The Twice Lost

by Sarah Porter

  “Not on purpose,” Luce explained. “But if they attack us again we probably won’t be able to stop it. We have to keep singing all the time to hold the water up.” She spotted one of the military helicopters hanging far back against milky smears of cloud and nodded at it. “It looks like they already figured that out, right?”

  More mermaids had joined Luce in the wave now. Delicate fins brushed Luce’s shoulder as Yuan swept in a high arc above her head.

  Now that they weren’t keeping themselves secret anymore, the Twice Lost were obviously enjoying showing off for all the flabbergasted humans. Luce found herself grinning at the idea too: how the amazing beauty and power of the mermaids with her must be affecting their human viewers. Magic had ruptured the surface of their everyday world, and that magic was quick and alive and talking back to them.

  The next moment, though, Luce was just as surprised as the humans must be.

  “Do you know someone named Andrew Korchak?” the newscaster shouted.

  Luce lost her balance in the wave and dropped a dozen feet. A writhing current caught her off-guard and flipped her before she was able to recover herself and swim up to the microphone again.

  Her father just wasn’t the kind of person most people knew about. Hearing his name from someone like this overly polished woman—that didn’t make any sense.

  “He’s my dad,” Luce finally managed—and then she glanced over at Catarina’s outraged face, suddenly acutely aware that she’d never told Cat the story of how she’d found her father alive. “Is he okay?”

  The woman ignored Luce’s question. “Andrew Korchak issued a statement claiming that mermaids drown people. Is he telling the truth?”

  Luce reeled in the wave’s core, though this time she somehow kept herself from tumbling. Her father had said that? Her adored father was going out of his way to persuade everyone to hate mermaids, including his own daughter—just when the mermaids most desperately needed his help? The pain in Luce’s chest and head was so wrenching, so physical, that her vision blurred for a moment. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do next: scream out against his betrayal or crumple into heartbroken silence . . .

  There’s no reason not to speak of the truth, Nausicaa’s remembered voice murmured in Luce’s mind. And wasn’t that all her father had done? Speak the truth?

  But now, Nausicaa? Luce answered in her thoughts. How could he do that to us now?

  Speak of the truth, Luce, Nausicaa told her. If you want to save us, speak of the truth.

  “General Luce?” the woman bellowed. “Our viewers are waiting for your answer.”

  Luce pulled herself straight and looked into the camera. How could she make herself say this?

  “It’s true. Most mermaids do drown people.” Luce hesitated then made a wild leap of faith. “If my dad says something, you can believe him. But we don’t kill. The mermaids of the Twice Lost Army all promise never to kill humans except in self-defense. If we can change, that proves other mermaids can change too!”

  “So you admit that mermaids are murderers. Why should we believe that you and your followers are any different?”

  Luce glowered at the woman. “You can believe it because you’re alive to believe it!” She almost pointed out how easily the Twice Lost could destroy every human within earshot then decided not to say anything about that. The impulse seemed less than diplomatic.

  There were tears on her face, Luce noticed. That was all wrong. She shouldn’t let the humans see her crying. Maybe, maybe, they’d think her tears were just droplets from the wave.

  Voices buzzed chaotically above her. All she wanted now was to get away: away from the cameras. Away from the thought that her father might hate her. Away from Catarina’s glare, and from the possibility that she’d let her army down by saying too much . . .

  “General Luce?” the woman called again. “Obviously emotions are running very high at this . . . this historic moment.”

  “We have demands,” Luce snapped. She felt half-sick from grief; the interview was getting to be more than she could bear. “We’re keeping the blockade up until our demands are met. Until then everyone had better keep away from our camps. And”—she felt another stab of inspiration—“if any other mermaids out there hear about this, we could use your help! Join us.”

  “What are your demands? General Luce . . .”

  Luce looked up at the woman with her rigid hair and shell-shocked expression. At this moment humans seemed pitiful to Luce, but they were also pretty infuriating.

