Sirens Unbound

by Laura Engelhardt

  “My last wish, Angus mac Og. Enjoy my garden. I’ve waited to give you a taste of early summer.” With that, the pixie seemed to fold in on herself. She dropped back into the almost comatose expression she had had when they entered her home, dissolving into a white mist that suddenly erupted in a burst of scent. The room filled with the heat of July, the smell of honeysuckle and peonies almost overwhelming in their conflicting perfume. Thomas could taste summer … and then all he tasted was ash.

  They backed out of the small house in silence. Thomas was in shock. He’d never actually seen a faerie fade before. He had never met her before, but felt an immense sadness nonetheless. The two walked in silence back towards the small village that had been built for the sirens stationed in the moors. Angus finally broke the silence. “You’re troubled.”

  “I’m so sorry, Angus.”

  “It was her choice, Thomas. We always have a choice. She was done. I had hoped she would at least try for one more summer.”

  “How do you do this?” Thomas asked in despair.

  “What do you mean?”

  “How can you stand to see such suffering? This can’t be the first time one of your friends has died in your arms. I didn’t even know her, and it’s terrible.”

  Angus stopped walking and looked at Thomas. “You don’t belong here,” he said flatly.

  “I’m sorry. I—”

  “It’s nothing you’ve said. You just don’t belong here. Those others—” Angus gestured towards the village, “— are either true believers: children of Aphrodite, intent on saving the fae from imminent destruction; or sadists, who secretly enjoy the suffering, while disguising the fulfillment of their innermost desires from the fanatics. You are neither of those types.”

  “I’m here to help,” Thomas said.

  “Perhaps. But at what expense? You never said who sent you here. It has been nigh on three decades since Marisol brought anyone here, and that was a novelty in and of itself. Why are you really here?”

  “I thought I could help,” Thomas said wanly, a sense of inadequacy suddenly welling up from a deep place within his soul.

  “Go home, Thomas. You are too good for this place.” Angus sounded defeated.

  “I can’t leave you like this.”

  “You have my permission to go. Go back. Haven’t you learned enough? Seen enough? You are not the type to volunteer for this. You are one who is meant to run races, and share joy, and laugh in the sunlight. You are what I used to be. We are not meant to be corpsmen, serving as medics to living corpses. If I could, I’d go with you. But I’m stuck here. Go home. Get out of this place while your spirit is still intact.”

  Siren resistance to fae magick is not absolute immunity. Depending on the strength of the fae, you can still be bespelled. That can be beneficial, where, for example, you have need of their healing powers. But bear in mind before visiting a preserve, that with the more gifted fae, you will succumb to their magick if you do not actively fight against it.

  – Sirens: An Overview for the Newly-Transitioned, 3rd ed. (2015), by Mira Bant de Atlantic, p. 106.

  Chapter 15

  Angus must have sent an aisling to haunt his dreams and send him fleeing back to Brazil, because that night, Thomas dreamed a true memory of his meeting with Kyoko. A dream of the pure past, unfiltered and unedited by the passage of time and his own wishful fantasies.

  Dreaming-Thomas saw himself as if from above, watching as Then-Thomas plunged through the waters of the Southern Atlantic for his first trip to Brazil. He could feel the slickness of the water, while seeing himself below as if he were in a movie. Though he knew he dreamed, he relished the chance to see Kyoko again.

  Thomas experienced again the shocking difference between the Southern Atlantic and the Northern Atlantic. He had spent too much time in the cold north, trying to make it love him. While the ocean didn’t call to him the way it did to his mother and sister, in Brazil, Then-Thomas could almost hear the Atlantic’s song: a soft swaying murmur, whose exact words were just out of earshot, but whose bubbling joy made him smile. A real smile, a real lightening of heart. It was like when Excedrin kicked in on an insistent headache: the absence of pain, a shocking delight in its suddenness. Then-Thomas hadn’t realized he had been actually feeling anything — especially pain — until the feeling was suddenly swept away by the unexpected euphoria.

  Dreaming-Thomas saw his mother waiting for him as he emerged from the rough surf at Praihna beach in Rio de Janiero. At the time, he had never even noticed the surfers behind him. Two had wiped out quite spectacularly when the Atlantic bounced him onto the shore. Mira drove up in an armored car, and again he felt the struggle he’d had to pull the heavy door closed.

