by A. L. Knorr
I nodded my thanks.
Gabriela closed the door behind her and I was left alone. I tried to find something to read, but I couldn’t concentrate. I looked at Jozef’s artwork, but I’d seen it all many times before. I grew restless. The room was stuffy and smelled of dust.
Getting to my feet, I crossed the library to the rear exit, which I knew opened into a large courtyard that wound its angular way to the back yard. Opening the door, I slipped outside and took a deep breath.
The courtyard was drowsy with insects and blossoms closing up shop for the night. The air was clean and humid, and the songs of nightingales drifted softly on a gentle breeze. There was a sense of peace in the garden that I desperately needed. I walked the curling path, enjoying the scent of flowers and the sound of evening activity among the creatures who made their home in the manor’s grounds.
Looking up, I noticed a light in the windows of an upper level. The faintest sound of trickling water reached my ears and I paused, listening. A shadow moved across the grass and I looked up to see the silhouette of a large man in one of the lighted windows. He was broader at the shoulder than Jozef and Claudius, and appeared to be looking down at me, but I couldn’t tell for certain as his features were lost in darkness. He moved away from the window.
The sound of trickling water grew louder. I frowned and cocked my head, trying to discern its source. It sounded like a good amount of water; in fact, it sounded like some kind of serious leak. I thought it was coming from the rear-most wing of the Manor, a place I had never been, since the rooms Jozef used were near the front of the house.
Curious, and hoping there wasn’t some broken pipe or other major problem, I moved toward the sound. I followed the narrow path down toward the rear wing, which I realized as I drew close, did not attach to the rest of the house. At least, it didn’t attach by any visible link; there might have been an underground hallway. But to the outsider looking in, this outbuilding seemed isolated and not in use. The thick wooden shutters on all the windows were closed up. The building looked abandoned.
The sound of trickling water grew louder, but it was still muffled and seemed to be coming from below. The sound of the leak drew me to an exterior basement door. At the bottom of a good twenty steps into the ground, a wooden door sat on crooked hinges. The sound was definitely louder, and my curiosity to pinpoint the source was nearly overwhelming.
“Hello?” I called to the yard and building in general.
Taking the steps down to the door, I called out again. The only sound to answer was the incessant stream of water, which sounded bubbly now that I was closer.
Reaching for the old metal latch, I turned it and opened the door. Cold, dank air wafted out, smelling of must and seaweed and salt. I called out again, but without much hope for a reply. The place had the feel of emptiness.
There was an answer, just not one I was expecting. A dull thump met my ears. Soft but solid sounding, and definitely not my imagination.
“Anyone here?” I peered into the darkness, feeling for some reason that I should explain my presence in this basement.
“I hear a leak,” I called, and felt kind of stupid afterward. I wasn’t snooping, I was trying to be helpful. This was true, but I was also overcome with curiosity, the calling card of a siren. I knew that a human might have possessed some small amount of trepidation or fear in this circumstance. The place was spooky, there was no denying it. But I was not frightened, only inquisitive.
Thump, thump.
I frowned and stepped inside. Flicking the lone light switch beside the door flooded the room with white light from three bulbs hanging on bare wire from a low ceiling.
Letting the door drift shut behind me, I walked slowly into the room, taking in everything. Three long, metal tables lay in front of me, covered in paperwork, books, strange instruments, and what looked from a distance like sketches and maps. Two bookshelves filled with titles of all shapes and sizes bracketed a closed door.
The sound of running water was louder now, and it was coming from the other side of that door.
“Hello?” I called.
There was no answering thump this time. I crossed to the doorway and reached for the doorknob only to find the door was locked.
My eye fell on the spines of the books and I discovered that very few of them were in English, and many of them appeared to be in very old languages. I knew what classical Greek, Hebrew, and Latin looked like and there were titles in all of these languages as well as several other languages I didn’t recognize.
Scanning the room, I took in some of the items on one of the metal tables. My heart gave an initial lurch as my gaze landed on a scientific sketch of something I could easily identify.
Pulling the drawing closer, I took a better look. The sketch was very detailed, rendered in black ink on parchment. It was a cross-section of a set of gills. The inner workings of the gill had been carefully documented and reproduced here, obviously for scientific study.
The drawing reminded me a little of the kind Jozef did, but the hand which had produced this one was clearly not his. I had become well acquainted with Jozef’s touch with a pen. This drawing had been done in thicker, harsher strokes. Also, I couldn’t recall seeing any of the insides of a sea creature in Jozef’s work, only the outsides.
Someone had to have dissected a fish bit by bit to make a drawing this detailed. I wasn’t entirely surprised at having found such a drawing, though initially my body had a reaction to seeing a body part––a body part I was intimately familiar with––drawn in this way.
A jar on the far end of the table caught my eye and I took a closer look at it, now ignoring the sound of running water since it was behind a door I didn’t yet have a key to. I made a note to ask Jozef about it when I saw him.
Picking up the jar, I peered at the contents. It was a jellyfish specimen, suspended in liquid and clearly dead and well preserved. A label on the bottom of the glass was written in a language I didn’t recognize. I had seen this specimen alive in my travels many times, though only in very deep and dark water.
