Disclaimer: I do not own anything that has to do with Pirates of the Caribbean, the legend of the sirens, or anything else that I do not own that might show up in the following fic.
Author Notes: Well, I absolutely adore PotC and after several fics I started but decided to never post, I actually came up with one that I think might do well. This first chapter doesn't really have much to do with PotC, but more of a prologue than anything else. I hope you all like it.
The Siren of Jezebel Isle
Chapter One
Legend has it that when the world was still young, there were three siblings who brought great joy into their village. For, rumor had it, that their beauty surpassed even that of Helen of Troy, the creature that even a war was fought for, and all within leagues of their homes instantly became enamored with them upon first sight. While their looks were stunning, their voices had the ability to make any creature that heard then forget everything and blindly follow them.
Such a gift was not thought to be dangerous until they used their sweet song to seduce the king of their land, binding him to their wills. With the cruel brutality only the shallowest of females can possess, they shattered his soul and took his wealth. To say the least, the gods were deeply displeased with the women they had blessed. They ripped the trio away from their idyllic life and with all the fury of enraged deities, marooned them on a small island far away from the sprawl of land they once lived on.
A curse was placed upon them; never would they feel the touch of another for their singing now held a darker tone, one that would draw any who heard it to their eminent deaths. They would be tethered to their island for the rest of eternity, able to explore the seas around with fins of the ocean life around them, another addition to cast them out of regular society.
"You aren't dreaming again of the legend that keeps us here, are you Jasmine?" The voice of my sister, Hyacinthe, brought me from my wanderings, a slight blush staining my cheeks.
"Am I that obvious?"
My sister merely smiled and brushed a long crimson curl behind her ear, smiling warmly in my direction. The centuries since we had been deposited on our little island, we had grown closer than ever possible had we lived out the length of our regular, mortal lives. Instead of dying and passing on to the Hades' realm, we were forced to live on until the end of time, to always regret our mistake of ruining another's short time on the earth.
A slight shiver gripped my shoulders as I remembered our transgression, though no guilt accompanying the regret that we had been punished. I stared out at the endless, rippling waves of the vast ocean that surrounded our home, fingering the shell I held in my lap. The first few months had been deathly difficult and the memory of the first ship that drifted past or island still brought cloying sickness to my throat. Hyacinthe's hand gently gripped my bicep and I turned my face up to see the warm face of my present sister.
"Sweet, don't go there. That day will haunt all of our memories until the day this world is swallowed by the gods."
"But all those men…"
"Were destined to die by our voices, dashed on the rocks of our island."
"We shouldn't have sung."
"There was nothing we could do; you know it is our very nature to lure unsuspecting sailors to us."
"But no creature should have to live with the guilt of so much blood on our hands."
"It is our punishment."
"We did no wrong!" My voice rose to a crescendo of sudden anger, a longstanding argument of our innocence once again igniting.
"Please don't fight." Our missing sister suddenly rose from the sea before us, liquid streaming from her water laden blonde hair. "You both have different opinions; may we just leave it at that?" She pulled herself out of the water and onto the main part of the island.
Once her lower half was free of the salty ocean, the scaly fins melted seamlessly into a pair of slender, human-like legs and she slowly folded her hands in her lap, watching us with saddened azure eyes. Out of the three of us, she was the most sensitive. A new conversation begun to spin, when Rose let out a gasp, eyes trained on the horizon.
"A ship!" She said breathily, sweet joy lighting in her eyes.
Hyacinthe and I twisted so we could see the object of our sister's desire, and indeed, a wooden vessel had begun to seep onto the wavering distance. In unison, our hands clapped together and we rose quickly to our feet, bare flesh pattering quietly against the warm stone as we quickly arranged ourselves on the middle of the small spit of land that made up our home.
Within moments the boat entered in the hearing distance, which was considerable, and in a single, dark voice we began to sing. How can one describe what we sound like? No one survives if they hear us begin to weave our treacherous net of seductive sound; they find their death upon the sharp rocks that protect out home from outsiders.
