Sirens and Scales

by Kellie McAllen

  He stood up, "No, Crystal and I actually ran into each other downtown and I came back here with her... for supper. I'll walk home."

  It was doable, but it was a long way to walk. "At this hour?"

  He opened the front door, "Yeah. It's all good. Night, Mira." The door closed behind him.

  24

  The next day, I didn't want to get out of bed. I was grateful it was my day off. All of the Chad and Angelica stuff was already forgotten. They didn't know I existed anymore so I didn't need to give them a second thought. I had also wiped Chad's memory of how to control a siren, so I knew he wouldn't be a threat to my kind anymore. But I kept replaying the moment when Nathan had opened the door to Crystal's room, the awful awkwardness between us. My heart felt like a dried up root.

  In the morning, I listened as Crystal got up, walked about the house doing her routine and then left. I heard her Corolla start and then drive away towards the harbor for the breakfast shift.

  Sometime in the afternoon, I heard heavy footsteps on the front porch and a knock on the door. I sighed, pulled the pillow off my face and threw the covers back.

  I opened the door to see Nathan standing on the porch.

  "Crystal already left for work," I mumbled.

  "I'm not here to see Crystal. I'm here to talk to you," he said. His large calloused hands were twisting the life out of his ball cap. “May I come in?"

  I stood aside and he stepped across the threshold. He closed the door and kicked off his sneakers. He turned to face me. He looked as tired as I felt, with dark smudges under his eyes. He took a breath. "Listen, I know what you thought you saw last night and I have to set the record straight. Crystal and I... we're over now. We're just friends."

  "Friends?" My eyes narrowed. What was his definition of ‘friends’?

  "Yes. The truth is, I came here with her yesterday so we could talk, because I knew that we needed to break up. Turns out, she wanted to break up with me, too. I mean, first she wanted to sleep with me, but then she wanted to break up."

  I blanched and swayed unsteadily. Black spots popped in front of my eyes and the edges of my vision fuzzed out.

  "I'm not explaining this very well. Can we sit a sec?" He lowered himself onto our couch. I sat beside him. The scent of wood and pine swept over me, his smell. My head spun and I took a breath.

  He ran a hand through his copper hair and made the curls frizz. "Crystal is... figuring out who she is. I think... I think she thought if she threw herself at me that it would help her, somehow-“ he made circular motions with his hands, illustrating mental processing, “-figure a few things out, or something. And I didn't want to hurt her, so..."

  Oh God. I put my head between my knees.

  He put a warm hand on my back. "No, no, that's what I'm trying to tell you so awkwardly. We didn't do anything. We just talked. Well, she talked. A lot. And cried."

  I sat up, my vision returning. "She cried?" So, the turmoil she’d been suffering had finally come out.

  "A lot. She didn't really want to do anything because inside, she's not attracted to men, she just hadn't admitted it to herself yet. Truthfully, I think she's already in love with someone else. And I didn't want to do anything because, well..." He looked me full in the face. His eyes grew soft. "I am too."

  My heart skipped. "You are?"

  "Yeah." He put a hand to my cheek. I closed my eyes and leaned my cheek into his calloused palm. My blood sang. His lips touched mine and he pulled me into his arms, surrounding me with his beautiful scent. He kissed me softly and then with more passion as I looped my arms around his neck. He pulled me onto his lap. Our hearts thudded against one another.

  Mom's words echoed in my mind. Go slow, Mira. The slower you go with a human, the stronger your relationship and your offspring will be.

  I wasn't sure how slow slow actually meant, but this man and our future meant too much to me to risk it by going at siren-speed.

  I broke the kiss and pulled back, with considerable effort. We put our foreheads together and he smiled. I smiled back. "Take me out? On a proper date."

  "I'd love to," he said, and kissed the corner of my mouth. Softly. First one side then the other.

  "Oh boy."

  Returning, Episode II

  25

  The lunch rush was over and the Sea Dog was empty of customers except for one young couple. A pram was parked next to their table, the parents peering into it with dreamy expressions from time to time. They held hands over the table, the man stroking the back of the woman's hand with his thumb. Lunch had been manic, and yet these two paid the world around them no mind, trapped as they were in their love bubble.

