Upon hearing him, the sirens threw themselves into the sea . . . for they were fated to die whenever a man did not fall under their spell.
—Jorge Luis Borges
That night, my last night as a half-human girl, she calls for us again. The humid air hums with electricity, and we climb from our beds and head for the beach, raincoats and boots thrown hastily over our pajamas. It’s just like the journal says we will. We have no choice.
A crescent moon peeks out from behind the clouds, and we pick our way cautiously among the rocks, holding hands and weaving, skidding on pebbles. In the distance lies the ship we are meant to destroy. As usual, it’s some kind of commercial fishing boat, but a small one, and the wheelhouse is decorated in twinkling white lights.
My sisters begin their song, and I attempt to sing along with them, my voice still broken and unnatural, but improving. Their song is as lovely and alluring as ever, but somehow, the boat continues on its path.
My sisters sing louder, straining, reaching toward the water. They take deep breaths and scream the melody. They stand on the balls of their feet.
The boat passes calmly beneath us.
“Come on!” Lara waves. “Let’s get closer.”
She leads us down the hillside to the shore. We are slipping in mud, holding on to each other, and I glance over my shoulder, certain something is especially wrong about tonight. Something is different.
We reach the ocean, and they splash right in with all of their clothes still on. Waves lap at their legs and then their waists, and their nightgowns billow around them like jellyfish.
I stay on the sand.
The trawler draws near, slicing like a shark fin across the wavering reflection of moonlight on the water.
This time is different.
Someone on the ship is playing his own music, a violin concerto in a minor key with double-stops so forceful and strange, you can feel them in your bones. He’s playing into a speaker too, so the haunting sound is amplified across the sea.
My sisters are still singing their desperate song, wading deeper and deeper until the water reaches their shoulders.
“Wait!” I start waving my arms and screaming. “Lara! Lula! Lily!”
But this time they are the blind ones. In this state, they can’t understand the danger they are in. They can’t imagine not getting their way.
There is a creaking, groaning sound, the sound of chains unfurling on a massive spool, and a net is lowered. Normally, these nets trawl the seabed, dredging thousands of pounds of cod, flounder, and haddock from the ocean. But this net is not going to catch anything like that. This net is going to catch my sisters.
From the shore, I scream their names, but I can only watch as the net hauls all three of them, clinging to each other, from the waves.
I chase the boat all the way back down the shoreline, back to the marina, and I hide behind a stack of lobster traps. The boat docks slowly, and Mr. Bergstrom emerges, making his way down the wooden gangplank. He is carrying Lara, and she is unconscious, her bare arms dangling ghostly white in the moonlight. Two other fishermen follow behind, each holding another of my sisters, also unconscious. While I watch, they take them to the old storage shed at the end of the dock, and then they all disappear inside.
I pull off my rain boots so I won’t fall again, and run as fast as I can, barefoot, down the street.
I barely know where I’m going, but somehow I wind up at Jason’s house, watching my own ghostly reflection in one of the wall-size windows. The entire place is alarmed, but I know which room is his. I take a handful of broken shells from the walk and toss them at his window. Jason has nightmares, and he never sleeps very deeply. Sure enough, moments later he appears. He glances back over his shoulder and holds up one finger to let me know he’ll be right down. Then he disappears from view. I study myself in the window. I look like a mess. I’m still carrying my boots, and my freakish two-tone hair hangs in wet, stringy waves down my back. All of my clothing—the nightgown, the moth-eaten wool sweater—is soaking wet and smells like a musty old closet.
Jason re-emerges wearing slippers and a navy sweatshirt with matching plaid pajama pants. Even when he’s sleeping, he likes his clothes coordinated. “Why are you all wet, Lolly? What happened to your hair?”
“Is your stepdad home?”
He shakes his head. “No, he went with his buddies on a fishing trip. Are you okay? What’s going on?”
“Just come here!” I motion for him to follow me behind the enormous oak tree in their side yard.
“You know I’m mad at you, right?” he says, crunching behind me through the piles of unraked leaves. The air smells like pine trees and smoke from their neighbor’s wood-burning stove.
“No, I don’t know that. Why?” We stop in the shadows under the tree, by the crumbling stone wall.
“Because you ran away,” he says. “You ran away from me at the dance. Why did you do that?”
