The siren sings and bodily sensations slip away. My eyes flutter closed, lids heavy. I fight to keep them open. Fight for the sake of fighting.
Emily… Mother… Father…They’re still depending on me. I still have so much I need to do for them.My crew…
I don’t recognize the words of his song. They’re low and fill my mind in the same way one too many strong drinks would, glazing over other thoughts. I’m vaguely aware of him releasing me with one arm. I try to use the opportunity to make an escape, but there’s no time. He frees the spear from his back, pointing it ahead. The notes dip and rise.
With an explosion of stardust, we crash through a swirl of silver. In a blink, I find us adrift in a turquoise ocean. Bodily sensation slowly returns to me as the siren continues to drag me through the water. Every beat of his strong tail sends tingling ripples across my flesh.
We’re somewhere else.
The sea floor is barren. Wrinkles of sand contrast against the streaks of light cast from a surface almost close enough for me to reach up and touch. In the distance is a strange, reddish haze.
Without warning, the sea shelf drops off precipitously. I squint and blink with force. It…it’s not a shipwreck. My mind struggles to comprehend what is so clearly before me.
There, beneath the waves, is a city of light and song.
As we approach, details become clearer. I can see the archways that support arcades, which frame in courtyards. Terraced houses stretch up as organically as coral. Balconies are used as front doors that sirens swim to and from. In the distance, at the far end of a narrow cliff that stretches like a half-finished bridge across an abyss so vast that it consumes the horizon, is the faded outline of a castle. A wall of the red water is behind it, looming ominously like a cloud, barely held back by a bubble of silvery light. Faintly, I see the shapes of tentacles as more nightmarish beasts circle in the murk.
I shudder. Even though the landscape I behold is as stunning as a painting, I would much prefer if this were only real in brushstrokes. In life,thisis the home of the monsters of the depths. The senses that were slowly returning to me numb once more.
All the stories about sirens that I could ever find stop at, “When they take you, they kill you.” I never encountered anything about deals made with them or how to break them. And certainly no mention of a city beneath the waves…
As we get closer, the outlines in the red haze that I thought were tentacles sharpen some. I realize that it is not the swirling of many beasts, but a single, stationary structure. No, it’s more organic than that. Atree? Squinting up, I try to make out the shape. But the water is too choppy and we’re moving too fast away from whatever it is that looms above the surface.
We bypass the main city, swimming along the edge and out over kelp fields that stretch taller than the main mast of a barque. Most of the kelp is shriveled, a rusty muck covering their surface that releases tiny particles into the water when we churn the currents as we pass. There are a few other smaller houses along the way. The men and women stop swimming to look at us in what I read as confusion.
Most of the sirens are like the man who has yet to loosen his grip on me, not the milky-eyed, bloodthirsty creatures that first tried to take me. They are as diverse as humans. There are all shades of hair—even in colors I have never seen grow from a head or chin before. Their skin ranges from as pale as the siren who took me to deep browns. They are large and small, young and old. Some tails are narrow and others are wide. Some have fins along the sides of their tails, dotted with scales, and others are smooth, looking more like the lower half of dolphins than fish.
It’s impossible to categorize them all. But one thing they all bear in common is painted markings upon their flesh. Some have only a few lines, wrapping around their torsos and biceps. Others are painted from nose to fin with artwork that is similar in style to what is on my forearm.
We crest a hill and a manor house comes into view. Behind it is a wall of rock and dead coral that the sea floor drops off behind. Somehow, illogically, the meager wall seems to keep out the swirling, reddish hue. The murk just stops, as if the barrier extends beyond the surface of the water invisibly.
The structures vaguely remind me of Lord Applegate’s estate. My chest tightens. I had sent him belowdecks again for the passage. There was no way he wasn’t the first to die. Was he one of the men I saw skewered on the wreckage?
I press my eyes closed, wincing. My mind torments me with visions of meeting his daughters years ago. All those girls have now is their mother, the wretched woman…and it’s because of me. And Kevhan is just one man… I’ve taken all my crew from their families.
Kevhan Applegate. Jivre. Maree, Lynn, Jork, Honey, Sorrea, more, all, my whole crew.Dead.
Because of me.
I thought I had learned through coming to terms with my own demise that I must make peace with the world as it is, not as I wish it to be. But I suppose it’s a lesson I never really took to heart. If I had, I wouldn’t be slowly collapsing inward with the costs of my choices. With the guilt that just my proximity brought such misfortune.
I’m sick to my stomach as we slow and come to a stop on a wide veranda. Unlike Applegate’s manor, there’s no long drive leading up to the building. Just sand and skeletal coral stretching out in all directions. I suppose sirens have no need of roads, or carriages, or front doors when they can swim up to any balcony and through any window.
The siren’s arms slowly unravel, releasing me from his viselike grip. But he keeps a hand on my person, preventing me from immediately swimming away, as he faces four others who have lined up, waiting.
There’s a grizzled man with a gray shark’s tail dotted with scars. Every pale line is outlined in red detailing that looks almost like lace covering his tail. His hair is a deep shade of purple. It must have been striking against his fair skin when he was younger, but now it’s thinning on top and graying near the fins by his cheeks. Despite his potential age, he is more muscular than the man holding me.
Next to him is a young woman with broad shoulders and skin as pale as the siren next to me. Her light brown hair is pulled back into a single braid, decorated with pearls that contrast like tiny stars. She has distinctly familiar brown eyes, nearly identical to the man at my side, accented by the deep navy lines that swirl upon her cheeks and up her forehead.
At her side is a woman who looks to be my age, perhaps slightly older. Her similarly brown-tinted hair is somewhere between my captor’s platinum and the younger woman’s—a golden blonde, lighter than mine, and accented with brown. It’s pulled into a bun, skewered with spiny shells, bone, and gems. As she approaches I can see her entire torso is painted with stark white lines that blended in from far away.
“Welcome back, Duke Ilryth.” The woman bows her head. Her mouth doesn’t move as she speaks. I hear her voice in my mind. “We are here to begin the anointing process.”
“Thank you, Sheel, Lucia, Fenny, but I shall do it myself,” the duke insists, nodding to each of them in turn. I can’t stop myself from narrowing my eyes slightly up at him, which somehow only makes his eyes shine with amusement. “Our offering is as easy to hold onto as an enraged eel. The sooner we get her in her cage, the better.”
Excuse me?I lean away from him enough to sign, “In my cage?”
“Speaking with your hands isn’t necessary,” Ilryth continues in my mind. “You are linked with me”—he touches his forearm—“so you can communicate with your thoughts as we siren do.”
