Chapter 24
How had Eli missed this?! Mira was practically speechless in her dismay. Amy had undergone the experimental procedure herself? Devin didn’t seem at all surprised, but this was beyond what anyone could have expected.
“Siren surgeon sight. Siren surgeon sight.” The Oracle’s words throbbed in Mira’s mind as her headache tightened around her temples like an elastic band, snapping out an agonizing rhythm.
She and Devin sat in their Boston apartment, after sending Eli back to the hospital. Actually, Mira was lying down on the couch with a wet washcloth folded over her eyes. Meanwhile, Devin used his bespelled phone to call Atlantis. Atlantea had not been pleased to hear about Amy’s operation, but unlike Mira, she hadn’t cared personally about Amy’s well-being. “As we feared, the pivot is pulling us into war,” Atlantea said unhappily. Devin had set the phone between them on the coffee table.
“The pivot won’t pull us into war if you don’t choose to take us there,” Mira countered. “The Atlantic barely borders Arabia’s frontier in Africa; there are no fae preserves in Arabia. Nothing in that area of the world need involve us. The actions of one latent siren — or even one family of sirens — will not pull the Atlantic into anything.”
Atlantea snorted. “Don’t be foolish. The Fifth Mage War. A latent Atlantic siren whose siblings and mother are de Atlantic? Of course we are being drawn in. The fact that you have lost contact with both Thomas and Cordelia at this juncture is also extremely concerning.”
“Atlantea, please—”
“How is it possible that you only just discovered this? After it was already done? We should have stopped this project months ago; Amy should have never been allowed to have performed these operations!”
“That’s the problem with prophesies. They are unavoidable.” Mira didn’t mean to sound flip, but the pain in her head was making it hard to think clearly.
“Are you actually trying to make excuses?” Atlantea sounded curious, but Mira knew better than to answer. After a moment, Atlantea continued briskly. “Second-hand information is obviously not good enough. It’s indisputable now: Amy Bant is one of the pivots on which this war will turn. Devin will be able to handle her once she is off birth control. What kind of birth control do you have her on?”
“Atlantea, no one will interfere with my daughter in that way.”
The silence on the line was deafening. Atlantea had to know that if Mira was forced to choose, she would choose her own children above the sirens. Until now, Atlantea had bent over backwards to avoid forcing Mira to make any choices. For now, at least, Mira still believed their interests were aligned. She sincerely hoped Atlantea did too.
Devin sat so still on the chair, Mira wondered if he was waiting for Atlantea to tell him to kill her now. Kill her and kill Amy too. Mira’s headache worsened; if the pain in her skull didn’t let up, she thought perhaps that would be a mercy.
“Your daughter is the pivot. Controlling the pivot is imperative.”
“Only if you want to win a war.” Mira sat up, her head pounding. “I thought you wanted nothing to do with this mage war, Atlantea! If we control the pivot, who fights us for control? You want to fight the Danjou Enclave? Perhaps the Cabal? Or Amir Khalid himself? Do you want to be in the middle of this? Surrounded by mages on all sides?”
“I sent you to Boston to find out what kind of influence the Danjou were attempting to wield. But you said they’d pulled back.” Atlantea’s voice was tight.
“They did pull back. Probably a feint, an effort to force Amy into this impossible situation without influencing her magically. But they must be hovering. I told you what I learned from my enclave source. The Danjou look to capture Arabia, to somehow evade the djinn and destroy the Amir. Somehow, they think Amy is key to that.”
Atlantea didn’t answer.
“Do you want us to interfere?” Devin asked, speaking for the first time. Mira closed her eyes. Atlantea was silent again for a long moment.
“No. If we are to fight in this battle, I want it clear to the world that we are blameless. But I will not be surprised again. All right, Mira Bant de Atlantic, do it your way. But I must know when the tide turns. You have failed me once in this already; do not fail me again.”
The line clicked off. Atlantea was angry, but Mira was still alive. So that was a start. And her headache was so bad, she didn’t think she could handle much more.
