The shorelander wanders down the grey beach.
Thunder rumbles quietly offshore, but the bare-footed shorelander does not retreat. With idle fascination, she bows to pick up a small cerulean stone carnivorously sculpted by the rise and fall of ocean waves, holding it aloft and tilting it to catch the clouded sun's hidden face. An autumnal sea-breeze encourages her to draw her white shawl closer to her chest, but she lingers with the stone, mesmerized, and utterly unaware of her audience.
At least, that is what the Siren hopes, holding onto a sea stack with a single clawed hand as he watches the shorelander examine her find. There are rhythms to the ocean that all Sirens know how to read – where a thrashing may be had, where a warm drift might carry a Siren for hours – but few use them for such mundane purposes. It is undignified for Sirens to interact with shorelanders except under the most exceptional circumstances, and salting the beach with pretty stones hardly qualifies. Still, there is no one else to correct him – for at any one time, there is but one Siren.
Leaning forward, the Siren errs and scrapes his claws against the stack. The screech is metallic. Alarmed, the Siren releases his hold on the rock, sinking beneath the surface, heart pounding. He cannot see the shorelander from here, could not guess what speculation covers the gaffe in her mind, but he stays below the waves until the patter of rain is distinct above him. Resurfacing, he scans the beach for any sign of her, but the stones are alone.
Disappointment fills him. He knows better – shorelanders do not like the old storms he is so enamored with – but he still searches for her until the rain becomes an occluding haze. Sinking under the waves again, he searches the shallows for cerulean stones. He finds a few and transfers them from gravelly bed to the small deerskin pouch slung across his shoulder.
The pouch itself is a gift from a drunken sailor who thought he was a man-a-tee. One day, the Siren vows to meet this Manatee, and perhaps acquire an even larger pouch from him. He can't help but wonder what collection the Manatee has assembled. Surely, it must be substantial, for stories of it to proceed its presence so far.
As the waves churn to a pummeling froth, the Siren retreats to deeper water, blue-grey tail paddling idly after him.
Unlike the Merpeople of the equatorial regions or the Selkies of the frigid poles, the Siren passes unrestricted across the vast oceans. Time is on his side – for Sirens can live centuries, millennia, under the kindest circumstances. Some are wiser than others and stay out of sight and out of harm's way; others make deals with creatures best not dealt with. A few have even attempted to join the Merfolk or the Selkies, but the history between them is sharp and unforgiving, and none have succeeded.
The Siren glides across the roof of the ocean for a time before plunging down, carving a clean path through the water to the cracked ocean base. It is not deep water, but rather the shallow shelf perched between the shorelanders and the distant seas. In many ways, it is an intermediate space between life and death. There is not much, Out There – nothing a lone Siren dares engage.
With learned confidence, the Siren squeezes through a fissure into the broad, bowl-like cavern beyond it. It is only thrice the Siren's length, broad enough he can turn fully but shorter than he is. It doesn't bother the Siren – he settles against the stone wall comfortably, surrounded by the brilliant blue stones he seeks so assiduously.
Smiling in the dark, the Siren reaches into his pouch and shakes loose his newest finds, pressing them into the smallest of gaps remaining in the walls. Someday too-soon, he won't have space for any more, and his smile fades at the thought. He could find a new cave, but he has cultivated this nook for nearly two decades – it was the very first place he called home under the waves. It has protected him from the passing dignitaries – sharks and whales and all manner of predator between – and offers a certain kinship with his predecessor that he cannot avoid.
The Siren Who Came Before Him never told him his name – not that he needed to, nor even was encouraged to. In the long line of Sirens, names were rarely exchanged. It was too personal. His predecessor selected him mere days before his passing, succumbing to poison from an errant urchin. To learn his name would foster heartbreak.
With only the barest of teachings before him, much of what he has learned about Sirens has been self-taught.
For example: Merpeople and Selkies do not like Sirens. His tail still bears the scrapes from those encounters, marked by two civilizations as an outsider. The Siren Who Came Before Him never warned him, and naively, he hoped that the reigning authorities under the sea might provide illumination for his inquiries. Instead, the guardians captured him, gagged him, and told him in no unclear terms that if he returned he would be killed.
Over nearly twenty years, he has learned bits and pieces of the story behind the animosity: Sirens, being a species with but a singular member, cannot have children. To keep their species alive – to keep their song alive – they must take from others. Merpeople live nearly as long as Sirens, and though he has never placed an exact number on the toll, the Siren has learned that even the most ancient affronts are remembered in living memory. Merchildren, like shorelanders, are curious: and they, like every living creature, love the Siren's songs. Selkids, while rigorously protected, are equally susceptible, and make memorable Sirens.
