The Twice Lost

by Sarah Porter

  The newscasters had started babbling again, but they weren’t making a whole lot of sense. “In just a minute . . . waiting for the feed to come in . . . truly an incredib—more in just a . . . bringing you a closer look at . . .”

  The mermaid in the wave had something white in her right hand, and she fluttered it as a gesture of reassurance. Her tail looked more or less the right color: a light, silvery jade green.

  “Trying to communicate . . . but does that mean . . . does that mean the same thing it would for us? Peaceful intentions?”

  The mermaid leaned forward, parting the water in front of her face as if it were a curtain. Dorian’s heart was pulsing so quickly that it felt like some small sick bird spasming in his chest.

  Then the image shifted abruptly as the close-up came on. She was wearing a tattered black bikini top; Dorian had never seen her wear human clothes before, only kelp leaves. Her arms and body were crosshatched with razor-fine wounds, there was a scar on her shoulder and a notch missing from her right ear—and she was smiling so sweetly and vividly that Dorian choked.

  Luce.

  20

  Saying Hello

  Luce sang through the night, holding herself just below the surface with slight rotations of her fins and only pausing when she surfaced for quick inhalations. She was singing as the military helicopters jarring above them were joined by more and more helicopters with the logos of television networks on their sides. She was singing when the immense wave supported by the mermaids’ voices turned into a furling sail of molten gold with the dawn light. Her voice webbed into the enchantment of those hundreds of gathered voices. Sometimes the music came to her like clouds of exalted laughter, sometimes as grief for the dead. But one thing was clear: for tonight at least they had won an astonishing victory. And as she had promised, they had won it without resorting to murder. Luce knew it was strange, but she felt a sense of profound triumph at the thought that the dead of that night were all her own followers, not more random humans.

  Even the human soldiers, with the possible exception of that submarine pilot, hadn’t died. Pharaoh’s army would see that the mermaids weren’t just mindless killers. And they’d see as well that the mermaids weren’t about to wait around passively to get slaughtered. She’d turned her enemies into witnesses, and that was a victory.

  It was well into the morning when Luce was shaken from her entrancement. Yuan’s golden face was shining and determined, and her hand was on Luce’s shoulder. “General Luce? You’re off duty.”

  Luce didn’t want to stop singing. The brilliance of her voice surging into everyone else’s voices was too great, too astonishing. She kept the song going, her tone like liquefied sunlight.

  Yuan looked a touch annoyed, but she was grinning at the same time. “Give it a rest, general, okay? You can come back soon. Anyway, you’re already late for a strategy meeting with all your lieutenants. Except Cala—I’m leaving her in charge for a little bit.”

  Yuan’s words reminded Luce that they weren’t just playing at war. But the song was so overpowering that Luce had to struggle with her voice for a few moments before she could force it into silence. The music stopped and started in quick staccato outbursts before she finally mastered it, and Yuan laughed. “Okay,” Luce managed.

  “Yeah? You’re all better now?”

  Without the song thrilling through her, Luce was suddenly much too aware of the horror of the previous night. “Yuan? Do we know how many of us . . .”

  Yuan reached out and hugged her. “We were at five eighty-three before the attack. Only about three hundred made it to the bridge at first, but a bunch more girls drifted back here during the night. We’re at four twenty-two now. But the problem is—with everyone missing, we can’t tell who died and who just panicked and swam off.”

  Luce recoiled a little. “I thought—I only saw a few of us get shot. Bex and maybe three girls I didn’t know. I thought we were almost all okay! Yuan . . .”

  Yuan hugged her tighter, her arms strong and comforting. “Most of them are probably okay. I mean, they got really scared, but they’ll come back once they calm down. And you have to remember, Luce, almost everybody would have died last night if you hadn’t guessed—I seriously have no idea how you knew those submarines were coming, but I do know for sure that you’re the reason so many of us are still alive. Okay?”

  “I didn’t know anything,” Luce murmured. “It just felt like something was wrong.”

