Waking Storms (24 page)

“Dorian. Lindy said you might be here, so I thought I’d see if I could catch you.”

Dorian had already recognized the voice before he turned to look. It was Ben Ellison. Dorian hadn’t heard from him for a few weeks. Seeing that broad brown face in the blue dimness provoked a mixture of feelings in Dorian: anxiety that he couldn’t get to Luce right away but also a strange sense of comfort. He couldn’t tell Ellison about the mermaids, of course. But unlike everyone else Dorian knew, Ellison would believe him if he
did
tell the truth. He felt sure of that, and it almost made him think of Ellison as a kind of fellow conspirator. This was someone who understood about secrets. “Hey.”

Ellison looked at Dorian with his usual expression of fatherly concern. Dorian had hated it at first, but now he felt himself softening a little. Not that Ellison needed to worry about him, but still it was nice that somebody gave a fuck. “Can I take you for something to eat?” Ellison asked; he was somber, unsmiling. “We haven’t had a chance to catch up for a while.”

Dorian shook his head. “I’m ... kind of supposed to be somewhere.”

“Band practice? Did you find a drummer yet?”

“No. Well, Steve says his cousin knows this girl who plays the drums, so maybe. But she lives like fifty miles away, and we haven’t even met her. They’re supposed to drive up here sometime.” As Dorian spoke he found himself wondering what would happen if he said something completely different:
“Look, I really need your help. It’s about my girlfriend...”
If only Ellison weren’t in the FBI, Dorian thought, it might be worth taking the chance.

“It sounds like it might be difficult to schedule practice times, then. If your drummer lives that far away.” Ben Ellison sounded distracted, and Dorian suspected that he was only going through the motions of having a normal conversation, just the way Dorian was doing himself.

Somehow they’d started walking together in the direction of the dock. Between the buildings the sea appeared as a huge dark blot where all the ordinary human things, houses and cars, were simply canceled out. But in a way, Dorian thought, that darkness was his real home, at least as long as Luce was living there. How was he going to shake Ellison? “Steve’s about to get his driver’s license, though, so we’ll be able to go there for practice. It could work out all right.”

“Not if you—” Ellison’s voice leaped higher and then broke off abruptly, and he shook his head hard. They had stopped in a place with no streetlights, and Ellison’s broad body appeared as a black silhouette against the charcoal sea.

Dorian was confused. “Not if I what?”

“Dorian, I’m ... facing a dilemma.” There was an unmistakable ring of sincerity, even desperation, in that low voice, and Dorian started. “There’s something that I know I need to say, and soon. Someone I care about is putting himself in a position of extraordinary danger, and I’m the only one who can warn him.”

The sudden shift in their conversation was too weird, Dorian thought. Warn someone? What was the guy
talking
about? “Then why don’t you?”

“Because the young man I need to warn is frankly untrustworthy. And I don’t know whether I can make him understand the danger he’s facing without revealing information that could be ... quite sensitive.”

They were walking again, but Dorian still couldn’t see Ben Ellison well enough to make out the expression of his face. “If you’re talking about me, I’m totally fine.” Dorian impatiently snapped the words out but then realized that his heart was racing. The hill sloped steeply away at their feet and he felt a rush of vertigo.

Ellison seemed not to have heard him. He was staring at the sea as if he half expected it to come rushing up the hill and engulf them. “Maybe you remember something I told you that time you came to Anchorage. I mentioned then that there have been very few recorded survivors of shipwrecks like the one you were on.”

“So?” Dorian’s voice wavered audibly. They were passing in front of a tiny gray house with brightly shining windows, its curtains drawn back, and golden light spilled over them both.

Ellison abruptly stopped and wheeled toward him, taking him by the shoulders. His broad fingers squeezed in so hard it hurt. “Dorian, you’re frightened. I can hear that you are. And you
should
be. You still have some instinct for self-preservation, and if you’ll only listen to what your instincts are telling you ... you might grow up to be a very interesting person.”

Dorian reeled a little in Ellison’s grip, unsure if he should try to pull away. Wasn’t there something skittish, even a little crazy, in the older man’s eyes?

