“Babushka’s already got a head start,” said Giselle.
“Get back here this minute,” shouted her mother.
“Or what?” demanded Giselle, turning to face her mother. “You’ll take away one of my privileges? Oh, wait, that’s right: you already took away the only thing I ever cared about!”
There it was, crackling in the icy air between mother and daughter, the precise thing Giselle had been aching to say for ten days. Breathing hard but no longer shaking, Giselle turned and ran for the river. Behind her, Katya called and her mother shouted and Giselle ignored them both. She was dry wood shavings and her mother’s words the spark that set her ablaze.
Babushka was a slow driver, and Giselle thought she could beat her to the river by taking the same shortcuts Sasha had taken to get home. A stitch in her side made her wince. The sprint would have been nothing in the past, but she no longer danced four hours a day. Ignoring the side-ache, Giselle continued running until she crossed the final stretch through the parking lot. The mermaid statue was ablaze, reflecting the red of emergency lights.
Emergency vehicles filled the lot, hastily parked at wrong angles. One of the fire trucks shone a floodlight at the river’s edge. Giselle heard the popping static of walkie-talkies and radios. Her grandmother’s Mercedes was nowhere to be seen. Giselle hesitated for a moment, uncertain whether she should wait for her babushka or get closer to the river to see if James was still in danger.
The grass upon which the sirens had danced was trampled, muddied. It was also siren-free. She couldn’t see James at first, but as her eyes adjusted to the bright lights, she found him.
EMT’s and firefighters had surrounded his body, which sprawled awkwardly along the grassy verge where it met the shoreline. One of James’s feet drifted in the current. Someone pulled his foot from the river. They were speaking to him. He wasn’t responding. He was unconscious. Or … worse.
Katya, panting hard, appeared at Giselle’s side. “Is he …?”
“I don’t know,” murmured Giselle.
From behind, they heard the rattle of the old Mercedes as it pulled into the parking lot.
“Babushka,” murmured Katya, but the girls remained where they were, staring at James, intent on the tubes and instruments descending over his still body.
“I shouldn’t have run away,” Giselle said in an anguished voice.
“Giselle.” Katya slipped a hand in her sister’s.
“No,” said Giselle. “It is my fault. I could have talked to her. The queen. I’ve … I’ve met her before, Katya. I could have asked her to … to …” The words trailed off because Giselle wasn’t sure what she might have asked or said or done, because the truth was, she hadn’t been willing to abandon Sasha.
Her sister spoke softly. “Did you just say you met a siren?”
“Yes. Seven years ago. When I was nine.” Quickly Giselle told Katya the rest of the story.
Katya’s brows drew together, but she didn’t respond.
The ambulance crew was now exchanging information with the fire truck crew. The girls heard words like pulse rate and temperature as the crew loaded James into an ambulance, tubes and wires trailing off the gurney.
“We should find Babushka,” murmured Giselle, still staring at James’s still body. James wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be dead. He would be okay. This wasn’t her fault. Unless … unless it was.
Katya cried out suddenly. “Babushka?”
Giselle turned her gaze to where Katya was looking.
Katya took a few steps forward, toward the river, toward a figure. Had the sirens returned? The figure beside the river was no siren. It was their grandmother, pacing slowly along the river, something small and rectangular held over her head.
“Holy Mother of Visitations,” murmured Giselle. Her grandmother held the ikon overhead and was singing or chanting something in Russian.
Lights flashed, sharp and bright, nearby. It took Giselle a moment to realize it was someone taking pictures. Someone with a camera was snapping picture after picture of Babushka as she performed whatever ritual this might be.
“Babushka,” cried Giselle, dashing to her grandmother’s side. “What are you doing?”
“One more pass,” muttered the old woman. “Three passes altogether.”
Katya joined Giselle and their grandmother. “They’re taking him to the hospital,” she said. “He’s definitely alive, but they’re having trouble, er, waking him up.”
