How (Not) to Soothe a Siren (Cindy Eller Book 9) (8 page)

She had made her immortal.

T
wo days in the saddle, with another one ahead of us, and my body was ready to throw a tantrum. My thighs and hips were sore stiff, while the rest of the muscles in my body were debating between being sore and refusing to function at all.

Asher had woken up cranky, with the slightest touch of a fever. It wasn’t hot enough to worry about, but it compounded his general cranky attitude. He cried as I dressed him in the warm sea-fleece lined outfit the selkies found for him, probably leftover from one of their lost children.

Asher cried and arched backwards as Timothy and I struggled to slide him back into the baby sling. He cried as I climbed into Gealbhan’s saddle. He screwed his face up and clenched his hands into fists and screamed as we took leave from our hosts.

“Wait!” Cliodhna called, racing out of the cottage with something in her hands. She handed the bundle to me. “It’s for the baby. It will help,” she said. “It was my granddaughter’s.”

Before I could thank her, she turned and hurried back in the direction of the cottage.

I looked down at the carefully kept and cherished gift. It was a necklace made of carved, wooden sea animals, from seals, capricorn, hippocampi, and whales, to the more recognizable turtles and shells.

Asher grabbed one carefully shaped hydra and stuffed it into his mouth. The crying ceased as the toy put pressure on the gums where his tooth was trying to break through. It wasn’t going to help his cold, but I knew that a low fever wasn’t going to hurt him. It was better to let his immune system kick in and interfere only if things got troubling.

My other sight showed that the necklace had the faintest touch of Magic to them—preserving the wood and the carvings, and offering comfort. Also, I noted with interest, one to prevent choking.

Apparently, all babies were similar, no matter what world we might live in.

The horses seemed energized by their free time. They climbed the steep hill back to the lighthouse without hesitation. Gealbhan’s long strides were smooth and relaxed. The wind teased his mane, tossing it like sea foam. It reminded me of the myth that Poseidon created horses, which is why the seas and horses were both called mare.

Funny, considering that my father pretty much was the model for Poseidon.

The Huntsman was waiting for us at the ancient lighthouse. He stood exactly as he had when we had parted company the night before. He had to have moved in the meantime, I was sure of it. Right? He could not have just stood there, all alone, all night long, waiting for us to return.

I shivered at the lonely image.

I had known loneliness in my life, but I had never been completely alone. I had always had somebody, family, Jessi and Tansy, Timothy—there had always been someone there for me.

Who did the Huntsman have?

I shivered again. This time it felt like premonition.

*~*~*

T
he path meandered wearily beneath our feet. We left the ocean far behind, crossing through woods and meadows, even crossing territory that reminded me of my home in Southern Arizona, where the sky stretched overhead, touching down only on the heads of the distant mountains. The sun sank down upon those distant peaks, sending out rays of brilliant purples and oranges.

I was beginning to think that we would spend our night camping out—a daunting thought with an infant, when the Huntsman stopped in front of a mud and clay building. The faintest glow of lantern light appeared under a door made from a thick, twisted, desert wood.

A slender figure opened the door, before we could even think of dismounting. It—she I realized—stood there for a moment, the lights of the room behind her casting a strange eight-legged shadow on the ground before us.

She stepped out further, a long, elegant shape. She had not eight, but several sets of arms and legs. Her hair wisped and danced around the skinny appendages, making her entire form seem to sway and dance on the wind. She was silent, but she beckoned us to follow her and enter her abode.

I glanced over my shoulder at the Huntsman. As usual, he remained behind. The shadows gathered around him as the door began to close behind me.

I opened my mouth to speak, but the shadows swallowed him up entirely.

The little house was full of looms of all shapes and sizes. Each one held projects of various lengths; some appeared to be nearly finished, while other barely started. The fabric on the looms encompassed every color of the rainbow, and my other sight showed me that Magically, they encompassed the full spectrum, as well. The materials varied from thin as spider’s silk, to a heavy and wooly fiber wider around than my wrist.

Our hostess offered us a simple bean soup with a homemade flat bread made of one of the harder Fae grains—it looked like blue wheat, and had a sweet, malty, maize-like flavor. We ate gratefully, too exhausted to make much conversation. Even Asher seemed subdued, after our day in the saddle. His fever passed, but his face was pink as he slept with his mouth open. Traveling as we had the past few days was hard on a child as young as he was.

