Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Acknowledgments
Also by Jaclyn Dolamore
Imprint
To my parents, for giving me a lifetime of love and creative space
Chapter One
It was not every day that a mermaid became a siren, and not every day that Esmerine attended such a party. It seemed just yesterday that she had moped at home while her older sister, Dosinia, had spent the week in a whirlwind of ceremony and celebration for her siren’s debut. Now Esmerine’s turn had come.
“Yes, this is Esmerine, my second to oldest.” Esmerine’s mother put her arm around her daughter for perhaps the fiftieth time that evening.
“Well!” The older merwoman, her neck laden with pearls, made a slight dip. “Congratulations, Mrs. Lornamend—”
“Lorremen,” her mother corrected. Everyone knew of the Lornamend merchant family, but the Lorremens were fishermen, and their name was hardly on the lips of society. “You may remember that my eldest daughter, Dosinia, was granted a siren’s belt two years ago.”
“Oh, of course,” the older woman said. “Miss Dosinia, yes. She’s a lovely young woman.”
“Esmerine here is the brain of the family,” Esmerine’s mother continued. “She has a wonderful head for remembering songs and histories.”
Esmerine smiled dutifully. Dosinia—Dosia to her sisters—was the pretty one, while she was the brain, and if they ever forgot, their mother would surely remind them.
The old woman paused in thought, her rather short tail gently waving. “Wasn’t it one of your daughters who used to play with that little winged boy?” She frowned at Esmerine a little, disapproving the behavior even before it was confirmed.
“Oh goodness, that was years ago! I had quite forgotten,” her mother said, clearly a lie, for Esmerine was still teased about her friendship with Alander from time to time. She hadn’t seen him in years, but the fact that she used to play with him—and worse, that he had taught her to read—had branded her as peculiar.
“I’m glad he doesn’t come around anymore,” the old woman continued. “Those people ought to keep a better eye on their children.” She gave Esmerine’s mother a pointed look, as if she should have done so herself.
“Excuse me,” Esmerine said, catching Dosia’s eye across the room. She swam upward with a flick of her tail.
Esmerine barely saw her sister these days. Even if Esmerine hadn’t been busy preparing for her siren’s initiation, Dosia was almost never home. Esmerine suspected she had a new beau.
Dosia stopped munching on olives long enough to wrap her arms around Esmerine’s shoulders. “Finally!” Dosia squealed in her ear. They had been wishing all their lives to do something truly exciting together, and now that day had come. They would both be sirens.
Esmerine reached for an olive, glancing around for a server. “Where’d you get those?” she asked Dosia.
“They were just passing them out a minute ago. I’ll share. They’ve got almonds inside.” Dosia gave half her olives to Esmerine. Esmerine’s mother only bought olives when good company was expected, complaining all the while about giving the traders a whole fish for a paltry handful of the surface-world treat.
“Don’t tell me you’re tired of trailing Mother around and meeting all those charming old rich ladies?” Dosia said with a grin.
“My favorite part,” Esmerine said, “is that they keep calling us Lornamends.”
Dosia groaned. “I remember the same thing from my initiation, and I think they only do it so we’re forced to correct them. Well, it doesn’t matter, the rest of the sirens are lovely. This is the only night you have to endure these old matrons.” Dosia made a face as a gentleman mer brushed by, his numerous strands of shell jewelry almost catching in her hair.
“Let’s go up near the ceiling until the ceremony,” Esmerine said. “It’s so crowded here.” Most of the mers had gathered at the bottom of the room, clinging to sculpted rocks or clustering by the floating lanterns.
“I thoroughly agree.” Dosia grabbed Esmerine’s arm and swished her tail, drawing them both up along the gently tapering walls. She stopped at a rock that jutted out not far from where water-freshening bubbles from an underground air pocket flowed through an opening in the ceiling. Although the bubbles occasionally obscured the view below, they had the space to themselves.
“So where have you been these past couple of weeks?” Esmerine asked. “I’ve hardly seen you.”
“You’ve just been busy,” Dosia said. “I’ve been around.”
Esmerine raised her brows. “Hardly. And I haven’t seen much of Jarra either.” Dosia was always coy when a boy first caught her interest, but it was no secret that she had favored Jarra at dances lately.
Dosia paused, looking back toward the bottom of the room, where the water churned with movement. “Jarra?” She shook her head. “I haven’t seen him either.”
“Well then, who?”
“Maybe I’m not interested in a boy,” Dosia said. She looked embarrassed, which was odd for her.
The soft orbs of magic lights dimmed, signaling that the show would begin soon. The siren’s ceremony would follow, and Esmerine knew she ought to take her place with Lady Minnaray in preparation, but she preferred to watch with Dosia.
The lights snuffed. Esmerine could hardly see Dosia’s face. The eerie sound of female voices rose from the seafloor. Three merwomen appeared, pushing a softly glowing rock as tall as their length into the center of the floor.
