Mire

by Vivien Leanne Saunders

  “How far does it go?” he asked. They were the first words he had spoken to me all evening. I shrugged and pointed at the distant lighthouse, whose bright light looked like a yellow eye in the fog.

  “That’s the middle of the island. We keep watch all along the beaches. They say there’s a great bay of sand that drags at your feet on the Northern side. The sailors who wash up there get stuck, and then the tide races in and covers their faces. Sometimes you can see the tops of their heads. If they had been a few inches taller they would not have drowned.”

  One of the old women had told me the story after she returned from one of the far watch posts. She had laughed as she said it. The man beside me shivered.

  “Between the rocks and the quicksand, this place must take more than its fair share of lives.” he muttered. “I’m lucky that I washed up near the pier.”

  “Not really. Have you ever seen someone dashed to pieces by the sea? The bone gets washed clean. You can see the white shards long before you notice the rest of the man.” I spoke callously. If he wanted to see the ugly side of the island, I wasn’t going to hide a single thing. I believed every foolish lie my teachers had told me: “We Siren admire anyone who makes it here alive. You act as though we’re mindless slaves, but it’s not true. We just have so much ugliness and death around us that we value our beauty more.”

  “And you kill your boy children, and banish the girls who grow to be ugly.” he finished for me, his voice snide. I shook my head. Both of the stories were as ridiculous as the legends about us enchanting dolphins to make them sing. I flicked my eyes up at him and smiled pathetically,

  “If I tell you all our secrets you’ll get me into trouble. Isn’t this enough?”

  As I hoped, he shook his head. Mocking a sigh, I made my way through the maze of saltwater pools towards one of the wooden shacks. I was relieved to see that the building was still sound. Pulling a rope out of the bag I was carrying, I threw it up over a wooden beam and pulled the two ends down. Then I forced myself to look confused, and stepped away.

  “I don’t think I will be able to climb a rope in this silly dress.” I plucked at the skirt nervously. “I don’t suppose…”

  He rolled his eyes and seized the rope in both hands. With deft, practiced fingers he looped the coils around themselves, crafting a series of knots which would bear our weight. I mentally checked off the first of my three questions. Perhaps this would be easier than I had thought.

  We climbed up into the building and looked out into the marshes. The sun had almost set, and I kicked off my shoes to shake the sand out. “It’s too dangerous to keep walking in the dark. We can stay here until dawn.”

  “Won’t you be missed?” he asked rather sarcastically. I smiled at him serenely.

  “If anyone asked, it was your idea.”

  The man laughed for the first time since we had been drunk together and gestured at my bag. “I hope you brought something to eat!”

  I pulled out bread and cheese, a hock of salted ham and a flask of apple juice. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve decided I’m never drinking wine again as long as I live.”

  He tutted, “How do you know your precious charge doesn’t want a real drink? I thought you were making me happy.”

  “You’re annoying enough without a hangover.” I replied tartly. “If I gave you wine you’d be happy tonight and miserable tomorrow. I figured I’d make you happy tonight myself, and tomorrow you can find your own liquor.”

  “How are you going to make me happy?”

  “Well, I was going to start by making you apologise for being so rough with me this morning. Then I was going to show you how else we could have done it.”

  He laughed darkly. “How about I don’t apologise; I bend you over that table, and you forget all about things being beautiful?”

  I shrugged dangled my legs off the entranceway. I made my way down the first three knots before a hand reached down and stopped me. I looked up, and told him flatly that I was going home. His pride made him grit his teeth, and I climbed down another two knots before he cleared his throat and forced out an apology. I was tempted to keep climbing, but I had never played this game before and I was grateful to get any kind of surrender from him. I made a convincing show of reluctance as I climbed back up. It’s easy to perform an emotion when you are really feeling it.

  The man was courteous for a good twenty minutes before he returned to his crude, prying mood. He decided to test the extent of my ‘obedience’. He took food from my plate when he wanted to eat it and interrupted me whenever he was losing an argument. He spent an hour at these games before he grew bored, and then he lowered my hand into his lap and instructed me in his other desires. In these, as in all things, I obeyed.