The ship's course veered drastically in our direction and from our vantage point, we could just spy the forms of several humans sprinting about on deck. What we did could not be helped, to sing and draw unsuspecting mortals to their deaths was rooted deeply into our instincts. To be perfectly truthful, it gave us unspeakable pain if we denied our baser needs. It took by moments until we heard the ominous creaking of timber and the shouts of men.
My sisters and I grappled for each other's hands, not heading the sharp nails that dug into palms. To our eternal delight, the vessel then hit the first line of rocks and the horrified screams of her crew rent the air. Our singing came to a haunting end and we watched with undisguised glee as the boat crumbled under the impact and razor sharp teeth of our spires of stone.
The men fell from their perches into the seething water and to our greatest surprise, not all were killed the instant they entered our oceans. Several of them were able to avoid the needles of rock that many of their fellows found their deaths on and climbed onto the body of our island. Their eyes had lost the glazed effect that they took when they became blinded by our song and the only thing resided on their faces was cruel hatred.
Held in their hands were glinting lengths of a strange material like we had never seen before and dirty, ripped clothing adorned their filthy bodies. These were not the creatures of olde, the ones we had first seduced to be our victims. These were a new breed, a frightening mix of beast and man that were wholly new and terrifying. We were innocent then, so naïve of the world that surround our meager island.
To the extent of our knowledge, we only knew of the mainland we had been born on. To there being any other great expanses of land, we were oblivious to their existence. Hyacinthe first rose to her feet, pulling Rose and I along with her. We had the curiosity of infants, but our divine physical appearances were enough to distill such an image. I lagged behind, an uneasy sense of distrust lingering in my heart as I watched these new creatures advance upon my siblings.
What happened next occurred in the blink of an eye, but the image will remain with me until the day I can be claimed by Hades. Those peculiar sticks they held clasped in their callused hands caught the sunlight as they whipped them menacingly in front of them. In movements so fast they were difficult to follow, they ran Hyacinthe and Rose straight through. Surprise flashed across my sister's faces before they fell, eyes fading into the dullness of death and the moment their spirits fled this world, I felt it.
They killed them.
A wail of tangible agony erupted from my mouth as I watched the men begin advancing on me to award me the fate they had given my sisters. Without pausing to think, I ran to the edge of the spit of land and dove into the calm seas, my legs molding together into elegant fins of darkest violet and obsidian. My soul bled as I descended far beneath the depths the mortal eye can perceive as I cried out for the lost presences of my sisters, the siren trio of Jezebel Isle broken until only I remained.
All manner of sea life twined about my form as my fins ceased to twitch and I let myself float aimlessly in the current, my tears lost in the salty ocean. There would be no one to comfort me, no one to gently stroke my back as I sobbed my broken heart out into my hands. Eternity stretched out before me in a lonely tapestry and with fisted by hands in my hair, tugging thoughtlessly at the blue-black locks in my misery.
The two women who I had slowly grown up and been damned had been ripped from me. I had nothing left of them but their slowly bleeding corpses. I do not know how long I drifted there, wallowing in the agony of loosing the two creatures I knew and held dearer to me than my own life. But soon the light filtering from the sun above began to diminish and I pulled myself up onto the rocks of my home, uncaring to my fate if those beasts had yet to find a way to slay themselves.
I dragged myself over to where my sisters had bled their live blood onto the rocks which nurtured and loved us when we felt the most alone. I curled up in the space between their cool cadavers, the thick crimson fluid that had once given them life staining and covering me. What did I care of beauty and physical niceties when the only two females who would have shared them with me lay cold and dead on either side of me?
