Siren Blood

by Nas Magkasi

  Other fishermen passed by him. Domenico greeted them, sometimes asking them about a wife or a child to be polite, then watched them sail away on their own boats. The fishermen were all friendly toward each other, but there was an unspoken distance between them that prevented real intimacy. They were all competitors, after all, and they were territorial about their fishing spots.

  He looked back to the houses and sure enough, uncle Rio was descending from the hill. After losing his leg to one of the siren monsters, he walked with a wooden leg. He still limped quite a bit, and when he was tired, he used a cane. It was only on a boat that Gio felt like a competent man, able to float at sea and reel in the fish like the best of them.

  By the time Gio reached the dinghy, a new suspicion had already formed in Domenico’s head about Adriana. Before Gio could greet him, he blurted it out.

  “What if it was the sirens?” he said. “What if they took her somehow?

  Gio frowned and smoothed out his mustache with two fingers, a self-pacifying habit.

  “They’re gone, Dom. The sirens are too afraid to come back here.”

  He began to push the boat into the water. Domenico jumped out to help him, and then both men hopped back onto the boat and rowed. The sun was making its appearance, illuminating the hill and the waves of the water were dappled with gold.

  Domenico described his nightmare, and his fears that it was a clue to where Adriana could’ve gone.

  “It’s only natural,” Gio said. “To make the connection to sirens. You lost your father to sirens and now you’ve lost Adriana. It doesn’t mean that they’re back. It’s over. They haven’t come back once in ten years. No one has vanished at sea. It’s only fear, son.”

  “I just suspect that Adriana is in trouble somehow,” he said. “What if the sirens have something to do with her disappearance?”

  Gio shook his head, and put his hand in the water. He swirled his hands and sighed.

  “Domenico,” he started. “The whole town looked for Adriana day and night.”

  “Precisely,” Domenico replied. “There’s no trace of her. I just don’t know where else she could be except into the sea.”

  “Think about it. What would sirens do with her? They prefer the meat of men. A woman would only make them sick. Zannan told us that. They’d rather eat catfish. Plus, Adriana knew the incantation like the rest of us. I’m sorry that there’s nothing you can do to get her back, Dom. You’re just going to have to move on.”

  “I can’t,” said Domenico.

  He buried his head into his hands. He felt like crying, but he wouldn’t in front of Gio, who was so brave. It would almost be like crying in front of his papa. When he a boy he had been a lot stronger. Now that he was a grown man, he was vulnerable, weak, and helpless. Both his parents were dead. Adriana was gone. He had no family except Gio.

  “Adriana could’ve gone herself,” Gio said. “She could’ve run away. You know that she never got along with her mother.”

  Domenico shook head. The sun was getting higher and brighter. The throbbing in his head was back. Although he was used to love being on the water, he felt seasick.

  “No. She would never do that. We were so happy. If she had planned on it, she would’ve told me she wanted to leave and we would’ve gone together.”

  Uncle Rio’s eyes darkened before he looked away. He shrugged.

  “You just never know sometimes with women,” he said.

  Gio would know. He’d been engaged twice and had always been left heartbroken and single in the end. One of his ex-girlfriends had fallen in love with another man in Tetro and he had to be reminded of their happiness, the happiness that eluded him, when he ran into them at the village, which was quite frequent.

  “You don’t know her as I would,” Domenico said more defensively. “She would never just get up and leave like that. She would tell me. She would never, ever do that. You have to believe me.”

  “Okay,” Gio said, more softly. “I’m sorry. I believe you. I don’t know the situation. Nobody does. Adriana was – is – a nice girl. One day we might find out just what really happened, but now, it’s best to think about something else.

  “I know Zannan could help if only we can convince him to. If Zannan had the power, he should use it for the good of others.”

  “Yes, but you know what happened to his wife. He has never recovered. Frankly, I don’t blame him. Magic can do a lot of harm on humans.”

  Zannan’s wife had not been a witch, but a human. Rumor had it that the reason she died was because she consumed one of his potions gone wrong. She died shortly after the birth of their daughter, Mistico.

  “I suppose,” he said.

  “Magic is not always good,” Gio said. “It can kill and destroy many men, and it has.”

  “He’s my only hope,” Domenico said. “Mistico’s been trying to convince him. If anyone could convince him and get him to help, she could. Zannan is a good man – I mean wizard, even if he pretends otherwise.”

  “There’s no stopping you, is there?” Gio said.

  Domenico shook his head.

  “You’re stubborn.” Gio sighed. “Just like your father.”

  Domenico beamed with pride, as he did whenever someone told him he exuded one of his papa’s qualities, even the bad ones.

  “I’m sorry she’d gone, but can you just try? Can you try to move on?” A smile played on Gio’s lips. “I’ve seen the way you are with Mistico sometimes.”

  Domenico looked shocked. “Mistico? What are you suggesting?”

  Gio shrugged. “That there is always plenty of other fish in the sea.”

  “Uncle Rio, with all due respect, Mistico and I are not romantically involved and will not be. She’s Adriana’s best friend. We’re friends too, and that’s all.”

