Sirens Unbound

by Laura Engelhardt

  “Devin, can you call Thomas back and give him these numbers? It’s a list of everyone he needs to call. Could you call Atlantea and Marisol? Maybe use the bespelled phones.”

  “Fine. But we need to talk more about this; I want to know what else Thomas told you.”

  “Of course,” Mira replied, trying to maintain her outward semblance of calm.

  Amy handed Devin her phone, and he went into the kitchen. For a long time, Mira just looked at Amy, her heart pounding. She had never in her wildest dreams imagined a moment like this. Mira now wished now she had chosen a different man to drain, someone whose fantasy might have been closer to the woman she used to be. Not that it would have mattered; she could never reclaim her original self. Mira thought for a moment.

  Amy had closed her eyes; this was too stressful. Too much.

  Mira rubbed her chin, then spoke softly, her voice just audible over the whir of the air conditioner. “Do you remember back in first grade, when you told me that you’d been the one taking the plastic counting bears from school? I told you that it was all right. The important thing was that you told the truth and that we give them all back. So, you took me into your room, and pulled out this shoebox full of tiny bears that Mrs. Ruane had used to teach counting. There must have been a hundred of those things. You had apparently just slipped one or two into your pocket every day and didn’t bring them back. At some point, the teacher noticed that there were a lot missing and sent a note home to all the parents asking us to talk to you kids and look for the bears.

  “The next day, I had the janitor let me into the school, and I put the box on her chair with an unsigned note saying that you hadn’t meant to bring them home; and then, once you had them, you didn’t know what to do with them all. But we had discussed it, and you wouldn’t take anything ever again.

  “You were so worried that you had been stealing and now you were going to Hell. You were so sweetly earnest. But you cried as if the world had ended, and when I told you everything could be fixed and forgiven, you practically leapt into my arms with relief. I guess I hadn’t been paying enough attention, and you had been moping around for weeks under the weight of this awful burden.”

  Tears started to trickle down Amy’s face as Mira told the story. This woman didn’t look anything like her mother. She was at least thirty years younger than Amy. Short and black, with brown eyes. She sounded nothing like her mother. But no one knew that story. Amy had almost forgotten it herself, it had happened so long ago. She felt almost as if she were outside of her body watching the scene unfold. Sometimes a feeling is so strong you don’t even know what it is.

  Mira was still talking, but Amy wasn’t listening. This is my mother, she thought. My mother is here.

  Most permanent geases are either inherited (such as Morgan le Fay’s curse) or imposed on the very young (such as enclave bindings). Temporary geases can be laid on children, though are more commonly imposed on apprentice mages (teenagers) and questors (adults). While those bound by temporary geases often report feeling confined by their bindings, those permanently bound generally do not report any discomfort. However, Australian scholars opine that those bound by permanent geases do not recognize their discomfort only because they are unaware of life without bindings, and are therefore better adapted to their yoke.

  – Sirens: An Overview for the Newly-Transitioned, 3rd ed. (2015), by Mira Bant de Atlantic, p. 96.

  Chapter 31

  Mary was stuck in Beltway traffic when she felt as if a tornado lifted her out of her seat, cast her two stories into the air, then slammed her back down until suddenly the law of gravity no longer applied. After the breath was knocked out of her, she suddenly felt weightless, as if floating in the eye of the storm. The only thing that saved her from a major accident was the fact that she had just put her car into park to get her phone out of her purse in the backseat.

  Once she was able to breathe again, she heard the honking of the cars behind her and pulled over to the side of the road, putting her flashers on. Mary just sat for a moment, wondering if she’d had a heart attack or stroke. But since that sudden storm of pain had passed, she felt drunk. The kind of sloppy, happy, party-drunk where everyone is your best friend and the world melts into an effervescent joyous hum. Mary felt so good, the memory of that excruciating pain seemed remote.

