“South. I was trying to warn everyone, but now . . .” Luce shook herself. “I never asked your name?”
“Oh, right. Where are your manners? There we were escaping from a complete bloodbath, and you didn’t give me a proper chance to introduce myself!” There was still an edge of hysteria in the stranger’s voice that made her annoyance sound more serious than she’d probably meant it to. “J’aime.”
“Gem?”
“No. Like Jem. Je-aime. It’s French for ‘I love’.”
Luce looked up at J’aime. Even without peering into the cloud of dark shimmer around the other mermaid’s head Luce was suddenly sure that whoever had hurt J’aime enough to change her into a mermaid hadn’t been her parents. Not if they’d given her a name like that.
Just like it hadn’t been Luce’s parents who’d driven her to the point of losing her humanity. Her father still loved her, Luce knew.
That, Luce thought bleakly, was why she didn’t want to kill humans. Why she still didn’t want to. She didn’t even want to kill those black-suited divers who were hunting her and all the other mermaids they could find.
If she did they might leave daughters behind. Girls who’d only wind up like her and . . .
“Hi, J’aime.”
“You said they killed your tribe, too?” J’aime’s voice was suddenly much softer.
“Yes. My ex-tribe, really. But the divers just slaughtered everybody, and ships weren’t even going anywhere nearby anymore, so it wasn’t like, like really self-defense or . . .”
“Did you see it happen?” J’aime’s eyes were wide in the dimness. Luce knew she was seeing unspeakable things all over again; that, no matter how long she lived, she’d never completely stop seeing them.
“I . . . just found the bodies.” Horrible as that was, Luce understood that it was much worse for J’aime.
“And it’s because of those helmets? Why we can’t just drown them?”
“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.
5
Little Girls
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.