I Stole You

by Kristen Ringman

  I fell in and out of sleep with your human body curled beside me on the floor. You made snoring sounds. When you woke in the night, I felt your hands stroking my head, the back of my neck, down my spine, across my ribs. The pain was so strong and my body was so weak, but every touch of your hands was warm medicine.

  Your parents set up the appointment with the vet.

  I knew they were having me “put to sleep.” I could never speak, but I always understood the words around me. You screamed at your mother. You screamed at your father. But you weren’t six years old anymore. You couldn’t make them do what you wanted. You were eighteen and powerless as the exact time of my death was decided.

  The old blue station wagon was long gone by then. We all piled into the sporty red car your father bought a few years back. Your mother had lined the back seat with blankets. I couldn’t lift my head to the window, so you lifted it for me. For the last time, you lifted me.

  The air outside was warm. It was still summer, but I could smell the fall coming. I liked that one of my last smells was of the coming autumn: the leaves turning crisp, as if their insides held insuppressible fire turning them red and yellow and brown as they fell and crumpled into dust upon the Earth.

  I didn’t die like a real dog, you know.

  In those last moments, with your hands in my fur as the vet slid the sharp point of the needle under my skin, I saw myself as who I really was—I saw my fairy body again and I saw this whole story flash before my eyes like the smells I inhaled on all of our car rides together. And it was beautiful: a dog and a child.

  A fairy who stole children. Who was then stolen by a child.

  I knew I’d do it all again, even though I’d have to die in a dog’s body. I’d steal those twins again without a second thought—just to feel your hands in my fur, to know that, for a while, I would be yours.

  * * *

  FLOATING IN THE SARGASSUM

  I stole you from the bow of your ship.

  You went there every evening and straddled the forestay. Your companion didn’t like it when you were there alone, but you did it anyway, always with a harness and halyard, so you wouldn’t fall into the arms of the sea (or someone like me). It took me so long to steal you I almost gave up.

  Okay, actually no. I didn’t manage to do it. Sometimes I forget that I never did steal you. But I rewrite our story every day. I tell myself I had you for one night, just one, and I gave you back. But other times I remember that the truth is: I simply wanted you like no other human I had ever seen on those long Atlantic crossings. All the other sailors were made of the same tough skin, hardened with salt and wind. You were hardened, too, but you were different.

  I’d like to think it wasn’t just because you were blind. But maybe that was it. Maybe that’s why, when I grabbed you from your perch at the forestay, you resisted. You weren’t affected by the glow of my skin, the color of my eyes, or the tangled mess of my hair. I couldn’t touch you the right way. You recoiled from me and the shock of the rejection caused me to slip and tumble over the lifelines back into the sea.

  You shouted for your companion and met them halfway to the cockpit, “Something grabbed me! Someone else is on the boat!”

  They laughed. “That’s crazy! We’re in the middle of the ocean and we haven’t seen another boat for hours! Unless you felt a mermaid, there’s nothing else that could be here.”

  You turned around, studying the sea. You looked right at me. Your eyes seemed to see me—or I just wanted them to see me—and you turned again and followed your companion into the boat.

  I had never been so easily pushed aside.

  I asked the other sirens, though we rarely communicate, so they were of little help. None of them had ever failed to steal a human from a ship. I always felt different from them, but this time, I felt inadequate. I wasn’t right in my skin anymore. I wasn’t a strong siren like I thought.

  For weeks, I followed your ship like a lover, watching your daily ritual of sitting at the bow right at sunset. You couldn’t see it, though, could you? Were the colors passing through some dark filter behind your eyes? Were they softer then?

  In the mornings, when you sat in the cockpit while your companion steered the boat, were you just feeling the warmth of each day filling up the world around you? Or was it light you were watching however you could?

  I had so many questions, but sirens don’t speak to humans. We only take them under the sea, kiss and hold them until they turn into fish food. It’s all I knew before I saw someone like you. The life I was given.

  Then you came along and made me question everything.

  I’ve been lost since that year.

  I’ve taken lovers, both men and women that I’ve pulled into the sea, allowed their bodies to merge with mine before they died, but none of them matter to me anymore. Sometimes, I just float. I let myself drift like the young turtles and sea horses in the sargassum, watching the sunlight filter through the brown clusters of seaweed, turning them gold. I saved one or two from a shark, and then I realized what I was doing. Since when do sirens save turtles?

  But they were helpless, weren’t they? I told myself, laughing, laughing all the while.

  What the fuck was it about you that turned me into this? You wouldn’t last a moment down here in the sea—not blind nor human. Why did I care?

  I frequented the towns along the American shore for years. Searching for you—though I never found you. One day a sighted human was swimming and they began to falter. I couldn’t tell if they were drowning or trying to drown themselves. Their efforts were so futile. Were humans really that pathetic? I didn’t understand, but I couldn’t stop myself from investigating and helping them ashore.

