The woman with golden hair comes to dress me. Her eyes are sad, but her hands are attentive. She adorns me in finery.
From head to toe, I am painted in the bright splashes and swirls of the old ones. I can hear their music in the lines. Raw power, plucked from the unseen weavings of the world. Remnants from a bygone era that I belong more to now than the present. Even though my physical form hovers in the sea, my soul is already with the old god deep beneath the waves that calls to me endlessly…
Endlessly…
I am given a fresh wrap around my hips. The young woman applies shells over my breasts with a gooey substance that sticks them in place. It’s used for other shells and small crystalline rocks that are stuck all over me.
A choker of many stranded necklaces and pearls arcs over my shoulders and around my sides—underneath my arms. My hair is pinned back with needle and spiny shell. She has slathered oil all over me. This substance is not pigmented but it creates an opalescent sheen to my skin. When she is finished, I am complete—a ready and willing sacrifice.
They lead me through the castle, low hymns already humming through the water. The sirens’ songs are more muted than the ones I know, than the masterpieces I’ve been listening to as I’ve stared out over the Abyss.
We arrive at a cavernous room with sculptures of Lellia and Krokan. A large dais has been positioned in the center. More of a pedestal, really, as it is a single wide column stretching up halfway through the hall. At its top is the lower half of a large clamshell, filled to the brim with pearls and gemstones.
We swim up and she positions me atop. I settle delicately onto the finery, grateful for the waters of the Eversea and their unique properties that allow me to hover just above the rocks, rather than putting my full weight upon them. It’d be rather sensitive, given how little I wear on my lower half.
“It will begin soon, Your Holiness,” the young woman says, and then leaves with the warriors that escorted us in.
I sit quietly, shifting to face the statue of Krokan at one end of the room. Meeting its emerald eyes, I fall into a trancelike state. The room around me fades into nothing.
My attention is called back to the present by movement. A brown-haired man approaches me, warriors encircling him. The latter begins to chant, and sway, as the former begins to draw music across the pedestal in a thick greasepaint. The swirling lines carry music. The song that has been written on my flesh, on my soul, is reaching its crescendo.
More voices fill the cavern. Dozens of singers, all harmonizing together, and I can’t help but sway to the rhythm their pulsing words set. My eyelids become heavy. The song seems to envelop me all at once and without warning.
A group of men and women swim in. They each hold a wooden staff with a silver ball of tentacles at one end. For every beat of their song, they wave it through the air, rocking in time with the music. Their clothes are strips of multicolored fabric of all colors and patterns that drift around them like pennons fluttering in the currents. They lead a procession of people that press in to the point of being flush, shoulder to shoulder.
I am overwhelmed by them all. It only takes a moment for the room to feel cramped with bodies and sound. Though perhaps the sensation comes mostly from seeing and feeling all their eyes on me and me alone. They lift their hands in unison as the song reaches its crescendo. It is as if they are reaching out to me. Begging me.
End it, they sing.Calm our restless god. Quell his rage. Be a worthy exchange for peace.
With the climax, the song is over and silence floods the room.
The man who drew music around me now swims over me. Layers of silver fabric around his shoulders swirl and coalesce. He addresses the room, turning as he speaks. “Today is the day of the five-year summer solstice. The day that we shall present Lord Krokan his offering as he has demanded. Who has brought us this offering?”
“I have.” A man with pale blond hair swims above the rest. The moment I lay eyes on him everything else falls away.
A slow, delicate melody trills in the back of my mind. It’s sung by a lone singer, somewhere deep in my soul. A song that’s just for me…
And for him.
Who is he?
“Duke of Spears, tell us of your offering.”
“Victoria is a woman of esteemed character. A woman who has sacrificed much to be here. Who has sworn to me with her life, with all she is, that she will bring peace to Lord Krokan’s rage.” As he speaks, every pulse of my heart tries to pull me closer to him. It begs me to leave where I sit and swim to him. Hold him…
Strange.
“As my father foretold,” the first man with the brown hair begins again, “when he communed with the old god:Krokan wants a woman, rich with life, and the hands of Lellia, to descend into the Abyss, only every five years.”
Thumping fills the room as wooden spears are struck against the roots that line the walls in response to the man’s proclamation.
“Today is the day of send-off, the day we will impart our songs and our wishes upon the offering for her to carry to the ears of our Lord Krokan. We invite you to bestow your blessings upon her. To finish her anointing. And to reaffirm your faith in the old gods to whom we owe our lives, and our deaths.”
The men swim away, leaving me alone in the center of the room. I am a slab of meat, offered up for carving. Everyone stares at me with hungry eyes and desperate gazes.
Singing starts again, a low humming in the background. As though everyone is murmuring softly all at once. There are no words, no intrinsic meaning this time, so far as I can discern. I am so focused on trying to decipher the song that I do not realize someone is approaching me until they are at the pedestal.
It is a young man, no older than seventeen. He bows his head and clasps his hands above his chest in prayer. The siren lets out a long and lonely song. In this hymn, I can hear words:
