4

The Timahk

Luce slipped into a velvety sleep, but even as she slept she was somehow aware of the row of girls’ heads, all lying like hers on the pebble beach inside the cave. As the tide came in, she let it lift her softly and carry her farther up the beach, and when it went back out her body followed the water. It was effortless. All the girls’ bodies traveled with hers in the same way, so that their haunting faces formed a kind of second tide as they slept. Soft echoes washed around them from the waves booming against the rocks outside; she slept in a sonic cradling, a deep bath of rich, whispered sound. Even in her sleep she was surprised by how safe she felt, too. Only now that Catarina was beside her did Luce realize she’d been living for months with a constant undercurrent of fear.

When she finally woke it was just a tiny bit less dark. A few holes in the roof of the cave let down shafts of light that gleamed off the spiny crystals all over the walls. Luce stretched and felt her strange new body twisting out into the water. It was so powerful, so smooth, and the soft lapping of the water thrilled her. It felt like small gliding kisses. Around her in the cave other mermaids were starting to roll and squirm. Some of them even sat up, but Luce noticed that all of them kept their long tails in the water. The tails had different shimmering colors. Next to her she could see that Catarina’s tail was a fiery bronze color, almost the same color as her waist-length, rippling, gleaming hair, except that the tail was more golden . . .

Luce sat up and ran her fingers through her own spiky hair. She realized at once that it was all wrong for a mermaid.

“I’m going to let my hair grow long,” Luce announced to no one in particular, and Catarina laughed and sat up at her side. Such a wonderful, delicate laugh, even if it was also somehow harsh. Luce hadn’t realized Catarina was awake, but hearing her gave Luce a feeling of being wonderfully protected. The night before she’d been too stunned to really absorb everything, but now it hit her: Catarina had actually risked her own life to pull her to safety. Luce turned to see Catarina’s warm, sardonic smile.

“Your hair won’t grow anymore, Luce. It’ll never grow any longer than it is right now.” Luce looked at Catarina’s moon gray eyes and tried to understand. “That’s the bad part. But your hair won’t ever fall out either, and it will never turn gray. And your nails won’t grow. Not even if you survive for a thousand years . . .”

Luce thought about it. “I don’t think I understand.” Catarina smiled wryly.

“How old were you yesterday? When you changed?” It was strange, but for a second Luce had trouble remembering. Hadn’t there been something special about yesterday? Then it came back to her.

“It was my birthday,” Luce explained. “I turned fourteen.” Catarina lolled drowsily in the water and splashed her tail a little.

“Then I’ve got good news for you,” Catarina said, a little sarcastically, Luce thought. “It’s always going to be your birthday. Forever. It will be your fourteenth birthday for the rest of your life. And if you don’t do any more of the crazy stuff you tried yesterday”—Catarina smiled—“then the rest of your life could be a very long time. Potentially. Most of us don’t make it for that long, though.” She watched patiently as Luce absorbed all this new information.

“You’re saying we don’t get any older? We don’t have to be adults?” Luce thought about Mrs. Cooper, her uncle Peter, who wasn’t forty yet but already seemed so old. She thought of their miserable, broken-down eyes and sick, dragging bodies, how pathetic they all were, how heartless, and how tired they always seemed when they moved . . . Excitement charged through her like an electric current, and her tail gave a huge involuntary flip that sent a wave of salt water splashing over everyone. The other mermaids didn’t seem to mind, though. Instead everyone was grinning at her, enjoying her obvious happiness. “Oh, Catarina, that’s fantastic! That’s the best thing I’ve ever heard!” Catarina tried to look strict, but then she couldn’t help laughing.

“I think so, too,” Catarina admitted. “Adult humans are monstrous things. Just disgusting. Foul. And the things they do . . .” Her voice faded, and Luce watched the lovely face turn stone hard and furious. Luce wasn’t quite sure which bad human actions Catarina was so angry about, but she wanted to agree with her.

“The things they do to what?” Luce asked, and Catarina looked at her with so much bitterness that her shining gray eyes almost seemed blind.