“Jason, sit down. There’s something I have to tell you.”
He leans against the wall and folds his arms across his chest. It’s clear out now, and the moon is burning over the ocean like a strange bright scar. It feels as if the temperature is dropping every second, but maybe it’s just me, radiating the cold.
Jason’s looking at me, and his breath is leaving little puffs of smoke in the air. “Okay. Tell me.”
“It’s going to sound a bit crazy.”
“Just tell me, Lolly! What’s going on?”
“You know the old stories about how there are sirens in the harbor?”
“Like, the creatures that lure ships onto rocks?”
“Yes. Like, the monsters.”
“Of course. Everyone knows those stories. Sailors used them to explain these eerie cries they’d hear at night and why there were so many shipwrecks around here. It wasn’t really monsters singing, though. It was just the wind through the caves. It’s been proven.”
“Well, not exactly.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I know for sure that the stories are true. There are sirens in Starbridge Cove. There always were.”
He looks at me. “How do you know?”
“Because my sisters and I . . . we’re living under this spell. My sisters are already sirens, and it’s going to happen to me too, tomorrow, when the sun rises on my thirteenth birthday. I don’t want it to happen, but I can’t find a way to stop it.”
At first he doesn’t say anything at all, and I think, This is it. This is the actual end of our friendship. Next year he’ll go off to his fancy prep school and turn as mean and dull as his stepbrothers. He’ll start sailing and hunting and wearing camouflage baseball caps, and he’ll forget all about me.
But then he steps away from the wall and grabs both my hands. “This is incredible.”
“Incredible?” My feet slip a little in the grass. “Jason, you’re scared of mayonnaise. You don’t think this is weird?”
“No,” he says, and he’s still standing there, staring at me like I’m some kind of spirit bear or the biggest giant squid in the universe. “I think it’s magical. Lolly, this could change everything.”
“But we’re in trouble!” I pull my hands out of his grasp and put them on his shoulders so he’ll have to pay attention. “There’s more I need to explain. You don’t understand the whole thing yet.”
Wind howls through the branches of the oak tree, knocking them together, and Jason shivers and pulls his fingers into his sleeves. “What else is there to understand? What kind of trouble?”
“It’s your stepdad. He’s been trapping sirens for years—kidnapping them. He has my sisters now, and maybe some other girls too. I think he’s keeping them in the storage shed at the marina.”
“Well, we have to do something!” Jason starts looking around the empty yard, like maybe there’s someone there who can help us. But of course, there’s not. We’re all alone out here. “What do we do? Should we call the police?”
“Your stepdad says he basically owns the police. And besides, it’s too late for that. When you’re a monster, the police can’t help you.”
Jason kicks at the leaves and his slipper flies off. “I hate him.”
“I know.”
“You don’t, though. You don’t know what it’s been like living here—the way he treats us.”
I look back over my shoulder at the house with its glimmering white walls and darkened windows. “I’ve seen how he can get.”
“He treats my mom like she’s just another possession of his, like he owns her. Some nights it gets so bad that she leaves. She goes and sits alone on the beach and cries. I only know because I follow her sometimes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I’m going to take care of it. As soon as I turn fifteen, I’m going to get a job on a fishing boat. That’s why learning to sail is so important. I have to get used to being out on the water. I have to get us out of here and make my own money so we never have to rely on some creepy guy like him again. So he’ll be out of our lives for good.”
I reach out and push his hair back from his face, and he gives me a look like maybe that was a weird thing to do.
“You need a haircut,” I tell him.
“I know,” he says. “I need new shoes, too. He owns four hotels and the entire marina and he makes us walk around with holes in our shoes.” Jason shakes his head like he’s clearing away some bad memory and puts his arm around my shoulder. “It’s okay, Lolly. We’ll save your sisters. We’ll get them back.”
“Aren’t you scared? I mean, it’s okay if you are. I kind of am.”
“I’m not scared,” he says. “You know, not all sirens are monsters.”
I look up at him. “What?”
“I mean, my stepdad has this book of Norse fairy tales that he’s always making us read, and there are these creatures called ‘havfrue.’ They’re not monsters in the usual sense of the word.”
“Well, what are they, then?”
“They’re like guardians—guardians of the ocean, specifically. I watched a whole documentary about it. Maybe you’re one of them.”
