by Sarah Porter
When Luce came close to Dorian's village she saw that almost all the boats, including his rowboat, had been hauled out of the water and lined up on a bank dense with brown grass. The boats were all set upside down on trestles, probably to keep them from getting damaged by the ice. She and Dorian wouldn't be able to go to their secret cave anymore, Luce realized. Not until the spring. She doubled back and found him sitting on the snow-covered beach, almost exactly in the spot where she'd thrown him ashore six months earlier. He was doing homework and didn't notice her at first, and Luce watched him in silence. Only six months ago, Luce thought. How could so much have happened in such a short time? Dorian looked up and straight into her eyes.
“Hey, baby,” he said sadly, and leaned out to kiss her. “Looks like we've lost the boat for a while.”
She hadn't thought Dorian was beautiful when she'd first seen him, but she did now. He seemed gorgeous to her sitting there in the dusk with his dark blond-bronze hair and full pale lips, his amber-tinted skin, his air of tattered nobility. And, she realized, the dark sparkling of the indication was almost completely gone from around him. Luce felt oddly shy. She didn't want to tell him how she'd gone to warn the tribe, in case he was angry with her for risking another fight. After a second she decided not to mention the slick of ice covering the water in her cave either. But keeping quiet about all the important things left her with nothing to say. They were too close to his village here for her to sing to him.
Instead she kissed him. She kissed him fervently for hours, clinging to his shoulders as if something was trying to tear her away.
On her way home that evening Luce noticed a series of dots in the water ahead of her. They appeared to be moving south, and her heart skipped hopefully. As quickly and quietly as she could Luce sped along below the surface, passing her own cave, until she was just close enough to confirm that what she'd hoped was true. Through the dim green water she could see the rapid, graceful flash of mermaid tails all swimming away together. Rachel had done her job well, Luce thought. The tribe was as safe as it could be now. If the humans found their old cave it would be nothing more than a vacant, garbage-strewn hole.
She stopped to gather a supply of oysters, then turned to go home. Once she was back in her own cave Luce realized that she was now truly the only mermaid living on this stretch of the Alaskan coast. She felt more alone than she ever had before, but she told herself it didn't make sense to feel that way. Not when she had Dorian.
***
A few days later Luce woke to find a fresh skin of ice covering the water of her cave. It was thicker than the time before, stretchy and as dark as the water below it. She tore through it easily enough, but she couldn't help imagining that soon it might be harder to break free. When she went to meet Dorian later that day she found that the water near the shore was covered by an elastic veil of nilas some three inches thick. It bellied and fell with the waves, tearing in places, so that sheets of soft ice overlapped one another in ridges. Luce rounded the boulder that sheltered their meetings from view and looked at Dorian standing on the far side of the bending ice. He was about twenty feet away from her.
“I could try to walk out on it,” Dorian called doubtfully.
Luce felt sure it wouldn't support his weight. “Stay there, okay? I'll break through from the bottom.” Luce swam along the seafloor until the ice ceiling pressed claustrophobically against her head, then drove herself upward. The ice sheet swelled above her while she drove up with her fists, finally bursting through at Dorian's feet. He knelt down, and his hands slid tenderly around her shoulders.
“Luce,” Dorian said immediately, “I'm really getting worried.” He was gazing out anxiously at the shuffling white blots of pack ice on the distant waves. “What if you got trapped under the ice somewhere and it was too thick for you to break and you couldn't breathe in time—”
“It wasn't like this last winter,” Luce told him, as if that could change anything. “The tribe stayed here, and they said the ice wasn't bad at all...”
“Everyone says last winter was pretty unusual, though, like it was some kind of global-warming thing. But this year is already so cold, and the pack ice is coming like a whole month early...” Dorian's face was against hers as he spoke. His cheeks felt burning hot after the bitter chill of the Bering Sea.
“My cave's been freezing over,” Luce admitted, and Dorian flinched as if she'd smacked him. She hadn't meant to tell him that, at least not yet, but somehow the words slipped from her.
