The Twice Lost

sealed pit of his mind.

But now they also sang in the sweet dilating sky that knew nothing of him.

32 Catarina Ivanovna Smekhov

The room had bars covering its single window, but apart from that it could have been a room in a hospital. The sky beyond the bars was the blue of late evening. She was lying in a plain, clean, very white bed, wearing some sort of equally white nightgown. The dry powdery feeling of the sheet covering her was horrible, but she didn’t move to throw it off. What would be revealed would surely be even worse than the revolting sensation of cloth on skin. Apart from the bed there was a night table and a chrome armchair with olive cushions. A half- opened door showed a small bathroom. And of course there was another door near the foot of the bed. That one was closed, naturally. It would be locked.

Just in case, though, she should check. The question was whether she could reach it without glimpsing the horror concealed by the sheet, without sensing more of its configuration than she absolutely had to. Catarina inhaled deeply, reaching for courage.

Only a moment later, she found herself obliged to breathe again. Her lungs intruded on her consciousness and demanded it.

She became furiously aware of the continuous, repetitive wheezing of breath into her chest, instead of single breaths spaced far apart as they ought to be. With a simple act of will, couldn’t she make her breathing stop? Catarina closed her eyes and pictured the deep green of the Bering Sea crossed by fans of sunlight. She pictured her fingers spreading out, parting the sun into rays; submerged cliffs whipping past beside her; water like streamers in her hair. She could stay here in this glassy airlessness for a long, long time. She simply wouldn’t allow herself to surface, no matter how that aching pressure swelled inside her, no matter—

Catarina gasped, and her eyes flashed wide as breath tore through her again. Her vision of the sea abandoned her, and instead she saw the pale, oppressive walls. She completely forgot the door. If the air kept on invading her in this insulting way, she would never be able to return to the sea. She’d never be able to forget what had happened to her body: this sudden deformity.

Breath was the first thing she had to conquer. Everything else could wait. She squeezed her eyes tight again, pulled a pillow halfway over her face, and dived into her dream of water . . . She’d swim deep, far down where the light turned thick and somber, where a whale might pass within reach of her trailing hand.

There was no need to head for the surface. Not for at least half an hour, at least . . .

“I’m sorry if we’ve been neglecting you,” someone said.

Catarina exhaled with such force that bile rose into her mouth for a moment. Her face was hot and damp, and she was ready to scream from frustration. She didn’t move the pillow to see who had spoken, but she did notice the sound of the door closing again.

“It’s incredible. We have an actual lieutenant from the Twice Lost Army staying with us, and everyone’s so caught up in the drama of the moment that they can’t even come check up on you,” the someone continued. It was a man, probably fairly young. Catarina found his nervous, placating tone distinctly annoying. “I guess the first thing is, can I get you anything to eat? What would you like? I can order delivery from twenty different places, so please don’t hesitate . . .”

Catarina threw the pillow away from her face and sat up slightly. The man stopped talking.

Young but not that young. Perhaps thirty. Moderately good-looking, with light brown skin and neat black hair and a strong, narrow face with prominent bones: not quite what she would consider handsome. Still, he was attractive enough that Catarina couldn’t help thinking that, if circumstances were different, she might enjoy drowning him. “Murderer,” Catarina murmured. “I need nothing from you.”

The man recoiled, wide-eyed. “Of course. You could only think that. But what happened to your . . . companions, the attack with the net, that was completely unauthorized. That’s why everything here is in such chaos. No one understands what happened or where that order to attack came from. There seemed to be two conflicting executive orders given at the same time, but one of them was faked. I have to say, your general showed remarkable strength of character in her response. We were all watching the whole thing on television, expecting the wave to come smashing down at any moment, and we were all stunned when General Luce refused to give in. It made a tremendous impression. She was faced with such a tragic, such an impossible choice . . .”

Catarina leaned her head heavily against the wall. Somehow in the brief time since she’d regained consciousness she hadn’t remembered the other mermaids in the net with her at all: their suffering the same as hers but still impossibly remote; their writhing and dying the same as hers, shared and yet incomprehensible. Their dying: that was what this man was talking about. All of the others must have died. And she, somehow . . . She’d heard that in very rare cases mermaids could survive leaving the water, but she hadn’t quite believed it. And why would she be the exception?

When she’d called this man a murderer she hadn’t been thinking of the other mermaids at all but only of herself. Of those two grotesque, suggestive bulges she could see running down the lower half of the bed . . . Hot shame rose in her face, confused and horrible. Her mouth was full of a strange sensation, something like burning pins.

“The president has already conveyed his apologies to your general for the loss of life. But—you could say that’s only a formality—any talk of tragedy is a formality—but the mermaids aren’t alone in grieving for what happened today. Much of the country is united in mourning for your friends. Catarina, I promise you that . . .”

She couldn’t let herself cry in front of this stranger. A hot, buffeting force was rising inside her, and its unwelcome winds were salty with tears.

“Lieutenant Catarina, I mean. I certainly don’t want you to think I don’t respect your rank.”

“Please leave me.” She could barely manage the words. Her throat felt raw; she’d screamed so long, so wildly.

“I’m . . . not sure you should be left alone, lieutenant.”

“I am not a lieutenant,” Catarina muttered.

“But . . . General Luce introduced you that way. On the news, immediately after the wave first went up. I’m sure I recognize you.”

“Luce was wrong. She is often wrong. Mermaids died today because Luce was wrong.”

The man pursed his lips as if he wanted to start an argument, but then he shook his head. “Just Catarina is good, then?”

“Queen Catarina.”

He’d been standing at the foot of her bed the whole time, but somehow her reply moved him to walk closer—it was almost unbearable to see those stalklike legs scissoring along, to think of her own body—then pulled the olive chair to her bedside and sat down, watching her with focused speculation. “I’m Rafe Naimier. Honestly I’d probably be more comfortable just calling you Catarina. Calling anyone queen doesn’t come too naturally to me. Can you live with that?”

Catarina kept her face turned away from him. The bed was made of white metal bars. Through the bars she could see plaster, also white and covered with small round blobs like bubbles rising in water.

“Can I ask you something? If you don’t think of yourself as a lieutenant, then do you consider Luce a general? I noticed that you called her simply Luce just now, without her title.”

“No. Luce is not my general.” Catarina thought of the net, the astonishing pain in her tail, and the scrape of scales against her back and lips as the mermaids around her shuddered and died. She must have lost consciousness at some point; her memory gave away to dark bewilderment. Now the cold metal of this bed frame was digging into her cheek. “So many of us are dead. To call Luce a general—it doesn’t help the ones who died in that net. The word has no meaning.”