The Twice Lost

Catarina thought that Luce’s decision to protect humans was so indefensible.

“Luce?” Cat’s voice had turned thin and strange. “Try to sleep. I’ll wake you when . . . when it’s time.”

   Luce obediently closed her eyes. Then through the dark fringe of her lashes she watched Catarina approach the young mermaid. Catarina whispered to the girl, her voice a steady, half-musical lull, and cradled her softly until her awful wriggling calmed.

23 The Letter

Just after midnight the little-girl mermaid who’d been appointed timekeeper came rushing up excitedly, saluting everyone she met as she told them their shift was over. One by one the mermaids under the bridge were replaced by fresh singers just returned from sleeping in odd corners of the bay. Then a few of the smaller girls returned from the south bay with their nets bulging with shellfish and promptly got into a squabble over whose turn it was to have the honor of giving the off-duty lieutenants their dinner. The little mermaids looked abashed and stopped bickering as soon as Luce smiled at them.

“So,” Yuan said, “got plans tonight? I heard about the new ambassador, Luce. I know we don’t have a ton of options, but the dude does sound like kind of a joke.”

Luce felt an unexpected impulse to defend Seb. “I think he’ll do fine, actually. At least you should give him a chance before you go around calling him—”

“Hey, general, I wasn’t trying to piss you off! Okay, he sounds outstanding. Better?”

“We do have plans,” Luce said shortly. “I need as many of the lieutenants as you think we can spare, Yuan. Because we have to write the humans a letter, and I want to make sure—that everybody basically agrees on what we should ask for.”

“I thought that was the easy part,” Yuan observed sardonically. “Like, oh, ‘We’d be ever so obliged if you gracious humans might consider, perhaps, refraining from making lethal holes in us with pointy objects? Thank you quite a lot, The Mermaids.’”

“I think . . . it shouldn’t be just about us. I mean the war.” Luce looked off at the skyline. Slices of their giant wave were reflected on the glassy sides of skyscrapers, creating the illusion that there were waterfalls frothing brightly in the center of downtown.

Yuan looked befuddled. “What else is it about?”

“I think . . . that’s why I need the lieutenants to come with us tonight. Because it’s a really big decision.”

Yuan flashed Luce a strange, skeptical smile. “You’re about to do something totally crazy and reckless, aren’t you?” She grinned, pausing for one long beat. “Well, you can count on me to help!”

Luce laughed gratefully; she was amazed to realize how much Yuan truly meant it. “Hey, Yuan? I’m sorry I snapped at you. About Seb.”

“Oh, ’sokay. I know you identify with rejects like that. Even though you’re so totally not that yourself!”

Luce opened her mouth and found she couldn’t answer. She wasn’t sure which part of Yuan’s observation surprised her most.

“Hey,” Yuan continued. “Do you want me to ask Catarina to come with us? It would be easy not to, like I could just make a big thing about leaving her in charge here. If you’d rather not deal with her.”

Luce was startled all over again. “Of course she should come with us! I mean, why wouldn’t I want her to?”

“I don’t know, because she seems like she’s always arguing with you? Like first she was so intense about you being in charge, but now it seems like she’s not a hundred percent on your team?” Yuan hesitated. “I hope I’m not making you mad again, Luce.”

“It’s okay.” Luce thought about it. “She does argue with me, Yuan. But I trust her a lot.” Catarina’s the one who doesn’t trust me, Luce thought. But she decided not to say that.

Yuan was staring at Luce with strange expectancy, her delicate mouth tensed as if it was crowded with words that she couldn’t quite bring herself to say. Her tail came up behind her in a single nervous flip. “Um, Luce? I’ve been thinking a lot about—about that thing you said.”

Luce tilted her head in perplexity. Had she offended Yuan somehow? “What thing?”

“That thing you said to me about the girl. The one I saved. Like, maybe you’re right that I don’t need to hate myself so much because I did that? And . . . I’ve been thinking about the person you saved, too.” Even as she spoke Yuan was turning away from Luce. Only one golden cheek was still visible, and it was blushing. “Catch you soon, general-girl.”

At first Luce felt relieved that Yuan was too embarrassed to continue the conversation—and then she felt a trace of something else, a tiny squirm of disappointment. What would happen if she did tell Yuan about her disastrous romance with Dorian?

And had she really helped Yuan feel better about her violation of the timahk, her fall from mermaid society? The clock at the Embarcadero glowed, and Luce passed a peculiar sculpture that appeared to be a giant’s bow firing an arrow into the ground.

Above the surface there was the brilliant city: below it the wings of rays, the fins of sharks, carved sensuous swoops from the darkness. Luce reached Seb’s pier with her thoughts still flowing around Yuan and the uncharacteristic vulnerability that had moved in her voice.

Soon twenty heads were floating just above the surface, the water webbed with spreading hair. Pools of milk-pale blond, caramel brown, and inky black were punctuated by Catarina’s shocking fiery amber. Seb was there, wearing a reasonably presentable navy suit jacket and a much less presentable tie with a pattern of scarlet elephants on it; Luce was touched at the thought that he was making an effort to dress up for his new role. He seemed to have trouble looking at the assembled mermaids for long and kept staring down at the rotten planks.

“So, um, General Luce?” It was Lieutenant Eileen, freckled and much less assertive than she’d seemed earlier. “Yuan filled us in a little bit, but I’m confused. I thought the whole idea of the wave was to just get the humans to back off, and it’s working great for that. But Yuan said—maybe you had some kind of bigger idea?”

“I do,” Luce said. “But I feel like—we’re all in this together. And what I want to do is going to make it a lot harder for us to win. So I think it wouldn’t be fair for me to insist on doing things my way. I wanted to ask you all —I mean, maybe you’ll agree . . .” Luce broke off, suddenly shy. Everyone was already struggling so hard and accepting such enormous risks because of her. How could she ask them for more than that?

“You said you thought it shouldn’t be just about us,” Yuan said. She was floating very close to Luce, and her gaze was oddly searching. “Like, of course you want the humans to stop killing us, but . . .”

“I do want them to stop killing mermaids,” Luce said. “But I also want them to stop killing the ocean.” A stunned silence followed her words, so Luce tried to explain. “I think the way humans treated us before we changed and the way they’re treating the world—they’re really not that different! When I was swimming down here I passed through this dead area where almost all the animals were just suffocated and rotting . . .” Luce heard that her voice was getting higher, sharp and fervent.

“And that’s why you don’t want to kill humans, Luce?” Catarina purred sardonically. “Because you’ve seen firsthand how much they destroy?”

“That is why!” Luce snapped. She saw the way everyone was staring at her. Of course it sounded like she was contradicting herself. “I mean,” Luce struggled to clarify, “if we kill them, then they’ll never get a chance to change.”

“So you’re saying you want them to stop global warming and stuff? Ice melting at the North Pole and the sea levels rising?” Yuan laughed. “I thought that was a problem when I was human, all right. Then after I hit the water I just thought, oh, hells yeah! More for us!”