Siren Sisters

by Dana Langer

  “I saw him follow you,” Jason says. “And I saw the boat sink.” The sun is just starting to peek through the clouds, and he’s sitting on the deck of his boat, squinting in the glare from the water.

  I’m sitting next to him, wringing water from my hair and peeling off my soaking wet snail stockings. “He came to my house.”

  Jason starts playing with the zipper on his backpack. “I thought he might. That’s why I didn’t want you to be alone there.”

  I run my tongue over my teeth, tasting blood from where I bit my lip when the gun hit me in the face. “You were right.”

  “And then you did it to me too? Tricked me, sort of.”

  “I had no choice. That’s what I tried to tell you. When she calls for us, it’s like . . . it’s impossible to control.” I glance at him, waiting for him to say something more, but he’s pulled his hood up and tightened the strings, so I can’t see his face. “You brought the crown, right?”

  He nods and pushes the backpack toward me. “I even wrapped everything in plastic, so it would be waterproof.”

  “What’s wrong? Do you feel sick?”

  “No, I’m just— It’s different watching you actually do it.”

  I feel the boat moving up and down in the waves, and suddenly I’m the one who’s seasick. “What’s different?”

  “Nothing.” He gets back up and leans over the railing. We’re not very far out at sea here, but there’s a fog surrounding the island, and it’s hard to see the shore. “I guess I just didn’t expect it to feel like this.”

  The sunlight burns my eyes and makes the water seem fractured and confusing. I pull my legs up to my chest and rest my forehead on my knees.

  Jason kicks at a coil of rope on the deck, and I think about what really happened four years ago at Lily’s first big sleepover party, the night he let her and her friends give him a haircut. I watched the whole thing unfold from a shelf in the linen closet, one I’d recently discovered I could climb into. At first he was okay with the haircut, going along with everything, assuring everyone it was no big deal. He was okay when they brought out one of Dad’s old razors and announced they were going to shave his head. And he still seemed okay a few minutes later when they lost interest in the whole operation and ditched him to go make prank phone calls.

  But then Jason caught sight of himself in the mirror. And then he started crying. And then he kicked the wall so hard he left a dent.

  I didn’t ditch Jason to go make prank phone calls that night. When the other girls left, I climbed down from my shelf and told him everything was going to be okay. I helped him sweep up the plaster and the fallen hair and move the garbage can to cover the dent. I made him an ice pack for his swollen foot, and we spent the rest of the night in a fort he made using blankets and the dining room table. I don’t remember where our parents were at the time. I don’t remember who finally fixed his hair or if anybody ever took him to the doctor for his foot. It’s highly possible that nobody ever even noticed. But that was the night it became unofficially official that even though he was Lily’s same age, and even though our families were always all together, Jason was my real friend. My first one besides my sisters.

  I lift my head. “I guess it’s easy being friends with a siren, until you actually get lured someplace.”

  He sighs. “It’s harder than you think.”

  “Well, if I’m so hard to deal with, then maybe you should just stay here by yourself.”

  He doesn’t say anything else, so I clamber up the side of the boat and throw myself over with the crown still under my arm, letting the freezing sting of saltwater flood my eyes and nose. I come back to the surface, treading water, and Jason yells down to me.

  “You forgot your shoes!”

  It’s a statement of fact, but it feels like the ultimate insult.

  I start swimming back to the island. I tell myself that I don’t care if he comes along or not. I don’t care if he stops being my friend and never speaks to me again. But a few moments later, I hear a splash, and I know it’s him swimming along behind.

  He follows me up out of the water and onto the black sand beach, and I watch him out of the corner of my eye. Hands braced on his knees and head down, he’s struggling to breathe. I’ve never wanted to hug him and throw something at him at the same time so badly before. Instead, I reach out and grab his hand, just for a second, and I squeeze his fingers, the way I used to during rainstorms, when the wind sounded strong enough to rip right through his mom’s trailer and send us all off into outer space, and Alice would tell us to count the miles between the claps of thunder.

