The Twice Lost

by Sarah Porter

  She was starting to clear the magic from her mind. This was important; she couldn’t stay in that watery dream-space, marvelous as it was.

  “Oh, Luce, we can’t make them stop hunting us with what we’ve done tonight! With—” The voice was Catarina’s, still half-enchanted, sweet, and despairing. “We can’t stop them with beauty.”

  “We can,” Luce insisted. “We can. Not just with beauty, Cat. But with what we can do. We can make them accept peace without killing anyone, not one more person.” The magic was still inside her; it was hard to find her way through her own pirouetting thoughts and even harder to put the right words in the right order. “Really, Cat. Really. I think . . . I know what to do now. I have an idea.”

  Now everyone was really staring at her. The thought of telling them all what she was thinking terrified her. If her idea didn’t work, the Twice Lost mermaids would be so terribly let down. But the wild expectation in those gathered faces wouldn’t allow her to hold back now either. “We’re going to close down the Golden Gate. A naval blockade, right under the bridge. Then they’ll have to talk to us.”

  Luce knew that she’d said something crazy by the blank way the crowd of mermaids looked at her. Most of them weren’t angry or indignant or excited; they just looked as if her idea was too strange to take in.

  Catarina was the first to speak. “Close it down? Luce, this is—”

  “With a wave. We’ll raise a wave big enough that none of their ships can get through. We’ll hold it there until they agree to stop.”

  “But then they’ll know we’re here!” Jo squealed. The toys wreathed around her neck rattled. “Luce, Luce, don’t . . .”

  “Of course they’ll know,” Luce said. As she envisioned it she began to feel stronger and clearer. “All the humans will know. Everyone in the world will hear about this. That’s how we’ll get the government to negotiate with us. I know it sounds crazy, but . . .” It could work, Luce thought. It’s the only thing that might work.

  “Then what’s going to stop them from dropping bombs on us? Luce, I want to believe in you, in all your plans. I do. But this . . .” Catarina seemed genuinely appalled, her gray eyes gleaming with desperate sadness. Actually, Luce wasn’t completely sure how they’d keep the human military from bombing them, but she felt certain now they’d think of something. After that incredible communal song, everything seemed possible.

  “They won’t drop bombs on us.” It was Yuan, suddenly grinning ferociously. “Oh, you better believe they won’t! If we can really raise a wave that big?”

  Luce suddenly understood where Yuan was going with this and looked at her gratefully.

  “Yuan, they’ll blast us right out of the water! No, our only hope is to try to stay secret.” Catarina was almost hyperventilating now.

  “Cat? No offense, but you need to start trusting our dear general more. Because she’s totally right. If we really have enough power to get such a huge wave standing up and keep it there—”

  “We’ll all be dead within an hour!”

  “No, Cat, listen! If they bomb us, we stop singing. If we stop singing, all that water comes crashing down at once. You really think they’ll send a tsunami right at downtown San Francisco?”

  “That sounds fun,” Bex muttered sourly. Then before anyone could say anything in response she added, “Oh my God, guys. Kidding? I’m just kidding?”

  Yuan was right. In fact, Luce thought, she was brilliant. “Do you see now, Cat? I don’t want to make you do anything you think is suicidal, though.” Luce looked around, and from something in the shine of the eyes on all sides she knew that, even if they weren’t all prepared to go along with her idea, enough of them were. “But this is the only plan we have, and the humans are definitely going to know that the bay is full of mermaids as soon as we’re good enough at this kind of singing to start the blockade. If any of you think that makes it too dangerous to stay here you can leave. Go back to . . . to the territories where tribes were already killed. As long as you don’t sink any ships, the divers probably won’t check the same caves a second time.”

  It was brutal advice, Luce realized. For some of them the journey would be terrible. For many it would mean returning to the site of hideous memories, even to the decaying corpses of their old friends. But it was the best she could do.

  “I’m not leaving you a second time, Luce,” Catarina announced through gritted teeth. Even now that Yuan had explained how the plan could work, Cat still seemed to be convinced that they were heading for their doom.

