Now I knew I wasn't crazy, but these past few days I was convinced that there was either something in the air or this town had a seriously adverse affect on people. Not only did Allison and Lydia get trapped in the school at night alongside Jackson, Stiles and McCall with some kind of psycho killer who was now currently on the run, but this history project mom had set me on was seriously making me question my reality. When she got me the transcripts of all the stories in the books which she had been compiling into a new one to accompany the one we currently had, I had dedicated everything in my power to read every single word.
Eventually I figured out that using a blue laminate helped everything to settle and made it easier for me to read, so once I utilised the tool I was able to actually read much faster and didn't struggle so much. Mom was right. These stories were actually all about sirens. Like, sirens in mythology, the ones that sang to sailors in order to seduce them to a watery death. There were a few cases of such events occurring, but others described how these beautiful women saved seamen from sinking ships or fell in love with men of the land which brought them to leave their ocean homes forever, but they all shared distinct similarities.
The sirens would be beautiful, with near transparent skin and crystalline blue eyes, oceanic and hypnotic. Their voices surpassed all other creature above and below the earth, being the most angelic and pure souled voice anyone would ever hear in their life. They had the power to be able to know the hearts and innermost thoughts of man which they would use to either tempt them into the ocean, warn them of their human flaws or uncover the truth about themselves that they wished to know. Before I knew it, I had been completely engrossed. One siren from millennia ago apparently was so gifted with her power of song and discernment that she could not only convince any man she wished to do her bidding, but could also know exactly what it was that person needed to hear the most. According to her chapter, this particular siren used her gifts to become independently wealthy, extorting from the rich to possess all the jewels and treasures she desired.
Another used her power of song to offer comfort and peace to the restless, working in a hospital during the Civil War to tend injuries and sing to the wounded. The more I read, the closer I came to my own time period until I found the last entry which dated back to the nineteen forties. My great grandmother Isla. In her entry, she talked about how she had sang professionally in all the greatest opera houses of her time, where her voice had become world famous before she had even reached her twenties. She too talked about sirens, but rather than a story, it seemed more like an etymology, talking about our ancestors and our connections to the ocean.
From what I could tell, it was as if these women actually believed that they were descended from a long line of sirens which appeared once every few generations. Great grandma Isla listed detailed information about sirens in general, including their links in ancient sources such as Homer, Hesiod, Strabo, Apollodorus, Sophocles and more. Even googling the term sirens turned up less information than what this book had. It seems great grandma Isla had been very thorough, she'd copied pictures and everything, detailing the variant forms sirens could take. Some leaned towards bird like appearances when they 'shift' or something, whilst others could grow gills, scales and sometimes even fins.
She explained our close connection to water and our near constant desire to be close to it, or submerged within it as a primal instinct that survived through the generations within our very genetics. This is crazy. I must be crazy for actually reading this, but I just can't seem to stop. Every now and then I would read something and think, 'hey, that actually sounds very familiar' such as when I read about the effects of singing and how sometimes, it were as if you could not help but simply let your voice lead you forwards and it took everything in your power to restrain it.
Before long I was already working on my assignment, writing down what my female ancestors had accomplished in their lives and the impact they made through their life choices, though I smartly opted to negate the fact that they were all insane and thought they were mythical women which originated from the sea and could put you under a spell by merely singing a tune. Like I said. Crazy. Lydia and Allison are not going to believe this when I tell them all about this, though with Allison it'll have to wait until I'm back at school because she was currently under house arrest for skiving school on her birthday. Honestly, I was rather proud of our growing rebel, but it sucked she couldn't come and see me in my crippled state.
As well as the assignment itself, I also started looking more into my family history, reading exerts which indicated to more information about the connection to sirens my family possibly had. I couldn't help it, I just had to know. "Mom!" I yelled as I limped across my room searching through the endless boxes she'd brought up for me to rifle through. "Where's that diary you told me about?"
"Which one sweetie?" She called back before hurrying into my room. Ever since the attack, mom had taken to either being very close or working in the study down the hall even though she hated it, just to be close to me so that she could come running if I needed anything.
"The one about the opera singer, what's her name…?" Utterly focused on my task, I continued to pull out old books and tattered papers, searching adamantly before suddenly realising that mom hadn't answered me so I looked up to see her standing there with a soft smile on her lips and water gathering at her eyes. I was shocked. "Um…mom? Are you okay? Are you crying?" Sniffling she quickly dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, laughing meekly.
"No, no, it's just that I've never seen you this dedicated to a project before and I couldn't help but feel happy that you're taking such an interest in our family history. I'm so proud of you sweetheart." Feeling a little bashful I muttered something about it being nothing and I just wanted to get my grades back up but mom just smiled at me knowingly. "Now, which diary was it you wanted? Oh right, Melusine the opera singer. It should be in this box here, remember I coded them?" Going across my room to a box that had been deposited at my bedside, mom lifted it up and dropped it onto the bed where it bounced from the weight of its contents. "The diaries are quite interesting, detailing her life as an opera singer, however there's nothing overly exciting in them, so maybe you'd be interested in this."
Pulling out a slim box with beautifully ornate carvings of shells and ocean creatures, she opened it up to show me pages and pages of sheet music. "No way! This is amazing, are these some of the pieces she sang in concert?" I asked, immediately going to pick them up but my mother stopped me, warning that the pages were very delicate so told me to put on some specialised gloves so that I could safely handle the pages. "Wait a minute, I've never seen classical music like this. It's not…I don't recognise this." My mother hummed proudly.
"Exactly. This sheet music was written by Melusine herself but as far as I can tell, she never released it, never performed it and never revealed it to anyone. She wrote the music then just locked it up to be passed down through the family, and in her will she made it so that no one could ever publicise them. She willed it 'in perpetuity', which means forever and to this day, our family have kept these pages to ourselves. Maybe you'd like to try singing them?" Damn right I'll sing them, these songs look amazing, beautiful even. I carefully read the notes and formulated the sounds in my head, already feeling the chills down my spine.
Gradually I began to notice that each piece was titled something in a language I could not read, and when I asked my mom she admitted that she couldn't read it either, that it was a language she and numerous language experts could not translate. It just intrigued me all the more. I just had this strange feeling that these songs were more than just pieces of music, that they meant something. That they were meant for me. So, putting my project aside for the moment, I took to rewriting all the pages of the music on fresh paper to preserve their memory, wanting to keep them for myself so that I didn't have to risk damaging the originals.
The titles were scripted in linear markings which looked nothing like anything I'd ever seen before. They did not form letters of vowels, but the not knowing what they meant made me want to know all the more. I have to get Lydia in on this. With her brain, I know for a fact that she should be able to come up with something or be able to figure out what they mean. So, on a separate piece of paper I wrote down the characters of each title on their own. I'll put these aside for now and come back to it later. If I don't get an 'A' on this damn report, then I am going to be super pissed.