Giselle snorted. Why else were they called the Sirens of Foulweather?
Along the shallow shelf of river beach behind the reporter, Giselle could see a scattering of combs, brushes, mirrors, bunches of flowers, and, oddly, a black and white teddy bear with a missing eye. The reporter indicated the items, explaining the offerings were left anonymously by people hoping to placate the water creatures, a tradition that stretched back to the time Russians populated the area and left similar offerings. The reporter then described the attack thirteen years ago, hinting at the grisly details, and delivering all of it with a professional lack of emotion.
Giselle stood and turned off the TV, suddenly angered by the cold detachment of the reports. How could they treat this as though it were no more important than a mall opening or a ballot measure?
A shiver crept along Giselle’s spine.
The sirens were back.
7
SHE KNEW THE STORIES WERE TRUE
When Giselle awoke the next morning, it was from dreams of ghastly, dripping girls with sharp teeth. Her heart was beating out rapid frappés. The chickens were all squawking and at least one was screeching.
Please don’t let it be Nureyev, she prayed to any listening Being. Nureyev was just a chicken, but she was Katya’s just-a-chicken, once a golden ball of fluff that fit in the girls’ hands or pockets. Although four years had turned Nureyev into a bundle of dirty feathers and ugly, clawed feet, Katya still adored the hen.
In the shriek-filled darkness, Giselle heard her mother throw open the back door. Heard her stomp down the deck stairs to the coop. It was one of those moments Giselle felt glad she was not the adult of record in the house. With Ruslana’s approach, the dreadful screeching noise died down, replaced by anxious clucking.
“Go on, get out! You stupid rodent!”
Her mother uttered a few Russian curses of the variety reserved for special occasions. In fact, they were the same curses Ruslana had uttered the day Babushka and the girls had brought the fluffy new chicks home. Giselle recalled the feeling of those words rolling around in her mouth until Babushka caught her teaching them to Katya. There had been soap and mouths, unhappily together, and promises never to repeat the filthy words again.
Outside, Ruslana uttered one of the filthy words, slamming the coop shut. There was a banging sound as she hit the fence with something wooden. Probably a broom, Ruslana’s weapon of choice for dirt, possum, raccoon, or spider. The chickens quieted, clucking softly to reassure one another.
Giselle wanted to go downstairs to inquire if Nureyev had sustained any injury, but she didn’t want to speak to her mother, and it was a sad fact that the part of her that didn’t want to speak to her mother was stronger than the part of her that needed to know if Katya’s pet hen had survived.
“I’m going to make sure everything’s okay,” said Katya.
Her sister’s voice, drifting from the top bunk, was furry with sleep. Giselle heard Katya thump onto the floor and down the stairs. Giselle’s phone informed her it was nearly 6:00. She rose and dressed.
In the kitchen, the samovar hissed promises of caffeine and Babushka hissed heavily accented warnings about the arrival of rusalki.
Katya bit her nails, chin resting on drawn up knees, her eyes darting between their mother and grandmother, who were clearly not on good terms this morning.
Giselle lifted her chin at her sister to catch her attention. She narrowed her eyes a fraction, staring at Katya’s hands. Katya ceased gnawing her nail-less finger ends. If Babushka and their mother were having one of those days, Katya would need something left to chew on at the studio that afternoon.
“Bad dreams, grandmother?” asked Giselle.
Sighing heavily, the old woman poured her granddaughter a steaming cup of chai, the Russian term for tea.
“Ochen, ochen,” Babushka replied in Russian. It meant very, very or indeed, indeed; Giselle was never sure which.
“I had one, too,” murmured Giselle, stirring sugar into her tea.
“You would, of course, considering who is your father,” replied her grandmother. Her botched word order told Giselle her grandmother’s dream had left her badly shaken.
“Enough of that,” snapped Ruslana. She punctuated the warning by slamming a hard-boiled egg onto each of their plates.
