Moreland had promised her that she could be human again if she wanted to. And she couldn’t keep being a mermaid, obviously; as soon as the Twice Lost recovered from the shock and realized what she’d done they’d be after her. And once they caught her . . . Her only option was to leave the water as soon as possible before dozens of enraged mermaids shredded her fins, twitched her scales off one by one, then opened her veins with raking nails. But when she looked around she couldn’t recognize the spot where Moreland had left her anymore. The streets channeled eddying waters spangled peach and bronze by the rising sun. She had a vague sense that she’d slid into the harbor somewhere on the left, near those slips where dozens of shattered and upended yachts now slanted across the jetties, their white hulls grinding together with each new impulse of the maddened sea. Anais dashed in that direction. Soon she was weaving between the submerged cars on the freeway, sometimes ducking below rolling human bodies dressed in bright summer outfits. A German shepherd with blood pouring into its eyes from a head wound snarled furiously at her as it swam nearby, but with a quick lash of her tail Anais darted out of reach of its jaws.
Lush green trees cast endless shadows over the dawn- shimmered water as she turned up a street of partly collapsed red brick townhouses and small, uninteresting shops that had sold plumbing supplies and carpeting. The water was high enough that she skimmed alongside second-story windows, sometimes peeking in at beds whose sheets suddenly hovered above them like huge waterlogged wings. Anais passed a teenage girl who was standing on her dresser in a room whose front wall had torn away so that rags of its flowered wallpaper bellied in the currents. The girl was gasping so hard that her breath sounded like tearing flesh. In the green water below a drowned white cat thudded against crushed bits of furniture, shoes, and uprooted saplings, followed by an unmoving boy no older than four. A silver fish peered out of his open mouth. Anais felt her heart beating so quickly that it merged with the sound of her blood into a single skittish clamor. She’d only done it because Moreland had made her, she told herself. But somehow that didn’t calm her down or ease the yawning, rattling sensation in her chest.
The water was smoother now, gradually lapping into the calm that comes after utter devastation. Birds trilled in the protruding crests of uprooted trees lining the street; sirens howled in the distance. Wherever she looked, Moreland was nowhere. A torn daisy grazed Anais’s shoulder, heading out toward the sea. She didn’t think about it, only about the black van that had to be around here somewhere. No matter how much she hated Moreland she needed him now to rescue her from all this awful chaos.
Then a garbage can lid came spinning straight at her, clapping her on the head. She glowered at it in irritation as it cycled on toward the harbor. It was traveling faster than the daisy had been.
A chair swung itself through roiling water, smacking her arms and bruising her tail. The drag of the current was against her now, and she had to fight to keep swimming inland. Her fins flicked against the cold metal dome of a car. Lace curtains billowed from a second-story window, and now they were well above her head.
With a sudden jolt, Anais became aware that the level of the water was dropping. Fast. The flood was receding from the ruined blocks along the waterfront.
And she couldn’t find Moreland anywhere, and soon she might be left beached and helpless on a field of silt-filmed debris, her tail slowly drying in the brightening sun. She toyed with the idea of turning back to the harbor and trying to escape into the open sea. But the harbor’s neck was quite narrow, and it seemed much too likely that the mermaids she’d deceived would catch her if she tried it. Anais could already picture the water streaked by their rapidly converging bodies, their hands contorting with desire to sink into her throat. She hovered where she was for a few moments, the water bubbling past her as if drawn by some immense drain. Then she began slipping along with the flux.
Where had Moreland gone? How could he have abandoned her now? It was, Anais thought, so terribly unfair. Doorways flashed by. She was drifting backwards now. Something razor-sharp gouged into her scales. She screamed and rolled sideways to escape it and only succeeded in slashing herself more deeply. Anais curled in place, turned awkwardly on her side, and saw that her tail had snaked deep into the broken windshield of a car strangely canted on a pile of fallen tree trunks. The hole where her tail was lodged gleamed back at her like a mouth lined with gleaming diamond teeth. The water kept pulling out from below her as she struggled to free herself until she was draped across a row of serrated glass jags, her upper body tipped across the car’s steeply angled hood. A long curve of her tail was exposed to the summer air now and her fins flapped helplessly against the driver’s seat. Blood streamed down the car’s scraped silver paint and blossomed in the greenish tide. With every twist and spasm Anais felt the glass stabbing her anew. Hot sun settled gently on her scales. Droplets of water flared like sparks, and soon Anais felt the pain of a deep internal fire. Her tail smoldered unbearably; it was all far beyond any suffering she’d ever imagined.
With a desperate effort she managed to tilt her body off the hood until her torso dipped into the outflowing sea. The sloping trunks below appeared through the reddish clouds of her spreading blood as she braced herself with both hands, then heaved her tail up and free of the slashing glass and jerked herself violently forward at the same time. Pain raked through her and gouts of blood spurted from wide ragged cuts. Her azure fins shredded as they flopped across the jags again, and she landed screaming in the water: water that was now no more than three feet deep. Bleeding and frantic, Anais swung her lacerated tail. She had to get back across the highway and into the harbor again before the falling water left her stranded.
She hurled herself through the retreating tide as best she could, asphalt and broken bricks and spilled garbage only inches from her face. Behind her blood trailed in crimson plumes. But there, just ahead, the highway shone in a long plane of glittering water interrupted by cars and trucks knocked askew like hundreds of small lacquered islands. And beyond the highway there was a large gymnasium caved in on one side, rows of treadmills heaped in muddy confusion—beyond that, the broken, swaggering masts and boats turned belly-up that promised deep water. If she could get there, at least she wouldn’t have to face that horrible burning in her tail again, that immolation buried in her own flesh . . .
The deep gouges in her tail slowed her movements, sending blades of cold agony through her with every beat of her fins. She was no more than a foot above the pavement now, and as she skimmed across the double yellow lines at the freeway’s midpoint she began to understand that the water below her might run out and leave her floundering before she reached the gleaming green depths on its far side. Terror charged through her muscles, and her tail began to lash in wild defiance of the pain. With every stroke her shredded fins slapped horribly against the coarse pavement and pebbles grated against her raw wounds. But she was close now, so horribly close; already she was crossing the yacht club’s parking lot on a plane of water so shallow that she had to constantly crane her neck to avoid dragging her face across the stones and torn metal thrown everywhere by that enormous wave. The masts now were just ahead, and suddenly instead of skimming above asphalt Anais saw the dark stained beams of the boardwalk that ran out between the ruined boats. In only moments she would plunge into deep water and sink her tail far from the harsh, pursuing sun, the naked air.