Waking Storms (6 page)

Did the intrusion of that quiet black boat mean the humans
already
suspected there were mermaids darting through their coastal waters, mermaids hunting their ships? It did seem peculiar that a diver was intruding on their territory not long after other ships had almost completely stopped navigating anywhere near them. Luce tried to shake the thought away. They were just scientists, she told herself, biologists or oceanographers, and the fact that they’d chosen to monitor this particular cove was purely coincidental.

Luce flicked away from the sofa-shaped rock, careful to give a wide berth to the area the diver had tampered with. Maybe if she stayed pressed to the rock wall above that spot she could approach the camera without putting herself in range of its lens. She swept far out, then squeezed up to the rock face and began wriggling carefully along, dislodging a few tiny crabs from their hiding places. They skittered away from her in annoyance, clinging to the slanting wall. It was an uncomfortable way to swim and the sharp crags scraped at her scales as she bellied along. The gray wall with its twisted kelp and feathery, pale green weeds slid by, only a fraction of an inch from her cheek. The diver had been somewhere over here, but for a long time Luce couldn’t find anything unusual. She had a sudden awful sense that she might have dragged herself at full length across the camera without noticing it.

No. Something dark and very small poked between two broad brown leaves. Its lens reminded Luce of the wet darkness inside a snail shell. Luce paused a foot away from the camera and considered what to do. It was tiny and well-concealed enough that she never would have seen it there if she hadn’t been searching carefully.

She broke a rubbery leaf free and lined the palm of her hand with it. If a human hand suddenly appeared on screen it would certainly attract attention. Then she found a sharp rock, crept a bit closer, and slammed the rock down hard into that lifeless, staring eye. She heard the glass shatter, and brought the rock down again, grinding deeper. This time there was an electrical fizzling as something in the camera’s insides shorted out.

That was easy, Luce told herself as she began the long swim back to her own cave. She’d protected the mermaids from discovery. Everything was going to be fine.

Of course those people were scientists. Humans were so convinced they owned the planet, sea and all. Luce could slap them right in their faces with her tail and the existence of mermaids would still be more than they could comprehend.

***

Luce’s cave was the same one where she’d taken Catarina to recover after the tribe had assaulted her. Luce could never slip through the entrance without remembering the time she’d come back bringing dinner for the two of them and found Catarina gone, the cave somehow colder from abandonment. It felt even worse tonight. Luce had thought she was used to being on her own, but now she squeezed tightly against one wall of her cave and gazed into shadows that seemed suddenly malignant. It wasn’t a particularly cold night, especially not for a mermaid, but Luce still felt horribly chilled. She curled there shivering, remembering the song from the cliffs, until the bronze-haired boy’s voice turned into hundreds of black sinuous eels. The eels emitted terrible music, shrill as electrical feedback, as they squirmed up the side of a soot-colored boat. Soon there were so many eels that the boat was just a black, glossy, wriggling mass, tugged gradually downward into water so black and slimy that it might not be water at all. And suddenly Luce knew that the boy was in the center of that mass. He was going under...

Luce’s tail convulsed. She felt the splash hit her face, heard her own small scream, and opened her eyes to the twilight glow that filled her cave even on the brightest days. It took her a moment to understand where she was and that it was already morning.

And she wasn’t alone. Dana was there, sitting with her back against the opposite side of the cave. Her tail was flicking, and Luce couldn’t help noticing the hard, strained look on that beautiful face. Dana had been angry with her before, of course, but this look was different: cold and skeptical and, Luce thought after a second, disappointed. Coming up from anxious dreams, Luce felt instantly worried.

“Dana? What happened? Is something wrong?”

Dana smirked. “Are you
expecting
something to be wrong?” It was a strange thing to say, Luce thought. “Actually, I just came to visit you. Violet wanted to come, too, but then—Dana broke off sharply. There were so many different emotions moving in her satiny brown face that Luce couldn’t keep track of them. “But I sent her home. I thought it would be better if I talked to you alone.”

Luce sat up facing Dana. Anxiety twisted inside her like the slippery eels from her dream. It was so out of character for Dana to take this cool, abrupt tone; her personality was usually warm and relaxed.

