The Twice Lost

Eileen nodded, her strawberry blond hair tossing with the movement. Filaments of light from the bridge curved around her face as her song began to drop through a long series of fading, silky tones.

“She isn’t with Dorian, either,” Cala insisted gently. All at once she was afraid that Yuan wouldn’t be able to cope once she understood that Luce was truly missing.

“How do you know?” Yuan’s snappishness only made Cala more concerned. “Of course they wouldn’t be making out right where everyone could see them!”

“Because he’s been looking for her too. Paddling around in that kayak. We’ve both been searching every place we can think of, and she just isn’t anywhere. Yuan, I don’t want to freak you out, but we have to send out search parties or something.”

For the first time Cala saw Yuan’s eyes light with genuine concern. Eileen was just leaving the line, swishing below them. “Hey, Eileen?” Yuan called down.

“Yeah?” Eileen reared back to look at them, her tail sweeping above her head in an immense C.

Everyone was just so tired, Cala thought. The exhilaration of victory seemed thin and wispy now compared to the weariness of their long struggle.

“You’re not off duty after all. I’ve got a brand-new assignment for you. General Luce is missing, and we need to get as many lieutenants as we can to organize search parties. Get a few of the girls who are just playing or whatever and go. I’m giving you the coast around Sausalito.”

Eileen groaned. “The war’s done, Yuan. If Luce wants to disappear she can go right ahead. I’ve got somebody else to look for.”

“Like who?” Cala snapped.

“My sister, Kathleen Fain. She hasn’t showed up here yet, but I know she’s going to.” Eileen looked so miserable that Cala melted. “The only thing that would stop her would be if she’s dead.”

Eileen swirled onward, and Yuan grimaced with exasperation. “I’d come help you search if I could, Cala. But I’ve got to keep on directing everyone lowering the wave until it’s completely finished.” Yuan sighed and tipped in the water as if she wanted to lean her head on something, but there was nothing there except a twinkling constellation of tiny silver fish. “Luce—she wouldn’t give up on herself now, would she? I mean, we won the war, and nobody really believed we’d be able to do that! Luce seriously better not have done anything stupid. I’ll kick her ass if she—”

“That’s exactly what I’m worried about,” Cala admitted. “Luce giving up. Like, she might think nobody needs her anymore? Now that we’ve won?”

“Of course we need her!” Yuan’s beautiful face was crumpling even as her voice rose furiously. “And what about her dad? And Dorian?”

Strong as Yuan was, Cala thought, the strain was obviously getting to be too much for her to handle. “I’ll organize the search parties. I just need to be able to tell everyone you agreed we should do that. Okay? Yuan, you don’t have to worry. We’ll find her.”

“Report back here right away if you find anything! I swear, Luce is getting bitch slapped if she even thinks about doing anything besides being totally happy from now on! You tell her that!”

Cala wanted to say something playful and comforting in response, but she couldn’t think of anything that would make Yuan feel better. “I’ll report back as soon as I can.”

There were mermaids chatting with the humans onshore, and Cala headed over there to look for volunteers. In some cases mermaids were kissing new human boyfriends. Late as it was Helene and Ray Vogel were reading aloud from a huge illustrated volume of fairy tales to a circle of the youngest mermaids. From the longing on their small faces, Cala knew that many of them had never had anyone read them stories before.

“Hey,” Cala called, too softly. No one turned around. “Hey, I need help! Luce is missing and she might be in trouble!”

That got their attention. Ten minutes later Cala had managed to get three small groups together and sent them out to search in different directions: along the north and south sides of the bay, with the third group heading out into the open sea.

Cala thought of how Luce had looked just after she’d signed the treaty—her blank, faded gaze, her forced smiles, her air of weary abstraction—and wondered if the search would prove futile.

* * *

“What a scrap she is,” a gruff voice said nearby. “A rag of skin and scales. Easily destroyed, easily thrown away.”

Even though someone was speaking, Luce supposed that she was still in the ocean. The medium that contained her was cold and terribly heavy; it ebbed and pitched. And yet somehow it felt not like the Pacific on a chill night in early September but like everywhere and always. It felt like the place where days and years burst their membrane-fine skins and poured into a single fluid sphere. The forever world, Luce thought vaguely. She thought of continents and seas ripped into confetti and gusting out of the map. She could see nothing, not even darkness.

“To what purpose?” This time the voice was a girl’s. “What we have before us is the rag, but is that rag truly Queen Luce? Or is Queen Luce the changes now wrought on the world?”

Luce felt an icy current wrapping her body. It was strong enough to bind her arms to her sides. Then with a kind of contemptuous flick it sent her rolling, and seized her again.

“She should end here. Her every act has been defiance.” A pause. “She has led all your kindred into defiance. And so I choose to lead her to these depths, here to abandon her. Her mermaid’s form is forfeit, and she will die very soon once I take it from her.”

“Children do defy their parents,” a different girl observed cynically.

“They may, when those parents are human,” the low voice rumbled in annoyance. It sounded half sea.

“No. When the children grow up. When their ideas are no longer only the ideas their parents have offered them. When they think beyond what they’ve been taught.” She paused. Luce had the sense that this unknown girl was about to give voice to something she found difficult, even frightening. “For these thousands of years the mermaids have been your obedient children. Perhaps it was time for one of us to change that.”

Luce felt her muscles squeezed and buffeted. Whatever held her pressed in with bruising force. Her eyes merged with the endless nowhere.

“I saved her!” The sea voice was now a roar. “I saved her and I offered her great gifts, and she repaid me with this rebellion, this contempt.”

“She repaid you by leading the mermaids into a future you never imagined for them,” the first girl said coolly. “Everything between mermaids and humans is different now. Queen Luce has repaid you with transformation. Surely that is your own coin?”

The deep voice growled. “You listen to Nausicaa too much.”

Luce tried and failed to cry out at that. Nausicaa? Where are you?

“I listen to what my own long experience tells me. So does my sister. Even the sea is too confining when your destiny is settled for you, and when that destiny describes so small a circuit.” The girl paused again. “Queen Luce should be with us. She’s earned that choice.”

“She’s earned nothing but death!”

“We claim her. Luce is ours. As we were first, so is she the first of the mermaids as they will now become. And we refuse to see her harmed.”

The sea rumbled in Luce’s head. Her whole skull roared like the inside of a seashell. There was a sound like vast currents quarreling. Sheets of water seemed to grind against one another until they squealed like iron; Luce’s empty eyes suddenly poured down tracks of blue phosphorescent flame.

Then, very quietly, she was no longer everywhere. Though it was impossible to guess precisely what had changed, Luce could sense that she was now somewhere quite specific. Her body was a point in space, it was enclosed in latitude and longitude, and the world was again banded by magnetic pull.

The time was no longer always, but now. She was weak and nauseous and— though she knew beyond all doubt that she’d been hopelessly far from the surface when her consciousness had merged with that strange forever—a cool breeze was brushing across her face. It took her a moment to understand that, and to remember to breathe.