  Thomas had come when Mira called; he always came when his mother asked for help. “Who are we meeting?” Then-Thomas asked, and Dreaming-Thomas remembered his irritation at being summoned to Rio. “Why did you want me to come to Rio? You said we needed to be in Salvador tomorrow afternoon for the preliminary mediation session.”

  “You’re not going to like it,” Mira warned, and Then-Thomas felt his heart pause a beat in concern. She took a deep breath, then paused. “Just give me a chance to explain.”

  Dreaming-Thomas thought that was a stupid way to start an explanation. If he wasn’t going to like it, warning him of that fact wasn’t going to help.

  “I called in a favor owed me by Gerel, who won last year’s vampire fight for control of Rio. Her indentured mage is going to grant you fluency in Portuguese in exchange for one-half of one day of your life.”

  Mira had spoken quickly, her tone cajoling. He liked the apparition she wore back then. It had been a beautifully different look for her: skin the color of toasted coconut, hair a wavy caramel blond, and brilliant green eyes. Dreaming-Thomas wondered if his mother missed any of her bodies after she changed.

  “It’s such a small price to pay to be able to speak and understand the language like a native — you’d spend years of your life trying to learn it anyway, and you’d never have a proper accent.”

  “Mom, that’s totally unnecessary for such a short trip: I memorized all the standard phrases in Portuguese for emergency compulsions. It’s not like I’m moving down here or anything.”

  Then-Thomas felt smothered by his mother’s incessant fretting over his safety. But Dreaming-Thomas noticed how her face tightened when he said he wasn’t moving to Brazil. Of course! That had been her intent all along; her summons had been another attempt to lure him away from Jarl Georg’s cold court. This time, Dreaming-Thomas acknowledged, his mother’s gambit had worked.

  “I overpaid for the skill myself before the war, and Gerel acknowledged her debt. There’s no way she could have won against Meng Tian without the boost I gave her. She agreed to these terms for use of her mage if she won. Of course, if she’d lost, there’d be no way I could have collected, so I’m not sure why that was a condition. But whatever.” Mira’s voice faded.

  His mother took too many risks. She always had.

  But Then-Thomas experienced only a wash of relief. Perhaps her trigger warning had been a good idea, because he had been primed for her to ask him to accompany her on a visit to an army barracks or some other Godawful place with a bunch of aggressive men. Visiting a vampire seemed relatively innocuous in comparison.

  As if sensing he was wavering, Mira looked at him. “If you want to know Japanese as well, you can get that for another half-day. That was my deal — Gerel’s mage gave me fluency in the two languages she spoke: Portuguese and Japanese. She took English from me, and I overpaid because Gerel was preparing to oust the vamp who ran Rio. Until her mage’s indenture runs out, I can have any of the mage’s languages in exchange for a half-day.”

  Then-Thomas thought this request was somehow less frightening that most of her requests: this time she only wanted him to meet some vampire slave and lose a day of his life. Knowing Japanese at least could be useful if he ever got a chance to visit the Pacifics. “You bargained
with a vampire? You take too many risks,” Then-Thomas said, letting Mira know without saying so that he’d do it.

  Dreaming-Thomas could see the relief on his mother’s face. At least he could recognize a gift, even if it wasn’t one he’d have chosen, and accept it graciously. Then-Thomas felt a sense of pride that he could handle his mother’s offer, knowing that she could not have expected such a calm response from Cordelia. Atlantea despised mages, and Cordy idolized Atlantea to the point of adopting the queen’s prejudices as her own. Then-Thomas imagined her views on vampires would likely be much worse than her feelings towards living mages. Dreaming-Thomas wanted to tell his old self that Cordy wasn’t so superficial. Certainly naïve, but not as racist as he used to think.

  And then, his mother’s relief led her to take on her professorial persona which irked him as much now as it did then. Then-Thomas tuned her out, but Dreaming-Thomas couldn’t escape so readily.

  “In his quest to build the perfect weapon,” Mira lectured, “Chía left hundreds of his mage-enemies as the walking dead. But given the amount of infighting amongst them now, I’m surprised there are any vampires left. No one likes to talk about them, but every major city has at least one vampire hunting in it. Saõ Paulo has at least two, and according to the Pacifics, Shanghai has four! The Shanghai territorial war has been going on for decades.”