I think about that for a minute. “Maybe. So you’re going to help me, then?”
“Of course I am.” He bends to retrieve his slipper and slides his foot back inside. “Lolly, you’re my best friend.”
Really, it’s kind of awful that someone as nice and color-coordinated as Jason has to have a best friend like me. Probably, I should just leave him alone. Stop getting him into trouble all the time. If I was a good friend, that’s what I’d do.
But then, it’s just like the Sea Witch said: Sirens make terrible friends.
“Go back inside and get your stepdad’s keys to the storage shed,” I tell him. “I’ll wait for you here.”
The storage shed is a place we’ve been a million times before, a ramshackle wooden structure with a corrugated tin roof where local families keep boats and fishing equipment, and where we used to build secret forts and play hide-and-seek. It’s always locked at night, but now we have his stepdad’s keys. Jason unlocks the door and pulls it open, and we aim our flashlights and beam them around the inside. It smells like salted fish in there, and even the air feels slimy. Rusted hooks and buoys hang from the ceiling, and stacks of lobster traps and a tangled mess of nets are piled in the corner. We can hear a faint squeaking sound and liquid dripping on the concrete floor.
“They’re not here anymore,” Jason whispers.
I look at the ground for a moment, trying to remember. “Wait!” I go into the shed and kneel down, running my hands over the cold floor in the darkness. My fingers brush against puddles and sand and cobwebs, and I try not to think about what else. “There’s a basement. Remember? Lula hid down there once for hide-and-seek and she got stuck—remember? The door was so heavy, she couldn’t get it open again.”
“Yeah. But where was it?”
Finally, my fingers brush against a steel ring. “Here!” I grab hold and pull, but the door won’t budge. Jason rushes over to help, and we pull together until the door finally starts to lift. “It’s heavy! Be careful.”
Jason goes around to the other side to push, while I keep pulling at the ring, and we finally get the trapdoor all the way open and propped against the wall.
I look at him. “Ready?”
He nods. “I’ll go first.”
The steps are steep, nearly vertical, and we have to turn off our flashlights so we can grip the railing with both hands. We lower ourselves into the dank cellar and Jason feels around the walls for a light switch. At last, a dim bulb flickers on above our heads. We hear a faint squeaking sound and the scampering of tiny rodent feet. The nets are still there, wet and tangled, and Lara’s locket is lying on the floor, but there is nobody else in the basement. I grab the necklace and slip it on. “What if we can’t find them?”
“Come on!” Jason starts climbing back up the ladder. “I have an idea where he might have taken them.”
By the time we arrive at our next destination, we’re both exhausted and very cold. A red neon sign reads: ARGONAUT MOTEL AND CONDOMINIUMS, and below that: NO VACANCY.
“My stepdad owns this place.”
“I know. I remember when they started working on the renovations last year.”
“He comes here sometimes when he and my mom are fighting.”
The motel is only two stories tall, arranged in a half-moon shape around the parking lot. On the second floor, a plastic tarp starts blowing in the breeze. The rooms up there are still under construction, and they have balconies and sliding glass doors, some of which have been left slightly open. Jason motions for me to follow him and keep quiet.
The main office is small and lit with too-bright fluorescent lights. There are vending machines, a bench, and a fake plant in a wicker pot, and there’s a girl wearing a Crew sweatshirt and sleeping with her head on the desk. Behind the desk there is a Peg-Board with room keys hanging on hooks, but we’d never get one without waking her.
Jason shakes his head, and we walk back around to the side of the building, flattening ourselves against the wall to stay out of the path of the floodlights. There’s an abandoned shopping cart filled with blankets, and a jumble of paint cans and buckets in a wire cage.
“It’s scary here,” I tell him.
“No kidding,” he says. “That staircase leads up to the second floor, but I bet all the doors are locked.”
“We need to use one of the balcony windows in the back.”
“But how are we supposed to reach them?”
“I’ll climb up the drainpipe.” I take my boots off again and hand them to him. “Meet me at the door.”
Jason looks back and forth between me and the rooms, but I’m already gripping the drainpipe and bracing one foot on the bracket that bolts it to the corner of the building. The scales on my feet, it turns out, do make climbing much easier, but my fingernails break, and moths and mosquitoes flutter in my face, and I have to climb toward the floodlights with my eyes closed, trying not to inhale any insects.
