Sirens Unbound

by Laura Engelhardt

  “We fae are a resilient species because we don’t dwell on the past or future the way you humans do. We experience the moment for all that it is. Of course, we can also strategize and plan for the future, and we can also look back with regret. We are distractible, but not stupid.”

  “You may not dwell on the past, but you aren’t oblivious to it. I look back at choices my people have made and am so ashamed. This situation is intolerable!” Cordelia’s voice rose. “But what’s the alternative? If your magick weren’t drained to a barely functional level, would you really go back to your pre-war life of parties and games? There’s no going back. And how do we move forward?”

  Titania turned to look at Cordelia. Slowly her appearance misted into a much taller woman, with long, bleached white hair, and purple, wide-set eyes. She wore a pale green dress bordered in purple and her feet were bare. Instead of a metal crown, a wreath woven of heather encircled her forehead before trailing down into the field so that Titania appeared anchored to the moor by a wide train of grass.

  “I’m appearing to you now in almost my natural form,” Titania said, her voice strained. “I hope you appreciate the effort it takes for me to expose myself like this to you.” Instead of the impassive expression Titania had been wearing, her face was lined with evidence of the stress she was under.

  “Your Majesty, please don’t exert yourself like this for me.” Cordelia was genuinely surprised.

  “I do it to demonstrate my sincerity when I tell you: we are dying. More than two hundred and fifty thousand fae were confined here when we lost the war. Before the mages salted the earth with iron, two hundred thousand of us remained. Now we are fewer than fifty thousand. It used to be that one would fade away each week; now three or more fade in a day.” Titania’s voice cracked.

  “The day before you arrived, Angus mac Og died. His perpetual smiling youth and beauty are gone from the Earth. His grace, his joy and delight are gone. How many more of us will succumb without Angus here to remind us of how wonderful the world can be? Cordelia,” Titania closed her eyes, then opened them as she took a deep breath. “I am begging you to help us. I can’t swear that there will be no consequences; I can’t guarantee that the fae will forget and move forward. But we can’t go on like this.”

  A tear dripped down Titania’s face and she looked at her hand, whispering, “I see myself fading. My Oberon died centuries ago and now my last joy has faded with Angus. What is left for me?”

  Cordelia looked into Titania’s eyes and saw suffering. Maybe it was a manipulation, but the empathic pain Cordelia felt looking at her was true enough. Watching Titania standing naked of illusion before her, dripping tears that formed pearls as they rolled off her cheeks, caused an agony of indecision for Cordelia.

  Now that she was finally here, she wished she hadn’t come. For years, she had been so stupidly naïve, thinking she could persuade the High Court. Cordelia had sworn to act as Atlantea’s hands, but Atlantea refused to give orders. Atlantea should be here, not me, Cordelia thought desperately. There was no way the queen could refuse to act if she were here to witness the Aos Sí’s suffering herself, instead of learning of it through filtered reports from Vincent and the other courtiers.

  While Cordelia’s mind swirled with the possibility of disaster, the aphorisms her mother sprinkled throughout her childhood roared back: “It isn’t what you do that will haunt you, it’s what you don’t do;” “Ninety-nine percent of life is just showing up;” “Don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good;” “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” She silenced the whirlpool of thoughts and firmly decided not to care if she were being deceived or what the future might hold. The High Court would not act. Zale couldn’t make a decision, and Atlantea refused to. There was no one else, and she would not be a bystander anymore.

  She took Titania’s hands. “I will help you.” But Titania continued to cry. It was as if once she started, she was unable to stop. Cordelia awkwardly pulled the queen into her arms, embracing her. They stood in the sunlight for several long moments while Titania wept and Cordelia whispered that she would help. And the more they stood there, the more certain Cordelia began to feel. Relieved that she had made her decision, Cordelia reached under the veil of heather to stroke Titania’s corn-silk hair.

