Waking Storms (40 page)

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.”

“We’re talking about some human,” Jessie objected. She was still rubbing her throat, but she didn’t seem to be really hurt. “Sedna, you know it’s not
right
—”

“She’s a friend of Nausicaa’s!” Queen Sedna snapped back. “And think about it, Jessie: she’s also an enemy of that rotten
sika bitch
...Have you thought at all about how happy that
sika
will be if we do anything to upset Luce? You want to do Anais some huge favor? After she killed your
sister
?”

Luce was still gasping, overwhelmed by storming emotions, breathless with weariness. But her mind was clearing enough for her to understand two things: a lot had happened while she’d been stalled at her father’s island, and if her father was safe it was thanks, in some unimaginable way, to Nausicaa. “What ... are you talking about?” Luce managed.

Sedna smiled at her. “Wow. It’s a long story.”

All the stories are long,
Luce thought. She suddenly missed Nausicaa so much that something seemed to crumple deep in her chest.

“But
still
...” Jessie kept trying to argue. “It’s not like the timahk makes exceptions for anyone, Sedna.”

“Oh, for Crissake.” Sedna rolled her eyes. “What
ever
. We can do this.”
Do what?
Luce thought. She tensed again, but Sedna was still grinning. “Luce, okay, so has your dad there ever heard you sing?”

Luce started. Of course he must have heard both Jessie and Luce singing just a few minutes before, but it seemed like Sedna had decided to ignore that. It could only be deliberate, and Luce started grinning back into the queen’s sparkling eyes. “Absolutely not.”

Sedna raised her eyebrows at Jessie. “See? So where’s the problem?”

“Well—
her.”
Jessie gazed around at the tribe for support then pivoted her eyes slowly to fix on Luce.
“She’s
the problem. Queen
Luce.
Okay, Sedna, even if ... Singing or not, she’s still been fraternizing with humans. You know what the timahk says! We can’t just let her get
away
with that. Not even ... You know how much I want to get back at Anais, but—

“There’s the timahk, all right,” Sedna pronounced definitely. “But there’s also common sense! God, Jessie, we’re talking about the girl’s dad here.” Luce found herself liking Sedna more by the second. She looked anxiously back at her father, but he was sprawled unconscious with his head crooked awkwardly sideways, the edge of a board digging into his cheek.

“Queen Sedna? Thank you so much ... for understanding. I need to go make sure he’s okay.” Sedna and Jessie were busy glaring at each other, tails flicking, and Luce skimmed away from them. In a moment her hands were in her father’s hair, gripping his arms, and she was shaking him. At least he was breathing, even if he wheezed like some kind of broken toy. “Please. Dad, please. Don’t you dare...”
lose your mind,
Luce thought, but she was too afraid to say it. “You need to live! You need to be okay, and happy, and...”
grow up for me. Since I can’t.

A sliver of cinnamon eyes gleamed at her. “Lucette. What kind of world is this?”

Luce beamed in relief. “The same kind it was ten minutes ago. You just fainted.”
If only that’s all it is,
Luce thought.

“It’s
not
the same! It’s new, always new. Every second. Like waking up on some kind of hard diamond planet.”

He was delirious, Luce decided. She stroked his matted hair and murmured to him, even as she wondered at what he had said. Always new?

Nausicaa certainly didn’t think so. But even Nausicaa wasn’t right
all
the time.

“Let’s get you to shore,” Luce whispered. “We’re almost there. You’ll be safe...” She forced herself to start swimming. Her tail was a snarl of pain, and her shoulders screamed as the ropes snapped taut again, but they would reach land in only a few minutes.

“Come back and talk to us when you’re done with that, okay?” Sedna called after her.

Luce looked around and smiled, and the glow on Sedna’s face told Luce that Sedna understood how utterly grateful she was. From the limp way Jessie held herself Luce thought she was starting to back down. Sedna would handle the situation fine, Luce felt sure. She was a real queen.

The raft finally ran aground a bit too close to the village for Luce’s comfort, but she was too tired to care. She flung her upper body onto the beach as her father scrambled ashore, staring all around him as if he really were seeing glinting diamond facets in all the trees. Smoke blue dusk blurred the waving grass. “Oh, Luce! It’s hard to trust it, but it’s all so beautiful!” He pulled himself upright and staggered a few dizzy steps, and Luce slipped the harness off her shoulders. Blood raced back into her arms like a hundred spinning razors, and she stretched and closed her eyes for a moment to fight the pain.

How could she possibly say goodbye now? But there was Dorian, and she’d already made him wait for so long. It was cruel. He must be so worried about her, maybe even afraid that she was dead.

Her father twirled messily, still clearly half-maddened by his brush with enchantment. “It’s
so beautiful!
I’ll never ask where I am again. Luce, baby doll, wherever it is, you brought me to it!” He was shouting, and Luce glanced nervously toward the shining windows of that tiny village: tiny enough that any disturbance would attract attention instantly.
Humans
would come. Already Luce caught sight of yellow light abruptly slicing from an opening door. Someone was calling and a dog barked.

“Dad? I’m going to ... I have to go. In just a minute.” Another door opened as if it were answering the first. They’d definitely heard him, then. “I—we have to say goodbye. It might be a long time—”

“No!” He staggered into the water, and Luce gaped in alarm. “No, doll, I’m going to do right by you this time. I swear it. Now that I’ve found you again, I’m going to change everything.”

She could already hear faint footsteps, and the barking was getting louder. A blot of yellow from a swinging flashlight crisscrossed a path; it wasn’t all that far away. “You
can’t.
You’ve—done everything you can for me, and I love you so much, but I have to go.” Luce heard the childish appeal rising in her voice. As if she was begging him to forgive her.

“How am I even going to reach you? Lucette, you can’t just—”

“I have to.” She considered the problem, but there was no time to come up with a good solution. “Make sure Peter always knows where you are. That way, if I ever ... I’ll have a way to find you.”

Her father snorted. “Don’t think Peter will want to do me a lot of favors. Not when I get done with him.”

She didn’t actually want him to hurt Peter, but this hardly seemed like the moment to start an argument. “I’ll find you somehow.” She sounded like Nausicaa, Luce thought. “Don’t wait for me, don’t worry, just do whatever you can to be happy...” She could hear men chattering, their rapid steps, the skittering sound of the dog breaking into a run. The flashlight’s beam suddenly swept across her eyes as the men turned onto the beach. She didn’t think they’d seen her, but they would very soon.

“Hey.” The man was heavyset and lumbering against the twilit sky. “Thought we heard something. Who’s there?”

She couldn’t hug her father properly while he was standing. She settled for squeezing his knees. Everything she’d promised him might be a lie. Luce had to choke down a wild cry of grief as she realized that she might never see him again.