Siren Spell

by Cidney Swanson

  Cidney Swanson

  Summary: Giselle Chekhov yearns to dance the lead role in the ballet for which she was named, but when fatal sirens are drawn back to her home town, Giselle’s carefully controlled career path spirals out of control and no one is safe from the sirens’ deadly magic.

  Copyright © 2015 by Cidney Swanson

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, character, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art © by Sarah Hansen. All rights reserved.

  ISBN 978–1–939543–37–0

  Also by Cidney Swanson

  The Ripple Series

  RIPPLER

  CHAMELEON

  UNFURL

  VISIBLE

  IMMUTABLE

  KNAVERY

  PERILOUS

  The Saving Mars Series

  SAVING MARS

  DEFYING MARS

  LOSING MARS

  MARS BURNING

  STRIKING MARS

  MARS RISING

  Books Not in a Series

  SIREN SPELL

  For

  Miss Tiese

  and

  Miss Leanne

  and

  Miss Nicole,

  remarkable women

  and extraordinary teachers.

  1

  HOLY MOTHER OF PATIENCE AND DEODORIZATION

  At 4:53 in the morning, it was hard for Giselle Petrovna Chekhov to care whether or not she might be drowned by Slavic sirens. It was hard to care about anything other than grabbing one last hour of sleep before the auditions at the family ballet studio began at 7:00. Twisting in bed, Giselle glared at her cell phone as if it were to blame for the early wake up call. It was not. Downstairs, Giselle’s mother Ruslana was arguing with Grandmother about rusalki, the name Russians had given the Sirens of Foulweather, Oregon. Giselle sighed and fell back onto her pillow. Babushka, her grandmother, must have had another dream of evil portent.

  Giselle had a smattering of Russian. Enough to piece together that her mother and grandmother were fighting about the ballet for which she had been named: Giselle. Babushka was warning Giselle’s mother their upcoming production of the ballet would draw the rusalki back to town.

  “Global warming might drive them to town,” said Ruslana, switching to English, “Or a lack of … salmon or whatever they eat, but vanity isn’t going to drive them anywhere.”

  Babushka muttered something Giselle didn’t catch.

  “It’s ridiculous to suggest the creatures are even aware of ballet,” said Ruslana, “Much less that they have an interest in it. How would aquatic creatures know what we’re up to? They live underwater.”

  “They know,” said Babushka, her voice darkly threatening. “And I tell you they are driven by vanity. Why the gifts of combs and mirrors if they are not vain?”

  Giselle’s mother made a derisive noise. “The ignorant and superstitious leave the combs and mirrors. And old women who have nothing better to do with their time.”

  Giselle’s babushka was convinced there was a supernatural component to the sirens’ existence as well as to their attacks on humans. Giselle believed too, and even sensible, rational Katya worried the creatures might be something more than … natural. Their mother didn’t believe the sirens were anything but elusive and occasionally violent sea creatures with a humanoid appearance. Ruslana had never had a problem standing outside popular opinion, either within her family or without.

  Beside her pillow, Giselle’s cell phone vibed with a text from her sister Katya in the bunk above.

  Has there been an actual sighting? Here in Foulweather?

  Giselle fumbled with her cell, responding to her sister.

  Babushka had a bad dream. Go back to sleep.

  Downstairs, Giselle’s quarrelling relations were no longer having a discussion. They had moved on from discussion to shouting past one another, which was arguably a better use of their time as discussions between the two rarely resolved anything.

  They scare me, texted Giselle’s little sister.

  Giselle didn’t think Katya meant Mom and Babushka.

  Propping herself on one elbow, Giselle typed: There’s nothing to be afraid of, but then, unsure, she deleted it. They aren’t really dangerous, she typed, but then she deleted it, because, well, they weren’t safe, either. Finally, she wrote, Everything will be fine, hitting “send” before she changed her mind about that, too.

  Aloud, Giselle shouted to her mother and babushka, “You’ll wake the chickens!”

