Chapter Two: Beneath the Shattered Waves

Mother made me split up the food for the next few days. Each “family” in the Chorus gets a certain amount of food based on how many members they have and how old they are. I’ve almost finished dividing up the rations, since Mother made me do it alone, it took almost two full days. 

Fourteen hours of rationing out food for the Chorus has made me tired, yet I have to sneak away to check on that human, she said her name was Callista, I think. I finally finished, thankfully I don't have to deliver it all, thankfully. In harsher times, we have to, but right now food is plentiful, so there isn’t any stealing or anything.

When I finish, I set out the rations. Each group of bodies is labeled for each “family” to take one a day. Sirens don’t have family names, since we live in Choruses, and every siren in a Chorus is technically related, it’d be useless. Instead, we designate a siren that is the head of each “family” to come get their food for the day.

I leave the pick-up and start to swim towards the surface. The water near the shipwreck has been still since we finished picking up all the food, and there’s still bloody clouds in the water. It will soon attract nearby sharks. How unfortunate.

I think humans can eat fish. Since I don’t know if this human can take care of itself, I’ll bring it food just to make sure. Caelumara is busy, she’s taking care of the new-formed sirens.

How a siren is actually made is unknown to everybody, some think that not even Matriarchs know how they are formed. Though, they always come into being where the bodies of dead sirens are laid to rest. Usually they come into being when a siren spends a lot of time there alone, not even those who have done that to make a new siren know how it works.

I snatch a fish from the water beside me, and dig my claws into its spine just to be sure it dies. Its blood clouds around the injuries I’ve inflicted, metallic. It tastes the way those chains from some of the ships smell. I have to wonder why human blood is so sweet yet the blood of other beings is always so horribly metal-like.

I recall my own first few years, Mother had been in the Trench, I found her, I think on the day I had finished forming. Memories that weren’t mine swirled through my mind, and she looked delighted to see me, if only she still looked at me like that.

At the time of my forming, a lot of sirens had died due to a human called Odysseus, he had killed our old Matriarch because they were running low on food and they wanted to make sure they wouldn’t starve. How were they to know that he’d see right through the song? Our Chorus has been miniscule ever since that rueful day. We’ve never really recovered from the massacre that was him “just trying to get home after twelve years” ridiculous. We do not care, just drown so we can eat.

What Odysseus did was brutal, he cut off their tails and threw them back into the water to die. It was a mercy for the rest of the Chorus to execute them, otherwise they wouldn’t have died as long as the Chorus took care of them. They were suffering beyond imagination, and most of them asked if the rest of the Chorus would give them a quick death. They couldn’t swim, or communicate underwater anymore, Mother said it was very sad, quite pitiful.

As I reach the surface, I have to wonder what humans think of Odysseus, do they hail him a hero? Even when he killed hundreds? We heard over five hundred of his men call out for him to save them, they all died under his command. He even sacrificed his own friends so he could get home to his wife.

Most sirens don’t find love, it’d be wrong since the sirens in a Chorus are all related. Though it’d be interesting to see two sirens from different Choruses, considering that each Chorus has a different language.

I drag myself partially out of the water and throw the fish towards the edge of the forest.

“Human! I’ve brought something for you!” I call out. Hopefully she’s relatively close and can hear me. I wait for a few moments before I see eyes from the edge of the woods. “Are you done making me wait? Go on, grab it; that fish is for you after all.”

A tentative hand reaches out and snatches the fish. She’s clearly nervous.

“I’m alone, if that’s what you’re worried about. You can come out of the woods.” There she is, finally. It’s like she has no idea just how limited my time is right now. “Come on, get out here, believe it or not I find myself mildly curious about you.” At this, she tilts her head, confused.

“Why? I thought sirens knew about humans. I mean, we know quite a lot about sirens so I just assumed sirens knew about humans too.” She’s fidgeting, maybe she’s just nervous or maybe she’s lying.

“How would you humans know about sirens? Most of the time when you humans come across us, you die.” She must be lying, humans practically drown themselves upon hearing a siren’s song. Even if they can’t swim, they still jump in to reach the source of the melody, they don’t care that there’s almost a hundred of us drowning them.

“Well, Odysseus shared his experience…” She trails off as my face turns to one of annoyance.

“Yeah? What do you think of Odysseus?” Will she call him a hero, even when hundreds have been harmed and killed under his command? Humans seem to think that there’s this scale where the good things they do will always outweigh the bad, no matter how big or bad the sins they commit are.

