Lost Voices (6 page)

People were looking at her, pointing. It was the strangest thing she’d ever seen. They were up above her somehow, waving their arms, but then the sound rose and spun around them, i 39

too. Of course so much beauty made them stop their ugly hub-bub right away, which was what Luce wanted. She didn’t like being pointed at. It was terribly rude. Instead they stared at her, and then, Luce could feel, the music began to take the shape of their secret hearts. It knew them, it forgave them for every bad thing they’d ever done, and they loved it more than they had ever loved anything in their lives.

Up above, the moon was golden and wide- eyed, and it watched Luce tenderly. Its light gleamed like floating coins all over the tops of the waves, and a slab of shining ice bobbed past.

A misty glow covered the smooth side of the cliffs just behind her, and then Luce realized that all those dreaming people were on a ship, and that the ship was coming toward her, and toward the cliffs, as fast as a train driving out of a tunnel. Still the music throbbed on, coating the night with its bliss, while the ship’s sharp metal prow sped straight at her forehead.

Luce dove just in time, pushing her way through the deep black water, and still the music that was somehow more than music shook around her, in her chest, in her throat. The only thing that almost drowned it out was the terrible metal shriek when the boat’s steel hull sheared in two as it slammed into the rocks. The strange thing was that no one on board screamed.

Actually it wasn’t so strange, because Luce understood exactly why all those people stayed so calm and quiet. They were still listening to the music, listening so hard that they didn’t even care if they drowned.

Luce thought she should be upset, but she found that she didn’t quite care either. The deep invasive chill was still in her heart, and it gave her the funny feeling that these were the same 40 i LOST VOICES

people who beat their daughters or left them alone to die on the tops of cliffs. She didn’t want to think too much about it, but she almost thought the people on that boat must deserve what was happening to them now. She was still far below the waves, and for some reason she didn’t feel any need to try to reach the air.

Huge slabs of ripped and twisted metal began to fall past her into the water. Luce saw things she recognized hunks of pipes, deck chairs as well as heavy machine- type things whose uses she didn’t know. Then she began to see the people. At first there were just one or two of them off in the distance, but soon the water was full of drifting, sinking bodies. They looked like enormous raindrops plummeting all around her, their arms slowly wheeling through tangles of seaweed. Some of them still seemed completely calm, and sank with drowsy smiles. One man Luce saw seemed actually to be trying to swim for the bottom of the sea. But others had been shocked out of their enchantment by the cold of the water, and they were flailing frantically, trying to fight their way back to the surface. Even though she thought that they must be bad people, even very bad, she still hated to see them so upset and scared.

She looked up. In the moonlight the surface of the water high above her looked like twisting golden foil, and against that gold there were dark frantic shapes splashing crazily away.

Some of the people on the boat must have snapped out of their dreaming enough to try to swim for shore. The wonderful music began to fade, and around her more of the sinking people began to panic. An old man’s face sank inches away from her own, and she looked deep into his shocked, staring eyes and saw his mouth i 41

contort as he choked on seawater. He was struggling horribly to breathe, but water rushed into his lungs instead of air.

How long had it been since she’d taken a breath?

The music came back, but it was different now. It came from a few different directions at once this time, and though the music didn’t sound like any normal
voice
Luce had ever heard in her life, she couldn’t help thinking the shimmering sound was made of several different voices. Quick curving shapes, as lovely in their movements as living water, began to dart among the swimmers, and Luce suddenly understood that they were
singing
. They were all singing together in voices too beautiful for Earth, and the music began to swell again in her own chest.

Above, she could see the desperate swimmers suddenly calming down, settling into the cold waves as if they were going to sleep in their own soft beds at home.

She must have gone deeper without realizing it, because she found herself face to face with the drowning old man again. He wasn’t afraid anymore. Waves of satiny, vibrating music poured from Luce’s mouth, and the old man was comforted. He gazed at her with his round blue eyes as if she were someone he had always wanted to see, his heart’s only treasure, long lost but suddenly returned to him. Even her own father, Luce realized, had never once looked at her with such profound tenderness, such acceptance. Luce knew the old man must be dying, but he was so
happy
. Happy just to be with her, and to listen to her singing.

