The Twice Lost by Sarah Porter

slip back to the surface for a breath. As deep as she was now, she ought to swim up soon.
Go, Lucette!
Instead she stayed where she was, staring mesmerized at the field of unmoving animals, jagged shells, and bacteria. A transparent creature floated by her, looking like a feathery scrap of silk torn from a ballerina’s dress. Countless tiny lacy filaments sprouted from its sides; it should have been wonderfully beautiful. But it was turning brownish, and it draped on the current with sickening indifference.
    Go on, Lucette! Now!
Her lungs were starting to burn, but that was just for lack of oxygen. Wasn’t it? Or was the water here poisoned somehow? She tensed herself, forcing her tail to spiral purposefully again, to carry her
up
. . .
    But hadn’t she heard something about this, once? Hadn’t
someone
—Luce couldn’t even stand to think his name anymore—hadn’t someone she once knew told her that there were ocean areas near the shores where almost every living thing was dying? That there were only a handful of species that could survive in them, because the water was starved . . .
    Starved of oxygen. She remembered now. All those creatures had suffocated. That must be why the water
felt
so wrong. Humans had done this, too, Luce remembered; it had something to do with all the extra fertilizer pouring into the ocean from farms.
    The water’s weight began to shift off her body and green wands of sunlight reached her. She was speeding upward now, constantly imagining that, wherever she surfaced, the boat would be waiting for her. Could they find her with radar? In a place with so much death, it would only make sense if she died too. Her lungs ached, longing for air, but for another few minutes Luce lingered ten yards below the surface, her gaze searching the green-glass surface above for any hint of an impending shadow. There was nothing up there, only the twisting light pleated by the waves, but still she couldn’t calm the panic that throbbed through her body. The instant she broke through into the air they’d rush in from nowhere, and glinting steel would cut the water so fast that she would only know it was there when she felt her body splitting wide . . .
    At last she rocketed upward, appalled by the wind on her face, and heaved in one quick breath before diving again to hover in watery space. Her heart punched at her chest. She knew she was being ridiculous; there was nothing up there. But after what she’d seen of her own tribe and J’aime’s, after seeing that field of death at the bottom of the sea, the whole world seemed jagged with menace.
    No,
Luce told herself. She couldn’t go through her whole journey this way. She might be killed at any time but there were more important things to worry about. She floated where she was a little longer, then deliberately flicked her tail and broke the surface, looking around at the serene golden light and breathing slowly. A few lifeless fish skimmed past, pale bellies winking at the morn- ing sky.
    If she was in a dead zone, then it was time to search for a living one.

7
Favors
    “Hello, Dorian.” Ben Ellison smiled up at him from a bench at the back of the town’s tiny cemetery. Although Dorian still felt some resentment over the conversation they’d had about that video of Luce, he smiled back. Ben Ellison was probably the only adult who actually cared about him now that his parents were dead, and in spite of himself Dorian had come to regard him as, maybe not a substitute father, but something like a favored uncle. “It’s been too long. How are you?”
    “I’m okay.” Dorian settled onto the bench beside him. The cemetery was at the top of a hill, and views of the harbor winked between the trees. A toy boat moldered in the grass of a nearby grave; probably a fisherman was buried there. “You said on the phone you had some news?” Dorian felt a spike of tension in his stomach as he asked that—maybe they’d found Luce; maybe they knew where