by A. L. Knorr
“Me?” I shook my head and laughed at the ridiculous idea, but Nike looked serious. At her expression, my laughter died. “Why?”
“You’re different. You ask more questions, and you have a different moral compass than most sirens. Your reaction to the way she treated those Atlanteans is proof of that.”
“You’re different too, though.”
“Yes, but I have no interest in going on a mating cycle, and that’s what it would require if I wanted power. Which I don’t.” She shuddered. “I’m not suited to lead.”
“Neither is Apollyona.” I said this without hesitation.
“Do you think you could do a better job?” Nike asked.
“I know I could. The Atlanteans do not deserve to be murdered. All they’re doing is looking for food, and we’ve plenty of that.”
Nike stared at me then, the challenge clear in her eyes.
I looked away, internally withering at what I now understood. Mating cycles were hard, and my gem meant I was no longer required to do one again. Odenyalis had decreed that all sirens would receive a gem when they’d successfully produced two daughters, but Apollyona only required that a siren complete one mating cycle. While daughters were celebrated, it was ultimately of no consequence to Apollyona—she would give the siren her gem and she could live out the rest of her days free from the curse. The sirens lived underwater and under her rule, never really understanding how she had been given the Sovereignty in the first place, or how they could attain it themselves if they were so ambitious.
But was I that ambitious? I thought about the Atlanteans we had first run across when returning to Okeanos. I remembered the disgust and intolerance Apollyona had shown. My stomach soured with distaste. Even when I’d been small, I had known there was something wrong with it. Okeanos was vast and so full of resources that the sirens couldn’t use it up in thousands of years, even if the population grew exponentially.
My mind then turned to the Atlanteans recently caught, and to the only remaining Atlantean sent away to tell the story of the fearsome Apollyona, Sovereign of Okeanos, as a warning to stay away. It would be effective because it was so harsh, so cruel, so heartless.
And no other sirens seemed to care, if they were even aware, that Apollyona was doing this.
I wasn’t particularly interested in power, but I was interested in living compassionately with all the creatures of the oceans, and I was interested in justice and fairness. How could I live with myself knowing this was happening and I had the ability to do something about it? I thought of a quote I’d learned while I was living through a mating cycle on land––‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’ It was no different in any civilization or species anywhere on earth or in the world’s deep oceans.
“It could take years,” I said softly. The task ahead of me stretched out like a very long journey.
“Sirens have nothing but years,” Nike replied. “Apollyona has nothing but years in power ahead of her, if you do nothing.”
My eyes cut sharply to Nike’s fine-featured face. “But you won’t do it.”
“My place is not on land, Bel.”
She was right. Nike was different; she was not suited to life on land. If her body had not given her the urgency to find a mate, then why should she force it? She might end up suffering worse than any other siren who ever suffered through a mating cycle. At least the Dyás had some kind of mercy. We forgot things, we forgot our siren lives as we focused on the mating cycle and on our child. It wasn’t until the cycle had run its course that the Salt returned to call us––sometimes cruelly––back to the sea. Beckoning at first, but that beckoning, if ignored, soon turned to an irresistible need.
I touched my gemstone where it sat between my collarbones. Slowly, I reached back and undid the clasp.
Nike’s eyes widened as I handed it to her, but she took it. “Just like that? You’re not going to give it to Apollyona?”
Sirens who elected to go on a mating cycle, few and far between though they were, gave their gemstone to the Sovereign for safe-keeping. But giving the stone to the Sovereign was not a decree; it was just what was done, and everything in me bristled against giving it to Apollyona. I’d rather slip away unnoticed. Months of my absence could pass before she’d even notice and inquire about me.
“Will you keep it safe for me?”
“You know I will.” Nike took the gem and wrapped its chain around her wrist three times, turning it into a bracelet.
My decision made, all that was left to do was wait. Swim in the salty waters and let the briny deep do its work.
