26
Luce was secretly dismayed to see how quickly Nausicaa mastered singing to the water. Nausicaa was an amazing singer, but Luce had hoped that she might have trouble picking up this particular skill. Within three days Nausicaa was lifting waves big enough to curl over her head, and she’d already started training Opal, the blond metaskaza who’d traveled with her from Hawaii. Luce tried to focus on her work, on helping to train new arrivals and keeping up morale, but she couldn’t completely fight off a sneaking depression as she realized how soon Nausicaa would be leaving her.
On the fourth day after Nausicaa’s arrival, Luce woke in the late afternoon to find Imani next to her, looking concerned. “Hey, Luce? I’m afraid you’re going to be upset about this.”
Luce jerked upright and gazed helplessly through the azure-streaked shadows, searching for Nausicaa’s dark silhouette. “Is she gone?”
“She said to tell you goodbye. She said it would be easier for both of you if she left while you were asleep, but she’ll come back as soon as she can.”
“Why didn’t you wake me? What if something happens to her out there, and I never . . . Imani!”
Imani was stroking Luce’s arm, trying to calm her down, but it wasn’t working. “I . . . thought she might be right. And I thought it might be better for everybody else here too. I understand that Nausicaa’s incredibly important to you, more than any of us, but that hurts . . . some of the girls. And if they saw you get too upset about her leaving—I don’t know—it might be pretty bad.”
Luce groaned, thinking of Catarina. Cat had taken to sleeping in one of the other encampments ever since Nausicaa had showed up, singing on the shifts opposite Luce’s and conspicuously avoiding her. A few of the other lieutenants had been acting a bit edgy too. It was as if they thought Luce was committing a crime by loving Nausicaa as much as she did.
“I know it’s not fair,” Imani went on gently, almost as if she could hear Luce’s thoughts. “But it can’t just be about what you want, Luce. It has to be about what’s best for the Twice Lost Army, about keeping everyone together, okay? You have to at least act like you’re fine.”
Luce stared off, unable to reply. She knew Imani was right, but she still couldn’t help resenting what she was saying. Now that she was general she wasn’t allowed to cry or break down just because of how other mermaids might feel about that? Since when did she not have a right to her own emotions?
“It’s going to be time pretty soon for our shift,” Imani pursued, still stroking Luce’s arm. “You look tired. You need to eat, and you need to be strong for us. When the war is over you can scream at me for this or cry or do whatever you need to, and I promise I won’t complain.”
Luce turned to look at Imani, with her midnight face and searching eyes. Blue light curled like feathers on her dark cheeks. “I’m sorry, Imani.”
“Why?”
“If I’m acting so wrong that you think I’d ever want to scream at you, I must be . . .” Really selfish, Luce thought, but instead of saying the words aloud she shook herself. “We need to get to the bridge early, anyway. We should see if there’s any news . . . about the letter.” Ever since Seb had wandered off with her missive, Luce had been waiting for a report, for any sign of how the humans might be reacting to her proposal. Some of the Twice Lost had started to make friends with certain humans on the shore, and there were already a handful of budding romances. If Luce’s letter was discussed on the news, the mermaids would be sure to hear something.
Imani leaned in and hugged her silently. All Luce’s grief and weariness and worry surged in that embrace, only to be met by the strong, sweet containment of Imani’s arms.
As they were rounding the Embarcadero, a young mermaid came dashing toward them through the deep green water. “General Luce! Lieutenants Yuan and Cala sent me to find you! They’re talking about us on the news!”
“The humans got the letter?” Luce asked breathlessly. “How did you find out?”
The little mermaid saluted, in a messy, embarrassed way. “They got it! They keep talking about it! And we can go watch the whole thing! On TV!”
Luce was perplexed. “TV? How do you mean?”
“They—two of those humans, the really nice ones? The woman with the brown hat? Who came looking for their daughter, except they say they know she’s gone? They brought a way for us to watch. Come see! General . . .”
Imani was smiling indulgently, but Luce was struck by the deep sadness of her expression. “I guess we’ll have to look for ourselves, Luce.” She touched the little mermaid on the cheek. “Would you go ahead and tell everyone we’ll be right there, please?” Then Imani’s face tightened in a way Luce had never seen before. She looked sharply away as the younger mermaid raced off.
“Imani? What’s wrong?”
Imani just shook her head, still turned away from Luce even as they swam. Wings of light brushed across the surface ten feet above Imani’s head, and a school of tiny silvery fish parted around her slim dark body like a strange cloud-shaped ball gown. Her storm blue tail cleft the water, flicking strokes of neon brilliance through the dimness.