  “What did you mean anyway, ‘losing a half-day of my life?’ I thought vampires sucked blood or something like that?” Then-Thomas asked.

  “Only in the movies,” his mother replied. “Vampires consume life-force. Similar, I guess, to how some mage healing spells work. Vampires need one day of a person’s life to sustain themselves, and more to gain any extras like glamours or strength, etcetera. They take it by touch. And yes, it hurts — but only in correlation to the amount of life they drain. So I doubt you’ll feel anything worse than some muscle aches.”

  Dreaming-Thomas was grateful he had rashly decided to take all the languages she offered, if only because it had extended their encounter. Kyoko had given him French as well as Portuguese and Japanese. At some point between when she had enchanted his mother and their meeting, she had somehow acquired French too. Dreaming-Thomas felt a pang of jealousy that Kyoko had stroked someone else’s thoughts the way she had his.

  The memory of their drive faded, and Dreaming-Thomas felt vertigo as time blurred to the evening he met the woman he couldn’t forget. He dreaded seeing her, anticipating the pain of losing her yet again; at the same time, he yearned to feel her touch. It was as if their brief meeting had linked them, and he was only fully himself when she was in his mind.

  Thankfully, his dream sped Dreaming-Thomas through his terrifying encounter with Gerel. The intense, split-second agony of her taking a day-and-a-half of his life was softened into an indistinct haze. Though Dreaming-Thomas knew that her gnarled hands with their sharp nails had been unbearably cold, he did not again feel the icy burning that had caused Then-Thomas to recoil. The dream fast-forwarded him away from Gerel’s frightening presence into the small room, where he had awaited her indentured mage. Dreaming-Thomas watched his mother walk back into the vampire’s larger parlor, half-closing the door behind her, when another door slowly opened.

  And then the dream slowed to show him Kyoko’s entrance in lavish detail. She entered through that other door in a gliding gait that entranced him now even as it had then. All the colors were amplified in his dream: somehow the utterly straight blackness of Kyoko’s hair was glossier and more brilliant than he had remembered, her skin even more radiant. Dreaming-Thomas absorbed the perfection of her oval face, feeling his body stir as he was entranced by the crystal intelligence in her gaze. Her upturned eyes were so dark he couldn’t look away. He savored the glory that was his Kyoko all over again.

  Then-Thomas felt the softness in her voice as she asked, “Are you ready?”

  Dreaming-Thomas watched himself nod, as she sat down next to him. She seemed so slight in his dream, but Then-Thomas had seen her as unimaginably strong. Then-Thomas looked bewitched, and she hadn’t even begun her spelling.

  Kyoko looked at him intently, then reached her hands up to gently cup the sides of his head. Then-Thomas experienced her mind in his as a whisper of sunlight caressing his exposed nerves; the lightest of touches across his very soul. There was no pain, no awareness of change, yet he was changed.

  “Watashinonamaeha Kyokodesu,” she said.

  “Kyoko-sama,” Then-Thomas breathed, worshiping her. What a magick this was! She had picked apart his thoughts, ever so gently and ever so precisely. Dreaming-Thomas thought he saw pulses of colors swirling around them as if in orbit; multi-colored threads of light dancing in intricate precision as she gifted him with comprehension. Then she released him, and the world was bland and dull again.

  “Eu terminei. Está feito,” Kyoko said coldly to his mother, who had poked her head back through the door.

  “Thomas, I’ll only be another few minutes. Are you okay here?” Mira looked warily at Kyoko.

  Then-Thomas nodded, and his mother shut the door behind her, with one long last look at Kyoko. Dreaming-Thomas wondered what additional business she needed to conduct with Gerel. His mother was always collecting favors, which she banked against a rainy day. Perhaps his mother was more fae-like than all of them that way.

  “Is this feeling a side effect of your spell?” Then-Thomas asked Kyoko in English. He couldn’t regain his equilibrium. This fixation on her was not the expected outcome.

  “Do you feel something?” Kyoko asked hesitantly. She glanced over at him without moving her head, somehow making that conservation of movement teasing, as opposed to shy.

  “I haven’t felt like this since my first crush in middle school. I don’t know why, but I want to know you.”

