SONG of EMBER

3

RIVER-FOLK

PART II

🙜

"One what?”

Frowning, Ember stuffed his hands in his pockets and glared at Hunter. “One of the river folk.”

“That depends.”

“What—”

“Is that your only question?”

“I suppose my most pressing question is how dangerous are they, really?”

“Quite dangerous.”

I’ll have to be more specific if I’m going to get a straight answer.

“Do they eat people?”

“Course they do.”

“How do you know? Have you ever seen it for yourself?”

“Most decent folk will try to tell you that those who disappear near the river or go out in boats and never return met with an unfortunate mishap, but a few of them came to more miserable ends.” He shrugged. “Where do you think all those fireside stories came from?”

“Are all the river folk… do they...” Ember trailed off, not sure which words might best describe his most pressing question. He picked them carefully. “Are they bad luck? You know, cursed, in some way?”

“Aren’t we all?”

That gave him pause. "Well…"

"Listen, boy." Hunter's eyes hardened, and Ember took an involuntary step back. "I don't have a book on the subject. And nobody's written one, so far as I know. But if you're going about meddling where you shouldn't, I'd be the first to tell you it won't end well. You just keep mending those nets and leave the river people to their own, and pray they stay away from you too."

A vivid memory of the pale creature dangling from his net made Ember glance down at the grass between his boots. He shifted, and cleared his throat awkwardly, not sure what to say next.

Hunter ground his walking stick into the road, but waited patiently.

Although Ember had thought up several hundred questions last night, he'd had nothing with which to write them down, and most had fled his mind the moment he called out to the wayfarer.

“Where do they live?”

"Hmmm." Hunter chomped more vigorously on the grass stalk, his gaze wandering among the trees as if he were sifting through colorful memories. "Sailors from the Northlands, the merchants down south, and all other manner of seafaring kind have their own legends about a race of sea-dwellers… They call ‘em sirens, but they're much the same as our river-folk.”

“And they resemble us in figure, if not speech? Man and woman, I mean?”

Ember thought back to the glimmering mirage he had seen—its form had been bound in such a fashion as to obscure any distinguishing features, but regardless, there had been no mistaking the feminine curvature of the creature. He blushed faintly and scrubbed at his cheek, hoping Hunter hadn’t noticed.

He was abashed to see the wayfarer staring keenly at him.

Hunter’s beard twitched faintly. “Siren and sirena—if one cares to be proper about it. Which, generally speaking, I don’t.”

“I suppose they’re both unfriendly,” Ember hedged awkwardly.

“Never heard of a friendly siren—only a hungry one.” Hunter shrugged. “Traded tall tales with an old mariner near Rivermouth who swears up, down, and sideways they can paralyze their prey with a single shriek.”

“Must be something dreadful,” he reckoned, quietly, “to hear one sing.”

Hunter scoffed, raising a puff of dust with the toe of his boot. "I'd rather face a thousand armed soldiers than one lonely siren with a breath of air in its lungs. They're excellent imitators, by all counts. Pick up a tune from just about anywhere. Waterfalls, birdsongs, even some human ballads."

Chills skittered across Ember's shoulders as he remembered the unusual bird call from two nights ago.

"They're obsessed with mankind, you know."

"They are?" That took Ember by surprise. "In all the stories I've heard, they usually kill us and sharpen their teeth on our bones."

Hunter chuckled. "We're more interesting than most of us would believe ourselves to be. You’re a fisherman, ain’t ya? Don't you find fish sorta interestin’, in some way or another? Their patterns, their habits, and suchlike?”

"Certainly.”

"And you eat them."

Ember frowned. "That's not the same thing."

"Still, it's something to think on.” Hunter paused, chewing thoughtfully. “That mariner heard one singin’ somewheres along the southern coast, many moons ago; he were sent away to gather some driftwood for their fire. Siren or no, it was gone, along with the rest of his shipmates, by the time he returned to their encampment. He wept a night and a day for his fellows, but more bitterly still that he never laid eyes on that creature."

Ember crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes at Hunter. "Has anyone ever seen a siren—or sirena—and lived to tell about it?"

Surely, if any man had, it would be the lonely wayfarer himself.

"If they have," Hunter shrugged, "they wouldn't. Simple as that. River-folk aren't something you speak of in polite company."

Disappointed, Ember went further: "You seem to talk about them whenever you please."

"I'm me." He shrugged again, as if that should be obvious. "Your quiet village decided I'd gone mad years ago. But I'll wager my warning did them some good—they'll be keeping away from the rivers now, and no mistake."

"So you really believe their lives are at risk?"

Straightening up and jabbing the walking stick into the topsoil, Hunter gave him a crooked smile. "If you thought that a man-eating beast had taken up residence in the rivers round here, wouldn't you?"

