The Twice Lost

by Sarah Porter

  Then Luce saw something ahead and interrupted her own song as she moaned aloud from pure relief. There were no caves, but there was a long, low dock stretched out above the beach in a shallow cove. She could swim under it and sleep hidden from the humans, even as they ran along the planks above. Luce crooned to the water again, urging it on, and soon there was sand stirred up by her dragging tail. She slipped under the dock and pressed her unhurt cheek gratefully against the shore. Blood trickled into her mouth.

  Darkness filled the world beyond, but it was no match for the darkness inside her.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Her sleep was utter oblivion. Dark and heavy and for once dreamless. She woke to feel a beam of sun lancing between the planks and straight onto her eyelids; she woke to feel something—a hand?—carefully touching her shoulder.

  A hand. Luce told herself not to panic. Low waves sloshed at her back as she very slowly opened her eyes and lifted herself. The hand jerked back, and Luce heard a quick intake of breath. Luce turned enough to see a little girl, maybe seven years old, kneeling on the sand and staring at her. The girl wore an oversized red windbreaker, and the cuffs of a gray sweater bulged out around her wrists.

  Without even thinking about it, Luce smiled at her. “Don’t tell anyone I’m here,” Luce whispered. “Okay?”

  She might have to get away fast, of course. Luce flexed her body, trying to assess her strength; she felt sick and faint and achy, but she hoped she could still outrace most human boats if it came to that.

  The girl stared at her silently for a few moments, pushing back loops of light brown hair. “I won’t,” she whispered back, then hesitated. “Um, are you real?”

  For some reason that made Luce laugh, though she stifled it almost instantly. The laugh sounded harsh, maybe even bitter. The girl looked dismayed, and Luce felt a bit sorry. “Well, I’m real to myself anyway,” she told her gently. “Does that count?”

  Luce stretched again, velvet sand against her sore belly, and noticed that it was the first time she’d felt real in weeks. The feeling was painful, and she wished she could go back to sleep.

  The girl considered the question but didn’t answer it. “You got hurt?”

  Luce reached up reflexively, touching the throbbing spot at the side of her head. A triangle of flesh almost an inch deep had been ripped from the side of her right ear, but the cuts in her cheek didn’t feel too bad. Even without looking, she could tell that her stomach was badly bruised where the first squid had crashed into her; that would slow her down. Luce’s physical injuries were the least of her damage, really, but they were all the girl could see. “A squid bit me. I’ll be okay.”

  “Are you hungry?” The girl was digging in the pocket of her windbreaker, pulling out half a candy bar.

  Luce stared at her, suddenly horribly sad. The mermaids had killed so many humans without caring at all. This little girl had no idea what kind of creature she was offering to feed. “I am hungry,” Luce said softly. “Thank you. But . . . I don’t think I can eat that. It’s not mermaid food.”

  The wind curling over her cheeks was warm and soft. It was a beautiful spring day.

  It was also the first time she’d been aware of beauty since Dorian had abandoned her, since she’d found the bodies . . .

  “What do you eat?”

  “Shellfish, mostly. Some kinds of seaweed are good.”

  “Wait here.” The girl ran off, and Luce watched her wading out along a sandbar down the beach. She was bending low, gathering mussels. The prospect of food hit Luce with stabbing intensity. Now that she thought about it, she wasn’t sure how long it had been since she’d had anything to eat. Two days?

  Footsteps thumped along the planks above Luce’s head. She tensed, but it wasn’t likely that anyone would notice her: by contrast with the brilliant day outside, the shadow covering Luce was very dark. She could see two colored shapes through the gaps between the slats, then she watched them emerge onto the dock. A man and a woman. Sun flashed in their windblown hair as they adjusted life jackets. They were talking about how they couldn’t find one of the paddles for their canoe.

  It had been crazy to fall asleep here, but she hadn’t had much choice. The waters spreading out around the dock were shallow, Luce realized, and the sunlight was bright and piercing. If she swam away, anyone who happened to be looking in the right direction would see her clearly. But maybe it didn’t matter anymore. The FBI knew about the mermaids; soldiers were hunting them down. It was simply too late for secrecy to do them any good. Why shouldn’t all the humans know the truth, then?

