A Sea of Sorrow

by Libbie Hawker

  But the dreams always ended badly. As of course they must. She woke each morning stranded still on the rocky, barren island, cursed by the gods for her grandmother’s-grandmother’s failure to find Demeter’s daughter. Doomed to live upon nothing more than what the sea—and the men who sailed it—provided.

  It had been little enough even in her childhood, and during the years of the great war between the Achaeans and the Trojans, when ships had come and gone full of plunder and supplies, and every third or fourth moon they might be so fortunate as to eat their fill of what was left upon the rocks. But of late, since they had sung the witch’s ship too near, unwitting, it had become much worse.

  “Enough of your dreaming, Aglaope,” her mother chided, finding her still in her furs by the fire, staring at the small, half-starved flame. They were as short on wood as everything else, these days. “Up to your roost, and quickly before the sun is fully risen and we miss a ship sailing by.”

  Aglaope sighed, snatching a scrap of dried and salted seaweed to quiet her growling stomach and lend some small strength to her legs and arms for the climb. Her mother and grandmother would not eat until sunset, and even then it would be no more than a cup of bone broth and the same dried seaweed in an even smaller portion. Unless Aglaope found a ship and sung it near. Unless the ship crashed close enough upon the rocks for her to reach and haul its bounty back without losing her prizes to Circe’s falcons, always winging overhead. Soaring as her grandmother’s grandmother had once soared.

  It was cruel of the witch to use the falcons with their clean-curved wings against them. And even now, Aglaope could hear the laughter of Circe’s handmaiden in the distance, carried by the wind across their cursed island. The tall woman had made it her habit to taunt them since their larger ship had wrecked and another of the witch’s women had drowned. She floated just beyond the deadly rocks that rimmed their waters, casting her falcons into the sky to scare and assault the seabirds who might otherwise build their nests upon the rocks. Seabirds, who might provide Aglaope and her mother and grandmother with eggs and roasted flesh to eat. Seabirds, upon which they might have lived.

  “Go on, girl,” her grandmother said, when Aglaope still stalled. “It will bring us all joy to hear your song, and goddess knows we’ve precious little of that.”

  “Joy and song, at least, we need not portion out quite so carefully between us,” her mother said. “As long as one of us sings, there is hope. And as long as there is hope, there is joy to be found, enough to nourish us, even when the broth has run out.”

  “We cannot survive on hope alone,” Aglaope grumbled. “Nor joy, either. Not if there is nothing else to fill our bellies.”

  “Hush, now,” her mother said. “If we are fated to starve after all these years, we’ll be with our goddess again, and that’s nothing to fear. Better beneath the earth with our lady than above it, punished ever after by her mother’s grief.”

  Aglaope wanted to argue, but her grandmother caught her eye, the slightest shake of her silver-haired head all the reminder she needed to save her strength. Instead, she left them both beside the fire to climb the stone spire, as she’d been told.

  Her legs and arms trembled with the effort even after she had settled at its worn top, padded with feathers and furs like one of the sea birds’ nests, where her mother, and her grandmother, and her grandmother’s mother had once sat. And at least it gave her more to look at than the black rock and the sad, lonely flame of the dying fire. She would never tire of the sight of the rising sun gilding the wine-dark waters. Aglaope let herself drink in its beauty before she searched the horizon more dutifully for any sign of mast, sail, or ship.

  But of course, there was nothing. Nothing but open water and the barest hint of a smudge where Circe’s island lay in the distance, visible only from the highest rocks. There had been no sign of any ship for months now, and if no ship came before the winter seas rose up, furious and unfriendly, there would be no more ships for months to come. No ships, and no food or wine or fresh water but for what the gods granted them in rain, and no men or corpses who might be rescued from the water, either. Between the undertow and the waves crashing against the sheer rocks, fishing was impossible. They could rely upon only what was washed up on their meager, rocky shore when the tide pulled back far enough that they might reach it at all. Like the body of Circe’s unfortunate handmaiden, and the spare ropes of seaweed that had made up most of their food over the course of the last year.