  “You can be sad later, okay?” Yuan said, but her voice was very gentle. “This is war. We need you to keep it together.”

  “Okay,” Luce said breathlessly. “Okay.” All at once she was struck by a realization that should have been obvious: now that the humans knew about them, that immense wave was the only protection they had.

  Now that the wave was standing there, it had to stay standing. If there was any lull in the mermaids’ singing, Luce knew they would be massacred almost instantly.

  Yuan took her hand and guided her, keeping well below the water, toward a cluster of brick buildings with low docks on the shore of Sausalito.

  Twenty of her lieutenants were already waiting in a circle beneath a broad, half-collapsing platform set on pilings. Catarina was there, her blazing hair fanning out across the water and her face blazing even brighter with a kind of exhilarated fury. Imani was beaming, her white lace kerchief tied over her short afro. And there was Graciela, looking almost crazed with joy, next to a freckled strawberry blonde Luce didn’t recognize.

  There was a brief pause while they stared at her, and Luce felt a familiar tightening in her stomach. Were they looking at her as if she was a stranger?

  In the next instant there was a wild swirl of dozens of fins, and Luce found herself embraced on all sides.

  “Luce! You figured it out! We stopped them!”

  “They would have wiped us out if you hadn’t . . .”

  “I was so worried when you told us your plan. I can’t believe it’s working!”

  “It’s not just your singing. It’s how you think, too. You’re like a real general!”

  “Hey, I haven’t met you yet, Luce. But I’m ex–Queen Eileen, and that was just awesome.”

  Luce did her best to hug everyone back, trying not to cry. It was hard not to suspect that they were crazy to trust her this much.

  Especially when she hadn’t even been honest with them, really. She hadn’t been lying, but she knew she’d been keeping too many secrets: about Seb, about the video . . .

  And especially about what Seb had told her: that if she had anything to say, the humans might be ready to listen to her.

  Even now that everything about mermaid life was changing—their whole world upended and the timahk hopelessly shattered—Luce couldn’t quite shake the sense that there were some things a mermaid just shouldn’t admit to doing. Talking to humans and saving them from the consequences of their own stupid behavior were both right at the top of the list. But Luce had never completely forgiven herself for lying to Dana about Dorian. She couldn’t make that mistake a second time.

  “I’ve got some things I need to tell you,” Luce gasped out. Everyone fell silent almost instantly. Did they really think that what she had to say was so important? Luce told them the whole story: collapsing under that dock and swimming out the next day without caring that she might be seen, then her surprise at noticing a camera pointed at her. Rescuing Seb and everything he’d told her afterward.

  There were a few shocked exclamations, a few sharply indrawn breaths, but at least no one told her off for behaving so dishonorably. Luce gazed around at them, wondering what they’d all say to her when the silence finally broke, and found that she could look at everyone except for Catarina. Cat was glaring at her with such obvious disappointment that Luce found it hard to meet her former queen’s eyes.

  “Well, everything is different now,” Yuan said at last. “It actually makes sense strategically to try to get some humans on our side, right?” She sounded like
she was arguing, though it wasn’t clear whom she was trying to convince.

  “If Luce had saved someone who counted, I might have to agree with you,” Catarina announced. She spoke in a silky, disdainful tone that Luce hadn’t heard since the days when Cat was queen. “But saving a dirty vagrant like that, only because she felt sorry for him? What possible use is that to us? No, Luce is too impulsive, too thoughtless—”

  “He made me think about submarines,” Luce pointed out, a little brusquely. “And talking with him gave me the idea about the bridge. You really think he’s supposed to do more than that?”

  “And he’s why we know about the video too. If a lot of humans are already interested in Luce, then maybe they won’t like it that the government is trying to kill her. Cat, I have this feeling that we’re going to need all the help we can get, if any of us are going to survive . . .” Yuan had seemed so calm through all the craziness and violence that Luce was startled to hear the raw emotion surging in her voice.

