CHAPTER 9
I was eleven before I saw the ‘real’ Siren.
We were called to a midnight meeting on the beach. We were so rarely allowed to leave the school that the excursion felt like a real adventure. Mistress Herry was not strict, but she scowled and swiped at Renata’s head when the girl started to laugh. We fell into a shocked silence, and marched down the path in a sullen crocodile.
There were hundreds of people standing in a circle on the beach. I had never seen so many Siren clustered together before. They were beautiful, but most of them looked exhausted. I was fascinated by their dour expressions. We children were slapped if we were caught without a smile on our faces. How could the Siren get away with it?
Every fifth person carried a burning torch. Our teachers led us into the crowd, and we were pushed together as more islanders arrived. I shuddered and shoved my way to the front of the crowd. The firelight made everyone’s faces look demonic.
Their ugliness was nothing compared to the creature in the middle of the circle.
She had to be a demon. There was no other way to explain the animal filth of her. She sank into the sand in a way that made her limbs jut out. I immediately thought of a spider hunching over its prey. Her ragged clothes were made of Siren brocade, but her face was covered in black streaks of blood. Mistress Piper snapped at me to keep my place in line.
An old woman hobbled out into the centre of the circle. Mistress Herry told her us that she was the High Mistress, Sweetwater. Her servant, an bull of a woman call Eround, stood beside her with a bared sword. The High Mistress spoke in short, clipped sentences. She told us what the disgraced Siren had done. I was not the only girl to vomit into the sand. Sweetwater did not spare a single detail.
Steppe had been too arrogant to hide her perversion, and too clever to be caught. The first two women she had attacked were too frightened to speak against her. Those women were pushed out of the circle into the sand. The islanders hissed and spat at them, for their silence had cost the third girl her life.
Her name had been Apricot. She had been sent away from school when she was seventeen, and had spent a lot of time spinning and weaving in the craft quarters, especially in the early hours of the morning when she could be alone.
One morning, the head seamstress found the weaving room locked. This was unusual, but not unheard of. Some of the intricate lace the loom women made was too fragile to leave unguarded. It was more unusual, however, that all of the window shutters to the courtyard were closed. The seamstress unlocked the door and felt her way blindly to the window. She only made it two feet before her foot slipped. She stumbled over the cold body which had once been a girl called Apricot.
We clutched at each other in dizzy horror. The island was our home! We were supposed to be safe! How could such a thing happen?
Steppe had not even had the decency to surrender herself to the Mistresses. One of her living victims had finally came forward. Nobody had suspected the truth, because nobody would look at a servant closely enough to see her scars.
Sweetwater announced that the victim deserved mercy. Her part in Apricot’s death was absolved by her confession. The other maids, she continued, had killed Apricot with their silence. They had to be punished.
She looked around the silent crowd and spoke clearly: “Every woman on our island has to understand that it is her duty to protect the others.”
I saw two of my classmates clinging to each other and sobbing helplessly. We stared at the maids and imagined them ignoring our screams while Steppe jammed blunt darning needles under our nails. Tears blinded us. The servants keened, and the old women hissed and spat at the girls in the sand. The whole crowd pressed closer – a sinuous, feral beast baying for blood. Only the Siren seemed unmoved.
The maids knelt on the sand and wailed. Sweetwater called for silence. As we choked back our sobs, our leader read out the names of twenty Siren. Each one scooped up a handful of hard or soft sand. One by one, they hurled them at the cowering women. The wet sand made dull, heavy thuds when it connected. The servants gasped in pain, and then shrieked when the dry sand burned their eyes and their skin.
When the punishment was over, Sweetwater raised each girl up and kissed them.
“Remember this.” she said, and sent them back into the circle. The girls fell into the arms of their friends, who held them tenderly until their sobbing eased.
Sweetwater waited for silence. She beckoned, and the circle drew in more closely around Steppe. The tide had come in so rapidly that some of the women had to wade into the sea. They left a gap in the line where the waves were too rough for them to balance.