  My head was aching with trying to out-think him by the time he fell asleep. He lay heavily against my chest, as he had insisted that I cushion him from the damp wooden floor. As the brine seeped through my dress I rooted in my pocket and drew out a small vial of fine oil. I dabbed my finger in it and waited for it to warm to the temperature of my skin. When I smoothed it under the man’s nose he barely stirred. I waited ten minutes for the drug to take effect, and then shoved him onto the floor so fiercely that his head bounced. He did not wake up.

  I climbed down the rope ladder and met my guard at the bottom. She yawned when she saw me, relaxing now that I was safely away from my ward. I reported back what I had discovered, and she promised to take the message back to Sweetwater when her relief arrived. We curled up together on the scant solid ground under the rope, and slept for a few hours. Then, before the sun rose, I pulled myself back up the ladder and hauled the man’s heavy body back over my own. The pungent scent of the drug made me yawn.

  While my companion woke up I invented a story about my childhood in the beach village of Imul. I described my mother and father making nets, and my baby brother learning how to walk. I laughed when I talked about the games we used to play.

  “I used to hide under the rowing boats. He never found me! One day I crawled straight into a nest of crabs. There must have been hundreds of them. I screamed so loudly the fishermen came running over. Imagine seeing a little girl bursting out of a boat, covered from head to foot in yellow sand crabs! I’m surprised they didn’t hit me with an oar and throw me into the sea!” I brushed the coarse hair back from the man’s eyes and smiled, “Did you ever play hide and seek?”

  “I didn’t have a brother,” he evaded, and then relented at the honest curiosity in my eyes, “My friends used to hide in the caves. I hated going in there – they were always so dark, and so cold. The trees hugged the edges of the mountains, and if you climbed up the strongest one there was a shelf of rock where you could see the whole world. I used to sit up there for hours and watch the birds.”

  “Did you ever fall into a bird’s nest?” I teased. He pulled a face at me and sat up.

  The sun had almost set by the time we returned to the pier. We were both tired,. The urge to be alone was almost unbearable, but I forced myself to look rueful as I escorted the man to the dining hall.

  “Wait,” he said as I turned to leave. He beckoned me closer, “Is your Mistress going to let you come and play with me again?”

  “Do I make you happy?” I teased him. He waved his hand airily.

  “I don’t know about being happy, but you’re certainly not as boring as those idiots. They’ll send anything in a skirt to make soft eyes at me. Promise that you’ll come back.”

  “I don’t know.” I bit my lip dubiously, “They might not believe you still want me.”

  He scowled, and then pulled me closer. I squeaked and kissed him playfully before pushing myself away. He knelt down and tore a tiny scrap of silk from the bottom of my dress.

  “There.” he said, and stood up to kiss me again. “I’ll tell them I only want the girl whose keepsake I carry.”

  “It’s a bit of muddy cloth.”

  “I see you have a lot to learn about flirting, little Siren.�
�� The man raised an eyebrow at me, and then fluttered his hand dismissively, “Go away before I starve to death.”

  I headed slowly for Sweetwater’s tower. I needed the time to clear my head. By the time I arrived, my guard had already told the High Mistress everything that the man had said to me. I couldn’t make any sense of it. Why would Sweetwater want to know about a man keeping scraps of filthy fabric?

  Sweetwater gave me a rare smile, “You’ve done well. Take this.”

  I held out my hands obediently, expecting some kind of treat, and she dropped something heavy into my palms and folded my fingers over it. I looked at the small vial curiously. It was made from blue glass, a rare treasure even on our wealthy island.

  “What is it?”

  “Poison.” The old woman said diffidently. “Pour it into his wine.”

  I almost dropped the priceless bottle, “You want me to kill him?”

  The High Mistress’s ugly face closed off. She looked at me like I was stupid, and cruel, and ignorant, as if my horror was more disgusting than her command.