He understood her so well, and the better he understood her, the more complete his love for her became. He was still smiling at her as the silver bubbles gushed up from his mouth and his eyelids sank over his blue eyes. Luce stayed with him, though, 42 i LOST VOICES

even as they drifted deeper and deeper into the smooth darkness. No one had ever looked at her that way before, and she wanted more than anything to see that gaze again. Down and down she went, watching the man’s quiet face, his wrinkles, and the faint gleam of his white hair.

Too far down. All at once she wasn’t sure if she could find her way back to the surface. The water began to constrict her chest and head, hundreds of tons of dark weight squeezing from above. It was too far down because she
did
need to breathe. She knew that now. Her lungs were crying for air, but the air now seemed so impossibly far away, and she was still sinking deeper.

A violent sinuous shape ripped past her, catching her waist in a thin, strong arm as it went. She was moving again, faster than ever before, but now that was because the shape beside her was pulling her along. It was definitely a human arm holding her, but the shape didn’t seem to be a person, at least not in the usual way, though it did have a head that looked like it might belong on a girl. Luce couldn’t make out the face, though. It was hidden in a storm of fire- colored hair that seemed to have its own light. She tried to tell the shape that she needed air, but the words wouldn’t come to her. Parting water ripped around her face as if she were rupturing endless layers of silk curtains.

They were rushing so fast that shapes began to blur in Luce’s eyes, and the cry in her lungs became a long, aching scream. The darkness turned narrow and hard, with long stony sides. Where
was
she? She could feel the rising urge to thrash and fight, to claw at the shape holding her and the brutal rocks closing her in. Luce opened her mouth to shout, and at that moment the water broke around her head, and the sweet air flooded into her chest.

i 43

Luce heaved hungry lungfuls of air, lying in the cold water with her face on the rocks. She was in a cave with a tall, arching roof and brittle ruffs of crystal sparkling on the walls. Stalactites dripped from above and the rocks gave out a very faint green glow. It was almost totally dark, she knew, but she could still see. Her hearing seemed strangely sharp and vivid, too. She raised herself on her elbows and looked around.

Lying next to her was the most beautiful girl Luce had ever seen. She was about sixteen years old, and gleaming lights stroked like fire along her wet red- gold hair. She was staring straight at Luce, and she was furious.

“Maybe you’re some kind of queen back where you came from,” the girl snarled at Luce. She was so angry she was trembling, and she spoke with an accent Luce didn’t recognize. “But this is
my
territory, and as long as you’re here you’ll follow
my
rules!”

Luce was too confused to answer, and after glaring at her for a moment the girl continued talking. “So many of us die because of things no one can help! They get tangled in fishing nets and drown, or the orcas . . . I’m fighting all the time to try and keep everyone safe. And one thing I
don’t
have time to deal with is one of us almost dying just out of pure stupidity! What were you thinking, going so deep like that?” Around them other heads were breaking through the water. All of them were girls, some very young and some about Luce’s age. The red- haired girl seemed to be the oldest one there. She gazed harshly at Luce’s blank expression, then thought of something. “Don’t you speak English?”

“I do,” Luce said. “I just I don’t understand what I did wrong.” She also didn’t understand where she was now, or even 44 i LOST VOICES

how she was still alive, but she decided it would be better to ask about those things another time. The red- haired girl was tense with rage, almost baring her teeth, and Luce was afraid to make her any angrier.

“You don’t understand what you did wrong! Swimming that deep as if you couldn’t drown!
I
could have easily drowned saving you . . . I should have just left you to die there! And bringing down a ship that big by yourself ! Have you considered how lucky you are that we were close enough to hear you and rush over to help? You could have broken the timahk!” Luce couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It sounded like the red-haired girl thought that she, Luce, had somehow made that ship drive into the cliffs. It was an insane idea, impossible. Even if Luce had
wanted
to do something so evil, she was just a shy, skinny girl barely strong enough to sink a canoe.