“You ask me that! You ask me! Your revolting uncle kept beating you, but even that wasn’t enough to change you into one of us! You didn’t change until he actually tried . . .” Catarina was choking with outrage, and Luce was too surprised to talk. She hadn’t said a word about what had happened with her uncle; she was positive she hadn’t even mentioned him. When Catarina was finally able to speak again the fury was gone, replaced by a dead, flat coldness that was even more frightening than her anger. “I’m talking about the things humans do to their own daughters, Luce. To the little girls who trust them, and who can’t escape from them, because they don’t have anywhere to go . . .”

“How did you know?” Luce whispered. But even as she said the words, she was already starting to understand. She’d begun to notice something peculiar as she looked around at the other mermaids.

When she looked straight at any of the mermaids all she could see was stunning beauty. Every mermaid was so excruciatingly lovely that her beauty almost seemed like a living thing, like something just a little bit separate from the mermaid herself . . . For the first time it occurred to Luce to wonder if her own face was really that breathtaking now, more striking than any human model’s. And every mermaid had a kind of dark shimmering around her, too, like a pulsating glamour.

But whenever Luce observed another mermaid from the corner of her eye, that dark sparkling haze took on shapes. It wouldn’t be quite true to say that the darkness formed pictures and that the pictures shifted and told stories. If Luce had been asked to describe what she was seeing in words, that would have been the nearest explanation she could have come up with. But in reality it was more dreamlike, more subtle than that; the darkness suggested the story, gathered the story up in itself and revealed it, but in a way that Luce could read as clearly as a book.

Luce tried looking at one of the older mermaids that way: a slightly chubby girl of about fifteen with such pale curly hair that it could almost be mistaken for sea foam sliding over her shoulders, and with pale, exquisite, sea green eyes. As Luce watched she could see how the girl’s mother had thrown her from a speeding car, breaking half her bones as she smashed into the asphalt. Even now, there was something just slightly awkward about the way the girl held her rounded, elegant body. It had a barely perceptible twist around the shoulders, as if not all her bones had healed correctly. The girl watched Luce watching her, but she didn’t seem bothered by it. “Hello, Luce,” the girl said distantly in cool bell tones. “I’m Samantha. You’re an amazing singer, especially for somebody new . . .”

Luce looked down, suddenly embarrassed. If she could see Samantha lying shattered by the side of the freeway, then Samantha could see her uncle’s crude hands sliding down around Luce’s hips.

“You don’t need to feel ashamed, Luce,” Samantha continued airily. “You didn’t do anything wrong. And besides, all of us . . .”

It was true. One girl who seemed no older than seven had been starved almost to death by her foster parents; another had had a pot of boiling water poured over her head; another had lived with a father much worse than Luce’s uncle. Others had simply been abandoned or orphaned or even just unloved, and had turned cold from pure loneliness. And Catarina . . . Luce let the beautiful red-gold head shift into the corner of her vision.

There was a sudden whirl and a smack as something icy, wet, and shining lashed into Luce’s face. The blow wasn’t hard enough to really hurt, but Luce was still shocked. Catarina had actually slapped her, right on the cheek, with her golden tail. Luce cried out and covered her face with both hands.

“I can’t believe you hit me!” Luce screamed, even though she knew she might be overreacting. After all, her uncle always hit her much harder than that. But somehow it felt so much worse to be slapped here, and especially by Catarina. Luce had been so sure she could trust her.

Around them the other mermaids gasped and whispered.

“I’m sorry, Luce,” Catarina said roughly. “I didn’t hurt you much, though, did I?” Luce glared up at her without answering. “I should have explained. You can never look at me that way!” Now Catarina’s voice had a wild, piercing sound that made Luce stop scowling. “I don’t allow anyone to look at me that way! It’s just . . . I can’t stand for anyone to see . . .”

Suddenly Luce felt horribly sorry for her. It was bewildering to feel pity for anyone so strong, so ferocious, and so lovely, but Luce did. If she’d been sure Catarina wouldn’t just get more upset by it, Luce would have hugged her.

“It’s okay, Catarina,” Luce whispered. “I’m really sorry I tried to look. I promise I won’t ever try again to see anything . . . anything you’d rather keep private.”

“You don’t need to be so nice about it, Luce,” Samantha announced in her too-serene voice. “Catarina gets ridiculously sensitive about everything from when she was human. And about some stuff afterward, for that matter. You’ll see. But she doesn’t mind seeing the things that happened to us!” Luce expected Catarina to get angry at this, but instead she just turned her face away from them and rippled her long body, and then disappeared under the water without a splash. A dozen other mermaids flicked themselves and dove after her; they were so fast that it was almost impossible to see them leave.