The Siren flicks his tail up and down absentmindedly. It is a flat, almost paddle-like appendage, broader than a Selkie's two-prongs and bulkier still than the tropical strands of the Merpeople. Its dull color allows it to disappear in the water, and his torso retains a gleied appearance, making him doubly difficult to find.
Amid this selected obscurity, arrestingly bright blue-green eyes stand out. The shiny black claws at the ends of each hand are equally hard to miss, and a flash of white teeth terminates in tipped points where human canines taper gently. Were it not for the tail, he could still pass for a shorelander – until he spoke.
Exhaling, the Siren closes his eyes for a moment, floating just above the stone at his back. It is immeasurably peaceful down here, far beneath the roil and toil of waves, the shouts and jubilee of humans. Some might call it the perfect life – complete master of his fate, unrestrained, unentangled. He won't ever have to grieve – for he has nothing to grieve. The ocean is eternal; the ocean will provide him what no Mer or Selk or Shorer could.
But not a friend.
Opening his eyes, he looks around the dim cave, at his brilliant and lonely collection, and feels an ache in his chest like poison. He has only been at this for twenty years – cannot recall anything before it, only that Siren Who Came Before him, and this fleeting forever after. One day, when he has grown weary of his pious servitude, he will thrust his post upon another, and they will carry the legacy onward, in an endless chain.
It is a most uninspiring future. Death in obscurity, a quiet passing away, unremarked and unnoticed, until he is just the predecessor of the Siren Who Comes After him.
Wedging himself through the opening, he strives with almost desperate abandon for the surface, cresting the waves and bobbing in the surf, stretching for days at his back. He could run, run to a place no shorelander would dare. Why he lingers at this port, this quiet and nearly always empty shore, he does not know. But he looks out over it, spattered with rain and quiet abandon, and feels himself drawn towards it. He drifts closer, heedless of the eyes that won't see him, and sojourns to his stack. A moonless, cloudy sky looks over him, hiding him from view more effectively than even the waves.
His ears pick up the braying of sailors not-far, and he turns to face the long boat making its way towards shore a good distance away. Keen as it is, his hearing could detect a whisper of conversation from the shore itself, but he ducks his head underneath the surface to block it out. He has never been overly fond of the noise. It overwhelms him. The Merpeople prefer to speak one at a time, and the Selkies not at all. Only shorelanders laugh and squall with such unconcerned buoyancy.
Still, they make quite a show. He sinks underneath and paddles as close as he dares, covering the span in slow strokes as the ship idles away. The old storm has moved on, and the sailors aboard have reclaimed the night with their laughter like seagulls. He passes along the length of the ship, unbeknownst to the crew, and brushes a careful hand against the wood. Strange, how heavy it is – how it floats, he does not know. He leans up, pressing both hands against the side, claws digging in a little, and still it does not give way.
Fascinated, he sinks back beneath the waves and repeats the experiment on either side of the ship, but no corner of her hull succumbs. Not that he wants it to – although certainly a challenge appeals to him, in his world of quietude. Something dangerous could almost be fun.
Of course, if he really, truly wanted to upend the ship, all he would have to do is sing.
But he keeps his mouth shut and sinks self-consciously back into the water when a large white furry creature leans over the edge of the ship above and barks at him. Eyes just above the waterline, he watches the beast lean closer, and wonders if he won't have to beat a hasty retreat. Then a sailor shouts and the beast retreats, and the Siren sinks beneath the waves just in time to avoid the inquisitive glance of the man.
He's always been nervous around sailors and shorelanders, as nervous as he is inquisitive, for Merfolk and Selkies share the seas, while sailors and shorelanders drift on land. It boggles him – why would any creature want to live so far from the ocean? What calls them?
And yet he understands the yearning, and quietly knows that he watches the shorelanders not out of idle curiosity at all – but envy, a soft, burning, irrepressible thing.
Daring to emerge, he sees an empty deck above, and he floats back a few waves, giving himself a better view of the ship and its voyagers. Oblivious to his presence, the sailors joust and laugh and jockey for wares the Siren has no name for, pitching the occasional bottle overboard. The Siren lets them fall – the ocean takes time to turn the jagged glass into something soft and beautiful – and watches instead their owners carouse carelessly, a world away.
