Lost Voices
Page 8
Luce found out, too, that she was happy to be left alone sometimes, in the cool and the darkness. It was hard to think clearly with so many chattering girls around, and then so much had happened to her over the last several days that she wanted some time just to wonder about all of it. She swam slow circles in the calm water of the cave, skimming along just above the pebbles at the bottom and watching the fragile, milky, long-legged crabs whose bodies were translucent and whose tapering feet looked almost like pink glass. There were tiny drifting medusas, too, with crystalline gelatinous frills around cobalt blue hearts, and dagger-thin fish that sometimes hovered in place and sometimes sliced away from her. She loved everything, watched everything.
There was another reason Luce was glad to be left alone. She couldn't forget the splendor of the song that had coursed through her the night she'd changed. Her longing to merge with that music again was so intense that Luce felt a bit embarrassed at the thought of anyone noticing how much it meant to her. She hadn't forgotten either how edgy the mention of singing always made Catarina; it might be better to keep any singing she did strictly private.
So when everyone was away and she was fairly sure they wouldn't hear her, she began to practice.
It was hard to control it, Luce found. Her new voice, after all, was magic, and singing was a little like taking the pressure off a coiled spring. When she sang her voice took on a volatile aliveness, an urge to expand and rip through water and rock and sky. It was hers, but she didn't entirely own it. It might even be stronger than she was.
Learning to sing, Luce thought, meant learning to tame the voice that was living in her. She would begin with a single note and hold it, doing her best to keep it low and soft as it struggled against her, full of yearnings to rip and surge. Once it settled down a little, she would let it lift a step and hold it again. Sometimes it got away from her and took over the cave with a high, liquid throbbing where impossible notes raced and fused together, and she would have to bite her lip as hard as she could to stifle herself, or lift her tail from the water until the pain stunned her voice into submission.
On her third day in the cave Luce floated on her back in the dark water watching a palm-shaped blot of violet sky that shone through the roof, and tried a little run of notes. It was the first time she’d deliberately ventured on a melody, and her voice seemed pleased. It didn’t fight her nearly as much as usual. The melody spilling from her was so lovely, Luce thought: a piercing lilt that hovered for a while, and then a long cascade of tones like something falling...
It was a whole song. Other notes took her voice, and carried it where they wanted to go. And, Luce realized with a shock, it was a song she’d heard before.
She’d sung it before, straight into the face of the old man she’d drowned, and he’d gazed back at her with rapture as he listened. Luce let out a little cry right in the middle of the song, and heaved her tail up to force her voice to be quiet. After a few seconds the first jolts of pain started, and the song dimmed in her throat.
Once Luce was sure it was completely gone, she allowed herself to lower her tail back into the water. Pain still jarred and sparked for a minute, then gradually slipped away. She'd let her voice run free, just for a few notes, and immediately it had turned into a song whose only purpose was murder! And yet singing it had exalted her. Her heart was pounding now from joy as much as horror.
But after all, she was all alone in the cave. There were no humans around to hear her, no chance that she was luring someone to die. Why shouldn't she let herself feel that song moving through her, then, when it had such a powerful will to live and its life made her so happy?
She let her voice rise again into the sweet high note that had started it all. The song hesitated, just for a second, but then it was back in her throat. Music spilled down the worn stairs of a farmhouse outside Pittsburg—Luce had forgotten that house until this moment, but now she knew it belonged to an old friend of her mother's—then the single note split into a thrumming chord, and she wept, and soft arms picked her up off the floor and cradled her. A rain of dark hair brushed against her face.
Of course people were ready to die in exchange for this song, Luce thought. She would joyfully die for it herself if she had to. She would drown again and again, only to find herself in this torrent of living music.
There was a slight pitching disturbance in the water around her. Luce ignored it. She was following the song now as it ran down a glittering sidewalk toward a tall young woman in a black sundress. Luce had done something wrong, but the woman forgave her completely ... Minutes passed as Luce flowed inside her own unthinkable music.
"Luce.” It was Catarina. Her hair ran out like flames across the dark water. Luce's singing shattered into the dark of the cave and the red flickering web around Catarina’s golden face. Luce gaped at her in sudden anxiety, and she was only partly relieved when Catarina gave her a sly smile. Maybe she’d misunderstood, and Catarina didn’t care at all if Luce sang to herself ? Luce watched the gray eyes nervously; wasn’t there something heated in their gaze that didn’t quite go with the smile, with the casual friendliness of Catarina’s tone? “I came to see how you’re doing. How does swimming feel now?”
In fact, Luce felt much better, but she wasn’t ready to talk yet. Her voice only wanted to leap out in wild notes, and she almost couldn’t stand the thought of limiting it to dull, small words.
“There’s a Coast Guard boat a few miles off,” Catarina continued, and Luce began to focus more. “We could take it without you, but if you’re well enough we’d certainly appreciate your help.”