According to Eli, the operation was a “success,” so at least Amy was as yet unharmed. Amy’s precipitous decision was so unlike her that Mira suspected the Danjou had manipulated her. She shuddered; attempting to control a pivot was contrary to all conventional wisdom. But mages always thought they could dabble around the edges without repercussions.
She’d known, of course, that the Danjou were dabbling, but she thought they were using Amy to create a super-soldier or perhaps trying to entice the Amir into dropping his barriers with the lure of a cure for his sister. Manipulating Amy like this was beyond her worst speculations. And now Mary was involved too, after dropping everything to come to Boston. She’d spent her entire life caring for her family when Mira could not. Amy was perhaps beyond either of their abilities now.
Cordelia had slipped off — not unusual for her, but still. Worse yet, Thomas was missing. His partner, Marcia Santos, had called, sobbing, to tell her that Thomas’ house had been destroyed. Investigators believed a battle mage was responsible, but Marcia was too bereaved to provide much more information.
Mira knew Thomas was still alive; her powers had not faded in the least over the past week. When Thomas’ newborn siren daughter was suffocated, Mira felt the loss keenly. Marcia couldn’t understand that Mira would have felt the death of a siren child like an amputation. She hadn’t felt anything; ergo, Thomas was alive. That didn’t mean he wasn’t hurt or injured. But the jaguars were looking for Thomas; Kadu and his mother had both pledged to find him. The weres had been designed as the ultimate weapons against mages. The clan had practically adopted Thomas, and if anyone could protect him, they could.
When Amy woke, the curtains were still drawn, but the red and amber lights were on. She felt much less tired than she had the day before, though her vision was still blurry. She pressed the call button, and the nurse opened the door. This time, the curtain had not been drawn around her bed, and the white light from the hall stretched into the room.
And the light did stretch. It turned and glided and spun in an array of millions of hues of blue and green, blending to purple and brown as it confronted the red haze that enveloped her room. Amy gasped.
“Good morning, Dr. Bant,” the nurse said, shutting the door, and with it, the dance of light subsided to a small line of rippling green and purple spots in the crack beneath it. Amy stared at the line of light under the door, momentarily speechless. Her non-responsiveness clearly alarmed the nurse, who walked quickly to her bedside.
“Sorry,” Amy said, collecting her thoughts and moving her focus to the nurse. “I just wondered what time it was.”
“It’s almost nine-thirty,” the nurse said.
“Ah. Thank you. What’s your name?” Amy asked.
“Carol Dorio,” she responded, checking the monitor above Amy’s head. Despite her blurred vision, Amy could see that the nurse was wearing patterned scrubs and her dark hair haloed her face in a long bob. “We haven’t met. I’ll be the day nurse today and tomorrow.”
“It’s Saturday, today, correct?” Amy asked.
“Yes, it is. And a dreary Saturday for sure. The hurricane that was supposed to hit the mid-Atlantic may have veered off and petered out, but now we’re in for a rainy weekend. I say better this weekend than next. My niece is getting married next Saturday, and better for all the bad weather to hit now so we can have blue skies then.”
Amy murmured her agreement, then asked if the nurse would help her up.
“Hmm. Not sure you’re supposed to be getting out of bed as yet. Let me check the chart.”
“Caro
l, it will be fine. If you’ll just take my hands, I’d like to just assess my stability. If there’s any imbalance, I’ll just lay back down.”
Amy’s tone and conviction were clearly persuasive, and the nurse stood in front of Amy as she swung her legs around to reach toward the floor. She stood up and was gratified by how little weakness she actually felt. It was akin to having had a bad flu, but no dizziness or vertigo. Amy smiled. “I’ll actually have to tell myself not to overdo it,” she said. “I didn’t expect to feel this stable. But I know I need to take it easy. Can we try walking just a little bit?”
“All right. Let me bring the IV around. But if you feel at all dizzy, let me know.” Carol’s deference was a relief. Amy had worried that being a patient would be more challenging than it was proving to be.
“Of course. I was thinking that I’d just like to see if I could use the toilet, then maybe sit in the chair for a while,” Amy said.
“That’s a good plan. We held your breakfast; Dr. Litner ordered no unnecessary interruptions until you called. He should be here around ten.”