I climb until I’m above the balcony and then swing myself over onto the concrete ledge. Then I jump down and peek in through the sliding glass door. And then I turn back and motion for Jason to hurry and come upstairs.
There are strong scents of bleach and paint fumes in the room. The ceiling isn’t finished yet and the carpeting hasn’t been put down, but the place is crammed with extra furniture: beds, and desks, and stacks of chairs, and hollow glass lamps filled with sand and shells. The only light comes from a ring of tiny candles, flames shivering and casting shadows on the wall. My sisters are lying there in the darkness on one of the beds, still soaking wet and fast asleep. And they’re not the only ones. There are other girls asleep in that room, girls with strange hair and scales on their feet. Girls who look a lot like us.
I run to Lara and press my face against her chest. She’s breathing, but she won’t wake up. None of them will. We call their names, and we poke and pull on their arms, but it’s no use. Jason touches Lula’s foot, running his finger over her scales. I think it’s partly to wake her and partly because he can’t believe any of this is real. In any case, she doesn’t move. It’s like they’re all under a spell, a different type of spell.
I look at Jason. He’s just standing there blinking, staring at Lula’s bare feet. I grab his arm. “We have to get them out of here!”
“I don’t think we should move them, Lolly. There’s something wrong with them. Like, really wrong. We should call a doctor.”
“We’re monsters,” I whisper. “We don’t call the police, and we don’t go to the doctor.”
“Who takes care of you, then?” he asks. “I mean, when you’re sick?”
By the time we reach the Sea Witch’s lair, the sun is starting to rise. I haven’t slept all night, and I should be even more exhausted, but instead, as we pilot my kayak through the choppy waters, I just feel dizzy and strange. My hands around the paddle are bloody and mosquito bitten, all the nails broken from my climb. The sky is a cold gray color, streaked with pink, and seagulls are starting to call and circle overhead.
We come ashore and drag the kayak to a safe resting place beneath some trees. Jason stares up at the house, and I know he must feel afraid. After all, he’s seeing it all for the first time: the weathered gray shingles, the sunken front porch, and the wind chimes made from bird feathers and bones twirling in the breeze.
As usual, the Sea Witch pretends not to know who it is, and she makes a big show of asking before she’ll open the door. “Hello? Who’s there?” When she does finally open the door, she fusses over Jason. “What an interesting boy. There’s something special about him, isn’t there?” She touches Jason’s hair, and he seems too shocked, or too scared, to do anything about it. “Oh yes. Why, he’s a born marauder. A subjugator of the high seas. You have the sea in your veins, don’t you, child?” She says it like it’s a compliment, but I know how she feels about sailors. It’s a defensive maneuver. A trap. If we didn’t have a good reason for being there, she’d probably keep on complimenting him and playing with his hair until she lured him right into her kitchen and boiled him in a stew.
“Jason doesn’t like the water,” I tell her. “He gets seasick.”
The Sea Witch snorts and steps aside to let us pass into the kitchen. “You look sickly, Lolly. What’s happened? Let me get you both some tea.” She walks over to the stove and pours more water in the kettle. “Is Earl Grey all right, young man? Do you take sugar?”
Jason clears his throat. “We don’t have time for tea.”
She turns to face him. “What?”
“Lolly’s sisters are very sick, and we have to rescue them.”
“Nonsense,” she says, and hands us each a cup. “There’s always time for tea. Drink!”
It’s nearly impossible to refuse the hospitality of a sea witch, and so Jason and I sit at her table and I take a few sips of the bitter tea. Jason holds his up to his mouth, but I know he’s just pretending.
The Sea Witch remains standing, hovering over us. Somewhere, the wolf is growling, a low, guttural sound, like the creaking of a ship.
“So what is it now, Lolly? What’s happened to your sisters? And why have you brought this little . . . marauder?”
“My sisters were captured tonight by men on a boat, the ones I told you about. Jason’s stepfather was one of them.”
She frowns. “Where are they now?”
“We found them at his motel. But there was something wrong with them. They were fast asleep and nothing would wake them. Did you have something to do with this?”
She puts her hands on her hips. “Lolly, why would I do this? Your sisters are my darlings, my soldiers.”