  "Why don't you just go over there and ask if you can see her?" Crystal had just emerged from the kitchen with a tray of recently filled salt and pepper shakers. "You've been watching them for an hour, Mir. You should have served them instead of me."

  "They wouldn't mind?" I dried my hands with a bar towel and threw it over my shoulder. I had little to no experience with babies, all I knew is that they did something intense to my heart and I couldn't stop dreaming about the day I'd have one of my own.

  "Course not. They're nice. People are always think their babies are the cutest and most lovable." She set the tray down and gave me a nudge. "They'll love that you're just as gobsmacked over her as they are."

  It didn't come naturally to me to approach strangers, but the curiosity to see what was inside that pram was overpowering. They didn't look up until I was almost on top of them. "Hello," I said, and realized my fingers were strangling each other. I dropped my hands.

  "Hi!" The mother looked up. "Sorry, we'll pay and get out of your way." She stood and began pulling on her parka.

  "No, that's fine," I said. "I'm not rushing you. I was just wondering if I might have a peek?" I gestured to the pram. My heart pounded and I felt awkward. I hoped Crystal was right.

  "Oh, of course!" she said, and smiled knowingly at her husband. She drew back the blanket.

  My anxiety vaporized when I saw her. "Ohhhh," I breathed. My heart pooled into a warm liquid of want. The infant was tiny and sleeping and perfect. Only her face was visible, her head capped in a white knit hat. "How old?"

  "Twenty-seven days," said the father. "This is our first time out of the house with her. We're incredibly lucky, she's an angel." He pulled on his jacket and zipped it up. "We know its cold out, but we just had to get out."

  The mother pulled on her hat. "You want a baby one day?"

  "As soon as possible," I said seriously, and they both laughed.

  "It's the coolest thing I've ever done," she said. "But you're young. Live a little first. That's what I'd suggest. Once you're a parent, you're a parent for life. And do it with the right guy." She gave her husband a mushy smile. She covered the sleeping infant and her partner pulled out his wallet and fished for cash to pay for their lunch.

  I felt like I had lived plenty, although a lot of it had been underwater. At twenty, I had only spent a single year more on land than I had at sea. I had all the exposure to salt that was needed to trigger my land-cycle, and land-cycle meant a baby.

  "Satisfied?" Crystal raised an eyebrow as I returned to the bar with the couples dirty dishes.

  "Cute." I said.

  "Yeah. Cute and messy and smelly and loud."

  "You don't want kids?"

  "Ugh, no thanks." She followed me into the kitchen where Phil was cleaning the stove. "They're like little drunk people. They poop their pants, throw up on themselves, can't walk, break stuff."

  "Who pooped their pants?" Phil looked up, startled.

  "Babies. Babies poop their pants. Multiple times a day. And yet, Mira here wants one so bad she can barely see straight."

  I laughed while I tucked the dirty dishes into the dishwasher.

  "That's nice," said Phil. "You and Nathan would have cute kids. What's stopping you?"

  "Tradition," Crystal and I said at the same time.

  She dimpled at me. She had
dated Nathan before I had, she knew he was as old school as they come. She was with Nathan when she figured out that she was more attracted to women than to men.

  "Ah," said Phil, coloring.

  "Nathan is so old-fashioned he should wear eighteenth century garb and drive a carriage to work, instead of a Tundra."

  "So. Get married," Phil suggested. "Why wait if its what you both want?"

  My sentiments exactly. I felt like I'd been waiting for Nathan since the day I'd met him. I'd been warned by my mother that human love needed time to grow. The stages of a true and authentic love had been studied by psychologists and there were important steps to take if you wanted a really strong foundation. I had taken a book out of the library on the subject, just to make sure Nathan and I weren't going to miss any steps. For me, it was a kind of torture. For my future child, if female, it would make her powerful beyond imagination. It was the kind of gift my mother wasn't able to give me because she'd had to use her siren voice on my father. I didn't know what had happened, she'd never told me, but I wasn't about to screw up my child's chances at having the best a siren could have. So... we were taking it slow. Very slow. Agonizingly slow.

