The Twice Lost (33 page)

Imani was smiling indulgently, but Luce was struck by the deep sadness of her expression. “I guess we’ll have to look for ourselves, Luce.” She touched the little mermaid on the cheek. “Would you go ahead and tell everyone we’ll be right there, please?” Then Imani’s face tightened in a way Luce had never seen before. She looked sharply away as the younger mermaid raced off.

“Imani? What’s wrong?”

Imani just shook her head, still turned away from Luce even as they swam. Wings of light brushed across the surface ten feet above Imani’s head, and a school of tiny silvery fish parted around her slim dark body like a strange cloud-shaped ball gown. Her storm blue tail cleft the water, flicking strokes of neon brilliance through the dimness.

“Imani?” Luce reached out and touched her softly. “Is there anything—”

“No one’s ever going to come looking for me, is all. Seeing all those humans who actually
care,
Luce, when—it’s hard for me. I wish they wouldn’t come here! No one ever loved me but my grampa, and he died.”

Luce wasn’t sure what to say; it seemed clear from the images she could see in the shimmering indication around Imani’s head that she’d already lost her immediate family by the time of her transformation, just as Luce had. And then the fact that Luce’s own father
still
hadn’t come to join the human crowds seemed to prove that he must not care about her at all anymore.

But Imani definitely didn’t need to be reminded of how many mermaids were in the same situation she was. “Your grandfather’s not the only one who ever loved you, Imani.” Luce hesitated but only for a moment. “I mean, you know
I
love you, right?”

Imani glanced over at her and managed half a smile. When they came up for a breath the water-wall gleamed ahead of them, foam sliding from its crest in a cascade of pearls. Pale mist wrapped the red bridge in bands of suspended glow.

***

A tangle of mermaids with arms around one another’s shoulders clustered near the shore not far from the bridge’s base, facing a tightly compressed crowd of humans some fifteen feet away. Police officers stood among them, tense and bristling in the headphones that protected them from the silky wash of enchantment endlessly throbbing from the singers under the bridge. An older human couple sat cross-legged at the front, pressing affectionately together. The woman wore a floppy brown hat and tweed coat and had a large laptop propped open on her knees, its screen turned toward the water. As Luce surfaced with Imani beside her several humans cried out softly, and the mermaids parted to make room. “Isn’t that her?” someone onshore murmured.

“Shh. Yes. Don’t scare them again!”

Luce’s tail fidgeted as she approached that mass of staring faces. Could it really be safe to come this close to a human mob? But there was the screen in front of her, with a newscaster introducing a man Luce had never seen before, his stiff white hair like frosting above a heavily jowled reddish face. The woman supporting the laptop looked kind and thoughtful, and she considered Luce with a mixture of warmth and open curiosity. “General Luce? I’m honored you could join us. I’m Helene Vogel.”

A bit nervously, Luce swam close enough to shake the woman’s outstretched hand. A few people gasped, and Luce abruptly swirled back to the waiting mermaids. “Hello, Ms. Vogel. Thank you for letting us watch the news with you.”

“My pleasure. I’m sorry the volume doesn’t go up any louder than this.”

Luce didn’t see any reason to explain that mermaids had much better hearing than most humans. Her attention was caught by the faces chattering on the screen in front of her; there was something unpleasantly fascinating about the man being interviewed, with his emotionless ice gray eyes and twitching half-smirk. A banner at the bottom of the screen read “Secretary of Defense Ferdous Moreland.”

“It’s plainly impossible,” Moreland was saying indignantly, “that these vicious entities were ever
human beings.
Those claims are pure propaganda.”

“But the facial resemblance?” the newscaster objected in a weak voice. “There are records of a Lucette Gray Korchak. A troubled eighth grader who was presumed to have committed suicide in Pittley, Alaska, in April of last year. So are you suggesting that
General
Lucette Gray Korchak is actually someone else?”

