Waking Storms

by Sarah Porter

  “That guy Ben Ellison came to see me,” Dorian announced, and Luce gazed at him in confusion. “The FBI guy, remember? From Anchorage. He had breakfast today at our house. I saw him for a while after school, too. And Lindy started talking about how I'm always going off on these long walks alone, staying out late, and how she worries about me.”

  Luce couldn't believe what she was hearing. “You talked to the FBI?”

  “What do you think I did? I didn't tell him anything about you. We just talked about other stuff. Like, he knows a lot about art, way more than anybody else around here, anyway. He's actually really nice, Luce.” He grinned at her in an awful, pinched way. “I can’t wait for you to meet him.”

  “Dorian!” Somehow everything he was saying today felt unbelievably cruel to her, even if it was mostly reasonable enough on the surface.

  “And I'm thinking of starting a band. There's this guy in my school who plays keyboards, and he's kind of not terrible. He says he knows some other people around here, too.”

  “What are you going to do, then?” Luce was overcome by bitterness, and she couldn't keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “Sing?”

  “Well, do you want to be our singer? We could get some kind of tank for you, or like a wading pool or something.” Dorian halfway leered at her. “I bet you'd be pretty good.”

  Luce stared at the mass of his body sitting hunched in the violet-gray darkness. He probably wouldn't be able to see it if she did cry, but still, maybe it would be simpler just to leave. “This is horrible.” The words leaped out of her unexpectedly.

  “What's horrible? That I'm starting a band?”

  “That we're fighting like this. Dorian, I don't want to feel angry with you. And there's still so much I haven't told you, and maybe it's important.” Dorian reached out for her for the first time, curling his fingers around her shoulder, pulling her close. Luce didn't resist, but she didn't go to him either.

  “Tell me everything later.” He had her tight in his arms now, tugging her far enough onto the beach that her tail was barely covered by each new wave rolling in; intermittent breaths of icy air prickled on her scales. Luce felt herself go tense, ready to fight. “Just kiss me now. Okay?”

  “Let me get a little deeper in the water, then.” Luce squirmed in his arms, trying to work her way down the beach's slope.

  “Is the air hurting you?”

  “It isn't really hurting. There's still enough water hitting my tail that it just stings a little.” The real problem was that it made her nervous, not that it hurt. She couldn't completely rid herself of the fear that he might suddenly wrench around and send her flopping up onto the shore. He might imagine he could turn her human that way and wind up killing her by accident. But how could she say that to him? Luce thrashed hard enough that his grip loosened, and she was able to slide three feet down. Immediately she felt better, her tail cool and secure in the rocking sea.

  “I don't see what the big deal is, then,” Dorian said. He was still sulking, but he kissed her anyway. After a moment Luce lost herself in the endless warmth of his mouth, the drifting tremor of his hands exploring her skin.

  Something crunched back in the woods. At first Luce didn't react. There were so many wild animals here; something was always crackling through the branches. Then an unsettling thought flashed through Luce's mind: maybe Ben Ellison had followed Dorian down here? She listened for a while longer, but there was only the hiss of wind in the spruce trees.

  Then heat and softness consumed her completely. Again there was that disturbing concentration of smoky warmth in her core, an eager feeling that wouldn't go away no matter how she squirmed. Her fins rippled over the stones, and her blood grew so warm that she felt almost human again. She began and ended in that kiss. What else could matter?

  After they parted for the evening Luce realized she still hadn't told him everything Nausicaa had said. She was sure he'd be interested, especially in the things Nausicaa had told her about the god Proteus and how he was the “father” of the mermaids. In a way it turned out Dorian had been right all along: the mermaids did have a kind of boss, even if a lot of them didn't know it.

  She needed to find out more, Luce realized. If there was a solution to her impasse with Dorian, Nausicaa would know what it was.

  Her argument with Dorian had made everything unavoidably clear, after all. They couldn't go on like this forever. Sooner or later one of them would have to change. It was either that or...

