Sirens and Scales

by Kellie McAllen

  "Yes," I said, and my voice broke over the word. He slipped the cold band over my finger, snugging it up against my skin. I threw my arms around his neck as he stood and took me with him, my feet dangled. "Yes," I repeated, muffled against his scarf and neck. I kissed his cheek a dozen times. "Yes."

  Our lips found each other and he kissed me sweetly. My fingers crept through his hair and up under his hat, holding him close and deepening the kiss. Warmth crept out from my heart and through all of my limbs, up my neck and flushed through my cheeks.

  He set me down on my own two feet and we stood wrapped in each other, our breath puffing out into the night air. My heart felt as though it would burst with every beat. This man. This heart. This mind. This body. This soul. Whatever it was that made him up, I wanted to make a life with him. A family. The moon shone her cool light down on us. The stars winked down on us - our witnesses.

  "Can we make a baby now?" I asked.

  Nathan guffawed and swept me up in another hug, swinging me around and staggering through the snow. We fell into a snowbank and landed in a heap, our laughter the only sound ringing through the still cold air.

  27

  "How about we get married in your back yard, just the two of us? You know, something simple," I said as Nathan steered his truck towards the harbor parking lot near the Sea Dog. A full day had passed since he had proposed and I was still in a daze, a stupid grin pasted on my face that didn't want to go away. Like, ever.

  "Really?" He glanced over at me with a cocked eyebrow. "You don't want to have our friends and family there?"

  "You are my family."

  "I know," he reached over, and squeezed my hand through my mitt. "But don't you think people would be disappointed if we didn't have an event? I mean, Saltford is our home town. We're... beloved... here."

  "Do your hockey buddies know that you use the word beloved?" I joked.

  "Come on, Mira. It's our wedding. We only get one of these in a lifetime."

  A cold thought chilled my blood. In theory, Nathan would only get one wedding in a lifetime. I was a siren. My lifetime could span centuries. I could have many weddings. I swallowed hard and didn't allow the thought of Nathan's passing to fully materialize in my brain. Till death do us part. But his death was not something I wanted to think about. "Yes, you're right," I said. Whatever he wanted, I would give it to him a thousand times over. "Having friends and family around us would be perfect."

  He gave my hand a last squeeze and parked the truck.

  Nathan and I opened our doors at the same time. "You don't have to walk me in, sweetheart. I think I can make it across the parking lot all by myself."

  "I want to," he said, and got out.

  It took a second for me to notice that the parking lot was unusually empty for a Saturday evening. Where were all the customers?

  "Isn't that Devon's truck?" I pointed to a big black diesel I recognized, one of the few vehicles scattered through the mostly empty lot. Devon played hockey with Nathan.

  "Don't think so," said Nathan and wrapped his arm around my waist as we walked towards the gangplank that led to the Sea Dog's front door. The porthole window was black and there were no sounds of a busy restaurant. I frowned. Nathan walked up the gangplank behind me, pressing against my back with his chest and shoving me forward.

  "Wait a minute," I said, but he reached around me and opened the door.

  "Mira and Nathan, sitting in a tree!" Three dozen voices shook the Sea Dog and the lights flicked on, illuminating a crowd of red, happy faces yelling at the top of their lungs. "K-I-S-S-I-N-G! First comes love! Then comes marriage!" A hand-written red banner had been hung above the bar reading 'Congratulations, Nathan & Mira!'

  Crystal appeared, a gaudy tiara with big plastic diamonds and a white veil glued to its rim in her hands. I shrank back. She pulled me into a fierce hug and kissed my cheek. "Then comes a baby in a baby carriage," she said in my ear. She placed the tiara on my head and pulled the veil over my face. "Congratulations, mademoiselle bride-to-be." Her face was flushed with happiness, and probably a bit of alcohol.

  I looked over at Nathan through the white gauze. Someone had fixed a paper bowtie at his throat and a tiny black top hat on his head. He was laughing. I cracked a smile and took a breath. This was what humans did. They celebrated big life moments. All together. With alcohol and food and loud music.

  "You look ridiculous," he said.

  "So do you. How come you knew about this and I didn't?"