  “I brought your shoes,” he says, and bends to open his backpack. “I was all out of plastic wrap, though, so they’re kind of wet.”

  “Thank you.”

  I slip the wet shoes on because it’s better than being barefoot on the rocks, and I stare down at our feet.

  “We’d better get going.”

  “Wait, Jason. What was it like?”

  He picks up a rock and starts examining it, holding it up in the sunlight so flecks of mica glisten and change color. When we were little, he used to collect rocks like that. Pretend they were valuable.

  “What was what like?”

  “My sisters say that sailors are in a trance the whole time, that afterward, if they live, they don’t remember anything at all.”

  “I guess so.” He’s still pretending to study the rock, turning it over in his hand like it’s the geological discovery of the century. “Yeah, I don’t remember. It’s like it never even happened.”

  I nod. “That’s what I figured.”

  “But I would have found you anyway, Lolly. I mean, even if you didn’t call for me. I think I still would have found you.”

  The water is rising, the tide coming in, and suddenly the broken, rust-splattered body of Mr. Bergstrom’s boat, all scarred and torn apart, comes rushing out of the sea. It shoots forward, carving a few feet into the sand, and then tilts on its side. The masts are gone, and the jagged holes in the bottom are big enough to see through.

  Jason whispers, “Do you think he’s still in there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The damaged boat lies quietly like a beached whale. There’s not a sound anywhere now except the tide and the seabirds that have begun to circle closer.

  “I’ve never seen a dead person before, Lolly.”

  “Me either.”

  Jason wipes his sleeve across his forehead, and then he takes the crown from me and puts it on his head. It’s a little big on him, but it doesn’t fall off or anything. It sort of fits. “I’m going to look.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “No,” he says. “Just wait here.”

  He crosses the beach with a sort of grim determination and starts climbing up into the boat. Maybe it’s just the crown he’s wearing, but he seems to have gotten taller over the last week. Like, from the back, you might think he was in high school or something.

  A few seconds later, he reappears and lowers himself onto the shore.

  “What happened?”

  He shakes his head. “Let’s go.”

  “Did you see anything?”

  Jason pulls the crown off his head and snatches at a tree limb, snapping it down and holding it out in front of him as he starts hacking into the overgrown brush. “No,” he says. “There was nobody there.”

  We start hiking up a barely worn dirt path toward the ruins of Fort O’Malley, tripping over rocks and tree limbs and squelching in our wet shoes. At certain points the trail turns steep, and we have to pull ourselves up, using the gnarled tree roots that stick out of rocks. At first, we don’t hear anything but the waves and the birds and the sound of our own footsteps. But soon there’s another sound too. A groaning, grumbling, prehistoric sound, and we see them coming out of the woods. Two of them. They have broad, flat heads and curious brown eyes, and they lumber toward us on massive paws, sniffing and growling and pawing at the ground. And
then more bears appear at the edge of the forest, rising up out of what seemed like empty woods. Each one is bigger than the last, and I realize that they’ve been there the entire time. They have claws like daggers and moss growing on their fur, and I think they must be hundreds of years old.

  Jason stops and looks at me. “The Kermode. You see how their fur is almost white?”

  I wrap my arms around the crown. “Are they dangerous?”

  “I don’t think so. They’re like black bears. Besides, most of these isolated island species don’t have any experience with humans. They don’t even know they’re supposed to be afraid.”

  The bears are still looking at us, little groups and families of them, some resting on the ground, some perched on logs, and some sitting in trees, and we continue up the path, picking our way carefully over rocks and fallen branches. The bears turn to watch us pass, and sometimes they throw their heads back and roar up at the sky, as if they’re seeking some explanation as to what we’re doing there. But they don’t ever come any closer.

  At last, just before sunset, we find ourselves standing in a forest of dwarf pine trees, all bent permanently in the same direction. The sky is burning magenta, and before us lies the steep fall of the canyon. A hawk circles overhead, and we can hear the unnerving sound of the bears bellowing in the distance.

