The Twice Lost

going to cause terrible problems for humans, too, so what we’re asking is really for your own good.’”

Luce looked around again. Seb was grimacing, and Catarina had her head tipped back and an aloof, sarcastic look on her face. But Yuan nodded carefully. “I think that sounds pretty good. Just something to finish up. Like they taught me in school, you want to end with something that sticks in the reader’s mind.”

Luce thought again then continued the letter. “‘We’re all kids. The oldest mermaids I know were only seventeen or eighteen years old when they changed form. I was in eighth grade. Why do we have to be the adults here?’”

“Will they take us seriously,” Eileen asked, “if we tell them that?”

Yuan grinned. “How are we giving them the option of not taking us seriously? Like, ‘Guys? Hey, you’ve noticed there’s this little issue with your ships getting out to sea these days, right? ’”

Luce shook herself a little. “Does everybody agree? We should sign this?”

Another brief silence followed. “Go ahead,” Eileen said at last. “We’re in it; we might as well be really in.”

Luce lifted the pen again, ready to sign General Luce. But—shouldn’t she remind everyone, her father especially, who she really was? The pen whipped into motion, and Luce’s heart surged with some strange mixture of pride and bitterness. “‘Sincerely, General Lucette Gray Korchak, The Twice Lost Army.’”

That brought on a wave of agitated murmurs. “Your human name, Luce?” Imani whispered.

“It’s not my human name,” Luce said, a little stiffly. “It’s just my name.”

Catarina’s tail swung up above the surface and slapped back down hard, spattering salt water across everyone and leaving tiny rounds of blurred ink on the letter. “Luce! You must remember. When you first changed, you must remember how I told you—”

“I remember that you told me I didn’t need my whole name anymore, Cat,” Luce announced. “I also remember that you never asked me how I felt about that.”

Catarina’s mouth went round with a mixture of surprise and anger; she seemed to be on the verge of some outburst. Then after a moment she closed it again.

“Luce?” Imani said gently. “Can I see that pen?”

Luce gave it to her. Imani slid over in front of the letter and stared for just an instant. Then she wrote, Lieutenant Imani Michaela Portman.

“Oh my God.” Yuan exhaled the words. “I can’t do that, Luce! I mean, my old last name—that was my father’s name. I was so, so glad to ditch that and—”

“It’s okay,” Luce said. “Everybody should sign with whatever name they feel is right.”

Soon the bottom of the paper was covered in a dark lace of signatures. Most of the mermaids stuck to their first names, but there were a few who followed Luce’s and Imani’s example. “It’s so weird to even think of my old name again,” a slender blonde murmured as she inscribed the name Lieutenant Natasha Elizabeth Lindberger. “Like one of those dogs you read about that finds their owner three thousand miles away.”

Natasha was the last mermaid to sign. Seb sighed. “Should I scribble that up too?”

Luce looked at him. “Will you?”

Seb knelt on the planks. His coarse hand lifted the pen from Natasha’s dimly luminous fingers. Twice Lost Ambassador Sebastian Grassley.

“Okay,” Luce said. Even more than meeting Dorian, than becoming general, than raising a standing tsunami under the Golden Gate Bridge—this moment felt new, volatile, radiating unpredictable consequences. A thousand possible hideous endings, and as many astonishing beginnings, might unravel from this moment at this broken- down pier under the dark-eyed night. “Seb, you have a new job to do.”

He nodded, then folded the letter and tucked it carefully in a pocket inside his jacket. “Get this out there, right? Copies got to go to TV networks, newspapers, the White House . . .”

“Send it out,” Luce agreed. She felt breathless. “Send it everywhere you can. Soon everyone is going to know what we’re fight- ing for.”

Seb nodded and walked off abruptly. Luce watched him go, his hunched figure illuminated at intervals by the pooled glow of the streetlamps, sorry at the thought that she hadn’t really thanked him. Cala was farther out at the end of the pier, watching something that Luce couldn’t see because of the pilings in the way. “Hey,” Cala called, a bit suspiciously. “I don’t know you. Are you with the Twice Lost?”

“Not yet,” a voice replied. Luce felt something opening deep inside her, a longing so profound that it felt like an incurable wound. “I would ask to join with you. I have heard reports of your great general, the one whose voice the water answers and who shares her skill with all unstintingly, the one who will not be called queen, who leads us in defiance of humans and gods alike, and who will change from the quick the very meaning of being a mermaid . . .”

Luce let out a half-sung shriek. The water followed her voice in an explosive fountain, and foam spattered down like heavy snow.

She tried to speak, and failed. Instead she screamed again, her voice carrying all the love and joy and frantic gratitude that she could not yet make herself shape into a name.

A dark bronze figure with massy coils of black hair swam into view and smiled at her.

Nausicaa.

24 Reunion

Nausicaa had never been particularly inclined to show affection through hugging or touch, but that didn’t stop Luce. She leaped from the water, her tail breaching and thrashing in midair, and knocked Nausicaa several feet backwards as she crashed down and embraced her. They spoke fast but softly, their voices rushing over and through each other. “Nausicaa! Nausicaa, I didn’t know if you would ever . . .”

“Dearest Luce, I promised I would find you again . . .”

“I wanted to keep looking for you, so much, but then . . . I needed to try to change things here, and . . .”

“You have done exactly as you ought to, Luce. Exactly as I always dreamed you would. I knew what I saw in you, and I was not mistaken . . .”

“But if it hadn’t been for you, I never could have done any of it. There were so many times . . . while you were away from me, Nausicaa, you . . .”

“Yes, Luce?”

“While you were away, you saved me so many times!” Luce was suddenly, giddily aware that that might sound like another contradiction. How could she explain that Nausicaa’s remembered voice had come for her again and again, always just when she needed it most?

Nausicaa was beaming, her green-black eyes starry with tears. “You should allow yourself more credit, Luce. But I’m thankful if I’ve helped you.”

“No, you don’t know how much, Nausicaa! There was this ice floe and I would have let go and drowned if . . . if I hadn’t been thinking of you. And I would have killed Dorian, except I remembered what you said to me. And—”

Luce broke off, appalled by the bitter tang of Dorian’s name on her lips—and just as abruptly realized that all her lieutenants were listening. Catarina’s face looked greenish, her eyes narrowed and her mouth misshapen. Even Yuan was scowling. Luce realized with a jolt that not everyone there would be delighted by the arrival of this darkly powerful newcomer. “Everybody—this is Nausicaa. She came to Alaska after you left, Cat. We—got to be friends. She’s a really great singer, and she’ll be a big help.”

Nausicaa tilted her head and smiled politely at Catarina’s glowering face. “Hello, Catarina. Luce spoke of you often.”

“We’ve already met, Nausicaa,” Catarina snarled.

Nausicaa started. For a moment her face went completely blank and confused, then she looked up at the