  Aglaope hummed softly, warming her voice, and forced herself not to hope for what it was clear would never come. The secret dream she had dreamed, ever since she was a child. The dream that one day a ship might hear her song and sail through the hazards of the rocks to arrive unbroken, with a worthy hero upon her deck to carry Aglaope away.

  Every day, sunrise to sunset, Aglaope sang. Not to the ships that did not come, but hymns and prayers to the gods above and below. She sang for food and water more than anything else, but sometimes, despite herself, her song turned to other needs as well.

  Akheloios, come to me...

  She was well into her fertile years, now, though her bleeding only came in times of plenty, when the rains fell and they drank their fill of sweet, fresh water as it spilled from the clouds. When the ships wrecked every other moon instead of every six. When her stomach was full of dried meats and cheeses and heady wine, and her body warmed with every caress of the winds.

  But Akheloios did not come even then. Season after season she sang to him, her father, the god who had gifted them with the sweet water of life and every daughter since. Always he had come before her—to her mother and her grandmother, to her grandmother’s mother, and her grandmother’s grandmother—in the shape of some shipwrecked man, rising up out of the sea unmarked and strong and beautiful. She remembered Akheloios’s coming, even in her childhood, before she had been old enough to bleed. Her mother’s stomach had swelled with his child, the babe kicking inside her belly, eager to be born, though Akheloios himself had fashioned a craft of little more than scraps and sailed away again. She remembered, too, the wailing cry of the baby all day long, lusty at first, with her Siren lungs ready to sing, then growing thinner and thinner as time went on and the ships came too slowly, too few to feed them.

  “Not all Akheloios’s children are strong enough to live,” her mother had told her, when the baby’s cries had turned to sad chirps and cheeps, no louder than a seabird’s chick. “It is a hard life on our island, and only those of us touched by his immortality can survive it. I fear your sister is not so blessed.”

  They had done all they could to help her. Grandmother had fasted, and even Aglaope had given up her bone broth and the last shreds of dried meat to her mother, that the baby might have milk to see her through. And then, too, she had climbed the spire every day to sing and sing, to beg the gods for another ship, for food enough that her sister might live.

  But then, as now, she had found no sails upon the horizon. And they had all grown weak, until her mother had refused the seaweed and the small bit of egg Aglaope had stolen from a nest. “You must eat,” she said. “You must have the strength to sing, or it will not matter at all if the babe lives to see the dawn again, for we will, all four of us, die before long.”

  So Aglaope had eaten, and kept her strength even as her sister shriveled and stilled. And then the life Akheloios had given them became her strength as well. That she might sing, and sing, and sing, day after day, moon after moon, season after season, always waiting and praying and hoping that Akheloios might come again, now, for her.

  For without a daughter of her own, a strong young girl to take her place upon the spire when she was weakened by age, it would not matter if they survived to see another dawn.

  There would be no Siren left to sing.

  And without song, they would have no nourishment at all.

  “Tell me the story again,” she asked her grandmother that night, after Circe’s broad-shouldered handmaiden—Anthousa, she cal
led herself, when she had first come, seeking vengeance—had sailed off with her falcons, and Aglaope had climbed down shakily from her spire once more. “Tell me of Grandfather’s coming, before mother was born.”

  Thelxiope smiled, her gaze going distant as her mind traveled back. Stories were another small nourishment, though her mother would never admit as much, scolding her for wasting her voice on the telling when she tried to share her own. But for her grandmother, remembering those days, getting lost in them as she told her tales—it was the only peace Aglaope could give her when the sea winked at them with nothing but the sunlight that promised another hungry night.

  “He was a fine, tall man,” Thelxiope said. “And my song then was more beautiful even than yours, my dear one. So beautiful, he could not tear his eyes from mine as he threw himself into the sea from his ship and swam hard for our rocks.”

  “But his ship sailed on,” Aglaope murmured, knowing the story by heart, but unable to keep herself from wondering at the men who had resisted her grandmother’s song. The men who had left a god behind.