  Slowly Titania’s sobs subsided. Perhaps it was a new spirit of hope that lifted some of the oppressive weight from the air, because the wind began to whistle through the heather again, sending it into purple waves as she stepped back and Cordelia let go. Titania’s form misted, as if she were again donning her armor. In a moment, Titania’s impassive face looked out above her sensible plaid jacket and jeans. Only the trailing heather crown and the gleaming pearls scattered on the crushed field evidenced the moment that had come and gone.

  “You can’t stay here,” Cordelia said.

  “We will go back to the forest,” Titania replied.

  “No, I mean the fae can’t stay in England. I can’t remove the iron from the ground. And even if I could, we couldn’t risk the kind of disturbance that would provoke.”

  “This ground is killing us,” Titania said.

  “I know it is.” Cordelia bit her lip softly, thinking. “You said there are fifty thousand fae here, right? Are they as healthy as you appear to be?”

  “Yes. Most are still fit — until they suddenly aren’t.”

  “But it’s the iron that is making you fade?” Cordelia asked.

  “That and the despair,” Titania replied.

  “But most of you can walk?” Cordelia had an idea. When she had originally developed her relocation solution, she had envisioned taking the fae to Africa by boat. The problem with the fae was that their very existence depended on their connection to the Earth. They couldn’t survive in an airplane hundreds of miles above, even if a plane weren’t composed of poisonous steel.

  But the ocean floor was the Earth.

  “There are some who are too iron-ill to walk,” Titania replied, “but most of us can, yes.”

  “One of the legends of the Third Mage War holds that Morgan le Fay’s army donned seven league boots to cross the Taiga to defeat the Nga’s mages at Tallinn. That you covered seven leagues in each step across the boreal forests of Russia and arrived in the nick of time.” Cordelia wasn’t sure bringing up a memory of the war was the best idea, but if true, the boots would make her nascent plan feasible.

  Titania looked sharply at Cordelia. “Parts of the legend are true. Parts are not. History is written by the victors, after all.”

  “I can’t change the landscape of England, and I can’t keep an exodus of fifty thousand a complete secret, but if you truly have enough boots or their like for all, I think perhaps I can take you beneath the sea to Africa,” Cordelia said quickly.

  Titania stared at her for a moment. Then she sighed and extended her arm to Cordelia. “If you are willing to trust me, I shall have to trust you also,” Titania said as Cordelia took her arm.

  Cordelia reminded herself that with the fae, there was no gratitude and no love, only bargains and obsession. They walked in silence back down the moor as the heather was flattened in broad strokes under the increasing wind. Eventually they arrived in the old-growth forest, where they had met several days before. Instead of the forbidding darkness of that morning, the dim light of the overcast day filtered through the heavy canopy to surround them in a dull twilight.

  The heather crown that encircled Titania’s head changed into crown of leaves with white flowers and blackish-red berries, which floated up from the forest floor into the trees that formed a circle around them. Cordelia realized that she was standing with Titania in a faerie circle, and her heart skipped a beat. If the Aos Sí queen had played her false, she was done for: not even a siren could survive a casting within a faerie circle formed by ancient trees.

  Titania sat onto a high-backed chair of light wood with scalloped edges that rose from the ground to catch her. “Please sit,” Titania invited, g
esturing to a chair that was similarly rising from the ground. Cordelia sat, and for a moment, they listened to the bird calls. The forest still felt oppressive to her, but not as ominous as it had before. When Cordelia looked back at Titania, she was pouring tea into a delicate cup painted with tiny violet flowers. A small round table, decked with a bright white tablecloth and carrying an old-fashioned tea set, had appeared between them. A tiered serving tray held tiny sandwiches and scones.

  “Cream and sugar?” Titania asked.

  “Cream, please,” Cordelia responded.

  This was the first display of the fae’s famed magical hospitality that Cordelia had been offered since her arrival. There had been a dinner in Helmsley Castle, but that had felt more like a dinner party at Atlantis House than a fae feast. Cordelia suppressed the urge to giggle. She wasn’t sure whether her giddiness arose out of nervous tension or the absurdity of having high tea in the middle of the woods. Perhaps Titania had conjured tea as some kind of binding to seal their compact. Or maybe because she sensed that Cordelia needed something to settle her nerves. Or perhaps Titania had simply wanted tea.

