Waking Storms

by Sarah Porter

  Luce cringed. She had to say something. “I just meant that I don't want to sink ships anymore. I told Catarina that, too. I mean—I don't actually believe that it's good to kill humans, so I decided not to do it again.” Luce's voice faltered. It was an outrageous thing for a mermaid to say. It must sound practically insane to Dana, and Luce started to hope that Dana would decide Luce was a hopeless case and go away. Then she knew from the unyielding look Dana suddenly flashed at her that what she'd said wasn't going to be enough. Dana knew something. She was too smart and sensitive to let Luce put her off that easily.

  Luce started desperately trying to think up excuses. If Dana had heard the bronze-haired boy singing Luce's song, couldn't Luce insist that he must have listened to her secretly when she'd been sure she was completely alone? Maybe kayaked to the entrance of her cave without her knowing it? Did the fact that he knew her song necessarily prove she'd saved his life?

  “But, Luce...” Dana sounded like she was forcing herself to stay calm, to speak carefully. “You know that's not what the timahk says. I mean, you know it doesn't mention anything about having to sink ships just for fun or something. So if that was all you were talking about, you wouldn't have felt like you needed to say that.” Luce was absolutely certain now that Dana had heard the boy singing. “There are really only two rules about humans. You can't talk to them or touch them or have anything to do with them. And you have to kill them, but only...” Dana paused and stared at Luce. “But only if they've heard mermaids singing. So they can't go around telling other humans about us.”

  Luce took a deep breath. She'd just have to deny everything. There was no actual proof.

  “I know what the timahk says, Dana.”

  “Then which is the part you don't believe in? Because I know you weren't talking about the rules for how we have to treat other mermaids. It's got to be one of the human rules.”

  They stared at each other. Both their tails had been swishing involuntarily as they talked, stirring up a froth. The water was cloudy with bubbles, dabbed here and there with foam. Luce couldn't answer.

  “Luce, do you think—I mean—if some human finds out about us, do you really believe it's okay to let them live?” Dana couldn't maintain her forced calm anymore. Her voice was getting shrill, rising with outrage. “Even though if any of us did something that stupid, it would guarantee that we would all get killed? Not just the mermaid who broke the timahk but everybody. It's one thing if you want to throw your own life away. Crawl onshore, then. But how could you do something like this to the rest of us?” Dana's face was streaked with tears. “You hate us all that much because of Catarina? Is that it? You want to see me with my head blown off?”

  Luce knew she should lie. She should play dumb, get indignant, say she had no idea what Dana was talking about. But seeing Dana's huge brown eyes staring at her in wounded disbelief, tears flooding down her cheeks, Luce couldn't do it.

  “I would never want you to get hurt, Dana. I promise. Even if I did break the timahk somehow...”

  “If you broke it?” Dana was yelling between fierce sobs, leaning over. She was reaching behind her back where it was pressed to the wall, pulling something out. “Luce, if you did? You know what you did! You know, and even if I don't know exactly what went on, I do know you're even worse than Anais!”

  The shape in Dana's hand was a white triangle. Paper, wet and floppy in places. She started unfolding it.

  Luce was shocked into speechlessness by the savagery of what Dana had just said. Her face felt hot and thick, and her heart was pounding. Then as the paper began to spread out and reveal an image, she thought she might faint, and pressed back hard against the rocks to steady herself.

  It was a drawing done in heavy lines of black ink, like a very skillful panel from a comic book. A giant, sharply peaked wave blocked out most of the sky, and centered in the wave there was a girl's face. Hers. Obviously it was meant to be hers. Her tail was curled behind her as she swooped downward, so that her fins fanned out of the water above her head. And it looked like there was some writing up near the paper's top edge.

  Wordlessly Luce stretched out her hand for the drawing, but Dana jerked it out of reach.

  “You want to know what it says, Luce? You want to know what—whoever this is—this human who's writing you notes wants to tell you?” The bitterness in Dana's voice was terrible. Her sobs were tinged with outraged laughter. “Just that he's going to keep putting drawings of you in the sea unless you talk to him. That you'd better show up if you don't want your friends to find out what you did. He doesn't say what that was, but I can guess. Which ship was it, Luce? Where you just decided that the timahk didn't apply to you anymore?”