Samantha shook her head disapprovingly. “Catarina’s a tremendous singer,” Samantha explained. “Definitely our best. She has every right to be queen here. But she still feels degraded by what happened to her. And no mermaid should ever allow herself to feel that way. That’s almost like saying we deserved what the humans did to us.”

Luce thought she was starting to understand; she felt an ache of tenderness for Catarina as the truth sank in. “That has something to do with why we all changed? Into mermaids?” It felt awkward to say the word out loud, but somehow Luce was sure that she’d hit on the truth. “We changed because of what human beings did to us.”

“Yes,” Samantha agreed. “That’s what we are. They made us.” Suddenly she gave an awful laugh, sharp and high. “And then the humans wonder why their ships sink! They wonder why so many of them end up drowned! And they never even suspect we’re here!” Samantha wasn’t calm at all now. She sounded like a vicious baby. “But there wouldn’t be any mermaids anywhere in the world if the humans weren’t all so evil!”

Luce couldn’t help thinking that there must be something wrong with what Samantha was saying, but she wasn’t quite sure where the problem was. She felt a little dizzy. There was a soft waving in her head that matched the rhythm of the lapping water. But one thing seemed clear from what the other mermaid was telling her: the ship that had crashed into the cliffs yesterday must not have been the first one ever to sink in the waters near this cave. She gazed around at the dim space with its glowing crystals like half-obliterated stars, listening to its constant resonance as the waves roared outside. Like living in the hollow of a violin, sustained in one endless note . . .

“You mean you sink ships a lot?” Luce asked. Her own voice sounded wrong for a mermaid, broken. The others always seemed so clear and confident, even when they were angry or sad.

“You mean ‘we,’” Samantha corrected. She was very cool and stiff now. “You’re with us now, Luce. We sink ships when we can get away with it, which isn’t anywhere near every time we see one. That ship you sang to yesterday—we wouldn’t have ever tackled a ship that big if you didn’t force us to. There just aren’t that many of us, and only a few can really sing.” Samantha shook her head. “That was impressive work, Luce. I bet Catarina would have been a lot angrier than she was if you weren’t so talented.”

Luce didn’t like being told she was responsible for what had happened to the ship, but she couldn’t help feeling flattered. It felt odd and exhilarating to hear the admiration in Samantha’s voice. Even so, she didn’t think she could let that pass.

“Catarina kept saying that, too—that I sank that ship,” Luce objected. “But I didn’t do anything. I mean, I heard the singing, and then the ship came straight at me, and it was really just an accident that there was a cliff right there.” Luce was trying to remember exactly how everything had happened; it had all been so overwhelming, and her memories seemed to get mixed up. “I didn’t even know it was me doing the singing. It was just like something I felt, like it came out of nowhere . . .” As she said it Luce wasn’t completely sure whether or not she was telling the truth. How could she sing like that and not realize she was doing it?

Samantha looked at her skeptically for a long time, and Luce began to cringe a little. Mermaids flashed away under the water, one by one. Soon they were all alone in the cave.

“Maybe,” Samantha finally conceded, but she still seemed doubtful. “Maybe you just started spontaneously singing the perfect song of persuasion, and everyone on that ship went mad for it, and you didn’t know what you were doing at all. But that ship definitely went down because of you, Luce. And we definitely had to clean up your mess. You still don’t realize what a big job that was, do you?”

Luce looked at her in bewilderment. She realized that Catarina had said something about this, too: that it had been stupid to go after such a big ship. She’d said Luce almost broke something, the teemeeka or the teemaya . . .

“What’s wrong with it being a big ship?” Luce finally asked. “And what do you mean, ‘clean up my mess’?” Samantha just stared at her, first with disgust, then with exasperation. Then finally she burst out laughing.

“I’m forgetting how much you have to learn,” Samantha admitted. “You’re still metaskaza.” Whatever the word meant, Samantha made it sound more than a little insulting. “Let’s go find everyone. I bet Catarina’s done sulking by now.” There was a flick and a flash, and Luce was alone in the cave.

The idea of diving into that dark, surging water frightened her, even though she knew she’d done it just yesterday. But yesterday, after all, she hadn’t done it on purpose!

