Siren Spell

by Cidney Swanson

  “Mom—”

  Her mother held up a hand and in response to years of training, Giselle fell silent.

  “We need to talk about this now,” said her mother. “Tonight.”

  Giselle shrugged, knowing her mother despised the indefinite-ness of shrugs, but she also knew this conversation, or some variation of it, had been lying in wait for her these past twelve months. Fine. They would have the conversation now. She had prepared for it as she would have done for an essay test or science exam and was as ready as she would ever be.

  “The height standards are changing,” began Giselle.

  Her mother continued as if Giselle hadn’t spoken. “Nilz, one of your grandmother’s protégés, is planning a revival of A Chorus Line in two years—”

  Giselle raised her voice, speaking over her mother. “There’s Christina Arestis. She’s what? Five-ten, easy.”

  “You used to love Broadway jazz,” said her mother.

  “Christina Arestis has had an incredible career. And there’s Joanna Myers—”

  “I remember how you couldn’t sit still in Miss Ellen’s class,” said Ruslana, smiling nervously.

  “Mom!”

  All Giselle’s carefully prepared arguments and examples vanished as she realized her mother hadn’t brought up the subject for discussion; she’d brought it up to make a pronouncement, irrefutable as a papal bull.

  Her mother raised her eyes to meet her daughter’s. “A production like Nilz’s A Chorus Line could launch a great career for you. It’s time for you to consider other options.”

  A Chorus Line was not an option. It was a jail sentence.

  “I don’t like jazz,” snapped Giselle. “I liked it once for six months, but that was a million years ago.” She gestured to her feet. “I have ballet feet. Perfect ballet feet. Look at my feet.”

  Her mother didn’t look.

  Giselle crossed one foot atop her lap as a sort of Exhibit A. Her pinkie toe was short like most people’s, but her other four toes formed a uniform line. Her feet were a singular miracle providing a strong support base for pointe work that other dancers would have given their eye teeth to possess. When other dancers lost toenails during rehearsal week, Giselle did not. She had zero tendencies to bunions. Her arch was strong but not overly exaggerated. She had exactly what a dancer needed for a long career on pointe. She didn’t have to point out any of these things because, to Miss Ruslana’s experienced eye, her foot shouted them.

  Her mother’s gaze traveled across her desk, landing on a dusty Rolodex. “There’s that modeling agency that was after me for years,” she muttered.

  Giselle slid her foot off her lap, slamming it hard on the wood floor.

  “You know I don’t want to be a model!”

  She was furious. She couldn’t think clearly. She had no idea how to corral the conversation. How to make her mother stop from looking for alternatives to a career in ballet.

  How to make herself short.

  Her mother looked up and regarded Giselle from eyes so nearly like her daughter’s. Giselle’s flashed angry fire, but her mother’s were expressionless.

  Giselle hated her mother’s ability to emotionally detach just when things got worst.

  As if hearing her daughter’s thoughts, Ruslana’s hard gaze softened. She tapped her thumb against her forefinger, middle finger, ring finger, pinkie.

  Giselle closed her eyes to block the frantic movement. When she opened her eyes and spoke, her voice was calm again.

  “I want to dance. That’s all. Ballet is all I’ve ever wanted.”

  “You’re a strong dancer,” replied her mother. “Better than I was at your age. But you’re too tall. You’re not going to find a company that will take you, milaya moya.”

  Giselle barely registered her mother’s use of the Russian term of endearment. The full impact of the conversation was now pummeling her like an ocean wave, dragging her under, suffocating her.

  “You’re telling me to quit,” Giselle whispered. As she spoke the words, the room seemed to turn in uncontrolled spirals, like Hilarion when he fell under the spell of the willis.

  “No, dear,” said her mother, placing a hand gently on her daughter’s. She smiled, tentatively. “But I’m telling you to change your expectations. And to take some time these next few months to ask yourself if there’s something else you would love as much as ballet.”

  Giselle felt her throat tightening. Her mother knew the answer to that. The words stuck in her throat: Ballet is my life.

