The Twice Lost (28 page)

Luce opened her mouth and found she couldn’t answer. She wasn’t sure which part of Yuan’s observation surprised her most.

“Hey,” Yuan continued. “Do you want me to ask
Catarina
to come with us? It would be easy not to, like I could just make a big thing about leaving her in charge here. If you’d rather not deal with her.”

Luce was startled all over again. “Of course she should come with us! I mean, why
wouldn’t
I want her to?”

“I don’t know, because she seems like she’s always arguing with you? Like first she was so intense about you being in charge, but now it seems like she’s not a hundred percent on your team?” Yuan hesitated. “I hope I’m not making you mad again, Luce.”

“It’s okay.” Luce thought about it. “She does argue with me, Yuan. But I trust her a lot.”
Catarina’s the one who doesn’t trust me,
Luce thought. But she decided not to say that.

Yuan was staring at Luce with strange expectancy, her delicate mouth tensed as if it was crowded with words that she couldn’t quite bring herself to say. Her tail came up behind her in a single nervous flip. “Um, Luce? I’ve been thinking a lot about—about that thing you said.”

Luce tilted her head in perplexity. Had she offended Yuan somehow? “What thing?”

“That thing you said to me about the girl. The one I saved. Like, maybe you’re right that I don’t need to hate myself so much because I did that? And . . . I’ve been thinking about the person you saved, too.” Even as she spoke Yuan was turning away from Luce. Only one golden cheek was still visible, and it was blushing. “Catch you soon, general-girl.”

At first Luce felt relieved that Yuan was too embarrassed to continue the conversation—and then she felt a trace of something else, a tiny squirm of disappointment. What would happen if she
did
tell Yuan about her disastrous romance with Dorian?

And had she really helped Yuan feel better about her violation of the timahk, her fall from mermaid society? The clock at the Embarcadero glowed, and Luce passed a peculiar sculpture that appeared to be a giant’s bow firing an arrow into the ground.

Above the surface there was the brilliant city: below it the wings of rays, the fins of sharks, carved sensuous swoops from the darkness. Luce reached Seb’s pier with her thoughts still flowing around Yuan and the uncharacteristic vulnerability that had moved in her voice.

Soon twenty heads were floating just above the surface, the water webbed with spreading hair. Pools of milk-pale blond, caramel brown, and inky black were punctuated by Catarina’s shocking fiery amber. Seb was there, wearing a reasonably presentable navy suit jacket and a much less presentable tie with a pattern of scarlet elephants on it; Luce was touched at the thought that he was making an effort to dress up for his new role. He seemed to have trouble looking at the assembled mermaids for long and kept staring down at the rotten planks.

“So, um, General Luce?” It was Lieutenant Eileen, freckled and much less assertive than she’d seemed earlier. “Yuan filled us in a little bit, but I’m confused. I thought the whole idea of the wave was to just get the humans to back off, and it’s working great for that. But Yuan said—maybe you had some kind of bigger idea?”

“I do,” Luce said. “But I feel like—we’re all in this together. And what I want to do is going to make it a lot harder for us to win. So I think it wouldn’t be fair for me to insist on doing things my way. I wanted to ask you all—I mean, maybe you’ll agree . . .” Luce broke off, suddenly shy. Everyone was already struggling so hard and accepting such enormous risks because of her. How could she ask them for more than that?

“You said you thought it shouldn’t be
just
about us,” Yuan said. She was floating very close to Luce, and her gaze was oddly searching. “Like, of course you want the humans to stop killing us, but . . .”

“I
do
want them to stop killing mermaids,” Luce said. “But I also want them to stop killing the ocean.” A stunned silence followed her words, so Luce tried to explain. “I think the way humans treated us before we changed and the way they’re treating the world—they’re really not that different! When I was swimming down here I passed through this dead area where almost all the animals were just suffocated and
rotting
. . .” Luce heard that her voice was getting higher, sharp and fervent.

“And
that’s
why you don’t want to kill humans, Luce?” Catarina purred sardonically. “Because you’ve seen firsthand how much they destroy?”

“That
is
why!” Luce snapped. She saw the way everyone was staring at her. Of course it sounded like she was contradicting herself. “I mean,” Luce struggled to clarify, “if we kill them, then they’ll never get a chance to change.”