  “I’m just saying, Mistico’s clever and smart. Pretty, too. She seems to like you. Maybe you’re not ready now, but someday you’re going to have to be open to the possibility of other women.”

  “Just like you are?” Domenico asked sarcastically.

  He immediately regretted it. Rio looked hurt. He stiffened.

  “I’m sorry, uncle Rio. I didn’t mean to.”

  “That’s okay,” Rio said. “We are all in pain. The whole world’s a bleeding wound.”

  “I just feel like something’s wrong, very wrong with Adriana’s disappearance. She’s alive, I know it.”

  “Dom, stop.” Gio put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re hurting me to see you get this upset about this situation. I don’t want you to waste your life, like I have, over one person and be closed off to other possibility of happiness. I want to see you better again. Please, son. Please be well for me.”

  Domenico looked at Gio, the pain in his brown eyes. How sad and pitiable he looked with his wooden leg. He wondered if any woman would ever love him again, if he would ever love himself. The mustache made him look tough, but Gio, too, was frail like he was, beaten with too much horror and hardship in life. Sometimes it felt as if they would both never recover. He didn’t know what he would do if other tragedies were to befall him.

  Perhaps Gio was right. He was too obsessed. It was driving him crazy.

  “I’m just so frustrated,” he muttered. “I wish I could do something.”

  “I know you are, son.”

  Domenico couldn’t hold it in anymore. Tears welled up in his eyes.

  “I just hate sirens so much,” he said through clenched teeth. “This whole town is cursed because of them. Even if they’re gone now, I’m reminded every day by looking out at the sea. When I was a child, I would see freedom, but now, all I see is darkness.”

  Gio could do nothing but nod knowingly.

  Domenico’s anger rose to match his frustrations.

  “If I ever see those sirens again, I’ll slit their throats.”

  “You and me both,” Rio said. “You and me both.”

  After sitting for a while, staring at the hill, which had grown noticeably smaller in t
he distance, they set up their fishing rods.

  “If only it were as easy to catch sirens as it is to catch fish,” Domenico said.

  Chapter Three

  Maj and Mer were getting bored waiting around in the cove. They took turns swimming around, but they couldn’t go far. They had a meeting with someone important. Their guest however was making them lounge around for so long that their hair was beginning to dry.

  “When is he going to show?” Maj moaned.

  “Demons are always late,” said Mer, the more practical of the two.

  Maj had taken to braiding her hair to pass the time and now shook braids free. Her hair cascaded down to her belly button and the effect was beautiful, like a shimmering black waterfall.

  “I wonder what he wants,” Maj said.

  Mer shrugged. “Persephone said he had a great offer.”

  “But what do we need him for, really? We’re doing just fine now.”

  The two sisters were the survivors of the battle in Tetro. After their three sisters were killed, they escaped to Greece where Persephone resided on her own private island. While Mer and Maj had been saddened to leave Tetro’s tranquil waters and the yummy Italian men they had a hankering taste bud for, they had no choice. The Tetro men had given them quite a few bruises and that nasty wizard had actually succeeded in destroying some of them. Perhaps the wizard had taught all the men the spell like he did with the repellant spell and they couldn’t risk returning to find out.

  Persephone had reprimanded them, telling them it was their fault that they couldn’t keep a low profile. They weren’t careful enough; one human escapee had the power to destroy them all, and he almost did. There were more humans than there were sirens and Persephone was not about to help them create more if they were to behave so recklessly.

  Maj and Mer had learned their lesson and began to feed off the Greek men. They were an acquired taste, but soon, the sisters learned to enjoy their flesh almost as much as Italian men and for the past decade they were feeding more than ever, although Tetro men were still the most delicious. All they had to do was to target groups smaller than two and not get too greedy. They had to prove themselves to be smart and responsible in order to show Persephone that their tribe could expand.

  When Maj’s hair was fully dry, she dove back into the water and began to back stroke.

  “What?” she said. “Is the demon going to give us legs or something? I’m telling you that I refuse to give him my soul.”

  “We don’t have souls,” said Mer. “At least not the kind that demons want.”

  “Why shouldn’t he? Our souls are rare. He should be lucky to have us.”

  Mer rolled her eyes. Sometimes her sister could be so dense.

  “We’re lucky that he doesn’t.”

  “I don’t know about that. Maybe it’s fun in hell. All the flesh of sinners that we could feed on.”

  “When men are dead, they don’t have flesh anymore.”

  “Oh. True.”

  Mer sighed. “Plus. We’ll belong to the demon. Hell is supposed to be a horrible place.”

  “Oh fine, miss know-it-all. But you won’t know until you’ve been to hell.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to risk an eternity just out of curiosity, do you?”

  Maj thought about it. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe you start calling yourself Pandora,” Mer remarked.

  “Please do,” said Maj, not getting the reference. “That’s a lovely name.”

  “We need to trust Persephone,” Mer said. “If we do well with this deal, whatever it is, she’ll help us turn.”

  “Turn what?” Maj said. She’d propped herself out of the water again to lounge beside her.