“Imani?” Luce reached out and touched her softly. “Is there anything—”
“No one’s ever going to come looking for me, is all. Seeing all those humans who actually care, Luce, when—it’s hard for me. I wish they wouldn’t come here! No one ever loved me but my grampa, and he died.”
Luce wasn’t sure what to say; it seemed clear from the images she could see in the shimmering indication around Imani’s head that she’d already lost her immediate family by the time of her transformation, just as Luce had. And then the fact that Luce’s own father still hadn’t come to join the human crowds seemed to prove that he must not care about her at all anymore.
But Imani definitely didn’t need to be reminded of how many mermaids were in the same situation she was. “Your grandfather’s not the only one who ever loved you, Imani.” Luce hesitated but only for a moment. “I mean, you know I love you, right?”
Imani glanced over at her and managed half a smile. When they came up for a breath the water-wall gleamed ahead of them, foam sliding from its crest in a cascade of pearls. Pale mist wrapped the red bridge in bands of suspended glow.
A tangle of mermaids with arms around one another’s shoulders clustered near the shore not far from the bridge’s base, facing a tightly compressed crowd of humans some fifteen feet away. Police officers stood among them, tense and bristling in the headphones that protected them from the silky wash of enchantment endlessly throbbing from the singers under the bridge. An older human couple sat cross-legged at the front, pressing affectionately together. The woman wore a floppy brown hat and tweed coat and had a large laptop propped open on her knees, its screen turned toward the water. As Luce surfaced with Imani beside her several humans cried out softly, and the mermaids parted to make room. “Isn’t that her?” someone onshore murmured.
“Shh. Yes. Don’t scare them again!”
Luce’s tail fidgeted as she approached that mass of staring faces. Could it really be safe to come this close to a human mob? But there was the screen in front of her, with a newscaster introducing a man Luce had never seen before, his stiff white hair like frosting above a heavily jowled reddish face. The woman supporting the laptop looked kind and thoughtful, and she considered Luce with a mixture of warmth and open curiosity. “General Luce? I’m honored you could join us. I’m Helene Vogel.”
A bit nervously, Luce swam close enough to shake the woman’s outstretched hand. A few people gasped, and Luce abruptly swirled back to the waiting mermaids. “Hello, Ms. Vogel. Thank you for letting us watch the news with you.”
“My pleasure. I’m sorry the volume doesn’t go up any louder than this.”
Luce didn’t see any reason to explain that mermaids had much better hearing than most humans. Her attention was caught by the faces chattering on the screen in front of her; there was something unpleasantly fascinating about the man being interviewed, with his emotionless ice gray eyes and twitching half-smirk. A banner at the bottom of the screen read “Secretary of Defense Ferdous Moreland.”
“It’s plainly impossible,” Moreland was saying indignantly, “that these vicious entities were ever human beings. Those claims are pure propaganda.”
“But the facial resemblance?” the newscaster objected in a weak voice. “There are records of a Lucette Gray Korchak. A troubled eighth grader who was presumed to have committed suicide in Pittley, Alaska, in April of last year. So are you suggesting that General Lucette Gray Korchak is actually someone else?”
The image was suddenly replaced by two very close-up faces juxtaposed side by side. On the right was Luce, wounded and exhilarated and fierce, as she’d leaned from the wave’s flank during her conversation with the reporters. On the left was what Luce recognized with a jolt as her seventh-grade portrait from school, her gaze scared and full of longing. Together those two faces created an unsettling stirring, a sense of something irreconcilable and rasping and wrong, because they were so much the same but also not the same at all. Objectively there was no real alteration in Luce’s features between the two portraits, apart from the notch missing from her right ear, her fine crisscrossing wounds, and the strange internal luminance that gave the mermaid version of her face the feeling of a beacon floating in infinite darkness. It was precisely the sameness of the two faces that created such a disturbing sense of impossibility: how could the commonplace childish prettiness of her human face translate into the volatile, raking beauty of the face on the right? Luce heard murmurs around her and realized that both Yuan and Imani were squeezed against her sides as if they needed to protect her from something.
The screen switched back to the interview. “Our research suggests that these creatures can assume a resemblance to their victims,” Moreland intoned heavily, then paused for effect. “The real Lucette Korchak—an innocent although seriously disturbed child—was almost certainly murdered by this monster who has hijacked her identity.”
Around Luce mermaids cried out in indignation and disbelief. But didn’t some of the humans facing them look troubled, uncertain? Luce couldn’t completely blame them: it had been hard even for her to stand the dissonance between those two faces. Even as she remembered the cold metal stool where she’d sat for that school portrait, the bleak room and glaring flash, she could still feel a kind of shudder of persuasion in Moreland’s words.
