Page 57 of Song of Lorelei
A dark-haired siren popped to the surface, a toothy smile, and amber eyes glowing. She waved with her whole arm.
Lorelei shot from her chair. “Nireed?” She could scarcely believe it. The mermaid was free now, why the hell would she ever come back to shore?
“Hello, Shorewalker!”
A smile broke out across her face. She set her book down and joined the other mermaid at the water’s edge. “What brings you here?”
“We came to invite you to our home.”
Lorelei touched her chest, heart thumping against her palm. “We?”
Two more sirens bobbed to the surface.
One had dark-brown skin, brown topaz eyes, and a halo of tightly coiled hair. The second was pale like Nireed, white skin with an almost translucent, pearly sheen, but had golden hair. She held a clawed hand above her eyes and squinted, so much so that Lorelei almost didn’t notice her eye’s light blue hue.
Both sirens dipped their heads in greeting.
“These are my friends Melusina,” as Nireed spoke, the dark-skinned mermaid pointed to herself, “and Delphine.”
Lorelei signed, “Nice to meet you.”
Grinning, Melusina and Delphine repeated it back to her, but the latter notably closed her eyes when she used both hands to sign. As soon as she was finished speaking, she went back to shielding her eyes with her hand and squinting.
“Do either of you speak Two-Legger English?” She signed the words, as well.
Delphine shook her head, but Melusina answered, “Some. Nireed teaches me.”
“Most of us don’t know it,” Nireed explained. “The oceans became noisy—one hundred fifty years ago or so—when the Two-Leggers traded their wooden ships for hard metal. We dove deeper to escape the noise. Did not surface so much and lost your language.”
She must have been talking about the Industrial Age—the rise of machines—a significant historic event to sirens and humans alike, but for two completely distinct reasons. Innovation for one. But noise pollution for the other, followed by other ills in the decades to come like overfishing, ghost nets, sonar, and drilling. Humans didn’t realize it, but they had forced the sirens of legend down into the deep, to the point where they had become nothing more than maritime myth, coastal aesthetic, and fantasy.
“I was very small,” Nireed continued, signing as she spoke, “but seventeen years past, the ocean became quiet again.” Melusina nodded along, signing the word “spooky,” coupled with a troubled, almost frightened expression. “It was almost the same time of year as this but a moon cycle before. Even in the dark deep, I had never heard it so quiet before, and never again since, but my great foremother said her mother swam in seas like that. She thought maybe the Two-Leggers left the water for good. Or died in large numbers on their shores like many of our fish.”
Lorelei did a quick mental calculation. This time of year, but a month before, meant September. Then 2018 minus…
A chill ran down her spine. 2001. Nireed was referring to 9/11. Even the sirens had known something big had happened that day—all epipelagic life would have for that matter. In an underwater world, where sound travels faster than it does in air, the silence would have been sudden and all encompassing, impossible not to notice by hearing-sensitive creatures.
Lila had told her once about a whale study her college professor had been involved in that measured their stress levels. They significantly dropped during 9/11 when all air and ocean traffic halted. Though whale populations had once more habituated to the ambient noise when human travel resumed, the truth was the poor things were low-key stressed all the time.
In Lila’s research of Nireed, she learned that sirens were high-frequency hearers like dolphins, meaning they heard a wider, higher range of sounds than humans did. And they were hearing sensitive, which explained their initial aversion to engine and propeller sounds—something they had habituated to over time as they began ascending to the surface to take canned pork from Dawn Chaser.
“Some still speak Two-Legger languages,” Melusina signed, bringing the conversation back around. “Very few.”
Nireed nodded. “Our foremothers passed them down to some, but less and less so as the years passed. Undine and Aersila learned because they are leaders.” Then gesturing to Delphine, she added, “Some of us have never even surfaced. I had only just begun doing so when we first met. Adjusting to all the light was the hardest bit. This is Delphine’s first time.”
Oh gosh. That explained all the eye shielding and squinting.
“Let me write Killian… my, uh, ‘mate’ a note so he knows not to worry while I’m gone. I’ll be right back. You can wait for me below the surface if you’d like to rest your eyes.”
Delphine smiled with relief. “Thank you,” she signed and promptly dove. The others followed. Pulse racing from excitement, Lorelei jogged up the beach to the cottage to shuck her clothes and scribble the note. This was really happening.
She was going to see the home of her siren kin.
* * *
They zoomed through the water, following Nireed’s lead, using the currents to propel themselves forward, streaks of bioluminescence in the murk. Green, amber, topaz, and light blue. Just like the colors of their eyes.
A cheerful melody—at first a hum, then song—rose from Delphine, her voice sweet and bright as it permeated the water around them. It grew in volume as each one of them joined in—first Melusina, then Nireed. This was not a song meant to lure prey or a mate. It spoke of friendship, sisterhood, and love of the ocean. A song meant just for them.