“He’s amazing! He survived against all odds, even when his own men betrayed him!” I flip my tail a few times as she continues “It took him years and years to get home, and never once did he want to cheat on his wife! He made his way through storms and he didn’t give up.” Even though hundreds died under his command, they still hail him a hero who survived hardships. 

Poseidon was justified in killing his men, yet these humans have decided that Odysseus’s hubris is what made him a hero. He has killed far more than my Chorus, yet we are the ones who are vilified. We wouldn’t eat humans if we didn’t have to, yet human flesh is the only thing that sates our hunger. Eating fish is not an option for us, it only leaves us hungrier than before.

“Hundreds died under his command. His men called out for him to save them, yet he never did. He purposefully sacrificed six of his forty something men to Scylla. Is that righteous?” The last sentence was spoken, but I had flashed it without realizing, the bioluminescent scales stretching from cheek to cheek flash along with the words I speak.

“But you sirens eat humans all the time. Is that righteous?” Her question is pointed, clearly a defense for her kind, and it’s like comparing coral to sand.

“Sirens aren’t humans, we do not kill our own kind for such selfish reasons. Eating humans is a necessary thing for us, nothing else can sate the hunger of a siren, and it’s not our fault we were formed like this. Odysseus killed hundreds of his own kind with his lack of conviction and his selfish desires.” My annoyance burns into anger as I speak “Besides, food was low, the Chorus was desperate. How were we meant to know that they would be so monstrous?”

She backs away from me, I’m being too aggressive. I reach out, there’s extra membranes between my fingers that humans don’t have. She continues to back away, her hands are shaking.

“Yet you still eat humans, so why not me?” Her voice trembles. D****t, I’ve been too aggressive.

“I don’t know. Something about you called to me, something inside me said that you should live. I thought you had put a spell on me.” I dig my hands into the gritty sand, hopefully I haven’t driven her away in my outburst.

The sand stopped shifting a few feet away, she stopped backing away from me.

“How would I even go about enchanting a siren?”

“You mean to tell me you’ve no idea how to enchant somebody? What a pathetic lie.” I check underneath my claws for dirt “Seriously, you couldn’t do better than that?” I ask, clearly unimpressed with her lie.

“Humans have done it to sirens before. Ever heard of Elyselle?” She’s the siren who’s vocal cords are still on display, she is the one who fell in love with a human, only for that lover to be drowned in front of her before she died herself.

“No, I barely knew sirens even had names.” My face drops to annoyance at this. “What happened to her?”

“Of course we have names, was that not something your precious Odysseus covered? In any case: Some human enchanted her to fall in love with her, and it got to the point where the Chorus had to step in. They drowned the human in front of Elyselle and then had to execute her.” I stare at her, there’s shock on her face, and something else.

“You’re saying that there was another human on this island before me? Another person stuck on this island surrounded by sirens?” Hope replaces her fear, though I’m not sure why, any evidence of that human would be long gone. 

“You do realize that this was two hundred years ago, right? If there was any evidence of it, it’s long gone now.” Her face falls, the realization that she won’t be seeing any other survivors for the rest of her life seems to be dawning on her. “Well anyways, you know how to cook fish right? I can bring you fish and seaweed, but anything other than that you’ll have to find yourself.”

“Yes, I know how to cook.” Her voice is sullen, like the loneliness of the rest of her life is hitting her. Sad, she looks sad. Maybe I could find something to make her feel a bit better. “Are you sure only seaweed and fish is what you can bring me?”

“Unfortunately yes, that’s just about all I can bring you.” Even that could look suspicious to Mother and my sisters. “I’m thinking it’ll be easier for both of us if I bring you a bunch of each every few days. I’ll leave it on the beach, and I’ll try to get about halfway up, just be very watchful of the beach around you when you go to get it.” She seems distant, almost completely uninterested in her own survival, how unfortunate. Maybe I shouldn’t have told her about Elyselle and her human, I think it discouraged her from her prolonged survival.

“In any case, I have to go. Go back in the trees and try not to die, okay?” My face is inquisitive, why do I care if she’s happy or not? It’s so weird, it must be a spell.

“Okay, sure.” She gets up and turns for the trees. She’s disengaged entirely, I think this is bad. Why do humans have to be so complicated? I feel a bit silly, sirens don’t cry. Yet I find that I want to, so why, why do I want to cry at witnessing how sad she is?

I push myself into the surf until I can turn around to swim away, hopefully this human doesn’t die in the next day or two. I don't want her to die. I search for an answer as I swim towards my home, I hope Mother isn’t home yet.

Author's Note

Tada! Chapter two is out, and I think I have a schedule now. A chapter every other Monday, hopefully they make Mondays slightly more bearable.