Ellison kept on, his voice hard but also somehow distracted. “I realized that I needed to investigate. To find out what happened to the other people who went through experiences similar to yours. It wasn’t easy. But I did discover—unsurprisingly, I suppose—that most of your fellow survivors have also been young males.” Ellison made a sound that was almost like laughter, but his mouth was twisted downward. He was staring into Dorian’s face without actually meeting his eyes.

It was all so strange that Dorian had trouble processing what Ellison was saying to him. Then it hit him:
unsurprisingly
the survivors were young men? For some reason Dorian felt offended by the statement.

Ellison let go of Dorian’s shoulders, but he didn’t move out of his path. “In two of the cases where I was able to track down records, the young men in question went permanently insane. Institutionalized. There was a case like that twenty-five years ago, outside Anadyr, Russia—”

“You’re
calling
me
crazy?” As soon as Dorian said it, he realized it was the wrong approach. He should try to reassure Ellison, not provoke him. “It’s nice of you to worry about me, but I’m a lot better now. I’ve pretty much stopped having nightmares and everything.” It was true. Every time Luce sang to him he felt a little stronger, not as broken inside. The sea had stopped following him around like some huge watery ghost, a heaving shadow. It mostly stayed where it belonged.

“Three others drowned within two years of escaping from their shipwrecks, Dorian. It appears that for many people in your position, survival is only a temporary reprieve.”

Dorian stared. “I’m not planning on
drowning
myself. Like I told you, I’m feeling way better—”

“I’m not worried about suicide. At least, that’s not my primary concern. I believe that you do indeed ... have something to live for.” Ellison’s tone didn’t make any sense, Dorian thought. Was he actually envious?

Just for a second Dorian considered running. But what good would that do when Ellison could find him anytime he wanted? “Then what’s the
problem?
If you know I’m not going to kill myself—”

“Something else might kill you. You may have placed your trust in something ... extremely capricious, and lacking any conscience as we understand it. You may be naively putting yourself in harm’s way, day after day, with no idea of the risk.”

Dorian’s knees suddenly buckled, and he barely stopped himself from falling. The cold wind whistled between the houses, and his hair snapped hard around his face. Was Ellison talking about
Luce?
But how could he know anything about her?

If the FBI was after Luce, Dorian knew, he had to find out. But it was hard to see how he could ask the right questions without giving too much away.

“Are you talking about my girlfriend?” Dorian struggled to keep his voice as flat and noncommittal as possible. He waited anxiously for Ellison to react with surprise: the older man should smile at him and say something like,
“Oh, you have a girlfriend now, Dorian?
I
didn’t know.”

“Of course I’m talking about your
girlfriend.”
Ellison growled. Somehow hearing him say this out loud made it worse. “I suppose the term applies.”

Could Ellison really know that Luce was a mermaid? Dorian had trouble believing it. But either way...“Well, it’s not fair for you to say shit like that about her, then. You don’t
know
her.”

“That’s true. I don’t. But I doubt I’d make it through an introduction intact.”

“She’s not like that.” There was a strange timbre in the rising wind, Dorian realized, a haunted musical beckoning. It was a sound he’d learned to recognize. Luce was upset that he hadn’t come, and she was calling him from the dimness below. They were only a block from the harbor, and by the intensity of the sound Dorian guessed that Luce had come recklessly close to the village dock.

Ellison seemed to be listening to the wind, too hard for Dorian’s comfort. He turned away from Dorian to gaze down into the bluish darkness. “She’s ‘not like that’? Are you sure about that? Because in that case, Dorian, I’d ... like to meet her very much. Maybe you’d be willing to pass on the message?” Ellison paused and seemed to think of something. “How does she communicate?”

So the guy was still fishing for information, Dorian thought sarcastically. At least that showed that the FBI didn’t know everything. “She won’t want to meet
you.”

“Why not?”

“She doesn’t like cops much.” Dorian’s tone was deliberately insulting.

“I can see that she might have her reasons for feeling that way.” Ellison delivered this in a snide voice that clearly implied Luce was a criminal, and Dorian glared at him. “But I’d actually like to meet her on a personal level. Not as part of my job, but simply—”

“Simply to
what?”
Dorian couldn’t have explained why he suddenly felt so furious. He fought down an impulse to lash out, shove Ellison in the chest, punch him.

