Sirens Unbound

by Laura Engelhardt

  “Ted, it’s Amy again.” Amy had gone straight into his voicemail. “I could really use your advice. I know we didn’t leave on exactly the best of terms, but it would be extremely helpful if you could just give me a call back. Listen, I’m sorry about what I said.” Amy hung up and paced around the office. She’d spent most of the day thinking about this, how she could actually push this through. But this was crazy, wasn’t it? She needed to talk to someone, if only to get her own thoughts in order. She plopped back into her chair, and almost reflexively dialed Mary.

  “Hi Mary, it’s Amy.”

  “Hey! How are you? You were amazing yesterday! I can’t believe how you handled those reporters’ questions. I mean, what a bunch of jackasses.” Mary sounded so upbeat and genuinely happy to hear from her that Amy felt herself relax a little.

  “You’re being really too kind. I could have been a lot clearer. Listen, I need some advice; do you have a minute?”

  “Sure,” Mary replied. “I’m actually on my way crosstown and the traffic is worse than ever. What’s up?”

  “I’m scheduling another operation.” Amy paused.

  “What operation? You mean another mage sight surgery? That’s terrific!”

  “Yeah. It is terrific. I’ve gone over all of Patient B’s results and reviewed our new plans. And I’m extremely confident that this will work.”

  “Fantastic,” Mary said. “Well, that’s good news. Right off the back of your press conference, too. You didn’t mention that yesterday.”

  “Well, it’s actually a rare mundane who’s even eligible for this kind of surgery. There’s someone we’ve had in mind for a while, but it didn’t seem like a risk worth taking until now.”

  “What risk? Well, I guess any brain surgery has risks.”

  “There were some complications with the original procedure that we now think we can avoid. We didn’t go into all the details in the press conference.”

  “Oh, well that sounds all right then. What kind of complications?”

  “The major side effect was the elimination of mundane perception, but we think we know what caused that now.”

  “You eliminated his mundane perception? You mean the patient is blind?” Mary sounded confused and somewhat horrified.

  “Blind from a mundane perspective, but his mage sight is off the charts in terms of clarity.” Amy knew she sounded like she was downplaying it.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t mention that yesterday; you went into so much detail about everything else,” Mary said.

  “I know, but that’s one of the reasons I want to do this operation now. We have the solution. We think we have the solution,” Amy clarified. “I can’t leave it like this, especially after making that announcement. After we do the second operation, we’ll have proven the success of the procedure.”

  “And does your next patient understand that you’re probably going to blind them in this — I don’t know what you’d call it — this elective procedure? Amy, this is nuts.”

  “The revised procedure won’t make the patient mundane-blind. And in any event, I have a pair of enchanted spectacles that our enclave partner gave me before he left. I watched Patient B try them; they work,” Amy said.

  “Enchanted spectacles?” Mary asked.

  “They enable the blind to see. Well not perfectly. They enable mundane visibility in black and white. But I have a back-up plan if the operation isn’t a complete success.”

  “You mean the mages have glasses that let blind people see and are just sitting on it? Holy shit, Amy. That’s unbelievable.”

  “They were made in Arabia, Mary, so they aren’t exactly easy to come by. And Ted, you remember, the via-enchanter? He was recalled a few months ago. But he was pretty clear that they weren’t readily available. I mean, who knows. I could be holding the equivalent of Durendal or Excalibur or something like that.”

  Amy twirled the glasses case around in her hand. What’s the worst that could happen? she pondered.

  “Wow. Well, hopefully the operation is a success, and you’ll be able to give them back. Hey, why didn’t the other patient take them? Are you sure they work?”

  “They work. Patient B didn’t want them. I asked a lot of questions. You know me.” Amy knew she sounded testy.

  “Okay. It sounds like you know what you’re doing. But you said you wanted advice?” Mary didn’t sound impatient, though Amy knew she would have been in Mary’s place. She took a deep breath.