  But Luce couldn't bear to finish the thought. If they loved each other, why shouldn't that be enough for both of them?

  Luce waited impatiently through the rest of that evening for Nausicaa to return while a rising wind whistled savagely, sometimes blowing a long, hollow musical tone through a chink low in the cave's wall. A storm must be coming, howling up from the direction of the Aleutians. After a while she stopped feeling annoyed and instead became worried that Nausicaa was in some kind of trouble. When she finally started drifting off to sleep Nausicaa still hadn't appeared, and Luce began to wonder if she'd ever see her again. The idea depressed her, and the wind lashed through her dreams.

  She woke to a noise like an explosion and jolted upright before she understood that lightning must have struck a nearby tree. “Such violence to this storm and to the currents,” Nausicaa said. She was leaning back against the cave's wall, the glow of her face filtering through the maze of wild hair that obscured one eye, and Luce noticed that she'd brought back a haul of oysters in a rag of torn net. “The struggle of swimming through them is too much. So you can tell me your long story if you like.”

  Luce gazed around the cave. It was as dark as midnight, and the air pulsed and reverberated with the intensity of the waves slamming just outside. For a moment she didn't even care that Nausicaa was back safe. With the storm this powerful it would probably be impossible for her and Dorian to see each other, and the memory of their fight lingered on inside her like a chill. She thought for the first time of him walking through the halls of his school, joking with other kids his age. He'd told her that part of his life didn't seem real to him, but he obviously didn't mean it. Not if he was starting a band.

  “Luce? Has something disturbed you? Would you prefer if I was gone?” Luce looked back at Nausicaa's gold-green glow; she looked serene but a little concerned.

  “Oh—no. Of course I'm glad you're here, Nausicaa.” Luce knew she didn't sound glad and cast around for an excuse. “I just had a really bad dream.”

  Nausicaa didn't ask what that dream had been. Instead she cracked an oyster on the wall, still gazing speculatively into Luce's eyes. “Eat something. It will help you leave your dream behind.” Luce moved closer to take the oyster Nausicaa held out to her.

  Nausicaa had told her to defy whatever she chose; Luce wondered if that included the timahk's prohibition on contact with humans. Maybe, just maybe, Nausicaa wouldn't think badly of her for loving someone on land. And there was still so much Nausicaa could teach her. “Nausicaa? Instead of me telling you stories—” Luce stopped, suddenly overcome by shyness, and Nausicaa waited. “I mean, maybe you could tell me about your life instead. And what you said yesterday, about Proteus being our father...”

  Nausicaa looked disgusted. “No one has told you this?”

  “I'd never heard anything like that before. About Proteus, or what you said about twins,” Luce said.

  Nausicaa was shaking her head as if she wanted to make Luce's words go away.

  “I wish I could say that I have never before met mermaids so forgetful of our history. I have met many. It is like the mind erasing itself. If the mind becomes erased, where can the world live?” Luce thought she almost understood. “You have never heard the story of the first mermaids? The Unnamed Twins?”

  The first mermaids, Luce thought. Somehow it hadn't occurred to her before, but of course someone must have been the first to experience the change, to feel her body becoming a cold spill of liquid flowing into the unknown. “"Who were they?”
>
  “They were no one. That is, they were the daughters of a poor shepherd. Born sickly, and as daughters not worth saving. Not worth the granting of names. He left the infants on a cliff beside the sea, intending they would die there. But Proteus, the herder of seals, found them and carried them back to his cave. They nursed on seal's milk, and he raised them as his own.”

  Luce was fascinated. “But if they changed when they were babies weren't they stuck being larvae?”

  “They had not yet changed. They were still human girls. Girls raised half in the water and half onshore, their father a sea god, but human.”

  “But then...”

  “Proteus raised them until they were adolescents and then gave them a choice. They could return to the human world and marry, or they could remain as creatures of the sea, both gifted and tasked. The Twins had pride, being the adopted daughters of a god. They refused to return to the people who had treated them as filth to be cast away. The sea was enough.”