“Simply to know, I suppose. What she is. What she wants. Maybe there are other approaches...”

“You need to leave us alone!” Dorian couldn’t keep his voice down. It was stupid of him to yell in the street like this. It was a tiny town, and at any moment people would come to find out what was going on. “I’m not in any
danger.
My girlfriend’s not ... a bad person.” As Dorian said this Ellison grinned strangely. “I just want you to leave me
alone
from now on, okay? I don’t want to talk to you again.”

“I doubt that avoiding each other will be an option for us, Dorian.”

“I’m going to
make
it an option...”

“I tend to think of you as a kind of hostage. An innocent mixed up in things he can’t possibly understand. But other people won’t see the situation that way, of course, and I’ve taken a considerable risk by coming here to warn you. At the worst my actions could be construed as treasonous.”

Dorian began to think he might have some leverage. “I
promise
I won’t tell anybody about this, then. As long as you don’t come back here.”

“The two of us belong to a very select society, Dorian. There are only a handful of people in the world who have heard what we’ve heard. Whether we like it or not, that binds us to one another.”

Dorian gaped. He simply couldn’t accept that this meant what it sounded like. The idea that Ellison could have his own share in the most powerful experiences of Dorian’s life—it was revolting, impossible. He braced himself and looked up, glowering straight into Ellison’s sad brown face. “You’re
insane.
What do you think I’ve heard?”

Ellison smiled, but there was something shattered and terribly distant in his eyes. “Haven’t we already discussed this once? In Anchorage?”

Dorian’s stomach lurched, and his legs seemed to be crumbling under him, but he did his best to stay brazen. “I don’t know what—”

“Say hello to your girlfriend for me. I expect I’ve made you late for your meeting with her, haven’t I?”

“I’m not—”

“Make sure you give her my message. It’s ... in her best interest if you do.”

Dorian watched as Ellison turned away and walked back up the hill, his dark body half vanishing in the shadows and then winking into view again as he passed through the rare patches of light. Luce was still calling, but instead of running to her Dorian slumped down abruptly on the brittle grass of a nearby lawn and leaned his head against his knees. He knew he had to tell her what had happened, but as he thought it over he realized that Ellison hadn’t quite said anything that
proved
the FBI knew about the mermaids. And now Dorian wasn’t sure if he’d be able to remember exactly what Ellison had said to him, much less convey just how threatening and disorienting their conversation had felt.

The wind shrilled through his hair, but now the sound of it was empty of magic. Luce had given up waiting for him, then. He’d just have to find her tomorrow.

It seemed so unfair. Ever since the day of the gray whales, he and Luce had been so happy together. She’d stopped worrying about her old tribe and about the police, and Dorian finally felt like he had her almost completely to himself. He had stopped telling her to become queen, too—he didn’t actually want to share her with the tribe. Even Nausicaa’s hanging around didn’t seem to be much of a problem anymore, though Dorian still would have been glad to hear that she was going away. And now he was supposed to tell Luce—what, exactly? That some FBI agent had dropped a lot of hints that
might
mean she and all the other mermaids were in serious trouble—or that might just as well mean something totally different?

Capricious,
Ellison had said.
Lacking any conscience.
Luce wasn’t like that at all, actually. But weren’t there plenty of human beings you could describe that way?

Even worse: what if Luce became convinced that Dorian had betrayed her? After all, how else could Ellison know so much? Dorian had never really promised Luce that he wouldn’t talk to the FBI. So what was she supposed to think?

The cold seeped through his parka until he shivered, and the wind came rushing faster from the wild black sea. A few drops of sleet spattered against Dorian’s face.

People kept saying it would be a bad winter.

***

When Luce and Nausicaa slipped out late that evening to look for dinner, snow was falling in thick plumes that dissolved the instant they hit the coal black sea. Luce felt like she was swimming through an endless maze stitched from pale lace and crisp billowing silks. Even Nausicaa stopped and spun in circles, gazing around at the white frills drifting down the black sky. It was all magnificently beautiful. The snow pranced in each gust of wind, and Luce could just make out the subtle tinkling sound of the huge flakes crumpling into water. Luce and Nausicaa floated slowly together to the beach, where they ate, both of them silent from wonder.