“So you’re saying you want them to stop global warming and stuff? Ice melting at the North Pole and the sea levels rising?” Yuan laughed. “I thought that was a problem when I was
human,
all right. Then after I hit the water I just thought, oh,
hells
yeah! More for us!”

“It’s worse than that,” Luce said seriously. She remembered everything she’d read and talked about with Dorian back when he’d been researching the ocean’s problems. “The ocean’s warming up a lot faster than the animals can adapt, and it’s getting way more acidic, too, from absorbing all the carbon. That has to stop or it’ll kill all the coral, and plankton, and—” Luce strained to recall the details—“I think a lot of the shellfish. And then everything that needs
those
things to live. It’s completely horrible.”

“And you don’t think saving the mermaids is a big enough problem?” Eileen asked. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, but this—it really sounds like a lot for us to try to do. You know? Like maybe we have
enough
to deal with?”

“We do,” Luce agreed. “It’s already incredibly hard—just trying to stop the war. I mean, I know, realistically, there’s already a good chance we’ll lose and then the humans will do whatever it takes to wipe us out.” It was the first time she’d admitted this out loud, and she saw the shocked looks on her lieutenants’ faces. They had more faith in the mermaids’ ultimate victory than she did, Luce realized. “But I think—we might die anyway. And mermaids have always been—kind of stuck. Like all we’ve cared about is what the humans did to us, and how hurt we all are, and how much they deserve to die. But if
everything’s
going to be different now, well, shouldn’t we start caring about
more
than that?”

There was another strained silence. Luce looked from face to face, trying to see the thoughts shifting inside their expressions. Seb looked oddly downcast, his mouth pinched and his eyes lowered. Yuan was biting her lip, but a half-smile was very gradually lifting the corners of her mouth and there was a distinct spark in her eyes. Imani was watching Luce but as if she was observing something far behind her. Eileen looked flummoxed and possibly angry, and Cala had started
laughing
with what seemed to be wicked delight. Catarina wore a contorted smirk. Luce couldn’t guess how it would all turn out.

Yuan went first. “I don’t
care
if she’s crazy. I’m with Luce.” She saw Luce’s flash of surprise and grinned at her, though there was something a little ragged in it. “What’s up with that look, Luce? I
told
you that.”

Luce couldn’t smile back. The choice they were facing weighed on her too much for that. “Imani?”

“Honestly? I think we’ll die if we push the humans that far,” Imani whispered. She still had that faraway look. The glow of streetlamps turned the droplets in her dark hair into clinging pearls. “But Luce? I think we should do it anyway. We need to—go beyond ourselves. It’s like we’ve been living in a sea that’s too small for our hearts.”

“Cat?”

“You know how I feel, Lucette. We’ve had this discussion.”

Luce felt vaguely annoyed. “Does that mean yes?”

“It means I don’t care. Not—” Catarina shrugged. “Not about this. Really, Luce,
plankton?
Write whatever you like.”

“Cala?”

“Yes. It’s seriously about time we changed everything up! I’m into it.”

They went around the circle. There were some halfhearted objections, and some answers that weren’t exactly agreement. But most of the mermaids there seemed ready to share in Luce’s goal of protecting the ocean. And, while a handful of girls seemed uncertain, nobody actually told her no.

Nobody except . . .”Don’t do it, Miss Luce!”

Seb had been so quiet that she’d almost forgotten he was standing there. Luce turned on him with a look that made him twitch back a little. “Why not?”

“Well, because . . .” Seb hesitated, his gaze flicking to Luce’s face and then down again. “If you’re just telling the power out there that they’ve gotta stop blasting your kind, it’s not going to cost them much more than their pride if they back down. And their pride—whatever kind of front they put up, their pride ain’t actually worth more than—” Seb brushed his fingers across the air, batting away invisible gnats. “But what you’re talking about now, Miss—I mean General Luce? That’ll cost them money. Money to change the way they do things. And as soon as you go messing with their finances, well, they won’t rest until they’ve made sure that
you’re
the one who pays for that. I just—”

Seb fell into a nervous silence as Catarina suddenly laughed, shrill and harsh. “I can vouch for the truth of what this
human
is saying, Lucette. Money is what drives those human
creatures
to distraction. Dearer to them than—”

Luce understood, horribly, what Catarina had stopped herself from saying.
Dearer to them than their own daughters. Dearer to them than
I
was
. . .
Impulsively Luce caught Cat’s hand and squeezed it.

