A few of the men looked like they’d lost consciousness.
The spinning slowed and the tall blue walls caved in.
“We should rip their helmets off while they’re still dizzy. Dispose of them.” The mermaids had darted some distance away then stopped to gaze back at the scene they’d created after drawing that boat to a spot where the water was especially deep. Through the rippling gray they could just make out the floundering shapes of the divers as they pulled free of their fast-descending boat, most of them dragging comrades who apparently couldn’t swim on their own.
“No.” The smallest of the three mermaids flicked her blue tail. “We stopped them for now, and we showed them enough that they’ll be scared about what they’re doing. We’re not going to kill them!”
“They’re murderers,” the brown-skinned mermaid hissed. “They don’t deserve to live.”
“Dana . . . you’re a murderer too. So am I. Someone has to stop first. We should just hurry up and get away from here.”
“Dang,” the purple-tailed mermaid sniped, but she was laughing in exhilaration at what she’d just witnessed. It was incredible what these two could do when they deliberately joined their voices that way, and now they were starting to teach her, too. “You really do talk like that, that crazy—”
“Are you surprised, J’aime?” Violet retorted. “I told you who my queen is.”
14 Pharaoh’s Army
It was evening again; in a few hours they’d all head out to sea for another round of training. It was going better than she’d dared to hope and Luce knew she should be happy; even Catarina had stopped objecting. But as Luce gazed across the light-streaked bay, anxiety kept twisting through her like cold wires binding her insides. More refugees were turning up every day, and while some of them were too rattled to do much but lie in the hammocks and stare at the nightmares spinning through their heads, others were all too eager to join Luce’s growing army.
The bay was getting crowded. It sometimes seemed like half the surviving mermaids on the West Coast must be living there now, under warehouses and rotting piers or in half-sunk boats. There were even larvae, and of course it was hard to make them understand how important it was not to let themselves be seen. Sooner or later the humans would realize mermaids were out there, and it was just plain dumb strategically to have everyone concentrated in a relatively small area with only one exit. More than once Luce had gone to scout out the Golden Gate, just in case, trying to determine if it would be feasible for the humans to block their escape route.
She couldn’t tell, though. Luce had to admit to herself that she just didn’t know enough to guess; she might be worrying for nothing, or she might be setting everyone up for death by letting them stay here.
She needed to find someone who knew more than she did. And no matter how long she brooded over the problem she kept coming back to the same absurd idea.
Luce glanced back around the tangle of nets. A lot of the mermaids were out; they’d gone off on their daily foraging expedition to the south bay, where there were large wild areas on the water with a good supply of shellfish. But Imani was swinging in her hammock, eyes closed, singing very softly to herself: a human song, Luce realized in amazement. She’d never heard a mermaid sing a song with words before, and she paused to listen. “‘If I could I surely would, stand on the rock where Moses stood. Pharaoh’s army got drownded; oh, Mary, don’t you weep . . . ’”
Where had she heard Imani’s song before? Luce swam over to her. Though Imani’s hammock was made from shredded white plastic shopping bags, they were all so intricately knotted that it looked more like handmade lace. “‘Oh, Mary, don’t you weep, don’t you mourn . . . ’”
“Imani? I don’t want to interrupt you, but . . .”
A tear rolled down Imani’s blue-gleaming cheek as she opened her eyes. “Why shouldn’t we mourn for them, Luce?”
Luce felt a rush of tenderness for her. “You mean for Pharaoh’s army? In the song?”
“My grampa would always sing that song to me, back when I was really small, and I couldn’t talk well enough yet to make him understand why it made me cry. But maybe those soldiers didn’t even want to be in that army.”
Luce realized what Imani was truly thinking about. “We can mourn for them, Imani. And we can change, and not drown anyone again.”
Imani’s looked as if she were half-enchanted by her own singing. “I’ve kept thinking of that song. Ever since I changed into a mermaid and found out what we do, I’ve kept hearing it. I hope we can make this into a war of water and music, but I’m afraid it’s just going to turn into another cycle of death and more death.”
Luce breathed deep, trying to calm herself. “It won’t.”
“If they find us we’ll be able to fight them now, and I guess that’s better than doing nothing, but . . . they’ll die, and we’ll die too. Pharaoh’s army and the Twice Lost Army, we’ll share the same end.”
“We won’t let that happen, Imani.” Luce tried to sound confident. “We’ll find a way to persuade them to agree to peace.”
Luce expected Imani to keep arguing. Instead she closed her eyes again, spinning her tail so that her net rocked harder. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Luce said. She wasn’t completely sure she’d heard right.
“I’ll . . . trust you on this, Luce. But I don’t see how we can persuade them to do anything.”
“It’s going to be really”—almost impossible, Luce thought, but she didn’t want to say that—“really hard. Imani, I think I have to go out for a while. If I’m not back in time, could you start leading training without me?”
That knocked Imani out of her waking dream. She looked down at Luce where she hovered in the water, and her gaze was sharper than Luce had ever seen it. “Really? Where are you going?”
Luce hesitated. “I have to talk to someone. If I can even find him.”
Him gave it away, of course. Luce couldn’t be talking about going to see another mermaid.
“Luce . . .” Imani breathed after a few moments. “About trusting you. Do you know you’re asking a lot?”
They held each other’s eyes, then something shifted and a slight smile seemed to flutter back and forth between them.
“Imani?” But what could Luce say, really? “Thank you.”
Above the surface reflected light pleated across the water, and the distant roar of traffic echoed and warped as it flowed along the waves. Below it there was the private night where sleek-finned bodies darted and spun, the glow of mermaids crossing the wings of rays.
Luce swirled along close to the bottom, where rusty bicycles turned their wheels in the current and weeds grew in long reddish ribbons. There were rubbery amber sea cucumbers and so many tiny pink anemones that the rocks seemed to be carpeted in feathery mouths. It wasn’t that long before she saw rotten pilings on her left and the line of a pier slouching down into the water. Luce surfaced to see if she could recognize the spot. There was a warehouse she thought looked familiar, its endless windows staring blankly across the bay. And sitting cross-legged on the pier there was a man, and he was looking straight at her . . .
Luce dropped under the water, down into green depths. “Mermaid?” the man called quietly. “It’s me. Your friend the old ghost.”
He didn’t look the same, though. Luce came cautiously to the surface and stared at him. He was wearing relatively clean clothes in place of his sagging overcoats, though to guess by how badly the new clothes fit him, he’d probably found them in the street. He was cleaner, too, and he’d cut his mouse gray hair. The reek of sweat and alcohol that had clung to him the first time Luce had seen him was gone, and she could tell by the alert way he was looking at her that he wasn’t drunk. She swam a little closer. “Hi.”