The Twice Lost

heart charging and her nails digging into her palms until they were flecked with blood. This was Yuan’s choice to make, and no one had a right to interfere. By the time Yuan came stumbling out in a borrowed lilac sundress and bedroom slippers Luce’s face was slick with tears.

“I’m cool,” Yuan slurred. “Seriously, it’s not that bad.” Then she fainted into Gigi’s arms.

She’s alive, Luce told herself. She’ll be fine. That’s all that matters.

Silently some of the mermaids around her started handing larvae to the doctors. It was terrible to think of the infantile little mermaids suffering that way, but everyone knew it was better than the fate that waited for them in the ocean. As human children they could be adopted; they would grow up and possibly even find happiness. In the sea they’d be unlikely to survive for long.

The afternoon took on the feeling of an endless ceremony. Now and then a mermaid’s face would start to waver, crossed by alternating doubt and longing, and then she would nod to herself and call the doctors over, looking back at her friends who were still in the water with puzzled sorrow. It was hard to watch, but Luce knew that it would feel worse to swim away.

It was at least an hour before Luce realized that her father was there, well back in the crowd; she couldn’t tell if he’d just arrived or if he’d been standing there quietly all along. He looked older and sadder than he should, but he definitely didn’t seem crazy anymore.

He was watching Luce somberly, so lost in thought that he didn’t react when she smiled at him.

“Oh my God!” Elva screamed next to her. “Luce, look!”

Luce turned away from her father just for a moment. She couldn’t tell why Elva was splashing so excitedly and waving at a handsome human couple who were picking their way gingerly through the crowd.

Her father was gone when she looked for him again. Where was he?

Elva grabbed Luce’s arm and shook it ferociously. “Luce, don’t you see?”

Luce’s head swung in bewilderment. Elva was still pointing to the human couple: a tall slim man with a narrow, light brown, sharp-boned face. A remarkably beautiful redhead was leaning heavily on his arm. She was long-legged, wearing teal cowboy boots and skinny black jeans with a fuzzy sea green sweater—and when she met Luce’s eyes her foot halted in midair. If her boyfriend hadn’t held her by her narrow waist she might have fallen.

Luce heard herself gasp. That lovely girl looked horribly similar to Catarina; she even looked at her with Catarina’s gray, wounded eyes.

“Catarina!”

Suddenly Elva wasn’t the only mermaid screaming. Voices were shouting on all sides, “Catarina! Cat! Cat! Cat!” It was becoming a chant now, but Luce still couldn’t quite believe it. Her insides were watery, roiling; her heart seemed to be caught in a whirlpool.

The redhead slowly approached as if she couldn’t hear the clamoring voices, and her eyes never left Luce’s for a moment. Her steps were unsteady, and Luce briefly wondered if she’d hurt her legs somehow.

“Cat?” Luce couldn’t believe she’d said that name.

The redhead didn’t smile, but now that she was closer there did seem to be a subtle green-golden cast to her skin. She was at the line of rocks separating the parking lot from the bay when she staggered and dropped to her knees.

Luce didn’t know she was reaching wildly forward until her hand found the redhead’s hand in midair and squeezed it. “Oh God, Cat . . .”

“I’m sorry, Luce. I know the things I said to you were unfair and unkind. I hope we can be reconciled.” Catarina delivered the words as if she’d rehearsed them, her voice clipped and formal. Beside her the dark young man knelt too, gazing at Catarina with ardent tenderness.

Luce started sobbing. She didn’t care that humans and mermaids were staring at her or that she might seem weak. Sobs wrenched from her so fiercely that she thought they might tear out her heart. She clutched Catarina’s hand above the row of stones and wept from gratitude.

Catarina laughed. Not harshly but with relieved delight. “I didn’t know if I should dare to come here! I was afraid you would be disgusted at the sight of me, my Lucette. Rafe told me that wasn’t true. He said you would be overjoyed to know I lived. He said it was important that we meet again, you and I. I had to wait until your treaty was signed to gain my freedom, but then I was terrified to show my face here. For hours Rafe persuaded me.”

Luce looked at Rafe through her tears and reached out her free hand to him. “Thank you,” was all she could say.

Rafe grinned. “You’re very welcome, general. It wasn’t hard at all for me to believe you still loved Catarina.”

He went for a walk while Luce and Catarina talked and sometimes cried, their words coming fast and overlapping, oblivious to the world around them. It didn’t take Luce long to notice how often Catarina said Rafe’s name and how her eyes seemed to deepen whenever she mentioned him. It was strange after all of Catarina’s vehement hatred for humans, but this was unmistakable. “Are you in love with him, Cat?” Luce asked.

“I never knew there were such people. I did not imagine a man like Rafe could be possible, Lucette! If you knew the humans I grew up with, if you had met my parents or those men who bought me, you would understand why I believed all humans were bestial. Vile. To learn so late . . .” Catarina shook her head and let out a plaintive laugh. “But Rafe says that all of us base our conclusions on our experience and that I could not be expected to do otherwise. Still, when I think I would have gladly drowned him, removed such a great heart from the world without a thought, I feel . . . as I suppose you sometimes felt, Lucette. I can only focus on the future so that shame won’t consume me.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Attend university. First I must complete intensive studies, though. I can only read the Cyrillic alphabet that is used for Russian, for one thing; I never learned yours.” Catarina’s gaze was momentarily far away. “When I finish my education, I want to work . . . on behalf of girls like me.”

For a fraction of a second Luce thought she meant ex-mermaids. Then she realized it wasn’t that at all.

Catarina completed the thought. “I mean, girls who were sold.”

Luce nodded. “That sounds like a completely amazing thing to do, Cat.”

Dusk was falling. Catarina was starting to glance around, and Luce knew her former queen was waiting for the man she loved to reappear. It was both heartbreaking and wonderful to realize how soon Catarina would stand up and walk away with him. And, Luce knew, there was something she had to ask first. “Um, Cat? Do you miss being in the ocean?” Luce hesitated, afraid that she might make Catarina angry. “I mean, are you sorry you changed back?”

Catarina glanced at her sharply, as if she guessed why Luce was asking this particular question. “Miss the ocean? Of course I do, Luce. I didn’t choose to be made human again. Humanity was forced on me. And yet I choose it now, now that I know what it can mean.” She smiled ruefully. “All I’m sorry for is that I have to use a name that comes from my father.”

Suddenly Rafe was there, listening and smiling to himself. Luce hadn’t noticed him approaching, but now he reached to lift Catarina to her feet. “In a few years,” Rafe said softly, “we might change that.”

Catarina paused to say hello to a few of the other mermaids, Rafe close beside her. Then she looked around: mermaids and humans were talking and laughing together under the hazy rust-colored glow of scattered streetlamps. Yuan slept in a lawn chair with her head on Gigi’s shoulder, her slippered feet sticking out from under a blanket, while well-wishers stopped by with gifts of clothes and books to help Yuan make the transition to her new life. Catarina glanced back at Luce. “It’s all your song, Luce. It’s your song come to life!”

“How do you mean?” Luce asked. Catarina looked magnificent and brave standing there, and also somehow much more grown-up than she’d ever seemed before. Her hair no longer shone with its own internal luminance, but it still flowed like fire in the lamplight.

“Your song always promised forgiveness, Luce, don’t you remember? It promised forgiveness and reconciliation so sweet that people would joyfully die for it.” Catarina smiled wryly at her. “Who would have thought that any mermaid’s promise would be so truly fulfilled?”

* * *

The scene at the shore had turned into a party. Mermaids were singing to the water, not to raise a blockade