  The girl was scampering back, a heap of mussels balanced on her outspread hands. A few of them fell as she ran.

  “What are you doing, Chrissy?” The woman on the dock was calling to the little girl.

  “Playing,” the girl said defensively. It sounded like a lie.

  “You know you shouldn’t pick the mussels if you’re not going to eat them.”

  “I’ll put them back in the water. I’m just moving them over here . . .”

  The couple on the dock had finally found the paddle, and they were lowering their canoe into the water. Luce found herself gazing after them with emotions she couldn’t sort out: a strange kind of sorrowful envy. As long as Dorian had kept pressuring her to turn human again, she’d been convinced she didn’t want to, but now that it was too late, now that Dorian didn’t care anymore, was she sure she’d made the right decision? Not that turning human had actually been an option . . .

  Chrissy dropped the mussels in a clattering heap at Luce’s elbow, and Luce smiled at her with genuine gratitude. “Thank you so much. I’m not . . . feeling very well.” She glanced nervously toward the canoe. It was just pulling away, and the couple was chatting about what the best picnic spot would be. Being this close to strange humans felt almost as dreamlike and peculiar to Luce as the hallucinations that had overcome her as she’d lost consciousness the night before.

  “Why aren’t you eating?”

  “I will. As soon as they’re gone.” Cracking the mussels would be noisy; Luce was nervous about trying it at all. Then hunger jabbed through her again, and she decided she didn’t care who heard her. She smacked one on the dock’s stone foundation then gobbled it too quickly. Another, then another.

  Chrissy watched her while she ate, clearly fascinated. “You’re so pretty. Even with bites in your face.”

  Luce didn’t feel like smiling anymore. “That’s just because of magic, Chrissy. How pretty I am.” The adoring shine of those warm brown eyes made Luce sad. “You shouldn’t take magic things too seriously, okay?”

  “Why?”

  “Because magic can trick you. You shouldn’t let it.” After all, Dorian hadn’t. He’d called her enchanted beauty “freakish.” That was all she was to him.

  “You’re not trying to trick me,” Chrissy murmured uncertainly.

  “No,” Luce agreed. Lying under this dock, looking at this child striped by sunlight, it was horrible to remember how she’d helped her tribe sink ships before. Luce knew she was partly responsible for the deaths of girls just like the one sitting beside her now. Dorian’s little sister had been about this age. Luce smiled warmly at Chrissy, and her smile felt like a scar. “But that’s because . . .” Luce wasn’t sure what to say. Chrissy obviously admired her, but Luce wished she wouldn’t; she gazed at Luce, her expression somewhere between hopeful and apprehensive. Luce sighed. “Because we’re friends.” Chrissy beamed.

  Luce knew she’d rested for too long. It was time to be moving on again. She had to warn the next tribe, and the next, before they were killed. The responsibility was all hers.

  Did she even care that there was another group of people, maybe half a dozen this time, already getting out of their cars and heading for the dock?

  3

  The Video

  It was lucky that Zoe lived so far away. Even if she started driving right after school let out—and sometimes she did—Dorian would have at least a
n hour to sit on the beach alone without Zoe catching him at it. He didn’t see any reason to mention it either. It wasn’t like he’d even glimpsed Luce since the day they’d broken up, since she’d refused to drown him and left him dripping on the shore. He always sat in that exact spot now. It was funny, in a sick kind of way, to realize how much he still resented Luce for not murdering him. Maybe he should have been grateful. But it was hard not to think that, if she’d only loved him more, she would have gone through with it.

  He was pretty sure Luce had left the area. If she hadn’t, wouldn’t she have come to look for him at least once? One time he’d even rowed to the shallow cave where she used to take him, just in case, although getting there and back in the rowboat took a full day of exhausting effort. It was dangerous, he knew, to steer such a small boat through the rough seas. But it wasn’t like he could do any of the things he might have tried with a human girl, like calling or sending an e-mail.

