by Sarah Porter
“You want me to leave, right?” Luce demanded. “Then you need to start doing what I tell you, or I'll stay here on your island and mess up your memories forever. I'll hurt the memories in every way I can! Answer me!”
It was hard for her to be so abrasive, so rude. But wasn't there a hint of something different, something just a bit more awake, in her father's expression? The voices gabbled in agitation and then seemed to arrive at some agreement. Luce braced herself as they came at her: a tangle of boiling winds carrying spinning fragments of grass and torn wildflowers.
“Child of Proteus,” the wheezing old voice gasped out, grating and vicious.
Luce cut it off.
“I am NOT the child of Proteus!” She shouted the words, and suddenly her rage wasn't an act anymore. “Don't you ever dare to call me that again!”
The voices wheezed and hissed, debris flung higher and higher in their whispering torrent. Luce knew they were astonished, beside themselves with confusion. This was her chance!
She pressed on. “You want to know whose child I am? I'm the daughter of Alyssa Gray and Andrew Korchak. Alyssa Gray is dead. She's nothing but memories now, and there is nothing I can do about that! She's gone forever.” Luce knew what she had to say next, but she could barely make herself do it. It seemed so cruel, especially with her father right there listening. “I'm going to forget her.”
Luce's hands were shaking now. Her father suddenly looked straight at her, his eyes wide with hurt. She waited with desperate hope for him to argue with her—to yell, “Lucette! Don’t say that!” Luce could practically see the words taking shape in his eyes, but they didn't come to his lips. Not yet.
The voices came closer, an angry chaos of winds. They lashed out at her with airy tentacles, then just as suddenly pulled back. Luce's hair jerked in their grip and fell again. “Child of...” the angry old voice gasped.
Then it paused uncertainly, and Luce attacked.
“I'm also the child of Andrew Korchak. The man you've been keeping here. I thought he was lost forever, but he's not. He's still alive, and he can still have a future. He can forget Alyssa, too—forget her enough, anyway, and fall in love with someone else. And maybe he should forget me, and have a new child...” Luce gagged on the words even as she said them, and the tangled voices screamed in her ears. They were going insane; at any moment, Luce thought, they would start invading her head again. Their shrieking pierced her thoughts, and she raised her voice to make sure her father would hear her above their wailing. “But I am NOT letting you keep him!”
Then all Luce could hear was the howl of enraged voices. They pounded into her head, opened like gashes in her brain. A cloud of sand and shredded grass rose in her eyes, blocking her father from view. She kept on yelling into the storm, though she could hardly make out her own voice. “I'm Luce! I'm Lucette Korchak! You think you can keep me as a memory, but I'm here NOW, and I'm going to make you know who I am!” The pain rose in her head, and with the pain came a violent urge to flee, to dash away from the suffering she felt, make it stop. How much longer could she endure it?
Luce thought of her dream, and her mother's dreamed voice sighed in her mind. Forget me just enough... It eased the pain a little, and Luce gathered her strength again, pulled in a long breath full of grit and twisting wind. She had to do this for Alyssa. Even as she insisted on forgetting her mother she had to honor her memory in the one way she still could, by saving the man her mother had loved so completely...
“FORGET ME!” Luce screamed. The scream ripped up through her chest like a whirling knife, cutting through the clamor of the voices around her. Slashing them apart ... Luce's mind seemed to burst into streamers of pain. Something like a wall hit her forehead, hard, and her hands flailed out against a cold rocking mass of stones. The whole world pitched below her, beating to a revolting rhythm, trembling like the skin of a drum. Luce's stomach turned, and acid rose in her mouth and overflowed. She coughed and gagged and felt tears drenching her face as if something had ruptured inside her.
But, she realized, the world was finally getting quieter. Either that or she was going deaf.
“We know you...’’ the old voice said wonderingly. “We know you!”
“Of course you know me,” Luce rasped back. “You've been living off memories of me for two years.” She squirmed down the unsteady beach, dragging herself away from the puddled vomit on the stones. The beach seemed to lunge at her face again, and she clung to it in an effort to stop it from slamming around.