  "I wasn't supposed to know," he jerked his chin at the wiry guy with the red beard who almost always played center. "Marty slipped up. You know he can never keep his mouth shut. Nice of them, though."

  "You're nice," I said, lifting my veil and pulling him into a kiss. The crowd cheered and closed in around us. Someone turned on rocked up Irish fiddle music. A pint of beer appeared in one of my hands, while a whole lot of people shook my other. My back was slapped, my cheeks were pinched, and I was given perfunctory hugs that smelled like everything from wood smoke to drugstore perfume to baby powder.

  "What's the date?" Phil yelled over the din, a whisky and water in his hand.

  "Give the girl a second to have a wee, Phil!" answered Crystal. "She just got engaged last night. Sheesh."

  He shrugged. "I thought maybe you might have a date in mind."

  "I'd do it right now," I said truthfully. "So I'll let Nathan decide."

  "Oooooh, will you let me plan it? I LOVE weddings," Crystal literally bounced on her feet, her blond hair swinging.

  "Sure." I didn't have a clue about weddings. All I knew was that I was supposed to show up in a white dress and say 'I do'. "Ask Nathan."

  Her face froze in a caricature of shock. "Wait, I was kidding." She put a hand on my arm. "For real? Would you really let me plan it?"

  I looked over at Nathan. He was laughing uproariously at something Devon was saying and caught my eye for a second. He winked and turned back to his friend, slapping him resoundingly on the back. He looked so happy. What would a human girl say? She'd probably want to do it herself, or hire someone. But I wasn't a normal girl. "If its okay by Nate, its okay by me," I said.

  "Eeeeeeeeeee!" She squealed, and both Phil and I winced. She went off through the crowd, weaving her way towards Nathan.

  "I hope you don't regret that," said Phil.

  "I won't." The less I got involved, the better the event would be. I was still getting used to human customs and hadn't a clue where to start when planning a wedding.

  We watched as Crystal shoved into the circle of men around Nathan. She grabbed his collar and pulled his ear down toward her mouth. Crystal had the kind of voice that carried and I laughed as he grimaced when she talked in his ear. Half a second later he looked up and caught my eye. He made a 'why not?' face, and I nodded and held up my beer. It was done. I turned back to see Phil watching me thoughtfully, his eyes at half-mast. "What?"

  "She's your only friend, isn't she Mira." It was a statement, not a question. His cheeks had gone pink from the whiskey.

  "Yes." It's not like I could have had a lot of girlfriends even if I wanted to. Women usually steered clear of me. Only the most confident and secure women didn't seem to be wary of me.

  "You're not really friends with Nathan's buddies or their wives and girlfriends. I mean, you get along fine on the surface, but you keep them at a distance, don't you."

  "You don't miss much."

  I was a siren, a being equipped with qualities and abilities that made me irresistible to men, even when I'm not trying. I had once been hit on by Devon after he'd had too much to drink, but other than that, all of Nathan's friends had kept a watchful distance. I felt their eyes on me, their expressions full of curiosity and sometimes desire. To their credit, they did what true friends do and didn't cross lines. I made it as easy for them as possible. I barely made eye contact, rarely gave them more than a few minutes of interaction, and never went to their poker nights even when I was invited. As for their wives and girlfrien
ds, they were mostly polite but there was always a wariness in their eyes. Fair enough. The only woman in the group who didn't look at me like I might be a home-wrecker, if given the opportunity, was Crystal. I wondered if that might be different if she wasn't gay. Things would not have gone well between us if she really had been in love with Nathan.

  "Only a few of Nathan's friends hugged you." Phil was saying. "And they gave you the awkward lean-in forearm flap." He mimicked a sloppy back-pat half-hug and sloshed his drink down his shirt front. He looked down. "Oh, darn."

  I didn't point out that Phil had never hugged me either, even though in some ways he'd almost become like a father-figure. Okay maybe more like an uncle.

  "You're a strange duck, Mira." He exhaled and I caught the scent of whiskey. "I've always thought so. Don't get me wrong, I love ya. But you're a puzzle." He swallowed the rest of his drink.