The image was suddenly replaced by two very close-up faces juxtaposed side by side. On the right was Luce, wounded and exhilarated and fierce, as she’d leaned from the wave’s flank during her conversation with the reporters. On the left was what Luce recognized with a jolt as her seventh-grade portrait from school, her gaze scared and full of longing. Together those two faces created an unsettling stirring, a sense of something irreconcilable and rasping and wrong, because they were so much the same but also not the same at all. Objectively there was no real alteration in Luce’s features between the two portraits, apart from the notch missing from her right ear, her fine crisscrossing wounds, and the strange internal luminance that gave the mermaid version of her face the feeling of a beacon floating in infinite darkness. It was precisely the sameness of the two faces that created such a disturbing sense of impossibility: how could the commonplace childish prettiness of her human face translate into the volatile, raking beauty of the face on the right? Luce heard murmurs around her and realized that both Yuan and Imani were squeezed against her sides as if they needed to protect her from something.

The screen switched back to the interview. “Our research suggests that these creatures can assume a resemblance to their victims,” Moreland intoned heavily, then paused for effect. “The
real
Lucette Korchak—an innocent although seriously disturbed child—was almost certainly murdered by this monster who has hijacked her identity.”

Around Luce mermaids cried out in indignation and disbelief. But didn’t some of the humans facing them look troubled, uncertain? Luce couldn’t completely blame them: it had been hard even for her to stand the dissonance between those two faces. Even as she remembered the cold metal stool where she’d sat for that school portrait, the bleak room and glaring flash, she could still feel a kind of shudder of persuasion in Moreland’s words.

Moreland kept going. “We also need to remember what happened to Kathleen Lambert of Grayshore, Washington, when she made the mistake of getting involved with these unnatural beings. It’s certainly a striking coincidence that Ms. Lambert turned up drowned so soon after videotaping this self-styled General Luce. Anyone out there who’s considering aiding mermaids, or trying to
contact
them—” Moreland’s voice became a bleak growl—“would be well advised to keep Ms. Lambert’s fate in mind.”

Yuan stared. “What is he talking about? You said somebody filmed you, Luce, but—”

Luce felt nauseous. “I don’t know. I only saw those people with the camera for a few seconds!” Had the strange woman Luce had glimpsed that day somehow died
because
of her? But that made no sense at all.

“The woman who put out the first tape of you was found drowned,” Helene Vogel confirmed softly, her hat sliding over her eyes. “People have been talking about it. I’m not accusing you, General Luce . . .”

Luce stared up at the humans lining the shore, bewildered and heartsick. Their skin was damp with fog, hazy with the faded afternoon light. No matter how she struggled to put a stop to the killing it seemed that there was always death, and more death, and maybe in some obscure way it was her fault . . .

“General Luce,” Helene Vogel asked, gently but steadily, “
did
you kill that woman? Or order her killed?”

Luce shook her head miserably. “I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I’m so
sorry
if . . . if she died because of . . .”

Helene nodded. “Then don’t allow anyone to manipulate you into
feeling
responsible, general.”

Yuan’s arm was tight around Luce’s shoulders, silently urging her to be strong, and meanwhile the voices from the interview kept beating into her mind. She needed to focus on what they were saying, no matter how she felt.

“So—I know you’ve stated before that there’s no possibility of agreeing to the Twice Lost Army’s demands—is it correct that General Luce’s letter doesn’t change the White House’s position on that?” The newscaster’s voice pounded on like a drum.

“I’ve said it before and if necessary I’ll say it again,” Moreland droned. “We do
not
negotiate with mermaids!”

That made Luce jerk back in shock. “But—why shouldn’t they
negotiate
with us! It just means
talking
to us. Like we count.”

“And as for resolving the blockade of San Francisco Bay?” the newscaster pursued. “You’ve appealed for patience, and of course there’s been a real outpouring of support from the business community so far. But—”

“All options are still on the table,” Moreland snapped. “Naval traffic will be redirected to alternative ports until such time as we’re ready to move on this.”

Luce bit her lip and leaned toward Imani’s shoulder. Her eyes squeezed shut with the effort to hold back tears. Beyond the darkness of her closed eyes the newscaster nattered on, thanking Moreland for taking the time to talk to their viewers. Why were mermaids the only ones who were considered unworthy of meeting in conversation? If the humans wouldn’t even
talk
to them, it was hard to imagine what else the mermaids could do.