Another large drawing, just peeking out from underneath a pile of papers and books, caught my eye. The drawing was large and what I could see showed a beautifully done sketch of a fin. Brushing the books and papers aside to get a better look, I uncovered the full length of the work. The blood in my veins turned to ice as my eyes devoured the image.
It was a mermaid.
But it wasn’t the fact that it was a drawing of a mermaid that made my body run cold and dread fill my stomach like lead. This mermaid had been cut open from breastbone to the base of her fin. The skin had been pulled aside to reveal her organs and the organs had been drawn and labeled while they were in place. Small arrows in red ink marked up every organ and major artery, small blue arrows followed her airways and lungs as well as to the sides of her neck where her gills were. She had no face, for the drawing stopped at the neck. The labeling of her innards above the pubic bone were numerous and written in both Latin and English, and many of them were labeled with the small notation, identical. Identical to what? To a human? To an Atlantean?
Small, hand-written text underlined with very straight lines leading from the various parts labeled the spinal cord, spleen, liver, gallbladder, ovaries, bladder, intestine, lateral line, and the list went on and on with parts I had never even heard of, like pyloric caeca, and olfactory bulb. From the ovaries and down had less labeling, and the striations and placement of the tail muscles were only partially drawn.
There was only one way anyone could have made this drawing, and it was the same way it had been achieved for every other species that had ever been studied.
Someone had captured, killed, and dissected a siren. And they’d done it in Jozef’s house.
Twenty-Two
A small notebook near the drawing caught my eye. It was lying open and I spotted the word mermaid. I picked it up and studied the barely discernible scrawl on the pages.
Siren/triton cros
s equals Mer of either gender. Siren/human cross results in a human male, or a mermaid (always female). Triton/human cross results in Atlantean of either gender. Atlantean/Atlantean results in Atlantean of either gender. Atlantean/human results in either human or Atlantean of either gender. Atlantean/siren results in ?.
I read this over and over again, studying it through tight eyes and with a rising heart rate. Someone had to have made all of these hybrids to have this information, unless it was simply conjecture. My eyes were repeatedly drawn to: Siren/triton = Mer of either gender. So, whoever was responsible for all of this research knew that tritons existed at one time, and they knew that only the union of a mermaid and merman could result in a male Mer. So why couldn’t we find any? Where had all the tritons gone? More imminently important, which one of the Drakief family friends or colleagues were responsible for these studies?
Memory took me back to the party where I had shaken the hand of the particularly cold and sordid Loukas. “More of a researcher,” he’d said, leaning over his cane like a wilting tower.
I wished now I’d asked him more specifically about his research.
Thump.
The sound jarred me out of the shadow of horror that had swallowed me. I dropped the book and whirled to face the door. Rage rushed through me, heating my face as I guessed at what was likely making the sound. The trickling sound of the water on the other side of the locked door had become a menacing, insidious noise, and the dull thuds were a cry for help. My heart vaulted up my windpipe as I wondered if it was a triton.
Taking a deep breath, I lifted one foot, turned sideways to the door, and slammed my heel into the wood. My fury-fueled kick splintered the door off its hinges and broke it down the middle in one long jagged gash.
The ghastliness within the room was another blow that would have sent me wheeling physically back if I hadn’t already been so enraged.
The trickling water fed an aquarium, and in the aquarium was not a triton but another siren––one of my sirens.
The rest of the room was lined with metal shelving covered with boxes and instruments. A large metal table with two gutters along the sides sat beside a tray laid out with menacing tools and instruments.
Running to the aquarium, I put my hand on the glass and peered at the pitiful creature inside. To my eyes, she was pitiful, but I supposed it was some small mercy that she was salt-flush. This was one of the sirens who had not come back from her mating cycle. I didn’t know her name, but I knew her face.
She barely had room to turn around in the tank, and the thump against the glass confirmed the source of the sound. When she saw me, she backed away from me, her eyes darting back and forth and her gills moving, drawing oxygen from the bubbles fed by a tube into her cage. Her pupils were dilated and her expression vacant of intelligence. I wondered how long she’d been here.
The top of the aquarium was a thick metal lid locked into place at each corner with a padlock. I grabbed one of the padlocks and inspected it. I needed something I could use for leverage. Looking back at the table full of tools, I crossed to it and found a hooked pick with a thick metal handle. I didn’t think it would hold. I put it down and scanned the room. The tools were too short and thin. I had the strength to bend some metals if I had enough leverage. What I needed was a long bar that was thin enough to go through the padlock loop and strong enough to break the lock.
I gave a cry of frustration when nothing could be found. A sense of urgency rose in my belly, cold and quivering. Jozef would be home soon, and how would I greet him with what I’d discovered? There was no way he knew about this; the very idea filled my whole body with adrenalin. I fully rejected that Jozef had any part in this.
I was taking this siren back to Okeanos with me and there would be nothing and no one to stop me short of a bullet. How long had she been here? Had they already tortured her in some way? How had they captured her?