If she let herself hesitate much longer, though, she’d never find Samantha and the others . . . Luce gathered her courage and swung her head around toward the sea. Her tail seemed to move by itself in a single whipping motion, and suddenly Luce found herself slicing through black water.

She had such force, such speed. She’d almost forgotten how magnificent it felt, this rushing power, the clear water parting around her shoulders, the sting of salt on her tongue. She could see a slightly brighter blot in the darkness, and she knew that must be the underwater tunnel Catarina had dragged her through the night before. With a sudden burst of delight Luce let her tail spin out, driving her faster. She hurled through the tunnel so quickly that she almost knocked her head against a bend in the rock.

Then she was in the open sea. It was vast, silvery, and treacherous, full of drifting life. Ice floes drifted and bucked in the distance. She started at a moaning, coughing sound that shivered through the water around her before she realized it was only the barking of seals. Luce was afraid to go any farther alone—what if she couldn’t find her way back to the cave? A giant reddish octopus pulsed by, and farther off there was the sinuous dipping of a small group of porpoises. She pushed her way to the surface and looked around at a lonely expanse of peaked water and craggy rock walls, an overcast sky, feeling her body rise and fall rhythmically with the swells. A chill wind whistled in her ears, and she began to feel something of the sickening, icy abandonment she’d felt that night on the cliffs. How could they all have gone off and left her on her own when it was all so new to her and she had no idea which way to go?

The whistling became brighter and sweeter, too musical for wind, and Luce realized it wasn’t whistling at all. The mermaids were calling to her from a place just around a zigzag in the coastline. It was something else they could do with their voices, Luce suddenly understood: disguise them as wind, just in case any humans were close enough to hear. As she listened, Luce even recognized the voice: it was Catarina. Carefully, experimentally, Luce tried to make the same sound in reply.

It came out in a long, beautiful gust. And it was much more powerful than she’d intended: a luxurious rush of sweet, high sounds. Luce was so delighted she laughed out loud and dove again.

She understood how it worked now. She still needed to breathe, yes. But a single breath was enough to last her for a very long time.

She found them in a skinny, pointed beach squeezed between high rock walls: a beach no human could ever get to without a boat, where protruding crags would block the view of anyone who chanced to pass by. The mermaids were cracking mussels on the rocks and sucking them down raw. Luce’s stomach roiled with nausea at the sight, but then the nausea turned into hunger.

“Hey, Luce! I was just about to go back and look for you when we heard you answering.” It was Catarina, who looked more beautiful than ever in the pearly daylight. She was perched out in the middle of the inlet on a wide underwater crag shaped almost like a sofa, lolling back against an outcropping of rock, and Luce joined her there. Luce was surprised by how cheerful Catarina sounded now, and also by the intense joy she felt at the sight of Catarina’s welcoming face. She almost didn’t care what the other mermaids thought of her, Luce realized, just as long as Catarina liked her. “You really have a wonderful voice,” Catarina added, and this time Luce heard something a bit resentful in her tone. And wasn’t there something strange in the way Catarina looked at her, something hungry and suspicious at the same time? Luce’s sudden worry must have shown too clearly, because Catarina laughed, and when she spoke again all the resentment was gone. “Do you want help getting breakfast? I bet you’re not used to cracking your own this way.” She took a mussel from her stash on the rocks and bashed it open. Luce accepted it uncertainly. This was a new start for her, after all, and Luce was very conscious that she couldn’t afford to make a bad impression. It hadn’t lasted long, but even so, her experience that morning of finding herself abandoned to gray, rocking emptiness still lingered, its cold pressure filling her chest. She made an effort and gulped the mussel down.

It wasn’t bad at all, actually. It was chilly and smooth and salty in a way that felt right to her. She ate more, and then she swam to the beach and tried some rubbery leaves of brown seaweed. The other mermaids were very entertained by the diffident way she bit into the first leaf and then by the changing expressions on her face as she chewed. She was introduced to more of them: Kayley, who was eleven, with an Inuit tint to her skin and beautiful tipped-up eyes and who had sleek black hair; Miriam, who was the same age as Luce, but had been a mermaid already for more than seventy years and had lived with other tribes along the coast. But as they ate and talked there was something that was starting to make Luce uncomfortable.

