Waking Storms Read Online Free Page B

a few more?” The larvae crooned wordlessly, snuffling at her and gobbling up the shellfish. One of them was pale, but the other was probably Inuit, and gazed at Luce with eyes like black pools. Sometimes Luce thought of giving them names but then thought better of it. That would only make her feel worse when they died.
    Late twilight brushed the cresting waves with strokes of indigo, moody purple, slate gray. A few scattered islands cut black patches from the blue-glowing distance. The spruce-fringed slopes of the coast began to call to Luce, and she felt the tidal pull of desire to give herself to the sea. To spiral out through the night blue water, caress each wave with soft curls of her own song, and then maybe—just for a little while—float farther north, out past the fishing village where she’d thrown the bronzehaired boy onto a pebble beach. Not that she expected anything to come of this expedition besides some painful memories...
    She was careful to keep her singing quiet as she swam out, even though hardly any boats seemed to come through this way anymore. Probably the crews had finally gotten spooked by all the shipwrecks and decided that this part of the coast was simply unlucky. Every time Luce noticed a big commercial fishing boat or a cruise ship, it would be swinging out toward the horizon as if it wanted to avoid the area on purpose. That was fine with her. She knew, though, that Anais and the others had to be seething with frustration, watching their prey repeatedly glide out of range. Still, there was the occasional small fishing boat or kayaker, and Luce couldn’t take the risk of anyone hearing her sing. She played with the water as she swam, sculpting it with rivulets of music. Several months before, she’d discovered the secret of controlling the waves with her voice, and she’d been practicing obsessively ever since Catarina had left. Now as she skimmed along the surface she let out a series of high, bright, concentrated notes, calling up a row of perfect jets of water that splashed down again as she swirled away. Then she dipped below, still singing, opening ribbons of air inside the sea.
    She could even make small blobs of water levitate now. She’d been working on sculpting water in midair with tiny variations in her song, shaping transparent fish and seabirds, stars with dangling tentacles, human faces...
    A spangle of shining windows to her right marked the fishing village set back in its small crook of harbor. Luce reflexively edged a bit farther out to sea. Even if no one saw her, human settlements always had an air of discomfort around them, a subdued menace. Farther on was the beach where she’d left the boy, followed by a wall of low, uneven cliffs thick with half-dead spruce. Luce swam in closer again, gazing up. Trees stripped naked on the windward side tilted forlornly out of jags in the rust-colored rock, their bare tan branches like decaying lace. She caught the flash of something white and plummeting, probably a hunting owl, and heard an animal’s cry from the edge of the woods. It was loud and determined, and Luce stopped singing to hear it better. Maybe a rabbit was screaming as the owl carried it gripped in piercing talons.
    No. The cry went on too long for that and, it occurred to Luce, it was oddly musical, though to a mermaid’s ears it was much too coarse and graceless to count as actual music. Not really like an animal’s voice at all. Almost human, in fact, and now that she thought about it there seemed to be something peculiar about the sequence of notes. There was one note that soared up, high and feverish, followed by a tumbling fall...
    Luce heard her own small cry of astonishment. She stopped where she was, her tail flopping straight down in the water. She wanted to clutch at something, but there was nothing to hold on to, only the lift and fall of waves.
    It couldn’t be, Luce thought. It just couldn’t! The voice from the cliffs faded away, leaving only the