  Luce choked. There was no way out of this. Dana had the proof right there in her hand. “The one right after Miriam died.”

  “Oh, now you admit it! What, was he incredibly hot or something? This is from a guy, right?” Dana's tone was shifting again, taut with sadness. “You seriously think you're the only mermaid who wishes she could have a boyfriend?”

  “It wasn't like that,” Luce objected. She was half whispering. One thing Luce knew for certain. She definitely couldn't tell Dana her real reasons for saving the boy: that he'd had the same dark shimmering around him the mermaids did and that he was the first human who had ever resisted her enchantment. That he was the only one who'd ever been brave enough to sing back to her. All that would just sound like a bunch of lame excuses, and it would only make Dana angrier. “It is a guy, but I wasn't—it wasn't like I was planning to ever see him again, Dana.”

  Dana stared at her. “You don't know how lucky you are that I'm the one who found this. Anybody else would have shown it to Anais. Then she'd have a great reason to kill you. Everyone would agree that you were asking for it.”

  Luce nodded, slowly. “I know.”

  “But I'm going to give you another chance.” Dana shook her head in disbelief, but at least she wasn't sobbing anymore. “God, Luce, I trusted you! I really thought you were something special—like everything would get better if you were queen. And now, I mean, I just can't understand. How could you? How could you risk all our lives—not only of our tribe, even, but of all the mermaids everywhere? After all the horrible things the humans did to us, too? Just because you liked some guy?”

  “I didn't think anyone would believe him.” It was a pathetic excuse, Luce knew. “Dana, I'm sorry. Just—we'd drowned so many people, and then Miriam killed herself, and I couldn't stand it anymore. There'd been so much death, and ... I just wanted somebody to live.” She was only making things worse, Luce realized. Dana gaped at her with a kind of dull horror. “But really, I really, truly swear it, Dana. I'm never going to talk to him again. I'll obey the timahk from now on!”

  “Oh, you are so going to talk to him!” Luce stared at Dana in amazement; what was she saying? “You are absolutely, definitely going to go talk to him! And I mean today, Luce!”

  “What are you talking about?” Even as Luce gasped out the question, she already had a miserable realization of what the answer would be. Dana laughed caustically.

  “I'm talking about the fact that you're going to go meet him, just like he wants you to. And this time,” Dana snapped, “this time you're going to make sure he dies!”

  5. The Rowboat

  The day seemed bleak and endless. Luce was buffeted by waking nightmares, by memories that pressed in on her mind and wouldn't stop. A black boat, then Miriam shuddering with agony as her tail dried out, then her father smiling at her the last time he'd said goodbye and sailed off on the High and Mighty, not imagining that it would never return to shore. Miriam's voice whispered on and on in her mind, telling Luce about a dark recurring dream: human soldiers invading their cave, raising guns. If that ever happened in reality, though, couldn't the mermaids simply overcome them by singing? Luce couldn't remember why, but in Miriam's nightmares the mermaids' songs had been useless to defend them. It bothered Luce that she couldn't reconstruct exa
ctly what Miriam had said about that. But then, what Miriam had told her had been just a dream. It didn't make any sense to wonder why their songs were rendered powerless: of course in a dream things wouldn't work the same way they did in waking life.

  Still, Luce couldn't stop remembering that boat, the sleek black diver, those distorted voices.

  She hadn't mentioned the boat to Dana. And she'd kept quiet about that, Luce realized, because she'd known exactly what Dana would think. Those black-suited divers were no scientists. They'd come hunting for solid evidence of the reality of the mermaids. And if they wanted evidence it must be because they already had an idea.

  And if that was true, well, probably someone had tipped them off. Someone had told the authorities a story that seemed too incredible to be real—but if it did turn out to be true, it would really explain a lot. Who had a better explanation for why so many ships crashed in this area, even in good weather?

