The Siren's Song

by Amalia Carosella

  For it was not only escape from her island she wanted of him now—no! Not just freedom or desire that inspired such longing in her breast. For Thelxiope’s murder, Aglaope wanted revenge. And it did not matter that Odysseus-Akheloios slept in Circe’s bed, ate at her side, smiled and laughed in her hall. Aglaope was certain once he knew what the witch had done to his bride, his daughter, he would not laugh and smile for long. The rage of the river god would fall upon Circe, strong and rushing, and she would be swept to her doom for such a bold offense.

  Whether her dreams were true visions, sent by the gods, by Akheloios himself, that she might know he was kept from her against his will and be reassured of his coming, or the wild imaginings of a tired body and grief-stricken mind, a means by which she might be freed of her sorrow only, Aglaope did not worry or wonder. It was not her place to refuse the gift she was given, or to dwell upon the reason why. And in truth, she had not the strength for the argument with Ligeia it would surely inspire if she spoke of it at all.

  Part of her did wonder, though, if her winged-dreams were not the wings upon which her grandmother’s grandmother had once flown. If the stories Thelxiope told had been spawned from such a simple thing, spun all the larger as they were passed from mother to daughter, until the wings were true feathered limbs, raising their half-starved bodies into the sky, beating the air and the water below and launching them into freedom from their island of misery and death.

  How sweet a thought that must have been, trapped as they were. A nourishment for their spirits when they had nothing for their bodies. As it had nourished Aglaope herself, all these years. As the dreams themselves offered her nourishment and strength and hope, even now.

  “Do not waste Thelxiope’s sacrifice,” her mother said, chiding her when once again she came only reluctantly out of the rain into their shallow cave. “You know she wanted you to live—to see all that she could not and sail away with Akheloios when he came, as she had not.”

  “And what will you do,” Aglaope asked, “when I have gone?”

  “I will greet the goddess gladly when it is my time to travel to the House of Death,” Ligeia said. “You need not worry yourself over me, if that is your concern.”

  “You wish me to leave you behind so callously? Truly? After all the things you have said, all your scolding and moaning about my foolishness?”

  “Listen to me, child.” Her mother grasped her by the wrist, squeezing tightly, and Aglaope startled at her intensity, unable to tear her gaze away once it was caught. “If I scolded and moaned and admonished you for your dreaming, for your hopes, it was only because I did not want you heartbroken. I did not want you to dream of something that you might never have, and suffer grief and disappointment. But if you think for one moment I would not wish better for you—that I would ever hold you back, if Akheloios came in a swift black ship to steal you away—if I had your faith, my love, I would never have spoken the smallest word of rebuke. And should Akheloios come, as you believe he will, and sail through our rocks as if they hold no threat at all, I would bundle you aboard his ship with all the food and water we had left, and watch you sail into the sun with a joyful heart. Do you understand?”

  Aglaope swallowed, shocked still and wordless, but when her mother’s grasp upon her wrist tightened again, demanding her answer, she nodded.

  “Promise me, then,” Ligeia said. “Promise me that you will take care. That you will keep your strength and stop this nonsense. Thelxiope has given us a gift, and we must make the most of what she has offered. We must live, and when the seas calm, you must sing, that Akheloios might have a hope of finding his way.”

  “I swear it,” Aglaope said. “For Thelxiope.”

  “For you, too,” Ligeia said. “For your own sake, above all else. Keep your faith, my love. Keep your dreams of a better life, and do not look back when it comes. Not for me.”

  ҉

  She ate more after that, and drank as much as she was able to catch in her cups when the rain fell, and she sang—not upon her spire to call for ships that could not cross the rough seas, but hymns and prayers to the gods, as she ought to have been all this time. For more rain and fresh water to fill the cistern, for the strength they would need to last the winter through on the little food they had. For Akheloios to come, and swiftly, upon his ship.