And did the beautiful girl think Luce had murdered all those people? The idea horrified her, and she stared around the cave, hoping someone would tell the redhead how ridiculous it was to imagine something like that. The faces of about twenty girls looked back at her from the dimness. All of them were silent, wondering. And, Luce realized, all of them were so beautiful it almost hurt to look at them for long. They had a dark, shimmering quality and a slight greenish tone to their pearly skin.

“I didn’t do
anything
to that ship,” Luce finally protested in bewilderment. “It just it came right at me. I barely managed to get out of the way.” As she said it, Luce realized how wrong it all sounded. How
had
she managed to get out of the way of the ship as it rushed at her head? Nobody could dive that fast or that deep. But as she thought it over, Luce realized that was just i 45

what she’d done: she’d dove at unbelievable speed straight down into the sea, and the ship had slashed safely above her.

The water must be freezing, too. It must be cold enough to kill anyone who tried to swim in it for more than a few minutes.

For that matter, what were all these girls doing in the ocean?

None of them seemed to want to pull themselves out of the water either. And, she realized, none of them were wearing any clothes.

The water lapped around Luce’s naked back, and the cold didn’t bother her nearly as much as she would have expected.

Somewhere in the cave a girl laughed, in a bright, sweet voice. The redhead glared in that direction and the laughter stopped at once. Then she turned her marvelous face back toward Luce and puckered her lips critically. There was something in her expression Luce couldn’t quite make out, though: a shift and slippage of emotions, something alternated with her anger; it might have been anxiety or longing . . . It didn’t make any sense and only heightened Luce’s suspicions that the red-haired girl was somehow unhinged.

“We follow the timahk here,” the redhead said slowly. Her voice had a very hard, bitter music in it, like cracked diamonds.

“We won’t hurt you, no matter how offensive I find your behavior. But you’ve already given us enough reason to expel you, if it comes to that. So do you want to leave?”
Leave for where?
Luce thought. She shook her head in sudden anxiety. “In that case we need to get this much straight.
All
the mermaids in my territory obey my rules. No matter
who
they think they are. Do you understand me?”

“All the
mermaids
. . .” Luce repeated. She felt completely baffled. Pale faces stared back at her, and Luce realized they 46 i LOST VOICES

were all just as mystified as she was. No wonder they were so confused. Their leader was an obvious lunatic.

Luce rolled onto her back and strained to lift her legs out of the water. They felt bizarrely heavy all of a sudden and also much too long. With an effort she managed to heave them up out of the sea.

A silvery green tail, halfway between a fish’s tail and a ser-pent’s, waved uncertainly in the darkness of the cave. It weighed so much that Luce could barely hold it up, and the cold air made it burn. Luce shrieked and let the tail drop, and salt water spattered across their faces.

The red- haired girl was staring open- mouthed at Luce, and then the laughter came back all around them. Almost all the girls were laughing now, but it didn’t sound mean. It sounded like the way people laugh when they suddenly understand something that should have been obvious all along. Luce gaped around in desperation. She could hear a few of the girls repeating another word she didn’t know: “metaskaza.”

When the redhead spoke again her voice was much gentler, and high- pitched with surprise. “Nobody would have believed, hearing the way you sang . . .” She shook her head and smiled suddenly at Luce, and the smile was so warm that Luce almost felt safe. “You mean, you really didn’t know?” Luce started laughing along with everyone else, but it was too shrill and fast. Hysterical. The redhead let out a kind of soft, lulling hum, and Luce felt her panic receding. She kept humming until Luce calmed down.

“I’m Catarina,” the lovely redhead said, still smiling her luminous smile. “I’m queen here. Who are you?” i 47

“ Luce,” Luce answered, but then that didn’t seem like enough of a name when she was so lost. “I mean, I’m Lucette Gray Korchak.” She thought of explaining that she lived with her uncle in Pittley, but then she realized how absurd that would sound.