4

Red Tide

The brilliant sun, the stunned human faces, the camera’s black glass eye were all fixed on her. Luce’s first impression was that everything in the world was staring straight at her; she cringed, anxiety prickling through her aching body. Swimming hurt so much that she’d surfaced to get a grip on the pain before pushing herself onward again. Then she’d stopped where she was for a second, struck motionless by a sudden insane hope. If she talked to these people on the dock, then could they somehow get a message to her father? At least let him know she was alive?

She didn’t even know where her father was now, though. And starting a conversation with strange humans would only lead to problems. The sunlight on the water was so bright that Luce’s outstretched arms appeared to be sleeved in fire. She shook her body and dived, forcing herself to move faster in spite of the pain.

They’d definitely been pointing that camera at her. Maybe she should feel guilty about that; it was an outrageous violation of the secrecy the mermaids guarded so carefully. But if the government already wanted them dead, well, maybe it was time everyone knew. The humans should know that mermaids were their own daughters, the girls they’d driven away.

Maybe that was what she should have done when she’d seen them filming her.

Explain.

Tell them the whole story.

Luce kept wearily on. After a while she remembered to sing again, disguising her voice so that it sounded almost like wind. Calling. She couldn’t go quickly at all, and she needed to rise to the surface for air much more frequently than she normally would. The day passed without her covering nearly as much distance as she thought she should have. She found a secluded beach, slept a few hours and ate a little. She didn’t want to risk passing out while she was swimming again. Then she forged on just as dawn was breaking.

Luce felt different than she had for the past few weeks, suddenly awake and aware, her pain sharply defined. The world stared back into her eyes. The coast was wilder again, and Luce began to search for caves, singing her alarm-call all the while. It looked like promising territory.

She was skimming twenty yards below the surface through a green zone thick with seaweed when she saw tiny diving shapes, still very far ahead of her, their arms stretching out as they swam. Luce wanted to hurry to greet them, but the bruises on her stomach throbbed with every flick of her tail. If only she were well, she could have been with them in moments instead of drifting sluggishly forward like this. It looked like they were ducking into a cave, one after the other. Their bodies showed jet black against the gold-green dawn shining down behind them.

A cloud passed, and the water dimmed. The figures only looked blacker than before. Luce paused where she was and watched as a mermaid eddied in place for a moment. Her tail looked too short, Luce thought. Then as Luce watched the tail spread wide, split in two, bent in a way that was much too angular, and kicked what she’d thought were fins . . . The diver vanished. Luce tried to stay calm. Most human divers were harmless, weren’t they?

At that moment mermaid song began to blast and warble through the water, strongly audible even from behind rocky walls. It didn’t begin slowly and seductively. Instead it was harsh, brittle, and panicked, coming from several throats at once. Luce felt the shock of that terrified song racing through her and lashed her tail, trying to reach them. There must be a dozen soldiers in their cave, maybe more, all armed with those guns that shot silver blades. She’d have to do her best to fight, any way she could; she’d send the water crashing against them, batter them unconscious before they could kill . . .

But before she’d gone a dozen yards the songs had turned into screams. Half a dozen screams, more, loud at first then fading toward silence like a loud chord struck on a piano and left to decay.

Then there were only two voices Luce could pick out. Then one. And she was still so far away, still fighting the seizing muscles of her tail, still straining as her heart smacked at her ribs.

That final screaming voice was harsh and furious, and it wouldn’t stop. Luce was getting closer now, curtains of seaweed brushing around her torso. They must have their weapons trained on that screaming mermaid, Luce thought in confusion. Why hadn’t they already shot her? Were they torturing her?

Luce hovered at the mouth of the cave, sick with dread. The rock bent and she couldn’t see what was going on; she huddled back into the seaweed. She was so outnumbered. If she was going to rescue the girl in there she needed to have some kind of plan; anything would be better than a crazed dash into the center of a massacre!

“You better shut up now! Goddamned tail. You think you can just swish your fins at us and we’ll melt? That crap doesn’t work on us. We know too much about you. We know what you do.” It was a man’s voice, buzzing and distorted by some kind of electrical mouthpiece.