After Carol left, Amy stood up and pulled the curtain back just a little bit. She knew she ought to wait for Graham, but she had to know.
It was amazing. Indescribable. Now she knew why Patient B had such difficulty explaining what he saw. Why Ted read her poems instead of just telling her outright.
White light, even that from the weak sunlight filtering through the dark cloud cover outside, was alive. That was the only way Amy could think about it. And she thought she heard something, too. It wasn’t the hum of the hospital monitors, though she could hear the whirring of those as well. It was like the sound of a boat floating on the Gulf Stream on a calm day. The sound of fiberglass rolling atop three-foot swells. As she stared out the window at the pulsing colors, Amy thought she heard the sea.
The blurriness she had experienced under the red haze of the safelights was gone. Even though she was staring through a rain-spattered window, she could make out the words on the neon sign on the deli below. She could see the people standing at the cross-walk distinctly. But it was hard for Amy to focus on the individuals, because she was captivated by the multi-hued trails being laid in front of her. It was as if the air itself were visible in colored layers, pulsing red then blue then green in an ever-changing flow. Whoever invented tie-dye must have been a mage, Amy thought. That was as close as she could come to describing what she was seeing. The world was a psychedelic tie-dyed shirt.
Sirens generally do not raise their own children. Transitioned sirens are typically deemed too immature to care for an active infant. While no one will force you to give up your child, you will be strongly encouraged to do so. Most commonly, sirens become parents when one of their latent offspring gives birth to an active siren. In that way, parenthood is delayed until a siren is mature and better acculturated.
– Sirens: An Overview for the Newly-Transitioned, 3rd ed. (2015), by Mira Bant de Atlantic, p. 52.
Chapter 25
Mira and Devin had both transformed again, and despite the grateful kobold’s healing touch, Mira still didn’t feel well. Back in their apartment, she went into her bedroom to hide; she was having a hard time keeping up the pretense of calm. She paced back and forth, staring out the window at the ocean in the distance, but the choppy water didn’t provide her any comfort.
Atlantea wanted them closer to Amy, and Devin had figured out a way to make that happen. Unlike Mira, Devin wasn’t fazed in the least by the news about Thomas. Instead, it had given him this ludicrous idea to disguise themselves as health aides sent by Thomas while he was detained in Brazil. With Devin’s remarkable gift for compulsion, it had been a small matter for him to call Marcia Santos and request her assistance on Thomas’ behalf. Marcia trusted Devin implicitly; she was overjoyed to hear that Thomas was alive, and happily agreed to call Mary, for him.
Everything Devin did was done with a calm efficiency of effort that only made Mira more aware of her own inner turmoil. She wasn’t so fae-like that this kind of deception was fun for her. “Mira” wasn’t a common name. Devin had suggested she use “Kiera,” his great-granddaughter’s name, and close enough to her own that she would hopefully remember to respond to it. So now Mary was expecting “Kiera” to come and help during Amy’s recovery, because Thomas couldn’t be there himself.
Mira sat down on the bed and covered her face in her hands. She had never expected to cross paths with Amy or Mary again. Her mundane daughters, at least, should have been safely removed from anything like a mage war! Even as she’d fretted over Amy’s work on the project, she had never expected … Mira’s train of thought broke off; she didn’t really know what she’d expected.
She started pacing again. Now that she was so close to seeing her daughters, interacting with her daughters, Mira couldn’t think straight. She wished Cordelia were here to help her calm down. But Cordelia had slipped away, and she was stuck here with Devin, who couldn’t understand.
She had thought deceiving them would be easier if she took on a completely different look from her original self, but now she only felt more lost. Transformation after transformation, the only constant had been her name. It had taken her years to be able to recognize herself within a new body, and now she had nothing to ground her.
Before visiting the kobold, she had found a mark who seemed less likely to lust after the kind of blond, blue-eyed woman she had been originally. While Devin wore the guise of another tall, tan and chiseled man, with a strong jaw and sparkling eyes, Mira was now a slightly-built woman with dark skin, sharply-arched eyebrows, and a high forehead.