“You told me they were replaceable.”
“Well, they are. But think practically, dear. They may be replaceable, but who has the time to train a whole new group of girls? Besides, I rather like them. I like all of you. I dare say I’ve grown quite attached to you these last few months.”
Jason puts down his cup and crosses his arms. “Well, who is it, then? Who gave my stepfather the spell? Who taught him how to do something like that?”
The Sea Witch takes a seat at the table. “Sailors have their own ways. When a sea witch drafts sirens into her service, she becomes much more powerful. But it isn’t long before sailors learn to fight back, to use their own tricks and magic spells. It becomes a bit of an arms race, you see. Now, this sounds like a classic Norse Sleeping Beauty Spell to me. They were asleep, you said?”
“Yes.” Jason leans back in his seat. He keeps glancing over his shoulder at the door, like he may decide to leave at any moment and he wants her to know it.
“And there were candles in a ring?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, it’s all too familiar. To cast this particular spell, a sailor with the right magical charms need only repeat a protection prayer and then capture the siren in a net of his own making.”
“A protection prayer?”
She closes her eyes. “Odin, far-wanderer, grant me wisdom, courage, and victory. Friend Thor, grant me your strength. And both be with me.” She opens her eyes again and looks at us. “Something to that effect. I’ve lost many girls to these sorts of spells over the years. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if your sisters weren’t the only ones he’s keeping at that motel.”
“They’re not. We saw other girls asleep in there too.”
“Well, unfortunately, there’s not much I can do about this. You’ll have to go after the person who cast the spell, I’m afraid. That’s always the way.”
I put my head down on the table. “How?”
“You find his symbol, and you assume its power. Then you can undo the spell yourself.”
“What’s a symbol?” Jason asks.
“What’s a symbol? Why, a symbol is a representation, a distillation of the essential, a translation of the abstract into the concrete. Since the dawn of time, people have used symbols to make sense of the universe and its complexities. They carry tremendous power. In fact, one cannot ever dispose of a symbol. They cannot be thrown away or even tossed out into the sea. Their power can neither be created nor destroyed, but only transferred from one person to another.”
I think of my science textbook again, the part about conservation of energy, where the illustration shows silver spheres on strings that swing back and forth forever, crashing into each other and never stopping.
“Transferred to who?” Jason asks.
“To some strong, deserving person for whom it carries equal significance. Might you know anyone like that, Jason?”
He blushes. “But how . . . how would we do that?”
“You would steal it from him and bury it someplace important. Someplace meaningful.” She looks up, and her eyes catch the glow from the fire. “Someplace like Fort O’Malley.”
“That fort is named for my dad’s family,” Jason says. “My real dad. General O’Malley was a relative of ours.”
“Well.” The Sea Witch looks at him with what could maybe be mistaken for kindness. “Imagine that.”
“But it’s not there anymore. They say it was completely destroyed in the War of 1812.”
“Oh, it was destroyed more times than that!” She laughs. “For two hundred years, the army kept building it up, only to see it torn down by invading forces. Why, that fort never met a battle it could withstand. I believe it holds the record for most destroyed fort of all time.”
“Oh.” Jason slumps down a little in his seat.
“But the roots of the place, the earthworks, were incredibly strong. They withstood all of that violence and destruction for hundreds of years. And what most people don’t realize is that the original Fort O’Malley, the foundation, is still there.”
“But taking the symbol to the fort . . . why is that better than just throwing it away, throwing it into the ocean?”
“Because things have a way of returning from the bottom of the sea, don’t they? Even the heaviest items sometimes float back to the surface when you least expect them. And this act, burying the symbol in a place that has significance, this will transfer its power to you. Do you think you’re ready for something like that?”
Jason sits up straight again and pushes his shoulders back. “Yes,” he says. “I’ve been ready for a long time.”
“Well, it won’t be easy. In the old days, the Viking kings all had crowns or helmets as symbols of their power. I don’t know what kind of symbol your stepfather has.”
“He has this crown that he’s completely obsessed with. He keeps it locked up all the time and wears the key around his neck. I bet that’s his symbol. But how do we find Fort O’Malley?”
“With a map, of course.” She heaves herself up from her chair and moves across the room. “I’ll show you both.” She pulls a giant nautical map from a shelf and spreads it across the kitchen table. “Something tells me you’re a man who knows his way around a map. Is it true? Can you read a map like this?”
