by A. L. Knorr
My nausea was back in full force. I clenched my teeth and did my best to ignore the nausea, as well as the heat baking my face and eyes.
Nike stood beside me. In a low voice, she asked, “Are you all right?”
I nodded and looked at her. She looked as pale and sickly as I felt. Everyone washed out in the light of the giant gemstone. With her dark skin, Nike looked gray. Mom and Emun appeared green. If my complexion was suffering from the nausea or the anxiety riding low in my guts, the illumination concealed it.
“We found your source,” Emun called from where he was inspecting the other side of the gem.
“Ugh,” Antoni said as he swiped at the crystal and his hand came away filthy. “I guess that’s what several millennia underground will get you.”
“There’s a dark shape in the middle,” Emun commented, swiping at the gem and peering into the clean space it left behind. “Wish we could see better.”
I cleared my throat. “I think I can help with that.” Moving to stand in front of the gem and allowing its heat to bake my face, I spread my hands out to either side where the gullies of groundwater ran. Emun jumped back with surprise as water over-spilled the lips of the gullies and poured across the floor toward the crystal. His feet splashed through the puddle as he retreated to higher ground.
Beckoning to the soft flows on either side, I bade the water to crawl up and over the shape of the crystal, bathing the stone as it went. The water swirled and trickled, ran and burbled in every direction. It grew blacker and dirtier by the moment. With little flicks of my fingers and wrists, I sent the dirty water back into the gullies and called up fresh water from its direction of flow. Making an endless wash-cycle, I sent the water into every seam and nook, rinsing away years of dust, grime, and sand. The glow began to brighten as the outermost shards came clean. The heart of the stone had the largest surface area and took the longest to clean, but soon that too was gleaming.
I let the water spill back into the gullies, pouring through the cracks and crevices of the stone like little waterfalls. The cavern echoed with the sound of spilling water. The cascades thinned until they became narrow streams. The streams became drips and the drips slowed until they became only the occasional droplet.
“Oh my word,” my mother muttered under her breath.
The rest of us were silent, but the reason for her shock was obvious.
For the shadow at the heart of the giant gemstone had become clear enough to make out. And trapped, deep inside, lying on her side and as still as a statue, was a woman.
Sixteen
I felt Nike as she came to stand by my side, both of us staring at the figure deep inside the crystal.
“Is she alive?” I couldn’t tear my eyes from the body.
“She has to be,” Nike replied softly. “She must be the source of the curse.”
“But how can she be alive after all this time? She must be thousands of years old.” I moved a little closer to the stone for a better look, ignoring the heat radiating off it as best I could. The nausea was making my mouth water in an unpleasant way.
“Targa, stay back please,” my mother said from somewhere behind me. She sounded unsettled, worried.
“It’s magic, Targa,” Nike replied, and––in my periphery––I saw her glance at my mother warily.
“So, what now?” Antoni appeared on my other side, his voice as tight as my mother’s.
“She has to touch it.” Nike kept her tone even, but she had to have known the reaction it was going to incite.
“Excuse me?”
I felt Mom’s hands on my shoulders pulling me backward, trying to put distance between me and the crystal.
“It’s okay, Mom.” I tore my eyes from the form inside the crystal and turned to look into my mother’s face. I put my hands on her arms and squeezed.
“It’s most certainly not okay.” Her eyes had grown wide, her face even paler, now tinged with blue in the glow of the huge gem. “Targa, touching that thing could kill you. I’m surprised you’re even on your feet standing so close to it.”
“So? What? You want us to turn around and go back? After everything you’ve been through? After all we’ve learned? We want to break the curse. Now is our chance, probably our only chance. I have to do this, Mom.”
She shook her head. “No, you don’t, Targa. You really, really do not have to do this. Sirens have lived with the curse for millennia. I didn’t even know I was cursed growing up in Saltford.”