  Luce didn’t know what to say. “I’m really happy if you want to stay, Cat, but you don’t have to. But I promise we’ll practice a lot first. We won’t try this until we’re totally ready.”

  She still loved Catarina, Luce thought. Of course she did. But maybe she didn’t love her in quite the same way that she used to.

  Her memories of Nausicaa just took up too much room in her heart.

  From the distance came the airy percussion of a helicopter. In a few moments the ocean’s surface was empty of everything except waves.

  It was time for them to be getting home, anyway.

  17

  Connections

  Nick slammed the door behind him, leaving Kathleen alone and crying in the colored beams of evening light shining through the stained glass windows. Another fight, Kathleen thought; why couldn’t they ever seem to understand each other anymore? She’d always been a firm believer that honest communication and kindness could solve almost any problem. Now, it seemed, the more honest she tried to be the more outraged and impatient Nick became. Telling him her real thoughts was beginning to feel like a mistake. When she did he’d respond with words she found hard to forgive. Kath, one thing I can assure you of? Just one? Eileen is not a mermaid! I suppose I shouldn’t blame you, but honestly, it’s absolutely foolish to go around listening to some charlatan who tries to persuade you that your sister isn’t dead.

  “Eileen,” Kath whispered as she sat on the bottom stair with her head in her hands, “Eileen, what I wouldn’t give to see you just for a second, one second before I die. Name it.”

  Something about that mermaid she’d seen—No, not “that mermaid,” Kathleen told herself. Lucette. Lucette Korchak, no matter what Nick says—had reminded her of her lost sister. She’d had the same haunted expression, the same unwitting glamour that almost seemed like a kind of dark shimmer in the air around her. Especially toward the end Eileen had seemed both wounded and magical, and those qualities had only intensified as she’d deliberately taken all their mother’s abuse on herself. Their mother might be on the verge of hitting Kathleen when Eileen would deliberately fire off the most offensive remark she could think of to make sure the broom swung her way instead. Mom? You know, I’ve been thinking that I’d like to see if I can be the biggest slut in school.

  Then Kathleen had run off with a boyfriend, and three days later her brave, insouciant older sister had vanished for good. And now—if only Eileen hadn’t died in some terrible way during all the intervening years—Kathleen was sure that she was darting through the waves somewhere, savage and free and still a freckled, impudent seventeen-year-old girl, only transfigured at the same time into something far beyond everyday experience. “Did you think I didn’t need you anymore, Eenie? I do, I still do.”

  Kathleen heard her cell phone ringing where she’d left it on the kitchen table. Her first thought was that it must be Nick, calling to apologize for their fight. She hesitated on the step, not sure she was ready to talk to him yet. Or—suddenly Kathleen was on her feet—maybe, just maybe, it was Andrew calling her from some truck stop in the middle of nowhere. The thought of hearing his warm voice, of simply feeling certain for five minutes that someone believed her, was enough to send Kathleen sprinting precariously down the long hallway, knocking a few seashells from tiny tables as she went. Andrew didn’t have a phone of his own. This might be her only chance to talk to him for weeks. Any second now the ringing would stop and the call would
go to voice mail and he’d probably feel too uncomfortable to even leave her a message.

  Her pale yellow kitchen wheeled in front of her. The lilacs in the vase were turning brown, but for some reason she kept putting off throwing them out. The phone emitted what was surely its final ring, and she still couldn’t find it anywhere. Kathleen’s shoulders jerked in frustration. No, there it was, half-hidden by that dropped napkin.

  A strange number. It had to be him, probably calling from some random pay phone in back of a gas station. She could picture him clutching the grubby receiver while the sunset glared off the nearby cars, his frown deepening as she didn’t answer. Kathleen was a little surprised by how hard her heart was pounding; she hadn’t run all that far. “Hello?”

  Silence. She’d missed him after all.

