Adeliyah sighed with pleasure as she watched Aylssha and Nayedi
swim loops around each other during evening patrol. Twenty sirens in
Kyrran's pod, and they nearly ruled the entire ocean by now.
The
gift of heartsong was powerful indeed. Polar bears and whales succumbed
to their will, turning aside and yielding their catch to the
unstoppable merfolk; whole
shipping businesses had been forced to close because their trade routes
crossed paths too many times with a mysterious force that disabled their
ships without fail. Merchants had to choose between receiving less
profit or losing their merchandise—and their men—altogether.
As
for Adeliyah, she soon grew accustomed to hearing the strange,
otherworldly tones and replicating them—so much so that she would no
sooner hear the song than begin to sing along, so powerfully that she
could empty a boat in record time—and yet so precisely that if two men
stood at the rail, one would throw himself overboard and the other would
not notice until she began to sing his song.
As women
transformed and joined their ranks, sometimes their early struggles
reminded her of her own experience with death—but the more she watched
it, the more those morbid thoughts began to fade, and only the idea of
her rebirth remained. Women on the surface were weak-willed things,
expected to shine as the most elegant thing in the room and provide
comfort for the menfolk, while procreating and rearing their lineage,
and maintaining their homes and lands.
Under the sea, she was a
thing of power, an inexorable force; she had all freedom, all
control—there was even talk of Kyrran allowing a select few of the pod
to branch off and become leaders of pods of their own, and among those
few was Adeliyah.
"As long as the men keep sending us women," Kyrran sang once, "we may as well prove that there is yet some use for them!"
One night, a siren named Jasper returned from a scouting mission in an extremely agitated state.
"There
is a boat in peril not far from here," she sang for her sisters. "I
hear the fear of many men—but I can also hear the heartsong of a woman!"
Kyrran
took up the melody, stirring agitation in all who heard it. "One of our
gender is about to become one of our species! We must sing for her!"
They
departed, and now, as Adeliyah watched her fellow sirens assemble at
the badly-damaged boat, she knew she would rather be a siren than any
other creature that breathed.
Kyrran raised her
arms and sang as faint, mixing melodies trickled down from the boat. A
commotion erupted at one end, and Adeliyah saw the white splash as a
small, pale body weighted down by cruel chains entered the water and
descended to the ocean floor.
Kyrran's eyes had not left the
towering mast and her fluttering sails—torn to shreds by last night's
storm—but her song swelled in intensity, becoming hard and razor-sharp.
Adeliyah opened her throat to let more of her voice out, feeling the
water in her lungs compress and amplify the sound of the song.
More
bodies dropped, but not involuntarily. The spineless sailors who had
dared blame the whims of Mother Nature on the innocent woman now
struggling to breathe soon met the same fate—but there would be no
rebirth for them.
As soon as the last man fell, the mermaids began
attacking the hull of the ship. They breached the hold, and the heavy
barrels of food and wine and chests of treasure spilled out among them.
Jasper and a few others tended to the newly reborn siren, and no one
quite noticed the small keel of a dinghy slipping away from the
wreckage.
No one, that is, except Adeliyah.
She
followed it to some distance from her pod. At first, she wondered if it
might have just drifted loose in the chaos—but then again, she
distinctly saw the oars plowing through the water, pushed by human
hands. She listened, and of course, she heard the heartsong. Readying
herself, she sang loudly and invitingly, intending to make short work of
this idiot who thought he had cleverly escaped the fate of his
shipmates.
The oars stopped, and Adeliyah saw
his face bend over the edge of the boat. She locked eyes with him,
singing stronger. His face was nearly in the water by now, and she
succeeded in breaking his will, superseding it with her own. His fate
was sealed. He plunged in headfirst and began the long process of
drowning.
Adeliyah had not stopped singing. Very often, the
sailors that tumbled off ships into their waiting faces were killed
instantly more from the fall than from drowning. This man, not being so
far from the water, was not such an efficient kill. She was so absorbed
in watching and waiting for the light of consciousness to leave his eyes
that she didn't even notice the second splash until two arms wrapped
around her intended victim and dragged him back toward the surface.
Adeliyah
faltered; she hadn't realized there were two men in the boat—how could
she have missed the second song? Her only hope was to try and drown the
original victim before his head broke the surface, but the second man
was a strong swimmer and accomplished what few had been able to do: save
another man from siren-induced drowning. Adeliyah could only watch as
the second man hauled the sailor back into the dinghy, and only then she
stopped singing the first song.
At last, the second heartsong
rang clear to her. She sang the first few notes, but the second man
turned and looked at her so suddenly, she faltered a second time. He was
looking at her with the same intensity with which she stared at him. As
softly as it began, the heartsong faded in her throat.
Adeliyah
could not comprehend what was happening; why had she suddenly lost the
will to sing? Was it because she had none of the other merfolk about
her? It was too late to let him go, now; he had seen her. She looked
up—he was still staring at her. She waited for the song to return—it
did, softly, but her voice did not swell to match the notes anymore. She
would have to resort to more conventional means of dealing with this
interference.
His near-drowned companion
couldn't do anything to preserve him, and his excellent swimming skills
had nothing against an angry siren wrapping her whole body around him
like the chain bonds on the woman, using the weight of herself to drag
him deep under the water and hold him until his struggles ceased. Even
then, she felt his body, and his heart still beat within him, a steady
pulse as unconsciousness was ironically the one thing keeping him alive
for now.
Adeliyah knew that she should just drop him and let
the water claim him, but the recent incident had unnerved her. Why had
she stopped singing? What made this man's heartsong different than all
the rest? She needed to know, and he just might hold the answers for
her. Adeliyah made her decision as she swam away with her befuddling
trophy. She needed him alive...
For now.
TO BE CONTINUED....
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