  A fucking siren helped a human to the beach? The world was ending, I knew it, and I turned to duck my head down beneath the waves before anyone could catch me.

  The human I saved was too fast. Suddenly, on land, he was fast. He grabbed me, and our eyes met.

  “Hey, who are you?” he asked.

  “Just a girl on a beach,” I said with a grin.

  “No—now look, I’ve never believed in creatures that look human but aren’t human, but you—there’s something weird about you. You’re a mermaid! Like an actual fucking mermaid.”

  It was no use arguing with him, so I said, “We prefer the word ‘siren.’ But really, I’ve got to go.”

  “Back to drifting in the fucking water? What have you got in the water that you weren’t happy with before you grabbed me?”

  “Grabbed you? You mean saved you! You were going to drown!”

  “I can fucking drown if I decide to drown. And if you’re really a siren, doesn’t that mean you’re supposed to help me drown?”

  “I can do whatever I want. But why were you drowning yourself?”

  “I felt like my whole life was caving in and nothing mattered but everything mattered and everything I touched fell apart. I couldn’t do anything right. I was depressed and I wanted it all to just fucking stop.”

  I never understood that the way I felt was something humans felt, too. And that boy even named it. I realized then that I was depressed, too.

  The human and I spoke of this thing called “depression” until sunrise. Everything we both said made sense to each other. We decided to meet again the next day and the next. I never knew that a siren and a human could be friends.

  You didn’t let me take you, but sometimes when I float in the sargassum, I thank you in my mind. I thank you for not letting me steal you because it taught me how to feel longing and depression. Losing you inspired me to open myself to the things around me that I hadn’t noticed before. I was able to be a friend to someone.

  I realized I didn’t have to be a typical siren.

  I could be myself.

  I could float and not drown. I could save a turtle.

  I could be a friend to someone without stealing them away.

  * * *

  THE DREAM THIEF

  I stole you betw
een your waking life and sleep.

  It wasn’t premeditated. I never planned for you to die. Please, if you can hear my words, if you can know my truth, maybe I’ll be able to forgive myself.

  This is our story:

  We met during one of your dreams of lovemaking.

  You had them often after surgeries on your pelvis, when the doctors told you repeatedly you couldn’t have sex for weeks. It was like your body, mind, and spirit came together in a quiet, sleep-induced revolt against the recurring problems that plagued your physical body. You were so much larger than them, though. In your waking life, you were a great force of loving energy to everyone. Your blue eyes and auburn hair and slim frame embraced every person you saw, regardless of race, creed, or occupation.

  You drew me to you like a moth to a flame, even though I had given up the taking of humans. I thought I was finished with humans forever.

  I was an old fae, you see: a dream stealer. I lived in the dream worlds: the places on the edge of waking life, on the edges of everything. Where the air was always filled with smoke, and sometimes things weren’t clear until they were right in front of you. Some objects were hard like in life, but others just looked that way and when you reached out to touch them, a tree or a ball or another person, your hand would slip through them as if they were ghosts. This was—is—my world.

  The orgasms you gave yourself in your dreams sent out rays of light throughout the dream world. They glittered over the nightmares other people were having—of empty rooms, raging seas, storms, and bloodshed. They provided hope and I loved to watch you in the throes of them. The ways you pleased yourself made me feel things in my spirit that had been asleep for decades. Sometimes, I imagined you were with me, that I was the reason you’d felt such ecstasy, but I never had the courage to enter your dreams or communicate with you.

  For years, I protected you and never went near enough to take anything of yours. I never planned to do it. I was happy just watching your ecstasy from a few dreams away, close enough to stop any other dream thieves or succubae from harming you. Everyone wanted you, you see. You were that special.

  Now here’s the moment when it all changed:

  I was riding a bike in a child’s dream when I felt something unusual in yours. You were having sex with a beautiful woman, and quite suddenly you began having a nightmare. I felt your fear as if it was something I swallowed that closed up my throat and I couldn’t breathe.

  I crashed the bike and rushed to you. I had never entered one of your dreams before. I only felt them, like stardust on the edges of my world, like an ever-present rainbow over so much dark.

  When I entered your dream, it was filled with purple smoke and blood raining down. Your body was a shadow on the ground with a monster crouched on its chest. The dream thief was at least twice the size of you. It had long, crooked fangs laced with drool. Its hunchback was covered in a tangled mess of brown hair, leaves, and claws. It held you around your small waist, digging its nails into your skin while leaning over your face.

  I approached too quickly.

  The monster turned in surprise and slashed me across the face with its claws. (I don’t have a body exactly, but in dreams, everything takes form. So when I entered your dream, a body appeared around my spirit. I don’t know what I looked like exactly, but in your dream I could be harmed as easily as you.)