  "I'm not so hung up about the marriage part..." I began.

  "But Nathan is," said Crystal, sliding her butt up onto the stainless steel countertop. Phil gave her a look and she hopped down again.

  "What has it been, 4 months?" Phil asked, drying off the gleaming stove.

  "Five," I said. Five months of going on dates, kissing, cuddling, talking, falling in love. I was so ready to move on to the next step that I could barely focus anymore, but I didn't say anything to Nathan. I let him dictate our speed. After all, he was the human, not me.

  "Well, you guys will know when is the right time," said Phil, patting my upper arm.

  For me, the right time was the day I first heard Nathan's voice. But for him? Who knew?

  26

  "So, where are you taking me?" I asked as Nathan steered the truck onto a narrow double-track road closed in by snow-covered trees. Snow was piled high between the tire tracks of other vehicles who had taken this route before us. I couldn't see anything but the endless snowbanks and trees.

  "You'll see," Nathan said, grinning. He'd showed up at the bungalow where I lived with Crystal at ten-thirty at night and told me to bundle up, that he had something to show me. The full-moon was already high in the sky when we got into his truck and left Saltford.

  We followed the tracks into a clearing. The spiky shadows of trees fell away and the starry sky opened up over an expanse of white snow. The trucks headlights illuminated a fire pit surrounded by logs.

  "Are we having a campfire?"

  "Yes, but that's not why we're here," Nathan said as he rolled the truck to a stop and killed the engine. He turned on the interior light and pulled the cooler sitting on the floor between us up onto the truck's bench seat. He waggled his eyebrows.

  "A campfire and... soup?" I asked.

  He laughed. "No. Look out there? Don't you see the ice? Haven't you ever been skating on a pond in the middle of the night?"

  "Skating?" I peered out the windshield at the dark expanse. "There's a pond out there?" I looked at him. "I don't know how to skate."

  "Really, Mira. Sometimes I wonder if you're even Canadian. This is a famous Canuck pastime." He opened the cooler and pulled out a pair of small black skates and dangled them in front of my face. "I'm going to learn you up real good," he said, putting on a hillbilly accent.

  "Change that learn to love and I'm in like sin," I grinned.

  He laughed and planted a kiss on my lips. "You ARE going to love it. Now come on. Chop chop." He opened the truck door and got out.

  The snow squeaked under my boots as I followed a packed down trail to the campfire. Nathan rummaged in the back of the truck and pulled out a lantern and some firewood. The air was crisp and cold, and the sky was so clear and black that the stars popped out intensely. There was a supernatural stillness to the air. I looked out at the expanse of ice mostly still buried under snow. The other side of the pond was lined by trees and looked very far away. My eyes travelled upward towards the moon.

  Nathan crunched up behind me and knelt to start a fire, his knees popping as he crouched.

  "You know, The RMS Titanic sank on a night like this," I said.

  "Except it was April, not February," Nathan added. "And there was no moon."

  I smiled. "You do listen."

  "Of course I do." He arranged the kindling and lit a twisted newspaper stick with a lighter. "You don't talk much, so when you do, I listen." He blew on the fire and it took hold and grew, its crackling sound warming my soul. Nathan stood and wrapped his arms around me, kissing my temple. "It was an unusual atmospheric calm." he said. "The sea was still, so they couldn't see water breaking at the base of the iceberg."

  "Yes, and some say..."

  "That the conditions caused a rare kind super refraction and thermal inversion that can hide things from view, even something as gigantic as an iceberg."

  "Do I sound that much like a textbook when I talk?"

  "No, you sound like someone who should spend more time on the water. I think we should buy you a boat." We sat on one of the logs in front of the fire. "Let's get these skates on you. I can't believe you've never been skating and I still haven't taken you. I'm a terrible boyfriend."