  Luce didn't want to believe that the bronze-haired boy had talked about them. But that was clearly irrational, and she knew it. He had every reason to hate the mermaids desperately. As far as he was concerned, mermaids were vermin that had to be eliminated in order to protect human beings, and human beings were the only creatures who counted. When Luce tried to imagine things from his point of view, she knew that he simply couldn't feel any different. It didn't matter that she'd broken the timahk for him and carried him to safety, not when her tribe had murdered his family. It would be insane to hope that he could feel any gratitude for what she'd done. Any loyalty ...

  Then why did she feel so betrayed?

  Dana was absolutely right, Luce realized. Luce had endangered the mermaids by saving that boy, and that meant it was her responsibility to undo the damage. She'd been a fool to trust him. A sucker, even, for caring what happened to someone who didn't hesitate to inform on her. As long as he lived he'd keep talking, insisting to anyone who would listen that there were mermaids living right there at the edge of the Bering Sea, that they had to do something...

  She'd promised herself that she'd never kill a human again. But she was going to have to make an exception, just this once. The prospect of drowning him appalled her, knotted her insides with sorrow and disgust, but there was no alternative. If she didn't, Miriam's nightmares might very well come true.

  There was no choice. However, there was one enormous problem.

  Unlike all the other humans Luce had encountered, the boy had the ability to resist the power of her song.

  ***

  With any other human it would have been ridiculously easy. Luce could have gone to the cliffs and gently uncurled her song of enchantment: the death song, wilder and lovelier than any music on Earth. The melody would insinuate its way into the victim's mind, promising that all the sorrows and wounds of his whole life would be healed, promising that every bad or cruel thing he'd ever done would be forgiven completely. A human who heard that music would want to die. They'd dive into the water under the spell of her fantastical song, even swim straight for the bottom of the sea. And, just as long as Luce kept singing to them, they'd die without any pain or fear. More than that, they'd die with their minds flooded with sweet, silky bliss, with a sense of rapturous homecoming.

  But that wouldn't work on the bronze-haired boy. As much as Luce hated the idea of killing him, what was even worse was that she'd have no way to protect him from torment while he died.

  Dusk fell over the sea like a judgment. Luce knew she couldn't turn back, but it occurred to her that it might be best if she died along with him. Much as she wanted to hate him, Luce couldn't help feeling a soft but definite bond with the boy she was about to murder. It would be by far the ugliest thing she'd ever done. She would live through it physically, but she knew beyond all doubt that her spirit could never survive an act like that.

  She swam slowly along the surface, looking at a world turned a thousand shades of blue by the twilight. Then she noticed how the northern horizon was melting, its contours softening into a purple vapor, and forced herself to swim a bit faster. The fog was rolling in. The boy had to be able to see her for her plan to work. She curved away from the harbor in front of the village, then passed the pebble beach. The memory was so potent that it came over her like a vision: she watched her former self lashing frantically through the surf with the bronze-haired boy caught in one arm. She could see her dark jagged hair emerging from waves where they collided with the beach, her pale back straining as she pushed the boy as far onto land as she could. She watched his weakened crawl up the shore, and saw how he turned to stare back at her as she rose and fell in the heart of a wave...

  The cliffs were next. Luce closed her eyes, trying to shut out the impending horror, but she still kept swimming.

  His voice came into the darkness of her closed eyes. The same mangled version of her song, but this time the voice was sad and the melody moved like something half asleep. Luce swam directly below him and stopped, stirring her fins to hold herself in place a short distance from the shore. She could hear the song break off with a sharp cry.

  “You did show up! Did you find my drawing?”

  Luce made herself look up and meet his gaze. He was leaning eagerly from his perch on the cliff, his hair gusting across his cheeks. She saw the same wide-set ochre eyes and strong cheekbones, the same big, slightly crooked nose, all blue-dusted with evening glow. But there was something that Luce wasn't prepared for at all. She'd pictured him glaring down at her, his eyes slick with venomous hatred.

  Instead he was smiling. Warm and relieved. He actually seemed happy to see her.

  Luce didn't say anything; she only gazed at him. If she got into a conversation with him, she was sure she wouldn't be able to go through with it.

