by Sarah Porter
“But—who are you talking about? I don’t know what—”
“Ah, tadpole, quite a prize. A prize and a surprise for you. I hope you’ll be pleased.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Whom in all the wide world would you most enjoy hurting, Anais?”
“I—you mean Luce? Did you catch her? But me singing wouldn’t make another mermaid go crazy!”
“I’d like to propose that you can wound Luce most effectively by destroying someone she loves.” Moreland grinned. “Now are you happy to see me? I have Lucette Korchak’s father in shackles just down the hall, and when you’re ready I’ll bring him to you.”
Anais didn’t look happy at the news. Moreland was genuinely surprised. She blanched and hunched her shoulders.
“You see, dear? You don’t have to try to track down his phone number anymore because we’ve conveniently brought him straight to you. And, given what an unholy nuisance he’s turned out to be, I’d have to surmise that his bitch of a daughter must take after him.” Anais’s expression didn’t change. Moreland felt the first twinge of worry that she might actually refuse to do what he wanted. “Anais? You will collaborate with me on this little project, won’t you? You wouldn’t want me to think that you’ve . . . outlived your usefulness. Of course not.”
“You wouldn’t do anything to hurt me! Not after—I’ve helped you so much! You wouldn’t . . .”
Moreland glowered at her sternly until her voice trailed away. She was much too precious to him to be killed, but there was no reason to let her know that. “Just follow my instructions, tadpole. That way there won’t be any need for us to find out what I would do if I were ever forced to deal with your disobedience.”
“Okay,” Anais muttered.
“Okay? You’ll do a nice, thorough job of destroying Andrew Korchak’s mind? Not one speck of sanity left?”
“I said okay, already!”
She was hunched in the water, her sky blue tail coiled tightly and her arms wrapped around her chest. Moreland regarded her for a sustained moment, one hand lazily tracing the outline of her head and shoulders on the glass. “I’ll have him brought in, then. You’ll be able to . . . enjoy yourself . . . for as long as necessary. Though I think you should be able to accomplish the job fairly quickly, don’t you?”
Anais didn’t answer, didn’t look up at him. After a moment he gave up waiting for a reaction and left the pale, soundproof room. When Moreland returned there were two guards with him leading a man in shackles and a black hood. They plopped him on a plain wooden chair and fastened him to it with a few deft adjustments. “So,” Moreland said. He positioned himself directly behind the captive. “So, Anais. You were complaining that you don’t get to see them properly? We can fix that for you.” Moreland tugged off the hood and dropped it to the floor, letting Andrew Korchak stare straight at Anais, her azure eyes suddenly lifted to meet his. “Better? The shock system in your tank will be switched off in precisely two minutes.”
Then Moreland and the guards stalked out of the room.
He could observe the proceedings through live video, for once, even if he couldn’t listen. He could witness on Andrew’s face the same expression that had floated on his own on the hateful day when he’d put those earphones on, when he’d heard her and his mind had given itself to new configurations, the dark intestinal corkscrewing of relentless song.
This was the happiest he’d been in months.
∗ ∗ ∗
Then Anais was left alone, facing the shabby, helpless man strapped to the chair. He had short-cropped, grayish brown hair, stubble, and a look somewhere between bleak and oddly whimsical as he regarded her. One cheek was swollen by a large greenish bruise. “Heya. That guy said your name’s Anais?”
Anais couldn’t help noticing that he didn’t seem even slightly surprised to see a mermaid in a tank.
“What if it is?” she asked sullenly.
“Did you know my Lucette? Sweet girl, short dark hair, light green tail? I was trying to swim out to see her when they busted me.”
Anais hesitated for a moment. But it was a relief to have someone speak to her so simply after all Moreland’s sadistic verbal contortions. “I knew her.” She pouted. “So? It’s not like Luce is going to get me out of here!”
She watched while the man in the chair nodded thoughtfully. “They’re holding you against your will? Yeah, well. Luce doesn’t even know we’re in here. Doesn’t look like there’s much she can do for either of us. But maybe we could help each other out.”
