SONG of EMBER

58

THE SIRENS' STORY

🙜

Ky flung out her arms and shut her eyes and trilled a halcyon cry which Ember had never heard from her or her sister. It was darkness and starlight, a beautiful summons. Had he been able, he would have leapt from the throne at once and rushed headlong down the stone steps, and he would not stop until he had swept her off her feet and gathered her into his arms.

But he was trapped, a prisoner to her gilded tongue until she set him free.

So he watched in silent wonder as a flickering light apparated between the nearest pillars. It twinkled across the hall like a blue firefly, and others soon followed from the shadows—the little glimmers of magic they had first encountered in the siren’s treasure hoard. The air rippled before him as if a wave of heat had arisen from the stone, though it was not warmth, but a cold draft which wafted across the steps and chilled his bones.

She met his glance through the veil of floating lights.

“When the world is yet new and full of promise, and the dirt is dark and damp underfoot, and magic sleeps in every leaf and stone and forest pool, the ocean and the moon dance together, and my people are come into being—we are the spray of the sea, given face and voice. The splash of water tumbling down the stony heights of your mountain. The song of the sleepy river, where once you make your nest…”

Ky swished her hands as if throwing colors into the air as Ember glimpsed once more the blues and greens of a distant ocean he could never quite imagine, and the fey lights scattered across the hall; a few floated up toward the distant ceiling, nearly lost in the great beams of sunlight.

“Mere babes, knowing nothing but our newness, we drift through foam and froth, thinking and learning and growing in knowledge and stature, until at last we come to the shore, crawling up out of the deep and drawing breath of the fragrant air which tastes of life and the sun. And there upon those mossy stones, we first glimpse the wildwood—the spirits of the forest which dwell alongside men, when men are yet strong in magic and trees are yet walking the lands beneath the moon. In the still and quiet places, inlets and rivers and the edge of the sea, we watch the mortals dancing in the snowy dark of winter: they are both fierce and gentle, and shape the songs of the earth, shining as brightly as the sun. All our lives we have known only darkness, and wish to be laughing with them, they the children of the light. And so, when spring has settled her crown of blooms and snowmelt rushes down from the hills, we seek the wildwood again…”

Ky clasped her hands, a smile in her eyes, and stared up at Ember beseechingly—not at him, through him—past his eyes—above his head—and a prickling dread touched the back of his scalp as her voice rose and fell in supplication.

“O Wildwood of Many Boughs, let us come nigh among them as they are greeting summer’s breath. We bring them many gifts of flowers and salt, of seaweeds and shells. We wish to be as equals with the sons of men, and dance until the stars are burned away by morning’s light!”

The sirena's whispered plea reverberated among the stone pillars, and Ember gripped the throne until his fingers ached as Ky dragged her claws across her face; the pool of sunshine brightened, gilding wayward strands of her black hair.

“Alas, it is never to be so…”

Her flesh appeared translucent in the light, as if with each word which left her tongue she became evermore empty, evermore a ghost of her former self.

“The wildwood is taking something from us that day…”

She pinched her thumb and forefinger together—he could just see the soft curve of her jaw, and the tip of her nose from this angle. Her head quirked, hair falling in front of her face. Her eye glimmered at him.

“And we are trying to reclaim it ever since.”

Ember strained forward slightly, striving to see her face, but even the light which fell upon her from above only heightened the great distance between himself and her emotions—her true feelings, not those she exhaled in a lilting regalement of the past—concealing her features in blue shadows and purple hues.

He felt that he was at the brink of an understanding.

Understanding something which was never for him to understand… just as he had felt he was never meant to understand those memories which had slipped through his fingers in dreams, the echoes of a hundred ancient souls.

It only made him want it all the more.

“Jealous of our great beauty, and jealous of men’s hearts, the wildwood names us other and wicked for our arrogance—the arrogance of shaping our own selfs from the frothy sea—and it sunders our newborn souls from us, banishing us to the depths, even unto the ending of the world. Many of those young ones are gone to the madness with loss, casting themselves from the highest cliffs, their fledgling bodies dashed to pieces upon the stones below. But those which master the emptiness where their souls once are, and staunch their bleeding spirits through magic or a tremendous effort of will, remain. They diverge into clans, and multiply, and become like the darkness they hide within, driven to spill more blood, and more, by their eternal hunger and despair.”

Her desolate stare pierced him, and the back of his neck tingled as he remembered that she could kill him where he sat, if she wished to. Ky placed a hand against her ribs, and blinked softly at him.