  “It isn’t a side-effect of my spell. At least, I have never known anyone to have such a reaction. But my feeling for you is a spell. You’re a siren. I have never felt this attraction before,” Kyoko spoke warily and both Dreaming- and Then-Thomas felt the punch of self-directed hatred.

  “You must be the siren of sirens, then,” Then-Thomas spoke earnestly, his voice humming with a magnetic resonance that Dreaming-Thomas could still feel in his bones. “Because I have never felt such a desire for anyone in my life. My heart is beating so fast, it’s like I’m running a marathon! And if you feel even half what I do, then I am a terrible creation for forcing you. You must not be affected by me!” Then-Thomas felt the resonance of his compulsion as his hands shook with effort, and his voice, normally a warm baritone, resonated with the power of the sea.

  There was a silence, then Kyoko reached out and took Thomas’ hand. “I don’t think your magick works that way,” she said gently. “But I love you more for trying. Sirenic magick is so strong. And I don’t mind your spell, it doesn’t press on me like your mother’s. Thomas, I don’t like your mother; I feel the need to slap her in the face, to scratch out her eyes, to—” Kyoko broke off, inhaling sharply, then speaking with more control.

  “The only thing that prevents me from harming her is the leash of my indenture to Gerel. But yet, even as I want to rip her apart, I also love her somehow because she’s your mother. We’re speaking the language we both learned from her; it’s the first thing we share,” Kyoko’s eyes reflected the light. They were so dark and luminous that, looking at her, Thomas felt like he was gazing into an eclipse.

  “You have bewitched me as surely as I have bewitched you,” Thomas whispered, tracing his finger gently across her cheek. “But I would free you if I could.” Dreaming Thomas felt the truth of Then-Thomas’ statement. He had a burst of insane confidence that even if he lacked the instinctual allure of a siren, he would still win her through the unbearable force of his own admiration for her, if nothing else.

  “I am not sure why you feel anything for me,” Kyoko said. “But I would not set you free, even if I could.” There was steel in her voice. Dreaming-Thomas knew she was telling the truth, and he grew ha
rd. He wanted nothing more than to be possessed by her.

  “Are you a witch?” Then-Thomas asked. “I don’t care if you are. I don’t care about anything except you. Say the word, and I’ll kill the vampire-bitch for you!”

  Then-Thomas meant it; Dreaming-Thomas regretted that he had not attempted to kill her. He had never felt such reckless courage, despite the terror that Gerel’s mere presence inspired. He had no skill to fight a vampire — let alone a vampire who had destroyed other vampires — but for Kyoko, he would try.

  “I couldn’t bear it if you were hurt. If you died, Thomas! Swear you won’t do anything!” Kyoko gripped his other hand, and her warmth radiated around him.

  “No, not unless you swear you will free yourself and come to me,” Then-Thomas felt rash. He had never met a mage as powerful as Kyoko. She was so precise and so strong. She was the needle that pierced efficiently. She was the guillotine that killed instantly. She was a song in his blood. He wanted her then, he wanted her now, he wanted her always.

  “I will come to you when I’m free,” Kyoko promised.

  “Be ready when she calls,” whispered the aisling. And Thomas woke up.

  “I’m done,” Thomas told Cordelia from the safe distance of Salvador. He was grateful that the faerie mound in North Yorkshire interfered with satellite and radio waves, so he had a slim excuse for having not told her he was leaving until after it had become a fait accompli.

  “What do you mean, you’re done?” Cordelia asked, her voice crackling over the line. It was a bad connection.

  “I’m back in Brazil, Cordy. I wasn’t useful — they didn’t need me — I … I couldn’t take it anymore.” Thomas struggled to find the right words.

  “How could they not need you? This line is not secure, Thomas. Why didn’t you come back here? It would have been helpful if we could have discussed this in person.”

  He couldn’t explain to Cordelia why he didn’t go back. It seemed crazy even to him. It was inexplicable, yet felt too real. Perhaps that’s what he deserved for allowing an aisling into his dreams at night. “Listen, Cordy. It’s bad. Much worse than I thought. Worse than you even imagine. Do I think there’s a danger that a faerie could turn on us? There’s always a danger.” Thomas swallowed. “When you can, go and see for yourself. But be prepared.”