  Her mother continued. “I’m telling you this now so that …”

  Ruslana must have seen something in her daughter’s face that made her stop. Giselle used the pause to pull her hand out from under her mother’s.

  “Sixteen is a good age to make a change,” Ruslana said softly, drawing her own hand back.

  “I don’t want a change. I know what I want to do with my life. I’ve known since I was four. Nothing has changed.”

  Except her height.

  “Nothing that matters,” Giselle added aloud.

  “It’s been a long day,” said her mother. She reached for Giselle as though she was going to pat her shoulder or run a hand along her cheek, but Giselle recoiled.

  “I need rest,” said her mother. “And so do you. We can talk more tomorrow. Think about what I’ve said.”

  Giselle rose, but she did not say goodnight. She did not kiss her mother on both cheeks, Russian-style. And she most definitely did not close the door quietly.

  The sound of the slamming bedroom door woke Sasha, who barked an earnest alarm, eager to protect her family.

  “Hush, Sasha,” said Katya, landing double pirouettes as Giselle stomped upstairs to her bedroom.

  “Drop your left shoulder.” Giselle called the correction automatically.

  Katya groaned and dropped her left shoulder.

  Upstairs, after Giselle slammed the bedroom door, doubts assaulted her. Her post-audition consultations with her mother were always focused on the cast list. Her mind raced, thinking about all they hadn’t discussed. Her mother hadn’t even said what role Katya would be dancing. What role she would be dancing.

  She took the stairs back down two at a time. Of course she had the role of Giselle. How could she not?

  Her mother was still sitting at her desk; her back, head, and neck curved into the shape of the letter “C.” The sight of her mother as curve instead of line jarred Giselle but didn’t silence her.

  “Mom, I’m dancing Giselle, right?” She stood, waiting for her mother to raise her head with a tired but sincere smile and say, Of course, milaya moya.

  Her mother did neither of these things.

  The silence between the two Chekhov women became threatening, and the hum of every electrical thing in the small house seemed to swell. Just outside Ruslana’s bedroom door, Sasha growled, disapproving of the charge in the air.

  “Mom?”

  No reply.

  “Mom!”

  A reply. “The cast list will be posted tomorrow.”

  Softer: “Mom?”

  “I’m taking a bath.” Her mother rose and crossed to the bathroom.

  “Mom?”

  Panic closed Giselle’s throat.

  She heard the snick of the bathroom lock.

  3

  BUCOLIC WITHOUT BEING IDYLLIC

  Giselle’s night did not improve.

  Katya came to bed late, chattering at high velocity and vowing never to drink coffee again. And then, just as Giselle finally worked up the courage to ask her sister about the conversation with their mother, Katya began producing Katya-sized snoring sounds.

  It took Giselle until well past one in the morning to fall asleep, dreaming without realizing she dreamed.

  Thorns pricked her. Thorns from blackberry brambles which had climbed through the girls’ bedroom window and were now growing at an alarming rate.

  “Katya,” she whispered, sitting up. “Wake up! We’ve got to get out of here!”
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br />   Katya leaned over the edge of the bunk beds, shaking her head in an I-knew-it sort of way. When she spoke, her voice trembled. “Mamulya has been replaced by an evil goblin, and she’s growing the bramble to trap us so she can cook us and eat us like Baba Yaga. Doesn’t Baba Yaga eat children for breakfast in the stories?”

  “I thought Baba Yaga was pretend,” murmured Giselle, kicking at an approaching vine.

  Katya’s brown eyes flew wide. “Oh, no, Giselle! She’s real. She just couldn’t travel to America until airplanes were invented.”

  “We’d better go check Mamulya’s room,” whispered Giselle, “To see if she really has been replaced by a goblin.” It occurred to her that a goblin-mother might behave as her own mother had done earlier. Perhaps Katya was right. Surely her real mother would never have told her to give up ballet.

  Together, the girls crept ballet-quiet down the stairs and into their mother’s bedroom. In their mother’s bed, they spied a dark-haired crone.