Someone strikes up a song and a yearning grows in the Siren's heart until it takes every ounce of will power not to open his mouth and sing. He swims close enough to dig his claws into the wooden boards of the ship, arrested by the tune, and aches to ask the sailors where they learned it. For he was born with the song in his heart – and yet here they invent them, just as they invent these vessels that should not bear any weight at all, without a second thought to the impossibility of such a thing.
The songs last deep into the night, but the Siren does not, gradually letting go of the wood as his hands grow numb with cold in the air. He stays just above the waves and listens, but the tune grows fainter as the sailors float away. He wants to ask them to play it again, but as they tire they fall quieter, and quieter, and quieter still, until he might be alone, but for the lapping of the waves against the ship.
He sinks below the surface and breathes in the ocean of which he is part, the ocean which so-long-ago stole his breath, and aches for a moment to be human again.
Then Barry surfaces into a world of fire.
. o .
It's cold, a breath above freezing, but Iris doesn't mind.
She idles across the shore, looking for nothing in particular, passing time until the Duke's arrival. She enjoys the Duke's company – Eddie Thawne has no trouble finding excuses for finicky friends to explain her long, solitary sojourns – but she also enjoys her time at the edge of the ocean. She especially enjoys it when others have retreated, leaving her alone, conversing with the great beast as if it were alive.
Holding her shawl close, she pauses when a spark of soft blue catches her eye. Reaching down, she plucks the stone from its perch, examining it in the fading afternoon light. A sharp screech jerks her head upright, but there's nothing there – just ocean as far as the eye can see. Keeping a firm grip on the stone, she walks slowly, deliberately up the shoreline. And she can almost swear she sees a ripple, the flicker of something not-so-simple out there, but rain dapples the surface before she can confirm it.
There are legends, myths, stories sailors tell to shorten the sojourns which are otherwise intolerable – but she's never fully accepted their unreality.
Something is out there, she knows, and she pauses at the crest of the shore, aching for a moment to find out what. It wouldn't be difficult – she could simply lay aside her shawl and swim until her lungs gave out – but it would be costly. And she cannot surrender so easily to such a flat fate, no matter how burning her curiosity.
Yet even as she tempts cold with the thickening rain, she only moves down the shore, retreating farther and farther from the civilization she knows. She wants to call out, but what would she say that something would respond to? Nothing comes to mind, and eventually the rain relents, her soaked clothes pressing unforgivingly against her sea-salted skin. She shivers once, and dares to press her bare feet into the breathtaking froth.
Soon they go numb and the cold is less violent, and she watches almost in a trance as a distance ship approaches shore, alight with torches and sailors conversing, almost-but-not-quite audible from here. It's a mile walk to port, and she could make it, but she cuts back across the rocky bank, curving up the path back to town.
She is nearly at the cobbled road leading back to the castle when she sees the brilliant blaze approaching port – a brilliant, terrible blaze, shouts breaking over the waves as sailors fight the sudden, consumptive fire with equal fury. She turns and runs full-tilt towards it, halting at the pier with a burning stitch in her side. In horror, she watches the ship fracture, plunging shouting sailors into the sea.
There's chaos on the pier as drowsing bystanders rouse. No one knows the cause of the fire, but no one cares. A pair of rowboats departs as the remaining half-dozen watchers anxiously attempt to assemble a more formidable rescue. Helpless, Iris can only stare in horror.
In seconds, silence consumes the sea, broken only by the faint shouts of the rowers. They pry a few men from the water, dragging them with obvious effort into their boats, but the rest are nowhere to be found. Iris' heart pounds; her mouth runs dry. Please, she pleads. Please.
She doesn't know who she's asking – the very ocean itself, it seems – but there's nowhere to go and nothing to do.
Then, with almost comical abruptness, a man leaps out of the waves. He lands with an audible thump in a rowboat, and before the extraordinary feat can be processed, a second man repeats it.
Except, Iris realizes, dazed and amazed, he doesn't jump – he's thrown. Iris scans the waves, but she can't see anything subsurface. A third sailor shouts as he's launched in the air, landing in the second boat. A third rowboat approaches in time to catch a fourth sailor, a fifth following after a painfully long pause. By the sixth, Iris has a hand pressed to her mouth, scarcely daring to believe her eyes.
A seventh sailor appears at the surface; the third boat quickly retrieves him. Seconds later, they haul the eighth from the water, and relieved tears cloud Iris' eyes. Added to the initial rescues, that makes a dozen even – a full crew.