  Cordelia resolved not to speak first. When in doubt with the fae, it was better to say nothing. She sipped her tea and attempted to appear nonchalant as she peered into the dim light of the forest, wondering how many fae were concealed within the shadows. So it was Titania who eventually broke the silence.

  “There are many legends and myths around the mage wars. I have been alive for two of them now, but there are some of us who fought in all four of them. They have stories that seem fantastical even to me.”

  Titania put her cup down. “I was no one special during the Atlantic War, Cordelia. I was never the battle leader that the Morrigan was or that Ares is today. Not many of the fae are really warriors. We are barely adequate soldiers at best. So, while we have been participants in all the mage wars, we have been perhaps a sideshow to the human battles. Sometimes scapegoats.”

  “I don’t know why you are telling me this,” Cordelia said, hoping she wouldn’t offend Titania, who had been rumored to be extremely proud. So far, Titania had not appeared extraordinarily proud or arrogant, and that made her wonder whether the image Titania was presenting was another illusion or her true self.

  “As background perhaps. You asked about artifacts from the war. Enchantments that I had hoped would have faded from mortal memory by now.”

  “Why would you want the memories to fade?” Cordelia asked.

  “Humans take. Fae take. Everyone covets what they do not have, and takes with violence or seduction when it isn’t given freely. You sirens are more like the fae; you take by compulsion and the illusion of love and lust. Weres are like humans, taking with violence and aggression. I have lived so long and seen so much. When I see the tree of war in full bloom, I know the roots lie in theft. Do your histories discuss how the war started?” Titania poured herself another cup, adding several spoonsful of sugar before stirring silently.

  Cordelia knew she meant the Third Mage War. “I learned that it started in an argument around a chalice, but even our accounts differ as to who owned what and who took what from whom.”

  “I made the chalice as a gift for my changeling daughter so that I would not have to bury another child. A gift to make her fully fae, without sacrificing her inherited humanity. Nga called it my greatest design, dreaming of a changeling army at his back, with human immunity to iron and all the powers of the fae. He demanded it as ‘rent’ owed on lands held by the Aos Sí for millennia.

  “Regret is futile, but how I wish I had never made it or given it to her. I know you sirens suffer when your children die, and perhaps our physical pain is less, but how I suffered when she died.” Titania’s voice was raw and broken. The light in the forest dimmed further into a gloom more reminiscent of true twilight than the filtered sunlight of midday.

  “I’m sorry,” Cordelia knew the words were too little and stupidly banal in the face of Titania’s remembered pain, but she didn’t know what else to say.

  “She lived a remarkable life. But it’s a true saying: beware the gifts of the fae. She would have led a greater life without that gift. Certainly, a longer, if less remarkable one. But I gave it to her in good faith, and she drank from it and transformed from Morgan le Malle to Morgan le Fay. Done.”

  Cordelia wasn’t certain why Titania was telling her this either. She had the impression that Titania was perhaps talking to herself, and Cordelia was only an excuse for her saying what she needed to say. Titania’s face remained impassive, but her voice was husky and harsh. “And so started the coveting and the taking and the war. So perhaps you’ll understand if I’m not so eager to talk about seven league boots.”

  “I only ask about the boots because we need to get you off this poisoned ground,” Cordelia said reasonably, hoping Titania’s mood would shift back to the present, instead of the pain of the past.

  “And how do you plan to get us past the mages left behind to watch our passing? Or your fellow sirens who are here, barely keeping us alive? What do enchanted boots matter if we can’t leave the moors themselves?”

  “There are few mages left in England since the Cabal’s exodus. If you’re powerful enough to manage the illusions you’ve cast so far, you’re strong enough to cast a veil to conceal your exit.”

  “And what of the sirens?”

  “The sirens are triaging the fading fae. They won’t doubt that I have authority to speak for Atlantis on the relocation. By the time they contact Vincent, we’ll be gone. Some will probably even volunteer to help.”