“You're going to have to leave, Luce! You should really go now, today, before it gets any worse. And it might be months before you can get back here, and we can't even e-mail ...” Dorian sounded despairing now. “Lindy says sometimes the ice doesn't start melting until March. Even April. Luce!”
He was right, of course. Luce didn't answer at first, just held him in her arms and tried to think of something she could do, some way she could keep reality at bay for a little longer. Nothing occurred to her. “I love you so much, Dorian,” she whispered at last. She fought to hold back her rising tears and failed.
“I love you so much, too. You're really all I want, Luce. In the whole world...”
“What if...” Luce hesitated. “Dorian, what if I can never turn human again? Would it be better...” Would it be better for you if I just stayed gone? Luce thought. But she couldn't say the words out loud.
“I love you anyway. I want you to be human, Luce. I want to make a real life with you and grow up with you. But I'm in love with you no matter what you are.” He pulled back just far enough to look at her. “You promise me you're going to come back? As soon as the ice breaks up?”
“I promise,” Luce told him. His lips were brushing across hers, and his ochre eyes swayed across her vision like satellites.
“No matter what?” Dorian whispered. “You won't abandon me again?”
“No matter what. I'll be back as soon as I can.”
“And you promise you'll be careful, Luce? You won't try any more of your crazy heroic stuff?”
“I'll be careful. But Dorian...” She squirmed in his hands, trying to pull back enough to look at him straight. She wasn't sure if she could say this.
“Baby?” He was trying to tug her close again, and Luce knew that once he did she wouldn't talk for a long time.
“Do you want me anyway? Even though I can't be with you the way a human girl could?” She'd almost choked on the words, but now they were out. Dorian's face was buried in her hair; she couldn't tell how he was reacting.
“Hearing you sing is better than that,” Dorian murmured. His hands brushed every inch of her exposed skin from her fingertips up to her ears, and then his mouth found hers and kept it.
18. The Lost Island
Luce swam blindly away that night, barely conscious of the need to stay near the shore. Her sense of the geography was a bit hazy, but she knew she'd have to swim through Bristol Bay and then around the Alaskan Peninsula and through the Aleutian Islands. That might take a few days. On the far side she'd soon be beyond the reach of the worst sea ice, but she'd also be in areas that would probably have too many humans for comfort. But Luce had a vague memory of someone telling her that there were vast forests and wild cliffs along the coast south of Anchorage. There'd probably be caves along the waterline, and she'd find one and pass the winter in solitude. It would be lonely and maybe kind of boring, but she'd have plenty of time to practice her singing, and in a few months she'd swim home again.
Dorian would wait for her. He loved her no matter what. The fact that they could love each other in spite of everything that stood between them proved that anything was possible. The important thing was to remember that so that she could face the long, dark months ahead bravely and not crack up somehow.
She skimmed along below the surface with the dark shore to her left. Her thoughts were so full of Dorian that she barely saw the clouds of silvery fish or the dipping seals, and hours passed in darkness. She felt nothing but the sinuous
movements of her own swimming. It must have been morning when she finally stopped to rest somewhere along the peninsula. The coast was low and grassy and she couldn't find a cave, but the beach where she finally stretched out seemed isolated enough that humans probably wouldn't discover her there. Her tail fanned through the water, and her head rested on a patch of grayish sand.
Luce slept and woke with her whole body aching, convinced in the first few moments that Dorian was sleeping beside her and that he was somehow perfectly comfortable halfsubmerged in the Bering Sea. Then she realized how alone she was, and she shivered. She didn't even have his jacket to nestle in.
And, she suddenly remembered, there were still half a dozen of his library books stacked on a rock in her cave.
***
The constant bluish dimness made it hard to guess the time. Luce looked out on an inky sky and thrashing waves as she ate mussels and braced herself for the onward journey. The pack ice was thinner down here at least, and there was no nilas clinging to the shoreline. Her muscles were so sore that she was reluctant to face another long night of swimming, but this beach obviously wasn't a good place to stay for long. It was too open. If she hadn't been so exhausted she never would have stopped here at all.