There was a shocked pause while Anais took this in. Her tightly coiled tail started to loosen and trail deeper in her tank. “Like how?”
“Well, maybe if I ever get out of here, I could let people know you’re trapped. Does anybody even know about this? How they’ve got you stuck in here?”
Anais gave a small yelp of surprise. This guy really was dumb enough to be Luce’s dad. “They’re never going to let you out! Are you stupid? They won’t let you out, unless . . .”
“What have they got in mind for me, Anais? They must have a pretty big reason for leaving me here with you like this.”
Anais looked at him, watching his wry cinnamon eyes and scruffy intensity. He should have seemed utterly contemptible, a bum and a lowlife, but Anais found that she didn’t quite see him that way. “You don’t actually look much like Luce.”
“Lucky for her, right?” the man asked. He grinned back at her. It was strange how relaxed he seemed in spite of his immobilized legs, his arms bound behind his back. “Yeah, Luce always looked like her mom, Alyssa. About as beautiful a girl as I ever saw. Before she went mermaid, Luce looked a little more—like, a quieter kind of pretty than her mom was. How about you?”
Anais jerked back a little. “What do you mean?”
“Who do you take after more? I mean, you had human parents and everything, right?”
He’d asked in the same casual, warm tone he’d used ever since they’d dragged him in here, but Anais couldn’t escape the feeling that the question was some kind of trick. “I don’t know!” Her voice came out in a thin squeal.
“You don’t know?” He considered that gravely. “You don’t know what your parents looked like, then?”
Anais didn’t answer. It wasn’t like she normally disliked thinking about her parents—they’d been rich and adoring, after all—but somehow now it bothered her to be reminded of them. Was her own father’s skeleton still clanking along the blue carpet of his office in their long-submerged yacht?
“How about Kathleen Lambert?” the man asked. His voice suddenly sounded flatter, as if he was suppressing his emotions. Anais felt an almost physical discomfort, as if the water of her tank was charged by a cold, jagged energy. “Did you come across her somehow? Like—” He stared at Anais then glanced searchingly around her tank. “Say, did you ever sing her any songs, maybe?”
Anais decided not to look at him anymore, and her mouth twitched up into an awkward smirk. Those two minutes were definitely up by now.
Even with her eyes averted, she could feel the man regarding her somberly. “That’s how it went down, then?” he asked. “They made you kill Kathleen, and now you’re supposed to do me, too? Not that I can get to an ocean too easy, tied up like this . . .”
“He doesn’t want you to drown.” Anais was surprised to hear herself mutter the words. “He wants you to go crazy.”
“Crazy, you say? So just don’t do it, Anais. You don’t really want to, do you? Look, I promise you I can fake crazy just fine. Then once I’m out I’ll tell everyone you’re in here. I’ll get you help. How ’bout that?”
“I have to do what he says,” Anais whispered. “If I don’t do it he’ll kill me, like he’ll drain my tank, or they’ll electrocute me, or . . .”
“You don’t have to. We can trick him.”
“I—” Anais was astounded by the words that had formed in her head. She didn’t want to say them, but they kept repeating in her thoughts,
aching and clamorous. “I—but you won’t be able to tell Luce anything! You’ll just be a vegetable, like, too retarded to even talk!”
“I loved Kathleen. I want you to remember that forever, all right? I loved her.”
Anais couldn’t keep those insistent words quiet anymore—and they wouldn’t make any difference anyway. No one would ever know she’d said them. “Uh, tell Luce I’m sorry about this.”
Anais sang.
26
Lost Humans
Luce was secretly dismayed to see how quickly Nausicaa mastered singing to the water. Nausicaa was an amazing singer, but Luce had hoped that she might have trouble picking up this particular skill. Within three days Nausicaa was lifting waves big enough to curl over her head, and she’d already started training Opal, the blond metaskaza who’d traveled with her from Hawaii. Luce tried to focus on her work, on helping to train new arrivals and keeping up morale, but she couldn’t completely fight off a sneaking depression as she realized how soon Nausicaa would be leaving her.