“Home now, girls,” said their grandmother, with all the authority of a ballet mistress. Tucking the ikon in her pocket, she strode back to the Mercedes. The girls exchanged glances and followed.
In the parking lot beside the car, Giselle saw her mother waiting, arms folded angrily over her chest, lips pressed together so tightly she seemed to have no mouth at all, only a livid dark line etched above her chin.
The four Chekhov women piled into the car, Ruslana at the wheel, and drove home in silence.
When they arrived, their mother spoke over her shoulder, headed for her bedroom. “There’s borscht on the stove.”
Babushka murmured a few things in Russian pertaining to daughters and ungratefulness and retired to her room as well.
Abandoned, Katya and Giselle stood for a moment, eyes darting from one closed bedroom door to the other. And then Giselle took her sister’s hand, something tangible to prove she wasn’t utterly alone in the world.
23
WHAT IF THE STORIES WERE TRUE
For several minutes, Giselle and her sister remained hand in hand, waiting to see if either of the bedroom doors would reopen.
“Come on,” said Giselle at last.
The girls shuffled into the kitchen where the rich scent of beets in beef broth poured from a pot on the stove.
“I couldn’t possibly eat,” murmured Katya. She turned off the stove.
“Me neither,” said Giselle. She didn’t want anything from a country with a tradition of evil water maidens. Not rusalki or ikons or borscht.
The two climbed the stairs and by unspoken agreement, both crawled into Giselle’s lower bunk.
“Giselle?” said Katya, speaking softly. “You told me you … spoke with the siren. When you were little. Are you sure she spoke?”
“Yes,” said Giselle, a hint of annoyance in her voice.
“Okay, okay,” said her sister. “It’s just … the scientists who study the sirens heavily discount any reports that the creatures might have human speech. Much less speak English.”
“I know what I heard,” Giselle said stubbornly.
“Hmm.” Katya breathed heavily. “I’ve been reading up on them, a few minutes here and there. There are definitely anecdotal reports of … speech. On one website, I read an article that theorized the queen became queen by being able to learn enough human speech to verbally lure her victims so the pod can … you know, feed. Although, I don’t know. If I heard a siren speaking to me in English, the last thing I would do is come closer to investigate.”
“She called to James. When he tried to leave, she commanded him to stay. And he did. Like he couldn’t help it.”
“Like a spell,” murmured Katya. “They’re like that in all the stories.” Katya frowned. “What if … what if the stories were true?”
Giselle tried to wrap her mind around it. It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t logical or reasonable or scientific or rational.
“Well,” said Katya at last, “The important thing is he got away, in the end.”
“He didn’t look good,” said Giselle. “He had IV’s and that breathing mask—”
“Standard procedure,” said Katya. “It’s so he’s ready for meds or fluids or whatever when he arrives at the hospital.”
“Oh,” said Giselle. “So all those tubes didn’t mean …”
“He’ll be fine.” Katya said it firmly.
Giselle’s forehead creased with a frown. “Maybe I imagined the whole thing about him freezing in place.”
“I have t
o admit, that sounds a little …”
“Crazy?” asked Giselle. Of course it sounded crazy. Who would believe such a thing?
“I didn’t say that,” said Katya. “I was just wondering how sure you were. Maybe he froze because he changed his mind about leaving.”
“Maybe I’ve listened to too many fairytales for my own good,” murmured Giselle.
Katya laughed. “We’ve definitely listened to too many fairytales.”
The two were quiet, each lost in her own thoughts.
Giselle heard Katya yawning at her side. “Mind if I sleep here tonight?” asked Katya.
“Of course not,” Giselle said. “Go to sleep. We can talk more in the morning.”
Giselle rolled over, closing her eyes, but sleep eluded her.
She could only think of the sirens. Were they predatory like sharks or vengeful like the fairytale willis and rusalki? And if they were vengeful, had they attacked James because of the way he’d treated Caitlyn? The way he’d treated her? There was that news story about the attacked boy with two girlfriends and a similar report about the Scappoose man with a wife and a fiancée. Shivering, Giselle pulled the duvet higher.
