The Twice Lost (20 page)

“I don’t
care
anymore! I—”

“Tell me something, Anais. Don’t you miss your singing?”

16

Seb watched from the pier as Luce waved good night to him, a little awkwardly, and headed out into the wild night. She had a long swim ahead of her before she would reach the spot where the Twice Lost gathered to practice. As their numbers grew, they all worried more about the risk that someone would spot them from a boat or a plane. Every night they traveled a bit farther from the coast, settling into remote waves and yet still feeling terribly, helplessly exposed. They put as much loneliness around them as they could, as if the night itself could be their shelter.

Even from a distance Luce could hear the music: long, thrumming, sustained tones, scatterings of brighter notes along the surface. The voices had the distinctive, oddly smooth sound that mermaid voices took on when they called to the water, coaxing and caressing. All around Luce the water shivered, and she whipped along in excitement, ducking below hunting sea lions and spinning silver balls of frightened fish.

Soon the water above her head was thick with swinging, glimmering fins, and Luce surfaced. On the dark sea the Twice Lost Army floated. Luce caught sight of Yuan, busy organizing the newer members into small groups under the command of former queens; of Imani, working with a few of the girls who’d been having trouble. As Luce watched, one of them—a mermaid with thick light brown curls and an anxious expression on her china-doll face—lost control of her voice completely. All at once the night throbbed with savage enchantment as the mermaid’s death song took over and leaped higher and brighter. The curly-haired mermaid flung herself backwards in a panic, gasping and thrashing as she struggled to regain mastery of the notes tearing from her throat. If any humans had been unlucky enough to be within earshot, Luce knew they would have had no chance at all of surviving.

Luce was about to race over to her when she saw that she wasn’t needed. Imani was already hovering just behind the frightened mermaid, her dark hands lightly resting on those heaving shoulders. The vehement music calmed a little, and the doll-faced mermaid’s spasmodic movements slowed. Imani was singing in her ear, a soothing, whispering resonance, luring the maddened song back down into a single note, soft and peaceful. A docile little wave curled up in front of them. And then . . .

Then Imani’s voice changed again, bending into a low, bubbling harmony. Her song caught the frightened mermaid’s voice in a way Luce had never heard before. It was as if Imani’s song had entered into that other song and opened it like a flower opening in the core of another flower, forming a concentric swell of music that was somehow greater and sweeter than the sound of any mermaid singing alone.

And the wave in front of them doubled, trebled in size, then abruptly shot skyward and wavered in a gleaming wall with gracefully fluted sides. The moon’s light refracted in each curve until a hundred long golden eyes winked out at them. Everyone stopped practicing and watched in silence. The china-doll mermaid stared in disbelief at the result of her strange duet with Imani, then let out a little shriek. The spell broke, the water tumbled . . .

And Luce’s voice entered the night and caught the falling wave again. Imani glanced over at her, eyes shining with a kind of serene exaltation. Luce could feel Imani’s voice singing
into
hers and feel her own song blossoming in Imani’s. The sensation was entirely new to her, and also entirely wonderful. The wave-wall grew higher and smoother, its upper reaches forming dancing pinnacles, bright corkscrewing vines.

It took all of Luce’s concentration to stop herself from bursting out laughing in delirious joy.
This
was what happened when the mermaids merged their power. Her voice felt lighter inside her, and the immense force of that music was much easier to sustain than it had ever been when she sang to the water on her own. Singing together in this way, they seemed to multiply their individual power into a marvelous synergy.

A few other mermaids seemed to catch on and joined in. Water rose again, sleeked up through the darkness, then again . . . The sound pulsed through Luce’s head and body until even her bones seemed to sing like the strings of a guitar. She was the heart of the song, but so were all the other singers, and the curling wave-walls bent the night on all sides until they were surrounded by a bright castle made of water and sound at once.

Like Imani had said, it was a miracle: their own miracle, their personal creation.

