The Twice Lost (30 page)

“Luce. What happened next?”

Luce was suddenly finding it hard to concentrate. It took a huge effort to focus her mind and keep up the story. How the silent black boat appeared and the divers fired on her before she knew what was happening. How in the impulse of her rage and terror she’d called the wave and flung the boat furiously against the cliff, then fled in a daze to warn as many mermaids as she could. Her hallucinations and the encounter with the school of huge squids, her collapse, those humans holding a camera.

J’aime’s cave. The massacre there. Then what Luce overheard about the divers’ search for one mermaid in particular—
her
—and how they seemed to know far too much about her.

How she’d concluded that Dorian must have informed on her—and thereby placed other mermaids in the line of fire.

Nausicaa was already shaking her head, her fins flicking with impatience. “It was Anais who told them of you! Luce, this only proves to me that she still lives—perhaps as a captive. How has your pride kept you from seeing something so obvious as this!”

“What makes you think it
wasn’t
Dorian? Nausicaa, I didn’t want to believe he could do something like that either, but . . .”

“He could not. If he spoke more than he should, he did so naïvely, with no intent to harm you. Luce, I know him.”

“I thought I knew him, too!”

“You know him still. Your pride and your hurt prevent you from
seeing
what you know. You make blind your own thoughts, and they wander in the darkness.”

If it had been anyone but Nausicaa who had said that to her, Luce would have felt nothing but resentment. As it was, her tail was beating the water into a froth, and she twisted out of Nausicaa’s embrace. “You’d rather make up some crazy story about Anais than admit you were wrong about someone—some
human.
You know why I’m glad I didn’t drown Dorian, Nausicaa? Because he didn’t even deserve the
honor
of being killed by me—after how shallow he turned out to be! He—”

Nausicaa burst out laughing uncontrollably, and Luce fell into an annoyed silence. Then, as Nausicaa kept on giggling, Luce found herself breaking into a responsive grin. Maybe she
was
being a little overdramatic. “Oh, such
pride
you have now, Queen Luce! I cannot begrudge you. You’ve earned this new arrogance, I admit that. But—”

Nausicaa couldn’t keep talking. She was laughing too hard again.

And, to Luce’s surprise, she felt grateful to Nausicaa for laughing at her. “Okay,
maybe
you’re right about Anais, Nausicaa. Maybe. But that doesn’t mean Dorian hasn’t been trying to hurt me—to get some kind of revenge! They could both—”

“Ah, Luce.” Nausicaa had finally mastered her laughter. “Dawn will be with us soon. You must teach me your way of singing so that the water will understand me and answer my voice. And I must learn your methods of
teaching
as well. Clearly, the next great task falls to me. Much as it will pain me to leave you again . . .”

Luce couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You
can’t
leave! Nausicaa, you—are you just trying to upset me? You can’t actually mean that!”

Nausicaa gazed at her strangely, almost speculatively. “We need each other, Luce. I am more aware of this than ever.”

“Then how can you even
talk
about—”

“But, as truly as you need me beside you, your struggle needs me
more.
Think of what I can do for the Twice Lost! At present, you and your followers here are alone in this battle, isolated in this bay, without support. The humans have only this one group to overcome and then everything you strive for will be destroyed. But I am accustomed to traveling great distances. I speak so many languages that their words tangle like brambles in my mind, and I am known well to hundreds of mermaid queens throughout the world.”

Luce was beginning to understand Nausicaa’s reasoning. She just didn’t want to understand it. “So you’re saying—you’ll go teach what we can do to other tribes?” Of course mermaids in other countries probably needed a way to defend themselves just as desperately as the Twice Lost did, or else they would very soon.

“More than that, dearest Luce. I will carry your skill to distant tribes, yes, so that they are not entirely helpless against these helmeted soldiers. But more than that, I will spread your movement and your goals. The humans will soon have more than just the dock mermaids of San Francisco to contend with!” Nausicaa laughed again, a little harshly.

“Dock mermaids?” Luce wasn’t entirely happy with Nausicaa’s tone; there’d been an audible breath of disdain in it.