At last she fell into dark dreams in which she rose from her bed and drifted ghostlike to the park by the river. Clouds had moved in from the west so that the full moon lit a portion of the clouds, piercing through and then fading as more clouds swam overhead. In the distance, the Multnomah Channel rolled past, a rushing white noise.
She listened and found she could distinguish the individual voices of the river: water dashing against rock, water slowed by reeds; the trickle of a nearby stream drain that emptied into the channel. A breeze brought with it the reek of things forgotten and decaying in shallow puddles beside the water’s edge. Giselle shivered as she stumbled past the spot where James had lain earlier, one foot in the watery grave meant to enfold him.
As though compelled, Giselle found herself moving toward the river’s edge. Now she could see other forms moving beside the swift water. Sirens. The girls bent and swayed across white ribbons of moonlit grass. Their gentle appearance was a lie, Giselle knew, but she was drawn to them, helpless to resist. In their midst, James danced, a strung puppet skipping at someone else’s command. His face was as pale as the white visages that surrounded him. Giselle could see through him, almost. He was fading. He was dying. He wouldn’t survive much longer.
She moved closer. The dancing girls with their streaming hair and blind, white eyes struck dread into Giselle’s heart. She searched the swirling crowd to find their leader. She had to stop them before James died. She had to find the queen, to see if the queen remembered her, was still kindly disposed toward her.
In the ballet Giselle, the queen carried an herb wand made of rosemary. For remembrance. The wild girls remembered the soldiers, farmers, and princes who had abandoned them in life. They remembered and they avenged.
Giselle caught a flash of silver upon one brow, but in the whirl of dancers, she quickly lost track of the queen. One of the pallid girls brushed past Giselle, raking fingernails along Giselle’s forearm, drawing blood. The pain was sharp and sudden and made tears well in her eyes. As she blinked the tears back, she saw that the bloody trails on her arm were already disappearing, leaving lines of new skin, tight and shiny under the moon’s light.
I am dreaming, she told herself, but there was no safety in the thought.
Another of the wild maidens approached her. Giselle flinched from the creature’s touch. The siren laughed. And then in a hissing tongue Giselle found she could understand, the creature spoke: “I can do you no permanent harm, mortal.” Saying this, the pale maiden drew a long white finger under Giselle’s chin, her razor sharp nail tilting Giselle’s head back so as to examine her.
Giselle felt the stream of hot blood trailing back along the line of her jaw as the creature’s nails found purchase. But as before, the wound healed almost immediately.
“No lasting harm,” sighed the creature. “The lasting harm was done by your father, though, was it not?”
Giselle stared in confusion. “My father? My dad never hurt me.” True, Papa’s departure had hurt at the time, but Giselle had never believed Papa wanted to hurt them.
Several of the sirens turned to face Giselle, expressions sad. The moonlight reflected off their blank, white eyes, and Giselle fought the impulse to recoil from their uncanny gaze.
“My subjects pity you,” whispered a gravelly voice at her side.
The queen had found her.
Giselle pushed aside remembrances of her father. “Your majesty,” she said, bowing deeply, “Please, you must release James.”
“Must?” The queen’s breath against Giselle’s face was snowfall. “Who are you to command me, mortal?”
And then, from the whirling circle of dancers, James caught Giselle’s eyes. His lips were cracked with thirst; the pitiless maidens had allowed him no drink. As he caught her gaze, his lips formed the shape of a word: Help. The only sound to pass his lips was a sickening wheeze.
He was dying.
“Let him go!” Giselle cried to the fey girls.
They laughed. Their queen fixed her gaze on Giselle, idly curious, perhaps. Or confused.
“We keep him for your sake, mortal.” The queen smiled, but it was a smile empty of sun or warmth. “They belong to us, all those who lie to gain a woman’s bed, those who abandon the maidens they profess to love, those who defraud one girl at the expense of another.”
The queen drifted past Giselle, surveying her with a look of curiosity.
