The Twice Lost by Sarah Porter Read Free Book Online Page B

only get stuck in there and drown.
    “Come on, already!” The other mermaid darted into the ragged shadow, and after a moment Luce followed her.
    It went upward, and at first it was so narrow that her tail thrashed against the rock. Luce had no trouble seeing in the darkness, but she knew it was utterly lightless. Now and then the fins of the mermaid ahead swished against her face.
    Then the crack began to widen and a subtle wash of light refracted through the water. They kept squirming upward, and Luce heard the stranger inhale a few seconds before her own head broke free of the surface. They were in a narrow span of water, smooth as black glass. The crevice kept twisting upward before it ended in a shard of daylight at least a hundred feet above them.
    There was no real beach in here, but there were outcroppings and natural shelves where they could at least rest for a while. Luce saw that the other girl’s left fin was sliced by a three-inch gash at its bottom edge, both sections writhing as if they were trying to hold each other. That was why she’d screamed, then. Her face was still taut with pain, her forehead furrowed. She was close to Luce’s age, and she looked at her roughly.
    “Are you who I think you are?” the girl asked.
    Maybe her tribe had met Nausicaa too. Nausicaa must have talked about Luce all the way down the coast, bizarre as that seemed.
    “I’m Luce.”
    “Yeah. That
wild
business you pulled with the water. I should have guessed right away, but I was too . . .” She paused, breathing hard, obviously struggling for self-control. “Luce. My God. Did you hear what they
said?
”
    Luce nodded. “I’m so
sorry.
I didn’t know. I thought they were just murdering any mermaids they could find, but if they were looking for me, and that’s why . . . your tribe . . .”
    “What did you do to get those creeps in that huge of an uproar? They said something . . .”
    “They didn’t say the
whole
thing,” Luce snarled. “They massacred my old tribe. Everyone. Then they were shooting at me. They made it sound like I just attacked them out of nowhere!”
    “You did that water thing to them?”
    “I smashed their boat into a cliff. Back in Alaska. I was just trying to stop them, really, but I guess a few of them died? But I don’t know . . . I can’t understand how they knew who I
was,
or my name, or . . .”
    Actually, there
was
one obvious explanation for how they might have gotten their information. Luce just didn’t want to believe it. There was someone who could easily give the authorities the name of the mermaid who knew how to control the water with her singing.
She sent a giant wave at your boat? Oh yeah, that was definitely Luce. She’s the only one who could have done that!
More than that, he could show them very good drawings of her.
    He could also confirm her identity after some people just happened to tape a mermaid.
She was heading this way,
the soldier had said.
    The girl’s eyes were wide, and she was biting her lip. Luce wavered, all the blood rushing away from her head and leaving a stripped, nightmarish shore behind it. Could Dorian really have done that to her?
    “I’d heard about you and the whole water-cannon act. You’re getting to be kind of legendary, for sure. But you’ve really got enough power to pick up a boat and crack it in half?” The girl laughed, too wildly, then choked on her own laughter. Her face kept bunching strangely.
    Luce gaped at her. She was overwhelmed by the hideous things she’d just realized. “It . . . works better when I’m really upset. I couldn’t always . . .”
    “Oh, I think you’re going to get
sufficient opportunities
to be upset!” Suddenly the girl’s poise crumbled completely, and her face deformed like smashed clay. Sobs racked her, and she doubled and gasped. Luce wasn’t sure what to do at first—the girl seemed too tough and confident to want to be held.
    Then Luce didn’t care anymore. She swam over