“And what if I can break it? What if there’s a chance that no siren ever has to suffer again? No siren will ever have to abandon her baby boy, or her beloved husband. No siren will ever have to struggle and suffer the way you were suffering in Poland.”
My mother’s eyes misted up and she shook her head vehemently. Her face crumpled and it was a knife in my heart, but I could not let it sway me. I knew what I had to do, what I had been born to do. I could no more escape my destiny than Petra had been able to escape hers in a different desert.
“No,” Mom whispered, a tear slipping down her cheek. “Please, don’t. Don’t do this. I can’t bear to lose you.” She released one of my shoulders to wipe at her tear with an angry motion. She cast about, her gaze landing on Antoni.
He stepped to my side and I felt his arm slip about my waist. I was grateful for his solid warmth.
Mom asked him, “Please, help me convince her she cannot do this.”
“I can’t,” Antoni told her, his arm tightening about my waist. “I don’t want to lose her either, but it’s her choice.”
Mom shook her head like a lost little girl, brushing away a tear again. “No.” Her eyes implored me. “Targa…”
“What would you do if you were me?” I asked her.
I felt the heavy stares of Nike and Emun on us. I felt their concern, their loss for words. No one knew what to do.
But I did. It was clear to me. It seemed nothing had ever been clearer.
Mom didn’t answer. We both knew what she would do if our roles were reversed.
“Don’t forget that I grew up watching the curse eat you alive,” I said. “I grew up not knowing if you’d be in your bed in the morning. I sat at your door at night, counting the lumps in your bed to make sure that I still had both a mother and a father. I know what the curse has cost you. And this isn’t just your curse, it’s mine too. It’s every siren’s burden, but it’s mine to break.”
Mom pulled me in for a hug and I heard a quiet sob in my ear as she swallowed her emotions. When she released me, I was swept into Antoni’s arms as he crushed me against him. I never loved him more than I did in this moment. I felt like he really knew me. He’d had a week to come to terms with my choice, but I knew how much this was costing him.
“Thank you for trusting me,” I whispered in his ear and I felt him nod against me.
“What are her chances?” I heard my mom ask Nike.
Antoni released me and we both listened. My heart had begun to pound hard in my chest and I had to quell the urge to run against the crystal and just get it over with.
“I don’t know, Sybellen. No one can know that.”
“Why her?”
“I don’t know that either. All I know is that whoever made the curse has something in common with Targa, something that makes them alike. As long as Targa is stronger than the one who made the curse, she’ll be okay.”
I tuned out at this point. I’d heard it already, and the heat from the gem seemed to be intensifying. I suddenly realized that my energy was being drained. If I waited any longer, I might get too weak to do whatever it was I had to do.
Letting go of Antoni’s hand, I stepped toward the stone.
“Not yet,” I heard my mother say, her tone sharp and alarmed.
“It’s now or never,” I murmured, and put my hand flat on the crystal.
When the agony struck, I thought for certain I’d failed. Every muscle in my body tensed, and my back arched in pain. All I could see was the blue of the crystal st
retching up before me, and the dark stones of the rocks high overhead. There was no way I could break a curse if I was in this state––I was dying.
There was a panicked blur of voices but I couldn’t understand any of them. My bones felt like glowing rods of metal. I no longer had power over my own limbs. I couldn’t have removed my hand from the crystal if I had wanted to. My breathing became shallow, for even the rise and fall of my chest felt like it was warping my ribcage where it attached to my spine.
Strange tugging sensations at my clothes, shoulders and hips came through in a dull, distant way. I tried to direct my gaze down but I couldn’t move my head, all I could do was move my eyeballs. They found my hand where it touched the crystal, only it wasn’t just touching the crystal anymore.
It was becoming the crystal.
No, it was inside the crystal, sinking farther in by the moment. I watched in horror, wheezing through the agony lancing up my arm and through my body as my hand sank farther and farther into the stone. My body shifted forward like it was being sucked into the crystal by an invisible vacuum.