Luce had long since given up singing humans to their doom, but she had never forgotten the addictive thrill her death song always provoked in her. But this
new
feeling, she thought, was even better. She was lost in the sound, her thoughts weaving through all the voices at once; only the gentle loft and fall of the waves gave her any sense of passing time. It was impossible to guess how long the strange new song went on, but when the music finally began to fade, the immense golden moon was rolling into the horizon, its disc misshapen by rising fronds of mist. The watery castle seemed to melt very slowly with the lowering music, its walls bowing out and then gently petaling downward.

Quiet; it was quiet. Only the dreamlike roar of the ocean and, far away, the plangent cry of a whale.

And around Luce hundreds of drifting, dimly luminous faces moved with the waves. For a few minutes it was hard to imagine that any of them would ever speak again. They had all known one another more deeply through their shared song than they ever could through words.

“
War,
Luce?” Imani murmured at last, and laughed a single breathless laugh. “How can this be war?”

Luce knew what Imani meant. She’d never experienced such absolute peace in her life, peace so profound that it became a new kind of shivering excitement.

“A new kind of war, Imani,” Luce said. Her voice was thin, airy, but suddenly she realized that everyone was looking at her. “I promised. I promised you. We can . . . make up a new story; we can find a new way through. We can stop all the death.”

She was starting to clear the magic from her mind. This was important; she couldn’t stay in that watery dream-space, marvelous as it was.

“Oh, Luce, we can’t make them stop hunting us with what we’ve done tonight! With—” The voice was Catarina’s, still half-enchanted, sweet, and despairing. “We can’t stop them with
beauty.
”

“We can,” Luce insisted. “We can. Not just with beauty, Cat. But with what we can do. We can make them accept peace without killing anyone, not one more person.” The magic was still inside her; it was hard to find her way through her own pirouetting thoughts and even harder to put the right words in the right order. “Really, Cat. Really. I think . . . I know what to do now. I have an idea.”

Now everyone was
really
staring at her. The thought of telling them all what she was thinking terrified her. If her idea didn’t work, the Twice Lost mermaids would be so terribly let down. But the wild expectation in those gathered faces wouldn’t allow her to hold back now either. “We’re going to close down the Golden Gate. A naval blockade, right under the bridge. Then they’ll
have
to talk to us.”

Luce knew that she’d said something crazy by the blank way the crowd of mermaids looked at her. Most of them weren’t angry or indignant or excited; they just looked as if her idea was too strange to take in.

Catarina was the first to speak. “Close it down? Luce, this is—”

“With a wave. We’ll raise a wave big enough that none of their ships can get through. We’ll hold it there until they agree to stop.”

“But then they’ll know we’re here!” Jo squealed. The toys wreathed around her neck rattled. “Luce, Luce, don’t . . .”

“Of course they’ll know,” Luce said. As she envisioned it she began to feel stronger and clearer. “
All
the humans will know. Everyone in the world will hear about this. That’s how we’ll get the government to negotiate with us. I know it sounds crazy, but . . .”
It could work,
Luce thought.
It’s the only thing that
might
work.

“Then what’s going to stop them from dropping bombs on us? Luce, I want to believe in you, in all your plans. I do. But this . . .” Catarina seemed genuinely appalled, her gray eyes gleaming with desperate sadness. Actually, Luce wasn’t completely sure how they’d keep the human military from bombing them, but she felt certain now they’d think of something. After that incredible communal song, everything seemed possible.

“They won’t drop bombs on us.” It was Yuan, suddenly grinning ferociously. “Oh, you better believe they won’t! If we can really raise a wave that big?”

Luce suddenly understood where Yuan was going with this and looked at her gratefully.

“Yuan, they’ll blast us right out of the water! No, our only hope is to try to stay secret.” Catarina was almost hyperventilat-ing now.

“Cat? No offense, but you need to start trusting our dear
general
more. Because she’s totally right. If we really have enough power to get such a huge wave standing up and keep it there—”

“We’ll all be dead within an hour!”

“No, Cat, listen! If they bomb us, we stop singing. If we stop singing, all that water comes crashing down at once. You really think they’ll send a tsunami right at downtown San Francisco?”

“That sounds fun,” Bex muttered sourly. Then before anyone could say anything in response she added, “Oh my God, guys. Kidding? I’m just kidding?”