A barking dog paddles close to the pier and several of the remaining bystanders reach down and haul him up, Iris' amazement scarcely abating at the magnificent recovery.
Then there's a commotion at the first boat as two of the men attempt to haul something – someone – from the water, a someone who decidedly does not understand the purpose of a rescue, thrashing and struggling mightily against their hold. He kicks up enough of a commotion that he nearly overturns the boat, and another man quickly joins the first two, shouting indecipherably at them. Somebody jumps in the water and the reluctant rescue becomes apoplectic, churning up the water violently.
The man in the water succeeds in getting a grip on his reluctant comrade, and Iris wonders if the violence isn't the result of trauma at the contrast of fire and ice. But despite his efforts to thwart his own rescue, the sailors are relentless. The message is clear: they aren't going to let him drown.
She doesn't see what happens next – only hears the low, baleful cry, almost wolfish in its depth – before both men on the boat let their charge go. The thirteenth man plunges beneath the surface, dragging his would-be rescuer with him, but before Iris can wonder the rescuer is projected upwards and lands hard in the boat.
The others scan the water, but the thirteenth man never resurfaces, and Iris' chest feels tight as she watches the remaining crew finally row ashore. Bewildered, half-frozen, and in dire need of a brandy, the men dock and shake hands, recounting the explosion – and tantalizing snippets of the rescue, the strangest of commonalities underlying every story: a stranger, silent and strong, propelling them up out of the water and onto the safety of the boats. They examine claw marks imprinted precisely against their backs and sides, reflecting the grip of their rescuer.
Iris stands in the middle of it, unable to retreat, unable to move forward, the stone burning in her hand.
At last, a man acknowledges her with a start: "Princess Iris. What are you doing here?"
She tightens her grip on the stone. "Who was that man?" she asks.
The man shakes his head. "A poor fool," he says, reaching out for her before hesitating, at last stripping the sheepskin from his own back and offering it to her. "You must be freezing. Come, come. This is no place for a lady."
Iris takes the offered skin but holds her ground, insisting quietly, "I want his name."
"I'll find it for you," the man vows with the polite sort of distance reserved for telling a lady he will kill a chicken kindly – cordial and unreflective. "Why don't I find you a carriage?"
Iris says, "I can walk," but she trembles where she stands, and does not resist when the man succeeds in flagging down a fellow and his steed, instead allowing herself to be gently guided to the step. Climbing into the carriage, she finds herself exhaling deeply for the first time in minutes, tension easing out of her in the quiet, enclosed space.
Sea accidents are always traumatic, she reflects, lulled into quiet reflection by the familiar rocking of the horse pulling the carriage along. Even the sharpest minds could play tricks under those circumstances. Surely – surely – it was an illusion, brought about by the sudden transpiration of events. Nothing extraordinary. Nothing impossible.
But the stone burns in her hand, and she can't help but think that the ocean didn't lie and neither did her eyes.
Something is out there.
And she'll be damned if she doesn't find out what.
. o .
Wedging himself in his cave with almost frantic violence, the Siren trembles from crown to tail, curling his arms tightly around his chest. The hands of sailors feel branded into his skin. This, this is why Sirens do not interact with sailors or shorelanders, humans of any sort. They're violent, compulsive creatures – prone to fishing anything that moves out of the ocean, for purposes he knows not, and he sinks into the smallest crouch he can, terribly aware of how many saw him, his face, his face, if they knew he existed they wouldn't stop until they found him again because that is what humans did.
Maybe if he stays here forever everything will be fine: they will pass away quietly and he can come back to the surface in a hundred years or so. Sick to his stomach, he closes his eyes, willing the panic away. No human could survive down here for long – no one would even know where he is, let alone come after him. Here, he's safe. He's safe.
Slowly, slowly, his heart rate comes down. He's safe. No one even knows he's here. Humans have short memories – he knows, he knows, because there is a nagging other-half of his reality that attempts to intrude any time he stares at the shore, like it will coalesce into being if he looks hard enough, something missing, something-that-was-there – and they will soon forget their strange encounter. They always do. If they didn't, he couldn't coexist with them – they would hunt him down, hunt him because he could hurt them, hunt him because he existed outside their own contrived reality.
His soft blue prison is the safest place in the ocean, and he will always be safest alone.
And if he saved them – if he dared to get close enough for them to try to drag him out of the water, the ocean, home – then maybe he is relieved, in a quiet corner of his heart, that there will be no funerals tonight.
He doesn't leave his cave for a week.