There were a few commercials for cars and alarming-sounding medicines. How much longer could she ask the Twice Lost to go on this way if there was no hope of negotiations at all? A blurt of shrill music announced a return to the news program.

“Well, we’ve all been wondering about the crowds who can’t seem to tear themselves away from the Golden Gate Bridge,” the newscaster’s voice suddenly thudded on. “It’s certainly hard to understand why some people in the Bay Area are expressing support for the mermaids.”

“That’s San Francisco for you!” a man’s voice smirked.

The female newscaster gave a dull laugh. “That’s certainly one explanation, Tim. But now we’re getting reports that even in Chicago—far away from the
crazy
Bay Area—there’s a demonstration happening right now. A crowd estimated at around five thousand people is marching in support of the Twice Lost Army. To you, Constance.”

Luce looked up again—and what she saw was even more intolerable than Moreland’s bland, cold face had been. The screen showed a large procession of people carrying signs. And right there, unmistakably, at the very
front
of it—

“Oh my God!” Cala squealed. “That is just so
sweet
of them!”

Two teenage boys were leading the march. A large banner stretched between them was emblazoned with the words
All Life Came from the Sea.
A wild wind stirred the tarnished bronze-blond hair of the boy on the left, and his expression was grim and determined even as his dark-haired friend grinned absurdly.

But even
worse
than that—

“Oh, I
love
that boy!” Cala called giddily. “Do you see what his
shirt
says? That is just the sweetest, most adorable thing—”

Yuan wasn’t looking at the screen anymore. She’d suddenly craned forward to stare into Luce’s face. Luce wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“He’s got no
right
to call himself that!” Luce snarled. “Cala, it’s not sweet at all! It’s like he’s
stealing
our name!”

The bronze-haired boy wore a black T-shirt, and printed on it in huge white block letters were the words—

“Twice Lost Human? Luce, he’s totally being nice! He’s just saying he’s, like, on our side. And he’s
cute.
”

TWICE LOST HUMAN
. How could he dare—after everything he’d done—how could he possibly have the gall to
call
himself that?

“Cala,” Yuan said coolly, strongly. “Cut it out.”

“I just don’t think he means it like
stealing
our name! He—”

“Don’t you get it?” Yuan’s tone was oddly matter-of-fact. “That’s Luce’s boyfriend. She doesn’t need to hear you going on about how sweet he is!” Luce reeled in the squeezing crowd of mermaids, spinning toward Yuan in outrage. Yuan only raised her eyebrows. “
Isn’t
he, Luce? That’s
Dorian.
”

All Luce wanted was to dive away and disappear. Eyes, both mermaid and human, came at her from all sides, curious and demanding, as if they wouldn’t be satisfied until all of Luce’s private suffering was dissected in front of them. She felt stripped and prodded; coarse fingers seemed to go fumbling through the chambers of her heart. Luce choked wordlessly, her tail lashing against the tails around her, wild with the urge to escape.

But Imani’s arms were around her and so were Yuan’s, and she was still their general—and their friend. She
couldn’t
just run away from them. Not anymore. She inhaled hard, forcing her tail to slow.

“Luce?” Yuan said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. It’s just—”

“He
was
my boyfriend,” Luce announced flatly. “He betrayed me. For a human girl.” She couldn’t believe that she’d actually spoken those words aloud.

“And you let him
live?
” Cala asked, wide-eyed—then looked self-consciously at the humans watching them.

“No,” Luce snapped. After all the horrible things Moreland had said and then the shocking appearance of Dorian, her emotions still seethed inside her, threatening to sweep her away. “I
made
him live. He
wanted
to die.”

“Either way,” Yuan said sardonically, nodding at the screen, “it sure looks like he wants you back! Why do you think he’s doing this?”

The news show cut away from the protestors. Now the two newscasters were talking about a movie star who had just been arrested for drunk driving.

The sudden disappearance of the marchers hurt Luce more than she would have believed possible. Could Yuan be right? Luce gaped at the screen, where Dorian’s absence seemed to form a cataract of emptiness. And far too many people were still watching her.

“Let’s get to work,” Luce said. Her voice sounded dead. “It has to be almost six by now.”