“Strange enough, but this is true the world over, Luce. Those mermaids outcast by their own kind gather at the margins of great human cities. They hide themselves between the two worlds, in the shadows there, under the docks or factories or in half-sunk ships. Breakers of the timahk most often become dock mermaids just like these you know.”

“You know you broke the timahk too,” Luce pointed out. Nausicaa had spoken with Dorian at least twice—and those were just the violations Luce knew about. In three thousand years, there might have been others.

Nausicaa hesitated. “I did.”

“And so did I. I’m a dock mermaid too!”

Nausicaa smiled at Luce, her expression wry and thoughtful, and reached to stroke her hair. For several seconds neither of them spoke. “Then I will travel to the dock mermaids first, Queen Luce. The outcast mermaids of this world will be your vanguard. The Twice Lost will be the ones who create the mermaids’ future.”

Luce looked at her. “And after the war—if there
is
any ‘after’, Nausicaa, if we live? Then . . .”

Nausicaa smiled, but there a shadow seemed to flit behind her eyes. “Then we may still have Proteus to contend with, Queen Luce. I cannot imagine that the god who gave the mermaids their form and their destiny will take kindly to your defiance of the timahk. The first mermaids, the Unnamed Twins, know me as an old friend, but even they might refuse to listen to me speak in your defense. You have not merely broken our law for yourself, after all.”

Luce barely registered the words. “But I need to know what
you’ll
do after the war, Nausicaa! I don’t care what Proteus does.”

“I will not part from you again.”

It all made sense. Nausicaa was obviously making the right decision for everyone; Luce could almost accept that. At least, she could accept it until she pictured Nausicaa swimming away from her again. Then her emotions all roiled in rebellion, wild with unreasonable urges to somehow force Nausicaa to stay with her, no matter the cost.

Water dripped from the rotting planks, and dull gray light suffused the morning sky. Nausicaa’s singing lessons would have to wait.

It was almost time to report to the bridge.

***

Soon she and Nausicaa swam close enough to the bridge to feel the water trembling against their skin from that overwhelming song. There were the usual animals: clouds of weaving blackish fish and scarf-winged rays—and, up above, something Luce didn’t recognize. She felt a quick impulse of fear. Maybe whatever was floating on the surface was some new weapon or a trap. There were dangling lines at its base that might be the wires of some strange bomb. She surfaced at a cautious distance to take a look at it.

Roses. It was messy bouquet of pale pink roses, balloons tied among them to make them float. Those trailing things Luce had taken for wires were actually curled white ribbons. Some human, Luce decided, must have dropped them in the water by accident. Beside her, Nausicaa gazed quizzically at the flowers.

Cala appeared at her elbow and prodded the bouquet. “They’ve started throwing us
presents.
” She sounded somewhere between exasperated and wearily amused. “The humans on shore, I mean. And they keep calling out, trying to get us to come
talk
to them, General Luce. Nobody knows what to do! And that’s not even the worst thing—” Suddenly her tone veered close to hysteria.

“What is this worst thing?” Nausicaa asked.

“I’ll . . .” Cala started. “I guess I should just show you. We’re all staying under the surface as much as we can because every time they notice one of us they freak, and no one knows how to react.”

On the San Francisco side, the bridge’s base was joined by a large parking lot. As usual these days it was packed with people. Some of them had started bringing folding chairs with them or else simply sat on the pavement with their eyes closed and their heads thrown back, rapt in the shimmering music of hundreds of mermaid voices joined together. But there were others who pressed purposely forward, some with mouths wide open but soundless, their expressions eager or ravenous or crazed. Luce, Nausicaa, and Cala had surfaced some twenty yards from shore, and at the sight of them the watchers squeezed together at the water’s edge began shouting desperately, waving their arms to beckon the mermaids closer.

Dozens of police wearing headphones stood stiffly among the listeners; Luce didn’t understand why they were there until a tall young woman with a mohawk leaped into the water only to be promptly hauled out and dragged away in handcuffs.

And, Luce realized, some of the humans onshore were carrying signs. At first glance they might have been mistaken for the kind of signs people carry at a political demonstration. But at the second . . .

