Lost Voices (17 page)

Luckily Catarina chose that moment to swim over to them.

She had a slightly tense look on her face, though. Luce took advantage of Catarina’s arrival to change the subject. She told Catarina what Dana had said about all the metaskazas changing into blobs of liquid and racing to the sea through drains.

Catarina seemed sad and a little distracted.

“It can definitely happen like that,” Catarina agreed. “I mean, if the metaskaza the change if it comes over you while you’re inland, then you need to travel to the sea any way you can: through drains or a river if you’re close to one. I don’t know what happens if some poor metaskaza is stuck out in a desert!” Catarina seemed to be thinking of something far away, though. Her hair spread out around them, catching the golden sunset light so brilliantly that it looked as if the waves had caught fire. “You don’t i 139

take your new form until you reach salt water. I came to the sea through a drain myself. So did Miriam.” Luce was surprised; it was the most Catarina had ever said about her past.

“So, where are you from originally?” Dana asked.

Of course Dana didn’t know yet how touchy Catarina could be about questions. Luce could see Catarina hesitating, and she half expected that Catarina would tell Dana off for being too nosy.

“Anadyr,” Catarina admitted after a minute. “It’s a town in Russia.” That explained Catarina’s odd, delicate accent, Luce thought, but the accent was so subtle that Catarina had obviously been speaking English for a very long time.

Dana was impressed. “Wow. So you actually swam across the Bering Sea? Were you alone? That must have been intense.

What
happened?
”

Luce was already startled to hear Catarina tell them so much, but when Catarina spoke again Luce could hardly believe what she was hearing.

“Do you think I’m beautiful, Dana?” Catarina asked. Her voice was icy and very formal, and there was still that faraway look in her eyes.

Luce was relieved to discover that Dana had the sensitivity to take the question seriously.

“I think you’re completely gorgeous.”

Catarina barely glanced over at Dana, nodded, and then looked off again.

“Thank you.” Catarina’s accent was suddenly thicker; her voice took on an exotic lilt. “Do you think I’m beautiful enough to be worth more than ten cartons of cigarettes? I believe they 140 i LOST VOICES

were Marlboros. Black market. Not so easy to get then. And three bottles of vodka, let’s not forget that . . .” Luce was amazed to see that Dana’s eyes were brimming with tears. Dana clearly understood more of what Catarina was talking about than Luce did.

“I think you’re worth much, much more than that, Catarina,” Dana said firmly, and a tear spilled down her cheek. “Whether you’re beautiful or not. You’re worth too much for anybody to ever put a price on you.”

Catarina couldn’t even look at them anymore. She dove away. Luce and Dana were both silent for a minute, and Dana splashed water on her face.

“Dana?” Luce was almost afraid to ask. “Dana, I don’t understand. What did all of that mean?” Dana couldn’t answer at first, but when she turned to look at Luce again her huge dark eyes were wide with pity.

“Oh, Luce.” Dana was quiet again for a minute. “It means Catarina’s parents
sold
her. For cigarettes!” Luce was confused.

“Why? Do you mean as a slave?” Dana gave Luce a long look, and suddenly Luce wasn’t sure she wanted to understand.

She felt very young compared to Dana, though Dana was only a year and a half older than her.

Luce felt something sucking at her fins, and flicked her tail wildly away before she saw what it was: just one of those poor little larvae. It shrank back with a wounded look on its doughy face.

“Why do you think?” Dana hissed. “Why does somebody
buy
a beautiful girl?”

i 141

10

Voice Training

It was an unusually warm spring but often rainy, and they all spent a lot of time lolling around in the cave. They were used to being wet, of course, but fresh water felt different on their skins than salt water did. It was tolerable but somehow slimy and unpleasant. Luce knew it was odd to think of clear water as “dirty,” but that was still the word that occurred to her whenever the rain slid around her face. They all tried to swim underwater as much as possible whenever they went outside.