The wind yowled and battered the stunted trees behind her. Luce pulled herself together and swam on, forcing herself to keep a steady pace for hours through the growing twist and push of the water. At first she tried to hug the shore, but as she went on the increasingly powerful currents threatened to overwhelm her. One towering wave caught her off-guard, swinging her high up through a blur of gray mist and then hurling her against the stone beach. For a few seconds she rolled, battered and confused, with her tail exposed and blasted by the stinging wind. She was only bruised, and she slipped back to sea on the next breaker that rolled in, but she couldn't escape the realization that she could easily be stranded beyond the reach of the water next time.
Luce drove herself through the heavy currents, heading into deeper waters. She didn't want to accept the possibility that a severe storm was gathering, but by the time the Alaskan Peninsula began to break into distinct, sharply peaked islands with huge slablike breakers rolling between them, it was becoming unmistakable. The only islands she could see had low, flat shores buffeted by the violent waves; there were no crags or caves where she could wait out the storm in safety.
She looked around hopelessly. At the bottom of each swell she could see nothing but sculpted walls of black water and whorls of bright foam. It was only as each wave lifted her that she could even glimpse those unwelcoming islands and the dark vacancy between them that might offer a way through to the other side. A few ice floes darted and pitched around her, and she had to dive abruptly to keep from being brained.
Luce sighed wearily and went on. There was no telling how long it would be before she could rest, though her tail muscles burned and her head swung heavily with the urge to sleep. The wind screamed as she surfaced again, and she strained to force her way against the current that seethed between the two islands in front of her. Billows of snow were falling, hissing like embers as they met the waves. Luce began to sing, trying to call a countercurrent the way she'd done before. If she could just make her way between those islands she might have a better chance of finding shelter.
The song-current came at her call, but this time it wasn't strong enough. The thrust of the water was still carrying her backwards, and the towering waves lifted and dropped her again and again. Each time the blow would knock all the breath from her lungs, and her voice would die until she could manage to reach the surface and seize another quick inhalation. Luce realized she'd never seen a storm like this before. It was fierce and unyielding, intolerant of any effort she could make to fight it.
An ice floe pitched at her so suddenly that she had no time to duck out of its path. With a sudden instinctive lunge Luce threw herself on top of the white coarse surface instead, almost skidding straight off its far side before she managed to get a grip on the jagged edges. The floe was longer than her body and roughly triangular, tapering to an end narrow enough that she could wrap her arms partway around it. She gasped in relief. Wildly as the floe bucked, harsh and dizzying as it was to ride it like a raft, it was still wonderful to stop struggling with the water. She let her tail go limp, let her fins flop over the brink. Shooting stars of pain coursed through her muscles, and she felt herself shuddering from sheer exhaustion.
So many waves were crashing over her that there was no chance her tail would dry out, at least. She pressed her cheek against the ice and accepted that the storm was stronger than she was. It was senseless to pretend she could fight it, and she closed her eyes and surrendered.
Luce clung hard to her ice floe as it lurched on wildly through frothing darkness that could be either night or day. She had no idea where she was going.
***
Again and again Luce drifted into a murky half-sleep, only to catch herself with a jolt as she began to slip from the ice floe that carried her. Sliding into these black, mountain-steep waves would probably kill her. She was so exhausted that she didn't think she'd be able to keep swimming long before her strength gave out and she sank weakly to impossible depths. Sometimes at the top of a tall surge she'd take advantage of the height by quickly scanning the horizon, but she couldn't see land anywhere. Nothing but the rollicking waves, the flying gouts of foam and maddened snow.
She fell into a kind of trance, letting her mind lunge and spin with her body. Sometimes she saw white bursts of light on the inside of her closed lids; at other moments she thought she heard Nausicaa's voice. Her arms were racked with cramps and seemed paralyzed in their endless grip on the ice. Luce couldn't understand how she still had the strength to hold on, hour after hour. At one point her hands seemed to melt into an icy liquid and she almost let them give way, almost yielded to a fall with no end.
