‘Oi, Ugly! Down here!’ Bladder splashed about in the water, scaring the small fish to the sides of the pool.
Sam glanced up as the younger-looking of the sirens opened her mouth and grinned around a sharp set of fangs. Then she sang. Bladder screamed, and Sam wailed too. A headache grew in the air, filling the atmosphere with stabs and sharp pain.
The song’s not for Bladder or me, Sam thought. The siren stood, stretching out her bird body to its full and hideous length, and she opened her jaw, her song getting stronger. The sea creatures around them moaned. Medium-sized fish threw themselves into the rocky basin. The dolphins battered their bodies against the too-shallow rocky area. Bladder jumped out of the basin into deeper water, swimming between the sea creatures. He tried to grab a dolphin to pull her away from the scratching coral and his magically grippy paws held on to Amira as he pulled her underwater. The other animals crashed the boat into the coral basin, sending silver fish fleeing. The water swelled as the whale calf steamed in from the distance.
‘Stop!’ Sam yelled as the animals scratched themselves.
Bladder’s head bobbed up next to Amira’s snout. She was straining herself trying to dislodge him. Wilfred bit his tail. Bladder let go of Amira and pulled on Wilfred’s fin just before the dolphin boy flipped into the atoll.
Sam watched the frenzied sea creatures.
‘Sam, if the dolphins flip themselves into the shallow area, they won’t be able to get out again,’ Bladder gurgled. ‘And that whale’s going to crash into us soon.’
Larger fish raced towards the sirens and flung themselves into the coral bowl, boiling around Sam.
Sam twisted towards the sirens and waved his arms. It didn’t stop the singing. He felt helpless. He stared up at the sirens, who were focused on him with more interest than on the creatures preparing to batter themselves on the stone. Bladder started back towards the rocks.
‘Stop it!’ Sam yelled at the younger siren. ‘Stop singing! Please!’
He expected her to turn to him, bare her fangs, jump down and put a talon to his throat, something nasty, but she just stopped. Like he’d asked.
‘As you wish, little master, but he needs to be somewhere I can see him.’ She pointed at Bladder. ‘No nasty gargoyle tricks. I know how well they climb.’
‘I’m going to pull her legs off with my bare claws.’
‘Bladder!’ Sam warned.
Bladder grumbled, but clambered back into the atoll and glared up at the two sirens. Sam noticed there was blood in the water. The shark swam off. Its expression, Sam could tell, was very disturbed.
The older siren pointed to the boat and giggled. It was rocking and swaying as water settled in its bottom. It had a crack in the side where it had hit coral.
The animals settled too, their whines and moans fading.
Sam’s ears delighted in the lovely sounds of waves, the wind and even the weeping chitters of dolphins and other sea creatures. Sad as it was, it was a lovelier song than the sirens’. The flight of larger fish flipped their bodies back into the sea on the other side of the coral wall. The whale blew a stream of water into the air in disgust.
‘You are Samuel?’ the older siren asked him.
‘Are you the queen of the sirens?’
She laughed. ‘I am the elder,’ she replied. ‘I imagine that will do as queen.’
‘He does not appear as interesting as she described,’ the younger siren said.
‘Who described?’ Sam asked, but he knew the answer. ‘You mean Maggie?’
The sirens’ few feathers ruffled.
Bladder groaned. ‘I told ya. That lying …’
‘Bladder!’ Sam said.
‘But she was behind this the whole time,’ Bladder raged. ‘Tryna convince you some other monsters was out to get you, so you’d rush to her for safety.’
Sam studied the older siren’s face. ‘And Maggie told you to call the children?’
‘She did. She said she would reward us with a child of our own.’
The younger siren ahhed and oohed in a broody hum.
‘She says there will be no more sirens without you. You can hatch sighs?’
‘A siren is a rare thing,’ the older siren said. ‘Only once in a few hundred years does someone so avaricious and greedy sigh an egg that hatches into a siren. It becomes precious. Maggie found this one under the great heaps of beads and gave it to us.’ She held up a dark stone. It was as big as her fist and beautiful in an awful way. The opposite of mother-of-pearl in colouring, casting dark colour and dark sheen, sucking in the healthy moonlight.
‘How can you make it into a siren now the ogre king’s dead?’ Bladder asked. ‘Only they can sigh a bead into being.’
The sirens glared at Bladder. ‘Stone tongue speaks lies. Maggie told us the fairy dust and her little prince together can hatch a monster. And she said she would help make this one into a new siren if we called the humans to a watery death. She said it would bring you to her side in grief, and if she also …’
‘Also what?’ Bladder moved forward.
Sam felt the seawater drop a degree or two. What else could Maggie do to him?