  “We have to think about it,” Luce announced. “We’ll send you a letter.”

  “But—”

  Luce plunged. Her serpentine body flashed through what felt like a rising waterfall.

  “Hey!” Imani called brightly into the mike. “I just wanted to say hi to everyone too!”

  21

  Voices Carry

  Secretary of Defense Moreland was standing slack-jawed beside the president, a dozen generals, and half the members of the Strategic Affairs Council. He felt a shiver of icy anticipation as the microphone curved through blue air toward Lucette Korchak’s face. He was sure she would sing. She would kill them all, and his heart felt both frozen and boiling at the prospect.

  He told himself that it was too late to do anything about it. Sweat sleeked his palms and his mouth seemed to be crowded with brittle leaves.

  His jaw fell even farther when Lucette opened her lips—and started speaking instead of singing. She sounded remarkably sweet, almost innocent, and not nearly as stupid as she should be.

  Moreland was blindsided by the force of his disappointment—and for one split second of lucidity he recognized how insane his reaction was. He’d genuinely wanted her to kill everyone.

  Then he forgot all about his own madness. There was another mermaid in the wave, a redhead, and Lucette Korchak had said the name Catarina. Another of the singers he’d heard on the recording, then: an irresistible prize, a flame-colored coin minted from fresh desire.

  “When I saw that wave standing there I knew it was a game-changer,” President Leopold grumbled. “But if everything this cute little general is saying is true, I think we’re going to need a whole new board.”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Andrew Korchak wasn’t watching his daughter. Instead he was sitting on a park bench, sobbing so violently that the world pitched and swam in his eyes. He knew beyond all doubt that Kathleen would be alive now if she’d never glimpsed Luce. Kathleen had been trying to help the mermaids, and they had killed her. He was positive of that, even if he couldn’t begin to guess how they had done it. It was worse than any treachery he could have imagined. And maybe it was his fault, too. Somehow those videos had brought Kathleen to the mermaids’ attention.

  He should have told Kathleen he loved her. While there was still time.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Seb perched on a folding chair in the community center housed in a church basement, other homeless and luckless people crowded around him. When Luce got to the part about mermaids changing their ways, Seb burst out laughing and cheering so loudly that the volunteers ordered him to leave.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Gigi Garcia-Chang knelt with her cheek pressed to her TV screen. With one finger she followed the ever-shifting curves of Yuan’s pinkish gold tail. She’d recognized her rescuer immediately, even after so many years. Until this moment, Gigi thought, she hadn’t understood how terribly she’d been missing the mermaid who had saved her.

  She was taking two summer classes, and then there was her part-time job in a café. Her responsibilities were a real impediment to just catching the next flight west.

  But maybe she would anyway.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  “Damn. How many guys do you want to bet are ordering sushi right now? Like, ‘Hey, um, can you deliver this to the bottom of the Golden Gate Bridge? And, like, tell that mermaid I sent it’?” Theo was laughing uproariously, though from something dark in his eyes, Dorian thought his friend wa
s trying to conceal wilder emotions behind this display of silliness.

  Dorian slumped on the green leather sofa, biting his lower lip and hoping that Theo wouldn’t notice his burning cheeks. His distress was partly provoked by bitter longing at the sight of Luce looking so proud and free and beautiful, and acting so brave. But that wasn’t all he was feeling. He was also queasy with shame. He’d watched Andrew Korchak’s appeal over and over, and he’d kept an obsessive watch on all the video testimonies that followed from it. But he hadn’t quite worked up the nerve to post a video of his own.

  And now—now it was way too late to do anything like that.

  Within hours thousands of people—and mostly, Dorian thought hatefully, they would be young guys, and some of them would be way better-looking than he was—would be posting videos claiming they had been personally saved from drowning by General Luce. There would be declarations of love, offers of adoption, the works. Damaged and defiant as Luce was now, she was simply that enchanting. Adding his own video to that ruckus would just make him look like a total moron. At best it would be an exercise in pointless humiliation.

