Page 59 of Song of Lorelei

They swam through the rocky channels of the underwater city until they reached Undine’s personal abode. A seaweed curtain draped over the narrow doorway, topped by a shark jaw nailed above its mantle. A grin tugged at Lorelei’s mouth. Who would have thought she and Undine shared taste in décor?

Inside was cavernous.

High ceilings and a wide room cut deep into the mountain. Other ocean creatures crammed themselves into nooks and crevices, but not the mermaids. They needed space to stretch their fins and keep water moving past their gills. Shelves made of whale bone lined the walls, all of Undine’s belongings on display. Some looked like they might be trinkets reclaimed from ship wreckage, but most seemed utilitarian—foodstuff storage and tools.

The floor was packed with muck from which a thick, neatly trimmed kelp bed grew. Someplace soft to lay and rest. At least, that’s what Lorelei felt compelled to do when she saw it.

When Undine swam toward the ceiling, Lorelei followed.

At the top, there was a circular stone slab, suspended from the ceiling by rusted iron hooks and thick rope as wide as her wrist. She glanced at Nireed, and the siren made the signs for “table” and “eat,” then pointed up.

Craning her neck, Lorelei looked up. A glittering mosaic of a many-armed kraken spanned the ceiling, made from tiny pieces of white, blue, and green tile. “Huge,” Lorelei signed, her eyes wide from awe. Prehistoric. A leviathan.

“Ocean Goddess,” Nireed replied, hands moving quickly. “No one’s seen her since before the sickness.”

Though that sounded ominous, Lorelei couldn’t help but be relieved. A leviathan was not someone she wanted to stumble across. She’d be little more than a snack to such a creature.

Undine brought over a circular silver-plated tray with braided etching around the rim that may have once belonged to a tea service from the 1800s—either a wreckage find or a family heirloom, possibly a gift an ancestor received from a sailor lover in the days before the flesh-eating brain virus. Strips of thinly sliced meats fanned the platter’s circumference. Upon closer inspection, Lorelei noted the initials U.S.N. engraved into the center—United States Navy. The piece had once belonged to a naval officer.

Lorelei sniffed—haddock, tuna, and something else she couldn’t place.

Nireed tapped Lorelei’s shoulder to get her attention. “Shark,” she signed. “Big. Aggressive. From last pod hunt.” Lorelei pinched a strip between her claws and took a bite. She chewed thoughtfully. It might be a new favorite.

Undine set the tray down on the table.

When Aersila described the shark’s size, grey top, and white underbelly she gulped. Great White. Rare in the Gulf of Maine, but not unheard of. Ballsy of the sirens to go after it. Ocean animals didn’t usually hunt things bigger than them, but then again, sirens weren’t animals. And humans had hunted things bigger than themselves since the Stone Age.

Great Whites were also a protected species, illegal for humans to hunt. Not that the sirens were beholden to human law, and to this siren pod, a Great White would be an invasive natural predator. Still, she probably wouldn’t tell Lila about this part of the trip, and at a later point, she might suggest to Undine that they try to chase out the next one they saw instead. If anyone understood first-hand the significance, it would be the sirens who were themselves an endangered species.

“How long have you lived here?” Lorelei signed.

“Not long,” Undine replied. “Grand foremothers built this place when our men drove us out of the deep.”

“Is this not deep?” They had to be about 600 feet down from the surface, far enough that storm effects no longer touched them.

Undine’s bioluminescence dimmed a bit. She shook her head, a motion seen because of two glowing eyes and lambent nodes at her temples and down the length of her nose. She pointed north of where they were now and began describing what sounded like a huge pit in the ocean floor.

Hands moving through the water, graceful as dance, but imbued with language, she said their people had carved cities into its walls going down and down and down. The oldest ones, now abandoned ruins, were built closer to the top. The louder and more dangerous the Two-Legger’s oceanic activities became, the deeper and deeper they built to get away from it all. But when their people got sick—the sirens craving human flesh, and the mermen turning against their own kind—their grand foremothers fled to escape the growing violence.

Recalling the topographical maps Lila showed her, it sounded like she was describing Georges Basin. Or something like it. Hundreds of miles wide, and hundreds of miles deeper than surrounding areas, its depths crossed into the mesopelagic zone.

X-rays of Nireed’s ribcage showed that it was much, much thicker than a human’s but also flexible. Like the sperm whale’s it allowed merfolk to swim to great depths without being killed by the pressure. They had powerful, collapsible lungs, too, for the same reason. Between Lila’s research and building Haven Cove Museum of Ocean Discovery’s mermaid exhibit, Lorelei had learned a lot about her species and the Gulf of Maine.

She took another strip of fish from the tray—tuna this time.

“There’s something we’d like to say.” Undine’s bioluminescence dimmed, flickering softly. Why did the siren seem sad? “The cure has given us…” She paused, rubbing her forehead. “More clarity than we had before about your ship friends. On behalf of the pod, we are sorry.”

Lorelei swallowed, rubbing her chest against the building pressure. Undine had apologized to her before for what happened to The Osprey crew, but it hadn’t been sincere. At least, she hadn’t understood Lorelei’s grief and anger a year ago and didn’t think the pod had done anything wrong.

“Coming to the surface began as storm play,” Undine continued. “Letting the waves toss us around. Feeling sky water hit us from above. But then we smelled the Two-Leggers, their fear, and saw the wooden boat tipping from side to side in the waves. It surprised us to see what our foremothers told us in stories—a Two-Legger vessel that barely made sound. Thought it was just stories.” Undine touched the back of her neck, the spot where the virophage had been injected. “Shorewalker, you helped us remember that Two-Leggers could be friends. Then gave us back the ability to choose. We know our mistake now and have put your friends to rest, their bones wrapped in seaweed the same as our own dead. If you wish to pay your respects, Nireed will take you to them.”

Lorelei clutched her hands to her chest. Should she do this? Was she ready? Human burial practices were hard enough. Could she handle the sirens’? If she saw individually wrapped bones and skulls, she might scream. But if it was more of a shroud, she could maybe do that.

She didn’t have to stay long. And a quick visit might give her the closure she never imagined she could ever have, and the peace of mind that she would never accidentally stumble upon their bones or The Osprey’s wreckage in her ocean explorations.

She nodded slowly.

They swam to another section of the seaweed forest, just Lorelei and Nireed, miles away from the cliff face city. She followed her siren sister through, though it was far less dense here. She could easily weave her way around the stalks of seaweed.