“You know we can give you a merciful death.” Sweetwater spoke only to Steppe, but her voice carried over the seething waves. “Tell us why we should do that.”
The woman looked around at the women in their silent circle. There were so many blazing torches that her eyes glowed scarlet. Her throat worked as she fought to summon her voice, and when she finally spoke it was like a raven’s caw. “I’m no worse than the rest of you.”
“You have broken your oaths to us, and the law of the island.” The High Mistress intoned. “Your life holds one last choice. Will you face the Siren, or the law?”
Steppe looked back at the crowd, and for the first time she looked afraid. The women held their torches a little higher, and some of them glanced back towards the shore. I followed their eyes, and saw a huge cairn of branches and barrels built on a rise in the dunes.
Steppe looked back at the sea and squared her shoulders. She stood up and raised her chin proudly. “The law, then.”
There was a rustling sound as the women whispered to each other. We children started whispering too, and were snapped at again by our teacher. When we flinched and looked up at her she pointed down and told us each to fill our pockets with stones.
Eround marched Steppe into the sea. As they waded into the waves the islanders formed a solid wall on either side. Some clustered behind the prisoner, blocking her way out, or spread out along the tide line. I craned my neck to see what was happening, and suddenly the murderess was caught in the current. She splashed and coughed up water as she was dragged out between the rocks. The islanders threw stones to force the woman to swim further out. Mistress Piper ordered us to join in. Our stones did not make it past the shallows, but we wept and threw them as hard as we could. When Steppe was a good distance from the shore we stopped the barrage and waited.
We watched for a long time as the woman drifted in the current. At first she tried to get away. When she swam too far to the left or right, the women on that side threw their stones to make her turn around. Some of the missiles connected, and I heard the sickening cracks of stone against skin. Sweetwater shouted at anyone who aimed too carefully.
We were not supposed to be the ones who killed her.
We waited, and watched, until the creature was swallowed by the sea.
Her body washed up two days later, about a mile along the shore. Her face was swollen with salt water and there were dark bruises on her skin where our stones had struck her. She was laid out in the courtyard, so that we might be reminded of her crime whenever we walked between our lessons. For three weeks, we watched her rot.
The corpse had beautifully shaped nails, and her eyebrows were tweezed to fine arching points. I remembered that more than the greenish tint of her lips. It was the only way I could believe that she had once been one of us.
CHAPTER 10
When I was sixteen, Dahra cut off an apprentice’s hand.
My Mistress had arranged to meet me in the courtyard. She never arrived. I wondered if she was testing me for a full hour before the sun grew fierce. I ducked back into the cool stone building and asked the old women where my Mistress was. Most of them shrugged and looked away. Nara scowled at them and gave me a biscuit.
“She isn’t coming.” she told me. “Just go to your classes.”
“But she told me to wait for her.” I insisted. I was c
onfused. I was used to Dahra disappearing, but she never did it without warning. And why was everyone being so secretive?
I trudged back to the school and suffered the teasing of my classmates for the rest of the day. My mind wandered too much for me to concentrate on the song I was supposed to be learning. My fingers were too slow and clumsy to play my lyre. It was the first time that I knew for sure that I loved my Mistress. I hated her, of course, but I was so stricken with concern that it hurt.
My mistress did not appear for two days. She had lost weight, and her skin was waxen and unadorned. She summoned me and I ran into her arms. Dahra shoved me away with a hiss. Her breath hitched in her throat, and I saw that her linen dress was stained with blood.
“I’m sorry,” I whimpered. She yanked my head back by the hair and threw me down into the dirt.
“You fool! They will have to stitch it closed again.”
“What happened?” I clutched at her skirt. I think I was more upset than she was. She shrugged and told me a vague story about an accident. She had tripped and fallen onto a broken branch. It hadn’t been bad, she said, just ugly.
I did not believe her.