Additional magical lights floated down through the opening in the ceiling, briefly illuminating Dosia’s face as they passed. Mermen with their tails formed into legs and dressed in tattered clothes kicked their way down from the skylight. Behind them followed pairs of mermen bearing white sails to represent the ship the humans rode.
The song of the women on the floor had faded, and now the men began to sing, mimicking the sea chanteys of human sailors. If the winds hold fair we’ll catch that whale, and if our luck is true, boys, we’ll catch a mermaid too …
As they sang, the rock on the floor cracked down the middle, releasing a narrow beam of light. The mermaid singers pried the rock open, revealing a mermaid nestled in a crystal lining, her rare red hair floating about her. Strands of tiny glowing beads ran through her hair, and a faux golden siren’s belt glinted around her narrow waist.
O sisters, what handsome voice crept into my slumbering ear and brought to me a waking dream? The mermaid’s pure, powerful voice put Esmerine’s neighborhood singing club to shame.
One of the “human” men swam down, lured by her song. They locked eyes, and she began to drift toward him.
Sister, no! Come back! sang the mermaid chorus.
The other sirens pulled at her arms and fins, and she shook her head like she knew she’d been a fool, but in another moment she began to drift up again. The siren and the human man grew
ever more enraptured by one another, until finally he slid her belt from her waist and she fainted dramatically into his arms, her tail splitting into legs with one final convulsion. The mermen bearing sails scattered around them while the sirens fled to a dark corner, cooing a sad song for the one they had lost. The merman actor did a magnificent job of portraying a human struggling to drag the mermaid’s body to shore.
Dosia and Esmerine sighed at the romance and the tragedy to come. They knew this story well. Not a week went by when even the poorest merfolk didn’t gather in homes and taverns to share songs and stories of their history.
As the next act began, the human man brought the siren to his home. Props brought from shipwrecks formed the stage set. She tried to please her new husband, but tongues of black “flame” from the seaweed fireplace burned her and she shied back from his horse—played by a muscular merman wearing a sea horse mask. Her husband finally lost patience, striking her across the face. The audience booed him with a passion.
“Humans aren’t really like that,” Dosia whispered.
“As if you’ve met one,” Esmerine said. Dosia could be a real know-it-all about humans sometimes.
Dosia grinned. “I’d never be so stupid if I was a human’s wife.”
“I’d love to ride a horse,” Esmerine said.
Dosia squeezed Esmerine’s hand. “Me too.”
In a final bid to win her husband’s love, the siren confessed she was with child. His hand paused, midstrike, and suddenly he broke into a song of love, demonstrating his poor human values. Esmerine couldn’t stand such moralistic tales, but of course the village elders hoped to scare the young sirens away from humans.
The lights dimmed as the stagehands cleared the props away. The somber opera of human cruelty and siren folly was followed by a trio of mermen who sang familiar comedic songs.
“We learned these in the nursery,” Dosia scoffed.
“They can’t get too bawdy, not with all these old ladies sponsoring it.”
“Still, the Fish Song? They might as well not even bother.”
One of the singing mermen noticed them talking and sang precisely in Dosia’s direction, flourishing with an arm. Dosia huddled even closer to Esmerine.
“Oh no,” she groaned.
“Don’t even look at them anymore,” said Esmerine.
“I won’t. Anyway, you should probably find Lady Minnaray.”
It was almost time for her siren’s initiation. Esmerine hadn’t allowed herself to think much of it, and her stomach had been in such a constant state of anxiety during the last few days that she had grown used to it. Being a siren was a great honor, an exalted place in mer society. No reason to be nervous, Lady Minnaray told her, but new initiates always were.
The possibilities of childhood—that she might grow up to be an actress or a human pirate or a fisherwoman—had always been a game and an illusion, Esmerine realized. Her world was here. Nonetheless, it was scary to think of reciting the siren’s pledge in front of everyone she knew, and commit to one life forever.
She approached Lady Minnaray shyly. The eldest siren was tanned and wrinkled from a lifetime of sitting on the rocks, and she had a regal bearing despite her small size.
“You look lovely, Esmerine,” Lady Minnaray said. “No need for such wide eyes.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“I know you will.”
Two of the other older sirens, Lady Minnaray’s friends, gathered closer with reassuring words. “It’s hard to believe it’s already been three years since we chose you. You and Dosia must be so excited!”
Every year, the village schools put on a weeklong festival where the children sang and displayed magic for the village elders. If the sirens and elders saw potential in any of the children, they would pull them aside for further testing, and a few fortunate girls were chosen to train as sirens. They were given a belt of enchanted gold, the links thin but impossibly strong and impervious to corrosion. For the next few years, the young sirens would learn to infuse the belt with magic, to tap into the magic when needed, and to enhance its powers as the years went by. By harnessing the magic outside themselves, their power grew. They learned the finer details of siren song, the power of their voices. And they would be warned, time and time again, of the danger of human men.
The trio of merman singers finished, and Lady Minnaray moved toward center stage, gesturing for Esmerine to follow. The other older sirens took up the rear according to their rank. The audience was full of the faces of young sirens like Dosia, all smiling and welcoming. Esmerine clutched at her bead necklace, trying to stay calm.
