by A. L. Knorr
I was surprised a second time. “Only about a thousand of them,” I replied. “But no one has time for me.”
“Least of all your mother,” she added, gently.
I didn’t reply to this stinging truth, only dropped my chin as my heart thudded painfully.
“My guess,” continued Nike, fingering the thin fronds of young kelp trees reaching up from the ocean floor, “is that you don’t understand your own mother’s sovereignty, as she’s never explained it to you.”
“How do you know that?”
“Let’s say, I’ve known Polly a very long time.” Nike had a secret smile, and I sensed there was more to her answer but now was not the time to ask more. “Sovereignty is both simple and complicated. You know already, of course, about the Dyás?”
“The mating cycle?” This I thought I understood, for I’d seen sirens return from these cycles. Those who brought their siren offspring with them were celebrated. I was rapidly approaching the time for my own debut mating season.
“Dyás is a shortened name for this mating cycle which originates from the phrase Dyás Kyatára. Have you heard this before?” She gazed expectantly at me.
I shook my head. I hadn’t.
She let out a sigh. “Polly’s neglect of your education is worse than I feared.”
I didn’t know how to respond to this open criticism of my regal and powerful mother. I loved Apollyona, and my desire to please her had only grown since our return to Okeanos. But the goal seemed to grow more and more elusive as I approached the years of my sexual maturity, and I didn’t know why. I was sure it had to be something I had done, something that I had failed at. Failure was not something Apollyona allowed, but she also did not explain herself to anyone. As Sovereign, she didn’t need to. But in my heart, I could not disagree with Nike’s assessment. I was uneducated, seemingly the most uneducated young siren in the halls of Califas.
But Nike was going on, and I shoved these thoughts aside, fascinated and eager to hear her every word.
“Dyás Kyatára is translated from our ancient tongue, roughly meaning ‘interval curse.’ Some refer to it as the Álas, or the Álas Kyatára––the ‘salt curse.’ This season is not something you should look forward to, my sweet Bel.”
“It’s a curse? But it’s how we procreate. How can it be a curse?”
Her elegant fingers went to the stone at her throat. “Because we need these to be protected from it. You don’t need one at your age, since you are too young, but you’ll know what I mean when it comes time for your first cycle. The power the Dyás will have over you once you cross the threshold into maturity is fierce and irresistible. I mean that quite literally. Without your gemstone, you will be unable to resist it. It will rule you.”
My head was whirling. No one had explained the sirens’ mating cycle to me this way before; it was always simply a fact of our lives, just the way things were. It had never occurred to me that there was anything unnatural or even malignant about it. I opened my mouth to ask her more questions about the Dyás, but she was asking me a question.
“What is it that the mating cycle gives a siren, aside from hopefully a daughter?”
I thought about this, about how young sirens who had yet to undertake their first cycle wanted to be around those who had just returned, if only to hear them talk about their experience.
“Experience? Knowledge about the world beyond Okeanos?”
Nike nodded.
“So, the Dyás makes sirens smart?”
Nike agreed, but fleshed out this idea more fully. “The cycles can be very painful. They give sirens the experience of love and loss and they cause emotional scarring. That, combined with her experience of life in the ocean, can lend itself to great wisdom. Life on land is much harder than it is down here. Here we rule, there is none to oppose us, and even the large predators of the ocean rarely move against a siren. They recognize us as their rulers and fear us.”
This part I knew as well. We were carnivorous and some of us were excellent hunters. Of course the animals of the oceans feared us.
“The gems mean we do not need to take on any more of these seasons on land than we have to. When Odenyalis ruled, she required us to have enough Dyás as it took to produce two siren offspring: one to replace ourselves and one to grow our numbers. After that, no siren was forced to undertake additional cycles unless they wanted to. Under Apollyona’s rule, we are required to go on at least one. She’s more lenient with us than Odenyalis or previous Sovereigns were in the past.”
I went quiet as I digested this. I was no longer paying attention to our surroundings, as there was too much going on in my head.
“So, without our gems, the Salt controls us.”
Nike nodded. “The Salt for us could be likened to a deity. We don’t fully understand how it works, but the fact that the Sovereign is gifted with power cannot be denied. There is something real there, and whether it has consciousness or not has long been a matter of debate among the more academic among us.”
“An academic siren?” I had to laugh. “I haven’t run across many of those.”
Nike smiled as she drifted along beside me, passing through the fronds of the kelp. “Well, now you have. And though your mother has not shared much of herself with you, she is an academic at heart as well.” Nike’s smile turned wry. “And a politician.”
“I don’t know this word.”
“You will. You’ll learn it on your first Dyás and then you’ll understand what it means much better than if I explained it to you.”
This might have annoyed me if I had not had so many other questions.
In Califas, there were halls and caves filled with mosaic paintings, images of history, cracked and broken in many places, crumbling and neglected in others. But as far as I knew, there was no recording of how many mating seasons each siren citizen of Okeanos had endured.
“How do we know how many cycles a siren has been through? Is that why everyone followed my m––Apollyona when we arrived here for the first time?”