Luce slept in the cave with her friends, but during the day she sometimes slipped away to spend time alone in the narrow cave Miriam had showed her. She had a project of her own that she didn’t want anyone else to know about, at least not yet. She was determined to learn to control her singing; more than that, to
change
it. She had a persistent fantasy that, if she could just 142 i

discover another kind of magic her singing could accomplish, something besides enchanting humans, maybe she could get Catarina excited about it. It wouldn’t be fair, after all, to expect her fellow mermaids to quit singing; the feeling of that music racing through them was simply too magnificent, and Luce knew that no one who’d felt it could ever give it up. Her voice, she thought, was her truest self. But if they could sing in a new way, a different way, then maybe the others wouldn’t
want
to kill people anymore. Everything else about being a mermaid was so purely wonderful, after all. There was just that one problem. Why shouldn’t she at least try to solve it?

If she let her voice go where it wanted it always turned into the same thrilling song, the death song: a single sweet, high note sustained for an impossibly long time then an endless fall . . . But Luce’s song had brought Miriam comfort, and because of that Luce decided that her voice couldn’t be completely evil. It was just a matter of understanding it. Luce knew her voice contained enormous power, and she was excited by the prospect that it might be capable of more than luring humans to their deaths. She had to admit to herself, though, that she had no idea what form that other magic might take. There was nothing to do except try experimenting.

Rain spattered down through the crack in the cave’s roof, so Luce was sitting squeezed against the stony wall, leaning against the rocks with her tail trailing out into the water. She let her voice rise into that high, aching note. But then she held it right there, pinning it like a butterfly and refusing to let it tumble down the scale. She could feel that her voice was angry with her, trying to fight free of her control, and she stopped singing.

i 143

“You’re
mine,
” Luce told her voice sternly. “You’re mine, and you’re going to do exactly what I tell you!” She let the note rise again.

This time, instead of tumbling, it soared even higher, fluttered, wheeled around in space. Luce was thrilled. Finally she was singing a new song! And the emotion in the song was different, too. Instead of filling her with soft, warm longing for everything she’d lost, it was full of quick, dizzy magic, a leaping celebration.

Humans would certainly be enchanted by this song, Luce thought, but she was almost sure it wouldn’t make them want to die. It just wasn’t that kind of feeling, and Luce laughed out loud. The new song faltered and disappeared.

When Luce tried again, the death song came back, and it was even more beautiful, even fiercer with tenderness and hunger, than ever before. Luce was ready to cry from sheer frustration, and suddenly she was tempted to give up. She’d almost discovered a new song, but then she’d immediately lost it again.

She swam disconsolately back to the main cave.

Luce drifted in the smooth green water near the cave’s floor, watching the blue medusas pulsing their way along. It seemed like the cave was empty, even though the rain was still splatter-ing down outside. The others must have gone out to get something to eat, and Luce rolled deep underwater, glad that no one was there to notice her depression.

Then she heard something, and realized she wasn’t alone.

A single high, piercing note sustained for a terribly long time and then an endless fall . . . Except the voice singing was thin and tinny, and the notes didn’t fall in quite the right away. Luce 144 i LOST VOICES

was bewildered, and then she understood. It was Samantha .

Samantha was doing her best to copy Luce’s song!

Luce had never liked Samantha much, but now that she heard her own song thinned and mangled this way she actively detested her. Samantha made the song seem so feeble, so worth-less! The emotion in it was ridiculous. It didn’t promise forgiveness anymore; it didn’t promise that everything lost would be restored. Instead, at best, it gave you the kind of feeling you might get from a stranger asking to take your picture or maybe from seeing yourself in the background on TV. You would be flattered, and the weaker kinds of humans might be enchanted for a while, but the feeling definitely wasn’t worth
dying
for! Luce let out a single, hard laugh of pure contempt. The song above stopped abruptly, with a kind of gagging sound.

Luce’s contempt turned into embarrassment. It was pointlessly cruel to humiliate Samantha for her singing when ev eryone already knew Luce was so much better than her, the second- best singer in the tribe. Luce slipped carefully back out through the entrance, hoping Samantha hadn’t realized who had laughed at her.

