by Sarah Porter
Violet never doubted that Luce was looking for them. The yacht where Violet and Dana were imprisoned was north of the tribe's usual territory; Luce just hadn't thought of checking it yet, that was all. But, smart as Luce was, Violet was surprised that she was taking so long to figure it out. It definitely made a kind of perverse sense that Anais would use her family's sunken yacht as a prison. She still thought of it as her personal property, almost as her home.
A warty, banana-colored starfish oozed out of a large purple vase, its legs groping at the aquatic emptiness. It flopped onto the desk and lay there upside down. There was something hopeless in the feeble way it squirmed, Violet thought, as if it didn't actually believe it could ever right itself.
No one was there with her except for the sleeping Dana, the skeleton, and the starfish. But somehow Violet felt exactly as if somebody had just accused Luce of not caring what happened to them. Luce hadn't found them, the invisible presence suggested, because she wasn't bothering to search. Maybe she hadn't even noticed that Dana didn't come to visit her anymore or thought about it enough to realize that Dana's disappearance must mean something bad had happened. All Luce cared about was herself and her singing...
“That's not true,” Violet whispered. It seemed important to answer out loud, to make sure whatever it was heard her, but on the other hand she definitely didn't want to wake Dana. “Luce is coming to get us out of here. I know it. She would anyway, but especially since—since we're only in here because we were loyal to her.”
The presence didn't seem to be convinced. Violet felt something like a contemptuous shrug close by.
It was her own shoulders.
Some queen, Violet thought, then shook her head wildly to make the words go away.
The brief interlude of blue daylight was already fading. Dana's beautiful brown skin took on a midnight shading outlined by her dim golden glow, and her coppery tail thrashed in sympathy with some unseen dream.
As far back as she could remember Violet had suffered from a sense that magic was everywhere: that dreams might grow like vines in empty skulls: that the air might take on a voice of its own or suddenly feather itself into a pulsing wing. From the wing a hawk would sprout, then dive at her and claw out her eyes. She'd felt the stirring of enchantment under her fingertips, and it had horrified her. With her transformation into a mermaid that creeping magic had suddenly, violently, invaded her body and taken it over, without asking her. Violet still couldn't feel the involuntary force and grace of her own tail without a shiver of aversion. Changing was simply the most devastating thing that had ever happened to her. It was even worse than watching her older brother being molested when she was still a small girl. And as for singing, well, Violet liked listening to the other mermaids, especially to Luce. But her own singing was stiff and uncomfortable, barely mediocre, and she usually tried to keep her voice as quiet as possible. She didn't want power, and most of all she didn't want the magic to think she'd accepted it.
But now Violet felt an inexplicable desire to sing, maybe even to try copying the odd, smooth tone—smooth even when it rose to a scream—that Luce's voice took on when she controlled the water. She glanced at Dana again. It would be too inconsiderate to wake her, Violet thought, and she stared around the room in frustration. The starfish didn't have the same shape as before. Now it was weirdly bundled in on itself like a squashed lemon.
Violet looked again and realized that the starfish was halfway through the laborious process of flipping itself right side up.
***
Miles down the coast later that night Luce stretched out on the beach of the shallow cave where she usually took Dorian, glancing around at the geometry of the broken rocks and the complicated snaking shapes of the roots that dangled overhead. A froth of gleaming snow covered everything. Somber clouds and mist choked out the sky almost all the time now, but this was a rare clear night. The stars were fierce and razor-bright, surrounded by radiating fangs of white brilliance, and an icy wind whirled down from the far north. Luce was a little bored. Dorian and Nausicaa had been talking so intensely—for what felt like hours now—that Luce was starting to feel sorry she'd suggested it.
And Dorian had looked upset when Luce had shown up with Nausicaa, too. Luce had the feeling he'd been waiting to talk to her alone, maybe about something important, though now it seemed like he'd forgotten about that. He was too absorbed in the conversation, not even reaching to brush away the snow that dropped from the roots overhead and landed on his neck. He was sitting cross-legged right at the edge of the softly lapping sea, leaning forward while the incoming tide soaked the frayed edges of his jeans. Nausicaa was close to him, her tail coiled in a circle around her and her emerald fins occasionally flicking above the glassy, star-streaked water.