  Only one wall of the fort remains. There are archways carved in stone, rusted metal gates bolted to the sides, and one lonesome cannon, riddled with holes.

  “It’s still standing,” Jason says, and runs his hand over one of the walls. The archways are all uneven and crumbling in places, and it looks like that might not be the case for much longer. He looks up at it, amazed. “Can you believe it? My ancestors, my actual biological family, built this with their own hands to protect their land and defend themselves from intruders.”

  I’m not exactly sure how I feel about forts, and Jason’s ancestors, and defending land that may or may not have been theirs to defend in the first place, but I can see what it means to him. It’s significant, like the Sea Witch said, and I bet he wishes he’d had a fort like this to defend him and his mom when Mr. Bergstrom first showed up in their lives. “So where are we going to bury the crown?”

  He walks to a place where the wall casts a rounded shadow in the dirt. “Here,” he says. “This is the right spot. I can feel it. Can’t you?”

  “Sure,” I tell him. “That seems right.”

  Jason takes two trowels out of his backpack, and we start to dig. The soil is soft and rich here, not like the dry, sandy soil at home, and it falls away easily. Soon we have a good-size hole, and we drop the crown down inside. It lands with a satisfying thump. And then we start kicking dirt back in, until it’s all filled up and we can’t see the glint of the crown anymore.

  I look at him. “Do you feel anything yet?”

  He shrugs. “Do you want a snack?”

  “A snack?”

  “Yeah.” He pulls a thermos and a plastic bag out of his backpack. He opens the bag and hands me the thermos. “I brought water and some of those cookies you hid in my room. They have a lot of sugar, and I figured that might help with the spell. I mean, I think it’s important to be prepared.”

  I take a sip of water and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “I’m prepared.”

  “I wasn’t saying you weren’t.”

  “Well, I’m just saying I am.”

  “You actually have no supplies with you at all.”

  “I had a bag,” I tell him. I decide not to mention that it was mainly filled with library books and sea glass. “Besides, I’m prepared in other ways.”

  He opens a package of cookies and hands it to me, and I give him back the thermos. He takes a drink from it.

  “You know that’s full of germs now, right?” I say.

  “I’m not scared of germs anymore,” he informs me, as if it’s a thing that happened three years ago instead of last week.

  “Oh,” I tell him. “Well, good.”

  One of the spirit bears has followed us all the way up from the beach, and now it’s standing on a rock nearby, watching. Every time I turn around, it tilts its milky-white head to one side, and we look at each other. And for some reason, I remember something Jason once told me, about why he’s so fascinated by marine biology. He said it’s that you see all these bizarre, impossible-seeming creatures, these fish with lanterns attached to their heads, and vampire squids, and sea snails with wings, and they all seem totally weird—but then you learn the science behind them, you get to understand where they came from and how they work, and you realize that they actually make perfect sense. In fact, you realize they never could have been any other way.

  After we eat, I sit cross-legged in the dirt where we buried the crown and straighten my back because I feel like receiving a spell calls for good posture. Jason sits down in front of me and rubs his finger in the dirt, and then he traces a crescent shape on my forehead the way the Sea Witch showed us.

  “Do you remember how it goes?” I ask.

  “Of course I remember how it goes.”

  “I’m just checking.”

  “Lolly, I wouldn’t forget the spell at a time like this.”

  He draws the crescent shape again and clears his throat—pausing, I think, to make sure I don’t interrupt again. Then he repeats the words exactly the way the Sea Witch did, even getting the accent and the intonation right.

  And then we wait.

  For a while we just sit there and nothing happens. The spirit bears go about their business, and the hawks call to one another, and the sky turns a deep navy blue. The shadows grow long and cold.

  “How are we supposed to know if it worked?” Jason asks.

  “I have no idea,” I tell him.

  “Does anything seem different to you?”