* * *

Luce found all of them at what she thought of now as the dining beach. The rain had finally stopped, and Catarina was talking closely with Jenna, which, Luce realized, was happening more and more often. Luce had the sudden miserable thought that she was too young for Catarina really to consider her a friend. Catarina had simply been through too much; she might feel protective of Luce, she might regard her with a slightly con-i 145

descending affection, but she couldn’t possibly think of her as an equal. It was only Luce’s singing that had made Catarina respect her at all.

Luce was even more hurt when she realized that Catarina was talking about her first tribe, one that lived on the Russian coast. She had never mentioned a word about it to Luce.

“The queen was Marina,” Catarina was saying. “She was crazy, but so brave . . . She’d take on any kind of ship. Things I would never dream of trying now . . . Once we made two container ships crash into each other in a storm, far out at sea, and some of the humans managed to escape in lifeboats. We were all up all night hunting down the survivors. It was madness!” Even though Catarina’s words were critical, her eyes were shining from the memory. “One man I don’t know how he managed to resist her. Marina was a singer like no one I’ve ever heard; her voice could swallow a ship whole. But he held out, so three of us shot up from beneath his lifeboat and capsized it. Marina pulled him under herself.” Luce couldn’t help feeling dismayed by the story, but Jenna was laughing. No wonder those two had become such good friends, Luce thought bitterly. Jenna shared Catarina’s ferocity, her rage at humans. Luce had been surprised to discover that even Dana was excited by the thought of sinking ships; she agreed that humans deserved it. After all, they’d left fourteen orphans alone with a homicidal lunatic, and no one had done the smallest thing to protect them. Dana was eager to try singing to a ship as soon as possible, but Catarina insisted that they had to wait a while longer. Too many ships sinking soon after one another might make the humans suspicious.

“What happened to her?” Luce asked hesitantly. “To 146 i LOST VOICES

Marina?” Catarina suddenly turned somber and stared down, and Jenna glared at Luce.

“She wasn’t talking to you,” Jenna snarled. “And you should know not to go around asking questions like that! Like, do you ever think that
maybe
there are some things Cat doesn’t want to be reminded of?”

Luce’s face turned hot, and her only comfort was the thought that Jenna couldn’t sing at all. The two new mermaids who showed signs of real talent were Dana and the fragile, skittish little blond girl, Rachel, the one who had insisted on the first day that she wasn’t crazy. Secretly Luce thought that Rachel
was
a little crazy. She would wake up screaming in the night, and she imagined monsters lurking everywhere they went. But her craziness gave her singing a disturbed, haunting, feverish quality different from anything Luce had ever heard before. Luce thought it might make people want to die simply by making them too terrified to remain alive.

Samantha popped up through the water, shot one furtive look at Luce, and then turned her face away, her lips compressed with resentment. Luce swam off on her own, feeling almost as lonely as she had when she was still human.

She didn’t want to be shut up in a cave, not when she was already so sad. Instead she decided to explore farther up the coast. She still hadn’t been very far from her home cave, and as long as she stayed next to the cliffs she probably wouldn’t have any trouble with orcas. She swam for half an hour, finding a few more small hidden caves with entrances on the water too far away to be convenient, though and eventually the cliffs dipped away, wide rocky beaches spread out along the sea, and in the i 147

distance Luce could glimpse the docks and bright fishing boats of a small village. She curled into a crevice between boulders; it was risky to come too close to a human settlement, and she’d have to be very careful not to be seen.

Anchored in the water outside the village Luce noticed an immense, shiny white yacht, and even from this distance she could see the gleam of what looked like a chrome tiller. The water made voices carry much farther than they would on land, and Luce could hear a booming man having some sort of tantrum.

It sounded like he was screaming at his cook; Luce could just make out the words, “A very inferior sauce . . . What do I
pay
you for?”

Ugh,
Luce found herself thinking,
humans
. Still, she was relieved that the yacht was keeping a safe distance from the mermaids’ cave.

By the time Luce strayed home, around twilight, she was somehow more determined than ever to master her singing. It was the only thing she had ever had that made her special, after all.