What matters is that you made the choice to save me as you did, Nausicaa whispered in Luce's ear. Her voice was so vivid and warm that Luce couldn't tell if it was dream or reality, but it broke through her trance and brought her back to awareness of her loosening hands. She tightened her grip on the floe again until its ragged edges scraped the soft skin of her inner arms.
It also mattered if she made the choice to save herself, Luce thought. And she was sure that Nausicaa would agree with her.
At some point the water turned strangely warm. At some point the floe stopped its feverish lunging and only pranced gently, knocking against a rocky pinnacle that stuck straight up out of the water. The wind still shrieked, but it seemed to pass by above without striking her anymore. More important, the waves barely sloshed across her tail. Luce looked up in a daze and realized that she'd arrived at a small conical island with a few dense patches of steeply leaning spruce and an uneven coast. Everything was padded in thick snow. The island didn't seem to be part of the Aleutian chain. There was nothing in sight but water, and far in the distance a dark blue line that could be either land or a ribbon of settling storm clouds.
Luce tumbled off the floe into shallow water. She'd barely managed to drag herself to a spot where she could rest her head on the shore before she was seized by sleep.
***
There was a dull rattling noise. Luce shook herself, annoyed at the sound's intrusion on her sleep. She wanted to dream on, unmoving, for a hundred years. Her cheek squeezed harder against the pebble shore as if that could make the sound go away. That seemed to help, and Luce drifted again, dimly aware that there was something strange about the air here, the wind. The warmth of the water soothed her, and there was a vague whispering licking in and out of the breeze. There were sounds that were almost words, but she couldn't make out what they were trying to tell her. She slept on, dreaming that she was pressing her ear against the page of a whispering book, unable to understand the story.
The crunching noise came back, and this time her irritation was sharper. “Cut it out,” Luce murmured. It was a regular, repeating sound of
small pebbles grinding together. Then her eyes flashed wide open, taking in the feeble daylight, and she froze. That was the sound of human footsteps, and they weren't so far away. As lightly and silently as she could Luce slid back under the water, her heart throbbing frantically. There was no way to tell if she'd been seen. She skimmed behind the rocky pinnacle she'd knocked against the day before and then let her head glide upward very slowly until her eyes hovered just above the glinting skin of the water. She kept her movements as light and soft as drifting seaweed so that she wouldn't attract attention and peered around the edge of the rock.
A hunched human figure stood on the beach some thirty feet away from her. Clumps of brownish hair hid his face, and his tall frame was so heavily swaddled in crudely stitched-together seal skins that he barely looked human at all. His feet were wrapped in strips of fur bound together with grayish strands that Luce realized were probably dried intestines. He walked with a slow, shambling gait, his matted beard swaying. If he'd noticed Luce he gave no sign of it. Instead he just shuffled tiredly to the water's edge and stood there, staring down with sullen concentration.
The murmuring in the wind seemed to gather itself just a bit tighter, knot into sounds that were somehow closer to becoming actual words, though Luce still couldn't make them out. An electrical prickling brushed through her skin. "Whatever it was she was hearing, she was sure she wasn't imagining it. The tone became a little softer, more like a whirl of blurred human voices; it sounded like a troop of invisible dancers who kept whispering insistently as they spun. Luce thought there was something disturbingly familiar about those voices. Hearing them felt like trying to recapture a lost memory. The memory kept purring and buzzing and hinting at itself but always stayed just out of reach...
She could hear the voices gusting in from all over the island, but they didn't pay any attention to her. Instead they seemed to concentrate around the ragged man, hissing and cooing to him. His face remained stock-still and expressionless even as the water in front of him began to eddy. The waves bubbled and coiled, and Luce could make out the flash of bright scales just below the surface. The whispering grew louder, bubbled like the water, then abruptly expired in a shrill hiss that sounded somehow like a command. There was a flash of leaping silver and translucent fins, and Luce couldn't stifle a gasp. A large pink-silver fish crashed down hard just inches from the man's feet. It beat its iridescent tail against the beach, its body arching and falling. The man bent and seized the fish with one hand then casually swung its head against the rocks, knocking it unconscious.