Page 58 of Song of Lorelei
Lorelei listened closely to the tune, inner ear absorbing resonance, internalizing pitch, getting a feel for the sound. As her own voice rumbled up from the back of her throat, she let the vibrations guide her and poured her heart into joining her siren sisters in song. This was one of those moments remembered forever, more for the soaring feeling of companionship and sense of belonging than anything else. Having simple unadulterated fun.
Nothing could touch such joy.
Her first swim with Nireed had been energizing, but this was next level. Save for brief, playful brushes with harbor porpoises last year, this was Lorelei’s first time swimming as a part of a pod. And pod was family.
They stayed close to the rocky sea floor, its formation much like the clusters of boulders that made up Maine’s shoreline, but broken up by patches of muck, silt, and seagrass. The landscape of the ocean with its mountains, valleys, plateaus, and gorges had all the same kinds of geographical features as Acadia National Park, just sunken. And instead of trees, there were seagrass forests.
The sea floor gradually sloped deeper and deeper the further they swam.
Nireed’s pace slowed as they approached the edge of a seaweed forest. When she spun in the water, a swirl of soft amber light, they drew up around her. Bioluminescent nodes, like glowing fireflies in the night, dotted her hands and fingers so that when she began to sign, they could see that she had said, “Almost there, Shorewalker. Just through this.”
Seaweed towered above them, some fifty-sixty feet high, its individual strands gently swaying back and forth in unison. With the flick of her tail, Nireed dipped down, hands brushing along the sea bottom and kicking up a cloud of silt. Arching back up in one fluid motion, she flicked her tail again, and plunged herself into the thick of the underwater forest.
Lorelei followed—Melusina and Delphine at her back.
Thick was an understatement. More like pushing through a pliant, slimy wall; 360-degrees of seaweed. It would be so easy to get turned around and lost in here, and yet, Nireed kept pushing on with purpose. How did she know which direction to go? Lorelei glided along, right on the siren’s glowing tail fins, almost close enough to get smacked in the face by them. She barely dared to blink, lest she lose track of Nireed and her way.
Nireed’s arms moved forward then backward over and over again, but it was no front stroke Lorelei had ever seen. If she didn’t know any better, she would have said the siren was hauling line.
Something that was too rough to be seaweed brushed the underside of her tail. She jumped, her green bioluminescent nodes flashing brighter. But upon a quick, cursory glance down, Lorelei saw that was exactly what Nireed was doing. She had picked up a thick length of frayed, braided rope. Probably an old bit of sail line.
Hand over hand Nireed pulled herself along, following the trail it marked.
Calming, Lorelei’s personal lantern light dimmed to a soft glow once more.
Bit by bit, the sea forest began to thin out, enough to see strips of ocean through the waving seaweed stalks. Nireed dropped the rope, darted forward, and swept aside the final strands, like opening a curtain. But the view beyond the window baffled Lorelei. It was just more open ocean.
She swam off to the side to let Melusine and Delphine through, and signed, words in green motion. “I thought home was just through this forest?”
All three sirens grinned, then pointed down.
Lorelei complied, staring down at chasm of dark water. The sea floor had dropped away completely. She swam out a little and saw humanoid bioluminescent figures flitting in and out of the rocky cliff face fifty additional feet down.
Her three siren companions waved their arms, the universal sign for ‘come on,’ then dove together in ‘V’ formation. Lorelei trailed behind them, rapidly closing the distance to where the other sirens swam.
With just one flick of her tail, she descended ten feet, coasted to her internal twenty-foot marker. Another flick and she was at thirty, now forty. She gasped, taken aback at what lay just fifty feet below the seaweed forest.
A whole city was carved into the cliff face, roughly the size of Haven Cove proper. It reminded her of the mountain side communities in Italy and New Mexico. Thin streams of light glinted against the granite structures.
Here in the lowermost portions of the epipelagic zone, the water was dark, pitch black to the human eye. But a siren’s eyes picked up so much more underwater, biologically evolved to catch the smallest amounts of light that filtered down from the surface to even these depths.
Delphine whistled, short but sharp.
Sirens of all ages and bioluminescent colors swam out of their homes and lined up into two rows, forming a gauntlet with synchronized precision. One hundred sirens living in a place big enough to hold one thousand. This was what was left.
“Come,” Nireed signed. “We say ‘welcome.’”
Wide-eyed, Lorelei followed Nireed down the opening between the two rows, watching as every mermaid made eye contact with her as she passed and pressed their fists to their chests. She didn’t need to have a clue about siren culture to understand that a procession through the entire siren community was an honor.
Undine and Aersila waited for them at the end of the rows. “Welcome, Shorewalker,” Undine signed, a broad smile bowing her lips.
“Thank you for inviting me. I’m honored.”
Aersila chimed in, pointing at Lorelei. Like Nireed, her bioluminescence was amber. She made a ‘C’ shape with her hand and dragged it from the base of her throat to her chest. “Hungry?”
Lorelei nodded, clutching her stomach, rumbling beneath her palms. The last she’d eaten was breakfast, and all that swimming had worked up a healthy appetite.
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