The Twice Lost

She needed to find someone who knew more than she did. And no matter how long she brooded over the problem she kept coming back to the same absurd idea.

Luce glanced back around the tangle of nets. A lot of the mermaids were out; they’d gone off on their daily foraging expedition to the south bay, where there were large wild areas on the water with a good supply of shellfish. But Imani was swinging in her hammock, eyes closed, singing very softly to herself: a human song, Luce realized in amazement. She’d never heard a mermaid sing a song with words before, and she paused to listen. “‘If I could I surely would, stand on the rock where Moses stood. Pharaoh’s army got drownded; oh, Mary, don’t you weep . . . ’”

Where had she heard Imani’s song before? Luce swam over to her. Though Imani’s hammock was made from shredded white plastic shopping bags, they were all so intricately knotted that it looked more like handmade lace. “‘Oh, Mary, don’t you weep, don’t you mourn . . . ’”

“Imani? I don’t want to interrupt you, but . . .”

A tear rolled down Imani’s blue-gleaming cheek as she opened her eyes. “Why shouldn’t we mourn for them, Luce?”

Luce felt a rush of tenderness for her. “You mean for Pharaoh’s army? In the song?”

“My grampa would always sing that song to me, back when I was really small, and I couldn’t talk well enough yet to make him understand why it made me cry. But maybe those soldiers didn’t even want to be in that army.”

Luce realized what Imani was truly thinking about. “We can mourn for them, Imani. And we can change, and not drown anyone again.”

Imani’s looked as if she were half-enchanted by her own singing. “I’ve kept thinking of that song. Ever since I changed into a mermaid and found out what we do, I’ve kept hearing it. I hope we can make this into a war of water and music, but I’m afraid it’s just going to turn into another cycle of death and more death.”

Luce breathed deep, trying to calm herself. “It won’t.”

“If they find us we’ll be able to fight them now, and I guess that’s better than doing nothing, but . . . they’ll die, and we’ll die too. Pharaoh’s army and the Twice Lost Army, we’ll share the same end.”

“We won’t let that happen, Imani.” Luce tried to sound confident. “We’ll find a way to persuade them to agree to peace.”

Luce expected Imani to keep arguing. Instead she closed her eyes again, spinning her tail so that her net rocked harder. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Luce said. She wasn’t completely sure she’d heard right.

“I’ll . . . trust you on this, Luce. But I don’t see how we can persuade them to do anything.”

“It’s going to be really”—almost impossible, Luce thought, but she didn’t want to say that—“really hard. Imani, I think I have to go out for a while. If I’m not back in time, could you start leading training without me?”

That knocked Imani out of her waking dream. She looked down at Luce where she hovered in the water, and her gaze was sharper than Luce had ever seen it. “Really? Where are you going?”

Luce hesitated. “I have to talk to someone. If I can even find him.”

Him gave it away, of course. Luce couldn’t be talking about going to see another mermaid.

“Luce . . .” Imani breathed after a few moments. “About trusting you. Do you know you’re asking a lot?”

They held each other’s eyes, then something shifted and a slight smile seemed to flutter back and forth between them.

“Imani?” But what could Luce say, really? “Thank you.”

* * *

Above the surface reflected light pleated across the water, and the distant roar of traffic echoed and warped as it flowed along the waves. Below it there was the private night where sleek-finned bodies darted and spun, the glow of mermaids crossing the wings of rays.

Luce swirled along close to the bottom, where rusty bicycles turned their wheels in the current and weeds grew in long reddish ribbons. There were rubbery amber sea cucumbers and so many tiny pink anemones that the rocks seemed to be carpeted in feathery mouths. It wasn’t that long before she saw rotten pilings on her left and the line of a pier slouching down into the water. Luce surfaced to see if she could recognize the spot. There was a warehouse she thought looked familiar, its endless windows staring blankly across the bay. And sitting cross- legged on the pier there was a man, and he was looking straight at her . . .

Luce dropped under the water, down into green depths. “Mermaid?” the man called quietly. “It’s me. Your friend the old ghost.”

He didn’t look the same, though. Luce came cautiously to the surface and stared at him. He was wearing relatively clean clothes in place of his sagging overcoats, though to guess by how badly the new clothes fit him, he’d probably found them in the street. He was cleaner, too, and he’d cut his mouse gray hair. The reek of sweat and alcohol that had clung to him the first time Luce had seen him was gone, and she could tell by the alert way he was looking at her that he wasn’t drunk. She swam a little closer. “Hi.”

“Hi, mermaid.” He was smiling a small careful smile, obviously trying not to scare her away. “Hoped you were gonna come back.”

Now that he was in front of her, Luce wasn’t sure where to start. “You look better.”

“I feel better. You know, I saw my own death that night. Turns out that a good shot of terror was the best medicine for me. And maybe there was something in that unreal voice of yours too.”

“I’m glad . . . it helped,” Luce murmured. He was gazing at her with such powerful curiosity that she was almost overwhelmed by shyness.

“But you don’t actually want to talk to me, do you? I mean— you’re gorgeous and magical and whatever the hell else you are. You didn’t stop by to shoot the . . . the breeze with me. So what do you want?”

He was right, of course, but Luce felt obscurely guilty that it was so obvious. “I just wanted . . . I wondered if I could ask you some questions?”

He just stared at her, his pale blue eyes glittering in the faded lamplight. It was hard to keep going. The immense emptiness above them seemed to press on Luce’s shoulders, and a rusty glow hazed across the sky.

“That night, you said you’d been a stevedore?” Luce asked.

“Eight years, after Nam. Unloaded all those ships pulling into the port of Oakland.”

“I was wondering . . . Maybe you know about the Golden Gate. You could tell me . . .” Luce didn’t want to give away too much; there was no way to know for sure if she could trust him. “Well, would it be possible to close it?”

The old man swayed a little from surprise. “Close it? The Golden Gate? Who the hell would want to do that?”

“Say, if the government, or the army . . . if they wanted to keep anything from getting through, could they do that?”

He tilted his head, thinking it over. “I guess the navy could do some kind of blockade. If there was a threat from foreign ships, not that this would ever happen, but they could line up their boats and keep ’em out.”

“But . . .” Luce knew she might be saying too much, but she didn’t see any other way. “What about under the water?”

“Because a sea serpent was gunning for Frisco, or the kraken was rising?” He laughed, a little too wildly. “Then they’ve got plenty of submarines. And they could plant mines.”

“I was wondering more about, if maybe they could close it down with a giant metal gate? Like, if they wanted to stop things that were smaller than ships or . . . or sea serpents.”

Luce watched understanding open inside his blue eyes, watched his lips purse thoughtfully. “And it’s the U.S. government that you think might be doing this ‘closing down,’ Miss Mermaid? Can’t say I’m their biggest fan.” He grimaced. “I have indeed seen a dab too much to be. Anyhow, I don’t think that’s something you should get yourself in a big tizzy about.”

“Because it’s impossible?” Luce asked hopefully. She was grateful that he wasn’t asking her too many