  "Excuse me, Phil," I dismissed myself and made my way to the little wenches room.

  When I came out, I ran into Nathan making his way to the little sailors room.

  "Hiiiii," he walked straight into me and wrapped me up. His smell enveloped me and I relaxed. He always smelled like wood - spruce and fir and freshly sawed pine. "Having fun?" he murmured against my hair.

  I made a sound that could be taken for agreement. "You?"

  "Mmmhmmmm. I've been asked about the date about seven thousand times. Can you just pick one?"

  "Tomorrow?"

  He laughed and trailed kisses across my jaw and under my ear. Butterflies whirred around my spine. "How about late summer? Just before the trees start to turn."

  I gulped. That was more than six months away. "How about March?"

  He gazed at me sleepily, then blinked as the suggestion registered. "That's next month. Doesn't give Crystal much time to prepare."

  "April?"

  He snorted and nuzzled me again. "May. Just so Crystal doesn't string us both up by our toes."

  I agreed and let him go the washroom. May. Three and a half months. It felt like years.

  28

  "Was the party your idea?" I asked Crystal the following week as we wandered through the craft supply store. My arms were loaded down with fabric color swatches, silk flower samples, colored tissue, and at some point a plastic swan headpiece had taken up residence on the top of my head. I had done everything short of beg not to have to come, but no amount of 'I trust your judgement' had worked. Crystal had practically man-handled me into her Corolla. We'd gone for breakfast at Flagg's Cafe, where we'd ordered frothy coffee-like drinks and Crystal had bounced and squealed and clucked like she was the one getting married.

  "Me and Devon," she said, holding up a piece of white lace trim. "Why?" She put the sample on top of the pile in my arms.

  "Because," I pinned the lace between my chin and chest. "Isn't it custom for the groom to party with his groomsmen and the bride to party with her bridesmaids?"

  "You mean a bachelorette party."

  "Right. That."

  "But you only have one bridesmaid, and I know you're not good friends with the hockey wives, so what's the point of a bachelorette? You would have hated it." She shrugged and continued down the aisle. She knew me well-ish, this blonde creature. "How do you feel about teal?"

  "Teal is nice. Like the water in the Caribbean."

  She turned to face me, surprised. "You've been to the Caribbean?"

  "Uhhhhh, once." In fact I had spent something like three or four of my salt-cycle years in Caribbean waters. I had skirted the Gulf of Mexico, it was too full of offshore oil rigs. I couldn't breathe in the water around those things.

  "Good place for a honeymoon," she waggled her eyebrows. "Not much need for clothes." We passed by a bin full of little paper hats and she picked up a bonnet with daisies on the brim.

  "Nathan suggested a cruise..." I began.

  "Ugh, no way!" She said with disgust and dropped the bonnet. A few other customers looked over at us. "I'll never allow you to spend your honeymoon on a floating city with four thousand fat tourists stuffing their faces and gambling their money away. Gross. You'd hate it. Trust me. Horrible for the environment, too."

  "Oh. Kay."

  "Where do you want to go?"

  Having spent eight years at sea and a lot of that time in tropical waters, I'd seen much of the Sargasso and the Caribbean. I hadn't been anywhere in the Pacific yet. My experience of these places was all underwater, I had never taken a real vacation on land. "Maybe a beach place on the Pacific?"

  Crystal chewed her lip. "I have an idea. If Nathan wants a cruise, and you just want warm and beachy, then why not a proper sailing trip? On a real tall-ship, not one of those polluting monsters. Something with not so many people and no diesel fumes."

  My face lit up. I adored ships, but all of the sailing ships I had ever seen were either laying at the bottom of the ocean or floating over my head. I'd never actually sailed on one.

  She laughed at my facial expression. "Well, Mira does care about something besides Nathan and babies after all." She plucked a little paper sailors cap from the bin and plonked it on my head next to the swan.

  That settled it. When I mentioned the idea to Nathan he loved it and we began to research sailing adventures. Within a couple of weeks Crystal had us booked onto a five-masted sailing vessel called The Red Star. She wouldn't tell Nathan or I where it was to disembark from, she said we'd find out once we got the airport the morning after the wedding. She made a list of what to pack.