  “Okay. I know you must think I was trying to mess with you. I really wasn't. I'm even glad you didn't get in trouble. I know it doesn't make a lot of sense, but I kind of felt bad about doing that.” How could he behave so familiarly? From his casual, open tone, anyone would have thought he talked to her all the time. Tears blurred Luce's eyes, and she tried to fight them down. She shifted her position in the water. Just a few feet to start, being careful to keep herself where he could look into her face. She had to draw him back in the direction of the village.

  He came along a few steps. Confusion creased his forehead.

  “Why won't you say anything? I know you speak English, remember? You talked to me that time. You told me to take a deep breath.” Luce began swimming very slowly as the trees came between them. He kept weaving away from the path and leaning out between the trunks to look at her. “Is somebody watching you? Like, one of your friends? Is that why you won't talk?” He was suddenly speaking far more quietly, and he stopped pushing his way out of the cover of the trees. “I thought I'd figured out that you aren't supposed to talk to me. I got that right, didn't I? Okay. At our beach there's this giant boulder at—for you it would be the left side. If we stay behind it they won't be able to see us.”

  Luce couldn't see him anymore, but she heard his steps as he took off running.

  It was a start, but she had to lure him past that beach. If she could draw him close enough to the village, he'd probably get the idea of filching a boat and rowing out to her. As long as he stayed on land there wasn't much she could do, but in the water she was far stronger than any human.

  Our beach, he'd said.

  When she'd seen him before, he'd called her evil and sick. A monster. And much as it had hurt her to hear him say that, Luce found herself wishing urgently that he would lash her with insults again.

  It would be so much better than the way he was acting now. Almost as if they were friends.

  ***

  She was there way ahead of him, waiting. She didn't slip behind the boulder he'd mentioned, though. Instead she floated in place offshore where he would see her as soon as he came out from the woods but far enough out that he wouldn't be able to speak to her without shouting. The fog was pressing in on the coast and a midnight
-colored haze swallowed the cliffs where he'd stood minutes before. She could barely hear the crunch and scuffle of his steps as he leaped out from the shadow of the trees, almost falling as the stones skidded away beneath him, and gazed wildly around the beach.

  Luce forced herself to wave, once and then again. The second time he saw her. She could see the sweep of his arm as he beckoned to her, but she stayed where she was, riding the swell of the sea.

  He looked in the direction of the village, toward her again, then toward the encroaching fog. She could almost see the thoughts forming in his head: he could steal a boat, but would he be able to find her in the mist? Luce gathered her voice and let out a long, sweet note, music that sounded like shimmering light, like a gliding wing. It wasn't the beginning of the death song, but a musical beacon, just loud enough for him to hear. Would he understand?

  Luce was just able to see him stare at her and nod before a swirl of dim blue cloud erased him from her view. She could hear his footsteps grating hard against the stones as he took off running again, and Luce drifted along parallel to the shore. She'd go as close to his village as she dared; she couldn't make it too hard for him to find her. The long note trembled and coiled in her throat, becoming a hovering lullaby. Luce closed her eyes as she pitched alone in the fog and sang to comfort herself. Anything to soothe the dreadful chill in her heart, to hold off the sense of creeping evil. Her heart raced as she tried to lull it with unearthly music, but even the beauty of her own song wasn't enough to protect her from the brutality of what she was planning.

  Theres no other way, Luce told herself, letting the thought sway with her song. Theres no choice, but tomorrow ... She finished with an image: floating on her back through Bristol Bay, eyes closed, until the water surged below her and sharp teeth snapped shut around her sides. She stayed suspended in her song and that awful vision for what seemed like a very long time, before she caught the steady beat of oars coming closer. The waves out here were too rough for a small rowboat, and its hull slapped down hard with each passing swell. When she opened her eyes again and looked around, the fog was so thick that the world seemed engulfed in deep blue velvet, and she could barely make out the slightly sharper form of the rowboat first approaching and then gliding past her, the boy's body tipping forward as he spotted her. His oars thumped as he pulled them in, and Luce swam close enough that they could see each other clearly. The lift and fall of her face wasn't quite matched to his, so that they stared at each other in a kind of vertiginous dance. Of course, she remembered, his night vision wouldn't be nearly as good as hers, but the subtle light of her skin would help. She noticed a strange look on his face, awkward and bitter and, she suddenly thought, resigned.