  Luce wondered if that meant there was something wrong with her. She couldn't honestly say that the sea was enough for her, not when she longed for Dorian's love as well. Even her singing wasn't truly enough. “So that was when they changed?”

  “Yes. Proteus is a shape-shifter, and he chose for them a form that embodied their history: half human and half of another world, needing both air and salt water to survive. He gave them their voices and their beauty as his gifts, their enduring youth, and the promise that other girls turned cold by human cruelty would have the same chance of finding the sea. He described the timay they would live by. Along with these gifts he gave them the task of avenging their own wounds and also all those girls who are not saved in time.”

  “So they didn't mind?” Luce asked a little breathlessly. “Killing people?”

  “They were delighted. Why would they pity humans? When I knew them, they were fierce with the hunger for ships. "We let none escape. Only once did a ship elude us, when a captain stuffed wax into the ears of his crew while he stayed bound tight to the mast.”

  It took Luce a second to process the implications of what Nausicaa had just said. “When you knew them?” Luce shrieked. She couldn't doubt that Nausicaa was telling her the truth. “Nausicaa, you knew them? Like, you were in the same tribe?”

  Nausicaa smiled—a little distantly, Luce thought. “Where else would I be but with them? I too was among the first. When I came to their tribe it held only five of us, but it grew very soon.” So many questions were whirling through Luce's head that she couldn't speak for a moment. Nausicaa's eyes sparked green, gazing into space, and the crackle of distant lightning thrilled through Luce's skin.

  “Did they ever get names?” There were more important things to ask, but somehow that seemed like the easiest question to start with. Everything else was just too overwhelming. Nausicaa laughed, clearly pleased by this, and swished her tail a little.

  “They had more names than you can count. Remember, their father was a shape-shifter: an old man one day and on another day a giant serpent. They were accustomed to change, to things with no settled form. We used to call them different words for hours, as a game, waiting to see when they might choose to answer. One of them might reply only to 'Fish Hook,' the other one to 'Bread,' and it would be so until they decided those names no longer suited them. It was hard to keep track, of course. But they enjoyed that.”

  They were quiet for a while. Nausicaa cracked oysters and stared around as if she could barely tolerate the confinement of the walls. Luce was too agitated to eat. She kept trying to think of some way that she could ask the next question without it sounding suspicious, but she couldn't come up with anything. “Uh, Nausicaa? Can I ask you something else?” She tried to keep her tone relaxed, but her anxiety was painfully audible.

  “Of course.” Nausicaa was still calm, but there was a subtle flash deep in her eyes.

  “You said Proteus promised them that other girls who got hurt and ... and outcast would be able to change into mermaids.” Nausicaa didn't say anything, but her lips pursed slightly. “So, well, I was wondering. Is that why there aren't any boys with us? Like, mermen?”

  “That is why.” Nausicaa's tone was caustic. “Proteus thought of his daughters. He had no sons. And the Unnamed Twins were discarded because they were girls. Why would Proteus give the same consideration to male children, then?”

  “So, well...” Luce tried to go on, but Nausicaa looked so irritated that Luce could hardly force the words out. “Does that mean there's never been a boy who changed? Somebody where there was an exception? Have you ever heard of that?”

  “I wished this would not be your question, Luce.” Nausicaa's voice was suddenly much lower, almost growling, and her face changed to a heavy, contemptuous mask. “There are no exceptions. Do not waste such hopes on your human lover, even if you are wasting yourself!”

  “Nausicaa...”

  “Now I know why you leave your tribe to the mercy of a sika! You, who are their true queen. Once again, a mermaid of great talent turns from all responsibility, from timay, from her own potential, for the worthless love of a human male!” Nausicaa shook her head, black hair gusting in the drafts that leaked through the cave, the glow of her skin reflecting in harsh glints on the water. Luce gazed at her and knew that denying it wouldn't help. “I know this story, Luce.”

  “So what if you do!” The words lashed from Luce before she could stop them. “So what if you think you know everything already, and all the stories are the same, and you're mad because it bores you?”

