The Twice Lost

Everything was dark, but that was because her eyes were closed. The process of opening them seemed confusing at first, but with an effort she managed it. Dark sea, towering night, and in the distance a star of piercing radiance high on a cliff. Behind it rolling tree-fringed hills. To the star’s right a long expanse of beach shone like a pale fissure in the darkness. “Is that light the Cliff House?” Luce asked aloud.

She felt a quick swish of displaced water as someone nearby spun around in surprise. Ten feet away from her a dark head swung to see who’d spoken.

Luce had never imagined that it would even be possible for Nausicaa to look so utterly discomposed, so flabbergasted. She grinned at her friend’s dropped mouth and rounded eyes; Luce couldn’t have explained why, but she wasn’t surprised to see Nausicaa at all. She’d just emerged from the always, after all, and Nausicaa was Luce’s private always, the ocean continually cresting in her heart. “But . . . Luce?” Nausicaa stammered at last.

Luce laughed and swam over to her, then realized again how weak she was. “Let’s swim to the beach. I think I might faint soon.” She leaned her head on Nausicaa’s shoulder.

“Luce!” Nausicaa hugged her tight and looked around. “But where . . . are we?”

“That looks like the Cliff House. I thought I went farther south than that, but . . .”

“Near San Francisco, then?” Nausicaa was regaining a hint of her usual poise, though she still seemed uncharacteristically shaky.

“I guess so. Where do you think we are?”

Nausicaa gave a crazed laugh. “When last I knew where I was, I was watching from a distance as the lights came on for the evening across the vast city of Alexandria. In Egypt, Luce. It might be ten thousand miles away from this place. I had just left the Twice Lost mermaids there.” She shook her head, her dark curls ruffling. “I thought that was only moments ago. But perhaps . . .”

Now it was Luce’s turn to be unsettled. “Egypt?” She thought for a moment. “Then . . . did you go through a place that didn’t seem like it was anywhere exactly?”

Nausicaa bit her lip. “I heard myself speaking. How did I hear that, Luce, unless it was a dream? I heard myself in conversation with the first mermaids, the Unnamed Twins. But I often dream of them, of course; they were my dear friends when I was newly in the sea.” Nausicaa stared, searching through billows of memory. “But now I think this was no dream. There was a discussion . . . about you. And I believe that they . . . extended an invitation, Luce. To the two of us.”

That made sense, Luce thought. She nodded, and then her head seemed to keep nodding by itself. Her eyelids swagged, and her face felt warm and watery. “I . . . really need to sleep. I can’t talk now.”

Nausicaa gazed at her in sudden concern and began towing her toward the shore. Luce saw the light of the Cliff House prancing and swinging through the dark. It was lucky that Nausicaa was holding her, Luce realized hazily, because she couldn’t possibly hang on to consciousness any longer.

* * *

When Cala’s search party found them it was well after dawn. They couldn’t wake Luce and so they carried her home, Cala and Elva in the lead with Luce’s tail slung across their arms, Nausicaa swimming behind and supporting her friend’s head at the surface. Nausicaa studied Luce’s jagged dark hair and long crescent eyelids, wondering at how transfigured she was. Her features were the same as ever, but even in her sleep Luce now had the aspect of a mermaid who’d been in the sea for centuries.

They passed beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. The huge standing wave was completely gone now. The bay gleamed mirror-smooth, without even a line of foam to show where the blockade had been.

Luce didn’t wake up to see it. But on the shore not far to their right, mixed with the usual crowd, there were doctors in white coats, gurneys, and ambulances.

The mermaids had started turning back.

A girl in a borrowed bathrobe tried to stand on legs as wobbly as a newborn calf’s then toppled slowly sideways. Her skin had a faint greenish shine.

“Hey,” a slightly tattered man with cropped hair and cinnamon eyes shouted across the water. He waved his arms high overhead, looking straight at the group carrying Luce. “Hey! You’ve got my girl! Is she okay?”

“That’s the general’s dad,” Cala sighed. “How are we supposed to explain what happened?” Then she raised her voice. “She’ll be fine, Mr. Korchak! We promise! She’ll come see you later!”

Nausicaa gazed at him with interest. For the first time she wondered if she might have to let Luce go forever. She pictured Luce stumbling toward her father on human legs and looked away.

41 Promises

“Heya, general-girl,” Yuan said as Luce at last opened bleary eyes. She barely knew where she was, but Yuan’s determined face was clear enough. “Damn, it’s about time you woke up! I’m here to say goodbye.”

“Goodbye?” Luce asked in confusion. “Yuan, where—”

“To Boston. With Gigi. She’s got to get back to college.” Yuan made a face. “And I’m going to go finish high school, of all insane things. There are these human groups organizing to, uh, rehabilitate ex-mermaids, so it looks like I’ll have some help.”

It took Luce several more moments to understand what Yuan was talking about. Then she groaned and sat up abruptly. One reaching hand found Yuan’s shoulder and squeezed it. “Yuan, are you serious?” All at once Luce felt like crying. “You’re really leaving the water?”

Suddenly grave, Yuan said, “Yeah, I am. Because you were right, Luce.”

“How do you mean?”

“When you told me that Gigi was actually my best friend. That I saved her because she’s—the person I love most in the world. I didn’t know that when I was pulling her to safety, but I know it now.” Yuan waited a few moments for that to sink in. “But we’re really hoping you’ll come and visit us, Luce. You and your dad.” She paused for a moment. “Or you and Dorian. We’ll have a blast together! And you and Dorian could maybe look at colleges in Boston too, right? ‘Twice Lost General’ is one hell of an extracurricular, so I bet you can go anywhere you want.”

Luce shook her head. She still felt obscurely sick, and she was bewildered to realize that Yuan took it for granted that she’d be turning human again. Imani had made the same assumption. Why did her path seem so obvious to them? “I can’t think about college. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Sure you do!” Yuan was sincerely shocked. “I mean, what about your dad?”

“If he needs me to take care of him . . .” Luce swayed a little as she considered the question. “If he’s not all the way cured, then . . . I guess that would be the right thing to do.”

“Of course it is! Family has to come first, Luce.” Yuan saw Luce’s stunned look and grimaced. “Okay, I know that probably sounds hypocritical, coming from me. But your dad is a good guy and mine was a monster. You do appreciate the distinction, right?”

Luce didn’t answer that. Instead she dropped from the hammock and hugged Yuan hard.

“You gonna come see me off, general-girl?” Yuan was straining to keep her tone light.

“Of course I’m coming. But I’m not actually anybody’s general,” Luce murmured. “Not anymore.”

“Yeah? Who is?” Yuan didn’t wait for an answer before diving abruptly. She whipped away at top speed and then vaulted over a sea lion with her pink-gold fins gleaming in midair. It’s for the last time, Luce thought. Yuan’s never going to leap that way again.

A long procession of mermaids followed her. Some of them had larvae cradled in their arms.

* * *

Yuan held her arm out for the injection. Then a group of human volunteers carried her inside a small white room made of folding screens while Gigi looked on with worried eyes. Luce caught a final glimpse of Yuan’s fins twitching as the air hit them.

She’d hoped—even assumed—that the drugs would make the transition painless, but that clearly wasn’t the case. Soon they all heard Yuan’s thin, keening screams. Luce had to throttle her own impulse to scream in sympathy, to send a wave that would lift Yuan and pull her back to them. Luce clenched her teeth instead, her