Luce had known this might happen sometime, but she wasn’t ready to hear it now. Her body dropped into the water and eddied there in confusion, and she couldn’t meet Catarina’s eyes. Catarina didn’t understand. “Your bruises look almost healed,” Catarina said, and there was a harsh edge to her voice, “but if it still hurts you that much to swim...” Luce was still emerging from the dream of her own singing, but she clearly recognized the quickening eagerness in Catarina’s eyes, the impatient swishing of her movements. It was so confusing; Luce had imagined that Catarina resented her singing, but now her friend’s long, golden body rippled with terrible desire. No matter what she claimed, she’d be furious if Luce refused to come with her. And in spite of herself, Luce felt a surge of the same shivering desire: to be out in that wild sea, devoured by her own much wilder song.
"I'm ready to swim,” Luce stammered. "I just—I'm so new—I don't think I'm ready to sing to anyone.” Catarina's tail flipped up behind her and lashed the water into a nervous froth. Her eyes flared.
"You think I didn't hear you just now? Luce, you're second in command! I'll lead the ship in, and you cover from behind. You have to watch out if they try to lower the lifeboats...” Luce was wide-eyed with dismay, and Catarina finally checked herself. "Just swim out with us, then.” She gave Luce a long, uncomfortable stare, examining something in her face, and her mouth twisted into a wicked smile. "You don't have to sing if you don't feel like it. I promise. All right?” And without waiting for an answer, she caught Luce's hand and dove.
Luce went with her. The mouth of the cave opened onto a glorious view. The ocean was stained green and golden, laced with writhing threads of light, and Luce realized it was the first time she'd swum through sunlit water. She'd been inside the dark cave for so long that she now swept her tail in excitement and raced through the delirium of sun, Catarina still holding her hand. Shine streaked over Catarina's flying hair and lit the bubbles churned up by their swimming. Luce's happiness was so bright and brash that she could almost forget her anxiety about what they were going to do.
She wasn't going to do it, Luce corrected herself. Catarina had promised that she wouldn't have to sing. Luce would keep her voice shut deep in her chest, where it couldn't hurt anyone. It wasn't like she could have done anything to stop Catarina either; Luce had seen the ravenous eagerness in her friend's face. Nothing would have held her back.
“Fan out,” Catarina commanded, and Luce could see how the mermaids all thrilled to the order. Their bodies dipped and flicked as they spread out to surround the ship, Catarina in the lead; Luce couldn’t help thinking of wolves closing in on a much larger animal, an elk or a moose. Luce stayed where she was, centered in the V of the ship’s wake. She wanted a place as far from Catarina and the others as possible. Even though Catarina had said it was all right for Luce to keep quiet, the other mermaids might resent it if they noticed she wasn’t helping.
On the deck a tall young man with caramel-colored skin and dark curly hair was busy with some complicated task involving an electric drill. Luce couldn’t quite make out what he was doing, but the bright sun formed pale branching shapes on the blue shoulders of his uniform as he bent over whatever object he was repairing. Luce fought a sudden impulse to call out, to try to warn him, though she knew that wouldn’t help.
A light breeze blew, and then something about it shifted. The sound of the breeze became more alive, more golden. The young sailor kept on with his work, but a soft inward look stole into his eyes, as if he was amazed to find himself alive on such a beautiful day. The tone of the breeze flexed and curved, becoming just a bit richer, tinged with a thickening music, and the caramel-s kinned boy smiled to himself and switched off the drill. He straightened and gazed off into the distance as the boat began to turn. Luce had to speed up to maintain her position in the wake.
Luce couldn't believe how skillfully Catarina sang. The enchantment rose so slowly, so sensuously, that time and place softened and liquefied. It was different from her own singing, Luce thought. Her skin warmed as she listened to it, and blood began to pulse in her temples.
The prow swung drowsily around on the sunlit sea. Soon the boat wasn't running parallel to the cliffs but nosing toward a bare island half a mile farther out: an island that was nothing but gray rocks jutting high up out of the waves, with tufts of silvery grass and white roosting birds along its sides. Other voices began to spread their music under the gathering power of Catarina's song.
Luce understood what Catarina was planning. After the boat cracked apart, people would come to examine the wreckage and try to figure out what had happened. Catarina was heading toward the island rather than the cliffs, because she didn't want any of the investigators coming too close to their cave.
The young sailor gently turned his head and gazed straight into Luce's eyes as she swam along behind. He didn't seem at all surprised to see her there, just happy and a bit perplexed, as if he couldn't understand how he'd forgotten the name of someone he'd known and loved for so long. He gave her such a sweet smile and waved peacefully. Luce hesitated, then waved back at him. That didn’t count as breaking the timahk, did it?
The boat was speeding up now, and the mermaids’ song flowed over the sky until every breath of air, every grain of sunlight was awake and alive. Luce felt the song streaming over and inside her body, and then she heard a single high, tremulous note soaring above the curls of music. It tore from her chest and peaked somewhere just under the sun, floated there, and then began a long, tumbling descent. The young sailor’s sleepy love changed, heightened into a fever of longing. The song entered into his mind, and Luce suddenly understood him. Her quivering song felt his thoughts, and it told her how heartbroken he’d been since his mother’s death. They’d been fighting, and he hadn’t gone to see her in the hospital as cancer ate through her; he’d stayed away, until it was too late.