Distantly, someone was screaming my name. I thought vaguely that the voices sounded like they were singing, as the sound slowed and blurred in my ears. My world was a blur of blue. Strangely, my right hand was no longer burning, and neither was my elbow. I wriggled my fingers, afraid for a moment that I’d lost all feeling and was dying from the outside in. But my fingers did move. I felt space around them. All at once, everything in me told me to press forward. That if I could survive this and make it through to the inside, I’d be okay.
I strained forward, though whether anything happened in response, I couldn’t tell. I was not in control. The crystal was in front of my face, touching my chin. It held my shoulder fast now and crawled along my ribs as I sank into the massive gem. My chin sank into the stone, the skin baking hot where it touched, and that heat spread across my face as I was sucked inside. But inside the gem it was cool; I could feel it now with my whole right arm and part of my left.
The tip of my nose touched the stone, then sank through it. My eyes filled with the crystal as it swallowed my face. As my head passed through the stone, the world became blue.
Then black.
Cool air swallowed me, and in my eyes, a white light flashed.
There was a sensation of falling.
Then there was nothing.
Seventeen
There was no longer any pain. That was my first thought as consciousness returned slowly to my mind, and feeling to my body. My second thought was to wonder how I ended up on the floor. Then, I wondered why it was so quiet.
My eyelids stirred and opened a crack. Aqua light flooded my retinas and I squeezed my eyes shut again. Pushing myself to sitting, I kept my eyes closed and felt around. Beneath me the surface was as smooth as glass, but covered with a gritty residue. The air was warm and humid, but smelled fresh and clean. Cracking my eyes open again, I winced at the flood of light but bore it as my eyes adjusted.
The world inside was green-blue, the color of a tropical shoreline. A large room with a strange cavernous ceiling of stalactites made of aquamarine arched over my head, as high as a cathedral. I got to my feet, my eyes now fully open. Behind me were many hollow fingers of clear gemstone, pale and illuminated.
I was inside the crystal. So, I hadn’t died. But was I trapped here too? Like the woman we’d seen.
The woman. I saw her some distance away.
“Hello?” I called. My voice echoed eerily around me, bouncing off the cavern walls.
She did not stir. She lay curled up with her back to me. She wore a cream-colored robe with a brown belt at the waist. Long dark hair––thick spirals of it––spilled across the floor. Even from a distance I could easily tell that the thick shining locks belonged to a person with life and vitality. And yet she did not move or respond to my call in any way. Questions tumbled in my mind like shells caught in a riptide as I walked slowly toward the still form.
Who was she? How long had she been here? How could she still be alive? There was no way in or out of this crystal, save the way I’d come. I paused in my walking and lifted a hand to my head, trying to remember…
How had I gotten in here? I could remember pain, white-hot searing heat. I could remember a high-pitched singing sound. Or had it been screaming? I remembered feeling stuck, and nothing visible but a blue glaze in front of my face. Then I’d fallen. I’d woken up on the floor. Now I felt fine, physically anyway.
Was this a dream?
I looked back the way I’d come, eyes scanning the strange interior of the crystal for a doorway or a crack. But there was nothing. Only an alien landscape of hollow crystal tunnels with offshoots to more tunnels. Blue stalactites and stalagmites reached into the space from floor and ceiling.
I continued my slow walk toward the woman, calling out a greeting again.
My footsteps halted as a memory surfaced. I’d left people that I loved to be here. I was alone in this. Nike wasn’t here to provide answers. My mother wasn’t here to add her strength or wisdom. And Antoni wasn’t here to offer support. How I’d gotten inside finally clicked back into my mind.
Looking back the way I’d come again, I peered at the crystal, trying to see through it. There were too many thousands of shades of blue and shadows cast by the crystalline structure. There was nothing to see but columns upon columns, crystals upon crystals. I had been able to see in, but I was unable to see out.
My foot crunched on something and I looked down.
