Free Lost Voices by Sarah Porter

pearly daylight. She was perched out in the middle of the inlet on a wide underwater crag shaped i 59
    almost like a sofa, lolling back against an outcropping of rock, and Luce joined her there. Luce was surprised by how cheerful Catarina sounded now, and also by the intense joy she felt at the sight of Catarina’s welcoming face. She almost didn’t care what the other mermaids thought of her, Luce realized, just as long as Catarina liked her. “You really have a wonderful voice,” Catarina added, and this time Luce heard something a bit resentful in her tone. And wasn’t there something strange in the way Catarina looked at her, something hungry and suspicious at the same time?
    Luce’s sudden worry must have shown too clearly, because Catarina laughed, and when she spoke again all the resentment was gone. “Do you want help getting breakfast? I bet you’re not used to cracking your own this way.” She took a mussel from her stash on the rocks and bashed it open. Luce accepted it uncertainly. This was a new start for her, after all, and Luce was very conscious that she couldn’t afford to make a bad impression. It hadn’t lasted long, but even so, her experience that morning of finding herself abandoned to gray, rocking emptiness still lingered, its cold pressure filling her chest. She made an effort and gulped the mussel down.
    It wasn’t bad at all, actually. It was chilly and smooth and salty in a way that felt right to her. She ate more, and then she swam to the beach and tried some rubbery leaves of brown seaweed. The other mermaids were very entertained by the diffi-dent way she bit into the first leaf and then by the changing expressions on her face as she chewed. She was introduced to more of them: Kayley, who was eleven, with an Inuit tint to her skin and beautiful tipped- up eyes and who had sleek black hair; Miriam, who was the same age as Luce, but had been a mermaid 60 i LOST VOICES
    already for more than seventy years and had lived with other tribes along the coast. But as they ate and talked there was something that was starting to make Luce uncomfortable.
    The mermaids on the beach ranged in age from five or six up to about sixteen, and they chattered and giggled like any young girls. But at the farthest edges of the group and out on the water, there were a few smaller, softer heads that bobbed and stared or suddenly popped out of nowhere like the heads of seals and then vanished again. Some of them didn’t even have hair. They watched Luce in a sad, yearning way that made her feel a little queasy.
    Samantha saw her looking. “Larvae,” Samantha explained, although that didn’t help Luce understand much. “Don’t pay any attention to them, okay? It only encourages them to hang around more.” Then Samantha failed to take her own advice, and shot a look of distaste at one little head that had floated up too close.
    “And besides, they attract sharks.”
    Luce didn’t know what to think of that. She was just starting to understand how much she didn’t know, how many questions she would need to ask before everything made sense to her.
    Larvae?
    “Are they mermaids?” Luce finally asked, and Samantha grimaced. Kayley nudged Samantha and shook her head to say that it was time to change the subject.
    “She does need to know these things,” Samantha snapped at Kayley. “We have to talk about it sometime.” Then she turned back to Luce. “ Technically, yes. Technically they’re mermaids.” Her bell voice was colder, more emotionless than ever. “That is, the timahk protects them.” That word again, Luce thought. “You can’t ever hurt one, no matter how much you want to, and you’re i 61
    not allowed to drive them away. But they’re not, not proper mermaids. They can’t even talk, and they just make these awful squeaks when they try to sing . . .” Luce couldn’t help thinking of Gum.
    She realized she missed him, and she glanced around at the bobbing larvae curiously.
    Babies,