I let my eyes slowly close and the exhaustion that comes after periods of great emotion claim my weary soul. I only hoped that the men that seemed too had disappeared from the graveyard that made a mockery of my once beautiful home had been rewarded with a torturous death far worse than what they gave my sisters. Each of their faces had been burnt into my mind and I would not forget them. If I ever ripped myself from my nightmare of clinging agony, they would wish they had never lifted their peculiar weapons against the sirens of Jezebel Isle.
Of the dark hours that passed as my body turned itself of to try and handle toe breadth of agony the loss of my sisters instilled within me. I vaguely recall foreign whispers, being roughly prodded, and then a blissful nothingness as I felt myself drift further away into unconsciousness. Something soft, much like the sensation of sun warmed ocean water encircling wind numbed flesh, wrapped around me and I burrowed closer in to the silky material, it reminding me of one of my sister's hair brushing against me as we sang.
"I dun' think she's ever gonna wake up." A wholly unfamiliar voice ripped through the sweet dreams my stricken mind created to protect me and instantly my eyes snapped open.
The wide spectrum of grey and green that made up my home had utterly vanished and had been replaced by drab brown and a heavy taste on the back of my tongue that screamed unnatural. No salty breeze buffeted my face and made my hair twine about my form, just stale air that smelt of unwashed body and burnt skin. My hand pressed against my mouth as my stomach began to heave, memories of Hyacinthe's and Rose's bodies floating up behind my mind's eyes.
"Lass, we mean ya no 'arm."
I lifted my gaze from the simple bolt of cloth that covered my body, for what reason I did not understand, and onto the face of a concerned woman. My jaw dropped at her appearance, for never had I seen any person, let alone a woman, with such dark skin and eyes. Around her waist a stick like that which stole the lives of my siblings rested easily and a matching one rested easily against the hip of the man beside her.
Frigid terror gripped my heart as I pressed my back against the wood behind me; hands gripped the material with white knuckles. While I desperately wished to join my sisters, I had no desire to die. Through a small hole in the timber on the other side of the enclosed space came a faint whiff of the ocean and I realized I had been picked up by a ship, similar to one of the many I had helped to ruin.
I must have aided in the killing of some of these people's loved ones or something similar and now they would take my life. The woman's words did not register in my mind and I had one thought, I had to escape. Without another thought, I leapt from the softness that wrapped around me, leaving the cloth on the bed. With the knowledge I hold within me now, I know that if I had not had the element of surprise, I never would have gotten more than a few steps past the bed.
But, at that time, my legs carried me quickly from the cabin, as I learnt it was later, and onto the main deck of the ship. Just in the distance I could see the craggy rocks of Jezebel Isle, my home, fading into the distance. A high, pained cry boiled out of my diaphragm as my mind projected the image of my sister's bodies slowly rotting away in the sun, no one to cast the proper burial rites that our people had prided themselves upon.
The men that had been working upon the deck, most who were hard pressed to ignore me, stopped what they were doing when that haunted noise came from me. With my hands clenching the wooden railing that ran along the edge of the ship, I began to lug myself up onto it so I could leap into the ocean, so like a mother's protecting womb to me.
I had to get back to the island, even if it meant that I would slowly waste away. Brawny arms grabbed me round the waist and jerked me off of the railing and held me firmly, despite my frantic kicking and biting. The stupid mortal holding me could not grasp the concept that I had to get off the floating lump of wood.
"Lass, twould be best if you was still, savvy?" His heavy accent muddled his words into an incomprehensible jumble.
A scream of frustration escaped from my throat, tear streaming freely down my cheeks as I fought to return to the tiny isle that had almost disappeared from sight. One of my thrashing legs caught him in a particular sensitive part of his body and he let out an oomph and released me to sink to his knees, holding his damaged area.
Believing it to be my chance to escape, I was just about to fling myself back into the sparkling cyan waters lapping against the sides of the ship, when something hard connected with the base of my skull and I crumpled backwards onto the deck of the ship.
Tell me what you think of this new venture in a review? I need to know if this fic is worth continuing or not.
Your Lord and Master;
Foamy the Squirrel