The mermaid screamed again, and Luce heard a smack.

“Shut up and answer our questions like a good tail, and maybe we’ll let you swim out of here, okay? But we can’t hear you. You’ll have to write with this. Know how to write?”

The scream had faded to a rhythmic wheeze. At least, Luce thought, they probably weren’t hurting her now, but they’d be ready to shoot her at any second. If Luce rushed in to rescue her she’d probably only guarantee the girl’s death. If she did nothing, though . . .

“I . . . Look, I can write, okay? Just stop . . .”

Luce could taste the seeping blood. She could see red corruption staining the water in long slow curls.

“Stupid tail. Remember we can’t hear you. Look. We’re looking for one of you in particular. This one. You know this one? She was heading this way.”

What was the man talking about? One in particular? Why? Luce froze, her bewilderment darkening into dread.

“A . . . What? A photo? But that looks like . . .” the mermaid began. Her voice was piercing, startled.

Another smack. “What did I tell you about writing?”

There were a few seconds of near silence: just a faint moaning and the surge of the sea around Luce’s ears.

“You haven’t seen her? You sure about that? She’s called Luce. The one we’re looking for. You know Luce?”

There was another silence, this time broken by a few rough sobs. Luce had the feeling the girl had noticed the face of a murdered friend among the dead.

Had the mermaids in that cave died because these men were hunting for her? But why would they care about her at all? She’d thrown their boat into a cliff when those soldiers fired at her back in Alaska, of course, but . . .

How did they know her name?

“What do you mean, you’ve only heard about her? She got away from us up north, killed a few of our guys, and now she’s causing us more trouble. We’re not too happy about that, all right? If you help us find her . . .”

Another silence. Luce’s dread thickened, knotted like slimy ropes. Was there any chance they’d let the girl go? It didn’t seem likely. Luce started to slide into the bloody water oozing from the cave. She turned a corner and saw a crowd of black legs on a stone floor. Men stood chest-deep in crimson water.

She had one advantage, Luce realized. Only one. The same protective helmets that blocked out the mermaids’ songs . . .

“Is that a fact? You won’t help us catch Queen Luce? Well, then . . .”

Luce’s song was already rising, calling the water. The soldiers couldn’t hear it, of course. They didn’t notice anything as the first note soared up around them. But a few seconds later they could feel their legs suddenly yanked out from under them by currents like twisting snakes. Luce’s song split into several violent notes all curling in different directions, and soldiers in slick rubber suits shot through the black air, waving in space, and bashed into the walls. Coils of blood-bright water chased them, gripped them, threw them again. Their bodies collided with the corpses of the mermaids they’d killed, already back in human form. Most of the soldiers had dropped their guns, but a few still held on. Luce couldn’t stop singing then, not while they might still shoot, and in desperation she hurled her voice up the scale.

Even as they swung, shouting through the cave’s darkness, one of them had seen her. His gun was up, and he was trying to aim. Luce focused on the water gripping him until he was buffeted face-first again the ceiling. The heavy gun finally flung free, whipping into a girl’s severed arm before it tumbled down into the water.

The living mermaid had to be here somewhere, spinning through this chaos of crimson water and electric screams and black thrashing limbs . . .

Luce didn’t mean to kill the soldiers, just stun or hurt them enough that she and the other mermaid—there she was, clinging to a rock in the corner, blood-slicked, flurried by waves—could get away. But she couldn’t keep her song going at such a frenzied pitch forever, and at least one man still clutched his gun like a baby against his chest, both arms wrapping it close.

Luce’s voice flung higher, sharpening into a scream, and dashed him headlong into the jagged wall.

There was a loud crack. He fell limp into the water, and Luce could see that the angle of his head was very wrong.

She hadn’t wanted to kill him. Her voice died away in anguish, and bodies plummeted into crimson foam. Luce fought through the pounding rain of half-conscious men. There wasn’t much time before they recovered, at least enough to dive for their guns again.