  “Orpheus, he was called, the man who stopped the rest of their ears with his own music. Or so your grandfather told us. Blessed by the muses, or perhaps Lord Apollo himself, to rival our gifts. And the Argo, that ship of heroes, sailed on, leaving Butes-Akheloios to the sea and our hospitality. Cowards, all, too afraid to test themselves against our rocks, when if they had succeeded, we might have sung their names for generations, granting them fame and glory beyond all imagining with our songs.”

  “Orpheus,” she tasted the name, bitter on her tongue. To think if he had not stopped them, those worthy men might have managed what no other had ever done. And perhaps her mother would have been born upon fertile earth, with more than bone broth and seaweed to eat during even the leanest of days. If not for Orpheus, perhaps they might have been saved.

  “Butes-Akheloios came to me with nothing but the clothes upon his back, the finest linens and softest, most supple leather for his belt. Nothing but for the seed he planted in my womb, and the love he showered upon me. Every day, I climbed the spire to sing, and he would wade into the sea or climb the tumbled rocks hunting for our supper, and every night we would feast upon one another, sated and satisfied in spirit even when our bellies still growled with hunger.”

  Aglaope closed her eyes, imagining what she had never known. Longing spilled over her body like so much sea spray, leaving gooseflesh upon her skin. “It must have been glorious.”

  “To know a god’s love is no small thing, for however long it might last,” Thelxiope said. “But knowing our time together would be short made it all the sweeter, for Akheloios has greater duties than plowing us, as god of the rivers and the sweetest water. And so far from his domain, he cannot linger without weakening.

  “Even so, Butes begged me to sail with him, when he had finally gathered wood enough for a skiff. He begged and pleaded, promising me rich lands and food enough that I might never hunger again. But the mother’s sickness had me by then, and I knew the sea would be no friend to me. And how could I leave my mother? My grandmother, who would never survive the journey, old and tired as she was. Someone had to sing for them, and my mother’s voice had grown too hoarse to manage it, if I had gone.”

  “But we might have been freed,” Aglaope said, despite her best intentions. Every time she heard the story, the truth of it ate at her insides. “We might have gone to bed each night with full bellies and kept our strength—you might have kept your voice, if you had not needed to sing for so long, and so loud, day after day, season after season.”

  “Perhaps we might have been,” her grandmother agreed, her forehead furrowing slightly. “Or more likely, had I survived the sea, Demeter would have struck at me when I reached her fertile earth, sending me down to Persephone to serve her daughter in death as we had not in life.”

  “We,” she grumbled. “We have done nothing at all to be punished so cruelly.”

  “Hush, child,” her grandmother said, voice sharp. “You do not know what you risk, saying such things.”

  “What is worse than this?” she asked. “With Circe’s falcons stealing what food we might have lived upon, and no ship in sight for moons and moons. We are starving, Grandmother, and it hurts me to watch. It hurts me to see you shrink just a little more, every day. To see Mother weaken, too, while you give me what scraps we have to eat, that I might keep my strength to sing. But I sing for no one but the witch’s woman and the seabirds who do not dare to roost upon the rocks so long as the falcons soar. And Akheloios has not come for years and years. You and mother knew his love, carried his children, but before long, I will be too old even to try.”

  “You must have patience, Aglaope,” she said. “Trust in the gods, and in the fates who weave and measure our years. What will be, will be, and in the end we will see our goddess again. That is all that matters.”

  “What matters is that the gods send us a ship,” she said. “And if the gods ever show us kindness enough that Akheloios comes to bed me, I will not refuse when he begs me to follow him across the sea. I will sail away from here, and happily.”

  “Perhaps you will,” Thelxiope said quietly. “I only hope that for your sake, what waits for you beyond this island is everything that you have dreamed it to be.”

  But Aglaope did not need it to be everything. She only needed it to be.