The mermaids on the beach ranged in age from five or six up to about sixteen, and they chattered and giggled like any young girls. But at the farthest edges of the group and out on the water, there were a few smaller, softer heads that bobbed and stared or suddenly popped out of nowhere like the heads of seals and then vanished again. Some of them didn’t even have hair. They watched Luce in a sad, yearning way that made her feel a little queasy.

Samantha saw her looking. “Larvae,” Samantha explained, although that didn’t help Luce understand much. “Don’t pay any attention to them, okay? It only encourages them to hang around more.” Then Samantha failed to take her own advice, and shot a look of distaste at one little head that had floated up too close. “And besides, they attract sharks.”

Luce didn’t know what to think of that. She was just starting to understand how much she didn’t know, how many questions she would need to ask before everything made sense to her. Larvae?

“Are they mermaids?” Luce finally asked, and Samantha grimaced. Kayley nudged Samantha and shook her head to say that it was time to change the subject.

“She does need to know these things,” Samantha snapped at Kayley. “We have to talk about it sometime.” Then she turned back to Luce. “Technically, yes. Technically they’re mermaids.” Her bell voice was colder, more emotionless than ever. “That is, the timahk protects them.” That word again, Luce thought. “You can’t ever hurt one, no matter how much you want to, and you’re not allowed to drive them away. But they’re not, not proper mermaids. They can’t even talk, and they just make these awful squeaks when they try to sing . . .” Luce couldn’t help thinking of Gum. She realized she missed him, and she glanced around at the bobbing larvae curiously.

Babies, Luce suddenly realized. Toddlers. What happened when someone hit a baby girl or left one in a dumpster? They turned into these mermaids that weren’t quite mermaids, and they could never get any older, never learn how to talk or act right . . . Luce shuddered. She was starting to understand why the other mermaids were so repulsed by the larvae, but at the same time she felt sorry for them. They had such sad, mushy, helpless little faces, and they stared at her with such longing in their wet, wide eyes.

“Couldn’t we try to take care of them?” Luce hazarded, and saw the disgusted looks the other mermaids flashed at each other.

“That’s a really terrible idea, Luce,” Kayley snapped. “We told you. They attract sharks. It would be a lot better if we could drive them away, but the timahk . . .” She shook her head angrily. “Anyway, there’s no point getting attached to one of them. They can’t swim that fast and the orcas just gobble them up all the time.” She made another grossed-out face. “But there are always more of them. They just keep coming.”

Luce realized that it wouldn’t help to talk about it more now. She was just making the other mermaids angry. Maybe later she could try to talk to Catarina.

Catarina was right there suddenly, leaning on one elbow. She’d swum over from her rock so smoothly that Luce hadn’t even noticed her arrive. Now that she was here, though, her presence was so elegant and so forceful that Luce had to make an effort not to stare.

“It just occurred to me,” Catarina announced. “We still haven’t explained the most important thing to Luce. She doesn’t know what the timahk is.”

The other mermaids stopped chattering at once. Their faces turned severe and solemn.

“What is it?” Luce asked. “Everyone keeps saying that word.” Catarina reached out and lightly, tenderly, touched Luce on her left cheek, right where the golden tail had smacked her earlier that morning.

“I almost broke the timahk myself today,” Catarina admitted softly. “If I’d slapped you even a little bit harder . . .” There was a low murmuring among the other mermaids. “If I’d actually hurt you, Luce, I would have deserved expulsion from my own tribe. That’s the penalty for breaking the timahk. And a mermaid who’s thrown out on her own like that . . .” Catarina didn’t have to finish the sentence. The grim looks on the faces all around her were enough to let Luce understand the truth: the ocean was full of dangers, and a mermaid swimming off on her own probably wouldn’t survive for very long.

Luce couldn’t bear the idea of that happening to Catarina. With a small start Luce realized that she already loved Catarina, and not only because she was so grateful for the risk the older mermaid had taken in rescuing her. If only she had had a sister like her, so powerful and clear and fair, maybe being human wouldn’t have been so hard at all.

“It’s our code,” Catarina said. “The timahk is the code of honor for all the mermaids in the world. Breaking the timahk is the worst thing that can happen to a tribe. It would be better if we were all killed than if we lost our honor that way. That’s why a mermaid who violates the timahk has to be expelled. It’s to preserve the honor of her tribe.”