  "Casper here is going to need a lot of sunblock," she said one evening as the three of us were drinking coffee at our dining room table and talking about wedding stuff.

  "Hey, I tan," he said. Nathan was copper-haired and pale and notorious for burning himself badly enough to peel, every single summer.

  "To what? A darker shade of white?" Crystal said. "Sunscreen, four litres." She added it to the list. "Mira's pale too so you'll have to share."

  I smiled secretly as I got up to go to the bathroom. I was pale, but I never burned, it was one of my supernatural assets. The sun only made my skin more smooth and opaque. My smile disappeared when my siren ears overheard Nathan ask Crystal quietly, "How much do you need for the wedding budget?"

  I halted right outside the door. I hadn't even thought about money. Of course weddings and honeymoons cost money. I was stupid not to have thought of it already.

  "Well, you've already paid for the cruise. You tell me what you're comfortable with." Crystal answered just as quietly.

  I almost smacked my palm to my forehead. Of course the cruise had to be paid for up front. Why hadn't either of them mentioned it to me? Probably because they both knew that as a contractor, Nathan made way more money than me. I was just a lowly waitress.

  "Maybe twelve thousand?" he replied.

  I jerked in surprise. That was a lot of money. If it were up to me, we'd do a backyard barbecue and skip the honeymoon. I wanted Nathan to have the wedding he wanted, but I'd be damned if I'd let him dish out twelve thousand dollars for it all by himself.

  There was a silence while Crystal reacted. I wished I could see her face but I was hidden around the corner.

  "Fifteen?" Nathan asked. My jaw dropped.

  Crystal let out a breath. "That's perfect. I can really do something awesome with that." I could hear the smile in her voice.

  "Great. Thank you so much Crystal. You have no idea how much it helps that you're planning this for us." If the sum stressed him out, I couldn't hear it in his voice.

  "My pleasure," she answered. "It's going to be a blast!"

  I pushed my way into the bathroom with a flutter in my stomach. Not for the money. Money was easy to get. But my savings had run down and there was no way I was going to let Nathan pay for all that himself. Time for a treasure hunt.

  29

  During the breakfast shift the following week Nathan surprised me by popping into the Sea Dog. He came through the door, scanned the restaurant and spotted me cleaning one of the booths inside an alcove
. He made a beeline for me. He wasn't smiling. He had sawdust on his shoulders and in the copper curls poking out from under his hat. His cheeks were pink from the winter air.

  "Hi," I said, my heart doing the same little flip it always did when I saw him. "Something wrong?" Nathan never visited me randomly in the middle of a workday unless he happened to be nearby. But today, he was working way across town.

  "Hi," he kissed me warmly and pulled me into a hug. The hug felt weird. He was concerned about something.

  "What's the matter?"

  "I just need to ask you... Can you sit for a second?"

  I sat at the booth and scooched over as he slid in beside me. He took his ball cap off and ran his fingers through his hair. Sawdust fell onto the table. "Sorry." He swept it away with a hand and more sawdust fell off his jacket and onto the silverware.

  "Nathan..."

  "Do you mind if I hire your dad for a small job?" he blurted.

  I blinked. "You saw Hal?" My hands had gone cold.

  "You remember I hired him once, before you and I met. Well, he's back in town again and he needs work." His eyes pleaded. "He looks good, Mir. He's really cleaned up. I won't if you don't want me to, but I have the perfect job for him, a small bathroom reno. I know he can do it because I saw him plumb in a toilet once and he did a good job. Kept the wax ring intact, real careful-" He was babbling.

  "Of course you can hire him, Nathan."

  He let out a sigh and a huge smile melted away the stress lines between his eyes. "Great."

  "Did he come to you for work?"

  "No, not directly. Just mentioned it in passing. I pulled up in front of the gas station and your dad was at the other pump. He just moved back from some small town in Ontario and said he was looking for work. Says he missed the ocean too much. He's already joined the local NA and..."

  "NA?" I'd heard of AA, but not NA.

  "Narcotics Anonymous... and he's been clean for three years. Three years, Mira!" Nathan's face was full of 'impressed'.