  And while she had feared that with Thelxiope’s death, she would be more alone than ever, she found that Ligeia did not argue as she once had. That when she spoke of her dreams, of flying and Circe’s hall filled with Odysseus-Akheloios and his men, all eager and anxious for the seas to calm that they might set sail again, her mother listened instead of chiding.

  “I pray you are right about this man,” Ligeia said. “If there is any of the Giant-Killer’s ichor in his blood, so distantly born as he is, surely that will help his cause.”

  “You do not believe he is Akheloios himself?”

  Ligeia lifted a shoulder, bent over the salt-crusted shreds of cloaks and blankets she worked to turn into a mat to place beneath their worn furs and fleeces. “The gods take many forms, that much is true. But until I have seen him for myself, I cannot say with certainty. He does not sound like any of the men who have come before.”

  “But they have all been different,” Aglaope said. “Butes-Akheloios did not look like the Akheloios I knew, when he came to you during my childhood. Or so Grandmother said.”

  “No,” Ligeia agreed. “And your father’s form was altogether different again. But Akheloios has always been lean and tall, strong to fight his way through the waves and survive. A man like your Odysseus—I am less certain of his mastery over the water. And do not forget that more men than Akheloios have thrown themselves into the sea, hoping to swim to our island—always, without Akheloios’s strength, they have failed.”

  “And none have ever threaded their way through our rocks, their ship unscathed,” Aglaope said, sighing. “But what if he held his ship away, like Circe’s women do? Still near enough that we might swim back together, but safe.”

  “That will be in the gods’ hands, my love. Whether they are lured by our song too near or sail by. Whether they hear us at all. Whether the gods will allow you the escape you dream of at Akheloios’s side. Swimming toward our rocks is one thing, but escaping the waves crashing against them with only the strength of your arms and legs to propel you forward, that is another.”

  “I will tell him what to do, if he will only come,” Aglaope said. “I will tell him where to hold his ship if the waves are too rough, and we will find a way. We must.”

  “Without the wood of the wreck to wash up on the beach, he cannot build a ship to sail away in,” Ligeia reminded her. “We have so little left, we will be lucky to keep the fire burning until spring. If he swims this far, there may be no returning.”

  Aglaope frowned, watching her mother work the fabric scraps. If it came to that, they would burn the mats upon which they slept, even the fleeces, too and all the rest of the scraps of cloth and hide—even those that lined her nest upon the spire. And then they would have to hope that a ship would come to replenish their supplies, just to keep them warm and sheltered from the wind and rain and sun.

  “The gods have always sent us what we needed,” she said, though whether it was for her own reassurance or her mother’s sake, she was not certain. Even as she said the words, she felt no certainty at all.

  Before, a goddess-witch had not been working against them, begging the gods for what favors they owed and determined to see Aglaope and her sisters suffer for what she imagined as a slight. Before, the only punishment they had been fated to endure was for their failure to find their lady when she was taken beneath the earth. But who knew what power Circe had, truly? Power enough to keep Akheloios at her side. Enough to keep her falcons trained and fed and her maids obedient and happy to do Thelxiope harm.

  Could Circe turn Akheloios against them altogether? Could she persuade him never to leave her side?

  Of that, Aglaope was
not certain, no matter how confidently she might have spoken otherwise. And as their food dwindled, and Ligeia ate less and less to be certain Aglaope would have enough to see her through and sing, still, when the water calmed enough for ships to pass again, her worries only grew.

  “Have another bite,” she urged, pushing the salted meat from her own portion into her mother’s hands. “And more water, too.”

  Ligeia shook her head, her lips pressed thin. “It is you who must eat. You who must survive. Without your song, there is no hope for me at all.”

  “You are not so hoarse that you could not sing, still,” Aglaope said, though she did not know if it was true. After long years of singing upon the spire, and climbing up and down its height, Ligeia had been more than grateful to give up her place to her daughter and her much sweeter voice when she had come of age.