  “Maybe not advice; more of a favor, really. Can you spare a week or two to come to Boston? I know it’s last minute.”

  “Amy, now is not a good time. I have auditions starting soon. Why do you need me to come to Boston?” Mary asked.

  “I think I need someone to stay with me after the surgery. I wouldn’t discharge a patient without appropriate home-care.”

  “What are you talking about, Amy? You operate all the time, and unless you just broke up with some live-in boyfriend you didn’t tell me about, this is kind of absurd.” Mary liked finding opportunities to remind her sister that there was more to life than her job.

  Amy rolled her eyes at her sister’s nagging. “I’m going to be the patient, Mary. That’s what’s different about this operation.”

  There was a long moment of silence, before Mary asked: “You’re going to be the patient? That’s ridiculous. How are you going to operate on yourself?” Mary sounded confused, her voice rising in pitch.

  “I’m not going to do the operation. Graham, my lead surgeon, will. He’s even better than I am. He’s faster, at least. Graham is more than competent to perform the operation. And this is our last chance, Mary. They’re giving up on the project. The DoD pushed us to make the announcement, and now they’re ready to drop the entire thing to move in a different direction. I know this will work. Seriously. I’m sure of it. After talking with Ted, it does seem like a unique opportunity to actually experience a new sense. Think of what a gift it would be to have a mundane able to actually describe how mage-sight works, in a way we can understand it! It’s an opportunity we can’t pass up.” Amy had started off speaking slowly, but her voice got faster and more certain as she spoke.

  “Amy, I don’t understand half of what you just said. It all sounds crazy. I mean, this is your sight, for Christ sakes! So you have a pair of enchanted glasses. So what? This is a mistake, and you know it. That’s why you called me.”

  “Mary, I called you because I can’t leave the hospital and stay home alone. I need you to come to Boston.”

  “You’re being ridiculous. You’re the doctor, not the patient. I can’t imagine that any halfway-decent doctor would be willing to perform such an operation! What are you thinking? God, your fear of failure is causing you to go completely off the rails!” Mary sounded shrill, but her intense opposition was actually making Amy feel more confident that she was making the right decision.

  “I’m not going to change my mind, Mary. If you won’t come, I’ll call Thomas or Cordelia. But honestly, I would rather have you.”

  “Please don’t do this,” Mary begged.

  “I have to, Mary. I’m doing this. I’ve thought it through.” Amy’s voice was firm.

  “Why are you really calling me?” Mary asked.

  “Please come to Boston.” Amy knew she sounded like she was begging, but she needed Mary. “I have to do this. It’s the only way.”

  Mary was quiet for a moment. “Amy, this is a mistake. A serious mistake. I don’t approve.”

  “I’m not asking for your approval.”

  “I know,” Mary replied unhappily.

  Highly-trained, skilled mages can see the siren spell entwined in our genetic structure. However, there are some common physical signifiers of our mixed mage-fae ancestry that can help in identifying latent sirens. For instance, latent siren eye shape and color typically reflect their mage ancestry, and latent sirens rarely appear older than middle-aged due to their fae heritage. Unique siren-like attributes include above-average physi
cal beauty and an attraction to the sea. Latents living outside coastal regions also contract illnesses at a higher rate than non-latent mundanes. But only mage-testing can definitely determine that a mundane is actually a latent siren.

  – Sirens: An Overview for the Newly-Transitioned, 3rd ed. (2015), by Mira Bant de Atlantic, p. 108.

  Chapter 23

  “Dr. Bant, if you can hear me, raise your hand.” Amy recognized Graham’s voice through the foggy state of partial awareness she found herself in. She twitched her right hand, but found the effort required to lift it was too great. She heard his voice speaking, but the twilight haze of anesthesia had muddled her senses. Until she tried to open her eyes, and panic shot through her: she couldn’t see.

  Amy’s heartrate spiked and she heard the monitor beep. Then she remembered that her eyes would have been bandaged shut after the operation. She twitched her left hand.