  “Look!” It was the mermaid who’d introduced herself as Eileen, pointing her freckled hand back in the direction of the bridge. “It looks like those humans are sending some guy over the side? What a weird thing to do!”

  They all crowded together at the edge of the shadowed zone under the platform, watching while the cameraperson dropped in his harness. Luce realized that the camera would capture a beautiful image: the top of the standing wave leaped and fluttered, delicate wisps of foam spilling from its crest, while sheets of sunlight wavered on its flank.

  “This is our chance!” Luce said, so suddenly that it took her a moment to realize what she’d meant.

  “Our chance to do what, Luce?” Imani said softly just beside her, and Luce reached out and squeezed her shoulder.

  “Our chance to talk to all of them,” Luce explained. All her joy rushed back at once. Maybe there was loss and terror and trouble all around them, but she suddenly felt absolutely certain that the Twice Lost Army was doing better than anyone could have dreamed possible.

  “Talking to more humans? Luce, can’t you control yourself?” Catarina snapped.

  “Talking to them is the whole point, Cat!” Luce’s tail gave an abrupt swirl of excitement, and she grinned around at everyone, almost quaking with the force of her inspiration. Now that she knew exactly what she needed to do, she wasn’t about to let Cat talk her out of it. “Hey, Imani? Do you think I could borrow your scarf for a few minutes?”

  “Are you serious, Luce?” Imani asked. But her black eyes were gleaming with delight.

  “One thing I know about Luce”—Yuan laughed—“if she says something that crazy, you better believe she means it!”

  Almost everyone was giggling now, half-nervous and half-delirious. It was all just so different from anything mermaids had ever done before. It was strange to feel such happiness in the middle of a war, but Luce couldn’t stop herself from laughing along with the others in sheer astonishment at her own daring.

  “Of course I’m serious,” Luce managed through her laughter. “I’m going to go up there and say hello. To every single human who’s watching this!”

  Extraordinary as that night and morning had been, Luce thought that what came next was the most wondrous thing of all. And yet it was so simple: just the glow on Imani’s face as she reached back and untied her headscarf.

  “Tell Pharaoh’s army I said hello too, okay?”

  “If you want to, Imani,” Luce told her, “you can come up and tell them yourself.”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Luce launched herself into the heart of the rising wave.

  She rose above San Francisco Bay, her view of it wrinkled and disturbed by the glassy curves passing in front of her eyes. Skyscrapers warped and shimmered to her right, glass panes glittering like fish scales. The power of the mermaids’ singing propelled her upward, and she had to use her tail only for balance. Tiny currents torqued and jarred around her, and she had to concentrate to keep herself from being flipped through complicated somersaults. She didn’t want the humans to get the impression that she was out of control in any way. So much depended on the coming moments, and she had to be strong and graceful and persuasive.

  After all, she was there to represent the Twice Lost Army.

  Luce twisted to a halt ten feet in front of the cameraperson, jouncing a little with the water’s irregular impulses. The man yelped and thrashed against his ropes as he caught sight of her. Luce couldn’t help grinning to herself at his eyes rounded into astonished Os, his legs kicking as he tried to run through empty air. Funny as his panic seemed, she felt enough compassion to wave the white scarf. She didn’t actually want him to be afraid of her.

  In the widening sky behind him a dozen helicopters stuttered, but none of them appeared to be the heavy military helicopters that had attacked the night before. Luce looked again and saw that they were all pointing cameras of their own.

  The cameraperson had stopped kicking and instead flopped weakly in his harness. But he wasn’t looking at the white scarf; his eyes were locked on her face. The hungry adoration in his gaze almost sent Luce diving back to her friends, but then she remembered why she was there. She tipped her upper body forward until the water-wall sliced open around her face. It felt sleek and cool, like bubbling silk against her cheeks. Her fins flicked continuously to hold her in place.

  “Hi,” Luce called, raising her voice to be heard over the mingling rush of water and song.

