The Siren Page 5

  Even with Miaka there, I felt like no one could touch me. Though I was attractive, I felt utterly repulsive. The Ocean was there to guide if I needed Her, but I felt like I was adrift in confusion almost all of the time. I knew it wouldn’t be like this forever. But still… what year was it? 1945? Seventy-six more years. Seventy-six years of silence and killing and loneliness. It was like being in the bottom of a well, seeing the light and knowing fully there was no way to get to it. Not yet anyway.

  We left Europe for good in the late 1940s to see what we could of the mysterious lands of Egypt, Morocco, and Greece. These locations were classic. History seemed to hold them in place as time ushered their existence along. During this exploration, something worth mentioning finally happened: We got another sister.

  Her name was Ifama, and she came to us from South Africa in early 1953. Miaka and I were glad to take her with us. Aisling didn’t even suggest taking her in herself. Ifama was beautiful in a whole new way. She was physically and emotionally dark and strong. I couldn’t help but be drawn in by her. There was something regal about the way she carried herself. Maybe it’s because she was a mystery. Ifama did not want to share the reason she was swept out to Sea, and we didn’t push her. As with all of us, the Ocean admired Ifama for some reason or another; we assumed it was her pride. Even sitting on the abandoned coast after the Ocean had saved her, she wasn’t bawling the way I had. She didn’t even have the steady jerks of Miaka’s moment. She did cry, but it was one desolate tear at a time. She didn’t want them to escape, but one by one they hinted at her sadness. I got the feeling that when she asked to live, she didn’t know what she was getting into. But who of us did? I explained the rules to her. When she agreed, she seemed reluctant. Hesitantly, she came.

  Ifama didn’t speak. Whereas Miaka had been standoffish because of her meek nature, Ifama had no desire to engage in conversation with us. We did everything we could to include her. I tried the technique I used on Miaka; I asked her questions about her family so that she would remember them.

  “I had a father, a mother, and a sister. We loved each other. Now I am gone.”

  She finished her sentences with such absolution; there was no way to follow up. It seemed she just didn’t want to think about the life she had left behind. I couldn’t blame her for that. It was hard to move on. So I started to ask her about trivial things.

  “What do you think about that woman’s dress?” I asked one day.

  “It is a dress. We are more than our clothes,” she replied.

  So final. Maybe that was just who she was. Maybe she just didn’t need small talk. But all of us needed something, right? Maybe she just didn’t know how to relate to me. After failing again and again to make Ifama comfortable, I went to Miaka.

  “I’m worried about Ifama,” I told her one night. We were in Sumatra. A small house near the edge of a tropical rainforest had been abandoned, and we made it our own. Ifama was inside, doing and saying nothing. Miaka and I were balancing on a fallen tree.

  “I am, too. I don’t know what to do.” Miaka was sweet. She would want this as much as I would. It hurt to even think this, but, for the sake of us all, I had to try.

  “You know how you were shy at first? Maybe Ifama is that way, too. Maybe she feels uncomfortable with us both here. Maybe if I let you try to talk to her alone…” I trialed off. Either Miaka would dread it or she would love it.

  “Do you really think I could?” She seemed astounded that I believed in her.

  “Of course, Miaka. You’re a big sister yourself, now. And you’re very kind and warm. I’ll bet if it was just the two of you, she’d open up.” I let the offer hang. Miaka sank into thought.

  “Where will you go?”

  I put on the classic brave face. “Oh, I don’t know. Anywhere I want, I guess. But I promise I won’t stay gone for very long. Two weeks maybe. Or a month. Then I’ll come back to you and your new best friend. Probably won’t even want me around anymore.” I winked.

  “Don’t be silly. I’ll always love you.”

  And with that, it was settled. I left the next morning, giving the excuse that I wanted to be alone with the Ocean. Nothing could have been further from the truth, but I didn’t want Ifama to think I didn’t want to be around her. I hoped she would think this was something I did regularly.

  When I was far enough away that my sisters couldn’t hear, I cried. I hated being alone. It went against my very makeup to be by myself for more than a few hours. I needed people. And I needed people to need me. But for my sisters, for the only thing I had in this world, I’d sit alone for years and cry. I loved them.

  I didn’t leave Sumatra. I didn’t even tell the Ocean what we were doing. I went to a northern part of the island and stayed up in a tree. I don’t like to think about that time.

  It was all I could do to make it those two weeks. I hoped that had been enough time for Miaka because I needed to come back to her and Ifama. Walking in the door, I knew she had failed. Miaka was using berries to smudge color onto thin papers. She looked up at me, half smiled, and inclined her head to show that Ifama was in the other room.

  I went into the second half of our tiny structure. Ifama was sitting like a princess on a stump we used as a chair. She was gazing out the window with a secret smile on her face, as if she was completely content to be still and simply admire the air. She was always in thought and never seemed troubled. We couldn’t know what she was thinking, what she had probably been planning from almost the very beginning.