  “You asked three questions. Can he tie knots? They found knotted rope around the first boy’s wrists. They found the second boy weeks after he disappeared. Where would you hide a child? Just as you said, he was on a rock shelf high above the caves. The birds had pecked out his eyes. He was eight years old. The Mainlanders turned his house over and found nothing. All there was were two scraps of fabric, one blue and one brown, tied around the bedposts. You told us what they were. One keepsake for each of the children he murdered. He had three chances to absolve himself and he used them to confess. Well done, girl.”

  My stomach heaved. I made it to the corner before I threw up. My throat burned with bile and hatred. Tears streamed down my cheeks. Sweetwater hadn’t sounded angry before, but now she snapped at me, “You’ll clean that up before you kill him, girl.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I gasped, still fighting back nausea. “Why… why would you let me go to him? The things I did with him…”

  “Would you have done them if you knew the truth?” she scowled when I vomited a second time, “Two families got justice today because of you. Stop crying. Any one of those Mainlanders would kill for a chance to poison that monster. Your reward is that satisfaction.”

  “I wish I was dead.” I moaned without thinking, resting my head in my shaking hands. Sweetwater cackled.

  “If you want to drink it yourself, then go ahead. You won’t be the first. I have no use for a girl who will not obey.”

  I sleepwalked back to my room. I had to get ready. Soon, the man would start to wonder where I had gone. I could laugh off a few hours but if I returned with my eyes red and my face white he would know that something had happened. I felt dizzy when I imagined his face, and if my stomach had not been empty I would have been sick again.

  One of the servants caught my elbow and sat me down. She stroked my hair but I was too numb to feel it. She said something, and brought me a glass of water. It tasted bitter.

  “What was it?” I asked in a shaking voice. The woman kissed my forehead and pressed the glass back against my lips.

  “You’ll feel better,” she told me. I drank. Who cared what it was? It wasn’t as if I could feel any worse. The woman kissed me again, wiped my eyes with her handkerchief, and then helped me to run a bath.

  I lay back so that the water covered my face. I thought of the sailors who got stuck on the sands, embraced by water that froze their fingers and stung their chapped lips. They were men, just men, and each one of them had disappeared from the island. I thought they were the only ones to die.

  We were taught that the Siren rite of passage was painful. I had idiotically thought my teachers had been talking about the way that my body had been used. They meant something far worse. I had willingly surrendered my flesh; now Sweetwater demanded that I ravage my soul.

  It seemed as though every woman on the island must be complicit in the murder of so many people, even if it was only carried out by the Siren. They had lied to me. I had thought I was so clever with my tart words and my open arms. I had been such a fool.

  I climbed out of the bath when I started to shiver and twisted my damp hair up into a tight knot. I pulled on a soft grey dress and painted my eyes with dark lines to hide the swollen lids. My hair was dark from the water and my skin was still pale. I slid golden pins into my hair and clipped a gold choker around my throat. For the first time, I looked into the mirror and saw a woman, not a girl – but a woman who I already despised. My eyes caught movement, and I gasped. Dahra was watching me from the doorway. When our eyes met in the mirror she saw how angry I was. Wordlessly, she turned on her heel and left.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I ran after her and clutched at her sleeve. The fabric tore and I flinched, “Why didn’t you say something?”

  Dahra was silent. She reached her rooms, slipped inside, and locked the door behind her. I pounded on it with my fist until my knuckles ached, and then I spat on the floor and turned away. A week ago I would have been beaten for it. Now, nobody would meet my eyes.

  One of the other Siren caught my arm. She drew me into her arms, and held me tightly. I clung to her for a moment, but my throat closed up so much that I choked. I could not bear to be comforted. None of the women on the island had any right to offer me absolution. They had twisted me around like crochet yarn. I fought back my open hostility. The Siren only let go of my arm when I managed to make myself look calm. It was only a look. I felt anger settle into my stomach, and knew the hot nausea would not leave me until I broke completely.

  The Siren fixed my makeup and kissed my unfeeling cheek. As far as anyone cared, I was ready.