  Quite possibly, she had yelled loudly enough to wake the chickens.

  Giselle pulled her pillow over her ear, securing it with her arm so the sound went soft and fuzzy, and tried for one last hour of sleep.

  Naturally, she dreamt of horrid, white-pupilled sirens trying to drown her sister.

  Giselle woke herself screaming, which brought Katya to her side, eyebrows raised in an unspoken question.

  “Everything’s fine,” Giselle mumbled, sitting up. She hoped she was right.

  The last attack in their Portland backwater hamlet had been thirteen years ago. Scientific-minded Portlanders called the attacks “sightings.” Those who favored supernatural explanations for the sirens called them “visitations.” “Attacks” was too pejorative for either group, revealing much about the greater Portland zeitgeist. Foulweather residents still called them “attacks,” revealing much about Foulweather.

  It may have been thirteen years since the last … attack, but the last sighting had come more recently: seven years ago. Giselle had never told anyone what she’d seen. At the time, it had changed her eight-year-old self from an acknowledger of sightings to a believer in visitations. This morning, however, cold water on her face and hot tea down her throat convinced her it had all been so long ago that she’d probably imagined most of it, a by-product of listening to too many of Babushka’s stories, most notably the story of the ballet for which Giselle had been named.

  Babushka continued to make gloomy pronouncements over the family breakfast of tea and toast while Katya attempted to redirect the conversation with the assistance of science.

  “Researchers now believe the sirens inhabit only cold water, which goes a long way to explaining their prevalence in Celtic, Norse, and Russian folklore.”

  Babushka shrugged. Mangling her English worse than ever, she murmured to Katya, “Explanation also is to be found in wandering eye of average Russian man—”

  Swearing, Ruslana interrupted her mother. “That’s enough, Mamulya.” Her use of the Russian diminutive for “Mama” sounded anything but affectionate. “Let’s get moving. We leave in five minutes.”

  The four Chekhov women left breakfast cleanup for later, gathering pointe shoes, clipboards, and composure, before making their way to their second home, the Family Chekhov’s Studio Bolshoi. They traveled in an ancient and frequently wheezing Mercedes sedan that had been purchased by Giselle’s ancient but never wheezing babushka upon her immigration to the United States some sixteen years earlier.

  Once inside the studio, Katya threw on the heater (dancers’ limbs must be kept warm), but it was still a brisk fifty-nine degrees when the first dancers arrived. Giselle murmured apologies for her icy hands as she helped the eight highest level dancers into willis costumes to assess them for fit. The willis were the siren-like undead maidens of the ballet’s second act, dancing on pointe in identical romantic era tutus.

  The dancers in their careful row, white tulle clad, looked neither bloodthirsty nor fiendish. This was problematic, as the w
illis were supposed to be both.

  Behind Giselle, Babushka muttered in dour Russian. Happily, Babushka was muttering not over the coming of evil rusalki but rather over the fit of the willis costumes—donated and faded—and how much work it would be to take in or let out the boned bodices, adjust the sagging shoulder straps, trim the fraying hems.

  Giselle’s grandmother considered the labor; Giselle considered the knowledge-base of the local audience and how they wouldn’t for one minute believe the elegant, white-clad girls spelled doom for any man who stepped within their pale. The residents of Foulweather knew their water fey, regardless of whether you called them willis or rusalki or sirens.

  Babushka, her back ballet-straight, her lips barely parting, had returned to mumbling about the imminent return of the sirens.

  At least she muttered in Russian instead of in English, thought Giselle, turning her attention back to the dancers.

  Morgan was joining the row of dancers, hands anchored on waist to protect her sagging tutu. The flat thump-thump-thump of Morgan’s pointe shoes told everyone she was unhappy with the condition of her costume. It had been the only one remaining. Giselle gazed at Morgan’s romantic-length tutu, frayed and bedraggled in what must have been the work of mice or squirrels or small boys with scissors. Really, thought Giselle, the look was rather lovely: tattered and … undead.

