A Siren's Silence | Novelette

T H R E E | T H I E V I N G

T H R E E

T H I E V I N G

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HONEY SPUN AND SPOOLED FROM THEIR MOUTHS, a generous spill of enchantment embroidering it.

    Rippling across the waters, its abilities magnified. Parthenope's tail swished, curling this way and that, beautiful scales glinting like thieved treasure. Her elbows lifted, and the shadow of a man grew. Closer and closer, he neared, until Parthenope's elegant, talon-tipped hands cradled his face, fingers soothing over skin seemingly with love.

    Peisinoe watched, voice steadying as their lips drew nearer, imagining all the hushed whispers they were exchanging –

    Splash!  

    Parthenope's tail lanced through the water, a heavy thrashing as her fingers gouged into the man's jowls and dragged him below the surface of the water. Deeper and deeper she swam, the Mortal's screams strangled by the water. As Parthenope passed, dragging the mortal to his watery grave effortlessly, Peisinoe caught sight of her eyes. Of large, serpentine nature, they were a luminous, abrasive yellow with vertically slit pupils – a token of her beast's nearness.

    Mortal screams, a thing to relish in, drifted to Peisinoe's ears as the creature's flock startled at his disappearance. And with a scarce warning, Leucosia pushed at the longboat, warping, and shredding apart the wood as Mortals spilled into the waters for their taking.

Ligeia snatched a youngling by the throat, smaller than the others, dragging him above waters and then back again, tearing at his fleshy throat, where blood bobbed and sang a similar enchantment.  Her jagged teeth carved through soft skin, his flailing limbs only testament to the game Ligeia loved to play.

    Peisinoe swam towards the outcropping of rocks again, hunger pangs gnawing desperately at her. In her veins thrashed a fearsome creature, its talons clawing at her innards, its scaly, winged breadth expanding in her lungs, aroused with every breath she took. A burn of pain, and Peisinoe began to feel her mouth broaden, jagged teeth emerging like stalactites. Though scales washed the length of her past her torso, emerging from beneath skin like coins overturned hazily in water, a very uncontrollable part of her curse threatened to undo her.

    She hauled herself upon the rock, tail drifting below.  

    Her mother still sang, curled upon a flat plane of rock. Water lapped at her, eagerly abiding her song. 

    But she was changing.

    Scale turned inward, their ethereal shade dimming as they burrowed into her flesh. A thing of bony rigidness followed. Like mortal legs, but they weren't. Brown, golden tinted scales were carved into the bird legs spawning from Peisinoe's mother's flesh. Knees appeared, protruding from the back, and for a mere second, human feet were glimpse, and then they too morphed into something hideous. Three protrusions, each clawed with something near to resembling a hook.

    Peisinoe was silent, though her beast – the very image of what now possessed her mother – yearned for freedom.   

She watched her mother's eyes thin. Their hue morphed to a glaring chartreuse, pupil growing long and slit. Rock groaned as talons peeled at it. The luminous, pearlescent skin of her back shuddered terribly, a bulge spreading from her shoulders, stretching, and splitting bone and skin. A grotesque cry fled her mouth, lips thinned and narrowed, broadening into something reminiscent of a beak, and they peeled back to reveal teeth of sharp, dagger-like construct.

Teeth ample for eating flesh and organ and crunching through bone.

Her back gave another shudder, bones warping, vertebrae twisting garishly. Then skin peeled, feathers of the sleekest raven emerged through holes and tatters of flesh and bone, broadening, and lengthening until wings were freed and skin disappeared in bloodied, mangled plumage of violet-stained black.

Teles and Himerope rose on either side of Peisinoe, mouths bloodied.

"Swim, men. Swim!" A horror-filled cry rose above the splashes and shrieks of hungry Sirens. The heavyset Mortal, of grey beard and terrified eyes, plowed through the water.  But it was no use. Peisinoe's mother had her birdlike eye set on him, her beak flapping open with a cry. And she dove from the rocks and into the air.

"God above!" Another Mortal cried, eyes finding her, his movements stopping in the water that jostled at his throat. 

A fatal error.

Teles and Himerope swam beneath the water wordlessly, slinking to either side of him. Peisinoe's throat tightened, breath scarce.  She knew just as well as she knew the sun would rise the next morning, that they would drag him to his death. Copper-headed and flaxen-haired, Teles emerged on his right and Himerope on his left. With garish smiles at his shrill cry, they whipped forth and yanked him underwater.

The bearded man turned to see his crewmate disappear and with a frantic hitch of breath, he began to swim faster, arms sloshing the water noisily, frenetic kicks doing nothing to aid him. Peisinoe's mother swooped down with a harsh cry, talons glinting in the fading sunlight as her shadow broadened over him.

There wasn't time for him to scream.

One second he was swimming, and in a heartbeat, he was yanked through the air, talons gouged into his eyes – dragging him from his eye-sockets. Unceremoniously, Peisinoe's mother dropped him into the water, delirious laughter spilling froth from her beaked mouth. Water ran crimson around him, and he surfaced with keening cries.

Peisinoe couldn't do anything to stop it.

Not when she was so far away.

Not unless she desired to get him killed, as well as she.

Peisinoe's mother drew him from the water again, talons scraped down his neck, sinking into his shoulders, shredding his dirtied shirt. And with a grotesque grin, she tossed him in the direction of the rocks – hear her. The splat turned her stomach, of flesh hitting rock, of bones smashing, and his rasping of breath above her. 

Weak.

The definition of Peisinoe's very essence scraped in her mind as she sank underwater, cowering against the rock.

Too weak to kill, to hunt, and to eat. And yet, too weak to help their victims and prey.

Her weakness made her a monster. No better than her mother.

And because she was a monster, she simply waiting under the waters and watched. She watched as her mother picked up the Mortal and tossed him upon the rocks again. She watched as Teles toyed with her Mortal, placing a rock upon his stomach and rendering him unable to swim towards salvation, as Himerope picked off toes, fingers, eyes, and teeth. She watched as Ligeia cleaved flesh from bone, as Leucosia sang to her dead sailor, and as Thelxiepeia finished off Parthenope's mortal. She watched as her Mother tore out the Mortal's still-beating heart from his chest, devouring it with her serrated teeth.

And she watched as her mother set off, eager for more -- for the ship in the far-off distance.