The Twice Lost

Luce looked up, surprised, and suddenly realized that the words had come from her own mouth.

“Not us,” Yuan insisted. “We’re twice lost. The humans lost us the first time, then we were lost to other mermaids, too. Now there’s nothing left to lose us, except life, and the way things are going, that shouldn’t take long either!”

“And the world, which is really in trouble now,” Luce said sharply. She still felt amazed at herself. “And each other, and all those mermaids out there who are getting murdered with no way to even defend themselves. We need to figure out a way to stop that.”

Everyone was staring at her, harder than ever. Luce felt embarrassed, but even more than that she felt possessed by an unexpected urgency.

“We don’t need the timahk anymore!” Luce added. “The timahk doesn’t even make sense now that the humans know about us. Maybe we’re dishonored, but that’s not the kind of honor that matters now! And we don’t need purity either. We just need to change what’s happening.”

For several seconds no one said anything. Catarina finally released Luce from her embrace and dipped quickly under the water before coming up again with streaming hair. Now that Luce was floating alone in the water dizziness rippled through her head.

Why didn’t anyone answer? They must all think she was insane, Luce decided. Even in this band of desperate outcasts she was simply too weird to fit in. There was no place for her anywhere in the world . . .

“We have a queen now,” Catarina announced. Her chin was raised proudly, and there was a calm glow in her eyes even though they were still swollen from crying.

Luce felt confused and suddenly unbearably tired. What was Catarina talking about? What were any of these crazy, damaged mermaids trying to say to her, really? They didn’t understand her, and in fact they made no sense to her, either.

“No queens,” Yuan snarled frantically, and Imani curled a gentle hand on her shoulder. “We don’t need one, and we don’t even deserve—”

“Yuan, Yuan, wait! We’re still mermaids. No matter how many times lost we are, we can’t lose that! You know what that means.” Imani smiled with sudden brilliance. She was so lovely, Luce thought, with her heart-shaped face and up-tilting eyes. But Luce still wasn’t sure what they were arguing about. The whole world was out of joint, so slippery and unbalanced that words couldn’t even hold on to their meanings anymore.

Yuan was gnawing her lip, but she didn’t answer. No one did.

Imani looked around, waiting for someone to contradict her. No sound disturbed the quiet except, very distantly, a chorus of car horns. Then she turned her eyes straight on Luce. “It means we’ll know the one who’s meant to be queen by her song.”

10 No One’s Queen

“Show them, Luce!” Catarina’s eyes flared with pride as Luce looked around, suddenly understanding what they expected from her. She’d fled from the divers and somehow wound up at an audition for a role she didn’t even want.

Luce felt a secret thrill at the thought of how amazed Catarina would be by what she could do with her voice now, and just as quickly stifled it.

“Not here, though,” Jo put in worriedly. She bit her hand again, jogging a plastic duckling at her throat. “We’ll have to swim far out, out where everything is completely empty.”

No one bothered to ask Luce if she wanted to be queen, of course, or if she had other plans. As the mermaids dipped below the surface of the bay, skimming in a long procession back toward the Golden Gate and the open sea beyond, Luce wondered what she should do. All around her mermaids streaked and rippled, dimly shining, until the dark water seemed banded by living light. Streetlamps like flocks of glowing birds crowded the hills on every side; whenever Luce surfaced the droplets on her lashes dazzled her with refracted stars. If they did want her to become their queen, then how could she look for Nausicaa?

She didn’t need to worry, Luce decided. Even if they were impressed by what she could do, they’d definitely change their minds once they found out what her rules would be. Like J’aime, they’d be furious that she didn’t want to use her voice as a weapon. But what if they did agree to follow her, even when her ideas went against everything mermaids had always believed?

They wouldn’t, of course. But if they did?

Remembered voices brushed through Luce’s head. That’s going to be a lot of dead mermaids who you did nothing for! J’aime snarled, and the words interwove with Nausicaa’s murmurs: Maybe someday someone will change our story. Maybe you will, Luce. Then the story will be new, even for me . . . Would Nausicaa want her to do this? Her father called her name just as Dana laughed in sudden delight, her laughter dancing with the midnight water.

Luce swished her head to clear it and swam on, coils of Catarina’s hair flickering in the corner of her vision. If they agreed, well—Luce glanced around again, and Imani smiled over at her — then with so many of them working together, maybe she could think of something? Maybe she didn’t have to fail these unknown mermaids in the way that she’d failed her old tribe.

They slipped below the bridge. Container ships piled high with stained metal boxes were still passing out to sea, even this late at night. The mermaids kept far below the surface, their bodies twisting against the sharply roughening water as they left the bay’s shelter. Then they kept on in silence, and Luce felt a brooding sense of ceremony as well as a growing tightness in her stomach. What if those black boats were prowling nearby; what if Luce had inadvertently led all these girls to their deaths?

Imani caught her wrist and tugged gently upward.

They came up in a surging sea, bright faces scattered like floating lanterns on the waves. On this side of the bridge the rising hills looked dark and wild, scrawled over by the pale writhing trunks of cypresses. Luce got the impression that there were even more mermaids now than there had been down under that warehouse. Two hundred? More?

No matter what she did it was probably just a matter of time before the divers discovered them and their refuge in the bay became a trap. After all, the Golden Gate was the bay’s only exit, and it was quite narrow: could the humans close it off somehow and take their time tracking down all the mermaids stuck behind it?

“Cat thinks you’re a big deal, but you have to understand—this isn’t how we do things here. It’s going to take a lot to convince us —” Yuan broke off. Luce was already humming very quietly. She closed her eyes to concentrate, to feel the smooth flow of her voice as it began dividing into multiple notes like a stream parting into a dozen bright rivulets. Her body rose and dipped with the waves, and Luce poured herself into the music. Each note became a half-forgotten dream from years before, or the memory of a beloved hand stroking back her hair. She was all alone inside a hundred weaving strands of song, each one free and sweet and liquid, each one calling to the water. Then she let the notes rise, twisting skyward. They mounted toward the clouds, leaped, wrapped themselves around spiral curves like the innards of a seashell . . .

Luce’s reverie was faintly disturbed by the cries of the mermaids around her. She half opened her eyes, still holding her song in the same complex, swirling suspense. She’d had a fair idea of the form the water would take in response to her song, but the reality was beyond anything she’d expected. Seeing it almost made her break off in astonishment.

The ocean around them had become a fountain. The crowd of mermaids was surrounded by rising streams, but the streams didn’t shoot straight up like the jets of a fountain in a park. Instead the water wrapped the midnight air in gleaming ribbons at least twenty feet tall, winding and writhing. Mermaids rotated to see, bright arms stretched like wings. Some laughed giddily or cried out; some were silent with wonder. Water rose in helixes that curled around one another high over their heads and then turned into looping archways or into sinuous, lethargically falling leaves.

It was too much for Luce to sustain for long. Her song collapsed, and the water jets abruptly crashed down. The sea rocked faster with the impact. Splashes radiated in all directions, and the assembled faces were licked by