  “That’s it. Amy, everything went perfectly.” Graham continued to speak, reviewing the surgery he had just performed. A few of his words punctuated Amy’s haze, and she vaguely understood that Graham had successfully lifted and reattached her sub-optical nerve. The surgery had taken less than five hours. There had been a small bleed in the anterior choroidal artery, which had been repaired.

  “Graham,” Amy whispered hoarsely, her throat sore from the ventilator. “Thank you. We should wait another day before removing the blindfold.”

  “Yes.” Graham sounded relieved. Amy smiled a little. She had not been the only one worried about the operation. She had been so certain the day before while they were doing the pre-operative brain scans for comparison. But when the actual pre-op prep had started, Amy had begun to worry and second guess herself. Usually she felt much better after making a decision, but she had never been so impulsive in her entire life. Perhaps this was her mid-life crisis. Some people bought sports cars and had affairs with men half their age. She had brain surgery.

  “Amy?” Mary had come into the room. Amy felt her sister take her hand and squeeze it. “They’ll only let me stay a minute. But I wanted to let you know that I’m here. I’m staying in your apartment. You need a better cleaning lady, by the way. I’ll be here for the next few weeks. It’s no problem.”

  “Thank you,” Amy whispered, then drifted off to sleep.

  Mary squeezed Amy’s hand, then caught the doctor’s eye as he gestured for her to precede him out of the room. He pulled the door mostly shut behind them. Mary paused in the corridor. “How is she, really?”

  Dr. Graham Litner smiled. “She’s doing extremely well. The surgery went exactly as planned. We’ll remove the blindfold tomorrow, but because the operation was on her nerves, it is quite possible that her vision will not be clear. Also, we know that it can take the brain a little while to ascertain exactly what it is perceiving through the new linkages. It’s possible that she may have false sight or visual hallucinations as she acclimates to her new sense.”

  “How long will she be in the Neuroscience Critical Care Unit?”

  “Because we will be continuing to test her functioning, we’d like her to remain here for a week. But her condition is stable. If this had been any other surgery, we’d be moving her to a nursing unit tomorrow. Go home, Ms. Arnold. Amy is going to be fine. She just needs to rest right now.”

  “When should I come back?” Mary asked.

  “Tomorrow morning. She should be more alert then.”

  They said their goodbyes, and Mary walked slowly towards the elevator. She had never spent time in a hospital, really. It was a terrifying place when you weren’t familiar with it. Both of her parents had died suddenly, sparing her, she supposed, the lengthy hospital visits and frantic calls that many of her friends had faced with their own aging parents. Her only experience in a hospital had been when the kids were born.

  She hadn’t been prepared to see her sister hooked up to so many machines; so weak, her voice a mere rasp. Amy looked near-death, despite the doctor’s blithe assertions. The elevator was taking forever to arrive and she felt her blood pressure rise as she waited. Mary didn’t get angry often, and didn’t like the feeling. She looked down at her hands and was surprised to see they were trembling. She was so angry, she was actually shaking.

  Neither Thomas nor Cordelia had answered their phones. So Mary, of course, was here alone. She had told Mike not to come; it was ridiculous for them both to come to Boston just to wait around. Besides, this was her foolish sister, not his.

  Mary shook her head. Why did Amy have to do this now, just as auditions were about to start? Of course, she reminded herself, her assistant could handle the preliminary organization, and she could continue to work on this season’s repertoire while staying at Amy’s apartment, but she couldn’t miss the auditions themselves! Amy was so utterly thoughtless.

  Why did Amy have to do this at all? She thought in despair. Her hands were firmly balled into fists when the elevator arrived and she stepped in, just as her phone pinged with a text. She fished her phone out of her purse; it was Alicia again, asking about Amy. If John’s favorite aunt was Cordelia, Alicia loved Amy.