  And even if he could call Luce, what would he say to her? That he was sorry; that he was still in love with her? They’d only have the exact same problems as before. It was ridiculous to think the two of them could have a future together.

  His phone let out a burst of percussion and Dorian jumped. Just for a fraction of a second he was possessed by an irrational fantasy: that she’d somehow turned human again, that she missed him too . . .

  It was his friend Steve, already talking as Dorian answered. “. . . got to come over! You are not going to believe this!”

  Dorian groaned inside, but he kept his voice calm. “Believe what?”

  “You’re the mermaid guy, right? There’s this video. It’s got to be fake, but—”

  “You mean on the Internet?”

  “What do you think? But, dude, she’s got short hair. Just like that one you used to draw all the time. She looks so real.”

  Dorian was already on his feet. His knees were trembling.

  “Dorian? Are you—”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  “It’s got to be fake, but it really looks . . .” There was something strange in Steve’s voice, Dorian thought; it was a little too soft, too floaty.

  “I’ll be right there, okay? Ten . . . ten minutes.”

  Then he was sprinting, the gray road and tattered spruce trees veering around him, billows of mist parting around his face.

  There were a lot of mermaids out there, Dorian knew. He’d met a few of them personally, and some of them besides Luce must have short hair. But this particular mermaid was also reckless enough to let herself be filmed . . . His heart surged and his stomach cramped, but he kept running at top speed all the way back to the village, his sweat instantly turning clammy in the fog. Then he was dashing up the low wooden steps and his outstretched hand slapped hard against Steve’s door.

  He had to knock a few times, more and more loudly, rocking with impatience. “Okay . . .” Steve finally called from inside, and shuffling steps approached. The door swung open and Dorian looked in, across the living room and down a hallway and through another open door. A sliver of the computer in Steve’s room was visible. Even that partial glimpse was enough to set Dorian’s heart thudding quicker than it had from his run. Steve’s face had a stunned, foggy look to it. The rims of his eyes were red, and he didn’t even say hello as he caught Dorian by the elbow and hauled him down the corridor. As they got closer to the computer screen, the video stopped.

  Steve’s hand was already reaching out hungrily to hit Replay as he skidded into his chair. Dorian stood behind him.

  The video started normally enough. A few people jostling around on a dock, laughing, taping one another, and then turning the camera toward a pair of seals lounging on a sandbar off to the right. A little girl in a red windbreaker came wandering into view on the beach below. She kept looking back over her shoulder, obviously watching something, maybe under the dock, that the adults hadn’t noticed.

  Then, off-camera, a woman screamed, and for half a second the camera lurched madly as she grabbed for it. There was a flash of blinding sun as the lens veered skyward. Voices were crying out: “My God! Nick, look!” and “What on earth . . .”

  The camera swung sharply, pointing down into the shallow water, and Dorian’s insides wrenched at the sight of the silvery jade green tail whipping ten feet below the surface, the jagged dark hair. He heard himself crying out involuntarily, but Steve didn’t seem to notice. He was staring too hard at the image, at the rippling grace of the mermaid’s movements. But, Dorian thought, mermaids could usually swim much faster than that. Was she showing herself on purpose?

  Incredibly, she broke the surface twenty yards out, right in a diamond-bright patch of reflected sun. Dorian wanted to shout at her, to tell her not to be so crazy.

  Incredibly, she glanced back. Straight at the camera. She hesitated for a moment, almost as if she wanted to say something but felt too shy. And then Dorian saw something dark on the right side of her shining face, and his chest tightened as he realized that it was almost certainly dried blood.

  Was she swimming so slowly because she was injured? That still wouldn’t explain why she’d done something so utterly perverse, though, coming so close to a human town and swimming right where people could see her.

  Just as Dorian finished wondering that, Luce dived. Only a quick green smear showed under the low waves, then she vanished from the image. The camera went on staring blankly at the water for a minute. The people on the dock were absolutely silent, and Dorian realized he was crying. He hoped Steve wouldn’t turn around and see.

  “It’s totally fake,” Steve muttered huskily. “Right?”

