by Sarah Porter
“Nice work on these nails, baby doll.” He was grinning uncontrollably as he gazed down at a handful of the nails she'd straightened. “One thing I did right was I taught you how to be resourceful. Make the best of things.” His confidence was coming back, Luce realized, and her tail flipped from pure exuberance. He was going to be fine. Maybe she could even introduce him to Dorian.
“You did everything right, Dad.” Except for trusting Peter, Luce thought, but she didn't say that part out loud. Then she couldn't suppress the urge to brag a little. She wanted him to be proud of her. “Some of the other mermaids even think I should be queen.”
He laughed. “I don't doubt it, baby doll. They couldn't hope for a better one than you.” He was looking at the pile of wood, and Luce suddenly realized that he was consumed by hope, almost delirious with excitement. After two years marooned to be this close to freedom...“Now, about that raft. I'll build a frame, and maybe while I'm working on that you can oil up these seal skins...”
24. Strange Queens
They couldn't have picked a better day for setting out. The sea was smooth and luminous, the air warm. Birds were flocking north again as Luce slipped into the harness she'd braided from long strips of hide. It had been her father's idea to pad the insides of the straps with fur so that they wouldn't chafe her shoulders. Luce checked the raft for the tenth time that day, tugging and banging on it. It seemed sturdy enough, with low boxlike sides to keep the waves from slopping in too much. Her father grinned to himself as he lowered in a heavy skin bag of fresh water along with some dried fish in a crude net of twisted grass cord.
It had taken them several days to get everything ready, but Luce was still nervous. It was a lovely day, and the waves were as low and easy as she had ever seen them, but if the weather changed for the worse she might not be able to save him. And there was no way to guess how far they had to go.
He saw the look on her face and ruffled her hair. “Lucette, doll, if something goes wrong...” She tried to keep her dismay from showing. “Don't ever think it was your fault, all right? I'm the one who should've studied harder in raft-building class back in high school.” He grinned, but for the first time since they'd begun planning his escape Luce could hear anxiety in his voice.
It was a feeble enough joke, but Luce smiled at him. “I won't let anything happen to you.” Suddenly she was positive that she'd get him to land, no matter what it took.
“Staying here isn't no kind of real life anyway,” he added, but his eyes had something wistful in them as they traveled back over the island. All at once Luce understood why he looked so sad. The muttering spirits that lived in this place might have tormented him, but they had also brought his dead wife closer to him than she'd been in many years. They'd crooned to him in Alyssa's voice, day after day.
No matter how badly he wanted to escape from this place, it also must cut his heart to go. It had to feel almost like he was abandoning the woman he'd loved, or at least the last vital traces of her, the final scraps and fragments of her spirit. It didn't matter if he knew that wasn't really the case and that what he'd heard wasn't Alyssa at all. The feeling of it would still tear at him.
Luce waited quietly while he stared back toward the woods. His head was cocked, and she knew he was listening as hard as he could. Just in case Alyssa's voice spoke to him, just one last time.
The breeze stayed silent.
“I'd say south,” her father said after a while. “Don't know why, but I feel like that's our best bet.” He was looking away from her, trying to hide the pain on his face as he shoved the raft out and clambered aboard.
Luce was surprised. “Not east? We'll hit the coast of Alaska eventually.”
“I've got this feeling the islands are gonna be closer. Don't want to wear you out, dragging this damn raft.” He was trying to smile, but Luce could see how hard it was for him, and just for an instant she wondered if she had even done the right thing.
“I'm going to be under water a lot,” Luce warned him. Suddenly she felt so awkward that the prospect of whipping along below the surface came as a relief. “You won't see me a lot of the time, but I won't drown.” He only looked at her quizzically, his cinnamon eyes wry and sweet and sad. Luce slid deeper, and the ropes binding her to the raft went taut. Blue emptiness opened in front of her, distant milky clouds. She glanced back over her shoulder and found him staring at the island again. “Yell if you see any orcas coming.”
He spun to look at her sharply; orcas obviously weren't something he'd thought about. Luce didn't want to discuss the possibility that she might be ripped apart in front of him and she dove, staying just below the surface.
Fast. It had been so long since she'd swum this fast, since curtains of glimmering bubbles had parted around her face. So long since she'd felt so free, even with the harness pulling back on her shoulders and slowing her down. The raft wasn't nearly as streamlined as Dorian's rowboat, and towing it was much harder work. Luce whipped through the glowing green waves, thinking of Dorian. In just a few days she'd feel his hands on her face again, breathe his scent, brush her lips lightly over his before she kissed him...
She couldn't wait to tell him everything that had happened.
Maybe it was crazy to imagine that she might be able to go back to the human life that was destroyed after her father vanished, but she couldn't entirely keep the fantasy of it out of her mind. Then she'd live with her father until she grew up, and she and Dorian would stay with each other always, but she wouldn't abandon the mermaids either.
The daydream was a little vague on the details. But possibly she could find some way to bring the humans and mermaids together before it was too late. Maybe there would never be a war at all. The fact that she and Dorian loved each other must prove that anything could happen. If the broken world was ever going to mend, if humans and mermaids were ever going to reconcile, it made sense that it would somehow start with the two of them: with the boy who was almost a land merman and the mermaid who was—Luce allowed herself to think it—almost a sea human.