“We know you, and you are not the memory...” Even as the voice spoke it was changing. It sounded warmer, more alive: it was almost her father's voice now. But it was also fading. Winds no longer seethed around her. “Lucette?”
Sunlight flashed on the wet rocks inches from her eyes. Luce saw a few dots of blurry red and realized that she was bleeding.
“Lucette?”
This new voice was human. Soft and confused. Luce was too sick to raise her head, but she could make out two fur-wrapped feet stopping just in front of her. Hands reached down and touched her shoulders, and she smelled the animal stink of seal skins. “Lucette!” The tone was getting panicky now. “It can’t be you...”
Luce knew she had to look up at him. She had to answer, even if the world seemed to stagger between glaring sun and devouring shadows, even if nothing would stay still.
She couldn't do it.
***
Luce woke to an icy, burning pain. A shivering fire sparked in all her scales, and she lashed her tail, sick with dread as she felt cold air licking her from all directions, as she writhed and strained to touch water again. The water wasn't there, but as her eyes opened she could see its gleam, the rippling of sunset colors. Something was holding her up, keeping her from reaching it. Something warm and strong and determined, and she was already screaming...
“Lucette. Lucette, it's okay.” Her father was staring at her, stunned and sad. “It's okay. I ... oh, God. I promise...”
He didn't know better, Luce suddenly realized. He'd taken her out of the water, and he was carrying her up the beach in his arms. But her voice was out of her control, caught in the scream, even as wind drank the last drops from her scales. She was fighting, twisting, endless convulsions gripping her tail...
“Put me back!” Who had said that? Luce was sure she didn't have the strength to say anything. “Please, please put me back...”
“In the water?” her father asked, surprised. There were a few more seconds of bewildering fire, then Luce felt the splash, the burning quenched by the liquid bliss of the sea. She was sobbing, and her tail swayed through the salty waves in pure relief. She rolled across the seafloor, gasping, trying to regain control of herself. From the corner of her eyes she saw him standing barefoot in the water, his shoulders hunched in sudden helpless uncertainty. “Are you ... Lucette, if that's really ... Are you okay?”
Luce ducked under for a moment, calming herself in the cool, fluctuating waves. When she came up she felt a bit more in command of herself. “I'm okay now.” She looked up into his doubtful cinnamon eyes, his mouth pinched with worry. “I should have warned you.” But she couldn’t have warned him, not as long as he was refusing to listen to her. “I can't leave the water anymore.”
He sat down at the water's edge, his legs crossed, and gazed at her with a look she couldn't decipher. Whatever it was she saw on his face, it definitely wasn't the love she longed for. She swam over and sat near him, carefully holding his gaze, and the longer they looked at each other the worse her disappointment became. He wasn't avoiding her now, but he didn't seem all that happy to see her either.
The air around them was very quiet. Luce could hear the far-off trill of a bird, but there was nothing else. No haunted mutterings moved through the wind, and Luce suddenly wondered if her father felt lonely now that the enchantment was broken.
“I guess you aren't what I thought you were,” her father said after a minute. “But I know you can't really be her. Not r
eally, even if I want you to be. Don't know what that does make you, though...”
Luce's pain began to shift into anger. He'd seemed to understand, but now he was shutting out the truth all over again, and after everything she'd gone through ... She glared at him. “I'm Lucette Korchak. I'm your daughter!”
Her father shook his head and covered his eyes with his hands. Was he trying to shut out her face, too? “Lucette is living with my brother, Peter. Back in Pittley. And I hope to God he can find the strength in his heart to treat her decently!”
His voice broke, and Luce almost reached out to hold him, then stopped. He might recoil from her touch, and she wasn't sure if she could stand that. And at the same time she was amazed by the implications of what her father had just said: the idea that her uncle Peter had hurt her out of weakness...
Maybe that was right, though. Maybe the problem with Peter was that he was simply sick and feeble, with no strength in his heart.
As tired as she was, as sick as she still felt, Luce realized her struggle wasn't over yet. She'd brought her father part of the way toward accepting the situation, but there was still further to go. And, Luce realized grimly, she was going to have to hurt him more to persuade him.