Yuan was right. In fact, Luce thought, she was
brilliant.
“Do you see now, Cat? I don’t want to make you do anything you think is suicidal, though.” Luce looked around, and from something in the shine of the eyes on all sides she knew that, even if they weren’t all prepared to go along with her idea,
enough
of them were. “But this is the only plan we have, and the humans are definitely going to know that the bay is full of mermaids as soon as we’re good enough at this kind of singing to start the blockade. If any of you think that makes it too dangerous to stay here you can leave. Go back to . . . to the territories where tribes were already killed. As long as you don’t sink any ships, the divers probably won’t check the same caves a second time.”

It was brutal advice, Luce realized. For some of them the journey would be terrible. For many it would mean returning to the site of hideous memories, even to the decaying corpses of their old friends. But it was the best she could do.

“I’m not leaving you a second time, Luce,” Catarina announced through gritted teeth. Even now that Yuan had explained how the plan could work, Cat still seemed to be convinced that they were heading for their doom.

Luce didn’t know what to say. “I’m really happy if you want to stay, Cat, but you don’t
have
to. But I promise we’ll practice a lot first. We won’t try this until we’re
totally
ready.”

She still loved Catarina, Luce thought. Of course she did. But maybe she didn’t love her in quite the same way that she used to.

Her memories of Nausicaa just took up too much room in her heart.

From the distance came the airy percussion of a helicopter. In a few moments the ocean’s surface was empty of everything except waves.

It was time for them to be getting home, anyway.

17

Nick slammed the door behind him, leaving Kathleen alone and crying in the colored beams of evening light shining through the stained glass windows.
Another
fight, Kathleen thought; why couldn’t they ever seem to understand each other anymore? She’d always been a firm believer that honest communication and kindness could solve almost any problem. Now, it seemed, the more honest she tried to be the more outraged and impatient Nick became. Telling him her real thoughts was beginning to feel like a mistake. When she did he’d respond with words she found hard to forgive.
Kath, one thing I can assure you of? Just one? Eileen is not a mermaid! I suppose I shouldn’t blame you, but honestly, it’s absolutely foolish to go around listening to some charlatan who tries to persuade you that your sister isn’t dead.

“Eileen,” Kath whispered as she sat on the bottom stair with her head in her hands, “Eileen, what I wouldn’t give to see you just for a second, one second before I die. Name it.”

Something about that mermaid she’d seen—
No, not “that mermaid,”
Kathleen told herself.
Lucette. Lucette Korchak, no matter what Nick says
—had reminded her of her lost sister. She’d had the same haunted expression, the same unwitting glamour that almost seemed like a kind of dark shimmer in the air around her. Especially toward the end Eileen had seemed both wounded and magical, and those qualities had only intensified as she’d deliberately taken all their mother’s abuse on herself. Their mother might be on the verge of hitting Kathleen when Eileen would deliberately fire off the most offensive remark she could think of to make sure the broom swung her way instead.
Mom? You know, I’ve been thinking that I’d like to see if I can be the biggest slut in school.

Then Kathleen had run off with a boyfriend, and three days later her brave, insouciant older sister had vanished for good. And now—if only Eileen hadn’t died in some terrible way during all the intervening years—Kathleen was sure that she was darting through the waves somewhere, savage and free and still a freckled, impudent seventeen-year-old girl, only transfigured at the same time into something far beyond everyday experience. “Did you think I didn’t need you anymore, Eenie? I do, I
still
do.”

Kathleen heard her cell phone ringing where she’d left it on the kitchen table. Her first thought was that it must be Nick, calling to apologize for their fight. She hesitated on the step, not sure she was ready to talk to him yet. Or—suddenly Kathleen was on her feet—maybe, just maybe, it was Andrew calling her from some truck stop in the middle of nowhere. The thought of hearing his warm voice, of simply feeling certain for five minutes that someone
believed
her, was enough to send Kathleen sprinting precariously down the long hallway, knocking a few seashells from tiny tables as she went. Andrew didn’t have a phone of his own. This might be her only chance to talk to him for weeks. Any second now the ringing would stop and the call would go to voice mail and he’d probably feel too uncomfortable to even leave her a message.