The mermaid in the corner was wheezing out a kind of low, rhythmic shriek. When Luce grabbed her wrist under the water she only clung harder to her rock, then swung at Luce with her tail. Luce dodged, splashing up through the surface, and crashed right into a black-suited diver, who made a bleary grab for her throat. He just missed her, then lost his balance and flailed in the crimson froth.

“Are you insane? We’ve got to get out of here!” Luce shouted at the blood-drenched mermaid. Every moment of delay could be one too many.

The girl stared around as if she couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from, still wheezing shrilly. She was so spattered with gore that the faint glow of her skin came through like moonlight through ruby glass. Luce grasped her by the arm and pulled, and this time the shocked mermaid folded passively toward the water, letting Luce drag her away.

They were flowing toward the entrance, weaving through crashing legs, through divers who swept below them as they reached for their scattered guns. The strange mermaid suddenly lunged to one side, tugging Luce with her, and a shining silver blade flashed past just where Luce’s head had been. It clanged into the stones, the water trembling with the sound. Luce tried to spiral her tail to drive herself at full speed, but the water was so crowded with bodies both living and dead that her movements were blocked by jumbled flesh.

Then it was the other mermaid who was picking up speed, towing Luce out through the fouled water and into crashing gray. Whorls of golden dawn spread out above them, leaping with the heave of the sea. Luce’s injured stomach clenched with pain as the other mermaid jerked on her arm, urging her to move, and from the corner of her eye Luce saw a few of the sleek black figures already after them. She was holding the other mermaid back, Luce realized, going much too slowly. Her whole body spasmed from pain as she forced herself into a burst of speed.

Beside her the other mermaid bucked and screamed. Luce glanced over at her in terror, but she was still alive, gritting her teeth as the blood sheeted off her light brown skin.

Away. They were getting away, the human divers drifting somewhere behind them. They were heading deeper, dipping around a bend. Far above Luce saw the black oblong shape of a boat silhouetted against rippling greenish light. The other mermaid was whirling forward in her panic, and Luce couldn’t stand the pain of going at this speed anymore. She tried to pull her arm free. The stranger was safe now, or as safe as she could be. It would definitely be better for her to go on without Luce.

Since Luce was the one they were after, in particular . . .

Since they’d just seen her, and they’d know she couldn’t be all that far away, and she’d probably killed at least one of them moments before . . .

“Come on!” the girl beside her barked, her voice distorted from the water. “I know a . . . It’s close . . .”

A hiding place? Luce made herself keep going, and in a few moments they were at a narrow crevice in the rock. Luce reared back. They were far below the surface, and she’d exhausted too much of her air by dashing so quickly. The crevice looked dark and ominous, and Luce felt sure they’d only get stuck in there and drown.

“Come on, already!” The other mermaid darted into the ragged shadow, and after a moment Luce followed her.

It went upward, and at first it was so narrow that her tail thrashed against the rock. Luce had no trouble seeing in the darkness, but she knew it was utterly lightless. Now and then the fins of the mermaid ahead swished against her face.

Then the crack began to widen and a subtle wash of light refracted through the water. They kept squirming upward, and Luce heard the stranger inhale a few seconds before her own head broke free of the surface. They were in a narrow span of water, smooth as black glass. The crevice kept twisting upward before it ended in a shard of daylight at least a hundred feet above them.

There was no real beach in here, but there were outcroppings and natural shelves where they could at least rest for a while. Luce saw that the other girl’s left fin was sliced by a three-inch gash at its bottom edge, both sections writhing as if they were trying to hold each other. That was why she’d screamed, then. Her face was still taut with pain, her forehead furrowed. She was close to Luce’s age, and she looked at her roughly.

“Are you who I think you are?” the girl asked.

Maybe her tribe had met Nausicaa too. Nausicaa must have talked about Luce all the way down the coast, bizarre as that seemed.

“I’m Luce.”

“Yeah. That wild business you pulled with the water. I should have guessed right away, but I was too . . .” She paused, breathing hard, obviously struggling for self-control. “Luce. My God. Did you hear what they said?”

