Sarah Porter - The Twice Lost

“Yes.”

“ You can still kill them, though!” J’aime gave a hacking laugh that showed how close she was to sobbing again, but her voice turned crisp and assertive as she went on talking. “Thank God one of us can! But damn, you’re going to be one busy girl, Luce. You’ll have to kill them for everybody! Smash the hell out of their boats! I’m gonna have to come with you just so I can watch those creeps get what they deserve. After they cut Maya’s throat like that . . .”

“J’aime . . .” Luce didn’t know how to break the news to her, but she realized she was sick of hiding her real feelings. The time for that was long past. “I’m sorry. I won’t kill anyone. Not unless they’re about to kill one of us and there’s really no other way. I’m not about to murder people for revenge, though.”

J’aime stared at her. “You have to! You won’t after . . .”

Luce tried to think of a way to explain it. “It doesn’t help, J’aime. Mermaids have been killing humans for thousands of years, and it hasn’t helped anything. It’s just making them go insane wanting to murder us! And besides . . . weren’t there any humans you loved?”

J’aime was glowering at her. “Sure. My parents. My grandma. They’re dead. So whether I loved them is no longer particularly relevant, okay?”

“But anyone we kill could be the only person some other girl loves, and then she could wind up . . . in foster care, or with someone a lot worse.”

“Those helmet guys are out to kill all of us! They blasted those spear things at everyone; they spilled their guts —”

“I know that.” Luce’s head was starting to wobble again, and her face felt hot and heavy. J’aime’s fury made her want to weep and scream and hide all at once.

“You will kill them! I don’t care what kind of queen . . . If I have to make you do it myself, every last one of them is going to die for that!”

“No.” Luce braced herself as J’aime glared at her. “J’aime, look, however many of those divers we kill, they’ll just send more of them after us, okay? If I thought I could save the mermaids that way I’d do it, but I know it won’t work!”

“Yeah?” J’aime spat it out. Her raw hatred hurt Luce more than anything that had happened that morning. “What will? ’Cause if you won’t get out there and dispose of the problem, that’s going to be a lot of dead mermaids who you did nothing for!”

“We’ll . . . have to think of something different. Some other way.” Luce knew how pathetic that must sound and stared up at the fragment of blue daylight far above.

“Like what? ”

“I don’t know.” Admitting that made Luce wonder if it would be better for everyone if she was dead. If the soldiers wanted her in particular, maybe they’d stop once she was killed?

J’aime shook her head. “I heard you were some kind of great queen. But you’re just sad. All that power—like who’s ever even seen that?—and you won’t do one thing to help.” She turned to go, her torn violet tail snaking awkwardly in the deep water.

“Be really careful, J’aime, please? Keep hidden.”

“Great advice. You stay away from the rest of the tribes out here, okay? If you’re not willing to do anything positive, you’ll just get them killed.”

“But . . . someone has to warn them, J’aime!”

“I’m on it.”

J’aime was gone.

She had a point. And even with her sliced tail she could go faster than Luce now, anyway.

But if Luce was really that useless, so marked and hunted that she’d do more harm than good even by spreading the alarm, then . . .

Then what reason was there for her to live at all?

Someday, dearest Luce, I will find you again . . . The voice in her head was Nausicaa’s, and Luce tensed for a moment before the bright blue patch in the dimness above melted in her tears.

“Nausicaa, please, ” Luce said out loud. “Please find me soon.”

Why do you think I left you, Luce? Nausicaa retorted. She hadn’t said those words in real life, though. Why could Luce hear them so clearly? I can only find you once you learn for yourself where you are.

On a path high above the ocean a man was walking. His hair was shorn within half an inch of his scalp, stubble covered his face, and a backpack thudded on his shoulders. He walked as if he were in a hurry, but then he would stop, sometimes for several minutes, as if he was searching for something in the long silvery grass. At first the path looked down on a harbor where sea lions sprawled, but after a while it bent back and ascended still higher over open sea. Tall cliffs plunged to knife-sharp rocks and the tumbling slopes of enormous waves.

It had happened somewhere around here. The man half expected a spike of cold anger to let him know when he was passing the exact spot, but all he could feel was the cool spring wind and the feverish determination crowding his thoughts.

He might go to prison for this, of course. Even if they bought his story—and there was no reason to think they would—the law didn’t make allowances for the kind of justice he had in mind. But that was okay with him. It wasn’t like he had anything better planned for the rest of his life. Luce was probably lost to him for good.

After another mile the dusk was dotted with golden squares and oblongs. Shining windows stood out against the blue evening and glowed through the spruce trees on the hillside behind while to the right a rolling silver-blue meadow dropped abruptly down into the waves.

Almost there, now. His heartbeat clattered in his chest like a handful of coins dropped on a hard floor. He climbed the steps up to the back door of a small brown house.

Through a gap in the curtains he could see a grubby pea green kitchen. A patch of bare wood showed where the floor’s linoleum had split and peeled away. Two heavy sock-clad feet were resting on the wood, but that was all the man could make out. It was enough, though.

He knocked. No response. Maybe the jerk had passed out. He knocked louder, sharper, making the loose windowpanes clack in their frames.

A moan, a shuffling noise, a fan of golden light where the door swung open. Eyes on his, blank and bleary. Definitely drunk. “You got a problem?”

“I got a whole bunch of them, as it happens, Peter.”

There was a long pause, a few panting breaths. Then recognition landed like a stone. The man on the outside step couldn’t help grinning as he watched his brother reeling back into the kitchen, too scared and shocked to muster a response at first. After another uncertain moment it came. “You’re dead. ”

“Tell me about it. But I’m not half as dead as I used to be, brother. Shoulda seen me a couple months ago.”

“Andrew. You’re not . . . Christ, man, how did . . .”

“Gonna ask me in?”

“Oh. Yeah. Good to . . . good to see you. Didn’t think I’d ever . . .”

Andrew Korchak stepped into the house. It was almost too easy. He shut the door at his back and locked it then dropped his backpack. “Got anything to eat?”

“There are . . . I’ve got some cans in the cupboard. Go ahead and help yourself. Whatever you want. Andrew, how did . . .” Peter’s eyes suddenly turned skittish as if there was something in the room he hoped his brother wouldn’t notice. His body was bloated and saggy, and a web of broken blood vessels reddened his face. A half-empty bottle sat on the table.

Andrew Korchak didn’t move to get the food he’d asked for. Instead he paused in the center of the kitchen, slowly and deliberately looking around. He kept on examining the room, walking back and forth, his face carefully composed into a look of mystification.