“Do you mean to take his place?” asked the queen.
Horrified, Giselle shook her head, pushing to escape the fey maidens.
The queen watched as James faltered, stumbled, collapsed to the ground.
“No!” called Giselle.
Her scream woke her.
She was in her bed.
It had been a dream.
Her cell read 2:08 AM.
“You okay, Giselle?” asked Katya.
Her sister was leaning over her and her mother hovered in the doorway, a faceless figure outlined by the light on the stair landing.
Giselle whispered, “I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?” asked Katya.
Gripping her duvet, Giselle murmured, “I don’t know,” in a voice thick with sleep and confusion.
A glance to her forearms showed no sign of the siren’s attack, but Giselle felt a throbbing pain running along her arm.
In the doorway, her mother stirred as if deciding whether to enter the room or not.
“I’m fine,” said Giselle, more forcefully.
She wasn’t fine. A part of her ached for her mother, for whispered words of comfort and a hand to smooth back the hair that clung to her face, wet with sweat or tears or both. But her mother had no comfort to offer. Her mother had stolen her only solace, her one dream. Her mother had brought the cruel sirens to town with the veela ballet.
Giselle turned over to face the wall. She pulled her covers over her shoulders.
“Turn off that stupid hall light,” she said. Her voice sounded harsh and ugly, like one of the clawing maidens from her dream.
The light flicked off and Giselle saw only blackness for a count of ten. She listened to the stairs, creaking as her mother returned downstairs. Katya sighed and climbed back into bed.
~ ~ ~
At school the next day, Giselle felt exhausted and had to fight to stay awake. She spent lunch in the quiet library, her head resting on an otherwise empty table in the very back. Her dreams, she kept locked away, refusing to ask what they might portend. But in drama, she was thrust back inside her nightmare. Students clustered in quiet groups, whispering. Giselle heard James’s name repeatedly.
“What’s going on?” she asked Ophelia.
“You haven’t heard?”
Ophelia’s eyes brimmed and she bit her lower lip before speaking. A chill spread through Giselle’s belly and she felt the cold
breath of the dancing maidens whisper past.
“It’s James,” said Ophelia. “He’s in the hospital. He was attacked by the sirens at the river last night and now he’s in a coma.”
24
GOBLIN, LEAD THEM UP AND DOWN
Mr. Kinsler began class by asking everyone to stand in a circle to observe a minute of silence for James. Arms were thrown around shoulders in a thirty-seven person hug.
Giselle tried not to picture James like she’d seen him in her dream: pallid, fading, fallen. He hadn’t appeared much better in waking life, though: on a gurney with tubes and wires sprouting like sickly fungi. She sent a prayer to the Holy Mother of Revenge is a Dish Best Not Served at Any Temperature.
After the minute of silence, Mr. Kinsler assigned an understudy for James’s role of Lysander and gave a rousing speech to the effect that the best way to honor James would be to put in a solid rehearsal. The speech had the unintended effect of making it sound as if James were already deceased.
The four lovers, along with Oberon and Puck, ran through the lines for Act Three, Scene Two, but Giselle’s mind kept drifting back to the sirens, white-clad and whirling beside the river, so like the willis in Giselle who danced Hilarion to exhaustion before leading him to a watery grave.
While she was lost in the parallels, Puck spoke and Giselle heard his speech as if for the first time. The lines filled her veins with ice.
Up and down, up and down,
I will lead them up and down.
I am feared in field and town,
Goblin, lead them up and down!
In the context of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the goblin’s threat was hardly lethal, but it echoed the actions of the willis, who forced Prince Albrecht to leap up and down, up and down, royale after royale until he dropped from exhaustion.
The hairs on Giselle’s arms rose.
“Giselle?”
It was Marcus. Speaking softly to her. Nudging her.
Everyone was staring at her.
Marcus tapped his script to indicate her line.
Giselle nodded briefly. The nod felt like … a peace offering.
Siren Spell Page 16