Luce nodded. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I thought they were just murdering any mermaids they could find, but if they were looking for me, and that’s why . . . your tribe . . .”

“What did you do to get those creeps in that huge of an uproar? They said something . . .”

“They didn’t say the whole thing,” Luce snarled. “They massacred my old tribe. Everyone. Then they were shooting at me. They made it sound like I just attacked them out of nowhere!”

“You did that water thing to them?”

“I smashed their boat into a cliff. Back in Alaska. I was just trying to stop them, really, but I guess a few of them died? But I don’t know . . . I can’t understand how they knew who I was, or my name, or . . .”

Actually, there was one obvious explanation for how they might have gotten their information. Luce just didn’t want to believe it. There was someone who could easily give the authorities the name of the mermaid who knew how to control the water with her singing. She sent a giant wave at your boat? Oh yeah, that was definitely Luce. She’s the only one who could have done that! More than that, he could show them very good drawings of her.

He could also confirm her identity after some people just happened to tape a mermaid. She was heading this way, the soldier had said.

The girl’s eyes were wide, and she was biting her lip. Luce wavered, all the blood rushing away from her head and leaving a stripped, nightmarish shore behind it. Could Dorian really have done that to her?

“I’d heard about you and the whole water-cannon act. You’re getting to be kind of legendary, for sure. But you’ve really got enough power to pick up a boat and crack it in half?” The girl laughed, too wildly, then choked on her own laughter. Her face kept bunching strangely.

Luce gaped at her. She was overwhelmed by the hideous things she’d just realized. “It . . . works better when I’m really upset. I couldn’t always . . .”

“Oh, I think you’re going to get sufficient opportunities to be upset!” Suddenly the girl’s poise crumbled completely, and her face deformed like smashed clay. Sobs racked her, and she doubled and gasped. Luce wasn’t sure what to do at first—the girl seemed too tough and confident to want to be held.

Then Luce didn’t care anymore. She swam over and hugged the weeping mermaid, resting her head on the same rock. Luce didn’t know why she couldn’t cry now. She definitely had enough reasons to. She’d never felt so cold, so utterly poisoned inside. She’d thought that abandoning her would be enough of a betrayal for Dorian, but apparently he’d only be satisfied with getting her murdered. That was what humans were like; that was what happened if you trusted one of them.

Why hadn’t she wanted to kill them, again?

The strange girl’s sobs grew only more violent.

Luce listened to her and thought with icy loathing of the boy she’d once loved so completely. He was responsible for this.

 

It was at least an hour before the strange girl cried herself out. “Queen Luce? We’re going to have to get moving.”

“I know,” Luce said. Another tribe had died because she’d come too late. And after what had happened that morning the divers would be more determined than ever to catch her, and they’d go on killing all the mermaids along her route.

Far from saving them, she’d only ensured their deaths.

“Where are you going, anyway?”

“South. I was trying to warn everyone, but now . . .” Luce shook herself. “I never asked your name?”

“Oh, right. Where are your manners? There we were escaping from a complete bloodbath, and you didn’t give me a proper chance to introduce myself!” There was still an edge of hysteria in the stranger’s voice that made her annoyance sound more serious than she’d probably meant it to. “J’aime.”

“Gem?”

“No. Like Jem. Je-aime. It’s French for ‘I love’.”

Luce looked up at J’aime. Even without peering into the cloud of dark shimmer around the other mermaid’s head Luce was suddenly sure that whoever had hurt J’aime enough to change her into a mermaid hadn’t been her parents. Not if they’d given her a name like that.

Just like it hadn’t been Luce’s parents who’d driven her to the point of losing her humanity. Her father still loved her, Luce knew.

That, Luce thought bleakly, was why she didn’t want to kill humans. Why she still didn’t want to. She didn’t even want to kill those black-suited divers who were hunting her and all the other mermaids they could find.

If she did they might leave daughters behind. Girls who’d only wind up like her and . . .

“Hi, J’aime.”

“You said they killed your tribe, too?” J’aime’s voice was suddenly much softer.