  “Everything seems different.”

  He nods. “I guess that’s how we know.”

  On the way back home, Jason stands at the helm of his sailboat and I sit on the deck wrapped in his jacket and gloves, even though I’m pretty sure it’ll be a long time before I ever feel anything like warm again.

  After a few minutes, he comes and lies down next to me. “You see the fireworks?” He points out across the harbor. “We’re almost home.”

  Sure enough, we can see the lights of Starbridge Cove from here, and the fireworks from the festival. We lie on our backs and watch them for a little while. As they do each year, the fireworks become increasingly complex as the show goes on, until suddenly there are a million crackling explosions going off over our heads at once, illuminating the entire sky and turning everything green and gold, and it feels as if we’ve fallen into some other dimension. Jason looks like an alien, and the sails billowing over our heads seem like ghosts.

  But then it’s over. The fireworks leave trails of ash shaped like jellyfish, and the night is black again and filled with stars. The sails are not haunted, and we’re back to just being ourselves.

  “I think that was the finale,” I tell him.

  “You know what you asked me about before, Lolly?” he says. “About what it felt like when you called?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I lied. I do remember. I just couldn’t think how to say it.”

  I prop myself up on my elbows. “Can you think of it now?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “It felt like not being alone.”

  Chapter

  7

  Sweet sad songs sung by lonely girls

  —Lucinda Williams

  Late that night, Jason and I come ashore and walk to the motel. We see the neon sign first, flickering in the distance, and then the hospital-bright lights of the lobby. And then we see them, all the faded, sleepy sirens with their hollow eyes and messy hair, stumbling out into the darkness. Dozens of them. They’re drinking diet sodas from the vending machine, lighting cigarettes, and stealing getaway cars from the parking lot. So many that at first, we can’t find my sisters.

  We push our way inside
the lobby, where this awful canned music is playing and the vending machine looks like it exploded. “There!” Jason recognizes Lula, sitting on the front desk. She’s wearing one of the hotel towels and trying to open a bag of pretzels with her teeth.

  When she sees us, Lula jumps down from the counter and throws her arms around my neck. “Lolly, do you know what’s going on? How did we get here?”

  Lara and Lily are coming down the stairs, pushed and jostled in the sea of ghost girls streaming toward the exit, but when they see us, they drift closer, and the four of us become a tangle of arms and legs, with everyone hugging and talking at once.

  I slip Lara’s necklace off and press it into her hand. “I found this.”

  She smiles and touches my forehead. “Where have you been, Lolly? You look so different.”

  Lula shovels a handful of pretzels in her mouth. “We’re starving.”

  “Why is it so cold in here?” Lily asks. “Who are all these people?” One of the other girls, weaving a groggy path through the crowd, bumps right into her. “Ow!” Lily calls out. “Watch it.”

  The girl doesn’t respond. She takes a few more steps and then pauses by the front door, blocking it. Her lips are moving, and I watch her for a second, trying to figure out what she’s saying. Her eyes are ice blue, nearly colorless, and her feet are swollen to twice their normal size, covered in thick, gray scales and fringed by nails like claws. She’s all wrapped up in a white bathrobe with the motel logo stitched on it and the belt looped twice around her waist, and she’s staring up at the loudspeaker like it’s the strangest thing she’s ever seen. Or maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe it’s the only thing in the room that makes any sense.

  Jason leans over and whispers, “What’s wrong with her?”

  “She’s blind,” I tell him. I look from one girl to the next, at the way they hold on to one another and grip the walls. “All of these girls are. They can’t see.”

  The blind girl starts singing then, harmonizing, taking that irritating little melody and making it sound full and rich with her voice. She plays with each note the way seabirds toss tiny fish in the air before they swallow them. And the other girls, who were lining up behind her like lobsters in a trap, pushing and climbing over each other to get out—they stop when they hear her voice. And then they start singing too, automatically, like a reflex. One and then another and another, like birds on a telephone wire.