  Except the silence wasn’t perfect; it had a weirdly bubbly, echoing quality that reminded Kathleen of an abandoned swimming pool. “Hello? Anyone there?”

  “Um, may I speak to Kathleen Lambert?” It was a girl’s voice overlaid by a hint of that watery quivering. Kathleen felt an icy tightness in her stomach; she thought it must come from disappointment.

  “This is Kathleen.”

  “Well, hi.” Now the strange girl’s voice took on a kind of smirking, self-conscious tone that made Kathleen wonder if this was a prank call. “Hi. I’m an old friend of Luce’s. Luce the mermaid? And I need to find her dad? Do you have his number?”

  Of course those videos had provoked all kinds of people to e-mail and call Kathleen, to Nick’s utter irritation. Most of them seemed deranged or malicious, but there had been a few who were obviously sincere. Kathleen decided that this girl was probably lying, but she wasn’t completely sure yet. “I’m afraid Andrew doesn’t have a phone. If you’ll give me your name and contact information I could send him an e-mail, though I don’t think he checks it too often.”

  “I . . . That’s not going to work!” The caller sounded petulant now, and the bubbling noise surged for a moment. Maybe there was something wrong with the connection? “Are you sure you don’t have a way I can call him? I have something really important to tell him about Luce. Like, I know he’d want to know, okay?”

  Kathleen bristled at the girl’s snappish tone. “Andrew doesn’t have a phone,” she repeated. “You can’t call him. And I honestly have no idea where he is now.” The last statement wasn’t entirely true; he’d sent her a brief e-mail two days before from Portland. “Your name is?”

  “Catarina,” the girl announced. “Luce was practically my best friend. I know all about her, like how she lived in that van while her dad was still a bum, and how her mom died when she was four. And I know exactly what her uncle did to her.”

  Much as Kathleen was starting to dislike the caller, this was enough to make her hesitate. Andrew hadn’t mentioned any of that in the video they’d made together, but it did correspond quite well with what he’d told her privately. “I suppose I could give you his e-mail address if you’d rather write to him directly.”

  “I need a phone number,” the girl sulked. “But—okay, you really don’t have one? I guess I’ll take his e-mail, sure. Maybe they can do something with that. Hold on. I have some paper . . .”

  “They?” Kathleen thought. Then she heard something in the background that sent an unaccountable chill through her heart.

  A splash.

  Then another one, as if the girl was thrashing around in a bathtub. But it would be absurd to think that . . .

  “Where are you calling from?” Kathleen heard herself ask shrilly. All at once her hands were trembling violently, and her body felt cold and hollow and as full of echoes as that watery space where—

  “Wait. He said if you started getting suspicious, I should just . . .”

  Kathleen’s hands jerked strangely as she tried to disconnect the call.

  Her twitching thumb missed the button. The phone dropped and skidded face-up across the kitchen table, coming to rest against the vase of lilacs. And all at once the calm afternoon air was streaked by an unimaginable sound, a terrible metallic sweetness that buzzed through her ears and tore at them. Power, Kathleen thought in confusion. Power to reclaim Eileen, to punish anyone who ever hurt Eileen, anyone who tried to get in our way . . .

  Power was beauty, power was the photons pummeling her with astounding vitality, power was her body’s atoms all waking up at once and pealing together like a million bells.

  Kathleen didn’t know when she’d picked up the phone again. She squeezed it to her ear until her skull seemed charged by that music, until a stampede of notes bit at her brain and goaded it. It was exhilaration beyond anything she could have dreamed, but it was as intolerable as it was thrilling: intolerable, Kathleen realized vaguely, because she hadn’t yet reached to truly claim this power and this brilliance. It was all rightfully hers, every spark of it, though someone seemed to be trying to steal it from her. If she didn’t reach it in time . . .

  Kathleen couldn’t have said quite what it was. She had an impression one instant of a castle made of stinging light, and in the next moment the castle morphed into a sort of crystalline, thundering horse with shifting facets, Eileen swinging on its back and calling to her.

