The Twice Lost

“You want me to drown someone else for you?” Anais asked. “And then you’ll let me go?” She tilted her head, gazing blearily at the truck’s dark metal walls.

“Anais,” Moreland scolded. He waved a finger at her. “Do you think you’re worth so little to me? Do you really imagine I would give you up in exchange for a simple murder? And whenever I begin to forget how deeply your last effort disappointed me, that humanity-hating boy radical always seems to pop up on TV again at the head of another march, declaiming this, that, and the other. After that, Anais, do you think I would rely on your competence as a killer?”

Anais didn’t seem to be listening. She reeled slightly under the impact of his voice, but her eyes stayed dim and insensate. The neon orange water wings held her arms sloppily akimbo so that they dangled from the elbow. “Where?” Anais started vaguely. “Wait, where are we? Why am I, why did you . . .”

“You’re here to do something that could make a real difference in the world.” Could she pull it off? Suddenly he wasn’t entirely sure, but she was the only hope he had left. His voice thrummed; his heart heaved and stammered in his chest. “We’re two miles from Baltimore’s Harborplace. As I said, this a chance for you to earn your freedom. You’ve been so sad locked up, haven’t you? Promise me you’ll do this one thing for me, and I’ll—” He hesitated, nauseous at the prospect of losing control of her. But if everything went well tonight they would only be separated for a few hours, just a very few, and then . . .“I’ll release you into the harbor. You’ll do your job, and then you can choose the life you want next. Human or mermaid. It’s simple.”

Once everyone discovered he’d personally orchestrated the attack on the Twice Lost Army earlier that day, he’d assuredly lose much more than just his job. But Anais knew nothing about that, and in any case his plan would render such considerations quite irrelevant.

Her head rocked a little. “Baltimore? Can’t we go to Miami?”

“No, tadpole, we can’t. The mermaids of Baltimore only declared themselves members of the Twice Lost Army two days ago, and they’ve raised a feeble little excuse for a standing tsunami, at least compared to the one in San Francisco. They seem weak and disorganized, which suggests they might very well listen to a charming girl like you. And our intelligence network believes they haven’t contacted the local human population yet. It’s the best opportunity we could have. With any luck you’ll find them entirely ignorant of what happened today.”

“What happened today?” Anais repeated. She was distracted, her thoughts churning behind her eyes as she tried to make sense of everything he was saying. “What do you mean?”

“What you’ll tell the mermaids here is that you’ve just changed form. This very hour. You’ll explain that you saw an attack on the Twice Lost Army on TV immediately before you changed. Tell them that General Luce was captured and tortured to death in front of the cameras. I’d suggest you describe it, my dear, in sickening detail; describe precisely what you’d like to do to Luce yourself. Then tell them that just before she died she cried out the order for the mermaids of the world to release their waves and drown the cruel and treacherous humans.” Moreland tried to smile, but the ache in his chest and the musical throb in his mind sent his lips torquing into a strange sloping curl instead. He knew he looked hideous. “You’ll have to be very persuasive.”

“But . . . did that happen? Did Luce really say—”

“Suppose it happened. As far as you’re concerned, Anais, as far as winning your freedom goes, it absolutely happened. What do you care what the truth is?”

This had to end. Everything had to end; the music had to be stripped from the sea, from his mind, the murmuring enchantment purged, so that he could simply rest. Even prison would be a relief if it could lock out those voices.

But prison wouldn’t be enough. He already knew that.

Anais was still bleary from the drugs. It had the odd effect of making her calculations all the more apparent. Her sly smile advertised her thoughts so distinctly that, had their situation been less desperate, Moreland would have found it comical.

“Okay,” Anais chirped, her smile so oddly heavy that her mouth seemed carved from some impossibly dense stone. “I’ll do it. Exactly what you said.”

“How touching, Anais. I’m moved by your enthusiasm for your work. Whatever our differences, we’ve always come together to serve a greater cause, haven’t we?”

Anais nodded, too carefully, her smile unaltered. “I like being helpful.”

“Oh, I know, tadpole. I have hours of recordings that prove exactly how helpful you’ve been. And if I need to, I can play those recordings through loudspeakers at a very high volume, not just above the harbor in Baltimore but up and down both coasts. You know, in some of our conversations you expressed views that might be perceived as . . . perhaps a touch disloyal . . . to the great General Luce.”

It wasn’t true. He’d given explicit orders that none of his conversations with Anais be recorded—for reasons so obvious that Moreland worried even she might realize he had to be lying. No sane man would tape himself instructing a captive mermaid to commit a series of murders.

Maybe Anais was still under the influence of the sedatives. Or maybe she just didn’t think of him as sane. Either way, her face greened with dismay as the threat sank in. “They’ll tear me apart! If they hear anything—those things I told you—they’ll . . .”

“Ah, but they won’t have the slightest inkling of how you’ve helped me, tadpole. Because you’ll do exactly what I’ve told you to do. I’ll be waiting to see the results of your work. And then”— and then and then and then, darling Anais, you’ll be the one to cure me, to save me —”you’ll report back to me here, as soon as the water recedes enough to make the shore passable. Once you do that I’ll honor our agreement, and you’ll be entirely free of me for the rest of your life. Do you understand?”

She nodded.

Thank heavens, she nodded. And she didn’t even ask him why he wanted to see the Baltimore waterfront destroyed.

To her the urge for destruction must seem self-explanatory, Moreland thought. As natural as waves.

The truck was already parked so that its back end protruded over the harbor. Moreland swung the back door wide open, giving Anais her first view in months of lacquered violet water and star-shattered sky. A hot, humid sigh of late-August air brushed in while in the distance Baltimore’s new standing wave wobbled, starlight pitching on its unstable crest. He was short of breath, and there was an awkward lull as he struggled to heave himself onto the walkway. The steel edge dug into his belly as his legs kicked in midair.

Not that long ago he’d been so strong, so agile, his body swift and unpredictable and deadly. Just as Anais was still. As he righted himself on the platform he saw her glorious form hanging in the blue water like a twist of golden, blue-fringed flame. “Anais,” he said. His hand was on the lever now, poised to set her free.

She watched him with intense interest. “I used to think I hated Luce, sir,” Anais said suddenly. She delivered the word sir with a vehement sneer. Her azure fins switched. “But now maybe I actually like her.”

Anais waited for him to ask why her feelings had changed. He stared at her, breathing heavily, and didn’t oblige her with the question.

“I like her because she’s made you so miserable. And pathetic. And because she’s showed everybody what a loser you are. You’re so messed up and weak now, it’s even better than if Luce had drowned you. Because this way you’ve suffered for longer. And,” Anais added with a smirk, “I’ve gotten to watch it happening. Almost every day I’ve seen you getting more and more wrecked.”

Moreland smiled at her. His face felt slippery and distorted, wet and rotten. “A man can’t be more than a ship, Anais,” he said, without quite knowing what he meant by it. “A ship, a song, and a shore.” The words felt true even if he didn’t understand them. “Remember to take your jewelry and your shirt off. Before you swim out there. Otherwise those other mermaids won’t believe you’ve just changed.”

He grasped the lever tighter, dragging down with all his strength. The glass wall swung outward, disgorging a wild and sudden flood that sparked with the pink and azure of Anais’s racing tail, the gold of her streaking hair.

The violet water leaped as it received her. Moreland gazed down into dim lapping depths and saw nothing. To his left the masts of moored sailboats gouged black lines from the starry sky; he’d parked in a lonely spot near a boat club. Behind him a highway hissed and whispered.

Faintly, faintly, he could hear the mermaids singing. They were singing as they always did in the rough