  * * *

  II

  “Sing, Siren, sing until your voice is hoarse and your throat is raw, but you will never have another ship so long as my lady lives! Soon enough, you’ll join Chrysomallo’s shade, and the gods will curse you for the desecration you have wrought, time and time again, upon the bodies of the dead.”

  Aglaope ignored the taunts, just as she had ignored the falcon circling above and threatening to dive upon her head, and the movement of the small ship rising and falling upon the waves just far enough away—the twist of anger and rage upon the woman’s features, the anguish and the pain in every jerk and sweep of the oars. Aglaope was humming still, warming her voice to keep from straining it with song. But soon enough her singing would drown out the woman’s spiteful calls.

  “Every ship that comes to our shores, our mistress keeps, turning the men to fine, juicy pigs, sheep, and goats, that we might feast! All the wine in their holds, all the supplies they carry, we take, and never have we eaten so well as we do now—falling asleep with bellies so full they ache.”

  Aglaope closed her eyes, ignoring the pang of hunger, the growl of her empty stomach. She might have felt badly for the woman’s loss if not for her boasting and taunts. She could too-well imagine how they indulged on their lush, fertile island. And of course Circe and her women would never fall so low as to eat the flesh of men—only fine, fat beasts, while Aglaope and her mother and grandmother had been driven to devour putrid, bloated corpses, with nothing but the ground dust of their dry, splintered bones to flavor their more and more brackish water. As if Aglaope would have ever chosen to eat the half-rotten flesh of any body, had she another choice. As if she did not long for good food, for salted fish and cheese and fruits, like any other.

  “And what will you do, Siren, if the rains do not come? With no ships to bring you water and wine? Where is your river god, your Akheloios, to quench your thirst? My lady Circe will hold him hostage, too, if he dares to pass her by, just as she holds the great Odysseus, grandson of Autolycus, himself a son of fleet-footed Hermes.”

  Her eyes snapped open and she hissed at the woman, bobbing upon the waters in her small skiff. “May Poseidon Earth-Shaker swallow you up and spit you out broken and bleeding back upon your green island’s shore! How dare you threaten a god, our father!”

  Anthousa laughed, delighted with her success. “You forget you are not the only ones with divine ichor in your veins. Our lady Circe is the daughter of Hekate herself, a goddess in her own name and right. How dare you, Siren. You, who lured our ship to crash upon your rocks, dooming Circe’s beloved servant, her lover an
d mine, and thinking yourselves safe from a goddess’s power, even when you steal from her open hand!”

  “Had I known that thrice-cursed ship was Circe’s, and the trouble it would cause, I would have thrown myself into the sea before I sung it near,” Aglaope snarled. “But your witch’s rule does not reach us here, goddess or not. She has no rights to anything that sails within our waters. Had your captain kept her course, or bothered to stop her ears with wax when she knew she risked the lure of our song, she’d have been safe enough from us. She has no one to blame for the loss but herself, thinking she lived beyond our power, after all these years.”

  “Tell the seabirds that Circe does not rule them,” Anthousa said. “Tell it to your mother and grandmother who starve, because you were too foolish to let our lady’s ship pass!”

  “And if I had not sung it into the rocks, my family would not be alive to tell at all,” Aglaope called back. “Dead then or starving now, it makes no difference to me, for Zeus will give us all what we deserve, no more and no less. But I promise you, from this day on, I will sing as I have never sung before if it means I might take another ship and crew from Circe!”

  The falcon dived upon her then, at some signal from Anthousa, and Aglaope ducked, drawing a fur over her head to protect herself from the sharp-curved beak and slashing talons. That thrice-cursed handmaiden only laughed, and Aglaope swore to herself, by all the gods she knew, that before the day was through, she would have one of Circe’s precious falcons for her supper.

  Furs and skins, leather and rock they had aplenty—for they had not grown so poor in firewood that they must burn the stinking, smoking hides upon which they slept. Nor did they dare to give up the small protection they had left against the wind and rain and sun, even for flame. But Aglaope could not waste good wood on a spear or an arrow with which to hunt the smug, soaring falcon. But perhaps—just perhaps—a sling would do.