A Siren Song, by Gabrielle Kaasa

Photo Courtesy of Damara Pennington

“Come on, it’s just through here. We’re almost there,” the girl said, with a lovely half-whisper. She vanished into the mouth of the cave, leaving only a faint suggestion of her outline on the barely lit water.

“Man, this is a bad idea,” Billy thought as he followed the girl’s shadow into the cave.

Caves were bad news for a sailor. One way in, one way out, generally inhabited by large, slimy man-eating amphibians. If you were lucky.

If Murphy’s Maritime Academy had taught him anything, it’s that there was always a new and more terrifying way to die just around the corner. Sailors had to be on the lookout for all manner of dangers- bad weather, indignant sea gods, water dragons, Sirens-

Oh, shit.

His mind seized onto the new and terrifying knowledge, immediately realizing what kind of mistake he had made. The stories always painted Sirens as chicks on rock in pretty dresses, singing like Martha and the Vandellas, irresistible, booty-shaking wonders of women, lulling men into a false security that ended up dashed to bits on the hard rock of reality. Or a sandbar. Or into a cliff. Sirens weren’t picky about that part.

But what most people didn’t know, and what Billy had learned at Murphy’s Maritime Academy, was that Sirens weren’t just consigned to rocks. Nope, they were everywhere- in the water, on the shore, in the red-light districts of most larger port towns. Sirens had branched out, and a good sailor always had to be on the lookout.

Stupid Billy. He saw the young woman on shore, beautiful but dirty, dressed in tattered rags, and took pity on her. He pulled his tiny dinghy into the cove and ran right into her trap. She looked up at him with those amazing green eyes, opened her mouth, and- Billy couldn’t hear a damn thing she was saying. He leaned in closer. Nothing. Oh, his earplugs, he remembered. He’d put them in at the beginning of the trip to Seawell, like every good sailor schooled at Murphy’s Maritime Academy, out of pure and simple habit. He laughed at himself, shaking his head as he removed the earplugs.

And he didn’t remember a whole lot else, not until now at least. But it was too late. Now that he finally realized what this girl was, it was too late to save himself. His feet moved forward of their own volition. His limbs didn’t listen to reason. He was moving swiftly towards death and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

This is exactly how I got fired, he thought. One dumb mistake and that was it. How was he supposed to know that peeing off the left side of the ship was a personal affront to Neptune? They hadn’t taught him that at Murphy’s Maritime Academy, that’s for sure. But the other sailors noticed. It was hard not to, what with a forty-foot god standing over the side of your ship, booming, “Where’s the little asshole that pissed on my head?” Billy was lucky they put him out in a lifeboat and hadn’t chained him to a barrel of rocks instead. And now, he was going to die anyway, before he’d even had a chance to find a new job. His mother would be so disappointed.

Oh well. Might as well make conversation before she offs me, he thought.

“So, you’re a siren, huh?”

The girl didn’t even turn her head around as she noted, “Yes, took you long enough to figure that one out. Your crab pot isn’t exactly overflowing, Sailor.”

“Hey, I graduated second in my class at Murphy’s Maritime Academy!”

“That’s not saying a lot, is it?” she asked in that breathy, syrupy sweet voice.

Billy mulled it over. He supposed she was right. There had only been ten men in his class at Murphy’s Maritime Academy, and only five of those were actually literate. It was not the Ivy League of Sailing Schools, for certain.

“I didn’t mean to be harsh, Sailor. Just making an observation.”

“It’s alright. I don’t want to argue. Not when I’m so close to death. I’d rather my last minutes be peaceful ones.”

The girl snorted, a delightful, tinkling sort of snort. Billy had never heard anything like it before. “Last minutes? Do you think I’m going to the trouble of killing you?” She stopped in her tracks and looked back at him in shock.

“Well, that’s what you people do, isn’t it?”

The girl rolled her eyes. “You people? That’s awfully racist of you, don’t you think? Some of us have greater ambitions that simply lolling about on a rock all day waiting for ships to come near so we can send them crashing to their watery deaths. Let me tell you something- lolling gets pretty damn tiresome after a while. It’s boring as hell, what with all the waiting, and some of those rock lounging bitches are tough. They will cut you if you step one foot onto their side of the rock. Divas!” She snorted again in disgust. “And it’s not like any of them wear sunscreen- oh no, got to get that crispy fried tan! They’ll look like shoe leather in ten years. Screw them.”

Billy noticed her alabaster skin fairly glowing in the soft light near the mouth of the cave. “Sensitive skin?”

She sighed. “I fry like a damned conch fritter out there, man.”

“Well, what about one of the larger towns? I hear there are sirens…uh…everywhere,” he said while clearing his throat, trying not to intimate that she was cut out for the life of a lady of the night.

“There’s nothing wrong with that career choice, oldest profession and all, but my heart’s not in it.”

“Well, what do you want to do?” Billy asked, curious as to why he cared so much about a woman he thought was planning to kill him.

“This,” she said, and waved her arm with a flourish.

Billy gasped, There, on a platform, was a small, brand new submersible ship. He’d seen these in drawings at Murphy’s Maritime Academy, but he’d been taught that they were terribly expensive and that they’d never see one, much less pilot one, in real life.

“Where’d you get that?” he said, still awed.

“I built it,” the girl said proudly.

Billy’s jaw dropped. “But…how?”

“Lots of steel and rivets, lots of time spent in shop class. I had a nice voice, but I was no good at lolling, and not much for fashion or charm- so no rocks or whorehouses for me, I’m afraid. So yeah, I was the only Siren in shop class at Seldon’s Seashore Secondary School.”

“Wow.” Billy was impressed, but confused. “So, why did you make me follow you here?”

“I need a first mate. Need a job?”