Everything Dorian told Nausicaa provoked a stream of questions. “Okay, so the oceans soak up like a third of the carbon dioxide from the air, and that's making the water get way more acidic. If it keeps up the acid's going to kill all the coral reefs and maybe a lot of the plankton.” Dorian was excited and he kept going too fast, forgetting how many things Nausicaa wouldn't know after her three thousand years apart from the life humans lived on land.
“Carbon dioxide? I've heard these words before, but the exact meaning...” Nausicaa's brow was creased with concentration.
“It's pollution, basically. It's in the air naturally, but we're putting tons more in the atmosphere all the time. From people burning fossil fuels. So we're screwing up the balance, and that's also why we're getting global warming.”
“Then why do they burn these fossil fuels?”
“Well, that's how they make all the cars go. And they make most of the electricity that way.”
“Electricity? That means all the lights at night?”
“Electricity makes the lights, but it also powers all the factories and everything. Where people make stuff.”
Nausicaa looked genuinely puzzled, even overwhelmed. Much as Luce loved her she couldn't help enjoying it a little. For once Nausicaa couldn't just say she'd heard it all before. “Humans can't make things with their hands? They did so once.”
“They can make a lot more stuff, though, by using machinery and robots. And they can make it a lot more quickly. But that takes electricity.” Dorian obviously liked his new role as a teacher. “Okay, but the scariest thing about the acidification...”
“Yes?” Nausicaa asked; her voice was strained.
“Plankton makes a lot of the planet's oxygen. And if the plankton dies, like, maybe extra algae or something will make the oxygen instead. But the scientists are all still arguing about whether or not that would happen.”
Luce looked up, ready to burst in with a question of her own—humans needed oxygen, too, after all—but Nausicaa was already speaking: “But the whales eat plankton? The whales with screens instead of teeth? Like the grays?”
“The baleen whales, yeah. Those screen things are baleen. Nausicaa, I hate to break it to you, but the whales are in pretty serious trouble anyway. There are these insane levels of like mercury in their bodies—”
“But they've been coming back!” Nausicaa's voice was suddenly so frantic that Dorian softened visibly. He looked like he wanted to give his old enemy a hug. Then Luce saw him glance down nervously at Nausicaa's magnificent bare chest, only partly hidden by the dense tangles of her hair.
Luce was ready to be irritated when Dorian turned his gaze deliberately on Nausicaa's eyes instead of her body. “I love them, too, Nausicaa. The way that gray whale looked at me...”
“What you humans call love, though...” A little of Nausicaa's contempt was coming back.
“But I'm not totally human!” Dorian blurted. Luce smiled to herself. It was wonderful to hear him defend himself that way. “I mean, Nausicaa, if Luce can see it you must be able to, too, right? I'm like”—Dorian laughed—“a land merperson.”
Luce stretched her tail, feeling the cold silky wavering of the sea against her scales. The brill
iance of the stars filled her eyes, and she wished again that Nausicaa would leave so she could wind her fingers through Dorian's hair. It was strange and uncomfortable to be so near him without touching him, without feeling his breath on her shoulders, tasting his mouth...
“You mean, can I see how you waited on many nights for your mother to decide—”
It took Luce a moment to realize what Nausicaa was about to say, and she jolted out of her daydreaming in alarm. “Nausicaa!”
Nausicaa only glanced at Luce curiously and went on. “To decide to kill you, as she stood above you with the pillow in her hands? And how your father insisted that you were insane and that he'd have you sent away to the asylum if you spoke of this to anyone?” Nausicaa asked all this in the same cool, almost scientific tone she'd once used to suggest that Luce might someday commit suicide. “I've seen this, yes.”