“That’s what I was talking about,” Cala groaned. “It’s so—I never knew I could feel so
sorry
for humans, but this is just horrible!”

Faces. The signs had blown-up photographs on them, sometimes blurry or grainy from how much they’d been enlarged.

And they were all photos of girls, grayish in the overcast dawn light. In those poster-sized images tiny girls in ruffles blew out the candles on their birthday cakes, smiling teenagers draped insouciantly over leaning bicycles, and nervous-looking ten-year-olds held up just-unwrapped Christmas sweaters. And scrawled above or below or across those images were the names, printed in huge letters: M
ELINDA
C
RAWFORD
, C
ARIDAD
R
OSARIO
, P
RECIOUS
T
AYLOR
-H
AWKINS
. . .

Luce heard a low, keening cry, and then realized it had come from her own throat: noise squeezed up by the painful tightness in her stomach.

“Oh my God,” Luce finally managed. “They’re the parents? Of girls who vanished or . . .”

“I
know,
” Cala murmured. “I know. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen. Maybe
some
of those girls are mermaids now, but the others!”

Cala didn’t need to finish the thought. A lot of those girls probably weren’t on land anymore, but their families wouldn’t find them in the water, either.

A lot of them would never be found alive.

The desperate parents screamed and pumped their signs into the air, trying to get the mermaids’ attention. Luce felt the hot salt stripes of tears crossing her cheeks. She couldn’t bring herself to look away from those signs. She didn’t
think
she recognized any of those faces—but maybe if she just looked long enough she’d notice a familiar smile or a name she knew.

Cala noticed the intensity of Luce’s gaze and nervously twirled an auburn lock around one finger. “I know. I keep staring like that too. I mean, I guess people whose daughters
actually
turned into mermaids wouldn’t care enough to come and look for them. But—”

Luce thought of her father. Before what that reporter had told her, she definitely would have expected him to be standing there too. Now everything was different. “I wish we could do
something
for them,” Luce sighed. “I just don’t know what. Unless we recognize one of those faces.”

Nausicaa was oddly silent, looking back at the row of humans watching her.

“So, um, general?” Cala asked after a moment. “We need to know the rules. I know you said the timahk has to be different now, but—well, are we allowed to
talk
to them? I know you talked to that reporter and everything, and Seb, but that was all official stuff, and I wasn’t sure if everybody . . .”

Luce thought about that. It seemed a little risky. And, ready as she was to overturn the old timahk, the idea of unrestricted socializing with humans still made her uncomfortable.

On the other hand, it would be way too hypocritical to say that it was okay for
her
to talk to humans—but not okay for the rest of the Twice Lost Army. After all, her relationship with Dorian had hardly counted as official business.

“The mermaids can talk to anyone they want,” Luce announced. “Let all the lieutenants know that. They can tell the girls in their divisions.”

Cala’s hazel eyes went wide. “Really?”

“Really. Just ask everybody to please remember that we all represent the Twice Lost Army, and we shouldn’t say anything that’s not true or that could make humans hate us any worse. Okay?”

“Luce,” Nausicaa interrupted sharply. “This is a dangerous decision. Many of those humans are not to be trusted.”

“We need to start trusting them, though,” Luce told her. “Because we need them to trust us.”

“You, as well as anyone, Queen Luce—you know the grief that comes of this. Allow them to draw close to humans, and soon enough a great number of your followers will be disordered by love for human males. It cannot end well!”

“I don’t see why that
shouldn’t
work out!” Cala interjected. “Just because we’re in the water!”

Nausicaa flashed her a dark look.

“We’ll . . . have to risk it,” Luce decided. Cala’s comment made it all too clear that Nausicaa was right, but . . .“I just don’t think we can
avoid
talking to humans anymore. No matter what happens. Just—ask everybody to be really careful, Cala, okay?”

Cala leaped impulsively, her dark turquoise tail breaching and flashing in the somber gray light, provoking a flurry of shouts from the onlookers. Then she darted away to tell everyone the news. Nausicaa looked worried. Behind her, the mermaids of the morning shift were streaking below the surface to take their places in the line, while those who had been singing through the night began to break away, one by one, and head home to rest.