Moreland kept going. “We also need to remember what happened to Kathleen Lambert of Grayshore, Washington, when she made the mistake of getting involved with these unnatural beings. It’s certainly a striking coincidence that Ms. Lambert turned up drowned so soon after videotaping this self-styled General Luce. Anyone out there who’s considering aiding mermaids, or trying to contact them—” Moreland’s voice became a bleak growl—“would be well advised to keep Ms. Lambert’s fate in mind.”
Yuan stared. “What is he talking about? You said somebody filmed you, Luce, but—”
Luce felt nauseous. “I don’t know. I only saw those people with the camera for a few seconds!” Had the strange woman Luce had glimpsed that day somehow died because of her? But that made no sense at all.
“The woman who put out the first tape of you was found drowned,” Helene Vogel confirmed softly, her hat sliding over her eyes. “People have been talking about it. I’m not accusing you, General Luce . . .”
Luce stared up at the humans lining the shore, bewildered and heartsick. Their skin was damp with fog, hazy with the faded afternoon light. No matter how she struggled to put a stop to the killing it seemed that there was always death, and more death, and maybe in some obscure way it was her fault . . .
“General Luce,” Helene Vogel asked, gently but steadily, “did you kill that woman? Or order her killed?”
Luce shook her head miserably. “I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I’m so sorry if . . . if she died because of . . .”
Helene nodded. “Then don’t allow anyone to manipulate you into feeling responsible, general.”
Yuan’s arm was tight around Luce’s shoulders, silently urging her to be strong, and meanwhile the voices from the interview kept beating into her mind. She needed to focus on what they were saying, no matter how she felt.
“So—I know you’ve stated before that there’s no possibility of agreeing to the Twice Lost Army’s demands—is it correct that General Luce’s letter doesn’t change the White House’s position on that?” The newscaster’s voice pounded on like a drum.
“I’ve said it before and if necessary I’ll say it again,” Moreland droned. “We do not negotiate with mermaids!”
That made Luce jerk back in shock. “But—why shouldn’t they negotiate with us! It just means talking to us. Like we count.”
“And as for resolving the blockade of San Francisco Bay?” the newscaster pursued. “You’ve appealed for patience, and of course there’s been a real outpouring of support from the business community so far. But—”
“All options are still on the table,” Moreland snapped. “Naval traffic will be redirected to alternative ports until such time as we’re ready to move on this.”
Luce bit her lip and leaned toward Imani’s shoulder. Her eyes squeezed shut with the effort to hold back tears. Beyond the darkness of her closed eyes the newscaster nattered on, thanking Moreland for taking the time to talk to their viewers. Why were mermaids the only ones who were considered unworthy of meeting in conversation? If the humans wouldn’t even talk to them, it was hard to imagine what else the mermaids could do.
There were a few commercials for cars and alarming-sounding medicines. How much longer could she ask the Twice Lost to go on this way if there was no hope of negotiations at all? A blurt of shrill music announced a return to the news program.
“Well, we’ve all been wondering about the crowds who can’t seem to tear themselves away from the Golden Gate Bridge,” the newscaster’s voice suddenly thudded on. “It’s certainly hard to understand why some people in the Bay Area are expressing support for the mermaids.”
“That’s San Francisco for you!” a man’s voice smirked.
The female newscaster gave a dull laugh. “That’s certainly one explanation, Tim. But now we’re getting reports that even in Chicago—far away from the crazy Bay Area—there’s a demonstration happening right now. A crowd estimated at around five thousand people is marching in support of the Twice Lost Army. To you, Constance.”
Luce looked up again—and what she saw was even more intolerable than Moreland’s bland, cold face had been. The screen showed a large procession of people carrying signs. And right there, unmistakably, at the very front of it—
“Oh my God!” Cala squealed. “That is just so sweet of them!”
Two teenage boys were leading the march. A large banner stretched between them was emblazoned with the words All Life Came from the Sea. A wild wind stirred the tarnished bronze-blond hair of the boy on the left, and his expression was grim and determined even as his dark-haired friend grinned absurdly.
But even worse than that—
“Oh, I love that boy!” Cala called giddily. “Do you see what his shirt says? That is just the sweetest, most adorable thing—”
Yuan wasn’t looking at the screen anymore. She’d suddenly craned forward to stare into Luce’s face. Luce wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“He’s got no right to call himself that!” Luce snarled. “Cala, it’s not sweet at all! It’s like he’s stealing our name!”
The bronze-haired boy wore a black T-shirt, and printed on it in huge white block letters were the words—
“Twice Lost Human? Luce, he’s totally being nice! He’s just saying he’s, like, on our side. And he’s cute.”
