The Twice Lost

the evil of those, those . . . Oh, I don’t even want to call them animals! When their vileness is clearer than it’s ever been!” Cat’s voice was rising and her gleaming hair swirled against Luce’s face. Luce glanced around anxiously, sure that other mermaids would overhear. “If the mermaids here don’t need you anymore . . .”

Then I can look for Nausicaa, Luce thought, but she decided not to say that. She couldn’t have explained why she felt so strange all of a sudden: thinned out into tissue, as if her muscles were airy scraps on the verge of shredding. “I . . . don’t think we should worry about that, Cat.”

“Luce!”

Now Luce struggled to keep her voice down. “Cat, it’s so hard already! We have to get everyone trained before the humans find us, but really they could find us anytime! There’s no way to know. Those boats could be here tonight! And there has to be some way to stop the war, but I don’t know how to do it!”

If she started crying now, Luce thought, the tears would take over. They’d break through her skin like watery bullets and she would drown in something deeper than any sea.

“Luce, my Lucette . . . please.” Catarina’s fingers smoothed through Luce’s hair. “Just do one thing for me.”

Luce just stared at her, trying to get her feelings under control again. Cat’s moon gray eyes were very close.

Cat bent until her mouth was almost touching Luce’s ear. “Just don’t teach them everything you know, Lucette. Hold enough back so that you’re always the strongest one. Don’t let yourself be outnumbered by mermaids with the same powers you have! That way—”

“Cat,” Luce said breathlessly. “You know I can’t do that.”

“Luce, would you listen to me for once!”

“I can’t! We need everyone to be as powerful as they possibly can. We need to do something.”

Hiding from the humans was only a temporary measure at best, Luce knew. Wearily she gazed across the dawn-streaked bay. In the distance cars were already beetling steadily along the Bay Bridge, carrying early- morning commuters to their jobs.

Luce realized now why she felt so tired and so close to shattering: there was an answer to the problem, but it kept slipping away just below the surface of her mind and eluding her. She was maddened by frustration and also simply exhausted.

“Luce,” Catarina whispered. “We can’t stop them from destroying us. Not if they find out we’re here. They’ll send thousands of their soldiers, or they’ll drop bombs in the water.”

“I . . . We’ll find a way. I promise we will.”

“Have you ever seen humans fishing with dynamite, Luce? The men in my town did that when I was a child.”

Luce groaned with weariness and threw her hands over her face. She knew Catarina was still staring at her from only inches away.

“Then I’ll have to . . . think in all the ways you refuse to, I suppose,” Catarina whispered. “I’ll have to protect you from anyone here who might not be as loyal to you as I am. And I wonder if I’ll also have to protect them from you.”

* * *

Luce woke sometime in the afternoon. Catarina was still fast asleep, her gleaming copper hair fanning across Luce’s shoulder, soft as the rising breeze. Luce slipped very gradually from the hammock, holding it steady as she dropped into the bay. Not far away, Imani lay asleep in a net made entirely of finely knotted scraps of white plastic decorated with dozens of milk white shells, bits of lace, and broken teacups where pink roses glowed. Her storm blue tail swayed just below the surface, winking with neon shimmer, and that white lace scarf she’d found somewhere was slipping off her short afro. Most of the hammocks seemed to be empty, though, and Luce wondered where everyone had gone.

Here and there among the trunks Luce glimpsed a silhouette. Mermaids hovered quietly, staring across the sunlit water. White mist filmed the bay and the hills were so faded they looked like clouds. At the very edge of their refuge Luce saw a sweep of glossy dark hair then a golden face turned in profile. Luce skimmed over to her. “Hey, Yuan.”

“Oh.” Yuan glanced over at her, tense and sad. She was leaning against a piling, one arm and her tail curled around it. “Hey, Luce.”

All Yuan’s cynicism and prickliness seemed to have melted in the afternoon’s pearly light. Luce almost decided to swim away; it seemed like Yuan might prefer to be alone with her thoughts. Instead she lingered, watching that golden face and wondering what was behind it. “Are you okay?”

Yuan hesitated. “Same as ever.” She didn’t smile. “Okay and not okay. Whenever I stop moving, there’s exactly one thing I can think about. Always.”

Luce thought Yuan must be talking about her father again. The memory of that dreadful story still rattled painfully in Luce’s mind, and she didn’t really feel like hearing more of it. But somehow she waited quietly, and Yuan kept watching her.

“You must too, right?” Yuan asked at last. “When you wind up thrashing around in the water you think, well, that’s the biggest change you’re ever going to go through in your life. You think you’re finished with changes, and it’s all going to be cool from then on. But then when the real change hits, it’s so much bigger than just—than getting stuck with some stupid tail. The real change . . . no one can see it, but after that you’re destroyed on the inside. You don’t deserve to be a mermaid anymore, and you can’t go back to being human either. I keep wishing I could have just not done it.” Yuan’s words came like quick, despairing jabs.

Luce wasn’t sure what to think. “The real change? You mean . . .”

“I mean when I saved that girl.” Oddly, Yuan lifted her hand and stared into the palm as if it were a mirror. “I didn’t even try to hide it, Luce. Can you believe that? I saved her right in front of my tribe, like ‘hell with all of you’! They were too shocked to try to stop me or anything. But the whole time I was dragging that lousy human through the water I hated what I was doing, I hated that I couldn’t stop myself . . .”

Luce didn’t know what surprised her the most: that it was a girl Yuan had saved or that rescuing someone had wounded her so terribly. “Do you know why you did it?” Luce asked softly. “There must have been—or, well, was there a reason why you chose her?”

“A completely pathetic reason.” Yuan shook her head in impatience. “She looked like my best friend from when I was—from before. I knew it couldn’t be her, like this girl wasn’t even old enough, but I couldn’t stop myself from acting like it was her anyway.”

Luce thought she was about to say the wrong thing, but somehow she’d stopped being able to keep her feelings secret. “Yuan? It was her.”

Yuan smiled ruefully. “I knew you were crazy.”

“No—I mean, that girl you saved, she probably meant as much to someone else as your friend meant to you, right? So it was the same as if you’d saved your friend, only for—for whoever cared about that girl. You kept somebody’s heart from getting broken.” Luce stopped, surprised by the thoughts racing through her mind. That girl was starred by love, just like your friend. The love is the same, so it doesn’t matter who’s feeling it.

Maybe she could have said something that weird to Nausicaa but not to anyone else.

Yuan made a face. “You almost sound like you think humans are the same as us. Like what they feel counts the same way.”

Luce didn’t answer that. Her thoughts were still with the girl Yuan had saved; she could almost see her hair trailing through the water, her face thrown back toward the sky. “Did you see her again? The girl?”

Yuan looked shocked. “Of course not! Making friends with some human—what do you take me for?” Luce didn’t say anything but her expression gave her away, and Yuan’s cheeks flushed. “Uh, sorry. If you did—after everything I’ve done in my life, I guess I couldn’t blame you for . . .”

Luce’s face was blazing and she looked away. “Can we please not talk about it?”