  Then Mary’s phone began to ring in her purse, which was still in the backseat. It was Thomas, of all people! As she spoke with him, all of the joy she had felt dissolved again into a kind of vague anger. She just sat in her car, feeling empty and rather afraid.

  This wasn’t the first time her understanding of the world had crumbled. Her father’s death when she was eight, then her mother’s when she was twenty-three. Now her mother’s what — resurrection? Reemergence? She pulled back onto the highway and drove to work in a kind of daze.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” Mike demanded when Mary had told him what had happened earlier in the day. “Did you talk to Jack and Alicia?” he added, without giving her time to answer.

  “And tell them what? That they’ve been under a spell that was just broken or that their aunt and uncle have been lying to them their entire life?”

  “So your mother is still alive, and has apparently been masquerading as different people since 1988 to keep an eye on you?” Mike asked.

  “That’s about it. Sirens. What a load of crap,” Mary said.

  Mike was having a hard time understanding how he had failed to detect the amount of lies and deception that had gone into this preposterous charade. “I don’t understand how this could be. I mean, I would have sensed it if your family had been lying about this.”

  “How often though did we talk about any of this? I can’t remember Cordy or Thomas really saying something like, ‘since Mom passed away,’ or anything like that. And no one has really told me what a siren is, anyway.” Mary was almost slurring her words at this point.

  She had gone into work on autopilot and spent most of the day just staring at her computer screen. Her accompanist actually had to come get her for rehearsal, when normally she got set up in the hall well before he did. Mary knew that they had rehearsed one of the new pieces, but for the life of her, she couldn’t remember which one it had been.

  And then she had driven home in a fog. When she got there, she walked straight to the liquor cabinet, and decided to drink until Mike got home. It was as if she couldn’t think properly without him to bring her back to Earth. She still felt as if she were lighter than air.

  “I never liked Thomas,” Mike said, pouring himself a second drink. When he walked in and saw Mary, drink in hand, he knew something must be wrong. But this was far stranger than he could have ever expected.

  “I know. But you loooove Cordelia,” Mary said, flopping back on the sofa.

  “Have you spoken to Amy?” Mike asked.

  “I called her and it went into voicemail. Then she called me back and I didn’t want to talk anymore.” Mary felt her lip curl into a pout. It was nice to be this drunk, she thought. She never drank. Well, not much, anyway.

  “I’m going to call the kids, then let’s talk.”

  Mary half-listened to Mike talking with Jack and Alicia. She really should have thought to call them. She had almost gotten into a car accident, after all. They could have been hurt. But she could hear Mike talking to them, and knew they were okay. She didn’t really feel worried; one of the benefits of heavy drinking, she supposed.

  Mike came back to the couch.

  “Thomas called them,” he said. “Alicia was studying for a test and thought it was a migraine, so she was a little surprised to hear a few hours later that she was actually a ‘latent’ form of a mage construct. Thomas promised to send her a book about it. Jack was in a car on his way back from a client meeting when it happened, and his reaction freaked the driver out. He was at the ER waiting to get checked out when he got Thomas’ call. What is this book Thomas is talking about, anyway?”

  “Thomas said s
omething about that to me, too. Mom was always writing when we were kids. She said she had a job writing appliance manuals. Ha. I guess that’s what we are, a kind of appliance. Look at me; I’m a vacuum cleaner, Mike!”

  Mike ignored Mary’s off-balanced portrayal and started to pace. “So, let me talk this through. Sirens are constructs and have been around since the age of Aphrodite. They were cursed during the Atlantic War with some geas that prevented them from telling their children about sirens and their children from understanding anyone who told them about sirens. Okay so far?”

  “You betcha,” Mary closed her eyes, but felt like she was spinning, instead of that nice floaty feeling she’d had since the morning. She quickly opened them again. Perhaps she’d drunk too much on an empty stomach.

  “Your mother is a siren, but she hadn’t always been a siren. Something about Cordelia’s birth ‘activated’ her and your father.”

  “Presto!” Mary announced, “Sirens.”