Over the course of the next few months, my mind and body changed. The power of the gem’s absence triggered the start of a cycle, and the desire to leave the water and find a mate grew stronger and stronger. My mind refocused on the task ahead. I began to roam farther and farther from Mount Califas and the center of life in Okeanos. I began to spend more time alone.
And one day, I ventured as far as I had ventured since my last mating cycle, and just… kept going.
“That cycle, as you know, I went to South America. I bore a son and left not long after he was weaned. I returned to Okeanos to recuperate—I don’t know if Apollyona even noticed that I’d been gone. A few years later, I repeated the process, that time going back to England for the first time since I was a child.”
I refilled my tea and continued, “The time I met Mattis was more eventful…”
Six
It had been days since I’d left Califas when I thought I heard Nike’s voice calling my name. Thinking I was just imagining it. It was Nike whom I would miss the most on this next Dyás. She alone knew the significance.
“Bel, wait!”
I turned, realizing that she was catching up to me, her blue hair flying behind her as she swam rapidly, bright scales gleaming against the gloom.
“Miss me already?” I turned to face the sorceress. I adjusted the strap of the bag I was carrying, heavy with bit of gold and gems I’d taken from the caves.
She gave me a smile tinged with sadness. She stopped in front of me and her hair made a fantastic cloud which drifted around her head.
“I made you something.”
She held out her open palm. On it was a simple chain with a ring attached made of a bright yellow metal, similar to that which I had seen used to make settings for Apollyona’s gemstones and jewelry. This metal was called orichalcum, a substance nearly as valuable as gold, and though I had never come across this metal in any of my human lives, the caves of Okeanos were rich with it. It always fetched a handsome price and some uncomfortable questions when traded.
Picking up the ring and chain, I inspected them. The chain was simple, but the ring was a thick sturdy band. Welded perpendicular to it was a little cylinder made of the same metal. Markings engraved into the side of the cylinder and the inside of the band were so shallow they could barely be seen. On the topside of the cylinder was a thin, tight seam, as though it had a cap.
I glanced at her, wary. “Please tell me there is not an aquamarine inside this.”
She shook her head and her eye had that mischievous glint I had come to love. “That would undermine your efforts to unseat Apollyona.”
“Then what’s in here?” I pointed at the cylinder, knowing it was hollow and that Nike would not be giving me this trinket unless it had some value beyond the intrinsic.
A dimple appeared. “During the rule of Odenyalis, I took four gems and hid them in or near the world’s major bodies of water. As you know, I abhorred the idea of mating cycles, but I believed I would eventually be forced to take my turn. I rebelled against the idea and wanted to make a safety net for myself. No matter how far from home I got, I wanted to know there was a gem not so far away that I couldn’t retrieve it before the Salt overtook me.” She touched the cylinder. “Inside are four maps, each leading to one gem. I think the risk of me being forced to take a Dyás has passed, so I want you to have it.”
I gave a delighted laugh. Nike never failed to amaze me. “You crammed four maps inside this tiny little thing?”
“Not paper maps. It’s a kind of spell.” She put her hand over mine and wrapped my fingers around the ring and chain. “I hope you won’t need them, but just in case.”
“If I ever become Sovereign,” I grinned at my impish friend, “I can see I’ll have to keep an extra close eye on you––rulebreaker.”
She did not smile but returned my look with a solemn one of her own. “When you become Sovereign. Endure, and you will succeed.”
I unclasped the chain and fastened it around my neck. “Thank you.”
“And one more thing.” She grasped my forearm gently. “Do not use your siren voice on your next mate. Let it happen naturally, don’t force it or deceive him in any way.”
“Why not?”
“Because, when nature is allowed to take its own course without manipulation, astonishing and magnificent things happen. Things that would not otherwise happen if we change a human’s way of thinking over to our own by force.” Her hand tightened but her touch remained gentle. She touched her other palm to my forehead. “You will be sorely tempted. You may forget a great many things, but you will never forget this: do not deceive your beloved.”
