The Siren Read online

  “What happens?” That was an interesting question. Marilyn should have seen this before, but for my and Miaka’s sakes, I was glad she asked. I longed to know how this all ended. Was it as strange as the start?

  Apparently there was a reason Marilyn didn’t know. The Ocean explained that they would discuss that privately. For now, Marilyn was simply reminded that her body would soon be breakable again, and she was to be careful with it. Marilyn could also rest assured that the Ocean would never seek her out again either to protect her or harm her, but that She could not promise complete safety.

  A moment passed. Marilyn had spoken with the Ocean so often. It seemed wrong that she would be confused on this point. They both knew it was close. Hadn’t they talked about it?

  “Will I remember anything?” Marilyn asked.

  This was unclear. Marilyn might remember sights and sounds of the last few decades, but beyond that, there were no certainties. Most everything would probably seem like a dream. The Ocean never spoke with former sirens to find these things out; it would only complicate matters. But She was sure memories of the life Marilyn had before becoming a siren would disappear. Upon hearing that, Aisling halted mid-stride. I guessed she had something in her she couldn’t wait to forget. Whatever awful thought littered her head, she kept her back to us, silently rejoicing at its eventual absence.

  Marilyn looked at the rest of us, tears touching her sparkling eyes. “What about my sisters? Will we know each other? Will we meet again?” At these words I choked. I was losing her forever, I knew it. I was aware of how much she meant to me, but I never stopped to think about what we meant to her. Marilyn had introduced all three of us to this life and had guided us through the hardest parts of it. She was very motherly in a way. The thing she had dedicated the last hundred years of her life to was now gone. I suddenly wondered if there was a chance I might miss this.

  It wasn’t impossible for us to meet again, but it was unlikely. And, of course, we wouldn’t be able to communicate with her if we did. So, for now, it was time to say good-bye.

  Marilyn steadied herself, strong as ever. She went to Miaka first. Surely that would be the easiest.

  “I know you’re scared, but you just listen to your big sisters. There’s something special about you, Miaka, never doubt that. You wouldn’t still be alive if you were anything less than one of a kind. Use this time wisely, and it will pay off. I wish you luck,” she said, her eyes full of honesty. Miaka was still so overcome from everything that she only nodded her head. Marilyn’s eyes met mine for a moment, but she backed away, heading over to Aisling. It was merciful; it gave me another moment to check my tears.

  “Aisling… you are the truest survivor I have ever known. You stand up to every challenge, you’re tough, and you never back down. I admire that about you. I hope that in this next life of mine, I take some of that strength with me. I hope to cross your path again someday.”

  Aisling had listened to all of this with a mixture of emotions on her face. For a moment it seemed like she was actually sad to see Marilyn go. That look of loss passed over her face so quickly that I was sure I imagined it. Then I knew I was wrong when Aisling chose to answer Marilyn’s last wish with, “I don’t.”

  Cutting until the very end, Aisling walked past Marilyn closer to the surf, still waiting for her chance to leave. Marilyn only sighed, still full of endless patience, even for someone hurting her in what ought to be a glad moment. She blinked her eyes, turned her head, and met my face.

  We both crumbled. How was I supposed to do this without her? Did everyone I loved have to be separated from me? We ran to one another and embraced.

  “Oh Marilyn,” I managed to mumble. But my weeping overtook any other words I might have had.

  “Kahlen. Oh Kahlen, just don’t give up. I know it’s been hard on you, but you have to hold on. You’re capable of so much; I’ve felt it from the beginning. You can’t stop trying to live. You can either sit here and mope, or you can let this be an adventure for you. It’s an amazing ride if you just hold on. Think of Miaka. You’ll mean so much to her. You’ve meant the world to me. I think once it all disappears, I’ll still manage to miss you. Try to make the most of this time. Breathe in all the wonders around you. Take a deep breath, Kahlen. Hold on tight.”