  Dorian realized that he didn’t have to worry about his friend looking around at him. Steve was crying too, just as if he was the one who’d loved her.

  The video was titled “Mermaid sighting? May 28th.” Just one day ago, Dorian realized shakily. Where was she?

  It had already been viewed nearly a million times, and there was Steve’s hand snaking helplessly to hit Play again. Luce, Dorian thought, Luce, how could you? She’d always been so worried that humans would find out mermaids existed, and there she was blowing their cover herself. What conceivable reason could she have for doing that? The seals lounged, people laughed, the little girl in the red windbreaker looked at something with terrible longing on her face . . . Then the flash of sun and she was on the screen again. Luce.

  It was her, it was her; there was no way it wasn’t her. Rippling, rising, glancing. Hesitating and then turning away again. She was too small for him to quite make it out, but it looked like something had happened to her ear. This time Dorian thought her movements definitely seemed like she was very tired. Maybe even sick.

  “Where . . .” Dorian said. Steve didn’t seem to hear him, and Dorian rapped on his shoulder. “Steve? Does it say where she is?”

  “Oh . . .” His voice was even more distorted by crying now. Dorian heard him gulping. “In the comments. They say it was outside Grayshore, Washington.”

  Washington. Dorian was hit by a nauseating surge of disappointment. She didn’t care about him at all anymore or she never would have gone so far away. Unless . . . It seemed crazy to think it, but maybe she’d let those people video her because she’d hoped that he would see it? When she glanced back over her shoulder that way, was she looking through the camera’s lens in an effort to meet his eyes?

  She was about to say something, Dorian felt sure. Was it his name?

  The picture on the screen showed empty, sun-blinking water and a line of wooded coast to the left. Then it went black. Replay. He was starting to feel precarious, and he wished he was sitting down, but Steve had the only chair.

  Of course, the FBI already knew mermaids were out there. Dorian had told Luce that himself several months ago. But he was pretty sure Luce’s worst fears hadn’t come to pass. FBI agent Ben Ellison had told him that the authorities “were still reviewing the options.” As long as the feds weren’t actually trying to exterminate the mermaids
, why would Luce risk provoking them?

  There she was again, looking back as if she could see him watching her. Dorian leaned closer to the screen, trying to make out the look on her face. He was desperate for any sign that would tell him what she’d been thinking in those moments, but she was too small, too distant. All he could tell was that she was hurt and unsmiling. If he could get to Anchorage, get on a plane, somehow drive from Seattle to the coast . . .

  She’d be long gone, of course. She already was.

  The screen showed nothing but water dropping into sudden blackness.

  “It has to be fake,” Steve said again. His voice was murky and unconvinced, and he still wouldn’t look around “Right?”

  “Of course it’s fake,” Dorian snarled, too roughly. “How the hell could that be real?”

  “I thought maybe you’d believe it . . . since you kept drawing her . . .”

  Her. What did Steve mean by that? “Crissake, Steve. I was drawing a comic book. Like, it was imaginary?”

  “The one you used to draw, though . . . She really looked like . . .”

  Irrationally he’d started hating Steve a little for coming this close to the truth. Dorian forced himself to stay calm. “Not so much,” he said coldly. “Just the hair.”

  His phone was ringing again. Dorian had a good idea who might be calling.

  Replay.

  “Steve?” No response. “Steve, I’m going to take off, okay?” Dorian felt a little bad for lying now. He wiped his sleeve across his face.

  “Oh—sure. See you later.” Dorian wondered how many times Steve would watch Luce swim through sunlit water before he got tired of it. But Luce was supposed to be his, even if all he had left of her was memories. No one else was allowed to watch her this way, to see just how beautiful she was.

  Once Dorian was out on the street he stared around in a daze. Gray mist curled between the small wooden houses, and at the bottom of the street he could see the iron-colored shimmer of the small harbor, the dock where he’d sprawled face-down, his body leaning toward the water to kiss Luce goodbye after she’d brought him home late at night. It took him a while to pull himself together, walk down to a lonely spot on the beach again, and call Ben Ellison back.