A Treasure Odyssey
Part 10: Don't Rain On My Parade
Birds chirped in the distance, sounding like a meditation record. Lukewarm breezes whispered by and waves splashed steadily against the still ship. The sky was extremely blue and sunny, but enough with the weather already.
After waking up Remus wondered why he was lying on the deck floor and had only a vague but slowly returning recollection of the underworld, having some trouble remembering what had really happened and what had just been part of tripping. It didn't matter. The floor wasn't too bad and he thought that there was no real hurry getting up until he heard a sound that was unfamiliar but most definitely not the sound of any strange bird and he covered his ears immediately and sat up. James and Sirius were already up fighting over binoculars so it was probably sometime in the afternoon already.
"What is this some woman island?" Sirius asked, pressing the binoculars to his eyes.
"I did hear giggling and singing" said James and waved.
"What's going on?" Remus asked, his fingers still inside his ears. "What is this place?"
James pulled out the fingers and nodded at a bunch of women sitting on a cliff in the distance.
"I don't know but maybe they do"
That was perhaps likely but Remus had no interest in engaging in conversation with any sneaky sirens. They seemed harmless alright but such was the nature of audio terrors. Their flirtatious singing and giggling couldn't have signaled more danger had they had snakes for hair (although gorgons were in fact not particularly sneaky anyway but that was beside the point). The naïve assumption that sirens were more like a type of slutty but harmless water elf got 400 middle aged men killed a year and kept filling the street corners of Diagon Alley with Siren Tourism Agencies.
"La la la is the map still inside the figurehead la la la?" Remus asked.
"No we took it out and put it somewhere" Sirius replied.
"La la la you 'took it out and put it somewhere'? La la la"
"Always so suspicious and paranoid! I figured you'd want to get away from the sirens although I don't know why. Shouldn't you people stick together?"
"What do you mean 'You people'?"
"Their song is so beautiful" said James, a little dazed. "Isn't it possible that they've just gotten a bad rep? The first thing they teach you in DADA is that beauty equals goodness and ugliness equals evil, after all"
""La la la that only applies to people la la la"
"So, not you people then?" Sirius asked.
It looked like Remus would just have to look for that map on his own. He stuck his fingers back inside his ears and recalled intently the words to Pink Shoelaces whilst running below deck. He searched Sirius's cabin first, which was in fact a wine cellar with a mattress and blanket, and was quick to find absolutely nothing. He pondered where to look next when he had his fingers pulled from his ears a second time.
"Oh look I had it the whole time" said Sirius, waving a scroll. "Just thought I'd let you know this is the place before I go and ask the natives for directions. Prongs went ahead and is probably making new friends already"
"How can you be sure this is the place?" Remus asked, thinking it a perfectly fair and important question but Sirius did clearly not feel that way for he just rolled his eyes.
"Only you could be disappointed this place isn't inhabited by moldy drawers. Do you fear the temptation or something?"
"Of course I fear the temptation. They're sirens, it's what they do. They're not a type of woman with a bad rep, they just look like such"
"You know that's what many say about you people"
"That's entirely different! This discussion wouldn't even be happening if they all looked like toads"
"Maybe you've benefited from not looking like a toad. Anyway, I'm going to look for treasure now"
Sirius left the cabin/wine cellar and Remus decided that tagging along was probably a better use of his time than hanging around in the wine cellar fantasizing about islands inhabited by moldy drawers, reminiscent of a post-apocalyptic Poshkea.
James was indeed up on the cliff making friends with sirens and looking unbothered by the fact that he was slowly becoming paralyzed. Remus raised his willow, 27 cm, Sphinx molar, intent on zapping the bunch into toads.
"Croakus Pokus-" he mouthed when Sirius pushed down his arm.
"Just because you don't want to enjoy yourself doesn't mean we don't" he said, flipping the map 90 degrees.
"I thought you wanted to look for treasure"
"We rock, scissors and papered who would distract them and he has cigarettes in his ears because what can't you do with cigarettes?"
"You can't inflate it, roll it, mold it, float on it, mend things with it, us it to fling things and climb surfaces…"
"Ask not what you can't do but what you can do"
"So what can you do?"