Any fears Giselle had that her mother would force a conversation about what had happened yesterday in the studio now evaporated. Ruslana was completely preoccupied with her own mother’s Russian mutterings.
Sasha whined from her dog-bed. She disapproved of conflict.
“Nureyev hasn’t laid an egg all week,” said Katya, also eager for a cessation of hostilities. “I need to hook up the light in the coop. I keep forgetting.”
“Turn off fountain when you are doing this,” murmured Babushka.
“Mamulya!” warned Ruslana. “Enough of your nonsense.” She slammed the dishes cupboard for emphasis, rattling the plates.
Babushka ignored her.
“They are drawn to water, the terrible girls. Long, flowing hair, they had in my dreams, and slippery dripping arms.”
As Giselle swallowed, her egg felt like dry ashes going down her throat. They were having the same dreams.
“And horrible eyes,” continued her grandmother. “With pupils only of white. Like in Pushkin.”
“I saw a spider in our bedroom,” Katya reported hopefully.
Giselle looked to see her grandmother’s response. In Babushka’s view, spiders were good omens.
“And the car is covered in bird poop,” Katya added.
Babushka smiled softly, patting Katya’s hand. “Well, two good omens in one morning. Maybe we are not perishing when slippery girls visit.”
Ruslana slammed the last cupboard and turned to the three at the table.
“No one is perishing. It was one attack. And it wasn’t even in Foulweather proper. The only problem in this house is an old woman who had too much sugar in her tea before she went to bed.”
Giselle made a mental note to avoid “too much sugar” before going to bed, because, really, she could do without the nightmares.
Babushka muttered something in Russian. Giselle didn’t catch what was said, but Ruslana did.
“We auditioned Giselle,” Ruslana said to her mother. “We are producing Giselle. The sirens’ arrival has nothing to do with Giselle. End of discussion!”
Babushka rose and shuffled to the built in buffet in the adjacent room. She only shuffled at home. In public, she always strode, ever the grande dame of the Kirov.
“Where this is?” she muttered, jumbling her word order as she rifled through a drawer with studio-related documents. “Where this is?”
Giselle felt confident the jumbled word order was on purpose to annoy Ruslana.
“Where is what, Mamulya?” demanded Ruslana, exasperation heavy in her voice.
“Letter from nasty woman wanting to buy studio,” replied Babushka. “Maybe I sell this fall. Take easy life for change.”
To further annoy her daughter, Ykaterina was now dropping all her articles, parts of speech not needed in Russian.
Ruslana exhaled noisily. “Mamulya, you already retired two years ago. We are not selling the studio. We are producing Giselle.”
Ykaterina shrugged. “I am telling you they come. Something attacked chickens inside henhouse. And evil German ballet about willis is attracting them.”
“Giselle is a French ballet,” said the ever-precise Katya.
Their grandmother muttered something in Russian and spit over her left shoulder. To Katya she said, “German names. All German names. Albrecht. Loys. Hilarion. Evil German names like officers in war.”
“That’s it,” said Ruslana, addressing her daughters. “Once your grandmother starts talking about what the Germans did to the Russians in World War Two …” She left the thought unfinished, crossing to the front door to don her coat.
“Ukrainians,” muttered Babushka as the girls’ mother departed. �
��And also Russians.”
Sasha stood hopefully at the door in case Ruslana decided to double back and take her for a walk.
“Things will be fine, Babushka,” said Katya.
Katya didn’t sound particularly convincing.
The girls’ grandmother must have found the letter she was searching for, because a few minutes into breakfast clean-up, Giselle overheard her leaving a message for one “Mrs. Fitzpatrick.”
Katya looked over to her sister, alarmed. “You don’t think Babushka would really sell the studio, do you?”
Giselle, aware she should no longer care, attempted to shrug with indifference and pulled another twenty dollar bill from the powdered sugar box for lunch.
Katya’s grave expression spoke accusingly. “Are you sure we should be spending so much?”
“Mom left without saying where the ice packs or lunch bags are hiding.”