“Nausicaa, stop it!” Luce cried out breathlessly. She was almost in tears, and she looked at Dorian with helpless anxiety, wondering what he would do. His face was bone white around his stunned, vacant eyes, and his hands were clenched. He tilted his head and gazed vaguely into the darkness, and a crescent of reflected starlight gleamed on his wet lower lip. He might start screaming, lashing out, calling Nausicaa a liar...
Instead Luce watched him exhale deeply, once and then again, and then slowly start to uncurl his trembling fingers. He shot Luce a quick, reassuring look, then turned with an obvious effort to face Nausicaa again. “I guess I shouldn't have asked that,” Dorian murmured wryly. “Not if I didn't want an answer.” He flashed a contorted smile.
Nausicaa was confused, staring from Dorian to Luce and back again. “But, Luce, what have I done wrong? Of course he would know ...There's no reason not to speak of the truth.”
“Luce tried to talk to me about it once,” Dorian explained. He sounded almost calm; only the quickened rhythm of his breathing gave his emotions away at all. “And I just freaked out at her. That's why she's worried. But the thing is, I'm way better now, and I can stand to hear it. It is the truth.”
Luce stared at him with a tumult of conflicting emotions. She was relieved and amazed to hear him deal so well with Nausicaa's bluntness, but she was also hurt that he was saying these things for the first time to Nausicaa rather than to her.
“You are better because Luce has been singing to close your wounds, shaping your psyche as she shapes the water. Hasn't she?” Nausicaa agreed. Dorian opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, then bit his lip and looked down. His dark blond hair hadn't been cut in months, and it tumbled over his eyes. It reminded Luce of the fact that her hair hadn't grown since her transformation. “As with the water, it is not that she changes what is there, but that she caresses it into new forms. This is what interests me about Luce, that she finds so many unexpected ways to use her gifts. She goes exploring inside her own voice.”
Luce was bewildered. She hadn't told Nausicaa anything about the dreamy afternoons and thrilling nights that she'd spent singing her way through Dorian's mind. It was too private to talk about, and she could tell by Dorian's wounded expression that he thought so, too. Nausicaa had a way of knowing more than she was supposed to, but how could Luce explain that to Dorian?
“I haven't ... Dorian, I mean ... I haven't actually been talking to Nausicaa about this,” Luce murmured uncomfortably. Nausicaa looked back and forth between them again, unsure what the matter was. For someone so wise about so many things, Luce thought bitterly, Nausicaa could be oddly clueless about people's inner lives. Thinking that made Luce miss Dana's sensitivity; it was so sad that Dana didn't seem to want to talk to her anymore.
“No,” Nausicaa said after a moment. “You don't need to talk to me about this, Luce. I can tell.”
Dorian looked up again, and Luce saw tears in his eyes. This wasn't fair to him, Luce thought. She was used to dealing with Nausicaa's brutal honesty, but there was no reason Dorian should be forced to listen to all this.
“How can you tell something like that?” Dorian asked. “I mean, I guess I never asked Luce ... not to talk to anyone about that, but...”
Luce had never imagined that she would see Nausicaa surprised so many times in a single night. “The images are fading! The sparkling around you, Dorian. It's starting to dim. I know what that must mean. I've heard before of mermaids who could use their voices in this way. Why would I need Luce to tell me when I can read the signs for myself?”
Luce had wondered before, once or twice, if the indication around Dorian might be getting just a little weaker. Now, hearing Nausicaa say so, she knew it was true. She stared into the night above his head and saw the shimmer, still there but guttering like a candle. When she looked sideways Dorian's mother winked in and out of focus, a powerless ghost, uncertainly waving the pillow that was still clutched in her hands.
Dorian met Luce's eyes, and a wave of unspoken sorrow flowed between them. Luce's heart felt raw and somehow bright, beaming with a vital pain that she couldn't explain to herself. Of course, she told herself, all she'd wanted was for Dorian's heartbreak to heal. Why should the knowledge that he was truly recovering hurt her so much?
“I don't understand humans,” Nausicaa muttered. “Why should such simple truths cause so much distress?”