We were offered thick, hand-woven rugs and blankets for our beds. The fabric was soft against my skin as I cradled Asher in my arms, with Timothy curved around my back.

Despite my exhaustion, sleep alluded me. I could not shake the sensation of loneliness I had felt—or had I imagined it—coming from the Huntsman. Perhaps it was foolishness for me to worry about a creature that had roamed the world for longer than memory, but his sadness haunted me. In my deepest heart of hearts, I believed that no one should be completely alone—even those that wore the faces of such as Owen Dark.

No, I mused. Even with his dark soul, I would not have wished the bitter loneliness of isolation on him.

I watched Asher sleep, memorizing every long eyelash, the curve of his nose, the way his mouth gaped open as he slept. This, this was what gave my life meaning—not just the baby, but those that I loved. Love was what gave me dimension. Without it, I was nothing but a construct of paper, with no depth, no purpose, and no direction.

I could not remember a time when I hadn’t been loved. Intellectually, I knew that the same was not true for every person, but for me, love had been like the air I breathed. My mother had sacrificed everything for me—literally her entire life. She had surrounded me with sisters and stepfathers—many, many stepfathers—and I had been loved by friends, the kind that would lay their lives down if it came to it.

I had found a different kind of love with Timothy—a love that I chose, and a love that did not complete me, but made me more than I was alone. And then there was Asher… my son. Holding him in my arms was like falling in love all over again. My loved ones filled my heart, until the abundance spilled out of me.

Whom did the Huntsman have?

I fell into an uneasy sleep, but the faces of the lost— ice giants, selkie folk, and others that I had never seen haunted my dreams. Standing in the background, I was ever aware of the presence of the Huntsman, standing, waiting for me to do something.

But do what?

I startled awake and discovered that it was morning.

*~*~*

W
e crossed out of the desert and back into the woods that day. The trees here were ancient—as big around as some of the towers back at the castle. They dwarfed us, until I imagined that our horses and us might be nothing but ants. I felt so small, so insignificant. The trees awed me; they humbled me. I imagined that their roots might dig through centuries of time, not just the soil below. There was age here that defied my all-too mortal mind.

Steam broke out of the ground in these parts, some as quiet as an angel’s breath, while other burst forth in geysers of sweet-smelling water. The streams we passed bubbled merrily, perfuming the air with the same, strange, yet not unpleasant, sweetness that all the water held here.

There were birds in the higher branches of the trees. We could hear them singing, though we never saw more than a sudden flit of wings as they darted over our heads. At times, through the trees, I thought I could make out the bolting forms of deer, white and gold in color, but whenever I tried to get a closer look, they had vanished.

Some of the streams were haunted with spirits, kin to naiads, but different, more solemn. They watched us ride past, combing out the rippling watery lengths of their hair in silence.

Other than the occasional birdsong, the woods were strangely silent. It was the hush, more than anything that conveyed the feeling of age.

I wondered, in a fit of fancy, if the trees might awaken and speak to us. But, even if they could, they slept as we rode by.

I
was at once saddened and relieved to leave the sheltering branches of the ancient wood. Part of me would have liked to explore, to learn all of the secrets that the woods must hold, but the rest of me, mortal and childish, was glad to leave behind the silences and shadows.

The horses, in unison, snorted and raised their heads, as if they had walked along in a stupor the entire time we had been among the trees. The feeling was not limited to them. Even the Huntsman seemed more subdued that usual. We all shook our heads, trying to clear them of the heavy, sleepy, mustiness that remained.

I felt as if I had been drugged, or fallen asleep in the sunlight, only to awake to a foggy mind and dulled senses. I had the distinct impression that we could have wandered around in those woods for years, and never realized that any time had passed.

“What a strange place,” Merlin said, turning nearly all the way around in his saddle to look back at the trees. “I wonder how long the trees have slept? It felt as if the entire forest were at rest.”

“Do you think they dreamed of us, riding past?” I asked, meaning to be funny, but shivering that it might actually be so.

We rode on in silence. The trees had given way to a hilly expanse of grass, dotted here and there with wild flowers. It might be winter back at the castle, but here it was in the first blushes of summer. The realization made my head buzz with speculations about the size of Faerie, equators, and just how much territory we had covered on the Magical paths that crisscrossed Faerie. I had a feeling we had traveled much further than we thought.