“Yes,” Jason says. “I study maps like this all the time.”
She nods. “As you should. Now look, this region is filled with tiny islands. Hundreds of them. Each has its own magic, its unique creatures and geological oddities. Some have waterfalls, and some have exotic animals, strange bears, and parrots, tortoises, and sea serpents—all things escaped from shipwrecks hundreds of years ago. Now, these . . .” She starts tracing one gnarled finger in circles over a place just a few miles north of us. “These are the Ursid Islands, islands riddled with canyons and volcanic craters. According to legend, you’ll find the ruins of Fort O’Malley there.”
“According to legend? You’ve never been there yourself?”
“Oh, goodness no. The coastline is far too dangerous up there, shallow and rocky. There’s nowhere to properly dock a boat, and I certainly don’t fancy a swim. But if you were willing to go, I would gladly assist in any way I could.”
“But how do we know we can trust you?” Jason asks. “I mean, Lolly says you’re supposed to be some sort of witch, right? And what if that’s not even true? What if you’re actually just some crazy person?”
She narrows her eyes. “Young man, ‘witch’ is in the eye of the beholder. It’s just a name. A label. For example, I might call you a ‘little marauder’ just because you are clearly a descendant of the very seafaring people who first colonized this land, treated me like an animal, and banished me to this lonesome existence, and therefore you are my enemy.”
“You did call me that.”
“Well, there you are. But we also have an enemy in common, which, some would say, makes us allies. So let’s not talk of witches and thieves and try to figure out who is or isn’t crazy. That’s nearly always a waste of time. Names, labels, they mean whatever you want them to mean. And a word that means whatever you want it to mean is actually, well, meaningless.”
Jason frowns. “I guess you’re right.”
“Of course I am.” The Sea Witch taps the map with her finger. “Now then, let’s focus on the task at hand, shall we?”
“How would we even steal the crown, though?” I ask. “I mean, he never lets that key out of his sight.”
The Sea Witch dismisses the idea with a wave of her hand. “I can give you a potion that will render your stepfather temporarily unconscious, knock him out long enough for you to steal his crown. How does that sound?”
Jason looks totally on board now. “I think that sounds great!”
She walks across the room to a massive wardrobe that stands beside the fireplace. She unlocks the cupboard, and the doors creak on their hinges and sweep apart, revealing shelves filled with tiny jars. Each of the jars contains a potion that bubbles or shimmers or changes color in the light. She chooses one and holds it up, and a thick, sparkling liquid swirls inside. “You must be careful with it, of course,” she warns us. “A few drops are powerful enough to rob a grown man of all his strength. Dissolve it in a person’s drink, and he will be incapacitated for hours.”
“That’s exactly what we need.” Jason gets up and tries to grab the potion, and the Sea Witch holds the jar above her head.
“Young man,” she says. “A sea witch will neither suffer fools nor tolerate rudeness.”
“I’m sorry.” He looks at the floor. “May I have the potion, please?”
“Yes you may.”
She hands it to him, and he slips it in his pocket.
“But giving my stepfather this potion, robbing him of his strength, that won’t be enough to break the spell?”
“Correct,” she tells us. “Now, this point is important, so listen closely, all right? It is not enough to hurt him. To wound him. To kill him, even. That does nothing for you. You have to assume his power yourself, and then you have to be the one to undo the spell. Like this.”
She reaches across the table and traces a crescent shape on my forehead with her finger. “Smear one of them with the dirt from the place where you bury the crown, and then say these words.” She says some words in a language I can’t understand. “You see?”
Jason seems a little uncertain. “I have to do that to her sisters?”
“You can do it to Lolly, if you prefer. She’ll be a siren then too. Perform that spell on any one of them, you see, and you wake up all the others. Think you’ve got it?”
Jason repeats the spell back perfectly, and the Sea Witch takes a seat. “Well done,” she says. “You learn quickly.”
“He’s in honors Spanish,” I tell her.
Then she leans sideways and whispers in his ear. “You have quite the interesting friendship here, you know. A boy with the sea in his blood and the newest siren in Starbridge Cove. Aren’t you just the tiniest bit worried? Afraid she’ll break your heart? Or worse?”