Katya’s fingernails drifted to her mouth, but then she saw her sister’s raised eyebrow and dropped her hands to her lap. “It’s just, with you quitting, Mom’s going to have to hire someone to teach level 1. She says I’m not ready.”
“She should have thought of that,” snapped Giselle, “before casting me in a role for has-beens.” She strode past Babushka, who was hanging up after leaving the world’s longest phone message in very bad English.
Following her, Ykaterina grasped Giselle’s arm. “Is for you I am doing this,” the old woman said to her. “They will come for your mother first. Or maybe for you first, because of your father.”
Giselle turned back sharply. “Why are we suddenly bringing Dad into everything after all this time?”
Babushka shrugged. “Is not for me to say. Ask your mamulya.”
Only long years of studio training kept Giselle from rolling her eyes at Miss Chekhov. She turned back to the stairs.
“You are having also the bad dreams?” called Babushka.
Giselle didn’t answer. To answer yes would mean admitting her dreams were substantive.
“Is very bad omen,” Ykaterina called up the stairs. “Very bad when two women from one house dream same dream. Ochen, ochen.”
“I’m getting ready for school, Grandmother,” Giselle called from the top of the stairs, attempting to end the conversation.
Giselle tried to push her bad dreams and her grandmother’s warnings aside. But the problem was this: she’d met a siren. She’d spoken to one—and it had spoken back. That, in and of itself, was hardly proof the creatures were magical and yet … There had been something not natural about the weeping siren. Something other-worldly. Something wrong.
No one had ever caught one of the watery creatures. Or if they had, they hadn’t survived to tell the tale. It was possible Giselle knew more about them than anyone outside of a few professors in Seattle and Portland. She knew they didn’t have fins or tails or normal eyes, but these details were commonly accepted. Far more controversial was Giselle’s awareness that the sirens had speech, or that the one she’d met had had speech. But strangest of all, this one, who had called herself a queen, knew things she shouldn’t have been able to know. Secret things. Hidden things.
Giselle had known about the creatures for as long as she could remember. Don’t go to the river alone was a rule all Foulweather children memorized before kindergarten. And if she had seen the watery creature’s white and pupil-less eyes first, all those years ago, Giselle would probably have run away. But all she had seen was something that looked like a girl: something small and thin, crying, her dress clinging in wet folds to a body so folded over on itself that Giselle thought the figure was no bigger than she was herself.
The creature’s sobs were high-pitched, gasping and choked, but her voice, when she spoke, was low and heavily accented. Gravelly. The voice of a pack-a-day smoker. The voice of a creature whose throat was raw with centuries of tears.
The siren hadn’t spoken to Giselle at first. She’d sat and cried while Giselle sat and stared. Then nine, Giselle had been trying to work out how to get adult help for the “girl” without confessing to an adult she’d been to the river alone, which the “girl’s” sopping wet appearance would surely give away. Giselle was still trying out and rejecting various lies of omission when the dripping girl finally spoke.
“What do you want, mortal?” asked the creature.
The voice put Giselle in mind of damp leaves scraping along the sidewalk.
“My name isn’t … Morta. It’s Giselle.”
The creature laughed briefly at the mistake. It would take Giselle years to figure out why the siren had laughed. Giselle pulled off her sweater, a cotton one with red flowers and shiny pewter buttons, and offered it to the dripping creature.
“You can wipe your face dry,” Giselle said. “It’s washable,” she added, thinking the crying girl might worry about wiping tears (and probably snot) on the pretty Saturday sweater.
It was at this point the creature had looked up and Giselle had seen the pupil-less eyes for the first time. So this was a siren, she’d thought. Then, reasoning the creature was already very sad, Giselle tried to keep a kind smile on her face even though the siren’s eyes were dreadful.
“Do I frighten you?” asked the dripping maiden.
At the whispered question, Giselle thought of water rushing from the street into storm drains.
Giselle’s brow furrowed and she considered the question carefully.