  Mer sighed again. Her little sister never did listen. “You know, like we talked about. We can turn human girls into one of us, expand our tribe, so we have more sisters.”

  “And more mouths to feed,” Maj said, making a face. “Why do that again?”

  “Don’t you remember the good old days when there were five of us? All the fun we had? We never got bored.”

  Mer sighed in nostalgia.

  “That’s because we didn’t have to go around striking deals with demons.” Maj was offended. “What? Are you bored with me already?”

  “Frankly, I am sometimes. We need new blood around here. I can’t have the same conversations with you all the time.”

  “Well, you’re not so exciting all the time either,” Maj huffed. “Let’s see if this demon even shows. If he doesn’t come by sunrise, I’m going to break off and find a man to eat for breakfast.”

  “You can’t do that!”

  “Why?”

  “Do you know how much trouble we’ll be in? Don’t you know how much power demons have? And what about Persephone? She’ll kill us.”

  “Sometimes, you’re too serious about these sort of things.”

  Mer turned away. There was no reasoning with Maj sometimes. She couldn’t wait to add more reasonable girls to the lineup. Maj was the youngest, and the most reckless.

  “As long as this demon doesn’t smell like the other ones,” Maj said.

  Once they had swam to a demon congregation on a deserted island to spy on them for fun. The entire place reeked so much that they didn’t even reach the shore before turning away in disgust.

  “Seriously,” Maj continued. “They smell so bad. Like human garbage set on fire. Or baby whales.”

  “It’s a million times worse than that,” Mer said. “I can’t even compare it to anything.”

  “Let’s just pray to God,” Maj joked, “that having one of them in this cove won’t make us want to hurl.”

  As she said this, something did begin to smell. It smelled like smoke. They looked around, but nothing was burning. A light fog invaded the cove.

  “What’s going on?” Mer said.

  “It must be him,” said Maj.

  The fog cleared, but it began to smell like rotten eggs. The sisters coughed and plugged their noses.

  “Definitely him.”

  Like lightning before thunder, the demon’s odor preceded his appearance. Suddenly there was a blazing fire near the opening of the cove and the sisters watched in awe.

  From the red and orange flames, they made out a shadow. The outline was of a human, but when the flames subsided, the features of the demon began to emerge. Orange eyes stared out at them, unblinking, from a face the colour of dried blood. Deep wrinkles marked his cheeks and forehead. His nose was flat like a bull’s and he even had a nose ring. Smoke flared from his nostrils. He wore a long black cloak with a hundred tiny black buttons from neck to toe. His hands were shoved deep in his cloak pockets. A devilish grin spread on his face at the sight of the two sirens.

  “At least I don’t smell like dead fish,” he said in a low booming voice.

  His orange eyes flashed and bore into Maj’s. She was so scared that she wanted to dive into the water and stay down there.

  “I’m sorry,” Maj stammered. “I mean, demons don’t smell. Except nice - they smell nice!”

  The demon let out a cruel laugh.

  “We didn’t mean anything by it, really.” Mer kept her head down.

  “Don’t you know that a group of sniveling sirens smell worse than the entire human species?” the demon taunted.

  Maj took offence to that “That is not –”

  “Shut up, Maj,” Mer hushed. She turned to the demon. “Please. Can you tell us what you brought us here for? We’ll be interested in helping you.”

  “Help me? You mean you’re interested in me helping you. If we both get what we want, we’ll both be happy indeed.”

  Maj and Mer nodded obediently. They sat up straight, stopped wagging their tails and listened closely.

  “I heard about what happened in Tetro, how your sisters were killed there.”

  “Yes,” said Maj. “But that was a long time ago.”

  The demon’s fire never extinguished. It blazed around him like an aura. He s
miled even wider, the lines on his face expanding and revealing tinier lines that looked like stitches.

  “Wouldn’t you like a bit of vengeance?”

  “On the wizard?” asked Maj.

  “Oh, the wizard, the men, the women, the children. Everybody.”

  “Why, of course,” Mer said.

  “How?” Maj asked. “They know how to destroy us, and we can’t exactly go back on land without being seen.”

  “Which is why you need me,” the demon said. “I’ll help you walk amongst the humans undetected. They won’t need to use the wizard’s spell on you if they recognize you as one of them.”

  Maj made a face. “Walking on land is so hard. We’re not used to it. Are you going to give us legs?”

  “No,” said the demons. “They’ll recognize your faces. You know well enough that Tetro is too small of a village and strangers would stand out.”

  “Excuse my sister,” Mer said. “She’s a little slow.”

  “Hey!” Maj said.

  “That’s obvious,” said the demon. “I’m going to give you disguises. You’ll inhabit the souls of two human women who had recently died. I need for you to seduce two fishermen. Gio Salverini and his nephew Domenico Salverini.”

  “What’s so special about them?” Maj asked.

  “Just shut up, Maj!” Mer hushed.

  The demon looked angry. “I have my reason and it’s none of your concern.”

  His flames grew wider and Maj slid back in fear.

  Demons were a weird bunch who were always trolling for human souls to add to their collection. Maj never knew what they did with them and she’d always been curious to find out.