The Twice Lost

36 Cresting the Wave

Imani’s voice was so soft that Luce didn’t understand at first how effectively her friend was taking charge. “Graciela, you need to swim as fast as you can to the Mare Island camp. Wake up everyone there and tell them it’s time to evacuate. Get everybody here right away, okay? But you need to keep calm so they don’t panic; we don’t know for sure yet that the humans will attack us. And Yuan, I think you’re the best one to go to all the little hidden camps; you know better than anybody where all of them are. We need to get every mermaid in the bay inside the wave or under it, now. That way we’ll all be close to open sea, and the humans won’t be able to trap us in here. Okay?”

Graciela looked at Luce for confirmation of these unexpected orders, and Luce nodded heavily. “I think Imani’s right. That’s the best thing we can do.” It was a good plan—and after everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours it was an immense relief to have someone else assume the work of leadership. Graciela and Yuan saluted and darted off, their quick forms gliding under the water-wall and back into the far recesses of the bay.

“Luce?” Imani murmured. She was gently leading Luce forward. The smooth, ascending wave rippled gracefully, whorls of wandering light caught inside it in glimmering suspension. “I hope you don’t think I was out of line, I mean by giving orders that way? I didn’t mean to act like I was the general. I just did it because, after everything you’ve been through, I thought you probably needed a break.”

All Luce wanted was to lean her head on Imani’s shoulder and forget the world. “Thank you, Imani. You were right.” Luce hesitated, watching the golden curls cast by far-off streetlamps climbing high through the towering water-wall. The sweet vibrato of mermaid song mingled with the disturbing clamor of humans weeping and shouting on the bridge above. Luce had briefly lived in Baltimore years before, and she pictured the city reduced to sea-battered ruins. With the time difference it was probably well after dawn there, and the morning light would sharply expose the full extent of the destruction. “Imani, I don’t think I should be general anymore. I think I’m . . . really broken now. After . . .”

Luce couldn’t finish the sentence, but Imani’s dark eyes flashed with understanding. “If you were broken you wouldn’t be able to heal anyone else, Luce. And you just did.”

Strangely, Imani’s words provoked a kind of rebellious weariness in Luce. Those kind words struck Luce as almost disrespectful, as if they showed that Imani didn’t take Catarina’s death entirely to heart. Imani was still guiding her forward and now the vertical sheets of water gleamed only a few yards ahead.

“Hey, Luce?” Imani asked softly.

Luce turned. The expression of Imani’s mouth was uncharacteristically mischievous, but her usual deep tenderness still glowed in her midnight eyes. “Yes?” Luce asked.

“Are you serious? You want me to give the orders tonight? Because if you mean it, I’ve got an order for you right now.”

Luce tipped her head, feeling weak and incredulous and—in spite of herself—quickened by curiosity. “What is it?”

Imani’s grin widened impishly. She looked lovelier than ever, Luce thought, even if her delight seemed incomprehensible. “That’s what I like to hear! Okay, I don’t want you to sing to the water tonight, Luce. I have a way more important job for you. It’s something only you can do too.”

Luce waited. The vibrancy of Imani’s smile was starting to affect her just a bit, as if flecks of joy dappled the surface of her despondency.

Imani raised one arm and pointed high above. It took Luce a moment to realize that Imani was indicating the raging human mob lined up along the bridge. “Don’t sing to hold up the wave. The rest of us can do that. Sing to them instead.”

Luce swayed from disbelief. “Imani! There’s no way—you can’t mean—” When their situation was so sad and desperate, when the humans might attack at any moment, how could she be so irrepressibly gleeful?

Imani laughed. “For real, Luce? You really thought I wanted you to kill them? Of course not. I want you to sing to them the way you just did to your father. They’re all suffering tonight; can’t you hear it?” Imani paused. She had the exhilarated look of someone who had just made a tremendous discovery. “I want you to heal them.”

Luce stared. “It’s too dangerous, Imani! It’s too much for them, too beautiful for them . . . to absorb.” She was thinking of Dorian, his crazy otherworldly rapture when she used to sing for him— and he had much greater resistance to mermaid song than any human Luce had ever met.

“It didn’t seem like it hurt those people who were listening to you on the bunkers just now,” Imani argued. She was still beaming. “And anyway I need to learn how you do that, and now seems like a fantastic time to get started, right? I’ll come up to the very top of the wave with you and I’ll just listen, and listen, until I can feel exactly what you’re doing.” And then Imani burst into a peal of blissful laughter.

It was too much for Luce. “I don’t understand how you can act so happy, Imani. Even if they won’t attack us as long as we’re in the wave, we still have to sleep sometime. Soon they’ll start searching for our camps. And you’re acting like this isn’t serious at all!” Her voice wavered.

In reply Imani caught Luce’s wrist and spiraled her tail, launching both of them upward through the wave’s glassy core.

They vaulted through a high upward dive, the dancing pane of water across their eyes making the skyscrapers flutter like wings and furl like rising smoke. Even in her grief and fear, Luce was consumed by the beauty in front of her. It didn’t matter if she died, since this splendor would live on without her. And still Imani’s tail was flurrying and still they were shooting higher and higher inside the wave, looking down on houses scattered like confetti across the distant hills and the bay’s variegated shades of smoke and dust and moon all joined into a single rippling symphony.

When they broke through the wave’s crest the girders crossing the bottom of the Golden Gate Bridge loomed only few feet above their heads, and the air popped and reverberated with stamping feet and raspy human cries.

“We loved the mermaids! We trusted them; we marched for them! And we believed them when they told us they’d given up killing, and now—now there are at least ten thousand people missing in Baltimore,” someone howled immediately overhead. “General Luce needs to answer for this!”

She did need to answer for it, Luce realized. But she couldn’t answer with words. They’d never believe her.

Luce and Imani looked at each other. Imani’s dark heart-shaped face had lost its giddiness; instead she was intent, rapt with concentration as she stared into Luce’s eyes. The droplets in her dark hair held the first hints of dawn in a crown of radiating rose-colored sparks. “Luce?” Imani whispered. “You asked me how I can be so happy now? After so many mermaids died yesterday and now that Baltimore’s flooded and all these people hate us?” Luce nodded slowly, unable to look away. Imani was illuminated by a kind of transcendence that Luce had never seen before. “I’m happy because we’ve won. The Twice Lost have won, and the war is over.”

The madness of Imani’s words left Luce paralyzed, silenced. The water frothed and gurgled around their chests, and they bobbed and fell with each tiny variation of the music swelling below them. “Imani . . .” Luce finally managed. “That’s not true. There’s no way we can win, not now that mermaids have destroyed a human city! They’ll never stop thinking of us as monsters now.”

Imani was unperturbed. She reached out with both hands and squeezed Luce’s shoulders. “No, Luce. I knew we’d won as soon as I heard you singing to your father back there. I knew we can do exactly what it will take. There’s only one way you can answer for what happened and that’s by singing it.”

“Imani . . .”

“Trust me, Luce. You know I’ve always trusted you. I promise you they’ll