***
After an hour or two Luce saw something blue in the far distance as she came up to breathe. She looked back at her father. “That's land all right, doll,” he called, grinning at her. Luce thought she saw some other emotion hiding behind his smile, though, maybe worry or grief. What was wrong?
“"Well be there before night,” Luce told him, trying to sound cheerful. “Going south was a great idea.” She kept looking around the horizon apprehensively, dreading a darkening in the sky that might mean a coming storm, but there was nothing except clear blue broken by beating wings, clouds like a trail of pale dots, a few whale spouts. It was all going better than Luce had dared to hope, and she pushed on, trying to ignore her growing tiredness. Swimming was a struggle with the raft's weight tugging on her, and they still had so far to go. She twisted, trying to loosen the cramps building in her shoulders.
Again the dive, again the streaking water, the rippling light, now and then a distorted silver wall that turned into a huge school of fish as she drew nearer. The sun arched up the sky, and Luce swam through gold-green beams, watching the ribbons of shadow that seemed to pour endlessly from her outstretched hands.
On and on, concentrating on the light-streaked space ahead of her. She'd almost succeeded, Luce told herself. She'd saved her father from his living death on that island, and soon he'd understand how much he still had to hope for.
Her daydreams still needled at her, prickling her with impossible hopes. It occurred to her, though, that even if her ideas weren't crazy she still wouldn't be able to tell her father to look for her near Dorian's village. She'd never thought to ask the name.
***
The sun wasn't far above the horizon, and the air was tinted golden orange as they closed on the Aleutian chain. Luce could even make out a few pale, boxy shapes perched on the slope of a conical island ahead of her: almost certainly a small settlement. Her father would find other humans soon. They'd help
him. When she stopped to grin back at her father now his excitement seemed genuine, without any of the hidden darkness Luce had noticed before. “My God, Luce! We've made it!”
Luce's shoulders were killing her, her tail stiff and heavy with exhaustion. She paused and looked back at him, then swam to the raft.
They were close to safety, but that also meant they were close to saying goodbye. She could see in her father's face that he might be thinking the same thing as he reached down and stroked her wet hair. “You did it, baby doll,” he whispered to her. “I thought I'd die in that place, but you saved me. I am so damned proud of you.”
Luce pressed her cheek against his hand. “You're happy?”
“I'm real happy.” But again something grim showed on his face. “Just need to figure out what we can do about you now.”
Luce flinched. “You can't worry about me...”
He needed to recover his hope, his sanity. Trying to raise a mermaid daughter couldn't possibly help with that, Luce thought. Much as she hated the idea, it would be better for him to forget about her completely, at least unless the day came when she could walk up to him and ... The look on his face was tense, distant.
“There's something coming!” he hissed abruptly. “Luce, under the water!”
Luce's reflexes took over and she dove in a spasm of fear. Dimly she heard her father's cry and the thud as he threw himself belly-down on the tilting raft. A surge of terror sped her heart, spasmed through her tail, but she could feel the raft's drag slowing her unbearably. Land was so close now. The island's dark peak loomed in her eyes, and she fought to reach it. Under normal conditions she could easily outswim an orca, but Luce realized with horror that the extra weight would hold her back too much. She strained to drive herself harder, but she seemed to be swimming through something thick and inhibiting, gray honey taking the place of cool water. Her tail was so cramped and tired that it twitched awkwardly as she tried to accelerate. And in the corners of her eyes she could see shadow-shapes closing in...
They came from the sides, not from below as she'd feared. And even in her panic Luce realized the shapes were too small to be orcas. Dolphins, then? For a fraction of a second she was ready to scream from sheer relief.
Her relief died as other dark shapes darted below her and she saw that she was surrounded. They weren't just too small to be orcas: they were also too quick, too graceful and sinuous, and a faint glow slicked their skin. Anais would love nothing more than to murder Luce's father in front of her ... Luce wove from side to side, looking for a way through the closing ring of mermaids. There was a flash and a blur, and a pair of dark Inuit eyes stared straight into hers. Who was that? Hands seized Luce's shoulders from the sides, and the dark-eyed mermaid jerked her head, signaling them upward. Luce thrashed as they tugged her to the surface. The gold of sunset flecked the sea in all directions, and there was that beckoning island. It was so close now that Luce could make out a ramshackle old dock.
Luce stared around in the golden light, catching one quick glimpse of her father's appalled face. Half a dozen mermaids pressed around her, their hands tight on her arms to keep her from escaping, and Luce realized that she didn't recognize any of them.
“Okay,” the Inuit mermaid snapped. Her round cheeks glowed tan, and her almond eyes flashed. She was the only one not gripping Luce: their queen, obviously. “I've got some questions for you.”
Luce glanced back at her father again, trying to warn him with her eyes to keep silent. He looked too stunned to say anything; at least Luce hoped he was.
“Are you new at this or something?” the dark mermaid snarled, drawing Luce's attention back to her. “Metaskaza?”