Luce began to grasp how serious this was. She straightened herself, and her voice turned so cold and strong that it surprised her.

“What do I have to do?” Luce asked. “To obey the timahk?”

There weren’t very many rules, really. The most important rule was that no mermaid could ever hurt another. No mermaid could ever be banished from a tribe either—unless she broke the timahk first. Anyone who came would be automatically welcomed into the group. And if you saw another mermaid in trouble, you had to do your best to help her, unless it was a situation where interfering could get you killed, too. Luce agreed in her heart with these rules. It all sounded much better to her than the way people on land treated one another.

And then there were the rules concerning humans. These were harder for Luce to accept.

“No contact with humans,” Catarina said firmly. Luce was upset by that; she’d already been thinking about swimming back to Pittley to visit Gum, though she wasn’t sure which direction would lead her there. She had the vague impression that she’d swum a long, long way after she fell off the cliffs the night before. But if she found her way back and called to him, maybe he’d scramble down to the beach.

“That just means we can’t be friends with them?” Luce asked. She had to suppress an impulse to ask why she couldn’t have human friends. She understood that questioning the timahk wouldn’t go over very well. Catarina was already scowling at her.

“Friendship with one of those creatures is unthinkable,” Catarina snarled. “Friendship! No contact means much more than that. It means you never speak to a human, and you never touch one. No interaction at all. You can sing to them if you feel like it,” and here Catarina’s smile turned cruel. “But then they have to die. That’s the last rule. That’s the rule you almost broke last night, Luce.” Catarina’s voice was bitter now and merciless, so that Luce felt a little scared. “No human who hears a mermaid sing can ever be permitted to remain alive. Ever. And that means you don’t sing to a boat unless you can guarantee that there won’t be a single survivor.”

Luce was so shocked that she couldn’t restrain herself now. “Why? Why shouldn’t they get to live? At least the good ones?” Her voice had turned pleading, and Catarina’s tail flicked out of the water; it waved urgently for a moment, drops flying from its golden scales. She was obviously fighting a desire to smack Luce for real this time.

“Good humans? Luce, haven’t you learned anything?”

Luce couldn’t answer. She was thinking of her father’s warm voice, his sidelong, playful smile. But if she tried to explain about him to Catarina, she’d have to tell the truth: that her father was a crook and a liar. Almost anyone would judge him to be an extremely bad man. Luce was perfectly aware of that. He was a thief, a scoundrel, a cheat, and he was also the best and kindest person Luce had ever known . . .

So maybe that proved Catarina’s point in a way.

“You saw how they acted last night, anyway,” Catarina added in the same savage tone, though at least she’d put her tail back in the water. “As long as you do a good job singing, they want to drown. It makes them happy. Happier than they’ve ever been in their rotten human lives! They’re so disgusted with themselves that they’d rather be dead. We just help them, really.”

There was silence for a moment. Luce was thinking about the face of the drowning old man when Catarina added something, a little reluctantly. “But it’s hard for any mermaid to keep too many humans enchanted at once. Even the best singers can only handle so many at a time . . .” Then Catarina shot a vindictive glance at Samantha. “Some of our singers can barely even deal with one human.”

Samantha’s face buckled with humiliation, and Luce knew this was revenge for what Samantha had said back in the cave: that Catarina was too sensitive about her past.

Luce tried not to let the personal drama distract her. She needed to understand. “And that’s why you won’t try to sink a ship that’s too big? You wouldn’t be able to . . . to make completely sure . . .”

“Exactly.” Catarina nodded. “We can’t risk losing control of the situation. Just think of what they’d do if they ever found out we’re here! They’d poison the whole ocean if they had to just to kill all of us.” A snarl came back in her voice. “They already do poison it. Such filthy things they throw in here!”

Luce was still brooding over all of this. She didn’t like the idea of killing anyone. But on the other hand, everything Catarina had said was obviously true. Humans did do terrible, unimaginable things, to one another and to the whole world. They’d done something awful to every girl here.

“But what do we do about kids?” Luce asked at last. “If there’s a kid on one of the ships . . .”

Catarina flashed a callous smile, and stroked Luce’s hair with her long, cool fingers.

“Oh, but they’re just going to grow up, aren’t they?” she said.