  I wept and wept. I wanted to express how much what she said meant to me, and how I would do it all. I would be strong and brave. But the only thing I managed to get out was, “I love you.” All I could think of were those two sentences, my eternal command: Take a deep breath, Kahlen. Hold on tight. It was the second time I had heard them, and both were the last time I had heard the giver’s voice. Marilyn knew that. She said those words to me on purpose. She knew I wasn’t very brave or strong. She knew I’d still need help. But this was all I was going to have.

  “I love you, too,” she told me. She kissed my cheeks and hugged me tight and then walked away. She went to the edge of the surf, pausing once to look back at us all. And then she was gone.

  That was the last time I saw Marilyn alive. She didn’t mention where she would go, but I guessed it would be back to England or America. I was right. In one of my more restless years, I ran across her obituary on microfiche from an Edinburgh newspaper. It had her picture next to the write up. She was radiant with age. Behind the wrinkles, I still saw that classic sparkle in her eyes. The hair might have been gray, but it still curled wildly. She did marry. She had a family. Her life was a quiet one, but it was good. I was happy to have known her.

  I wouldn’t have known this detail except that the article mentioned this, and it made me wonder for a long time after. She had her ashes scattered at Sea. Maybe there was absolutely no reason behind it, but I couldn’t help but contemplate the other possibility. For years afterwards, even though she had passed on, I felt a comfort in the water because I knew Marilyn was there.

  The Ocean had no more instructions for us, and we were free to leave. But there on the beach, Miaka and I simply held each other. Miaka was still reeling from the events that had just passed, and I mourned losing Marilyn with so much strength it overwhelmed me. This day seemed to drag on and on. I couldn’t believe that it was only this afternoon that I had watched the young couple walk happily down the street.

  Aisling walked past us into the gentle waves, muttering the word “babies” under her breath as she disappeared off to wherever it was she hid. I couldn’t believe her.

  After an immeasurable moment, we calmed. I looked over at Miaka. I heard people say they had a tough first day on a job before, but she would put them all to shame. She had withstood it all with a level of grace that surpassed me. I had seen grown men collapse under less strain. I hoped I would be able to comfort her now.

  “So,” I finally said, “I guess you’re stuck with me, huh?”

  She laughed a little at that and nodded.

  “Where would you like to go?”

  “Oh… I don’t know. I’ve never been anywhere but Japan. Can we live there?” she asked.

  “That’s not the best idea for now,” I said, summoning all of Marilyn’s wisdom. “You don’t want to accidentally be seen. And it’s better if we go where we can be alone— it’s hard to get used to talking to only one person. And it’s easier for your family if you just… just vanish.”

  She quietly let that sink in. There was no struggle in her to get more than I could offer. I guessed she had lived her life in submission until now. I think it was my position as a favored child that made me think I deserved more than I currently had. But Miaka was meek. If she could hold onto a little of that timidity, she would do exceedingly well at this job. Still I hoped there was more to her than that. She looked out over the blackness that surrounded us.

  “Could we go somewhere with a lot of lights?”

  CHAPTER 3

  If I was on a honeymoon here, how would it be?

  My husband would take my ha
nd and spin me around in circles. I would laugh out loud, my voice glowing brighter than the lights around us. We would be dressed in casual and crisp styles; he’d give me anything I wanted. He’d pull me in, his face lingering inches away from mine. Whoever he was, he would be too beautiful. Sparing my eyes for a few moments, I’d look up and examine the crisscrossing metalwork above us. How many hands had made this structure? His fingers would find my cheek, pulling my gaze back down. Without warning, I’d be lost in a kiss.

  A romantic thought. As it was, no handsome stranger held me. Instead, I walked the streets of Paris with Miaka. She’d said she wanted lights, and these were the best I knew of.

  Time passes slowly when you have a lot of it. The last of the 1920s and the beginning of the 30s found us in France. Paris wasn’t exactly Ocean-front, so we had to check in a lot. I often questioned the Ocean’s timing with us in my head; we were both so young. I didn’t know much about the history of sirens, but this seemed to be a bad idea. She was lucky She chose responsible girls back to back; otherwise, we would have been helpless.