  It made her think.

  “Katya,” she whispered, beckoning with a crook of one finger.

  Her sister frowned and shook her head a few millimeters. Katya refused to leave the row of white-clad willis. Refused to place herself above her peers. Giselle admitted to herself this was probably the best way to promote harmony among the dancers.

  Tilting her head, Giselle squinted against the dove grey light of morning, the girls’ last morning in the studio before school began again tomorrow.

  As usual, the Oregon sun refused to break through the cloud cover. But the light was coy—more silver than gray—and as it caught the hem of the unhappy dancer’s gown, Giselle thought of the rusalka she’d met seven years ago, remembering her tattered dress-like covering, clinging in wet folds, strangely translucent. Not so different from ballet costume tulle, really.

  Rusalki, sirens, willis … Yes, thought Giselle. Yes. Absently, she nodded.

  In her head, the violins swelled with the theme for the undead maidens of Giselle, and she imagined the dancers crossing the stage wearing not the clean white of the nineteenth century ballet, but gowns distressed from long use. Use by ancient girls who rose from watery depths to lure men to their graves.

  Like the rusalki in Babushka’s tales. Or like the sirens.

  And the more she considered it, the more the idea took a perfect shape in her mind. By tradition, the willis were supposed to dance in gowns that resembled clean, white bridal garb. But really, how white could the willis’ whites be? They passed each night in frenzied dance, and Giselle could speak with some authority as to the not-clean of eternally unwashed garments.

  She re-imagined the dancers’ make-up: a pale base with deep hollows of charcoal beneath eyes and cheekbones, a streak of blood red upon their unsmiling mouths. And there it was: the solution to the meeting of a nineteenth century French ballet with twenty-first century Portland.

  Giselle smiled because the ballet school, tiny and not reliant upon wealthy patrons, could take this outrageous step where larger companies could not. Larger companies relied on the good will of aficionados familiar with the canon of costumes. Such patrons would almost certainly object to any departure from traditional garb, let alone the radical change she was considering.

  Giselle knew better than to try convincing her mother, but if she whispered the idea to Babushka and her sister, upon whose shoulders fell the alterations and re-stitching of torn frou-frou, well … Giselle thought they might just end up with willis who would call to mind the Sirens of Foulweather: Willis who would terrify.

  Upon considering her babushka's present mood, however, Giselle elected to postpone the discussion until later. She took a picture of Morgan’s costume and released all the advanced level dancers to change.

  Then, alongside Katya, Giselle turned to welcome the next wave of dancers who were too young for pointe roles. Katya took registration fees and Giselle sorted dancers into a-b-c-d-e groups that corresponded to their numbered Vaganova syllabus. At 8:00 AM, the first drops of rain spattered the studio’s tall windows, and the registration line, which had wound through the parking lot, coiled snake-like into the lobby.

  Katya, holding up a safety pin, raised one eyebrow at Giselle. The girls had been raised in an environment of Hush, girls! The studio was a place for arched brows, abbreviated nods, and tiny, pregnant shrugs. And anyway, who needed words when bodies could say so much? The raised eyebrow, accompanied by the raised safety pin, was shorthand for: Giselle, Mom forgot to re-stock the safety pins even though we told her, like, five times yesterday.

  Giselle found a fresh box of safety pins and tossed it to Katya so the new dancers could pin audition numbers to their leotards. As Giselle’s eyes ran over the gathering crowd of excited dancers, a rush of exuberance roared through her. She’d always loved the first day back. She’d always loved auditions. But this audition was special; she’d waited for it for as long as she could remember. Today her family’s studio auditioned their production of one of the oldest continuously performed ballets of all time, with a role that had been hers since she’d been born and given the name “Giselle.” All her life, she’d dreamed of the day she would begin rehearsing Giselle’s Valse and Variations, the Grand Adage and the heart-wrenching tour jetés of the final mad Coda where Giselle saved Prince Albrecht.

  “Giselle!” hissed Katya.