  At the sound of her voice his eyes bulged and he twitched again, his lips moving around the shapes of silent words. Then he seemed to find his own voice and screamed.

  Luce jarred back in shock before she understood what he was shrieking: “A mike! A mike! Get me a microphone down here! Get a mike! Carol! Sam!”

  This is our chance, Luce reminded herself. This might be the best chance we’ll ever have. If there’s ever going to be peace . . .

  Was peace enough, though?

  Now that the opportunity was in front of her, shouldn’t she try to save more than just her fellow mermaids? The mermaids weren’t the only thing in danger, after all. She thought again of that field of death she’d seen on the seabed.

  Above her there were confused shouts, a clatter of equipment, and then a jointed metal stalk leaned out into the air. It crooked halfway down like an insect’s leg, and at its tip there was a large black microphone coming straight toward her face.

  If she chose this moment to let her voice spiral into her death song, Luce realized, it could easily have an effect equal to a nuclear bomb going off. What was happening now was so extraordinary that countless humans must be watching her. If she sang that particular lethal melody, literally millions of people would probably drown themselves. The human governments would agree to whatever she asked out of sheer terror. Mermaids all over the world would expect nothing less of her. It would be terrible—but wasn’t it possible that more lives would ultimately be saved if the war ended now?

  The microphone lurched awkwardly forward, brushing right against her lips.

  “Hi,” Luce said again, her voice clear and definite—and completely free of any music. “We’re not here to hurt anyone.”

  Something swished through the corner of her vision, and Luce noticed that she wasn’t alone in the wave anymore. Imani was pirouetting in slow, elegant spirals on her right, and incredibly enough Catarina had swum up too and was hovering a few yards to her left.

  Luce was looking to the cameraperson for a response, so she was surprised when the reply came from above her head.

  “Who are you?” a woman’s voice boomed, and Luce gazed up to see a carefully coifed woman in a cobalt blue suit bent over the railing clutching a megaphone. She looked both terrified and fascinated. Luce suddenly felt sorry for the woman, and a little heartsick that she’d even contemplated killing people like her.

  “I’m General Luce. We’re the Twice Lost Army. And these are two of our lieutenants, Catarina and Imani. We don’t want to hurt anyone, and you don’t n
eed to be scared.”

  “Are you mermaids?” the woman bellowed back.

  This was such an absurd question that Luce couldn’t bring herself to answer. Instead she let her long body catch the movement of the water. She swam in suspended, curling loops for a few moments then pulled herself through the wave’s flank to face the microphone again. Then she realized that the question was actually important: it was another chance to make the humans understand.

  “We’re mermaids now,” Luce explained, “but we haven’t always been. All of us used to be human.”

  That seemed to cause a minor uproar. Luce couldn’t quite make out what the people above her head were saying; without the megaphone their voices blended with the babble of the water and the rich swell of music. But it sounded like there was some kind of debate going on.

  “Why are you doing this?” the woman finally called. “You say you don’t want to hurt anyone, but this wave is threatening San Francisco. How can you claim that’s not an act of war?”

  Luce thought about that for a moment and decided that her best choice was to be honest. “It is war,” Luce agreed. The microphone swayed in front of her face, dark and somehow disquieting. “The human government has been killing mermaids all over the West Coast. Maybe in other places, too. They attacked us last night with submarines and helicopters, and some of us were machine gunned. We had to do something big to defend ourselves, to make them stop shooting at us . . .” For the first time since she’d faced the camera, Luce remembered the mesh of fine wounds covering her skin. “If we lower the wave now, they’ll kill us all. We don’t have any choice!”

  Again there was consternation above her. The cameraperson squirmed, wide blue space crossed by bridges and hills glowing behind him.

  He looked stunned by what she’d said. Maybe even appalled. Would other humans feel upset about the mermaids being gunned down too?

  “So you aren’t going to send this wave at San Francisco?” the woman yelled. Her hair was so stiff with gel that the wind only made it fidget a little.