The Twice Lost

around her didn’t reveal anything. With her there was no horrifying story displayed in a language of winking darkness. That made her different from other mermaids; all the others were marked forever by flickering images of whatever heartbreaking event had stolen their humanity from them. Anais had always been glad to be set apart from the pathetic, broken girls she lived with in the sea. But in a situation like the one she was going into now, a distinguishing feature like that might be dangerous. She needed a story of her own personal horror, and she needed to describe it with enough shaken, vulnerable intensity that the mermaids might start to think they could see it happening when they gazed into her shimmer—or at least feel bad about not seeing it.

Anais thought for a moment and chose the story she would tell.

On her face the emotions she’d selected shifted and flowed: grief, consternation, denial. She was ready. She came up and sighted the high, palpating wave heaved up as an imperfect barricade across the harbor’s narrow mouth and made for it. Pale lilac dawn glazed a tangle of freeways with dripping blue; on the other side of the harbor some kind of old fort loomed in a mass of sullen gray. It would be better if she didn’t swim straight up to the Twice Lost mermaids who were singing under that wave; instinct told Anais that it would be more convincing if they found her instead. She swished closer, stopping some fifty yards away from the wave’s base. Then she let her body go limp in the water, and let out a few wild, stabbing, fragmented notes. Just as if she hadn’t yet developed any control over her voice. Just as if the power of her own singing terrified her.

As she’d known it would, that outburst of music brought two mermaid guards dashing over so quickly that she hardly saw them arrive: a sweet-faced younger girl with hair streaked in shades of deep gold and soft caramel and a thin, nervous brunette, maybe seventeen or so, who looked at Anais guardedly. Anais gaped back at them with assumed terror and then shook her head violently and threw her hands over her eyes. “Oh, God,” she moaned. “Oh, God, this just can’t be real!”

“Hey,” the younger girl soothed. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re going to be okay! We’re here to help you. My name is Sadie, okay? We’ll be friends. You don’t need to be scared.”

Anais peeked between her fingers, then howled and covered her eyes again. “Oh, no! I don’t know what this is, and I don’t know what you are.” A stolen glimpse told her that she’d miscalculated; Sadie’s tender look had altered into a flash of skeptical surprise. Of course: everybody in the world knew that mermaids were real now. “I mean, I guess you’re mermaids like everyone is talking about, but I just can’t believe this is happening to me! After what my uncle did—I couldn’t take it anymore! But I never thought—”

Sadie and the brunette mermaid both responded to Anais’s statement on cue, turning their heads to gaze sideways into the dark, cloudy sparking hovering around the newcomer. “That’s so weird,” the brunette murmured after a moment. “I can’t see anything. Sadie, can you?”

Anais lowered her hands enough that she could watch the two strangers. Sadie’s lips were compressed and her brows were drawn; a shadow danced in her eyes. “I can’t. I’ve never seen anything like this! Paige, I’m not sure . . .”

There was only one way to deal with this. Anais burst into frantic tears. “He kept hitting me whenever he got drunk, but this time . . . this time he . . . oh, I can’t say it! And I was so, so scared, because I knew . . . if I stayed, he’d try it again! Oh, God,” Anais sobbed, then carefully dropped her voice into a whimper. “Please help me.”

“Of course we’ll help you!” Paige cried. Her arm was already wrapped protectively around Anais’s shoulder. “Mermaids always help each other, okay? And your uncle won’t find you, and we won’t let anyone hurt you ever again!”

Sadie bit her lip and didn’t say anything. That was okay, Anais thought; she could work with one sympathizer to start with. She leaned against Paige and cried harder.

“But . . .” Anais sputtered. “But you can’t promise that! They’ll come for us, and they’ll catch me and hurt me. I know it! Just like they did today, when they caught General Luce . . .”

For several seconds Paige and Sadie didn’t react to that at all apart from the glazed look that came over them. Then Sadie’s hand shot out and gripped Anais’s shoulder dangerously. “You’d better explain what you’re talking about right now!”

“Sadie,” Paige whispered urgently. “Sadie, calm down. We’d better take her to Lieutenant Tricia. That way she can explain to everyone at once.”

Sadie was glowering, her mouth opening to speak, when Anais yowled abruptly and cut her off. “Oh, God, you mean you don’t know? But I can’t be the one to tell you; I just can’t say it. It was so, so terrible! She died so slowly, and they kept on . . . kept on . . .”

Sadie’s sunset-colored tail was lashing in vexation. It reminded Anais that her fins should be flicking, too. “She’s lying,” Sadie hissed. “Paige, I can tell!”

Anais did her best to look wounded. She began rippling her tail so vigorously that her whole body gyrated.

“Why would she lie about something like that!” Paige yelled. “Sadie, nobody would just make that up. Why —if those filthy humans killed General Luce, we’re going to make them pay for that! Come on. You have to explain everything to Lieutenant Tricia. I don’t care how hard it is for you to talk about it!”

Anais went slack in the water, passively letting the two strangers grab her by both arms and drag her toward the glimmering, upright wave. Serene golden light rose like a mist on the horizon, and the wave concentrated the dawn’s glow into brilliant pleats and falling streamers of unbearable purity. Below the wave was the line of mermaids, their hands linked except now and then when one of them broke free and rose to the surface for air. And in the center of the line was a harsh-looking girl with vivid green eyes and ash brown hair who had to be Lieutenant Tricia. There was something in Tricia’s look—something stubborn, furious, and full of raw, unexamined emotion—that made Anais think she might be in luck. She shot Anais a hard, slightly contemptuous look. But for all Tricia’s apparent toughness Anais detected a quiver deep inside it: Tricia was already fighting a continuous undercurrent of panic.

The way to deal with Tricia would be to channel her fear and feed it back to her until it amplified into hysteria.

“So who’s this?” Tricia barked. “The last thing I want now is to get stuck training some sad little newbie!”

“We didn’t ask her name,” Paige groaned. “Tricia, she says—”

Tricia nodded brusquely. “We’ll get to that. What’s your name, new girl?”

Again a tremor of instinct warned Anais in time. “I’m Regina. I— Oh, no, you’ll be so angry when you hear what they did to General Luce, and maybe you’ll blame me for telling you . . .” Anais deliberately sent her voice wavering higher.

“I bet Regina’s not even her real name,” Sadie muttered. “Tricia, listen . . .”

“To General Luce?” Tricia burst out, and Sadie fell silent. Anais could feel the agitation she’d put into her tone moving through Tricia like a transfusion of tainted blood. “Regina, you start talking right now! Who—did they dare—our general—we’ll—”

Some of the mermaids began deserting their places in the row to find out what was happening. As the crowd thickened the wave began to totter. Eager, reckless girls pressed in, clamoring with questions, and Tricia’s obvious anxiety danced and dabbled over them like a living, serpentine thing.

Anais allowed herself to shoot Sadie a look of such dark triumph that, if any of the others had seen it, it would have given her away completely. Sadie’s indignant cry was instantly lost in the uproar.

“Everybody shut up!” Tricia yelled. “Just shut up and listen! Our general, our great general, she’s—”

“Dead,” Anais moaned dramatically. “General Luce is dead! Whenever she was just about to finally die they would pour some water on her scales and then she would start slowly drying out all over again! They did it live on TV, to send us a message they said, and it went on for hours! I’ve never seen anything so, so terrible! And right when she was dying she said that trying to make peace with humans had been a big mistake!”

“A message?” Tricia shrieked. “We’ll send them a message right back! We’ll