“What did you want to talk to me about?” It took all of Luce’s courage to ask the question. She wanted to stare down at her hands, at the wall, and she fought to keep her gaze steady on Dana’s eyes.

“Well...” Now Dana seemed embarrassed, too. Her voice switched abruptly from curt to oddly shy. “Luce, I mean, last time I saw you, you said something? And I just wanted to ask what you meant by it.” Luce began to have a sense of what was coming. She braced herself. Suddenly Dana was the one who couldn’t hold her gaze on Luce’s face, and she stared off. “You said you weren’t sure you
believed
in the timahk anymore. What was that about?”

Luce cringed. She had to say something. “I just meant that I don’t want to sink ships anymore. I told Catarina that, too. I mean—I don’t actually believe that it’s good to kill humans, so I decided not to do it again.” Luce’s voice faltered. It was an outrageous thing for a mermaid to say. It must sound practically insane to Dana, and Luce started to hope that Dana would decide Luce was a hopeless case and go away. Then she knew from the unyielding look Dana suddenly flashed at her that what she’d said wasn’t going to be enough. Dana
knew
something. She was too smart and sensitive to let Luce put her off that easily.

Luce started desperately trying to think up excuses. If Dana had heard the bronze-haired boy singing Luce’s song, couldn’t Luce insist that he must have listened to her secretly when she’d been sure she was completely alone? Maybe kayaked to the entrance of her cave without her knowing it? Did the fact that he knew her song
necessarily
prove she’d saved his life?

“But, Luce...” Dana sounded like she was forcing herself to stay calm, to speak carefully. “You know that’s not what the timahk says. I mean, you know it doesn’t mention anything about
having
to sink ships just for fun or something. So if that was all you were talking about, you wouldn’t have felt like you needed to
say
that.” Luce was absolutely certain now that Dana had heard the boy singing. “There are really only two rules about humans. You can’t talk to them or touch them or have anything to do with them. And you
have
to kill them, but only...” Dana paused and stared at Luce. “But only if they’ve heard mermaids singing. So they can’t go around telling other humans about us.”

Luce took a deep breath. She’d just have to deny everything. There was no actual proof.

“I know what the timahk says, Dana.”

“Then which is the part you don’t
believe
in? Because I know you weren’t talking about the rules for how we have to treat other mermaids. It’s got to be one of the human rules.”

They stared at each other. Both their tails had been swishing involuntarily as they talked, stirring up a froth. The water was cloudy with bubbles, dabbed here and there with foam. Luce couldn’t answer.

“Luce, do you think—I mean—if some human finds out about us, do you really believe it’s
okay
to let them live?” Dana couldn’t maintain her forced calm anymore. Her voice was getting shrill, rising with outrage. “Even though if
any
of us did something that
stupid,
it would guarantee that we would
all
get killed? Not just the mermaid who broke the timahk but everybody. It’s one thing if you want to throw your own life away. Crawl onshore, then. But how could you
do
something like this to the rest of us?” Dana’s face was streaked with tears. “You hate us all that much because of Catarina? Is that it? You want to see me with my
head
blown off?”

Luce knew she should lie. She should play dumb, get indignant, say she had no idea what Dana was talking about. But seeing Dana’s huge brown eyes staring at her in wounded disbelief, tears flooding down her cheeks, Luce couldn’t do it.

“I would never want you to get hurt, Dana. I
promise.
Even if I did break the timahk somehow...”

“If
you broke it?” Dana was yelling between fierce sobs, leaning over. She was reaching behind her back where it was pressed to the wall, pulling something out. “Luce,
if
you did? You know what you did! You know, and even if I don’t know
exactly
what went on, I do know you’re even worse than Anais!”

The shape in Dana’s hand was a white triangle. Paper, wet and floppy in places. She started unfolding it.

Luce was shocked into speechlessness by the savagery of what Dana had just said. Her face felt hot and thick, and her heart was pounding. Then as the paper began to spread out and reveal an image, she thought she might faint, and pressed back hard against the rocks to steady herself.