On the fourth day after Nausicaa’s arrival, Luce woke in the late afternoon to find Imani next to her, looking concerned. “Hey, Luce? I’m afraid you’re going to be upset about this.”
Luce jerked upright and gazed helplessly through the azure-streaked shadows, searching for Nausicaa’s dark silhouette. “Is she gone?”
“She said to tell you goodbye. She said it would be easier for both of you if she left while you were asleep, but she’ll come back as soon as she can.”
“Why didn’t you wake me? What if something happens to her out there, and I never . . . Imani!”
Imani was stroking Luce’s arm, trying to calm her down, but it wasn’t working. “I . . . thought she might be right. And I thought it might be better for everybody else here too. I understand that Nausicaa’s incredibly important to you, more than any of us, but that hurts . . . some of the girls. And if they saw you get too upset about her leaving—I don’t know—it might be pretty bad.”
Luce groaned, thinking of Catarina. Cat had taken to sleeping in one of the other encampments ever since Nausicaa had showed up, singing on the shifts opposite Luce’s and conspicuously avoiding her. A few of the other lieutenants had been acting a bit edgy too. It was as if they thought Luce was committing a crime by loving Nausicaa as much as she did.
“I know it’s not fair,” Imani went on gently, almost as if she could hear Luce’s thoughts. “But it can’t just be about what you want, Luce. It has to be about what’s best for the Twice Lost Army, about keeping everyone together, okay? You have to at least act like you’re fine.”
Luce stared off, unable to reply. She knew Imani was right, but she still couldn’t help resenting what she was saying. Now that she was general she wasn’t allowed to cry or break down just because of how other mermaids might feel about that? Since when did she not have a right to her own emotions?
“It’s going to be time pretty soon for our shift,” Imani pursued, still stroking Luce’s arm. “You look tired. You need to eat, and you need to be strong for us. When the war is over you can scream at me for this or cry or do whatever you need to, and I promise I won’t complain.”
Luce turned to look at Imani, with her midnight face and searching eyes. Blue light curled like feathers on her dark cheeks. “I’m sorry, Imani.”
“Why?”
“If I’m acting so wrong that you think I’d ever want to scream at you, I must be . . .” Really selfish, Luce thought, but instead of saying the words aloud she shook herself. “We need to get to the bridge early, anyway. We should see if there’s any news . . . about the letter.” Ever since Seb had wandered off with her missive, Luce had been waiting for a report, for any sign of how the humans might be reacting to her proposal. Some of the Twice Lost had started to make friends with certain humans on the shore, and there were already a handful of budding romances. If Luce’s letter was discussed on the news, the mermaids would be sure to hear something.
Imani leaned in and hugged her silently. All Luce’s grief and weariness and worry surged in that embrace, only to be met by the strong, sweet containment of Imani’s arms.
∗ ∗ ∗
As they were rounding the Embarcadero, a young mermaid came dashing toward them through the deep green water. “General Luce! Lieutenants Yuan and Cala sent me to find you! They’re talking about us on the news!”
“The humans got the letter?” Luce asked breathlessly. “How did you find out?”
The little mermaid saluted, in a messy, embarrassed way. “They got it! They keep talking about it! And we can go watch the whole thing! On TV!”
Luce was perplexed. “TV? How do you mean?”
“They—two of those humans, the really nice ones? The woman with the brown hat? Who came looking for their daughter, except they say they know she’s gone? They brought a way for us to watch. Come see! General . . .”
Imani was smiling indulgently, but Luce was struck by the deep sadness of her expression. “I guess we’ll have to look for ourselves, Luce.” She touched the little mermaid on the cheek. “Would you go ahead and tell everyone we’ll be right there, please?” Then Imani’s face tightened in a way Luce had never seen before. She looked sharply away as the younger mermaid raced off.
“Imani? What’s wrong?”
Imani just shook her head, still turned away from Luce even as they swam. Wings of light brushed across the surface ten feet above Imani’s head, and a school of tiny silvery fish parted around her slim dark body like a strange cloud-shaped ball gown. Her storm blue tail cleft the water, flicking strokes of neon brilliance through the dimness.