“Peter didn't find that much strength,” Luce announced. Her voice came out harsh, bitter. “Not even close. Like a month after you vanished he started hitting me whenever he got drunk, and it just kept getting worse.”
Her father took his hands away from his eyes, and Luce saw that he was crying. But she couldn't stop now. It was simply too incredible: that this was his own girl, his Luce, but somehow transfigured into a mermaid. He'd only accept it once he really understood what had happened to her.
“And after a year,” Luce went on, forcing the words out, “he tried to rape me.”
Her father let out a sharp cry, but he didn't say anything at first. His eyes were grief-stricken, wide and wavering. She could see his expression jarring between disbelief and fury. “He what?” His voice was a croak.
“He tried ... to rape me. Peter did. On the cliffs, on that path that you take as a shortcut back from town? He shoved me down, and he started going under my clothes. That's why ... I know you don't understand it, Dad, okay? But that's why I changed. Into what I am now.” But as Luce said it she realized that wasn't the only reason she'd changed.
It had also been because she was so sure her father was dead. If she had had any hope at all that he might still come back someday, she would have clung to her humanity no matter what it cost her.
It had all been a mistake, and maybe she could never take it back.
Realizing that did make her feel like she wasn't necessarily responsible for fighting on behalf of the mermaids after all. At least maybe it wasn't her biggest responsibility.
“I'll...” Something dark was coming into her father's eyes. It was like watching the shape of something huge and dangerous rising to the surface of deep water. “I'll kill him. My little girl ... when she didn't have anyone else...”
“You're talking about me like I'm not here,” Luce pointed out. “It's not your fault that Peter ... I missed you so much, but I always knew it wasn't your fault. You didn't want to leave me.” Suddenly Luce understood how much emotion she'd been keeping crushed down, buried inside her chest. It had been the only way she could keep going, doing what she had to do. But now ... Tears had started to curve around her cheeks, and he reached toward her and slowly brushed one away. It only made Luce cry harder, but she still tried to smile. “I like being a mermaid. Really. You don't have to worry.”
“A mermaid.” His tone was disbelieving again. “You can see why ... I might have some trouble buying that this is really happening, yeah? Can't hardly trust my own mind anymore. But even if I'm dreaming this, my God, you're a vision.” He suddenly laughed, with the same warm softness Luce remembered. She was trembling as she leaned in and rested her head on his knee, ignoring the stink of his ragged furs. He gazed down, lightly running one hand over her hair. “Luce,” he said after a while.
Luce fought down a sob of relief. “Yes.”
He seemed confused again. “Luce. For real? My ... How the hell did you get here, though?”
“In a storm. I was trying to go south, but the storm got too intense, so I grabbed on to an ice floe...” She told him the story quietly. But the miracle, Luce thought, was that he was listening, thinking about what she was saying to him. Not about the past at all. “How did you wind up here? Oh, I was so sure you were dead.”
“Oh, that. Storm, too. Eight days alone in a lifeboat after the High and Mighty cracked up. If it hadn't rained so much, thirst would have done me in for certain. But then the lifeboat smashed to bits on the rocks right here, and they ... those voice things were ready to pounce. Like, maybe they'd pulled me here somehow. Oh, baby doll.” His old pet name for her. Luce could hardly believe it, and she squeezed his hand.
“We need to get you out of here, Dad, okay? We can build a raft.” She needed to be honest with him, Luce thought. “It's going to be dangerous. Trying to tow you back to shore. If there's a storm or something I could keep you from drowning, at least for as long as I could swim myself. But you'd get hypothermia...”
He didn't seem interested in this part, though. Luce looked up at him and saw that he was still thinking about something else. “You say you can't leave the water? Luce...”
Luce had been so preoccupied with simply getting him to recognize her that she hadn't thought about how awful the truth might be for him. She kept her voice as gentle as possible. “I can't ever leave the water again.” What if she could, though? But that was probably too much to hope for, and he had to know. “Dad, I'm not human anymore. I can't have the kind of life ... a human girl would.”
“But then ... if you're living in the ocean...” He laughed, in a bleak, shocked way. “How am I supposed to bring you up?”