"It alleviates stress and passes the time"
The clearly marked treasure spot lied on the other side of the siren rock. The quickest route was obviously through the sneaky sirens, the safest most likely through the forest ahead, but there was no guarantee there weren't sirens there as well.
"Through the forest is probably better" said Remus.
"Yeah over the rocks will save time I agree"
Sirius let Remus have the map before foolishly setting course towards the siren rock, naively thinking cigarettes in his ears and the complete track list of Hair would protect him for any longer period of time. It was true that all the books on the subject agreed that ear worms were the most efficient defense against audio terrors. What they often failed to do was warn against the use of show tunes, for to sing show tunes was really to day dream and day dreaming weakened the mind, six year olds knew that!
"Manchester England, England, across the Atlantic sea…" Sirius sang as he merrily skipped through the sirens which stopped fondling James to gawp at him instead. "And he's a genious, genious! I believe that God believes in Claude that's him! Ah-that's him!"
The sirens were successfully silenced and paralyzed but only for a moment, for although the song was catchy enough and Sirius could have easily carried on without having anybody fondling him, he lingered around too long for he wasn't singing to defend himself but to relive the school production of Hair in which he got to dance on a long table with plates. The sirens were clever enough to realize as well as take advantage of this and began to harmonize a beautifully slow paced a capella version of Black boys/White boys and thus turning Sirius into a limp dummy in their arms. James sat up, scratching the back of his neck shortly after the sirens had lost interest in him, looking generally confused until a couple of sirens after a quick game of rock, scissors and papers went back to soothe him with their breathtaking rendition of Day By Day and Remus was baffled that these sirens knew that James actually not-so-secretly liked Godspell in spite of at least not openly being a fan of musicals (but fact was, you had to be a sociopath to not like musicals, according to scientific studies). These sirens were clearly very powerful and Remus could feel their song stubbornly seep through the gum in his ears and make his head feel all warm and clogged inside and he needed to act while he had some consciousness lest he'd be rendered blissfully paralyzed as well. And he would just have to think of some tune that was even catchier than all the tracks from Hair and Godspell combined, even if it was against his better judgment, his inability to do karaoke sober be damned. It seemed like an impossible feat until he recalled Aunt Muriel's collection of Bobby Darin records.
He began to snap his fingers but practically whispered the first few lines.
A couple of sirens frowned at him. Well, they could frown all they wanted, Remus wasn't trying to win any awards. The important thing was that he got their attention.
He carried on more loudly and more sirens began to frown and stare. Then they started to put their hands to their ears and shriek in agony and although it sort of hurt Remus's feelings it also made him care less because there were few things he disliked more than rudeness.
The head of one of the sirens exploded halfway through the second verse and the worms that crawled out of the remains were so disgusting Remus had to be strong to not be defeated by nausea and continue. The remaining sirens began to move towards him; bloodlust and rage in their colourful eyes and looking nothing like the smiling and seductive sirens in the adverts for siren tourism. But Remus carried on crooning in spite of it and perhaps he was terrible for being filled with joy every time a head exploded but frankly he didn't care, at least not at the moment for he was feeling a tint of murder lust as well for some strange reason he had no time to ponder more closely at the moment this fine and darkening yet unusually bright evening.
The sirens got closer and closer and their heads kept popping, usually one at a time but sometimes three at a time and it was immensely satisfying to watch them decrease in numbers.
"And they will squeak! And! Squawk! And! Speak! And! Talk! To! Me!" he belted out the final words as the few sirens with their heads still intact ran for protection behind the rock, some heads popping on the way.
"Yeah you just run!"
Somebody slow-clapped sarcastically behind him and he turned around to find another batch of sirens. Remus pointed his wand at them, content with turning the remaining ones to toads because getting them all extinct just risked getting him unwanted attention.
"I thought I toad you to run" he said and paid no attention to the distant boo's and you-suck's from the cliff.
A siren pointed at a lovely part of the sky illuminated by a lovely and fat moon. Well, that explained why his molars had been itching like hell all day. It should have given him a clue of how much time had really passed since they had visited the underworld but such was the power of denial, as deluding as it was pleasant, much like daydreaming and show tunes.