It was a drawing done in heavy lines of black ink, like a very skillful panel from a comic book. A giant, sharply peaked wave blocked out most of the sky, and centered in the wave there was a girl’s face. Hers. Obviously it was meant to be hers. Her tail was curled behind her as she swooped downward, so that her fins fanned out of the water above her head. And it looked like there was some writing up near the paper’s top edge.

Wordlessly Luce stretched out her hand for the drawing, but Dana jerked it out of reach.

“You want to know what it
says
, Luce? You want to know what—whoever this is—this human who’s writing you
notes
wants to tell you?” The bitterness in Dana’s voice was terrible. Her sobs were tinged with outraged laughter. “Just that he’s going to keep putting drawings of you in the sea unless you talk to him. That you’d better show up if you don’t want your
friends
to find out what you did. He doesn’t say what that was, but I can guess. Which ship was it, Luce? Where you just decided that the timahk didn’t
apply
to you anymore?”

Luce choked. There was no way out of this. Dana had the proof right there in her hand. “The one right after Miriam died.”

“Oh, now you admit it! What, was he incredibly hot or something? This is from a guy, right?” Dana’s tone was shifting again, taut with sadness. “You seriously think you’re the only mermaid who wishes she could have a boyfriend?”

“It wasn’t like that,” Luce objected. She was half whispering. One thing Luce knew for certain. She definitely couldn’t tell Dana her real reasons for saving the boy: that he’d had the same dark shimmering around him the mermaids did and that he was the first human who had ever resisted her enchantment. That he was the only one who’d ever been brave enough to sing
back
to her. All that would just sound like a bunch of lame excuses, and it would only make Dana angrier. “It is a guy, but I wasn’t—it wasn’t like I was planning to ever see him again, Dana.”

Dana stared at her. “You don’t know how lucky you are that I’m the one who found this. Anybody else would have shown it to Anais. Then she’d have a
great
reason to kill you. Everyone would agree that you were asking for it.”

Luce nodded, slowly. “I know.”

“But I’m going to give you another chance.” Dana shook her head in disbelief, but at least she wasn’t sobbing anymore. “God, Luce, I
trusted
you! I really thought you were something special—like everything would get better if you were queen. And now, I mean, I just can’t understand. How
could
you? How could you risk all our lives—not only of our tribe, even, but of all the mermaids everywhere? After all the horrible things the humans did to us, too? Just because you liked some
guy?”

“I didn’t think anyone would believe him.” It was a pathetic excuse, Luce knew. “Dana, I’m
sorry.
Just—we’d drowned so many people, and then Miriam killed herself, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. There’d been so much death, and ... I just wanted
somebody
to live.” She was only making things worse, Luce realized. Dana gaped at her with a kind of dull horror. “But really, I really, truly swear it, Dana. I’m never going to talk to him again. I’ll obey the timahk from now on!”

“Oh, you are so
going
to talk to him!” Luce stared at Dana in amazement; what was she saying? “You are absolutely, definitely going to go talk to him! And I mean
today,
Luce!”

“What are you
talking
about?” Even as Luce gasped out the question, she already had a miserable realization of what the answer would be. Dana laughed caustically.

“I’m talking about the fact that you’re going to go meet him, just like he wants you to. And this time,” Dana snapped,
“this
time you’re going to make sure he dies!”

5

The Rowboat

The day seemed bleak and endless. Luce was buffeted by waking nightmares, by memories that pressed in on her mind and wouldn’t stop. A black boat, then Miriam shuddering with agony as her tail dried out, then her father smiling at her the last time he’d said goodbye and sailed off on the
High and Mighty,
not imagining that it would never return to shore. Miriam’s voice whispered on and on in her mind, telling Luce about a dark recurring dream: human soldiers invading their cave, raising guns. If that ever happened in reality, though, couldn’t the mermaids simply overcome them by singing? Luce couldn’t remember why, but in Miriam’s nightmares the mermaids’ songs had been useless to defend them. It bothered Luce that she couldn’t reconstruct exactly what Miriam had said about that. But then, what Miriam had told her had been just a dream. It didn’t make any sense to wonder why their songs were rendered powerless: of course in a dream things wouldn’t work the same way they did in waking life.