  We borrowed apartments from strangers. It was easy to get into empty flats, and after watching for a few days we figured out where some furnished but temporarily uninhabited ones were. We quietly moved in, listened to the tenant’s music, lounged on their beds, and disappeared. Things like that are simple if you just have your eyes open. I think this ability is wasted on thieves. And us.

  This was just how we lived. We didn’t need a place to cook food or sleep the night away, but after so long, being outside was boring. At night all the shops closed and there was nothing to see, so we retreated inside. The Ocean was too far away for us to go and be with Her. Besides, I didn’t really care for the waters here.

  From Paris, we silently skipped around Europe enjoying the sights until the War. I longed to visit London, but kept my distance. The place, the very word haunted me. I wasn’t sure I’d ever go there. Maybe I would once I was living my own life. That city held a sort of unanswered promise for me. But it, like so many other things, would have to wait.

  War made me uneasy— as did anything unpredictable while we were such strangers to this world— but I had to be grateful. The War kept us unemployed, as it were, for a while, which none of us complained about. Well, perhaps Aisling was wherever she was hiding. With so much time on our hands, it really did take the reuniting with our sisters to distinguish between years and decades. Those moments of destruction were so striking; they were the only real things we had to mark time. Sometimes we tried to keep up with the seasons to celebrate holidays, but that was for the sole purpose of being entertained. It was like life happened all around me, but not to me.

  I could watch mothers, but not be one. I could see women as sales clerks or students, but not become one. We had to lay low, so we perfected people-watching. Sometimes this was fun for me. Watching children in particular lifted my heart. They always had so much energy. Children who already existed brought me unimaginable joy. But sometimes, when I saw a woman who was glowing with the fulfillment of pregnancy, I had to turn my face from Miaka and cry. I wanted to be strong for her.

  If I saw too many couples, their actions would dissolve into my daydreams of faceless partners who held me and kissed me. Sometimes, in my dreams, I was still like this— a creature of destruction. Somehow, I found someone who loved me beyond my condition. Other times, I was the girl of my last life, and I picked up where my own story had left off. It made me yearn, and since I couldn’t speed up time, I had to quietly endure it. Besides my own emotions pulling me, nothing was remarkable. So the 30s and 40s were quiet for us, with only being called upon to serve a handful of times.

  Living with Miaka was quite a shift from being with Marilyn. Where Marilyn was as talkative as I was, Miaka rarely spoke up. I kept reminding her that it was alright to talk to me, that it couldn’t hurt me. She just said she wasn’t used to speaking first. So I started asking her questions all the time. First, I learned everything I could about her past; her memories were slipping faster than mine. And then I made an effort to get her opinion on everything, or even get her to have an opinion at all. We bonded slowly. Miaka and I had vaguely similar backgrounds. Like me, she was the oldest of three and the only girl. But where I had been loved, Miaka was only accepted. Her parents needed boys. She couldn’t do the work they did, so she just wasn’t as valuable.

  Those were the exact words she used: not as valuable.

  They got her to do small tasks on their fishing boat with her brothers since her mother could handle the housework. They didn’t care that their daughter feared the Ocean. Tiny Miaka cried every time they put her on the boat for years. And then, seeing that it made no difference for her and only angered everyone else, she learned to control that. She couldn’t swim and was very soft-spoken. She fell off her boat on a particularly choppy day, and no one even noticed. Now she was lost to her family because they refused to listen to her. I had to imagine that, even if she wasn’t the most favored child, this would still bring grief to any mother. And how strange that now the Ocean she had feared for so long was like a parent of sorts, protecting her from everything else.

  I tried to show her things and teach her about the rest of the world. Miaka had no idea it was all so big. She had such a hard time saying how she felt that I would ask her thoughts on things that had no value at all. What did she think of that woman’s dress? Aren’t those stones in the wall pretty? Did she see any shapes in the clouds that day? Anything to get her to open up. I think asking all these tiny, detail-oriented questions eventually struck a chord in her. She knew I was going to ask them, so she started paying attention to everything. She started noticing things that my eyes missed.