“Not as much as Danny Metzger,” she said truthfully. “Or Tommy Schrank.”
The creature took Giselle’s chin in her cold, damp fingers and spoke very softly.
“They are wicked boys with wicked futures, mortal. Tell Danny and Tommy the Queen of the Rusalki will drown them if they disturb you again.”
And then, before Giselle had a chance to ask for a wish, the creature hissed to two of her kind who bobbed in the river. All three slid underwater. No fins. No tail. Just a sad siren queen who lived underwater.
When she’d gotten home, Giselle hadn’t mentioned she’d been to the forbidden river. She hadn’t told anyone she’d encountered a magical creature.
But this was how she knew they spoke—how she knew the stories were true.
8
IN LIFE, THERE IS NO REWIND BUTTON
Katya and Giselle walked to school because their mother had already taken the car. Clouds, purple with unshed rain, hung over the girls blocking out a sun that already felt like a memory belonging to someone else. Summers in Foulweather began sometime after the Fourth of July and ended well before Labor Day. The sisters were accustomed to enjoying September watermelon as winter crept in, slowly at first and then all at once following All Hallow’s Eve.
Katya jabbered at Giselle’s side, full of yesterday’s Giselle rehearsal. Giselle forced herself to listen; none of this was Katya’s fault. Katya didn’t say rehearsal went badly, but Giselle could list off four or five things that would have been left unattended because she had always attended to them in the past.
Giselle told herself she would adjust. That today, certainly, it would be painful, not accompanying her sister and her friends to the studio when school ended. She told herself she would adjust, but as the sisters arrived at school, Giselle felt the interminability of a day without ballet.
Things went from bad to worse. At 10:37 AM, Giselle was notified by her Spanish teacher that her presence was required in the school office. She blushed furiously amidst the ensuing class-wide commentary. Students at a performing arts high school did not hold back when it came to making their thoughts heard. Giselle rose, her back pencil-straight, and walked to the school counselor’s office.
Inside the office building, secretaries huddled over a computer screen making noises of shock and revulsion. Giselle overheard whispers of “the poor boy!” and “he washed up like that,” but all whispering stopped as she approached the office counter. She was glad she couldn’t see whatever was on the computer screen.
An aide showed Giselle to the counselor’s office while the admin
istrative staff regrouped around the computer.
Ms. Park smiled cheerfully when Giselle seated herself in front of the desk dominating the small office. Motivational posters adorned the office wall.
“Success means having the will to become the person you were meant to be,” declared one, featuring a helmet-gripping female astronaut. On the counselor’s desk, a wooden plaque observed, with rather less optimism, “Tomorrow is another day.”
“Your mother called this morning to inform me you will no longer be dancing,” said Ms. Park, removing her glasses to polish them with an orange square of cloth. “Is this correct?”
Giselle nodded and the guidance counselor replaced her glasses.
“Band has openings, of course,” said Ms. Park. “Do you play an instrument?”
Giselle frowned and murmured she did not.
Ms. Park nodded. “Drama is your only option, in that case. It will mean extra hours outside class for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
Giselle stared, wondering in what possible universe her counselor imagined she could be persuaded to enroll in drama.
“You do realize this is a performing arts high school,” stated Ms. Park, flavoring her tone with more sarcasm than Giselle thought school officials should employ.
“Of course,” murmured Giselle.
And then she saw the problem.
“Oh,” she whispered. She had to be active in the arts to go to school at All Arts.
Govno, she thought in silence. A memory of the taste of soap passed through her mind.
“Drama isn’t an option,” began Giselle. The irony of her statement was not lost upon her as images of yesterday’s confrontation with her mother returned.
“Well, you need a performance credit class each term, and sculpture has a huge waitlist, so that’s not happening,” reported the counselor, tapping through screens on her computer. “Maybe choir?”
“I’ll talk to Mr. Lee about sculpture,” replied Giselle. Singing was the only thing she could think of that might be worse than drama.
Siren Spell Page 6