“You don't understand more stuff than you realize, Nausicaa,” Dorian answered. But his voice was alive with tenderness as he said it, and Luce thought that he suddenly seemed much older than he ever had before. Even Nausicaa's three thousand years clearly hadn't taught her what Dorian seemed to have learned in the last few minutes. “Do you mind letting me and Luce have some time alone together now?”
“I'm glad it's you Luce loves, I suppose,” Nausicaa said abruptly. “If she must...” But, Luce saw, her friend's face was grim and sad as she torqued herself and swam away.
Then Luce was finally alone with Dorian in the star-streaked darkness. The rivulets of snow outlining all the roots above seemed to glow with a vehement diamond shine, blue-white and somehow terribly alert, as if all the world was watching them.
“Oh my God, Luce!” Dorian whispered. “There's all this serious shit happening, and I need to tell you about it, but it's been ... it's just been such a crazy night.”
Luce was already in his arms. His hands slid over her body, sensation moved in her skin like breath, and her tail began to thrash. For the first time he reached to pull the band of seaweed away from her breasts, and Luce writhed to press herself against his fingers. The kiss took her like a wave as warm as blood, and she felt as if she were tumbling inside it. Dorian fell back onto the beach, pulling her partway on top of him, and kissed her until her mouth filled with a strange, almost shivering heat.
Whatever it was he had to tell her, Luce didn't want to know. Not just now.
Dana was awake. She and Violet sat on the floor, their tails coiled around them, eating the mussels that one of the smallest mermaids had thrown through a porthole. The room was entirely dark but they could still see each other. Dana looked moody and didn't seem to feel like talking. The tide swelled around them, and Violet could hear the skeleton's head gently knocking on the carpeted floor.
“Do you think—” Violet began, and then stopped abruptly. She was afraid her idea would sound stupid.
Dana had managed to keep up her optimism so well that Violet was shocked to see the desolation in her huge brown eyes. “What now, Vi?”
This didn't exactly make Violet feel any less self-conscious. “If Luce was in here with us ... I was thinking ... maybe she could control the water well enough to push that bolt up? Even from this side of the door?”
Dana's lovely face went hard. “I don't want to talk about Luce, Violet.” She glowered off into empty space. “We're on our own. What's the point of pretending that anybody's going to help us?”
Violet was overwhelmed with embarrassment. Her idea was obviously idiotic. It was childish, even pathetic, for her to pretend any escape was possible. She should just keep quiet. “But ... I mean, I
know I’m a terrible singer and everything...” Violet didn't know what force was making her keep blathering on this way. Shut up shut up shut up, Violet. Now the voice in her head was screaming, and it wasn't even hers but her stepfather's. He'd had his own kind of dark magic; that was clear. Violet's mother had been too enchanted to do anything to protect her children. Shut up, you little moron, or I swear you’re next!
Dana sighed loudly, and Violet cringed as if Dana might be about to hit her. “What are you going on about, Violet? If you actually have some kind of plan, you might want to come out and tell me already.”
“Maybe...” Violet whispered. Why couldn't she control herself? All she was doing was annoying Dana. “You're such a great singer, Dana. Maybe you could sing the way Luce does? Like, move the water? And if you got good at it...” Violet didn't finish the sentence, but suddenly to her own amazement she didn't feel nearly as ashamed of herself. She felt the same awareness of unexpected courage that she'd experienced when she'd stolen the knife for Luce.
Violet looked expectantly at Dana, ready now to argue with her if she refused to try. It wasn't a stupid idea at all. For a few seconds Dana looked impatient, even angry, then Violet watched something shift in the older mermaid's face. Dana's eyes got wider, and her full mouth narrowed with concentration.
“Luce did say one time that she thought I could do it, too!” Dana exclaimed. She sat up higher, and her eyes flashed with golden intensity. “She said I could learn! I thought she was just embarrassed about being the only one, but maybe ... but she's not even here to teach us, Violet.” Dana's excitement was already collapsing. “I don't know, actually. It's nice to think it would be possible, but Luce—she doesn't want to admit it, but probably she just has powers the rest of us don't.”