  We were out on the Sea, standing at the ready. When we were told to sing, Ifama refused to open her mouth. The Ocean actually warned her and gave her a second chance to join in the song. The rest of us were already caught in the moment and couldn’t stop to urge her on. I saw Miaka pull desperately at Ifama’s arm. She just stood there on the water, her jaw set.

  She only made the quietest of gasps when the Ocean jerked her under.

  The rest of us sang with tears on our faces. Aisling was in front of me, so I couldn’t see her face. I did see her slowly shake her head. The song carried on in the three-part harmony it had for more than two decades. No new voice added to its splendor, and no amount of tears shook its steadiness.

  It was particularly hard for Miaka. She felt like she failed Ifama, that Ifama could have stayed and grown like her if only she had done a better job somehow. Miaka carried that guilt. We took lives regularly. Death was nothing new to us, but it always left us pained. That pain was so much worse when you knew the person, admired them.

  I didn’t take the loss much better than Miaka myself. I couldn’t quite pinpoint it at the time, but it was more than losing a sister that way. Ifama’s departure was equally as abrupt as Marilyn’s, but it held an entirely new feeling. It took me days to distinguish why it was so distressing. It wasn’t just that another sister was gone. It was the sister herself. Ifama had planned this. She kept her distance on purpose. She never had any intentions of hurting another person. It was her actions that left me weak.

  A few days after Ifama left us, I had to leave, too. I thought about how being alone in the forest only months before had been a self-inflicted prison. Now isolation felt like a lifeline, the only thing that would get me through this disaster.

  “Please don’t leave me alone,” Miaka cried. I didn’t want her to ache any more than she already had, but I couldn’t take her sadness on top of my own.

  “Miaka, I love you. I just need to think some things through. I need to be alone for a little while.”

  “What are you thinking? You’re not going to die like that, are you? Please don’t do that to me!” Her face fell into her hands. She had always been such a sweet girl. Miaka had adjusted to our job because she had to, but anything beyond that was too much for her disposition.

  “No, no. I would never do that to you. I need you as much as you need me. I wouldn’t leave you alone. Not like that,”
I said, holding her and trying to calm her down. I couldn’t tell her that the thought of doing exactly what Ifama had done had crossed my mind. Briefly, anyway.

  “Then why do you have to go at all? Stay with me. We can go to some place new if you want. I’ll go anywhere you want.”

  “Look at me, Miaka.” She did. “I just need some time to myself. I will come back to you, I promise. I know you don’t think so, but you probably need to think through some things, too. I won’t be gone forever. I promise.”

  It took going through that conversation several times before Miaka would let me leave her sight. I tried not to be frustrated with her, to remember she was used to being unwanted. I went to the Ocean and headed towards America. Surely this was a long enough time to wait to go back to my native country. It wasn’t too long of a journey; I asked to go fast and didn’t bother saying another word to Her as I traveled. She must have known what I was thinking; I wasn’t disciplined enough to hide it. But She let me be.

  Ifama’s disregard for the rules left me heavy. And I realized it came down to one thing: She was braver than me.

  I tried to reason with myself that I wasn’t all that bad. I was obedient. I went without the things I wanted and never failed in my duties. I was here, which meant someone else didn’t have to be. I gave up myself. But Ifama… she lost her life refusing to take another. As many times as I looked at it, she always came out the hero.

  I spent months by myself mulling this over again and again in my mind. I didn’t have the slightest clue what to do with these emotions, so I sulked. I was depressed. It seemed the only way for me to right this was to go to the Ocean and ask to die myself.

  But I couldn’t do that. Not because I was afraid, though I was. But because I had already given Her thirty years, and I didn’t want to waste it. Because it would break Miaka’s heart. Because Aisling would call me a traitor or something worse. And because it would mean I failed Marilyn. And if I failed her, because of her words, maybe I failed my family, too.

  I just couldn’t do it. I wasn’t brave enough. I would never be brave enough to really put myself on the line if it meant someone else was safe.

  I wandered up and down the eastern coast of the States. I hadn’t been back to America since I set sail all those years ago on that pointless adventure. This whole thing with Ifama made me want to be somewhere that felt like home. Floating around America was the best I could do.

  I knew I had lived in Ohio, but I didn’t remember where exactly. I wondered if my brother Alex was still alive… his name was Alex, right? No. Alan. No, it was Alex. Maybe visiting him would make me feel closer to that old life— the one that was simple and good. I didn’t know where to look for him though. I was alone. I had no family anymore.

  I had Aisling, who was terrible, and I had Miaka, who was just too sweet to understand. I had the Ocean… but, to be honest, I wasn’t sure how I felt about Her. I debated for months… maybe it was time to talk to Her.

  After quietly jumping from state to state, I was spending some time in a beach house in Pawleys Island in South Carolina. I was enjoying the uninhabited rooms of a Mr. and Mrs. Patterson. Like so many others, they were away for the winter season, and I was staying unassumingly in their beachfront home. They had terrible taste in furniture. Thank goodness I wasn’t expecting company.