“The great beauty that we fashion for ourselves is now abhorrent to mortal men, and the air we breathe is heavy with enchantings, and we hear the songs of the earth and twist those songs with our magic to ensnare your kin which linger here, whom my kin have grown to despise above all things…”

She ducked her head lower, eyes flitting up, and for a moment he thought—he knew—they glowed like green fire in the blues and purples of the shade. No—he blinked, and all was dark once more.

“You see, it is only in our envy… for the souls which remain to you.”

Ember no longer felt the stone beneath him.

He felt as if he were falling.

Some long-repressed instinct, one which he had battled ever since that day on the river arose within him, and if he could have stumbled down the stairs and run for the door at the end of the hall, he would have surely done so in that moment.

The fey lights drew near to Ky’s pale face.

Some nestled into the thick waves of hair she had looped about her shoulders. She held up a black clawed finger, and one light settled upon it like a tiny moth. Her gaze shifted from Ember to the little blue light, and though the weight of her stare was lifted, he was still bound by the heaviness of her words.

“Those of the firstborn which survived the sundering took a blood oath—a binding oath, yes, until the sea dries up and the mountains crumble—that they and their children should never dwell amongst the men whose merriment is turning our hearts to things of the daylight and world above… from their laughter, which once we loved, there came a terrible lamentation: we are of the ocean, and so to the ocean we are bound. We are parted from our essence—our very souls—for this one wish… and now it is the absence of our souls which consumes us, and we wish for nothing else. In this, the wildwood has won, and we are ever undone.”

Ky croaked once, her fingers twitching to her ribs again. A curse hissed around the hall, so quietly that Ember was unsure if she had spoken it aloud.

Snailskin…

"Only one of these first deep-dwellers outlives his companions—the eldest of all the clans in all the seas—and he keeps his knowledge of that day in the wildwood buried in his heart until his mind grows foolish with age, and he is at long last entreated by a Little Fish to tell his story."

Ember's eyes widened at the thought of how very old that elder must have been, but his mouth would not open and his tongue would not move, and his hands remained clasped to the carven throne.

Ky stamped upon the floor again, glimmers of magic swirling from her hair and around her uplifted arms. For a fleeting instant—with her smooth features and pale skin—she reminded him of the stone statues keeping watch above the waterfall stair…

Her fangs flashed in a grimace, shattering the illusion.

"Long ago, a mighty warrior of the fiercest clan is taken to the edge of madness by soul-hunger, and the power of his tongue is mighty, such that he possesses the strength to sway a hoard of sirens. Senseless with his songs and lofty promises, they swear that they shall never bow to any mortal king. No, not they—the beautiful, the proud. They will work a feat of magic, and take as many souls as please them by force to replace the souls they lost.”

The air darkened and thickened around him like water as Ky stepped forward and back again, thumping the flat of her palm against her chest and guttering to herself. He was so absorbed in the scattered rhythm of it and the way she swayed to and fro that when she did speak again, it was not merely the thunderous projection of her words which startled him.

“Why,” Ky proclaimed suddenly, her voice deepening to a near-baritone that shivered his senses with its wrongness, “must we content ourselves with any less than that which the human kings possess? Why must we hunger for their flesh? Why is it that we fade away to the cold and dark of the abyss? Are we not all of one life and breath?”

She threw out her arm, a clawed finger pointing rigidly at Ember.

With a sonorous thud, the air compressed beneath the growl of her song.

“Are we not so worthy to rule our fates as the kings of men?”

The magic dimmed and brightened and his heartbeat quickened and slowed in that otherworldly cadence. He felt afflicted—of what, he knew not. A strange wanting crept through Ember's mind, prickling him with thoughts that were not his own, clamoring together in a maddening, ravenous desire…

A lust for lovely things beyond his ken.

Things once lost and never found again.

Ky whirled, the stained and tattered skirts fanning out around her knees and her hair swinging wildly, and most of the fey lights vanished.

“Seized by a deathless rage, they enter the mountain kingdom on a moonless night, and the river runs red, and stone is shattered, and their thirst for blood is sated… but the emptiness remains. So many men and deep-dwellers are lost to us that day, so very many spells woven and broken that the shape of magic unravels; the might of men is diminished as they scatter across the lands…”

She took a step back, skin scintillating in the streaks of pale daylight, and for a moment the pool of sunshine shimmered around her bare feet, taking on a ruddy hue. The few lights which lingered floated around her ankles as she retreated into the shadows.

“...and the deep-dwellers fall back into the ocean's arms, and we promise one another that we will sooner die than to speak of the blood that is running that day beneath the mountain. Nor is any siren to keep company with a mortal for more solace than the replenishment we crave, for all mankind belong to the treacherous wildwood. The wilds, and their men, must never be trusted again."