“You can't.” Luce saw the grief rising in his face, but she plunged ahead anyway. “You need to think about ... doing what you want to do. You can't bring me up. I can't live with you.” Unless... But no, almost certainly no. It would be much too cruel to give him false hopes now. She considered for a moment. “I can't even grow up.”
“What's that supposed to mean?” There was a hint of growling in his voice now.
“I changed on my fourteenth birthday. We—mermaids don't get any older, ever. I'm going to be fourteen forever, and I can't grow up at all.”
“But”—he stared at her again. “Lucette? You're not dead, are you?”
Was he asking if she was something like a vampire? A ghost with a body? “I'm not dead. I have a heartbeat. It's maybe slower than a human's, but it's there. And I still have to breathe, only not as much. And eat.”
“I do those things.” He smiled wryly. “Don't stop me from feeling pretty dead.”
Luce glared at him. “You're not!”
“Might as well be, Lucette. If I couldn't even protect you from—” She opened her mouth to argue with him, but he held up a hand to stop her. “Listen, though. This business of you can't grow up ... That doesn't make any sense.”
He was still in denial, then. How much longer would she have to keep hurting him? “It's just how it is for us.”
He shook his head. “No. I mean, can you still learn new things? Change your mind about stuff?” He hesitated for a second. “Love new people?”
That stopped Luce in her tracks. She'd learned more in her year of being a mermaid than she ever had as a human being. And as for loving...“I can still learn and everything. Definitely.”
“So how can you say you're not growing up, then?” Andrew Korchak asked.
Luce was amazed by the question. Maybe he had a point. She stared silently for several moments while he watched her. Then he grinned, brash and sparkling.
“Even if you're not growing physically. I won't be getting no taller now either, but God knows I've still got some growing up to do!”
Luce laughed and threw her arms ar
ound him. It finally felt like he was really back with her. Really alive.
It was already dark by the time her father climbed inland to bring back a stick off the fire the spirits had kept lit for him. Without their help, he told Luce, he never would have survived for so long; if they were really gone he'd have to be a lot more careful. He built a new fire on the beach so he could stay near her and roasted the mussels Luce collected for him.
Luce even tried one. It was the first time she'd attempted to eat cooked food since her change, and it felt all wrong in her mouth, too hot and too gummy. Luce spat it out, and soon fell into a hazy sleep. Firelight shone red and soft even through her eyelids, and after a while she heard him stretching out to sleep on the stones not far from her. Utterly exhausted as she was, worry kept jarring through Luce's mind, keeping her awake. The journey back to land would be hard. All she wanted was to save her father, but there was a distinct risk that she could kill him in the attempt. She wasn't even sure which direction they should choose, or where to find the nearest land. With the voices watching over him, he'd at least been safe. It was hours before she finally slipped deeper, tumbling through levels of velvety darkness.
Very soon now she would be with Dorian again.
***
Luce woke to the thump of wood being dragged along the beach and looked up to see her father grinning at her. His look was playful, impish, and delighted, and Luce saw that he'd already lugged out of their hiding place a lot of the boards she'd gathered and also heaped up some other materials that had probably come from his own stash up on the hill. Luce couldn't stay worried, not seeing that look on his face.
“I'd kind of been wondering what that wood was doing there.” He beamed at her. “But it was you, wasn't it, doll? Always thinking ahead.”
“It was me,” Luce confirmed. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so peaceful, so overjoyed purely by the sight of the brilliant sky.
She wasn't going to talk to anyone from the FBI, of course. But maybe she could try changing on her own sometime, only without telling either her father or Dorian her plans. If things went wrong it would be better if they never knew what had happened to her. Two out of three hundred weren't good odds, of course, but it wasn't impossible that she would survive. Surviving wouldn't be any more incredible than Dorian forgiving her for her part in killing his family; it wouldn't be any more incredible than finding her father alive. Maybe incredible was just the way life went ... Luce wasn't about to mention the idea to her father, though. It wouldn't be fair to say anything that might make him think they could really be a family again. Not unless she was actually standing up on human legs, alive and strong and staring back at the waves she'd left behind.