  Oddly, Luce's outburst seemed to soothe Nausicaa's fury. She was even smiling, though there was something morose about it. “Perhaps this boy has the shimmering around him, and you thought of how he had suffered and how in justice he might be considered one of us?” Nausicaa watched steadily as Luce jerked with surprise. They gazed bleakly at each other. “You see, Luce? I can relate those things that occurred as well as you can.”

  Stunned as she was by Nausicaa's words, Luce still thought the older mermaid was missing the real point. She scrambled to find a way to explain her feelings. “But Nausicaa? That doesn't matter. If you can tell me how it happened, I mean.”

  “It doesn't prove to you that I have witnessed this story too many times already? And that since I know how it starts, I may also know how it ends?”

  “But I don’t know this story,” Luce objected. The words came out in a feverish rush. “It's new to me! And it's not some story, anyway. It's my life.”

  “Your life. Of course. Your pardon, Luce.” There was still something deadly crawling through that low voice, even as Nausicaa's smile became a taut grin. “Though I have seen the same thing happen three hundred times at least and seen every time the mermaid destroyed by her forbidden passion, I should assume that your case will be different. Because with you it is not a story.”

  Luce was ready to rage back at her, but something in what Nausicaa said stopped the words in her throat. Every time the mermaid was destroyed? Nausicaa gazed hard at Luce and nodded as if to acknowledge her stunned silence.

  “Should I tell you, then, Queen Luce? What your story would be, if it were a story and not a life?” Nausicaa spat the word. “Though he loves you for your magic and your beauty, for your voice and your strangeness, those are the very things he will want to take away from you. He will ask you to become again a human girl, no different from the girls he might have with far less trouble. You will resist at first, but in the end, in fear of losing him, you will try to make the change.”

  Luce's hands flew out randomly and grasped at the loose rocks of the shore, but it wasn't enough to keep her from feeling like she was falling. How did Nausicaa know so much?

  Nausicaa watched her swaying and went on relentlessly. “You will let him carry you ashore, then. And you will die. Forgive me, Luce, that I am not happy in such a future for you.”

  Luce let herself fall back onto the beach and threw her arms over her face. She could feel pinpoints of electricity
in the water, a breathing sharpness to the air, and there was the strong blue smell of ozone mingling with the familiar reek of salt and wet stones. The darkness moved inside her closed eyes like a private sea, trying to carry her away from everything Nausicaa was saying to her. It all sounded so true. Sooner or later, Dorian would persuade himself that Luce could change back without dying. And then he'd try to persuade her, too, and she loved him so much that she'd start to believe he was right...

  “It is not only because I'm bored, Luce.” Nausicaa's anger was entirely gone now. Her voice was soft and endlessly sad. “It is not only because I have great hopes of you, or because you saved a life that I can hardly find the will to value. I am not so entirely selfish. I don't want you lost as others have been because...” Suddenly Nausicaa seemed to be at a loss for words. “So bright a spirit,” Nausicaa went on at last, sounding uncharacteristically hesitant. “The world cannot afford to let you go. Not when so many ills threaten it.”

  Luce wasn't in any mood to care what the world could afford. “Nausicaa?”

  “Yes, Luce?”

  “Is that always what happens? I mean, that the mermaid tries to change back and dies?”

  “Oh.” Nausicaa sounded tired. “For a few things have not turned out this way. Only a very few, Luce. Twice I have known the mermaid to live through the suffering and stand up on human legs again. Though I can't truly consider that the better fate. One of my earliest friends survived and went back into the human world. She told me later that it was her deepest regret.” Two, Luce thought. Out of three hundred. It wasn't encouraging.

  “Those were the only times?”

  “More commonly the exception is that the male betrays the mermaid who loves him for a human girl. Then the mermaid remains in the water. Alive for the moment, but with her honor gone, her life newly broken.”

  That almost sounded worse. The thought of Dorian lying beside some human was intolerable: her bare legs wrapping like pink tentacles around his body, her tinny, empty voice squawking along with some song on the radio.