Seb flicked his eyes, very briefly, toward Catarina, and then broke out nodding. “So that’s all I’m trying to say, general. I want to see you live through this, and I’ll do whatever I can to help make sure that happens.”

“What does that matter?” Luce asked. The words burst out of her almost before she knew what she was saying. “If I can do—what I have to do—who
cares
if I live through it? I mean, you were watching us on TV. You heard what that reporter said. Even my
dad
is out there telling people mermaids are just killers, making everyone
hate
us, when we’re right in the middle of a war!”

Luce’s voice was suddenly veering out of her control, spiking into odd sharp notes of song as she spoke. Luce’s lieutenants looked stunned, and there were a few random cries of concern. Imani swirled rapidly over and flung her arms around Luce, holding her tight and humming softly into her ear, soothing the dreadful, violent music out of Luce’s voice.

For an instant Luce was angry. In the next heartbeat she was grateful. Her voice had almost ripped away from her. In another moment it might have leaped into the death song and then she could have killed Seb without even wanting to.

Luce quickly hugged Imani back. Her voice was still fighting a little inside her, and a mournful thickness gathered in her throat where she held it suppressed.

“Aw, Miss Luce,” Seb said after a moment. “It’s not like you’ve had a chance to check up on what that woman said, right? Maybe your dad didn’t mean anything as bad as she made it out.”

Luce tensed. “I don’t want to
hear
about it, Seb.” At least the song inside her had quieted; she could speak again without risking its release.

“Maybe if you heard the whole
context
of what he said, it would seem a little different than—”

“It doesn’t matter.” Luce felt taut, focused, and still a little angry, although she wasn’t sure at what. “We’ve got work to do. Can I please have that paper now?”

They spread it out in a spot where the planks were relatively level. Luce was surprised to see that it was heavy, obviously expensive ivory stationery emblazoned with the logo of what must be a fancy downtown hotel. “How’d you get this, Seb?” Luce’s emotions were still running high, but now she felt close to laughter.

“Oh, you know,” Seb said almost demurely. “I was fast. I figured, writing to the president or whoever, you should have something nice.”

Luce thought about that. There’d been an election coming up when she’d transformed, and it suddenly occurred to her that she had no idea who’d won. “Who
is
the president now?”

The mermaids around Luce looked blank. “Leopold,” Seb said.

Luce shook the droplets off her hand. Her fingers still left wet prints on the paper. She took up one of Seb’s pens and started writing in her best script, reading aloud as she went: “Dear President Leopold . . .”

“He’s not
our
president,” Catarina snarled.

Luce looked at her and nodded. “You’re right. Okay, ‘Dear President Leopold of the United States Humans, and All Humans of the World. The mermaids of the Twice Lost Army don’t want to be at war. We want peace with humans as soon as possible, but there are some things we need you to do first.’”

Luce glanced around at the faces pressing in around her. No one said anything, so she kept going. “Um, all right. ‘We already promise not to kill humans unless you force us to defend ourselves. If you agree to our demands, we’ll lower the wave blockading the Golden Gate, and we’ll do it very carefully so we don’t damage anything. We’ll also send messengers out to any mermaid tribes that still attack humans and do our best to persuade them to stop. In exchange, we want you to completely stop attacking mermaids. And we want you to stop killing the ocean. Global warming and the water becoming acidic and all the sea animals getting killed off are going to cause terrible problems for humans, too, so what we’re asking is really for your own good.’”

Luce looked around again. Seb was grimacing, and Catarina had her head tipped back and an aloof, sarcastic look on her face. But Yuan nodded carefully. “I think that sounds pretty good. Just something to finish up. Like they taught me in school, you want to end with something that sticks in the reader’s mind.”

Luce thought again then continued the letter. “‘We’re all kids. The oldest mermaids I know were only seventeen or eighteen years old when they changed form. I was in eighth grade. Why do
we
have to be the adults here?’”