  Where the monster clawed my face, blood ran down. Through the flowing blood, my eyes met yours. I knew your eyes were blue, but in that moment, I saw every shade of every color there. I saw the promise of a thousand loving embraces from you. The real kind, the kind of love people rarely give because it scares them even more than the monster sitting on your chest, crushing the life out of you.

  I leaped onto his back. I wasn’t a strong fae like him. I don’t know to this day how I did it, but I have to believe that I got most of my strength from you, from the look in your eyes.

  He threw me off but like I said, in the dream world, the edges aren’t solid. Nothing is really solid. Objects that feel solid at first can crumble in your hands at any time like grains of sand. Our dream bodies can crumble, too.

  He slipped. He fell through the ground, taking his purple smoke and blood with him.

  The following night I couldn’t stay away. I found you in a grove of autumn beech trees shining like muted gold. You were naked except for a green sweater.

  “Was it you last night?” you signed without opening your mouth or using your voice.

  I wasn’t sure if you were deaf in life or if you learned sign language from a deaf friend. It didn’t matter, though. In dreams, everything is fluid, and everything speaks the same language depending on the dream. Deaf people can speak and hear in languages they’ve never even seen in their waking lives. Hearing people, too. Sometimes people don’t use vocal or hand language; sometimes they use their bodies like animals or read the minds of beings they encounter. I don’t fully understand where the dream world and the waking world meet or how or where the dream world even exists. I just move inside it, from one dream to another, one being to another.

  “Yes,” I answered in your hand language.

  “Thank you. I think you saved me,” you signed and embraced me before I could move my hands or keep my distance.

  I had never made friends in dreams. I took things from people. Things like bikes or balls, and I used these small tokens as my sustenance. As a way to steal tiny pieces of dreams without hurting the person. Sometimes I made children cry, but it was nothing like that monster who almost killed you or vomited so much fear into your mind that you lost your grasp on reality and would never again function in your waking life. You—might never have smiled again. The human who brought so much joy to everyone you met.

  I held back as you wrapped your arms around me, but your body was so warm, your love so deep, even for me, even for a lowly dream thief like me. I had to taste you. Just a little. I moved against you slowly at first and then faster. Your green sweater dissolved into sparkling dust, like the dust of fairies, and we were covered in it. I lay you in a bed of the softest moss and began kissing you from your neck down to your toes. I closed myself up, the power I have to steal, and sealed it away.

  At first my plan worked. I was able to give you orgasm after orgasm in that beech grove, surrounded in gold and green and the pink of your blushing skin, your parted lips I bit with my teeth ever so gently. I loved you better than any human could love you, this I know. This consoles me.

  We met for years, though eventually, I lost track of my time with you. I was hundreds of years old. Our time together was so brief but it was rich like Indian silk. I suppose all beings need repose. A time of rest and only love. We gave that to each other.

  Things changed when your waking life partner died.

  Your light grew dim despite how much I tried to nurture it, to keep you happy at least in dreams. I couldn’t enter your waking life. I couldn’t see how each day exhausted you. It enraged me. The powerlessness of my situation. So I began to leave you sooner and sooner each night. I moved a few dreams away and stole things people held close to their hearts. I made more children cry than I ever have, though I never killed them. I just stole things. I got stronger while watching the dim green of your light fade through the smoke.

  One night I left after only a few moments. You were sad, but you didn’t ask me to stay. You didn’t care what happened in your dreams then. You just drifted through them like a speck of fairy dust that used to be a fae being itself. You didn’t even use dreaming for respite anymore.

  My chest tightened.

  I was so many dreams away from you—so far—when I heard you scream, that I kept falling through the smoke. I kept slipping through the ground.

  Every dream I tried to cross to reach you was a valley of quicksand. Thick mud covered me in brown. I couldn’t move fast. I could barely take one step and then another.

  Finally, I reached that grove of beech trees and the leaves were gone. The trees were gray skeletons
twisted in mourning. Your ravaged body lay on the dead moss, as brown as the fallen leaves, crystallized over in frost. Your mind had been shattered. I knew it without even touching you.

  When I did lay my hands on you, I felt you in between the dream and your waking life. Your body was softer, fading away. I couldn’t let you leave like that. I couldn’t let you wake up into a life of madness.

  I took you in my arms before you melted away. I brought my lips down against yours and stole the rest of you. I took your mad energy into my body and you disappeared. So quickly, you were gone from the world of dreams and life. A rainbow fading to black. I was left in the grove of beech trees crumbling brown leaves into dust around me, waiting for winter.

  * * *

  A MURDER OF TWO

  I stole you in the pouring rain.

  The air was cool but not cold. The leaves had lost their fire and were falling from the trees in swirls of brown stars. Your hair was red, a dusky deep shade close to that of human blood when it reaches the air. You were running down the empty black street lined with elms, birches, and maples; old, twisted trees with cracked bark covered in pale green lichen and moss.