A pulse went through my forehead from her palm and I closed my eyes as it passed through the back of my head like a wave of warm water. Opening my eyes, I met her gaze. “Did you just put a spell on me?”
She shook her head and took both of my hands in hers. “Not a spell, just a calling. We forget so easily without our gems. It’s part of our curse. This is too important, both for you and for the future of Okeanos.”
I didn’t realize it at the time, but what Nike had done in that moment was fix her advice in my mind forever.
We said goodbye and parted again. I looked over my shoulder a few times as the distance between us widened, until I could no longer see her distinct thatch of blue hair.
I didn’t look back again.
Just past the borders of the apotreptikó came the sensation that someone was watching me––not just watching, but following. At first, I wondered if Nike was tailing me, but I dismissed the notion—she knew I wouldn’t turn back.
Skimming along the ocean floor in an area where sunlight pierced the shadows with flickering beams of light, illuminating motes and flashing on the backs of small silver fish, I paused over a bed of coral and watched with my peripheral vision for a time.
A distant figure darted behind the coral and I realized it wasn’t even a mermaid. The flash I’d seen had revealed legs and long webbed feet.
“I won’t hurt you,” I called.
After several long moments of waiting, I almost gave up and continued on my way. Then the long-webbed fingers of an Atlantean female appeared over the golden coral wall, then drifting matted hair, then a face with large, haunted eyes.
I tried to give her a smile but the corners of my mouth wavered as she came forward, revealing all of her pitiful self.
Gaunt-faced, and poorly nourished, just like the Atlanteans Apollyona had so heartlessly executed, her face was human but difficult to look at. Large, dark irises took me in almost hungrily. She wore colorless, algae-coated clothing tied at the waist with ropes she’d likely taken off a shipwreck. I shuddered when I thought she may well have taken the rags from a corpse as well. Her elbows and knees were knobs of bone, and her skin had a gray cast. Dark hair, matted close to the scalp, floated in a cloud around her head like so much seaweed. Her high brow and cheekbones suggested that were she healthy, she might have been beautiful.
“Why are you following me?” I asked gently.
She drew close, cautiously, her gaze never leaving me but cutting from my face to my neck where sat the ring with the small metal cylinder Nike had given me. It occurred to me that she was either extremely curious about this object or she was hoping to steal it.
Then she spoke and the sound of her voice startled me, for it was dry as paper and deep as a man’s.
“Is that your gemstone, then? Inside there?” She gestured at the ring and my attention was drawn to her hand, where her nails were so long, they’d become talons and had just begun to spiral.
“How do you know about our gemstones?”
“All of us know,” she husked. Her haunted eyes darted from the ring to my face again. “Well?”
“No, it’s not. It’s just a gift from a friend.”
She was drifting closer. I could make out more of her ghastly details––the dark splotches in her irises from parasites in her guts, the horrible stench of rot coming from her mouth.
I could not fear such a creature, but there was an unsettling and strange greedy air about her, probably to do more with starving than anything else.
“Do not drift, accidentally or purposefully, into the territory of Okeanos.” I warned her. “It’s not safe for you right now.”
At the reference to Okeanos, her lip curled ever so slightly, revealing gray teeth.
“Never has been,” she rasped, her covetous eyes taking me in like I was a meal, and still casting to the ring.
“I hope to change that,” I said softly.
“Evil queen you have now, don’t you?” But she wasn’t looking for confirmation, as she already believed this. “Evil and long-living.”
Her hand drifted to her side, where I noticed a short-handled blade with a broken handle strapped to her leg. She did not touch the weapon. She’d be foolish to do so and she knew it.
“We might have long lives,” I replied, “but our Sovereigns can be unseated before their deaths.”
“Unseat the Sovereign,” she echoed, in a way that made me wonder if she hadn’t realized she’d spoken out loud.
“I hope to change things. Our people should be able to share the realm of Okeanos peacefully. There are more than enough resources for everyone.”