It took Dahra weeks to recover. While she healed she threw herself into teaching. I thought she had been strict before, but when she had twenty girls to command she ruled with an iron fist.
Dahra was an expert herbalist. The art was the backbone of our island. The potions which we traded with the Mainland were not magical, but the result of long hours cultivating thousands of stubborn plants. The Siren could rouse a man from sleeping sickness or cure colic, but if the Mainlanders knew our recipes they could have done exactly the same thing.
First, Dahra taught us how to care for the plants. We would fetch water, crumble up chicken manure and pull out weeds. We had to wear stiff grey gloves to protect our soft hands from the thorns. Dahra didn’t bother, but I never saw her get pricked. Some of the girls burst into helpless sneezing fits when they leaned too close to the pollen.
Anyone could grow a seed; few could learn how to pick and prepare it properly. Every night we spent an hour tasting and discussing whatever we had gathered that day.
It rained heavily that autumn. We spent our time draining and piercing the soil, and had little time to collect new herbs. We were cold and miserable, and we all hoped our classes might stop, but the Mistresses took jars out of storage for us to study. Matured moulds, dried leaves and liquors abounded, but the one I remember most clearly was Dust.
Dust was made from dried fungus. It was so rare that a single gram took several weeks to refine. It relaxed the inhibitions - a simple effect that even alcohol could manage, but Dust was a thousand times more potent than wine. A single dose could make a spymaster part with every secret he knew.
Mistress Herry made us try it. We dabbed our little fingers into the brown powder. It tasted of malt, but there was a sharp aftertaste that made my mouth pucker up.
Even that small amount was enough to loosen our tongues. Mistress Herry asked us if we knew what Dust was. Many girls lied in their lessons, pretending that their Mistresses had told them secrets, but that morning we all blurted out,
“No!”
We looked at each other in confusion. Mistress Herry asked one of the older girls what she had dreamed about the night before. Poor Tisha got several sentences into a lurid story before she realized what she was doing. She clapped her hand over her mouth.
When we stopped giggling, our teacher turned to a girl called Violet and asked her what was hidden under her bed. The girl clearly fought against the drug, but she finally listed hairbrushes, bracelets – things which had gone missing. Our faces flushed in anger. We had all been accused of the theft, and had been punished for not turning in the culprit. We had not known that it was Violet.
“This is a dangerous drug.” Mistress Herry cut through our whispers, “The truth can hurt you. Some secrets can hurt all of us – your friends, and your Mistresses, and even the island. If you taste this dust, bite your tongue and cover your ears. There is an antidote, but if you cannot take it you must lock yourself away until the effects are gone. You cannot fight it.”
Someone pinched Violet. She yelped. We could not hide our delight, and the thief sniffled as we laughed.
Mistress Herry taught us how to make the antidote, and then she asked us how we would hide Dust in someone’s food. It tasted of malt, she said, but it would be foolish to bake it into bread or porridge. The sharp aftertaste was too acidic. It would be obvious to even the most dull-witted man. It was better to mix it with beer or brandy. However, many people refused to drink alcohol if they were suspicious. It was better to hide Dust in lemon juice or sour fruit. Again, she asked us if we understood. We all said,
“No!”
We spent the rest of the day mixing pickled brine in fruit salads, retching at the bitter taste, and being embarrassingly honest with each other.
Mistress Dahra reappeared the second that the rains stopped. She took us into the woods and we ripped bark from the trees. While we worked her melodious voice rattled out long strings of remedies we were supposed to remember. Milk thistle cures gallstones, larch and centaury petals make you less timid…
When she grew bored with lecturing us, Dahra would prowl between our thorn-prickled, sweaty groups and test us. If we were lucky she would ask about something she had just told us, but usually it would be some obscure fact from days before. The only time I ever managed to answer correctly was when I told her cherry plum treats hysteria – a tincture I had memorised because I was sure that with Dahra around, I would need it!