  The America I’d left and the America I came home to were very different places. I’d seen the world progressing through Europe, but it seemed to happen a lot faster here. It was good I could hide away. This world was becoming so fast-paced.

  I would walk along the sand in the day, trying to work up the nerve to talk to the Ocean. Marilyn used to do it all the time, so it must not be a big deal, right? But I wasn’t sure we could be friends. The only time I ever went to Her before was when we needed to do something that required money. You would never believe all the money that gets lost in the Ocean. And She would give it to us generously whenever we had need. It washed up on shore, as much as we could carry. We didn’t have homes or cars that could prove it, but we were secretly rich.

  By night I holed up in the beach house afraid to go to Her. For some ridiculous reason, I thought She might be resting. Not possible. So I stared at Her out the windows.

  I had spent so much time avoiding Her, distrusting Her, and blaming Her that I didn’t know how to go and talk to Her now. I was afraid I’d end up screaming at Her and make Her mad. I wasn’t sure She would even want to talk to me. I just waited for something to happen.

  Pawleys Island was beautiful. If I was going to hide, this seemed like a good place to do it. The Patterson’s house was the last one on a road that stretched down the coastline and ended in a small parking lot. The beachy coast made a crescent shape, like the sands were trying to give the Ocean a hug. I couldn’t help but wonder if they were. Yes, I had a hard time dealing with the life She dealt me, but the rest of the world was grateful.

  It was a secluded little area, and this time of the year it was particularly private. Some nights younger couples would drive up to the dunes in their cars. They’d turn out the lights and fog up their windows.

  I was jealous.

  There was one night when I had wrestled with my anger all day— anger with myself, anger with the Ocean— and then these teenagers show up and while away the hours kissing in their cars. I was so upset, so envious, that I was seconds away from speaking just to get rid of them. I was grateful my senses kicked in before I could act. I definitely wouldn’t have been able to live with myself after something like that. That was a long year, and some days were just worse than others.

  I just ached to be loved so badly. It was the last and most powerful desire of the life I lived before becoming a siren, and it carried over heavily. I didn’t know if Aisling had anything she longed for, but I knew Miaka had always wanted to create. She was exploring those ideas in full force now. And Marilyn wanted to live a life above being the walked-on girl she had always been, and she accomplished that fully. So many things faded, and there was no way to hold onto them— like wind in your hands. But some things… some things got deeper and bigger, and made your heart hurt from taking up so much space.

  So when these kids came around, it physically hurt inside my chest. And I was aware that teenagers making out in the back seat of a car didn’t necessarily constitute true love. But I knew it was just as, if not more, powerful than what some people felt later. I’d seen it: men and women sitting at their dinner tables with miles of silence and unfamiliarity between them. Seems to me that with how free the kids were that they might be onto something. But if I was being honest with myself, I would have taken the second option, too.

  It was just one of many things bothering me through this season of my sentence. In my world, the world I was raised in, I was on the edge of married life. And now that life was on pause for a century… so for a hundred years I anticipated it.

  But more pressing was this growing depression. Ifama’s stand had left me doubting my decision. Still I was fully aware that the only way out for me was to wait. So I needed to talk to the Ocean. And this time it was going to be different. It was going to be personal. And what if She was tired? Or busy? Or just didn’t like me? I had no reason to believe otherwise.

  Finally, after months, once I was resigned to the possibility that She would probably just turn me away, I walked down to the coast. It was an overcast day so no one would be around. Not that we’d be talking out loud.

  Though She was essentially in everything, I needed to be in water to talk to Her. Rain would work. Or a river. Even a good mud puddle. Things like sink water and showers were detached— that was different. It was the organic versions of Herself that were bound together. Still, this was a serious conversation; I wanted to be close to the source.

  So I stepped in the water, letting it come up to the middle of my calves.

  Hello? Even in my head I sounded ridiculously timid.r />
  Yes. It’s me.

  No, no. Nothing’s wrong. I just… well, actually I was wondering if I could talk to You?

  She was… elated. I hadn’t been expecting that. She hadn’t had anyone talk to Her since Marilyn left. It never occurred to me that She might be lonely, that She might be feeling isolated, too. A little bit of my anxiety melted. Not all of it, but some.

  How are You?

  I felt Her happiness. I was so absorbed in my own feelings when I was around Her that I never noticed that if I let my guard down, I could feel Hers, too. It made Her happy to have me show even the smallest bit of concern for Her. No one bothered to worry about how She was. She said She was well, and hopefully months away from needing us.

  That’s good…I really appreciate the warning. My words caught in my head. Listen… I know I may be crossing over a line, but I wanted to talk to You about our lives and how we live, how You live. Would that be possible?

  She asked if I was struggling.

  Yes. I started to cry. Yes.

  I wasn’t the first, and I wouldn’t be the last. She told me I was free to ask Her anything. I worked to calm myself and spoke.

  How did it all begin for You? This life?

  She apologized for having to deflect my first question. There are some things that She had to keep to Herself.

  I understand. Have You always had sirens from the beginning?

  No, but She could not elaborate on that either.