“I present to you Esmerine Lorremen,” Lady Minnaray said, her voice a song even when she spoke. “She has completed her training and is ready to take her place as a guardian of our waters.”
An attendant brought out the ceremonial shell, as big as Esmerine’s head, and opened it to reveal the golden belt Esmerine had spent so many hours filling with magic. Lady Minnaray lifted the belt by its clasps, and presented one end to Esmerine. For a moment, the belt was a chain between them.
Esmerine repeated her pledge after Lady Minnaray.
“I promise to serve as a daughter of the sea. For as long as I live and it is within my power, I shall protect the sea and all its denizens from the human race, even if it means disregarding my own desires.” Esmerine swallowed, remembering the day when the elder sirens explained how to wreck a fishing boat that took more than its share of fish and how to drown a human swiftly. She spoke the next words quickly; she wished to have them over with.
“The water is my mother, my father, my first love, and sworn duty. Should I have children, I will keep my belt safe for them, for the safety and strength of my people. With the donning of this belt, I give myself to the sea and its people forevermore.”
How often had those words been spoken and then ignored? Esmerine wondered as she lifted her dark-brown waist-length hair out of the way so Lady Minnaray could fasten the belt just below her navel.
“Now you are one of us,” Lady Minnaray said.
Chapter Two
“Well, you’re a true siren now, Esmerine,” her father said proudly. Her parents and Dosia were waiting for her when she left the center of the great room. The crowd was already beginning to disperse and resume conversations. “How does it feel?”
“Good.” Esmerine didn’t know what else she could say. Maybe it was impossible to achieve a great honor without feeling numb.
“Two sirens in the family,” her mother said. “I would never have guessed it. Not a single siren in our entire family history, and now two! You girls are truly treasures.” Not only did sirens bring prestige to a family, but even after death, a siren’s belt was passed down through generations and could be used in times of need to work powerful healing spells or even defend the village. The status of Esmerine’s family would be forever elevated from mere fishermen.
When Esmerine, Dosia, and their parents arrived home, Esmerine’s youngest sister, Merramyn, was swimming to and fro, adorning the cave walls with flower chains. Tormaline, usually the most serious of the sisters, was moving the magic lights to find the best position. Esmerine’s mother swept in to interfere.
“Tormy, what are you doing? I said put one in the middle of the room and—wait, where is the fourth?”
“Mother, we don’t have a fourth.” Tormy was thirteen, and lately she had taken to saying “Mother” in a particularly irritated way.
“We should have four. This one is ours, and I rented three.”
“You rented two. You decided to save the rest of the money to buy sea bass, remember?”
Merramyn twirled through the water, draping the last flower chain around her shoulders. Dosia tried to take it from her. “Merry, don’t be silly with that, you’re going to damage it.”
A flower broke free from the garland and swished around Merry’s hair. She snatched it. “Dosia, look! Now you broke it! Mother, Dosia broke the flowers!”
As Esm
erine swam out of the main room, she made a silent prayer to the sea gods that her family would make it through the evening without embarrassing her. Through the narrow door to the kitchen, her poor aunts were preparing food for a crowd with only one magic light to see by. The cave was old and had few windows, just small holes to keep water flowing in and big fish out. In wealthier homes, window nets kept out the fish and let in light.
Fragments of seaweed drifted through the water from the salad Aunt Celwyn was making, while Aunt Lia tucked bits of neatly sliced raw fish into empty seashells for presentation.
“Can I help?” Esmerine asked.
“Chase out this silly fish that keeps bothering me.” Aunt Lia waved her hand as a slender fish darted past her face and into the shadowy corners. Just as Esmerine chased the fish out with the net, Dosia hooted a summons from the main room.
“The guests must be arriving,” Aunt Celwyn said. “Go on and greet them! This is your day.”
Esmerine raked her fingers through her hair, checking that her beads were still in place before she returned to the main room for hugs and congratulations. The guests arrived in a steady stream: her mother’s friends, the fishermen who worked alongside her father, friends she and Dosia had made in school and in their neighborhood singing group.
She knew the routine from when Dosia had become a siren, and although she blushed and said humble things, she was secretly pleased to have a little piece of the attention Dosia had gotten for so long.
At dinner, her aunts brought the food around. Esmerine wished they had servants, particularly since her mother had invited Lalia Tembel and her family. Esmerine and Lalia had been casual friends for years now, but Esmerine had never forgotten how Lalia had teased her about playing on the islands and for her lack of bracelets when they were little. Lalia also used to tell Esmerine that if she spent too much time in human form, she’d get stuck that way, and even when Esmerine had Dosia tell her off, Lalia had never apologized.
Still, her mother had not skimped on the food. They had the freshest fish, rare sea fruits sent from the Balla Sea, almonds and hazelnuts, enough olives that Esmerine had her fill for the first time in her life, and sea potatoes filled with minced shrimp.
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