“I smell the ocean,” my mother announced, standing up in her stirrups.

I tilted my head back. The breeze did seem to carry with it some tang of the sea. I hoped that we were not back at the lighthouse and the selkie folk. I
assumed
that we would not have traveled for two days, merely to end up where we had started from, but I couldn’t pretend to understand the motives of someone like the Huntsman.

“We must be nearing a different shore,” Timothy said, voicing my thoughts. The slightest touch of doubt colored his voice.

If we had just spent the last two days on a wild goose chase, I wasn’t the only one who was going to be royally peeved with the Huntsman.

The path our horses followed was covered in sand the same yellow color as saffron-infused rice. The soil was fine in texture, and clay-like, nothing like any of the roads we had traveled through thus far. That alone, plus the drastic change in seasons, reassured me that we were entering new territory.

We were surrounded on three sides by rolling hills. Grass rippled in the breeze, greens and golds highlighted by the warm late-afternoon sunlight. The grass whispered with feathery voices as the wind danced through it. The sky above was blue, not the usual pink-tinted sky that I saw in my part of Faerie. Fluffy, white clouds slid gracefully across the wide canvas of the sky.

A great shape winged overhead. I shaded my eyes as it flew between me and the sun, dropping its shadow across my companions and me. It was followed by another, and then another, form. I could not make out what they were, though I was left with an impression of great, white wings.

“Swans,” my mother called.

Seven in all, the swans winged overhead. The sun caught hold of the white of their wings, creating halos of light. I squinted, this time against the glare.

The swans flew on, disappearing over the horizon.

I bit my bottom lip. Uneasiness fell heavily in my chest.

Swans.

Swans were an omen of death, weren’t they? In my studies, I had seen swans described as messengers, as spirits, as the ghosts of those whose business was unfinished.

We didn’t need any dark omens.

Hopefully these swans were just swans. It didn’t seem likely, though, not with the sort of luck that I had.

The hills we traveled grew steeper as we moved along. Our horses huffed and sweated as they climbed each crest, only to be face with another hill, and another climb. The leather of our saddles squeaked. The only sounds were the breathing of the horses, the squeaking of our saddles, and the jangling of metal stirrups.

The sky darkened by the moment, echoing with distant thunder and the smell of rain. Storm awareness prickled against my skin. I looked up at the sky. The fluffy white clouds had been replaced with their darker cousins. Storm clouds blotted out the rest of the sky.

The wind howled mournfully. It pulled at our clothes and hair. It brought within the storm the subtle scent of evergreens, pervading the air in an intoxicating way. This far from the woods, it should not have been so strong. The evergreen smell was too strong, too heady. My stomach grew heavy, even as huffed through my nostrils, trying to allay the stench.

The sea salt was also in the air and it, too, did not belong here. The sea, wherever it was, was nowhere in sight. The wind, bringing the scent with it, came from the wrong direction. We were in a limbo between sea and land, where the trees and the water were neither nearby.

Magic.
It slid silently across my nerves like a razor.

I bit my lip, tightening my arm across the bundle of my son, resting peacefully in his sling. The scent of the Magic coming told me that this was no friendly force. It did not perfume the air with fragrance, it tainted it with its harshness.

A whispering mist crept over the hills with the stealth of a cat stalking its meal. It reached out with long fingers, winding around us in supple silence. The horses froze still beneath us. Our breathing became audible. Strange syllables echoed from the unnatural fog, hissing whispers that drew up the hair on my arms and the back of my neck.

Part of me screamed that we should run, but I could not engage my muscles. It was as if the fog had found its way into my head, too. I could not think. All I could do was feel… and tremble at what I felt.

Before long, we could not have seen our hands in front of our faces. We were muted completely in a pungent, damp cloud.

I wondered if I would ever feel clean again.

In my arms, Asher whimpered. One of the horses let out a whinny, which cut off abruptly, half-completed.

And then we heard it, though it was far from unexpected. From the distance, the soft, achingly beautiful song of the siren came. I knew at once what it was. There could not be anything else like it, at once fascinating and terrible.

“Quickly,” My mother shouted, her sharp voice cutting through the haze of the song. “Cover your ears! Don’t let her song reach you.”

Half-dreaming already, I pushed the soft dough-like resin my mother had made into my ears. Immediately, the tingling sensation that had pulled at my limbs with the siren’s song, ceased to bother me. The fog lifted from my brain.