She stared at the stranger in her bedroom mirror. The older gentleman whose fantasy she now embodied probably had a thing for Dorothy Dandridge. Mira reminded herself that she wasn’t often this lucky: she should appreciate the proportionality of her top and bottom half, the pleasure of not feeling any strain in her back from the weight of an oversized chest. Her hair fell effortlessly to frame her face in loose curls; a style that would have taken a human woman hours to do, and the hot pink of her lacquered nails contrasted beautifully against the shade of her skin.
Get a grip, Mira told her reflection sternly, taking a deep breath. She only had another couple of hours before her interview, and had to calm down. Marcia’s second-hand explanation of Amy’s condition differed slightly from Eli’s. But from both accounts, it sounded like Amy was a lot better than she would have expected for someone who had undergone brain surgery only a week before.
Apparently, Amy’s vision was blurry at times and she was subject to slight auditory hallucinations, but she was walking and able to use the bathroom alone. She was on very few medications and wasn’t supposed to drive. The post-discharge instructions seemed rather basic. According to Marcia, Mary’s biggest concern was how Amy would wash her hair, given the number of staples holding the incision site closed. Mira hadn’t even realized that Amy would still have hair; she had assumed that with brain surgery, it would all be shaved off.
While Marcia had told Mary that Thomas was sending two aides, Mary had firmly declined to see Devin. Mary simply wouldn’t be comfortable having a man stay with her sister under the circumstances, even a man vouched for by Thomas. On the one hand, she was glad that Mary was unwilling to leave her sister with a strange man, but it did complicate things.
Mira took one last look in the mirror, breathing in and out slowly, before walking into the living room. Devin was sitting on the couch, the personification of resolute readiness, and Mira felt herself tense up again. Her fleeting sense of calm dissolved in the face of his composure. But when he spoke, he didn’t sound very composed; he sounded worried. “It doesn’t matter if your daughter does not want me there. You will determine an appropriate time to bring me in directly.”
“Devin, I don’t know how I am going to do this, let alone how to persuade Amy to let you stay in her apartment,” Mira pleaded. She was having a hard time keeping it together, and couldn’t seem to grasp
a coherent thought. She was flailing.
“Mira, sit down.” Devin’s voice may have held a compulsion, but of course it slipped right off her. “Just take a deep breath. You can do this.” Devin’s tone wasn’t encouraging: it was as if he were merely stating a fact.
“Do what?” Mira asked, rubbing her temples with both hands. “I can do what, exactly? Lie to my daughters? Pretend to be a stranger? Pretend Amy isn’t headed straight into the middle of a war?”
“Mira, you know as well as I: No one can change a prophesy. You can only ride the waves that part around it. I wouldn’t want my children anywhere near this either. But you and your daughter are very fortunate that Atlantea had enough of an interest to send me here.”
Mira’s mouth dropped slightly, and Devin smiled. “Mira, think about it. If Atlantea wanted the pivot dead, she would be dead. Instead, she has sent me to ensure you both survive, at least until the war starts and I am needed elsewhere.”
And suddenly, Mira felt better. It wasn’t Devin’s matter-of-fact tone, or his infernal competence, but suddenly, Mira felt like she would be safe; more importantly, that Amy would be safe. She sat down.
“Atlantea herself told me that my job was to make sure you and your daughter remained alive. But I was not to interfere. You were not to interfere.” Devin smiled. “And yet, here we are, interfering.”
“I thought she was going to order you to kill me when I told her I wouldn’t allow Amy to be influenced,” Mira admitted, rubbing her chin.
If possible, Devin’s smile grew wider, but it wasn’t a cruel smile; he actually looked amused. “I’m sure Atlantea was counting on your refusal. Who else but you, Mira Bant de Atlantic, would refuse her direct order to influence the pivot? No one has ever successfully changed a prophesy, and only rarely has anyone who tried to manipulate a pivot actually come out on top. But it is so tempting. Like the moral dilemma of whether you ought to kill baby Hitler or blind the apprenticed Chía if time-travel were possible.”
Sirens Unbound Page 28