  There had to be something else he could do, Dorian thought. Something to show her . . .

  “But I’m the one who’s going to get the date with her, because I know the secret. Mermaids can eat fish anytime they want, right? So the way to get their attention is obviously with pizza . . .”

  Something to show her I deserve to get her back, Dorian thought grimly. Something to prove to her . . .

  “ . . . we could use your help!” Luce exclaimed passionately from the television. “Join us.”

  Her pale olive face gave off a subtle greenish shine. The glow shone brighter in the streaks of her tears. When they were breaking up Dorian had told Luce her problems weren’t real; he’d told her she wanted to stay a kid forever so that she could avoid responsibility; he’d even blamed her for letting herself turn into a mermaid in the first place. And now here she was, injured and scared but still leading an army into this weirdly peaceful battle, doing what no mermaid had ever done before, while he sat on his ass.

  “Or, you know? Maybe that black mermaid is even hotter. Yeah, check out that blue tail!”

  “Theo?” Dorian snapped. “Could you possibly shut up?”

  “I see no call for such an uncouth remark, good sir. I was merely expressing my sincere desire to send those exquisite mermaids a hot, cheesy pizza.”

  “It’s a war!” Dorian growled. “Luce is wounded, okay? Her friends just got shot. She doesn’t need your fucking pizza!”

  What Luce needs, Dorian realized, are allies.

  And he was ready to join her war.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  A hazy pink glow filmed the water, slivered with turquoise by the ripples flowing smoothly toward the shore. Bell-shaped scarlet flowers cascaded down the cliff, lush mosses dripped, and a tiny waterfall raised a perpetual shimmering froth where it splashed into the cove. But for all the fantastical beauty around her, the emerald-tailed mermaid leaning on the shore looked somber and a little bored. Coils of black hair snaked thickly around her dark bronze shoulders, and her greenish black eyes were glazed with sadness. She’d already seen every possible permutation of beauty the world had to offer far too many times.

  If the friend she was missing had been there with her, then she could have experienced this sunset as if for the first time, seeing the world with borrowed freshness and enthusiasm. But the odds that that particular friend was still alive were admittedly poor.

  The waterfall’s sleepy percussion changed its tone. The mermaid looked, without much interest, at a sudden fervor of bubbling, a slippery confusion of crosscurrents that beat and rose and gathered form . . .

  This too was something she’d seen plenty of times before. The mermaid waited with morose patience for what she knew was coming. A new mermaid was about to appear, a metaskaza, stunned by the transformation and the devastation that had provoked it.

  New fins flashed into existence under the water’s disordered surface, and with them there appeared a girl with a long tail that swung erratically. Her scales were a lovely color somewhere between dove gray and lilac, gleaming with pearly iridescence. The tail went well with the metaskaza’s coloring. She was a very pale blonde with deep gray eyes, and she sat up with her hands scrambling wildly into empty air. Her breath was heaving with terror and shock, and a single impossibly sweet note tore from her lips and ended in a sudden gasp.

  The dark observer thought she might as well do the helpful thing: stay and talk this newly transfigured mermaid through her inevitable reaction to the change. The girl would be overwhelmed by denial, hysteria, grief . . .

  She was genuinely surprised when the metaskaza displayed none of those emotions. Instead the blonde gaped wide-eyed at her own tail, hefting it uncertainly and letting it fall back again once, twice, three times. She looked amazed, yes, but not devastated or incredulous.

  That was unusual, to say the least. Of course, if this girl was sika, someone born cold and void of true emotions, then she might not be capable of the usual responses. The dark mermaid twisted her head to check up on that possibility, peering from the corners of her eyes into the dark shimmering that winked around the blond girl’s head. With a normal mermaid you could see the terrible incident that had chilled her heart to the point where she let go of her humanity; with a sika, cold from the beginning, there would be nothing to see.

  The blonde wasn’t sika. She’d been altered by one of those horrors that her observer regarded as simply wearisome routine.