  Ligeia smiled sadly. “I have not the strength to climb the spire, day in and day out. Not any longer. And with so little to live upon this last year, I surely have not grown stronger. Even caring for Thelxiope had begun to be too much, though I would never have let her know it.”

  Nor had she let Aglaope know it. Her mother had always bent to her work without so much as a sniff of complaint. And until that moment, it had not occurred to her to think Ligeia might have weakened so much.

  “But you must live,” Aglaope told her. “We must both live to see the day Akheloios returns to us.”

  Ligeia smoothed back her hair and kissed her forehead. “It is my dearest wish to see you made happy and free, if that is your fate. But whether I live or die—that is for the gods to decide, and if it is my choice, I would rather be certain that it is you who survives.”

  VI

  They were both weak by the time the seas had calmed at last, and another handmaid appeared again, bobbing in her skiff just out of reach, her flame-colored hair streaming behind her in the wind. An unwelcome herald of the finer weather and Persephone’s return to the lands above—though there was nothing upon the island to bask and grow in the glow of Demeter’s joy. And with so little rain to replenish their water, they were fortunate to have as much left as they’d had when winter had first come.

  Not enough to last them both through the summer.

  Not nearly enough.

  “Have you survived, sirens?” Circe’s handmaiden called out. Her voice was high and sharp, but strong. “My mistress would know if her work is done for her by the winter storms!”

  Aglaope climbed slowly up the spire, her stomach all but empty and growling with hunger. Bone broth and seaweed was all they had left, and the broth was weak and briny. But still, she had strength enough for this—to prove that she lived.

  The handmaiden flashed a grin at the sight of her when she had settled herself in her nest. “You look weak and wasted, siren. Tired and broken. Is there only one of you left? I cannot imagine you will last much longer, looking like that. And my lady will be certain she warns her guests against you before she allows them to set sail. Stop their ears with wax by her own hand, if she must, to be certain they will not hear your song.”

  Aglaope did not dare to respond, remembering too well how the other women had used Circe’s falcons and the trouble and pain it had brought. If only she had been wise enough to keep silent before, perhaps Thelxiope would not have been killed in such a way.

  But she would have died still, all the same. That much she could not deny, as much as she might have wished to. Perhaps it would have taken longer, and they all might have suffered more, but Thelxiope would not have survived the winter—could not have survived the winter, without dooming them all. It had taken her moons to accept what Ligeia had known at once: Thelxiope’s murder had been more favor than curse.

  So Aglaope only hummed, warming her voice, and made herself as comfortable as she could within her much more leanly padded nest, for they were perilously close to running out of their meager stock of fuel, as well as their water, and she had stripped the spire of all she did not need to feed their fire on the coldest nights.

  “Not much longer,” the handmaiden said, light-boned and almost childlike but for the venom in her words. “And my lady need never worry over your kind again. I am not certain you have the strength to sing at all, even now.”

  Aglaope smiled, took a breath, and proved her wrong.

  ҉

  The days wore on, the waters kind and gentle, though the handmaidens did not come so often to taunt them. Perhaps Circe knew there was no reason for it—certainly there were no seabirds circling overhead, or looking to build their nests. Not anymore. And now that Aglaope refused to be goaded, it was clear the women had grown bored by the duty as well.

  But Aglaope dreamed, still, of her wings in the night. And with her dreaming eyes, she saw the restlessness of Odysseus’s crew, and the men working even at night by the bright moonlight to ready their ship to sail. Odysseus-Akheloios himself overseeing them, calling out orders and direction. And every so often, his gaze would rise up, the flicker of her shadow upon the ground drawing his attention, and his lips would curve, the strain easing from his brow and the weight lifting off his shoulders as he watched her fly and dive, weave and roll above him.