  “Right. So sirens have some weird effect on humans, where the opposite sex loves them and the same sex hates them. That’s how your dad died. Because he didn’t know he’d been changed or whatever and the men who beat him to death were somehow compelled to do it because he was a male siren.”

  “Yup. Like phero… phero…” Mary couldn’t get the word out.

  “Pheromones,” Mike finished for her, and Mary tried touching her nose, but missed and nodded instead. “And your mother and Cordelia would have the same effect on you, except you and Amy have been on the pill since puberty, which counteracted the effect.”

  Mary nodded again.

  “But then, your brother turns into a siren — not sure how that happened,” Mike looked at Mary, who shrugged.

  “And after he changes, your mother’s appearance starts changing frequently. So, because she can’t explain herself to you, she fakes her death at sea. And since then, she’s shown up from time to time to watch over you from afar.”

  “That’s what Thomas said.” Mary swallowed more of her drink, knowing even as she did it that she had taken one sip too much. She bolted to the bathroom and threw up.

  When she staggered back into the room some time later, Mike was on his laptop. He pointed to a glass of water and Mary sat down and started drinking it slowly. “So, there are a lot of myths or legends about sirens that I found online. Some of the articles detail what you describe, others are a bit different. All of them describe sirens as having incredible power in their voices. Power to compel members of the opposite sex into doing things.

  “Some talk about siren power over fertility — describing an ability to take fertility from one person and somehow bestow it on another. Some others talk about sirens as having the ability to change into fish, or half fish, like mermaids or mermen. And others talk about the sirens as a kind of gift to the fae to help protect them from iron poisoning. There’s a lot out there, but none of it from any reputable source. I don’t know what’s real or not. I can’t discern truth from lies without the person in front of me. Some of these sites talk about sirens as having a shape-shifting capability, but they are kind of sparse on the details.”

  Mike turned away from the computer and looked at her. “They never recovered your mother’s body. I’ve tried to think about all the different interactions I’ve had with Cordelia and Thomas. I can’t say they’ve been lying to me and I just didn’t notice. But maybe. When you lie to me, it doesn’t feel the same way as when other people lie. Maybe that’s a siren thing.”

  Mike looked troubled. “Should we go to Boston?”

  Mary finished her water. She was wrung out, and the room was still spinning. “I think I need to go to bed,” she said.

  Sirens are sometimes called “children of Aphrodite,” because Aphrodite used her own genes as a key element of the siren spell. This almost poetic term is most commonly used in admonitions to remind sirens of their primary purpose of fae preservation. However, it also speaks to the fact that all sirens are descended from one of the greatest mages who ever lived. While a siren’s magical powers are far narrower in scope than those of a typical mage, they are nevertheless formidable.

  – Sirens: An Overview for the Newly-Transitioned, 3rd ed. (2015), by Mira Bant de Atlantic, p. 13.

  Chapter 32

  Mira started a full pot of coffee, then sat down at the kitchen table to finish watching the sun rise over the harbor. They had talked late into the night. Devin was sleeping on the sofa in the living room now, but Mira felt wired. She didn’t know whether the unholy optimism coursing through her stemmed from the geas being lifted, but she was almost giddy in her joy. She had her family back. Mary was taking it hard, but that was only to be expected. She would come around. Mary had never been comfortable with change or uncertainty, and hid her anxiety in a flurry of anger. She just needed a little time. Mike would help her. He was a good man.

  And Amy was already coming around, though it seemed like she had suddenly switched off her emotions when she started peppering Mira with questions. Amy had been almost like a robot. Jack used to do that, too: separate himself from a conflict to lay out the issues logically. There were times she thought him cold and unfeeling, but mostly she had been grateful for his calm under pressure. He was always reliable in any sort of crisis, and Amy seemed to take after him.

  Last night, while Amy flexed her researcher muscles, Mira tried to tamp down her bubbling joy to respond in kind. Amy wasn’t ready for a hug, or any emotional contact; she wanted answers. So Mira had slipped into her earnest professor persona to try to accommodate.