  “Look at that shade of yellow,” she said one day out of the blue.

  “What yellow?” I asked. We were talking low. We could hear the movements of people above us and were trying to be extra careful. Gazing down on the street from our safe and empty apartment, the city was moving through some haphazard dance of errand running. The people who usually lived here must have been performers of some kind. There were tons of books and paints and musical instruments. It was the most interesting place we’d stumbled upon yet.

  “In the sky. See how the sun is breaking through those clouds? It’s making the most interesting shade of yellow.”

  “It’s really beautiful.” I smiled at her speaking so freely.

  “It’s more than that. Look, it’s bright and muted at the same time; it’s shining, but it doesn’t hurt your eyes. It’s a miracle that such a color should be.”

  I stared at her in awe. I had no idea that she thought this much or even had the words “miracle” or “muted” in her head. Soon after that, Miaka started to describe small things from her past life when she could remember it. She remembered her house very well, but then there wasn’t much of one to remember; it was minuscule. She used phrases like “the walls were weak with time” and “so brown it seemed the earth had given birth to it.” I was amazed. Once she chose to speak, she said the sweetest and loveliest things.

  It was divine that we ended up in France first. Miaka came to love art. Since she could not describe things with words, she did it through paintings. Her delicate hands worked fast. Not needing to rest, she would sit in front of a canvas for days straight. I would pass every once in a while and watch as blank papers would blossom with images. She had a gift resting in her and had never even known.

  It only took those first few years to get her to open up, and then I really started to see who she was. Miaka was polite and funny and warm. She was smart, without a doubt, and incredibly graceful. Each year I grew more and more appreciative that the Ocean had spared her. Not only was I thankful to have her company in particular, but I was happy that Miaka had a chance to become who she was now. None of her finer qualities would have been discovered in her tiny village as the lowest in her family.

  Together,
we took in everything we could. We went to museums and art shows. I marveled at the statues and oil paintings. How could human hands create things so divine? What took Miaka days must have taken their slower bodies months. Miaka saw even more in them than I did and tried to write me notes about what she saw in the paintings, but her notes were in Japanese, and I couldn’t understand them. That meant that once we got home, I’d have to brace myself for her onslaught of words. She would not pause until every detail she’d enjoyed had been thrown out into the air. In that creativity, Miaka became satisfied.

  I was jealous that my desires were not so easily met.

  We also enjoyed an array of food. I didn’t know how many different kinds of cuisine there were. Using French translation books, we would go to cafes and point to phrases to ask for what we wanted. We were lucky that most of the waiters we came upon were so understanding. Cake was by far my favorite indulgence, but I loved the little tarts and pastries we discovered there, too. I vaguely remembered American food, and I had already experienced the spices and brightness of Spanish food. French food was savory and designed to be enjoyed slowly. So we took our time discovering it all.

  And when we couldn’t walk around anymore, we went to see movies— that was our favorite. Later we would gush and gush over actors and actresses and favorite scenes. By now movies had sound to go along with the action, and this made them so much more enjoyable than what I remembered of the movies in my old life. I couldn’t get enough of a good love story; it was my own personal escape. Always, afterwards, I’d live through the whole thing in my head with myself as the heroine.

  Maybe, when I had my second life, I could be an actress. I already had several years of experience under my belt at acting normal, average. Maybe I could act out other things, too. Then again, maybe not. Not even a third of this life had passed, and I was tired of acting.

  I couldn’t say it then, but all that time I was bitter with the Ocean. I knew She was the crux of this life I led, but I didn’t want to have anything to do with Her. It was so tedious. The world I got to see was interesting, but I didn’t just want to see it; I wanted to be a part of it. And then the boredom of my wanderings was marked by moments of acting in the most revolting way I could— as a killer. I tried to distract myself, but it was all so empty that I never got very far. For all those years, there was nothing more for me in my life than being a beautiful, poisonous nomad. There aren’t words to explain it. I never imagined the toll loneliness could take on a soul.