The Twice Lost

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.

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