Beneath the soles of my hiking boots were shards of aquamarines. Thousands of them, spread out around the woman like she’d made a bed of broken gemstones to lie in. It looked as though she’d tried to break through the crystal cathedral ceiling over her head and succeeded only in raining shards down upon herself. Many of the shards were sharp, as jaggedly pointed and nasty looking as weapons.
Crunching closer to her, I circled her and looked down upon her.
Her eyes were closed. She lay with her left arm straight out on the floor and her head resting on her bicep. Her right arm was crooked and her hand underneath her cheek. Her robes fell across her legs and small bare feet were visible from beneath them. A golden chain encircled one ankle. Her thick hair was looped back in braids at her temples and then tumbled free from a thong fastened at the back of her head. Her face was peaceful, eyes closed, her dark lashes long and soft against her cheek. Her ribs rose and fell very slowly. So she was alive.
I knelt at her side, unsure of what to do next.
My gaze went to a long aquamarine shard not far from her hand. It was shaped like a knife, with a smooth round handle and a sharp edge to the wicked blue blade.
My stomach turned inside out.
Nike’s words rang in my ears––if you are stronger than the one who set the curse, then you’ll prevail. If you are weaker, then you’ll die.
Reaching for the blade, my fingers wrapped around the cool crystal. No pain. No heat. But picking it up, my hand trembled.
A thought came: Kill her.
Frowning, I focused on her sleeping face. Was I supposed to kill this woman to break the curse? It made some kind of sense. Kill the one who set the curse, kill the curse.
My thoughts tripped over one another. Why hadn’t Nike warned me that I might have to shed someone’s blood? Or was I silly not to have assumed it would be this way?
I didn’t know this woman, but she was defenseless. In another life, at another time, she might have been a friend of mine, or a friend of my mother’s. Given the nature of the curse, she had to be either Mer or Atlantean. She didn’t have the look of a siren. Her skin had the blemishes and veins of a human. And she was here, deep in the heart of Atlantis, so wouldn’t that make her most likely an Atlantean?
Wait a minute. I pulled back a little and took a breath.
Why would this woman curse herself to be locked inside a huge stone for all of eternity? Didn’t it make more sense that she was not the cause of the curse h
erself, but maybe involved somehow? So if it wasn’t her who made the curse, then who was it? Or was she the source of the curse and had willingly given herself to this great blue cage to…to what? Fuel the curse? Keep it alive?
I shifted from one foot to the other, frustrated.
I couldn’t kill this woman without knowing for certain that it would end the curse. What if it was a mistake? What if it made things worse?
The knife slipped from my grip and fell on the floor in front of me, and in front of the sleeping woman. It shattered into a thousand pieces. The shards sprayed outward, hitting my boots. They landed in the woman’s hair, peppered her face and hand, and landed in her clothing.
Her eyes opened. Eyes so dark they looked black. She bared her teeth and her face transformed into something from a nightmare.
Startled, I screamed and made to straighten up, my heart doing cartwheels in my chest.
As fast as lightning, her hand reached for me, her fingers closing around my wrist as a hiss issued from her throat. It was a sound I’d never heard a living being make before. Another startled scream ripped from my throat before I could help it.
I yanked at my hand, trying to pull away and get to my feet. All I wanted was to get away from her.
The woman held fast, her grip like a vise. I pulled her to her feet and she staggered after me as I tried to get away from her. My boots crunched on the broken shards.
“Free me,” she gasped into my face, as the horrible contorted expression began to ease. Where I’d seen evil a moment before, I now saw desperation and fear. “You must free me. It’s why you’ve come.”
“Let me go,” I replied, my multi-layered siren’s voice trembling with fright and adrenaline coursing through my veins.
“You must,” she repeated as though she hadn’t heard me—of course, Atlanteans were immune to siren voices. Her hand tightened and her lower lip quivered. “You must, it’s why you’ve come.”