  Since the fae maintained the park as a kind of faerie mound, impervious to satellites and radio waves, phones didn’t work, and contact with the outside world was highly restricted. But even so, Cordelia thought that if she asked the siren support staff to delay their return to Atlantis to give her more time to navigate the politics, they would.

  Before heading deeper into the preserve to meet with Titania, she had first met with the large contingent of sirens stationed here. They had explained how the support staff turnover rate had increased dramatically in the past decade, something Vincent had neglected to inform the High Court about. Except for a handful of utterly-devoted fanatics, most of the sirens had been in Yorkshire for less than a year, and were counting the days before their replacement. Some were terrified of their charges, some horrified by the decline in health they had witnessed. Some had cried when they recounted witnessing an actual fading. A few seemed resolute or indifferent, but they were the minority. Most seemed deeply relieved that Atlantea had supposedly sent Cordelia to investigate. They were waiting for direction, waiting for their time to be up. They would not question her, and she thought they would do what they could to help.

  “And how will you explain your part in this once we’re safely away?”

  Cordelia hesitated. “I don’t know. I think if I just disappear for a while and let things settle down, I can decide next steps. My guess is that most of Atlantis will feel relief that this has finally been resolved. Atlantea will claim this as a sanctioned step, or she’ll denounce it as a rogue act. Either way, she may decide I’m a liability and take action.” Actually, talking through the potential risk was a relief. Sometimes you needed to put your fears into words to puncture the inchoate terror.

  “When Morgan le Fay brought us to England, she parted the sea like Moses and we crossed the channel on the bone-dry sea floor. But she was a mage, and we were a lot stronger then.”

  “There were also a lot more of you and she wasn’t trying to be discreet.” Cordelia was amused. The Atlantic loved her for sure, but Cordelia was no mage to carve a channel like that. She wasn’t even certain the Atlantic loved her enough for this request.

  “You think you can do this? Regardless of what you’ve heard, we can’t breathe underwater. We are immortal, but not unkillable.” A breath of humor infused Titania’s tone as well. Perhaps like Cordelia, she was giddy at the thought of attempting this.

&nbs
p; “I don’t think I could keep you, let alone fifty thousand fae, from drowning if we had to walk at a normal pace beneath the ocean. But if you do have the ability to cross seven leagues in a step, then I think maybe it is possible. Maybe then the ocean will love me enough to let me take you safely beneath the water.”

  Titania looked at Cordelia for a long moment, then drained her tea and set the cup down on the table. “Linden,” Titania said, and one of the trees that formed the faerie circle dissolved into a short man with dark curly hair and a dark complexion.

  “My queen?” He asked, inclining his head.

  “Ready the people. Our Moses has arrived to bring us to the promised land.”

  Linden misted into a huge raven and flew off, cawing loudly. Cordelia still wasn’t sure what to make of Titania’s dramatic statement, when she suddenly felt as if she had been struck. Every nerve in her body was suddenly on fire; her senses darkened. She couldn’t hear, see, smell or taste. But as suddenly as the moment came, the moment lifted. Cordelia felt as if all the air had been knocked out of her lungs, and struggled to inhale. She was utterly exhausted; all her energy went into trying to breathe.

  As she drew in a shaky breath, she also felt amazingly light, but not dizzy. Had she not been gripping her chair with a cramping hand, she felt as if she might have floated away. Cordelia wondered if this were some kind of fae spell to seal her promise.

  “Are you all right?” Titania asked, clearly concerned.

  But Cordelia still felt as if she couldn’t draw in a breath. Titania raised her hand and a brilliant glass chandelier appeared in the air above them, illuminating the clearing in a blue-white light.

  Titania stepped over in front of Cordelia, who was still trying to catch her breath. Her jaw dropped, and she turned Cordelia’s head to one side and stroked the air in front of Cordelia’s neck and chest.

  “Morgan’s geas is gone,” Titania said. “I don’t know how, but I can just make out the remnants of the broken spell.”