Going back to the outer room, I frantically scanned the space again for something I could use. I let out a hiss of satisfaction when I found an emergency fire cabinet containing an extinguisher and an axe. Smashing the glass face with my elbow, I wrenched the axe from its holder and returned to the caged siren.
The thought occurred to smash the glass with the axe, but I took the risk of hurting the siren as she slid out and landed in all the broken shards. Instead, I used the sharp end to chop at the padlocks and break them. The sounds of my efforts echoed in the room like gunshots. Having broken the front two padlocks, I dropped the axe and pried the heavy metal lid upward. Grunting, I pushed the lid slowly up and up, inching along beside the aquarium to take the lid to fully open. It fell back against the wall behind it with a clang.
The siren inside wiggled and tried to dart around, but succeeded only in thumping the glass sides and probably bruising herself in multiple places in the process.
With shaking fingers, I reached behind my neck to unclasp the aquamarine at my neck. Lowering it into the water I dangled the gem from the chain and held my breath as it made contact with her skin.
There was a sound of a muffled scream and the siren’s whole body spasmed. She twisted in the tank, sending a big wave of water over me and out the front of the aquarium. It splashed across the floor. Her hand darted to the gem and her fingers clutched it like it was a lifeline––which it was.
She thrashed and rolled over again. Pushing herself against the aquarium, she thrust herself upward and her torso shot toward me. A pair of cold wet arms wrapped themselves around my neck and she pressed her heart against mine and held on like it meant her very life if she let go. I wrapped my arms around her and just held her, my chin trembling at what she had suffered.
She was panting in my ear, her chest heaving, and I could feel her heart thumping wildly against my own.
I glanced down her glistening back to see that she’d already transformed into her human shape. I could see the knobs of her spine and the wasted curve of her buttocks. She was painfully thin.
“It’s all right now,” I said gently, and felt her arms tighten around me like she was afraid I was going to let her go. “I’m going to take you home. I won’t let anyone else hurt you.”
I let her cling to me until the urgency told me we couldn’t afford to waste any more time.
“It’s not safe here, we need to go.” I patted her gently on the back. “I know you’ve been through a terrible ordeal.”
I pulled on her arms, pulling her back enough that we could see one another’s face.
“I need you to walk,” I said. “Can you do that?”
She nodded. Her brown eyes were haunted and huge, her tawny skin tinged with yellow, and her nails had grown to a length that would make using her hands impossible.
“Let me put this on you.” I touched her closed fist where the long nails pressed against the pad of her hand and her wrist. She opened her hand and I took the necklace. Her eyes never left it until they had to, as the gem settled under her chin and against her collarbones. She put a hand to it and looked up at me.
She spoke for the first time. “How did you know where to find me?”
“I found you by accident,” I replied grimly.
She let me lift her from the tank and put her on the ground, where her legs buckled and I had to catch her.
“What is your name?” I asked as I grabbed one of the sheets from a stack of them on the shelf below the metal dissection table.
“Fimia,” she replied, her voice tremulous.
“Fimia,” I repeated. “I’m Bel.”
She gave a small smile and it warmed my heart. She was not so gone that she couldn’t find a smile, which meant everything to me.
“I know who you are, Sybellen. I am not sure what astounds me the most,” she said, articulating her words in a crisp way that made me wonder if she’d had an upper-class education somewhere, “the fact that I’ve been rescued, or the fact that it was done by our Sovereign.”
I nodded. Of course she knew who I was.
Th
e sound of men’s voices in the distance made us both look towards the door. Putting my hands on her shoulders I said, “I need you to gather your strength. We might encounter some resistance to my taking you away from here.”
I went to the tap, grabbed a glass jar sitting upside down in the dishrack, and filled it with freshwater. I tasted it to make sure it was clean. Returning to Fimia, I gave it to her and bade her drink. She swallowed the entire jar in a moment and asked for another, which I fetched her. The shaking in her legs seemed to lessen and she stood up a little straighter, under her own power.
She wrapped herself up in the sheet and we left the room and headed for the door. On the way out the door, I spotted a hat stand and a set of hooks with a few white lab coats on them. I grabbed the nearest one––with two pens clipped to the chest pocket––and gave it to her. She discarded the sheet and pulled the lab coat on, doing up a couple of the buttons. She crossed her arms over her waist. Hugging herself like that, she looked like a little girl.
I kept her behind me as we climbed the stairs and emerged from the basement into a dark but star-speckled sky. A partial moon glimmered overhead, half buried behind a swathe of choking clouds.
Taking her hand, I led her across the lawn in the direction of the water. We passed through a circle of light thrown by a garden lamp in the center of a rose garden. A fountain and pool encased in a round concrete reservoir reflected the lamplight.
“Hey, there! What are you doing?” called a strong and heavily accented male voice from the second-floor balcony.
“Run,” I hissed at Fimia, pulling her in front of me and shoving her toward the water. “You can smell the ocean. Go!”
“What about you?” She clutched at the jacket with one hand and her other hand reached back for me.
“I’ll be right behind you. Go! Now!”
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” she whispered, her eyes on the verge of panic. “Our voices, we can stop them.”