  “It’s her!” cried Katya. “The goblin queen!”

  Giselle gasped in shock as their mother’s eyes opened. They were pupil-less white eyes.

  They were goblin eyes.

  Giselle awoke, kicking at her covers, panting for breath.

  It was only a nightmare, she told herself. Only a bad dream.

  Downstairs, Sasha’s toenails made a click-click-click noise, echoing in the quiet before dawn, comforting, reassuring.

  Reaching for additional comfort, Giselle switched on her bedside light, casting a pink glow in the cavern of her lower bunk. She and Katya had outgrown their pink lamp shades at least eight years ago, but money existed for important things like tights and pointe shoes.

  Giselle turned to make certain there were no brambles growing through the window and then gave herself a stern shake for allowing her imagination to run away like that. Above the heater vent next to the window, her pointe shoes hung where they did every night, to make sure they dried completely. The forlorn blackened edge of her shoe-ribbon fluttered as a breath of wind blew through the window. She would have to re-sew a new ribbon to her tired shoe. The shoes might last another week, with the judicious application of pointe shoe glue.

  She sighed and tapped her pink lampshade, causing the bangled fringe around the bottom to shiver. The nightmare faded and her thoughts shifted to last night’s conversation with her mother. Her chest tightened as she recalled her mother’s refusal to tell her what role she had. Giselle had navigated twelve end-of-summer auditions, but she’d never had to deal with the anguish of not knowing how she’d been cast. Certainly she’d grown more attached to the outcomes of auditions as she’d grown older, but she’d always known ahead of time what role she would receive. During the last few years, her mother had encouraged Katya and Giselle to maintain the appearance of surprise when the cast list went up, but that was all it was: an appearance. And as the number of older boys dwindled each year, in related proportion to (but not because of) Giselle’s height, it became simple to decide who would dance which part.

  But this year, for the first time in her life, Giselle felt a rising panic about her role.

  She shifted in her bed, worrying the fleecy edge of her blanket with her left hand. Outside, the chickens squawked in anticipation of their daily escape from the henhouse. Someone must have gone outside already. Katya, probably. Maybe that’s what had awakened her from the nightmare—Katya getting out of bed.

  Giselle leaned out from her bunk to stare through the window overlooking the yard, anticipating her sister’s appearance at the chicken coop. But Katya wasn’t the one who opened the coop and scattered feed this morning. By the pale light of the new day, Giselle saw her mother’s trench-coated form. Her mother returned to the house and Giselle heard a scraping sound, the back door hesitating as it grazed the door-jamb, swollen with moisture. The back door shut with a quiet click. A minute later Giselle heard the front door open and close. Heard the sound of her mother’s booted feet as they retreated along the sidewalk.

  Why was her mother leaving so early?

  Giselle’s stomach felt suddenly hollow.

  “Are you awake?” murmured Katya, still in bed above her sister.

  In response, Giselle got out of bed.

  “First day of school,” said Katya.

  Together the sisters stumbled through the school morning routine they’d abandoned over summer vacation. Going back to school again felt like a new combination at the barre, uniting familiar with unfamiliar. Nothing was where it was supposed to be, and Ruslana, who knew the secret lodgings of school lunch bags and ice packs, had left the girls to figure it out on their own.

  “We could wake Babushka,” suggested Katya as they finished ransacking the pantry.

  “She won’t know where Mom hid anything,” replied Giselle. “Except the emergency cash, and we already know where that is.”

  Katya stared wide-eyed as Giselle drew a twenty dollar bill from the powdered sugar box in the pantry.

  “We’ll take the car, and I’ll drive us to Carbs for lunch. Mom owes me,” muttered Giselle, shoving the bill in her bag.

  “She’s never left us to fend for ourselves on the first day of school.” Katya spoke timidly, as if to convince herself it was okay to steal the twenty.

  It was true that their mother typically made a big deal out of the first day of school, taking pictures by the rhododendron bush out front. It had to be, in Russian phrasing, “raining as from buckets,” for their mother to skip school pictures.