“Yes. My ex-tribe, really. But the divers just slaughtered everybody, and ships weren’t even going anywhere nearby anymore, so it wasn’t like, like really self-defense or . . .”

“Did you see it happen?” J’aime’s eyes were wide in the dimness. Luce knew she was seeing unspeakable things all over again; that, no matter how long she lived, she’d never completely stop seeing them.

“I . . . just found the bodies.” Horrible as that was, Luce understood that it was much worse for J’aime.

“And it’s because of those helmets? Why we can’t just drown them?”

“Yes.”

“You can still kill them, though!” J’aime gave a hacking laugh that showed how close she was to sobbing again, but her voice turned crisp and assertive as she went on talking. “Thank God one of us can! But damn, you’re going to be one busy girl, Luce. You’ll have to kill them for everybody! Smash the hell out of their boats! I’m gonna have to come with you just so I can watch those creeps get what they deserve. After they cut Maya’s throat like that . . .”

“J’aime . . .” Luce didn’t know how to break the news to her, but she realized she was sick of hiding her real feelings. The time for that was long past. “I’m sorry. I won’t kill anyone. Not unless they’re about to kill one of us and there’s really no other way. I’m not about to murder people for revenge, though.”

J’aime stared at her. “You have to! You won’t after . . .”

Luce tried to think of a way to explain it. “It doesn’t help, J’aime. Mermaids have been killing humans for thousands of years, and it hasn’t helped anything. It’s just making them go insane wanting to murder us! And besides . . . weren’t there any humans you loved?”

J’aime was glowering at her. “Sure. My parents. My grandma. They’re dead. So whether I loved them is no longer particularly relevant, okay?”

“But anyone we kill could be the only person some other girl loves, and then she could wind up . . . in foster care, or with someone a lot worse.”

“Those helmet guys are out to kill all of us! They blasted those spear things at everyone; they spilled their guts—”

“I know that.” Luce’s head was starting to wobble again, and her face felt hot and heavy. J’aime’s fury made her want to weep and scream and hide all at once.

“You will kill them! I don’t care what kind of queen . . . If I have to make you do it myself, every last one of them is going to die for that!”

“No.” Luce braced herself as J’aime glared at her. “J’aime, look, however many of those divers we kill, they’ll just send more of them after us, okay? If I thought I could save the mermaids that way I’d do it, but I know it won’t work!”

“Yeah?” J’aime spat it out. Her raw hatred hurt Luce more than anything that had happened that morning. “What will? ’Cause if you won’t get out there and dispose of the problem, that’s going to be a lot of dead mermaids who you did nothing for!”

“We’ll . . . have to think of something different. Some other way.” Luce knew how pathetic that must sound and stared up at the fragment of blue daylight far above.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.” Admitting that made Luce wonder if it would be better for everyone if she was dead. If the soldiers wanted her in particular, maybe they’d stop once she was killed?

J’aime shook her head. “I heard you were some kind of great queen. But you’re just sad. All that power—like who’s ever even seen that?—and you won’t do one thing to help.” She turned to go, her torn violet tail snaking awkwardly in the deep water.

“Be really careful, J’aime, please? Keep hidden.”

“Great advice. You stay away from the rest of the tribes out here, okay? If you’re not willing to do anything positive, you’ll just get them killed.”

“But . . . someone has to warn them, J’aime!”

“I’m on it.”

J’aime was gone.

She had a point. And even with her sliced tail she could go faster than Luce now, anyway.

But if Luce was really that useless, so marked and hunted that she’d do more harm than good even by spreading the alarm, then . . .

Then what reason was there for her to live at all?

Someday, dearest Luce, I will find you again . . . The voice in her head was Nausicaa’s, and Luce tensed for a moment before the bright blue patch in the dimness above melted in her tears.

“Nausicaa, please,” Luce said out loud. “Please find me soon.”

Why do you think I left you, Luce? Nausicaa retorted. She hadn’t said those words in real life, though. Why could Luce hear them so clearly? I can only find you once you learn for yourself where you are.