  “Oh my God!” the new mermaid exclaimed shrilly. “It’s just like on TV!” Then she noticed that there was another mermaid watching her. “It is, right?” she asked. “This is just like on TV. And that video. I knew it was real!”

  This situation wasn’t just unusual, the green-tailed mermaid realized. It was utterly unprecedented. And she adored anything unprecedented no matter what it involved. “I don’t know this video you speak of. But certainly, all of this is real.”

  “You have to know!” the metaskaza squealed. “And—oh, wait, can we swim that far? We have to get to San Francisco! How fast can we swim there?”

  “To San Francisco? I can help you do this, yes. But why?”

  “Like on TV yesterday! Didn’t you see it?”

  “I don’t watch a great deal of television,” the dark mermaid observed dryly.

  She watched as realization, then embarrassment, flickered over the blonde’s face. “Oh. Oh. Wait, so are you saying you don’t know what’s happening? You haven’t heard about the Twice Lost Army?”

  Things were only getting more interesting. “I’ve heard nothing of this, no. What is this army?”

  “And you don’t know about General Luce? We have to go help her!”

  For the first time in several centuries, the green-tailed mermaid was briefly rendered speechless from astonishment. Her jaw dropped and her eyes widened. Within moments, though, she had recovered most of her poise. “General Luce?” Her look of surprise was rapidly mutating into one of absolute delight. “General Luce? So she still refuses to be called queen?”

  “She’s leading this mermaid army to stop the government from killing them. And there’s this wave, and they’re holding it up by singing, and she said on TV that they need other mermaids to come and help. Please . . .”

  “Of course, you are right. Of course, we must rush to aid General Luce! With the next ship! I will show you how we can ride across unseen.”

  “Can’t we just swim?”

  “Not so far. We would drown. The first thing you must learn is that you still need to breathe, and to breathe while you sleep. You must be careful of how deep or far you swim. Many new mermaids die of their ignorance. How are you called?”

  “Oh. I’m Opal Curtis.”

  The green-tailed mermaid smiled at her warmly. “Welcome, Opal.” She already liked Opal, quite a bit, for her impassioned, spontaneous loyalty to Luce. “My name is Naus
icaa.”

  22

  Reaching Out

  For the next twenty-four hours the mermaids were preoccupied with figuring out the details of their new struggle. Luce was more grateful than ever for Yuan’s help. Under Yuan’s direction the mermaids were organized into two groups; each group would sing for two six-hour shifts every day in order to keep the wave up nonstop. It wasn’t far to the clock tower at the Embarcadero, and a small mermaid was dispatched to keep track of the time. Once they divided the army in half that way it became clear that they didn’t have quite enough mermaids to sustain the wave at its full force, but they didn’t want to risk a disastrous collapse. Yuan was the one who got the idea of removing the singers one by one, letting the water adjust for a few moments before she beckoned the next mermaid out of the line. She posted guards, choosing those mermaids whose voices weren’t as strong to keep watch.

  Half of their force proved to be enough to keep the wave going, though not quite at its previous height. It wasn’t ideal, but they had to hope that it would be enough. And as Yuan had predicted, many of the Twice Lost mermaids who had scattered in terror were starting to drift back, drawn by the faint resonance of the music stroking through the water. The wave swelled higher as they poured their fresh voices into the effort. Then in the early evening a new tribe of refugees showed up, and Imani immediately set to work on training them to join in.

  Above them police wearing what were probably noise-canceling headphones had begun physically carrying people off the bridge. But for every one they removed it seemed like some other human would manage to sneak on and take their place. The crowd hadn’t thinned at all, and now the shores were packed with listeners as well. The base of the Golden Gate Bridge began to resemble a jostling auditorium.

  Luce sang through her shift from late afternoon until midnight then swam back to their hidden encampment to get a few hours’ sleep. She was bleary with exhaustion, and with Yuan handling so much of the work—and so much happier than Luce had ever seen her before—Luce felt more like just another weary soldier than like a general.