“We don’t track it simply because it is in our blood, the magic that links us all. Being Sovereign comes with certain advantages,” Nike explained. “When your mother became our Sovereign, she inherited these powers from Odenyalis––her predecessor.”
“Enya,” I said, which was the name Odenyalis was now known by. “What are these powers?”
“To those who have never been in the Sovereign’s seat, it is something of a mystery,” Nike said with a grim smile. “We know these powers exist because we can feel them, ebbing and flowing from Apollyona. Can you not feel them?”
I nodded, but this explanation was an understatement. Apollyona had been terrifying even before we returned to Okeanos. When she became Sovereign, she had become deified in my mind and in my physical reaction to her.
“So, besides the feeling that she could crush you at any given moment,” I said, “no one actually knows how powerful the Sovereign really is…except for past Sovereigns?”
“Some say even those past Sovereigns come to forget what those powers are, and in this way the natural order is maintained.”
“Do you think that’s true?”
Nike shrugged and her expression became veiled and far away.
“It’s impossible to say. I have questioned Enya about it, but she either genuinely forgets or she feigns forgetfulness.” She wrinkled her nose. “It’s very annoying. I suspect Sovereigns become aware of a great many things, and they like to keep this knowledge a secret because it adds to the respect they are given.”
I was quietly astounded at the way Nike was discussing this so blithely. I had never heard other sirens speak this way about the Sovereign, or speculate about the nature of the Sovereignty. Apollyona was to be respected and obeyed, otherwise, what would separate us from the other creatures of the oceans? This was our civilization and it worked for us. We had the wealth and resources of all the Atlantic at our fingertips, we were unchallenged in our rule, and we were impen
etrable, protected from harm at all times.
I watched Nike’s face, wondering what made her think this way.
“You don’t like it?” I asked, hesitantly.
Her eyes sharpened. “What makes you say that?”
“I’ve never heard anyone else talk this way. Everyone else is respectful, even awed.”
The corners of Nike’s mouth lifted momentarily. “She gestured to her sharper than normal ear-tips, her pointed features, and blue hair. “Yes, well. I’m not your average siren, now, am I?”
I shook my head. “Why are you different?”
“I suspect my mother dabbled in some pool she was not meant to,” Nike replied with an impish grin.
“She never told you?”
“I never knew her. I was cared for by my father before making my way to Okeanos on my own. I suspect the Sovereign at the time really didn’t know what to make of me.” Nike shrugged again, and the elegant motion was becoming familiar to me. “She welcomed me warmly enough in the end.”
“Because of your magic?”
Her eyes glittered with mirth and mischief. “How do you know I have magic? Have you ever seen it?”
“I hear… talk.”
“The rumors, you mean.”
“But it’s true, isn’t it? You can do things that none of us can do. They call you the siren sorceress.”
“Do they?” She feigned surprise, her blue hair cascading from her head as she shook it in artificial wonder.
“You’re not behaving any differently than the Sovereigns,” I said, cheekily, pointing at her. “Hiding your abilities from the rest of us.”
Some of her mirth vanished and I thought she flashed me a look of respect. “You’re cleverer than your mother gives you credit for.”
It was as though someone had sent a thin, white-hot blade through my chest, for these words precisely framed my most ardent desire––some recognition from my own mother.
Nike did not miss the pain flashing across my face.
“She makes another error in this,” she said quietly. Her eyes were drawn downward and beyond us. “But, look. We have a friend in trouble.”
Following where Nike had pointed, I picked out a large, slow moving sea turtle in the distance.
“Shall we see if we can help her?”
Nike swam toward the creature and I followed, still swallowing down the pain she had so swiftly been able to resurrect.
Approaching the sea turtle revealed what Nike had instinctively known––this was a creature not only in trouble, but in pain. As we came alongside the slow-moving animal, I forgot about my own pain in lieu of hers.
Ropes––wrapped around her shell and between her front legs and her neck––had been there so long that her body had grown around them. She’d suffered this way for a very long time, but it appeared now she was close to the end of her suffering, for the rope across her neck was embedded in her flesh deep enough to affect her ability to swallow.
I reached for the small knife at my hip, which I wore in a light holster strapped around my waist when I went out exploring.
Nike stopped me. “You can’t cut it away with a knife, Bel. It will kill her to remove it, look how deep its buried. She got wrapped up in these ropes when she was just a young turtle.”
Nike reached for a dangling end of one of the ropes. As she held it up, I saw the rudimentary but sharp metal hook still fastened to the end.
“Atlantean fishing equipment.” Nike frowned. “Probably poachers.”
“You don’t know that,” I replied. “She could have come from anywhere, even from the Pacific. You said she’s been like this for years.”
We swam alongside the turtle for a while. She ignored us, her beak opening and closing slowly.
“We can’t just leave her to die,” I said, finally.
“We’re not going to.” Nike’s expression switched from thoughtful to resolute and she gave me a serious look. “You wanted to see some of my magic? Today is your day. Do not speak of what you see to anyone. Promise me?”
I agreed.
Nike’s hands began to work over and under the turtle’s form, never touching her but dancing around her, fingers fluttering as though weaving with some invisible cloth.