We returned to the woods every day. Dahra expected us to flawlessly mimic everything she did, but she worked quickly and didn’t explain what she was doing. I was always the first person she called on to copy her. Of course, I usually messed things up. The girls who went last had seen the task so many times that they were perfect. Dahra had no notion that she was making me look stupid. She scolded me every day, and my cheeks stung with her slaps. The girls stopped teasing me after a week of her abuse. I do not think they had known how cruel my Mistress was. I hated their pity more than their casual gibes.
Every day we had to walk further into the woods. It is a bad idea to always forage in one place. A willow might give you enough bark for a thousand fever tonics, but afterwards it would not survive the winter. We cared for the plants as much as we harvested them.
Dahra said that our medicines had made the island rich. People came to the island looking for magic; our beautiful sisters waved their hands and used our herbs. Without the forest we could not work, trade, or even eat.
I didn’t believe her. Mistress Herry had told us that the Siren soothed sailors after their boats were wrecked on the rocks. The men were so grateful that they sent us tithes when they got back to their homes in the Mainland or Altissi.
Both stories made sense, but neither of them seemed to fit. My idle suspicions sharpened after Dahra was hurt. Her wound had bled in a straight line, as if she had been slashed at with a knife. She had definitely been lying when she said it had been a broken branch. And it wasn’t an accident. The servants would have joked about her for being so clumsy. Instead, they had pressed their lips together and told me off for asking too many questions.
I didn’t ask my classmates what they thought. They would have pulled my hair out for saying their beloved Mistresses were lying to them. They were so loyal that they would have believed the Siren if they said they juggled and ate fire on the pier.
One day we walked to the base of the mountain. It was dry and hot there. When they heard our voices, tiny lizards hissed and scurried under the rocks. Dahra stopped and casually hauled a writhing viper out of a trap. As we shrieked she drew a sponge from her bag and taunted the creature with it until it struck. Venom seeped from its fangs into the sponge. When it unhinged its jaw Dahra threw the snake away into the dust. She brushed her hands off as if she had been flouring a cake tin, and tucked the sponge carefully into a
clay jar.
The next trap was for me. Singen had been lousy with natrix and grass snakes, so I had no fear of them. I earned a rare kind word from my Mistress when the creature’s venom bled into the sponge. One of the other girls sobbed and backed away from the canvas trap. Dahra looked up at me and I knew we both wore the same exasperated frown. I smiled; she rolled her eyes.
There was a mouse-faced apprentice called Harriet who was scared of the dark. Every time we walked into the woods she would cover her hair with her hands and whimper when we walked under cobwebs. When it was her turn to catch a snake she trembled so much that she could barely reach down. Her fingers twitched as she reached out and gripped the snake’s neck.
A look of pure relief brightened her face just before she lost her grip. The snake whipped around and it sank its fangs into her wrist. She screamed and dropped it. She had barely let it go when she started swaying, gurgling and shuddering like a rabid dog. She crashed down to the ground. Blood frothed from her mouth and her feet kicked in the dust. Her eyes bulged and stared blindly – desperately - at us. We screamed and backed away, kicking at the snake as it thrashed wildly in the dirt.
Dahra knelt beside Harriet’s twitching body and studied the bite mark. Her cheeks were ashen, but her voice was angry, “You fool! Why did you…”
Harriet made an odd sound and her hands reached out, clutching at Dahra’s sleeve. The woman shoved her off. She heaved the girl onto her side and pressed down her flailing limbs to hold her still. She pulled out her flask and forced the girl to swallow so much water that she choked. When she vomited Dahra glared around at us.
“The snake was young; its venom was weak. She’ll live. Stop crying and help me carry her.”
By the time we dragged Harriet home her wrist was black and swollen from the venom. Her screams split our ears. When the wound finally burst open the pus stank so badly that flies buzzed around her bedroom door. The old women tried to eke the bad fluid out with hot water and antidotes, but they knew that the flesh was rotting on the girl’s bones. That night, they carried sharp knives and scalding irons into the girl’s room. There was a ghastly wail, and then silence.
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