TWICE LOST HUMAN. How could he dare—after everything he’d done—how could he possibly have the gall to call himself that?
“Cala,” Yuan said coolly, strongly. “Cut it out.”
“I just don’t think he means it like stealing our name! He—”
“Don’t you get it?” Yuan’s tone was oddly matter-of-fact. “That’s Luce’s boyfriend. She doesn’t need to hear you going on about how sweet he is!” Luce reeled in the squeezing crowd of mermaids, spinning toward Yuan in outrage. Yuan only raised her eyebrows. “Isn’t he, Luce? That’s Dorian.”
All Luce wanted was to dive away and disappear. Eyes, both mermaid and human, came at her from all sides, curious and demanding, as if they wouldn’t be satisfied until all of Luce’s private suffering was dissected in front of them. She felt stripped and prodded; coarse fingers seemed to go fumbling through the chambers of her heart. Luce choked wordlessly, her tail lashing against the tails around her, wild with the urge to escape.
But Imani’s arms were around her and so were Yuan’s, and she was still their general—and their friend. She couldn’t just run away from them. Not anymore. She inhaled hard, forcing her tail to slow.
“Luce?” Yuan said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. It’s just—”
“He was my boyfriend,” Luce announced flatly. “He betrayed me. For a human girl.” She couldn’t believe that she’d actually spoken those words aloud.
“And you let him live?” Cala asked, wide-eyed—then looked self-consciously at the humans watching them.
“No,” Luce snapped. After all the horrible things Moreland had said and then the shocking appearance of Dorian, her emotions still seethed inside her, threatening to sweep her away. “I made him live. He wanted to die.”
“Either way,” Yuan said sardonically, nodding at the screen, “it sure looks like he wants you back! Why do you think he’s doing this?”
The news show cut away from the protestors. Now the two newscasters were talking about a movie star who had just been arrested for drunk driving.
The sudden disappearance of the marchers hurt Luce more than she would have believed possible. Could Yuan be right? Luce gaped at the screen, where Dorian’s absence seemed to form a cataract of emptiness. And far too many people were still watching her.
“Let’s get to work,” Luce said. Her voice sounded dead. “It has to be almost six by now.”
For once, her followers ignored her. “But if they won’t even negotiate with us—I mean, what’s the point of trying so hard?” someone muttered behind her.
Most of the humans waiting by the bridge were friendly, but Luce knew there had to be spies mixed in with them. “We’ll talk about—about our options later. But we’re not giving up that easily!” Luce braced herself to say something she didn’t entirely believe. “That Moreland guy was bluffing, anyway. Couldn’t you tell?”
Still no one moved. “Luce?” Cala whispered nearby. “Do you still love him? Dorian?”
Before Luce could get upset by the question she was distracted by a commotion some distance to their left. A young, strikingly handsome man in a beige trench coat was fighting his way toward the water on that side, where there were fewer police—and where a lovely chestnut-haired mermaid Luce didn’t know had actually come close enough to rest her crossed arms on the embankment. With a touch of bitterness Luce thought that the two of them were probably falling in love; they seemed to be gazing at each other with ravenous fascination. “You’re amazing,” Luce heard the young man say. “It’s hard to believe that anything could be so beautiful. How can you be real?”
The mermaid’s reddish fins fluttered up behind her, haloing her in falling droplets. “Well, thank you. I’m really not about to vanish or anything, though.”
“Noooo,” the man drawled, and Luce looked at him more sharply. “No, I know you’re just as real as me. And you have such a sweet face, such gentle eyes.” His voice was purring, seductive. “It’s hard to believe you could kill people. Have you really done that?”
Luce wondered if she should try to interrupt the conversation, but her friends pressed in around her; it wouldn’t be easy to get over there. And anyway, she had said her followers could talk to anyone they wanted. But this was starting to feel a bit uncomfortable.
“Oh, I used to,” the mermaid acknowledged casually. She tucked her long hair behind one pale, exquisite ear. “But I really do think General Luce is right, like, there wasn’t much of a future in hunting ships and everything. I’m pretty much over that stuff now.”
“Pretty much?” the man crooned. Both his hands sank deep in the pockets of his long coat. “Do you think one of the people you killed might have been this woman?”
The mermaid’s eyes went reflexively to the photo the young man suddenly held in front of her—so that she didn’t watch his other hand as it came up pointing a gun. Luce was already screaming at the chestnut-haired mermaid to dive. The girl had just time to pivot her head quizzically in Luce’s direction before the air cracked wide and a blood-bursting hollow opened where her perfect ear had been.