The Twice Lost

“He could not. If he spoke more than he should, he did so naively, with no intent to harm you. Luce, I know him.”

“I thought I knew him, too!”

“You know him still. Your pride and your hurt prevent you from seeing what you know. You make blind your own thoughts, and they wander in the darkness.”

If it had been anyone but Nausicaa who had said that to her, Luce would have felt nothing but resentment. As it was, her tail was beating the water into a froth, and she twisted out of Nausicaa’s embrace. “You’d rather make up some crazy story about Anais than admit you were wrong about someone—some human. You know why I’m glad I didn’t drown Dorian, Nausicaa? Because he didn’t even deserve the honor of being killed by me—after how shallow he turned out to be! He —”

Nausicaa burst out laughing uncontrollably, and Luce fell into an annoyed silence. Then, as Nausicaa kept on giggling, Luce found herself breaking into a responsive grin. Maybe she was being a little overdramatic. “Oh, such pride you have now, Queen Luce! I cannot begrudge you. You’ve earned this new arrogance, I admit that. But—”

Nausicaa couldn’t keep talking. She was laughing too hard again.

And, to Luce’s surprise, she felt grateful to Nausicaa for laughing at her. “Okay, maybe you’re right about Anais, Nausicaa. Maybe. But that doesn’t mean Dorian hasn’t been trying to hurt me—to get some kind of revenge! They could both—”

“Ah, Luce.” Nausicaa had finally mastered her laughter. “Dawn will be with us soon. You must teach me your way of singing so that the water will understand me and answer my voice. And I must learn your methods of teaching as well. Clearly, the next great task falls to me. Much as it will pain me to leave you again . . .”

Luce couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You can’t leave! Nausicaa, you—are you just trying to upset me? You can’t actually mean that!”

Nausicaa gazed at her strangely, almost speculatively. “We need each other, Luce. I am more aware of this than ever.”

“Then how can you even talk about—”

“But, as truly as you need me beside you, your struggle needs me more. Think of what I can do for the Twice Lost! At present, you and your followers here are alone in this battle, isolated in this bay, without support. The humans have only this one group to overcome and then everything you strive for will be destroyed. But I am accustomed to traveling great distances. I speak so many languages that their words tangle like brambles in my mind, and I am known well to hundreds of mermaid queens throughout the world.”

Luce was beginning to understand Nausicaa’s reasoning. She just didn’t want to understand it. “So you’re saying—you’ll go teach what we can do to other tribes?” Of course mermaids in other countries probably needed a way to defend themselves just as desperately as the Twice Lost did, or else they would very soon.

“More than that, dearest Luce. I will carry your skill to distant tribes, yes, so that they are not entirely helpless against these helmeted soldiers. But more than that, I will spread your movement and your goals. The humans will soon have more than just the dock mermaids of San Francisco to contend with!” Nausicaa laughed again, a little harshly.

“Dock mermaids?” Luce wasn’t entirely happy with Nausicaa’s tone; there’d been an audible breath of disdain in it.

“Strange enough, but this is true the world over, Luce. Those mermaids outcast by their own kind gather at the margins of great human cities. They hide themselves between the two worlds, in the shadows there, under the docks or factories or in half-sunk ships. Breakers of the timahk most often become dock mermaids just like these you know.”

“You know you broke the timahk too,” Luce pointed out. Nausicaa had spoken with Dorian at least twice— and those were just the violations Luce knew about. In three thousand years, there might have been others.

Nausicaa hesitated. “I did.”

“And so did I. I’m a dock mermaid too!”

Nausicaa smiled at Luce, her expression wry and thoughtful, and reached to stroke her hair. For several seconds neither of them spoke. “Then I will travel to the dock mermaids first, Queen Luce. The outcast mermaids of this world will be your vanguard. The Twice Lost will be the ones who create the mermaids’ future.”

Luce looked at her. “And after the war—if there is any ‘after’, Nausicaa, if we live? Then . . .”

Nausicaa smiled, but there a shadow seemed to flit behind her eyes. “Then we may still have Proteus to contend with, Queen Luce. I cannot imagine that the god who gave the mermaids their form and their destiny will take kindly to your defiance of the timahk. The first mermaids, the Unnamed Twins, know me as an old friend, but even they might refuse to listen to me speak in your defense. You have not merely broken our law for yourself, after all.”

Luce barely registered the words. “But I need to know what you’ll do after the war, Nausicaa! I don’t care what Proteus does.”

“I will not part from you again.”

It all made sense. Nausicaa was obviously making the right decision for everyone; Luce could almost accept that. At least, she could accept it until she pictured Nausicaa swimming away from her again. Then her emotions all roiled in rebellion, wild with unreasonable urges to somehow force Nausicaa to stay with her, no matter the cost.

Water dripped from the rotting planks, and dull gray light suffused the morning sky. Nausicaa’s singing lessons would have to wait.

It was almost time to report to the bridge.

* * *

Soon she and Nausicaa swam close enough to the bridge to feel the water trembling against their skin from that overwhelming song. There were the usual animals: clouds of weaving blackish fish and scarf-winged rays— and, up above, something Luce didn’t recognize. She felt a quick impulse of fear. Maybe whatever was floating on the surface was some new weapon or a trap. There were dangling lines at its base that might be the wires of some strange bomb. She surfaced at a cautious distance to take a look at it.

Roses. It was messy bouquet of pale pink roses, balloons tied among them to make them float. Those trailing things Luce had taken for wires were actually curled white ribbons. Some human, Luce decided, must have dropped them in the water by accident. Beside her, Nausicaa gazed quizzically at the flowers.

Cala appeared at her elbow and prodded the bouquet. “They’ve started throwing us presents.” She sounded somewhere between exasperated and wearily amused. “The humans on shore, I mean. And they keep calling out, trying to get us to come talk to them, General Luce. Nobody knows what to do! And that’s not even the worst thing—” Suddenly her tone veered close to hysteria.

“What is this worst thing?” Nausicaa asked.

“I’ll . . .” Cala started. “I guess I should just show you. We’re all staying under the surface as much as we can because every time they notice one of us they freak, and no one knows how to react.”

On the San Francisco side, the bridge’s base was joined by a large parking lot. As usual these days it was packed with people. Some of them had started bringing folding chairs with them or else simply sat on the pavement with their eyes closed and their heads thrown back, rapt in the shimmering music of hundreds of mermaid voices joined together. But there were others who pressed purposely forward, some with mouths wide open but soundless, their expressions eager or ravenous or crazed. Luce, Nausicaa, and Cala had surfaced some twenty yards from shore, and at the sight of them the watchers squeezed together at the water’s edge began shouting desperately, waving their arms to beckon the mermaids closer.

Dozens of police wearing headphones stood stiffly among the listeners; Luce didn’t understand why they were there until a tall young woman with a mohawk leaped into the water only to be promptly hauled out and dragged away in handcuffs.

And, Luce realized, some of the humans onshore were carrying signs. At first glance they might have been mistaken for the kind of signs people carry at a political demonstration. But at the second . . .