She had promised she wouldn’t sing, Luce reminded herself. She could still lift her tail into the sunlight and hold it there until the burning forced her voice to stop. But even then the ship would smash apart. Everyone on it was already doomed. And she couldn’t let the young sailor die, Luce thought, with so much grief still inside him. Her song fell and the note split into a widening chord, and then the young sailor knew that, even as she died, his mother had forgiven him. She’d thought of him with the purest compassion, with gratitude for the years of joy he’d brought to her life.
At least, that was what Luce’s song told him. It vibrated with a sense of perfect homecoming, and as Luce sang to him everything broken was mended, and everything lost was restored. She meant the song only for the caramel-skinned boy, but other sailors heard her and they began to crowd around him: almost all men, though Luce spotted a few young women there as well. A row of faces watched Luce, all rapt with tenderness as the music sank into their minds. Some of the heart-chill she'd felt the first night she'd sung came back, bringing the idea that these men deserved whatever happened to them. This time, though, Luce understood that it was just part of the magic of her own voice, a kind of anesthesia that let mermaids kill without caring, and she pushed it away. She didn't want to let go of the warmth she felt for the dark boy staring down at her, not when his smile was so beautiful.
The ship's motors were thrumming at the limit of their strength, and the wake around Luce rose higher, thicker with white foam. She couldn't swim nearly as fast with her head above water, and she struggled to keep up. The ship was only moments away from crashing.
The dark boy couldn't wait any longer, though. He gave a sudden shake as if he couldn't stand to feel his life still holding on to him, and hurled head downward over the side, crumpling as his body hit the water at an oblique angle. And then the other sailors followed him, one by one, their bodies plunging heavily with loose arms flopping around them. They were so taken by the dream in Luce's voice, it seemed, that they couldn't even focus enough to dive properly. White rings of foam spread out around the places where they disappeared.
The boat's hull crunched; shuddered; screamed like a living thing as the rocks tore it apart. It had so much momentum that the metal sides bowed out from the impact, swung upward, and then began to lean back into the water. The sides of this island were steep, Luce realized, the underwater slopes precipitous; the ship would go down quickly. That was another reason Catarina’d picked this spot. She’d known exactly where to go.
It was horrible, Luce thought. But she was undeniably a part of it. Her voice was free and desperate, stretching out of her and pounding through the sea.
She closed her eyes and dove. Down into the cool, swelling gray, where she didn’t have to see what she’d done. Down, until her reaching hand brushed something soft, and her eyelids opened reflexively. Dark curly hair. The caramel-skinned boy looked up, his face at most a foot away from Luce’s as she plunged. She barely managed to keep herself from running into him. And still her song pulsed on and on, an immense beating heart made of music.
He gazed up at her, his eyes shining with joy. Luce remembered what her father had said about her mother: She gave me more and truer love than any human being can hope for in this life. That was the way the drowning boy stared at her, Luce realized, with a fierce adoration that seemed too consuming to belong on Earth. She would never feel lonely again if only he would keep watching her with that glow in his eyes. More and truer love than any human being...
But that was because she wasn’t human.
If she’d stayed human, no one ever would have loved her as much as the caramel-skinned boy did now. And then Luce saw that he was already dead, his brown eyes still locked on her face. His eyes were empty and gentle, watching nothing.
***
When Luce broke through the water again the other mermaids were already gathering,
swishing their tails with excitement.
"Look at our little metaskaza!” Samantha exclaimed. "Did you see that? She had them actually jumping overboard!” Luce was nauseous, trembling; it took her a second to understand that Samantha was talking about her.
"Even you can't call Luce metaskaza anymore,” a blonde named Regan objected. "Not after that! I've never seen anyone do that before.” Luce felt choked and her eyes were hot, but she wouldn't let herself cry while they were watching her. She looked around at the white scraps of debris still bobbing on the surface of the water, then up at the grassy crest of the island. There were obviously no human survivors, just as Catarina had said.
But where was Catarina?
Miriam noticed the way Luce's gaze searched the waves.
"There was one kind of stubborn one,” Miriam explained. Her eyes were blue-black, gleaming but also somehow sad, and a mist of pearl-colored light clung to her pale, bluish skin. "He almost made it to shore before we noticed. Catarina's giving him some ... some personal attention. She'll be back with us soon. She took him straight down a little while ago.”
As queasy as she was, Luce felt worried by this. "What if she goes too far down? If she's all by herself...”
Samantha thought that was funny. "I really wouldn't worry about Cat, Luce. She's better at swimming deep down than the rest of us. And besides, I kind of think she likes to be alone sometimes.” Samantha's voice took on a cold, mocking tone, and something about it bothered Luce.