At first nothing seemed to change, but then I noticed the turtle’s colors fading, turning white. Looking closer, I realized the turtle wasn’t fading, but was being wrapped in a white caul. The membrane thickened and became pearlescent, and soon the turtle was no longer visible at all. What remained was a softly pulsating sac.
“Can I touch it?”
“Sure.”
I softly brushed the membrane with my fingertips. Jerking my hand back in surprise, I looked up at Nike. “It’s warm! It feels like flesh.”
She smiled and we watched as the large sac began to drift slowly toward the ocean floor. “Like a uterus,” she said quietly.
“What does it do?” The cleverness of the sac was apparent; how the turtle would be assisted was not yet so obvious.
“It helps her in the only way it knows how,” was the cryptic reply.
It was weeks later when I finally had the chance to see the result of this magic.
“So, what was it?” Targa interrupted, putting a hand on my arm to stop me in my tracks. “What did she do?”
The four of us had gone for a walk to stretch our legs and get out of the manor after lunch. Emun and Antoni stopped also and stepped closer to hear me answer over the wind.
“I did not forget what I had seen Nike do to the turtle, and though I asked her to explain, she only told me that if I had enough curiosity, I would find out for myself.” I turned my back on the wind so they could hear me better before continuing.
“I returned to the place where we’d left the turtle. I watched it, day in and day out. The sac seemed to age and lose its fullness as time went by, until one day it was a strange pale thing draped over the dark, jagged rocks. Deflated like an old balloon…”
Descending to the depths, my pupils expanding wide to adjust to the near zero sunlight penetration, I approached what looked like a canvas sail, wrinkled and misshapen. But before I lost interest and moved on, I realized it lacked the texture of canvas and instead had a spongy, less porous character.
Then it moved.
Not the whole thing, just a very small part of it. Close enough now to touch it, I reached out and ran my hand along its surface. It was warmer than the water, and it seemed to respond to my touch in a crawling, shying-away motion, the way a horse’s skin can move in only one place, sliding over the musculature.
A small, rounded lump moved beneath it near my hand, and I touched that as well, feeling the hard dome shaped thing.
It came to me suddenly, and I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “You clever sorceress,” aloud. Arresting the urge to help the lump free itself from the now empty sac, I put my hands behind my back and watched, captivated, as a young sea turtle emerged from its now far-too-large casing.
“Bet you’re wondering what in the world just happened,” I said to the turtle as it flapped tiny flippers and worked to ascend. As it drifted past my face, I saw that it had similar distinct shell markings of the adult we’d come across, but no longer was it scarred and dying, with ropes digging into its flesh. It was perfect, as new and pristine as it had been in its youth.
I watched the sea turtle disappear overhead, smiling to myself and shaking my head.
Then I moved on, and forgot all about it.
Emun, Antoni, and Targa were silent for a long time after this anecdote, so we finished our beach walk with only the sound of the waves as our backdrop.
Sera and Adalbert wanted to clean the parlor we’d been using, so we went up to what Targa still referred to as Martinius’s office on the third floor where Adalbert had lit a fire for us. Sera had prepared hot tea and brought it up to us just as rain began to spatter against the old glass of the windows.
“So that’s really the secret then, that is the only thing th
at explains how you could be my mother, and Targa’s mother as well,” said Emun, settling into one of the plush chairs and picking up his mug of hot tea. “Sometime after the events of The Sybellen, you returned to Okeanos…”
“Or at least to wherever Nike was at the time,” Antoni added.
“She was in Okeanos,” I confirmed. “And yes, that was where I went after Gdansk.”
“And,” Emun continued where he’d left off, “Nike used this same magic on you, to reverse your age.” My son raised his eyes to mine. “But why?”
“The why will take some time to answer, and I want to do it properly.” My heart softened as I gazed at my children. “You both deserve that, but especially you, Emun. You who were deprived of so much, and who had to survive all on your own.”
My voice tightened up when I thought of my young son, my young triton, left to fend for himself, not even understanding his true nature when his salt-birth finally occurred. He’d likely been surrounded by drowned sailors. I wondered if he’d found Mattis’s body and I shoved the unpleasant question to the side.
I took a breath to refocus. “So, you understand what Nike was capable of. The next important milestone in this story occurred years after this event. After I had gone on three mating cycles and returned each time to Okeanos without a daughter.”
All three of them stared at me. Targa’s mouth dropped open. “Before Poland? You’d already been on three of these Dyás thingies?”
“Where did you go?” Emun asked.
“What was your first mating cycle like?” Targa asked right after.
“Did you have only sons?” Antoni interjected.
I raised my hands, laughing. “I want to keep this story on track, so in short I’ll tell you that on my first Dyás I ended up on the coast of Portugal and it was a short and disastrous experience from which I eagerly returned to claim my gem. That cycle resulted in a miscarriage, and there had been no love in the relationship.”
Targa made a sound of sympathy.
I rubbed my hands over my face at the memory of that time. “It was so long ago now, please do not feel sorry for me. I never think of that time, and it’s not important for the story.” I looked at Antoni next. “To answer your question––yes, the following two mating cycles resulted in sons and me returning empty-handed to Okeanos yet again.”