“Imani?” Luce reached out and touched her softly. “Is there anything—”
“No one’s ever going to come looking for me, is all. Seeing all those humans who actually care, Luce, when—it’s hard for me. I wish they wouldn’t come here! No one ever loved me but my grampa, and he died.”
Luce wasn’t sure what to say; it seemed clear from the images she could see in the shimmering indication around Imani’s head that she’d already lost her immediate family by the time of her transformation, just as Luce had. And then the fact that Luce’s own father still hadn’t come to join the human crowds seemed to prove that he must not care about her at all anymore.
But Imani definitely didn’t need to be reminded of how many mermaids were in the same situation she was. “Your grandfather’s not the only one who ever loved you, Imani.” Luce hesitated but only for a moment. “I mean, you know I love you, right?”
Imani glanced over at her and managed half a smile. When they came up for a breath the water-wall gleamed ahead of them, foam sliding from its crest in a cascade of pearls. Pale mist wrapped the red bridge in bands of suspended glow.
∗ ∗ ∗
A tangle of mermaids with arms around one another’s shoulders clustered near the shore not far from the bridge’s base, facing a tightly compressed crowd of humans some fifteen feet away. Police officers stood among them, tense and bristling in the headphones that protected them from the silky wash of enchantment endlessly throbbing from the singers under the bridge. An older human couple sat cross-legged at the front, pressing affectionately together. The woman wore a floppy brown hat and tweed coat and had a large laptop propped open on her knees, its screen turned toward the water. As Luce surfaced with Imani beside her several humans cried out softly, and the mermaids parted to make room. “Isn’t that her?” someone onshore murmured.
“Shh. Yes. Don’t scare them again!”
Luce’s tail fidgeted as she approached that mass of staring faces. Could it really be safe to come this close to a human mob? But there was the screen in front of her, with a newscaster introducing a man Luce had never seen before, his stiff white hair like frosting above a heavily jowled reddish face. The woman supporting the laptop looked kind and thoughtful, and she considered Luce with a mixture of warmth and open curiosity. “General Luce? I’m honored you could join us. I’m Helene Vogel.”
&
nbsp; A bit nervously, Luce swam close enough to shake the woman’s outstretched hand. A few people gasped, and Luce abruptly swirled back to the waiting mermaids. “Hello, Ms. Vogel. Thank you for letting us watch the news with you.”
“My pleasure. I’m sorry the volume doesn’t go up any louder than this.”
Luce didn’t see any reason to explain that mermaids had much better hearing than most humans. Her attention was caught by the faces chattering on the screen in front of her; there was something unpleasantly fascinating about the man being interviewed, with his emotionless ice gray eyes and twitching half-smirk. A banner at the bottom of the screen read “Secretary of Defense Ferdous Moreland.”
“It’s plainly impossible,” Moreland was saying indignantly, “that these vicious entities were ever human beings. Those claims are pure propaganda.”
“But the facial resemblance?” the newscaster objected in a weak voice. “There are records of a Lucette Gray Korchak. A troubled eighth grader who was presumed to have committed suicide in Pittley, Alaska, in April of last year. So are you suggesting that General Lucette Gray Korchak is actually someone else?”
The image was suddenly replaced by two very close-up faces juxtaposed side by side. On the right was Luce, wounded and exhilarated and fierce, as she’d leaned from the wave’s flank during her conversation with the reporters. On the left was what Luce recognized with a jolt as her seventh-grade portrait from school, her gaze scared and full of longing. Together those two faces created an unsettling stirring, a sense of something irreconcilable and rasping and wrong, because they were so much the same but also not the same at all. Objectively there was no real alteration in Luce’s features between the two portraits, apart from the notch missing from her right ear, her fine crisscrossing wounds, and the strange internal luminance that gave the mermaid version of her face the feeling of a beacon floating in infinite darkness. It was precisely the sameness of the two faces that created such a disturbing sense of impossibility: how could the commonplace childish prettiness of her human face translate into the volatile, raking beauty of the face on the right? Luce heard murmurs around her and realized that both Yuan and Imani were squeezed against her sides as if they needed to protect her from something.