Luce stared at her and then looked around at her followers. All their faces were hard, unyielding, gorgeous in the evening light. “Let us go.”
Two of the mermaid guards jerked her in response, about as roughly as they could without it counting as a violation of the timahk. “You didn't answer my question,” the Inuit queen observed.
Luce glared back at her. “I'm not metaskaza.”
“And you haven't been living on your own since you changed? This isn't, like, the first time you've met other mermaids?”
“No.” Luce tried to think fast. She could call a wave to throw these mermaids out of her path. That kind of singing wasn't meant to harm humans, and it was just possible that her father would be able to withstand it, but the risk was terrible. And even then this strange tribe would be sure to chase after her, and she definitely wouldn't be able to outrace them. Not encumbered as she was by the raft.
“Cool.” The queen considered this. “Looks like you're running out of excuses, doesn't it?” Luce braced herself, ready to spring, as the queen cocked her head at the raft. “Last question, then. "What's with the human?”
Luce exhaled, trying to calm the impulse to fight. Furious as she felt at being thwarted with land so close, violence wouldn't help her father. Maybe these mermaids wouldn't care what Luce had to say, but she needed to try. “He's my dad.”
Murmurs of surprise came from the other mermaids. Luce watched them look around at one another, and a few swiveled their heads to see the events that had made Luce change. “It wasn't him, anyway,” one of them whispered. “But still...”
“You know that doesn't matter!” someone yelped behind Luce. Luce turned to look at her, a girl with masses of wavy, honey-colored hair and a face that would have been sweet if it weren't so bleak and miserable. “No fraternizing with humans. It doesn't matter who they are!”
Luce glowered at her. “It matters to me. I'm taking him back to shore, and I'm not letting anyone stop me.”
The queen touched her arm sympathetically. “I'm really sorry. Look, I understand it's your dad; you still love him. But we can't let you do that. There's no way.” Luce turned on her with such a dark blaze in her eyes that the queen recoiled a little. This was it, then. Luce had never dreamed she might kill one of her fellow mermaids, but if that was what it took...“I'm really sorry about this,” the queen said again. “Everyone hold her. Get her tail. Jessie?” She cocked her head at the honeyhaired girl. “Want to do the honors?”
Jessie shot Luce a look; Luce couldn't tell if it was meant to be defiant or apologetic. Then Jessie gazed down sadly at the water's surface. Anyone would have thought that she was thinking of something completely different, but Luce could feel the crushing expectation of the mermaids around her. Nails dug into Luce's arm, and girls pulled in shivering breaths. Jessie's soft pink lips opened, and the air began to melt like butter. It dripped with sounds too beautiful for any human mind to bear, and Luce glanced back to see her father staggering to his feet. His gaze was veiled, milky, already drowning in impossible dreams. She had only moments.
No choice, Luce thought vaguely. No other way. Her own emotions were rising in Jessie's voice, higher and fiercer by the moment, and even before Luce had quite realized what she was doing those feelings had transformed themselves into a song of stabbing brilliance, so sharp and piercing that the sun's glare seemed to dull by comparison. The sea swelled in Luce's cry. Everything around Luce slowed into a kind of drowning light, but the light was made of pure music, and that music was an unceasing, magnificent scream. The strange mermaids had half a second to gape at her with a mixture of terror and admiration. Then waves like giant hands caught them by their wrists, their tails, wrenching them away from her; fins tumbled, flashing sunset at every turn, and plunged from strange heights. The water seemed to obey her will even before she was consciously aware of what she wanted. Luce felt herself in the sound that cut off Jessie's singing as a tendril of water wrapped around her neck and silenced her; she felt herself, her music, fused into rolling waters forty feet high that threw mermaid bodies apart.
There was another shriek as the Inuit queen crashed down just in front of Luce. Luce allowed herself one quick glance backwards to make sure her father was still on the raft; his limp body lay face-down on the planks. Then she was hurling toward
the island again, fading music curling in her chest and tears she couldn't control dissolving in the rushing sea. There was no way to guess what that assaulting music had done to her father's mind and no time to stop and check on him. But she was in so much pain. Her movements were sloppy and unhinged, and already that strange tribe was after her again.
“Wait!” Luce heard someone shouting behind her. The cry shivered and refracted through the water, pounding at her head from all sides, and Luce drove herself on. “Wait up! Queen Luce! We didn't know it was you!”
Luce's tail convulsed painfully. She couldn't help slowing for a moment, and her whole body wobbled with the green waves around her. Hands were closing on her again, but much more gently this time. She broke the surface with a gasp. “I won’t let you hurt him! Not after ... I mean, he was lost for so long; it's so incredible that I found him again...”
“We won't,” the dark queen promised softly. Her arm was already halfway around Luce's shoulders, and Luce couldn't decide whether to be angry or to give in to the comfort of that touch. “It's all okay. I'm Queen Sedna. Look, Luce, we've heard about you...” Sedna faltered, and Luce saw the other mermaids gaping at her as if they could hardly believe it. Sedna gazed back at them with a sudden flash of authority. “She can do what she wants.”