  It didn’t matter to her that she didn’t know exactly what it was, this electric bliss that the music kept promising her. She knew she had to hurry before she lost it forever. Most important, she knew exactly where it was waiting for her.

  Out the kitchen door, down the sloping street, why, she was already walking—no, running, no, it was better to walk casually in case anyone else realized what she was after and got there first—the phone still crushed against her ear and the blood in her head throbbing fiercely in time with the song.

  Orange sunset light exploding everywhere, astonishment flaring in the trees, wide laughing mouths raining down from the blossoms . . .

  Even through the unbearable music pounding at her ear Kathleen could still hear a sound that told her the promise would soon be fulfilled. Waves, she could hear the waves. They were the charging hoofbeats of an infinite horse assembled from moving diamonds. In the horse’s heart Eileen was waiting, whispering. “Keenie, hurry up hurry up hurry up! I’ve been waiting for you for so long!”

  Kathleen turned a corner and saw the ocean as she’d never seen it before: countless blazing geometric planes, all transfiguring into momentary birds and stars and armies . . .

  Someone who Kathleen knew had been a close friend of hers quite recently, maybe even yesterday, came up and started yammering stupidly about something and then looked hurt as Kathleen shoved past her . . .

  The music and the sea were almost together now. When they finally met they would merge and expand, and Kathleen would ride with her sister in the quick of the miracle. She couldn’t stand waiting anymore; she started running right down the center of the street, dodging cars, then out onto the long dock where she’d had her first glimpse of what could be . . .

  Just for a moment that astonishing music paused, replaced by a weary sigh from the phone. “I wish you’d finish up,” a girl’s voice complained. “I’m getting bored.”

  Kathleen veered into a railing, gasped, and looked at water that was suddenly just water. She felt a frigid internal touch; something corrosive and evil fingered her heart. What was she doing?

  The singing started again.

  Eileen’s face became as huge as a cloud; it had endless changing angles, all of them sharp with glory; her mouth opened wide in greeting.

  Kathleen vaulted over the railing. She felt her sister’s teeth close in.

  They were very cold.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  General Prudowski spread the photos in front of Secretary Moreland—satellite photos of the ocean near San Francisco taken over the previous three nights. The photos were utterly unbelievable; it was an insult to Moreland’s intelligence that Prudowski was forcing these images on him at all, let alone insisting that Luce Korchak must be responsible for those watery, convoluted ra
mparts rearing out of the Pacific. He began wondering how he might teach the general a lesson.

  The general wouldn’t stop jabbering insolently about mermaids working together, and about some plan he had for stopping them. Maybe it would be simplest to agree, before his confusion became too obvious.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  In a dorm room in Boston a chubby, sweet-faced, gold-skinned girl sat on her bed with her arms wrapped around her knees. She’d cut class that morning for the first time in her life, telling her roommate that she was nauseous and might be getting stomach flu. The nauseous part was true enough, but she knew flu wasn’t the reason she felt so awful.

  A camera rested on her bedspread with its pattern of cartoon cats, and Gigi looked at the cats to avoid looking at the camera. For the last seven years she’d managed mostly to ignore the memories of the afternoon her mother had drowned, the afternoon her own life had been saved so inexplicably; at least, she managed to ignore them as long as she worked all the time and blasted abrasive music to drown out the music in her head; at least, until she had to go to sleep.

  But now . . . I bet you don’t want them all dead any more than I do. Now the scruffy-looking man from that damned Internet video kept talking in her thoughts, trying to persuade her to do something thoroughly reckless.

  “They killed my mother,” Gigi argued aloud. Her mother had taken her out on a whale watching trip for her birthday, but they hadn’t seen whales. “And their songs—it’s like I’ve had some kind of brain disease ever since. Why would I make a fool of myself in public for them?”

  So I’m here to ask . . . Then there’d been the unbearably beautiful music that made her want to die from the sheer force of her joy, as if she’d finally understood that the only way to love life enough was to end it. The crash, the wild deep water. If that’s you, and some mermaid saved your life before . . .