"I suppose I would," Ember agreed soberly, glancing into the shadowy woods behind Hunter.

"Anything else?" he asked, spitting out the blade of grass and raising an eyebrow.

"If you thought you'd made one angry," ventured Ember, avoiding eye contact while he spoke, "what would you do?"

"Be eaten, I suppose," Hunter said.

A cold empty feeling settled in his stomach. "What if it didn't kill you?"

"The river-folk have long memories and—much like our kind—do not easily forget a face that has wronged them."

An insect began to chirr somewhere in the grass, and a bird chattered in the nearby woods.

Hunter glanced up the road, and then frowned at Ember. "Will that be all?"

“You have no advice?”

“None whatsoever. But if this notional person who went poking around where they shouldn’t have and angered the river folk happens to be a young fisherman named Ember, I’d tell him to watch his back.”

Hunter shouldered his pack and gave him a mirthless wink before procuring a few coins from his pocket. Ember caught two as they flew through the air, but the other one fell to the ground.

"Those belong to Alden at the tavern. If you'd be so kind as to take them to him, along with my regrets about a certain happening last night that I had almost nothing to do with…"

"I'll let him know," Ember said, retrieving the fallen coin and eyeing it hungrily for a moment. When he looked up, Hunter was already striding along the road, whacking the tall grass with his walking stick and whistling a cheery tune.

"Keep your chin up and stay out of trouble."

"Too late for that," muttered Ember.

But Hunter either didn't hear him or didn't care and continued on his way, never once looking back over his shoulder.

❧

The sun was setting by the time Ember reached his cabin; he'd taken the long way around instead of the usual river path. He hadn't been down to the bank since yesterday morning, but he could see a few of the old tree's branches from there, a great leafy canopy over the river. The sunlight caught on a few frayed ropes dangling in the breeze.

As he approached the single wooden stair, he noticed movement out of the corner of his eye. It gleamed and flashed in the sunlight, just outside his door. His mouth dried out and he snatched the spear from his back.

It was a pile of fish… and they were still flopping.

He quickly glanced over his shoulder, and then at the garden and the path to the river, but he appeared to be alone. As he approached the cabin, however, a familiar flowery smell assaulted his senses. It was just a whiff, but it was enough to bring back the terror of yesterday morning. Forgotten details of the encounter came back to him in pieces, as if he had been recently awakened by daylight and was struggling to remember a foggy dream.

Bracing one foot on the stoop, Ember cautiously leaned forward to investigate, suspecting some sort of trickery. Nothing happened. Beside the fish sat a little mound of bilberries.

He stared hard at the fish, unsettled—they clearly hadn't been there long.

One of them flopped off the stair to flounder in the overgrown grass beside the path.

…Did one of the townsfolk leave these here?

It wasn't until Ember had patrolled the entire perimeter of his modest cabin and jostled every bush with the spear—frightening a few birds in the process—that he returned to the staircase to ponder the fish and berries.

What did this mean?

Were they a gift?

A threat?

Who had put them there?

He decided that it was a stupid question, yet every possible answer presented him with more stupid questions. If it was someone from town, why hadn't they strung up the fish? If it was the creature from before, how had it walked up the path? Could river folk leave the river? Why hadn't he asked Hunter?

Eventually Ember's mind stilled, and he was left to face the most likely (and terrifying) conclusion: he couldn't forget what he'd seen in the misty morning light, and he couldn't explain away the pile of fish and plump berries.

He had threatened to spear the creature while it dangled helplessly from a tree. He wouldn't have killed it, of course, but maybe the creature didn't know that. Hunter had mentioned nothing useful—certainly nothing about river folk customs—and Ember found himself facing an unpleasant quandary. If he didn't take it, he might cause further offense. If he did take it, perhaps he was breaking some unspoken rule which river folk would consider an insult.

After a few moments of thought, Ember settled on what he thought was a very good plan: he would take the food, no matter what the creature's intentions, and put something else there instead.

Better to be cautious than spurn a gift, he reasoned as he stuffed the berries into his pocket and hooked his fingers under the gills of the glimmering fish. It must have chosen fish as either a mockery or an apology, as it was clearly a mutual favorite. And it had even sweetened the offering with some freshly picked berries.

He shivered, imagining pale clammy fingers plucking those berries and placing them on his front step.

In the end he decided to part ways with a rock he'd found by the river—one of his favorites from the windowsill. It was a small blue stone with intricate white veining that Ember had always particularly admired, but when he set it on the stoop it seemed somehow underwhelming. Ember gathered a few fresh white flowers from the river path to place beneath, just in case it liked that sort of thing. The sentiment, he hoped, would be glaringly obvious:

Thank you. Please don't kill me.