  This morning as the girls stepped outside, the rain seemed to have given up the fight, and a bleary sun was doing its best to pierce small breaks in the cloud cover. Katya grabbed the copy of the Foulweather Free Press from the porch.

  Giselle drove the old Mercedes, and silence settled between the sisters like a creeping fog. Katya turned the pages of the paper, folding each back on itself and pinching the crease exactly as their mother did.

  Breaking the silence, Katya emitted a tiny gasp.

  Giselle looked over, her brows drawn together. “What?”

  “There’s been a siren sighting. By someone just outside of Astoria, downriver.”

  Downriver meant farther from Portland. It also meant closer to Foulweather. The creatures weren’t known as the Sirens of Foulweather for nothing.

  “A sighting,” asked Giselle, “Or an attack?”

  “No one calls them attacks any more,” Katya said, her mouth slanting in disapproval. “Other than Babushka. You say ‘visitation’ if you think they’re supernatural beings or ‘sighting’ if you think they’re … real,” concluded Katya, after floundering for the opposite of “supernatural.”

  “There’s a difference between a sighting and an attack,” Giselle replied, insistent. “A difference that matters.”

  “I know.” Katya sighed and gave a tiny shake of her head. “This sounds like it was an … attack.” Then, as if to assuage her guilt for using the pejorative term, she added, “They say the sirens can’t help it anymore than a shark or a lion. They’re predators.”

  Giselle, who was not entirely sure this was true, let the comment pass.

  Katya continued, summarizing the news article. “Three boys say they saw half a dozen sirens disappear into the Columbia with a fourth boy who is currently reported as missing. One of the boys says he saw a tail fluke, you know, like when a whale—”

  “Oh, good grief,” said Giselle, interrupting. “The sirens don’t have tails, which means the boys were lying.”

  Her relief was palpable. Whether the creatures were natural or supernatural, she had no wish to see one again.

  Katya turned the page, shifting one shoulder in a you never know sort of way. She re-creased the paper.

  “They don’t have tails,” Giselle said again.

  As to their predatory behavior, Giselle felt less certain. All the fairytales agreed in that regard, whether they called the creatures sirens or veela or willis or rusalki or water goblins. Giselle considered telling
Katya how she knew what she knew, but they were already running late for school, and it had happened so long ago. If it had even happened….

  “The missing boy will probably turn up, hung over, in the woods outside of town,” said Giselle.

  As the girls turned onto Foulweather’s Main Street, also the highway paralleling the Multnomah Channel, they passed media vans from two of the big Portland news stations, heading north.

  “When was the supposed sighting?” asked Giselle.

  “Yesterday. We would’ve heard if we hadn’t been at auditions all day long,” Katya murmured. “What do you want to bet the vans are heading for where the Multnomah Channel meets the river?”

  “They must really be digging for stories today if they sent vans all the way out here on such shabby evidence of an attack,” was all the response Giselle would give.

  Christened Fol Pogoda two hundred years earlier by a group of Russians who’d fished the channel, Foulweather had gained notoriety due to the attacks. The small town was to Portland not so much a little sister as a sort of possibly illegitimate sibling it was thought best not to enquire after. Foulweather was bucolic without being idyllic. If Portlanders drove to it at all, it was probably because they’d missed the bridge to Sauvie Island and hadn’t yet realized it.

  “The attack thirteen years ago must’ve been the last time any news vans have come out this far,” said Katya. “I mean, other than for football.”

  “They don’t come for our ballet productions, that’s for sure,” muttered Giselle. This wasn’t entirely fair; several of the Portland stations had been unsuccessful for years in their attempts to interview Ykaterina Alekseyevna Chekhov.

  Giselle watched the retreating vans as she brought her grandmother’s car into the parking lot All Arts High School shared with its sister institution, Foulweather High.

  Katya set the paper down. After a moment, she turned to Giselle and spoke softly.

  “Everything will be fine, you know.”

  Giselle knew her sister wasn’t talking about the supposed attack or the media vans. Katya was referring to the ballet auditions.