  Knowing his eyes followed her warmed her limbs, urging her on to greater heights and braver tricks. But even more, knowing he saw her at all, yearned for her as she did him, gave her the strength she needed, though she had little food left, to rise in the mornings and climb the spire. To ready herself for their arrival. And Aglaope thrilled at the knowledge that even Circe’s power had not held Akheloios. That he made ready, eager to sail from her side and take Aglaope as his rightful bride.

  Eager to see to his daughters, after all this time.

  “It will be any day now,” she promised Ligeia, watching carefully to be sure her mother at least drank the water she had drawn, and chewed upon the fresh seaweed she had found caught in the rocks. “We will be feasting before full summer is upon us, our heads spinning with wine and our stomachs sour with so much rich food.”

  Ligeia smiled, humoring her. “As you say, dear one.”

  “As the gods have shown me,” she assured her. “The men crawl over their ship like so many ants, as desperate as we are to sail again. Circe has lost her power over them, at last.”

  “Or perhaps she knows she need not hold them for much longer, and gives them the illusion of freedom while she holds them carefully back, even still.”

  “We are not so bad off as that,” Aglaope said.

  But Ligeia’s gaze met hers, and she could not avoid the truth in her sunken eyes and too-thin face. “I fear if we must wait much longer, you will greet your Akheloios alone.”

  “Mama—”

  “No,” her mother said. “Promise me, Aglaope, that you will do what you must. That when my time comes, you will not waste what I can give you, but make my strength your own.”

  She grasped her mother’s hand in both of hers and held it tightly. “It will not come to that. You’ll see. He’s coming for us, I know it.”

  “I only hope you have not put too much of your faith in these dreams.”

  “They are god-sent,” Aglaope said. “When he looks at me, sees me flying overhead, I know it. And if Circe thinks we are no threat, that we are weak, it makes sense that she would send these men upon their way. Even more so if she warns them before they go. She will think we cannot reach them. That they will not dare to come too near without hearing our song. But with Akheloios aboard, their captain and commander, how can they not? He will not need our song to set his course. He knows to come to us.”

  “That much is true,” her mother said, her forehead furrowed in thought. “And by now he must know we have need. That it is your time. And he cannot have been deaf to your hymns all these seasons, even if he does not hear you sing as he passes by, he will have heard your prayers.”

  “And I will sing for him today again,” Aglaope told her, smiling. “As I have for all the days since my bleeding came. And you will see, Mama. You
will see that my faith and my dreaming has not been misplaced.”

  ҉

  That night, when she dreamed of Circe’s island, there were no men inside the hall, no beached ships upon her shore. Just Circe and her women and darkness where there had been lamplight every other night. The witch-goddess paced upon a rocky ledge, staring out across the waters, as if expecting them back.

  Aglaope’s heart soared, then sank again, when she realized fully what it meant. For if Odysseus and his men had set sail—they had not passed her island or heard her song. She had seen no sails upon the horizon, nothing but the bright clear sky and the sun flashing in her eyes off the water.

  She flew outward from the island, searching desperately for any sign of ship or sail in the open waters, circling farther and farther, wider and wider, until her body ached with the effort of flying. But she saw no sign of Odysseus and his men, no ships, no sails, nothing, and she had no choice but to return home, to her own barren rock in the vast, dark sea, collapsing, exhausted, by the fire.

  And when she woke, her back in spasms and her body shaking, she could not bring herself to speak of it to her mother. Not when she saw how carefully she moved, how slowly. Not when she knew Odysseus was the only hope they had left—and if he had somehow passed them by, they had nothing left to dream of but an easy death.

  ҉

  Aglaope did not sleep well the following night, cursing the itch between her shoulder blades when her dream-wings formed and jerking herself awake. She did not want to fly to Circe’s island and see that all was lost. She wanted to hold on to her last thread of hope—the image of Circe pacing anxiously upon the shore. For if Circe paced and waited, she had reason. Another ship, if not Odysseus’s. A ship Aglaope might yet sing into the rocks before her mother lost faith, for she had no doubt what would happen if no ship came.