  Amy had quizzed Devin as well, watching as he sweated trying to even say the word “siren.” The geas still held him tight, and Amy seemed fascinated by its effect. She remarked that she could see something constricting or twisting around Devin as he tried to answer her questions or talk about sirens in her presence. Mira finally had to tell Amy to stop; it was like watching torture. Amy’s inquisition was probably why Devin hadn’t woken up yet, despite being a light sleeper. Mira knew how exhausting fighting the geas could be.

  Atlantea had definitely felt the breaking, and Devin’s explanation had not helped. She called Mira directly several times — and she rarely contacted Mira at all, except to “request” her attendance in Atlantis. Atlantea hated any form of communication other than face-to-face conversation.

  While the breaking of the geas caused Amy to become almost single-mindedly focused, it had pushed Atlantea into a maelstrom of contradiction. Atlantea was simultaneously terrified that the mage Thomas harbored could break such a powerful spell, while seeming to rejoice at the same sensation of lightness they now all felt. In their final discussion, Atlantea had raged that Thomas had brought his mage “paramour” to Atlantis, only to whisk her away after performing the impossible.

  “If you want the mage back, have the Atlantic bring her back,” Mira finally said in exasperation. “They left by boat, right?”

  “Yes, but they boarded a plane on Ascension Island, and I don’t know where they are now,” Atlantea complained.

  Mira wasn’t sure whether Atlantea truly wanted them back. It was far easier for her to rage now that they were gone, than to have acted to keep them close while they were still within her reach. “You waited too long to pull them back,” Mira said sharply. Perhaps not the wisest thing to say when Atlantea was this emotional. Today would not be a good day for anyone to venture out in the water.

  Devin didn’t hide his shock at Mira’s tart tone. Maybe she was being overly familiar with Atlantea. But there was something about feeling so utterly lightened that made her want to be as reckless as Thomas. And maybe her bluntness had helped Atlantea achieve some semblance of calm, because they had ended the call on a more familiar note: with Atlantea cautioning Mira to remember the reason she was in Boston. She was not, under any circumstances, to leave Amy’s side until she had ascertained the full scope of Amy’s enhanced sight, and discovered what the mages wanted with her.

  Mira heard Devin stirring o
n the couch before he sat up, twisting his neck from side to side. The cracking seemed louder than normal in the silence of the morning. Devin padded into the kitchen as the coffee pot beeped. “Coffee’s done,” Mira said to Devin unnecessarily, but she enjoyed hearing her voice over the soft gurgle of the machine. It seemed somehow richer than before.

  Devin poured a cup of coffee for Mira, adding a generous amount of milk and sugar. One benefit of their spending so much time together was that he knew how she took her coffee. But it wasn’t the broken geas or the easy familiarity that came from being together for so long that had changed her mind about Devin.

  She knew she trusted people too easily and had steeled herself against Devin out of fear that he was another of Louisa’s pawns, set to eliminate any risk to Atlantis. But after months of working together, culminated by his willingness to help Amy last night, Mira finally allowed herself to believe that Devin was exactly what he appeared to be: an honorable man. His mission was to keep both her and Amy alive, and she was infinitely grateful for Atlantea’s foresight in pairing him with her.

  “Who is this mage Thomas is with?” Devin asked, as he poured himself a cup of coffee. The few hours of sleep seemed to have only paused their conversation.

  “She’s the via-enchanter who was indentured to Gerel, the vampire ruler of Rio. I’m not sure how they got together. Honestly, I didn’t think she and Thomas had been in contact since we bargained for languages more than five years ago. But Thomas seemed beside himself with pride that he had been able to extricate her.”

  “It seems odd that she would go to Thomas, or that Thomas would take her in, from what I know of him.”

  “Everyone deserves to be a hero sometimes,” Mira remarked sharply. Thomas was still a child by siren standards, and it was unfair for anyone to judge him as they would a siren in his prime just because he had sired two active children.