  "Yes, a partner most foul," I teased. He showed me how to lace the skates up so they supported my ankles. He went to the truck and pulled out a much larger pair of hockey skates and sat beside me to lace them up.

  "How do we get to the ice through all this snow?"

  "There's a path." He picked up the lantern and helped me to stand. My legs wobbled but I soon got used to the feeling of standing on the thin blades. Walking was a whole other challenge. I took a step and promptly fell. Nathan caught me and stood me on my feet again. I felt like a kid and giggled.

  "Hang on to me. The ice is just a few feet away."

  I clung to Nathan's jacket and waddled awkwardly after him, the blades slipping in the snow. I started laughing and couldn't stop as I flailed to keep my balance. Nathan laughed and caught me again. Suddenly we were on ice. My blades bit into the frozen water and the feeling changed completely.

  A rink had been cleared by hand, the boards around the rink were made of three feet of densely packed snow. A tall black shadow loomed over the pond and blocked out some of the stars - a bluff covered with trees.

  "How did they clear away all this snow?" I asked, as I looked at the rink around us under the moonlight.

  "The guys from the hockey team take turns clearing it off after every snowfall. Now, pay attention. You push with one foot and glide on the other, like this."

  It didn't take me long to get the knack of skating, being a siren means I'm unusually strong. But I'd never be able to zip around on the ice, or stop and turn the way Nathan could. Once I was capable enough to skate on my own, Nathan ripped around, goofing off and making me laugh. I'd seen him play in lots of hockey games, but I never got sick of watching how fast he could move his considerable bulk. Like a lot of Canadian boys, he had dreamed of playing in the NHL when he was a kid. We skated until our faces and toes were cold and then made our way back the fire. Nathan produced a thermos of hot chocolate and a couple of brownies and we munched on those as we warmed our booted feet. We listened to the silence and huddled together, looking at the stars.

  Before I was ready, Nathan twisted the cap back on the Thermos and stood. "Ready to go?"

  "But it’s so nice out here, and the fire is still good."

  "Not back home. Not yet. I have something else to show you." He picked up the lantern and held out a gloved hand.

  We began to walk in the opposite direction of the pond. We followed another trail of footprints through the thick banks of snow and soon we were climbing in between trees and up the bluff I had noticed earlier.

  "Popular spot, it is?" I asked as we wedged our boots into the snow
steps made by many others before us.

  "This year it is," he said in front of me, a smile in his voice.

  We emerged from the trees to overlook the pond. I couldn't make out much in the lantern light. As though he could read my mind, Nathan turned the flame down almost to nothing and set it down at our feet.

  As my eyes adjusted, I could see dark squiggly lines in the snow beyond the black space of the rink. The lines sharpened. They weren't squiggly lines, it was cursive writing. My eyebrows shot up as my vision cleared.

  Marry me.

  The words had been cut deeply into the layers snow and now that my eyes had fully adjusted, they stood out stark black against the sparkling white.

  I gasped and my hands flew to my mouth. "How?" I turned towards Nathan, one side of his face in shadow and the other lit by moonlight. His pale cheekbone and brow reflected the light and his hazel eyes looked black. I could still read the love shining through them.

  "I came out here with a shovel after the first snowfall and wrote it."

  "And every snowfall after that?" My jaw dropped.

  He chuckled. "The guys had mercy on me after my sixth or seventh trip and we began to take turns."

  "You've been planning this since..." I thought back to when the first snow had fallen. "Halloween?"

  He went down on one knee. He took off his gloves and produced a small black box from his pocket.

  My breathing had become shallow and my pulse quickened. It was finally happening. No more waiting. I took off my gloves and cupped my hands around the outsides of his as he opened the box. A single diamond sparkled in the moonlight. It was small and simple and perfect.

  "Mira Belshaw, you're the love of my life." His voice shook ever so slightly. "I can't imagine being with anyone but you. Marry me? Live your life with me. I would say that I will give you all of me, everything I have and everything I am, but you know..." he took the engagement ring from its box and held it so it sparkled in the moonlight. "That I already have."