  Giselle returned to Earth, assisting those clamoring to pay fees, or audition, or get back to their car before the meter maid did. Ballet moms and ballet dads tended toward “high strung,” and today the very weather seemed to mirror the agitation within the studio, alternating between blustery winds and pelting rains.

  As Giselle collected fees for the last dancer and Katya pinned the last audition number to the last leotard, the rain subsided and a sort of calm descended over the studio lobby. And then, as she did every year once it was too late, Babushka rounded the corner inquiring if the sisters needed help. Now in front of an “audience,” the old woman transformed from a Russian-mumbling costume mistress into the grande dame of the Kirov, Ykaterina Alekseyevna Chekhov, moving arrow-straight amongst admiring fans. Mothers and fathers drove in from as far as East Portland and Camas, Washington so their children could study with Miss Chekhov and her daughter, Miss Ruslana (addressed by her first name to avoid confusion with Miss Chekhov, former prima ballerina assoluta.)

  The pianist flew through the lobby, coat dripping, his reserved parking space having been taken by some not-to-be-forgiven ballet mom. Giselle took his coat and he slipped behind the piano. From the dance floor, Miss Ruslana requested a quiet bit of Chopin, which awakened the a-group girls and seemed to bring a warmer glow to the studio’s polite mixture of blond wood and creamy wall paint.

  As the morning wore on the temperature in the studio climbed, cause for girls Giselle’s age to pin their arms to their sides because dread reeked worse than hard work.

  Giselle watched the smaller girls with their shining faces and warm-wet palms pressed against the one-way glass that looked onto the dance floor. The little ones smelled sweet in a salty way that made mothers hold them close. Giselle smiled, noting the dancers who could not bear the imposed stillness of hugs with Tchaikovsky playing through the door. They wriggled free to bounce around the lobby like electrons dressed in tights and leo’s.

  There was no place on Earth like the studio: heat and smell and too-tiny-ness and all. Giselle felt alive here as she did nowhere else. It was the home of her heart, the home of every aching muscle and bruised toenail and fly-away strand of hair. It was heaven contained by four walls, and the joy swelling Giselle’s heart made her want to b
ounce around the lobby as well. But Giselle was a level 5 student, and Miss Ruslana’s daughter, and Miss Chekhov’s granddaughter, so she held herself in stillness and silence, awaiting her turn to dance.

  “Who do you want to be?” whispered a young dancer to a friend.

  Giselle smiled softly, exchanging a glance with her sister. Katya smiled back.

  None of the dancers in level 4 or 5 would dream of confessing they wanted a particular role, but of course, they would all kill to dance the part of Giselle. Giselle Chekhov, however, wouldn’t have to. The role had always been hers.

  Today, she was quietly proud of the odd French name teachers had been mangling since she started school. It was a simple enough name to pronounce: Gee as in golly gee and zelle like the second syllable of gazelle. Through childhood she had swallowed so many mouthfuls of embarrassment over her name that she was now immune. Or perhaps just accustomed to the diet.

  At times, it bothered her that her mother thought it was a good idea to name her for a ballet heroine who danced herself to death after learning her lover was really a prince who couldn’t marry her since she was a peasant. But, to the heroine’s credit, she intervened from beyond the grave to save her Prince from evil undead maidens. For a female ballet role, this kicked derrière.

  “Kleenex?” whispered a desperate mother, interrupting Giselle’s reverie. A tiny dancer sobbed into tiny fists at the woman’s side.

  Giselle reached for the box under the counter, squatted next to the miniature dancer, and handed her a tissue.

  “Good work, Talia,” she whispered. She knew all the dancers by first and last name, class level, and zip code. “You remembered to keep your arms soft and your chin lifted.”

  Talia hugged Giselle tight and Giselle hugged her tight, right back. She’d been the little girl’s teacher for the past three years. This year Talia was graduating to Miss Ruslana’s level 2 class where there would be no hugs and little praise; this year Talia would become a real dancer.