Jason pushes her away. “Why don’t you just let them all go?”
For a moment, the Sea Witch appears paralyzed. “You mean, return them to their former human state?”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I mean. Why are you doing this to them?”
She tosses her shawl over her shoulders and the mocking smile disappears from her face. “Young man, this is not a thing that I am doing to them. This is a thing that they asked me for. In fact, if I told you what I know about the night their mother died, you would not be so quick to judge me or speak to me in this tone.”
“What are you talking about?”
She folds her arms prettily on the table and looks at me. “I am not at liberty to say.”
I lean forward in my chair, as desperate to hear what she knows as the sailors are to hear whatever it is they hear when we sing to them. “If you know something about my mom,” I tell her, “about that night, I want to know it too. Please.”
The Sea Witch reaches for the teapot, and the angles of her collarbone protrude. “Your mother . . . she was not alone out there on the bridge that night like everybody thinks she was.”
“What do you mean?”
She pours more tea in my cup. “I mean you were out there too. Do you understand? You were with her in the car.”
“But I don’t—”
“No, you wouldn’t remember, dear. But that’s the real reason your sisters made this bargain. They’d lost you, you see. You drowned in the river along with your mother. And so they came to me in the dead of night, pale and hollowed out with grief, and they sat right here at my table, right where you are now, and they told me they were desperate to have you back. I told them they could make a trade: their souls for their sister. And they agreed. That’s always what this was about, Lorelei. This was a sacrifice they made.”
Jason gets up from the table. “No,” he says. “No! Don’t believe her, Lolly. She’s just trying to hurt you.” He turns to the Sea Witch. “Why would you tell her something like that? You’re horrible.”
“Horrible?” Red blotches appear on her neck, beneath her freckled skin. “Who are you to call me horrible? I’m the one who saved her. What have you ever done?”
“I think you’re a liar,” he says. “I think you’re just using them, and now they’re hurt, and I think this whole thing is your fault!”
“You know nothing!” The Sea Witch sweeps the teapot from the table and it falls to the ground and shatters.
Out of the darkness comes a click-clicking of claws on the wooden floor, and then the wolf is in the room with us, wild and monstrous with his matted fur and sharp yellow eyes, and ribbons of drool hang from his mouth.
Jason’s face turns pale. “What—what is that?”
“Oh,” I tell him. “That’s her wolf. He just—”
But then the wolf starts barking like crazy, and he raises himself up on his hind legs and lunges at Jason.
“Stop it!” The Sea Witch gets up and yanks the wolf backward. He loses his balance and skids on the floor. “No more of this!” She gives him a shove, and he whimpers and pads away down the hall.
“He clawed me,” Jason says. Jason, whose shirt is now stained with blood and whose stricken face is white and slicked with sweat.
“Oh dear.” The Sea Witch looks at me. “The wound is deep.”
This is an understatement. In fact, it’s a good thing Jason can’t see what’s happening because it’s completely horrifying.
“Do something!” I tell her. “He’s hurt!”
“All right, now. Just a second. Let’s not get hysterical here.” She leads Jason back to the cabinet of potions, sits him on a stool, and pulls down a glass jar, a needle, and a spool of blue thread. She puts the jar up to his mouth and pours some liquid down his throat. Then she licks the thread and slips it through the needle, and she starts sewing up the gash on his shoulder as if his skin were torn pieces of fabric.
“Oh, don’t look so frightened,” she says, glancing at me. “These medicines are very powerful, and this is a special, healing thread. He’ll be fixed up in no time. You know, by the time I was your age, I was bribing my way onto a whaling ship bound for the New World. You children are different now, I suppose. Softer.” She breaks the thread with her teeth and ties a knot. Then she kneels to Jason’s eye level. “I am sorry, young man. I don’t let people in my home very often. I don’t trust people easily.”
Jason touches his shoulder with the tips of his fingers, and when he speaks his voice is a whisper. “I don’t either.”
The Sea Witch lifts her chin in the direction of the living room, which is a small room set farther back in the house—a room she’s never invited us to before. “Let’s go sit by the fire and collect ourselves, shall we? I believe this has been rather a trying encounter for us all.”
The wolf is already there, curled beneath the window, and we hesitate to get near him again, but she pushes us forward. “Go on,” she says. “He won’t hurt you now. I swear.”
