Chapter 14 #3
What if it wasn’t just appreciation of the music that led Maren, but a...soul call? What if the soul of the singer was speaking to my Maren, luring her, beguiling her, leading her away from me. And I couldn’t hold her.
Was I watching her find her soulmate? Because if so, she’d be forever lost to me.
The thought was like a punch to my chest that wretched my heart out.
She hastened between the merchants’ tents and stalls, effortlessly weaving through the light crowd of the market on her way to the beach.
Thankfully, sirens’ celebrations took place largely in the ocean, with the majority of attendants gathering in the water and only a fraction of the crowd mingling on land.
So far, I had managed to avoid murdering any of my subjects.
But with panic impeding my logic and coordination, the risk of that grew.
“Maren!” I bellowed in anguish, but she just tossed a reassuring smile over her shoulder at me, not slowing down in her run.
Desperate, I searched around for something, anything to get her attention. To stop her. Or at least to slow her down until I could get through to her.
A long string of large, colorful beads in one of the vendor stalls caught my eye.
“I need these,” I forced the words through my tightening throat.
The merchant inhaled in terror, his hands shaking at the sight of me. Hastily grabbing the beads from the display hook, he tossed them onto the counter as if they were made of hot coals instead of carved wood.
Only then I realized that I had nothing to pay the man with.
“Stop by Prince Arnon’s palace tomorrow morning,” I said. “Tell him I owe you a gold coin for these.”
“A g-gold coin? That’s very generous of you, Your Majesty.” The merchant nodded rapidly but still stepped back and away from the cart. He looked ready to give up the cart and all his wares just to see me gone.
A gold coin was way too much for a cord of wooden beads. But I’d pay many times over for anything that would help me keep Maren.
Stilling my breath, I made an effort to lift the cord by a single bead without touching the counter. The last thing I needed on this blasted excursion was to ruin this man’s livelihood by turning his cart to glass through no fault of his.
There was no way to predict with certainty what the curse would do to any particular object.
It had turned my entire bed to glass, sheets, pillows, mattress and all.
Yet it only killed the branches of the coral that I touched directly, not the entire reef, thank gods.
Some items would turn solid, others remained porous or layered even after turning to glass.
After a century of living with the curse and dealing with its effects, I still didn’t know exactly what to expect every time I touched something new. I breathed with relief when only the bead I held in my fingers turned to glass, leaving the cord inside it unchanged.
“Thanks,” I tossed to the stunned merchant and rushed down to the beach to find my fleeting butterfly.
She was waist-deep in the surf already, pushing against the waves to keep going deeper into the ocean, led by the song.
“Maren!” I called to her, but she didn’t react this time at all, stolen from me by the enchanting voice of the singing siren.
Fuck that song and that voice.
I was a siren too. I had lost my song for decades, but I had found it again. I started singing again because of this woman. And I couldn’t let her go.
I wasn’t sure when my mouth opened or how the lyrics formed. I didn’t even know if it was an old song that I remembered or if a new one had just formed in my heart. But the song begged to be let out into the world, needing to be heard.
And I sang, my voice reaching far and wide to drown out the call of the other siren:
“Come to me, my darling,
Reach across the worlds to make our fates entwine,
Find me through the ocean storms,
Let your soul see mine.”
It was a searching song, I realized. In the feverish desperation of bringing Maren close to me, my mind chose the type of song that lonely sirens sang to the ocean when calling for a mate.
And it worked.
Thank fucking gods, it worked.
Maren stumbled in the waves, as if hitting an invisible obstacle, then turned back to me, rubbing her eyes as though waking from a dream.
“Maren...” I exhaled.
The tension that had gripped my chest and clawed at my heart finally loosened.
“Come here, sweetheart,” I coaxed. “Come to me.”
Praised be the ocean and all that lived in it, she listened to me this time. She walked toward me, her chest rising and falling with deep breaths, her cheeks flushed, her eyes aglow with excitement, as if she had run a race and won.
“I thought you were right behind me,” she said. “Did you not want to hear the song?”
“I can hear it from here,” I gritted through clenched teeth.
The fucking singer hadn’t stopped. Their silver voice was still drifting over the waves, stretching toward the land like a snare.
I spotted a group of sirens by one of the coral branches in the water farther in the ocean, and I would bet my shattered crown the voice was coming from there. But it didn’t matter anymore.
Winded but happy, Maren stumbled to me and sat in the sand at my feet.
“This place is a paradise for music lovers,” she said, hugging her knees. “So many beautiful voices.”
But it was my voice that had finally freed her from the pull of another. At the moment, that was all that mattered.
I searched around for a place to sit down, then lowered my naked ass onto the closest rock instead of the sand. If there was one thing I’d learned in the past hundred years, it was that sand in any form created an extremely irritating sensation in body crevices unprotected by clothes.
“What was the song you just sang?” Maren asked, gazing out into the ocean with a dreamy expression. “I’ve never heard it from you before.”
“I believe I might’ve just composed it.”
She snapped her full attention to me. “Did you really? Are you a poet?”
In a siren’s world, it wasn’t the words that mattered as much as the melody and especially the emotions that one put into a song. The lyrics of my creation were simple. But the intense longing and the fear of losing her that I felt so acutely when singing... Well, that was what carried the magic.
“Hardly,” I replied with a chuckle. “The last time I rhymed anything at all was when I teased my friends as a boy. And even then, the rhymes they responded with were much better than mine.” I held out the cord of beads. “Here, give me your hand.”
She squinted at me suspiciously.
“What for?”
If she decided to run again, the beads would give me a quick and effective way to get her attention and stop her, but I needed her cooperation.
Resting my elbows on my knees, I explained patiently, “Sirens are creatures of temptation. It’s in our blood, in our voices, and in our words.
This might not be the last song you hear tonight that will make you want to fling yourself into the ocean or even off a cliff.
Sometimes, a simple touch is enough to bring a beguiled one back to their senses.
Sadly, I can’t touch you. Wrap this around your wrist, and I’ll hold the other end. ”
“Like a leash?” she scoffed.
“Like the only contact I can have with you without killing you,” I corrected swiftly. “See? Almost all beads are glass already, but they’re big enough to protect the cord inside. I can hold it.”
Turned to glass, the beads lost their bright colors. Initially, they might’ve been made as a child’s toy. Large and sturdy, with a strong cord inside that wouldn’t break when I tugged on it while trying to reel in an escaping, willful minnow.
She hesitated, worrying her lower lip between her teeth. “Why can’t I go into the ocean?”
I groaned inwardly, wishing I could just toss the stubborn woman over my shoulder and take her with me wherever I went.
One hundred years ago, that’d be exactly what I would’ve done.
But since I wished to keep this woman alive, even against her best efforts to get herself in trouble, I had to search for the diplomatic skills that my mother always lamented I lacked.
“I know you’re an excellent swimmer,” I said, calling on my patience.
“But look over there. See how far into the ocean the crowd spreads? Look how turbulent the water is under their fins when they dance? Do you really think you can make it across safely? And I haven’t even told you about the poison stored in those fins. ”
“There’s poison? In those beautiful things?” She frowned, watching the couples, throuples, and groups flirt and frolic in the foamy waves.
“Many beautiful, alluring things store hidden dangers, my butterfly,” I said. “Keeping a fragile human safe in Nerifir is a task fit for a king. It’s a good thing then that you have a king to keep you safe.”