  The man reached for me the moment I stepped into his room. I flinched away. His hands closed into fists, and I forced myself to laugh. It sounded bright, nervous. “You’ll mess up my dress! We’re not in the marshes any more for you to act like an animal.”

  “Careful, Siren.” he drawled, and drew me closer anyway. “That was dangerously close to an insult.”

  “Was it? It’s better to be a beast than a worm.” I smiled, and caught his lips in a slow kiss that promised far more. He caught his breath and his hand closed on the back of my neck as he deepened the kiss. I wondered if he had crushed the children’s throats. I wanted to bite him and spit out the taste of him. I made myself moan and tangle my hands in his hair.

  “Stop,” I murmured, as if I didn’t really want him to, “One of the servants will walk in on us.”

  When had I ever stopped him? I always sank so quickly into mindless desire that I wouldn’t have cared if the old woman had brought all of her friends. My breathing had returned too quickly to normal. Something had changed, and he could smell it on me.

  I bit my lip and moved forward, letting my hand wander down his body until he shivered and lay back. I was just touching his clothes, I told myself. One part of his body was as vile as the rest of it. I was relieved when the door opened and my guard carried a flask of wine through on a silver tray. She gave me a warning look when I couldn’t help relief from shining from my face. The man cursed at the interruption.

  I poured two glasses without thinking, knowing that if I drank from one he was more likely to drink from the other. It only took a moment to drip the poison into his glass, hiding the motion by turning my back. They looked identical. I set his down on the table but he did not reach for it. I met his eyes in confusion.

  “Who asked her to bring that? You said you didn’t drink wine.” he said, and underneath the mocking tone there was a suspicion that my awkward behaviour had summoned between us. He looked down at the glasses and his forehead puckered. The air was thick with unease. I laughed, and although it sounded too shrill it dispelled some of the darkness.

  “Don’t you swear the same thing every time you get a hangover?” I drained my entire glass. My stomach turned over, but I grinned lazily and lay back against the cushions. He played with my hair, watching me carefully. This
time I forced myself to meet his eyes, to smile and blush at the right times, and finally to pull his hands down onto my body. When his breath panted in my ear and his hand pushed up my skirt I laughed and sat up, pushing him lightly away and reaching for the poisoned wine.

  “If you don’t want it…” I knew that he wouldn’t touch it unless he was absolutely sure it was safe. I bit back my rush of fear and looked down into the liquid, and at him. He deserved to die. I wanted it more than I had ever wanted anything, and in that moment it was all that mattered to me. The feeling of his hands on my skin disgusted me.

  I could have convinced him, I think, if I had let him thrust his foul body back into mine. Exhausted, sated, he would have been far easier to persuade. But the thought of lying with him made me want to scream. I couldn’t bear another second of it. I pressed my lips together as tightly as I dared as I tipped up the glass. I took the tiniest sip I could manage. The liquor stung my throat as I swallowed.

  The man snatched the wine from me as soon as I lowered it, and he drained the glass. I sighed, and took the empty cup from his hand. I was already feeling dizzy. I knew that the poison would work far faster on him.

  “There.” I said softly. “Even if we threw up we would be too late.”

  He understood in a second, and looked at me in horror before hurling me to the floor. I scrabbled against the soft carpets for a second before the world stopped spinning, and then I felt something close around my throat. The poison felt like it was choking me – but then I realized that it was the man, sweat already beading on his pale skin, drawing me up against him with his arm crushing my neck.

  “Antidote.” he growled, and then snarled it at the old woman who burst through the door. “Antidote!”

  “It doesn’t hurt. You’ll just fall asleep.” she told him pleasantly, and let him see the bared knife in her hand. “If you don’t let go of Clay I’ll make it hurt a lot.”

  I laughed manically, and I felt the man’s arm growing warmer as his body fought the poison. My own skin felt as if it was made of ice, but he was ahead of me now – blood dripped onto my cheek, and when I forced my eyes to focus I saw that it was dripping from his chin. I tasted copper, and coughed, and felt blood trickle from my own lips.