Jason and I sit on the rug, and the Sea Witch takes off her shawl and wraps it around us both like a blanket. Beneath my skin, my bones feel like icicles, and there is a strange humming sound in my head. The fire pops and sparks, and it’s so warm, I wish I could crawl right inside.
She sits in a rocking chair and pats the wolf on his head. “I apologize again on his behalf,” she tells us. “He is very protective of me.”
Jason nods. “I’m sorry I said you were horrible.”
“Well, you’re certainly not the first.”
I inch closer to the fire, and the humming gets louder. “I want to know more about the night of the accident.”
She starts rocking the chair with the balls of her feet and narrows her eyes. “Such as?”
“Such as, well, where were we going?”
“According to your sisters, your mother was driving you home from some sort of gymnastics competition. As you know, we had a terrible winter last year; the roads were covered in ice. Apparently, your father told her to stay the night, but she insisted on driving back home.”
I search my memory for some image or sensation from that night. Glistening roads, hail pinging off the roof of the car, icicles hanging from the bridge. My mother stops singing with the radio for a moment, glances at me in the warm semidarkness of the car, and tries to smile. I’m holding a box of chicken nuggets in my lap, and I can tell that something is wrong. Something bad’s about to happen. But I don’t know if those memories are real or made up or from some other night entirely.
“So it was my fault, then, what they did. It was because of me.” I’m sure I’m speaking out loud, but the humming in my head has become a roar, like the ocean, and my voice sounds so distant, like it’s being filtered through a speaker and broadcast from a million miles away.
“But—” Jason looks up. “If Lolly was in that car, if she had—if something had happened to her, we all would have heard about it, right? Wouldn’t we remember?”
The Sea Witch shakes her head. “That was part of the bargain, you see. They were to go out to the graveyard and exhume her body, carry her home, and tuck her in her bed, and in the morning she’d be awake again, their little sister, good as new, as if she’d never left. And nobody in town, including her, would have any memory of what happened that night. Those sorts of community spells, the erasing of unpleasant memories from a large group of like-minded people, are among the easiest to perform. Much simpler than raising the dead.” She smooths my hair back. “You see, your sisters don’t really love being sirens. Or maybe they do. I suppose I couldn’t say. But what motivated them originally, the reason they came to me and made this trade in the first place, was to save you.”
The wolf whimpers in his sleep, and she scratches behind his ears. “Now, these sorts of transformations take a toll on the body. Quite soon, dear, you’re going to be in excruciating agony. Once that happens, if I try to change you back, it could cost you your life. And so that, young man, is why I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“But if you can do this, if you can bring people back from the dead, why didn’t you bring their mother back too?”
“Oh, a trip to the underworld is an exhausting journey. Picture a bus ride in traffic on a rainy afternoon. Or the helpless desperation of the wait for a stalled baggage carousel at the airport.”
“I’ve never been to the airport,” Jason tells her.
“Take my word for it then, dear. It is most unpleasant. Besides, magic like this won’t work for everyone. I can only bring certain girls back. Outsiders. Motherless girls with a predilection for music. Girls whom I can then use as sirens to lure ships to our shore.”
“Why do they have to be girls?”
“I don’t make the rules, Jason. I didn’t invent this system. I merely figured out a way to operate within it.”
I remember a dream I once had of a hallway, like a bright hospital corridor. The smell of saltwater. The burn of blood returning to my veins.
I can feel it now.
I try to stand, but my legs won’t hold. It’s as if my bones have melted right out from inside me. “There’s something wrong with me.”
“No, there’s nothing wrong.” The Sea Witch takes a watch out of the pocket of her dress and smiles. “Everything is exactly right.”
“What’s happening?” Jason asks.
“She’s becoming a siren. The transformation is complete.”
“Now?”
“Yes, Lolly is thirteen years old today. Surely you know that. Wish her a happy birthday.”
It hits me before I can do or say anything else. There is a feeling like a lead weight falling through my stomach, and then the whole room seems to tilt. Jason lets me lean on him, and we stumble back into the kitchen, and I feel too sick to even care how disgusting I must look.
The Sea Witch follows us. “Take her outside,” she advises. She kneels and begins gathering the pieces of her broken teapot. “Things are bound to get a bit messy now.”