  Amy joked that it was her life’s goal be the kind of rich maiden aunt who spoiled her nieces and nephews outrageously. But Amy hadn’t only been generous with her money, she’d been generous with her time: Amy had always been there for Alicia and John. Despite her insane work schedule, she had always shown up. Alicia’s text helped calm Mary somewhat. Thomas had never been around, so why should she expect him now? Cordy was often unreachable too. Her mother used to say that no matter what happened, they would always be family. For Mary, family meant showing up.

  As the elevator door opened to the lobby, Mary took a grim pleasure in the fact that she had shown up; that slight, petty feeling of delight in doing the right thing while her siblings had again failed in their responsibility. Whatever it takes to get yourself through this, she told herself.

  “I’m ready,” Amy announced. It was just after sunset. They had drawn the curtains and replaced the white lights with red and amber safelights, so it must have felt like an old-fashioned dark room used to expose photographs. But instead of watching a picture develop, they would be watching to see if this surgery had succeeded where the first had failed.

  “All right, then. Remember, nerves take a long time to heal. So what happens today may not reflect the final outcome.” Amy found Graham’s tone irritating, but he was speaking more for the benefit of her sister, who hovered anxiously in one corner of the room. Graham slowly cut the bandage that served as her blindfold.

  Amy wasn’t sure whether the IV drip included a sedative, because she didn’t feel worried or anxious at all. She either would or would not see. That’s all there was, and the emptiness she felt at the prospect enabled her to focus exclusively on providing the information necessary for their research.

  “We should try an EEG and MRI tomorrow, regardless of the outcome tonight,” Amy said. She felt a coolness on her eyelids as Graham wiped a wet swab over the area.

  “Okay, try to open them.” Graham was backing away as he gave Amy the instruction. She hadn’t detected a difference in brightness from before he had cut away the blindfold, but the room was so dim, that was as expected. She blinked her eyes slowly open.

  Amy saw. The images were grainy and blurry, as if seen through a rain spattered window, but she could see the hospital table across from her, the framed whiteboard on the wall (though she couldn’t make out the writing on it), and she could see her sister, standing to the left. She turned to Graham, and could see him in better focus, his glasses reflecting strangely in the red light. The room was awash in a red haze, such that she couldn’t tell what colors Mary and the nurse were wearing other than that they were dark and that Graham’s lab coat was lighter in hue.

  “I can see,” she said. Mary let out a deep breath, and Graham stepped closer.

  “The room is a little blurry, but I can see you, Mary, over there,” Amy gestured towards Mary in the corner, “and you, Graha
m. Stop. Let’s not test the acuity yet,” Amy held up her hand to forestall Graham from pulling out the cards. “I can’t read the whiteboard, but I can see that it’s there. No, wait, I think my eyes are just grainy from being closed for so long. Graham?”

  Graham obliged by putting drops in Amy’s eyes and gently swabbing her eyelids again. When Amy opened her eyes this time, the room was in sharper focus, but she still couldn’t read the whiteboard. That wasn’t predictive, though. Barry had seen nothing when he awoke in the darkroom, and it took patients undergoing the Bant Procedure a median of eighteen weeks to achieve 20/20 vision post-surgery.

  Graham was clearly excited, but Amy herself felt removed from the moment — like she was hovering on the outside, observing herself answering Mary’s questions and listening to herself speak to Graham about the tests they should do tomorrow morning. All the while, she wished Ted were here to perform the mage sight testing; without him, this would perhaps be a literal case of the blind leading the blind.

  Magical constructs are not mages. The magick a siren is able to perform is simply part of the multi-level siren spell. Sirens cannot perceive the magick they themselves wield any more than a mundane human can. While mages spend their childhood learning to perceive magick, then decades more learning to cast spells, there is almost no learning curve to working siren magick: it is generally as straightforward as learning how to operate an air conditioner or other magical device. The biggest challenge is in managing your own reactions to the experience of sirenic magick.

  – Sirens: An Overview for the Newly-Transitioned, 3rd ed. (2015), by Mira Bant de Atlantic, p. 16.