‘She said she could make you bent and twisted, and with a smattering of fairy dust she would hatch us a new sister.’
‘It failed, though. You didn’t drown the children,’ Sam said.
‘No, Amphitrite intruded and changed them instead. But then we heard you had come to the water looking for them yourself, and we knew we no longer had need of Maggie’s intervention. We sang and they brought you here.’
‘So much better; we do not have to wait,’ the younger siren said.
‘Sam himself doesn’t respond to your caterwauling though, does he? He came here freely,’ Bladder said. ‘So he doesn’t have to do what you ask.’
‘We could sing your little school of friends into the rocks until one by one they die. Or you could make another little sister for us and we will let them all go.’
Bladder stared at Sam. The air seemed to freeze around him. Sam shook his head. ‘I can’t help you, even if I wanted to. I need a magic I don’t have to hatch a bead. I can’t complete the spell.’ Sam looked at the damaged boat as the moon cast horrible shapes on the water.
The old siren pulled a tin out from under her wing. ‘Of course. You mean this? Fairy dust. With the right song, a fairy can be made willing to give a snifter of wing powder.’
The younger siren cackled. It made Sam tremble.
The older siren continued. ‘We know Maggie means only for you to hatch ogres. For war. But we sirens cannot afford the losses; there are so few of us, we only want life.’ Her face pulled down into sad lines. ‘Please. Do this and we will let you all go.’
Bladder looked at Sam. ‘It’s just one. One siren for all of these kids,’ he whispered. ‘It doesn’t seem so much. There’s only two of them.’
Sam nodded. It didn’t seem much, but he knew what sirens could do. He would be bringing another cruel monster into the world, and if he did that, he’d feel awful. Also, Marée and Queen Amphitrite would not be happy.
‘They don’t want war any more ’an we do,’ Bladder said.
‘So they say, but they’re monsters.’
‘So are we, Sam.’
Sam hung his head and Bladder raised his to the sirens.
‘How do we know you will honour your word?’ Bladder asked. Sam sighed. It was a good question. He was glad Bladder had come; hearing the sirens’ request had chilled all of the sensible questions out of Sam.
‘What word?’ the older siren asked.
‘You said you would let them go if Sam hatched the egg.’
The sirens laughed sadly. ‘We will. If that’s what you want. If you can turn a bead into a babe, then you are the ogre king. You would be our liege, and we will be your servants.’
‘I’m gonna throw up,’ Bladder said.
Sam felt the same. He wasn’t the ogre king; he’d never be the ogre king. The idea was horrible.
‘I don’t want you calling children to sea again.’
‘Never,’ the old siren said. ‘If Your Highness wishes it.’
‘In fact, I want you to sing them back to shore, so we don’t lose even one of them.’
‘Yes, yes,’ both the sirens agreed.
The old siren scrabbled down the rock. Sam wondered at her fragility and discomfort, and how the pair got across the water. Perhaps they could charm any sailor to give them transport.
Up close, Sam noticed how intensely she was gazing at the bead.
‘There’s only two of you left?’ he asked.
‘Only two,’ she echoed. ‘All our other sisters gone. And if one of us should … go.’ She glanced back at the other siren briefly, then held out the bead and the tin to Sam. ‘Please, sire.’
Bladder raised his eyebrows. Sam understood. Monsters never said ‘please’ and she’d said it twice.
Sam sighed and took the tin. When he opened it, the fairy dust glowed in the moonlight, sparkling like a collection of stolen stars. He blew it over the egg.
‘Come on, no need to watch it happen,’ Bladder said, and jumped towards the boat. It lurched, causing it to drift away from the rocky atoll, but he made it. Sam scrabbled after him and as he landed his foot disappeared into the puddle at the bottom of the little craft. The boat was already sinking. The dolphins looped the ropes around themselves again and chirruped at him. Sam hoped they knew where they were going.
He heard the egg crack as the boat pulled away from the rocks and he turned to watch the siren place it gently on a stone. A small arm pushed out of the top, and the dark sides crumbled down. A small girl’s face appeared atop a downy dove’s body. The little siren was pretty. The other sirens laughed fondly as it reached for them, and the younger one pulled the infant into her arms.
‘It don’t look right,’ Bladder said.
‘It’s a beautiful baby,’ Sam replied.
‘Exactly. Not right.’
Then the infant began to sing. It was lovely, even to Sam’s ears.
The sea creatures halted and listened to the sound. It wasn’t hypnotising them. Not in the normal siren way, not playing with their minds – it was simply a sweet voice singing a sweet song. Then the other sirens joined with it, singing a going-home song. There were notes in it Sam didn’t understand, but overall, it was glorious.