She was taken with a violent cough, but when it did not stop, I realized that the cough was what passed for a laugh. She curled her taloned hand in front of her mouth, her shoulders shook, her eyes crinkled and her brow drew together––her entire being reflected disbelief and disdain for the idea of sharing Okeanos.
“You must be very young. Beautiful and fat with health, but young and stupid.”
I was so shocked at this speech that my mouth opened, but I found I had no words.
“Have not your wise sirens told you? Are you really so ignorant of our history? Too much bad blood. We shall never be comrades. Never.” A light appeared in her eyes, one tinged with lunacy. Something about her expression sent a shiver down my spine. “While a single Atlantean remains alive, Mer will never be safe, and while the evil queen rules your halls, we will never be safe.”
I wanted to ask what she thought sirens had to fear from Atlanteans, but felt it would be pointless to ask. This Atlantean seemed on the brink of reason. I began to swim away.
“Atlantis will rise again,” she called, following after me, her voice like the groan of an old nail in water-logged wood. “We will rise again. We will vanquish our enemies. We will kill your unrighteous Sovereign and scatter your people to the dark places of the oceans.”
I put on more speed and she fell behind.
“You will know, you will know what it’s like to be wanderers! You’ll be next. It’s your turn. Your turn is coming!”
Her voice was fading fast now, even for my siren ears.
“…strangers in a strange land, feeble outcasts…”
She continued to call after me, but distance swallowed up her half-crazed curses.
I swam on. As the Salt plied at my thoughts and emotions with soft fingers and the days turned into months, she was relegated to that shadowy territory whose borders soon stretch wide for a siren without her gem. She became blotted out––forgotten, just like the ring at my neck.
I had already lost track of time before I became trapped in the old wreck along the shores of that hot, tropical place. The Salt had
done its work, seasons had passed. Years could have passed for all I was aware of it. Okeanos was like a distant dream I’d had before, just moments of something I’d once experienced slipping through my fingers whenever I tried to lay hold of it, see it more clearly. Sometimes I would break the surface for a look around, and at these moments, accompanying the influx of fresh oxygen into my human lungs, my memory would return. It would dissolve again soon after, pitted by the Salt in much the same way as a limestone statue from one of the great Greek collections which had found its way to the bottom of the deep.
But even more distant was the thing I had left Okeanos to do. I was left with the perplexed notion that I’d forgotten something important, but whatever it was had been shunted to the side by a more pressing desire––that of locating human men and beginning my search for a mate in earnest.
The feeling was a slow-growing coral in the groves of my heart. The waters around me became bright and clear, full of fast and shiny fish, more colorful and varied than the flowers found in botanical gardens or the rainforests of South America. These fish were an endless source of pleasure for my eyes and food for my stomach. I instinctively knew which would be easier to catch, which might cause me digestive distress, which had impossibly inconvenient bone-structures…riddled with deadly spines on the inside, and which might outright kill me. If I were to distill these survival instincts into one piece of wisdom for the wayfaring siren, it would be this: don’t touch anything in the world’s oceans that is either very pretty or very ugly. Luckily, my favorite foods were sardines, roe, a very dark-green species of kelp, blue-green algae which sparkled with minerals and gathered in warmer seas, and the occasional sea bass––all of which were in abundance.
The drive to find a mate brought me first to shallower seas, then to beaches. On one of these beautiful, warm, tropic beaches, I was drawn to a shipwreck laying mostly upside down and mostly underwater. The hull was intact and not overly large, nor was it outfitted for battle, as there were no gun ports speckling its sides. Both of its masts protruded from their original places in the ship’s deck, but lay at terrible angles, giving the sad impression of defeat. The sound of water inside sloshing against the hull with the movement of the waves drew me near, and peeking curiously through the cracks in its hull revealed a school of fat sardines. Mouth watering, I wriggled my way inside by way of the broken hatch cover.