My heart thudded as I realized just what easy prey we made.

On my chest, Asher screamed, his face turning bright red. He struck out with his hands and feet, his mouth open in a round O of frustration. His face was already an angry red. Tears poured out of his tightly-clenched eyes

He could still hear the siren’s song. Despite his age, he apparently wasn’t immune to its effect.

My mother, for once, had been wrong. The siren’s song did have an effect on babies—and Asher wasn’t handling his exposure well.

I fumbled for the earplugs my mother had given me for him, in case her theory was wrong and he was effected by the song as the rest of us were. I would have torn the plugs out of my own ears for him, if I weren’t so afraid that I would succumb to the song and be made useless by it.

My hands shook as I tried to dodge my son’s swinging arms and legs and tried to remember which pocket held the ear plugs. The faster I searched, the clumsier my hands became. I would have had an easier time trying to search my pockets with lobster claws.

I shot Timothy a panicked look.

He reached for our son. I let him take Asher into his arms as I searched. I fumbled through my pockets, more frantic by the moment, for the ear plugs. Where had I put them? I had believed my mother when she had told me not to worry. I should have trusted my own instincts. Why hadn’t I kept them with my own?

At last, I found them, deep in a pocket I had already searched several times. With a smile of triumph, I held them out to Timothy.

Even through my earplugs, I could hear the silence. The mist was so thick that I could see nothing, hear nothing at all. I was blanketed in evergreen and salt. The only sensation I could feel was the clammy caress of the salty mist that surrounded me.

I whirled around, the names of my husband and child on my lips.

“Timothy!” I shouted, my tongue loosened by a burning wave of fear. “Asher! Where are you?”

The sunlight burst down upon us with the heavy beating of swan’s wings. Golden light blazed against pure, white feathers, filling the air with the scent of clean, green grass.

Under the barrage of swan wings, the mist turned to vapor and disappeared.

My lungs drew in an aching breath. My hands clenched the saddle in front of me. My heart wrenched in my chest.

Timothy and Asher were gone.

Even Timothy’s horse, Whisper, had vanished with the mist. There was no sign of them, no proof that they had ever existed.

Nothing.

My empty arms ached.

My mother appeared by my side before I could even fully process what had happened. I tore the ear plugs from my ears with shaking hands.

“Can you feel them?” she asked. “Timothy and Asher—use your Magic to find them. Can you do it?”

I took a steadying breath, trying to calm myself enough that I could access my Magic. I had felt fear before, even terror, but never of this caliber. Breathing, moving—it all was impossible. My heart was still beating strongly. How could that be so? How could life not pause? My world was shaken, and yet I remained.

Blank. My world was blank. Empty. I could perceive and conceive of nothing. I was turned to stone, unable to think or reason.

Beneath me, Gealbhan let out a whinny that shook his entire body. The motion jerked me back into the land of the living. In fact, I had to grab onto his mane with both hands, so as not to be unseated.

It worked as well as being slapped across the face would have. The world came back to me in a rush of sensation and color. I gasped as if I had been holding my breath.

Gealbhan whinnied again, dancing to the side and bobbing his head like a marionette. His legs bunched under him. For a moment, I thought he might try to bolt with me, or buck. He spun on his haunches and danced in place, his hooves cutting up the turf below them.

It took all of my skill as an intermediate sort of rider to stay in the saddle. I grabbed onto his mane. What had happened to my ever faithful, tried and true mount? Had he gone mad?

Then I saw them.

My lopsided world balanced out again. Everything askew was righted.

Breathing became possible, even desirable.

Whisper was trotting towards us, the sunlight glistening against the gold of her coat, until she looked like she had been cast out of gold. A golden horse could never be as alive as Whisper, however. She moved easily up the hill towards us, her gait smooth enough not to jar her passengers.

Timothy and Asher smiled as they rode the last few steps to join me and the rest of the company. Asher was tucked partway under Timothy’s chin. He let out a gleefully garbled yelp, wiggling with all his might.

Timothy gave me a reassuring smile, the crooked smile that made his dimples appear, even on the scarred side of his face. The same smile that had caught my attention, when we’d first met.

“What happened?” I cried, even as Gealbhan scooted sideways, allowing me to throw my arms around my family. My voice cracked. I could feel there was only the thinnest veneer keeping myself together.

Timothy shook his head, his expression turning grim. “The siren’s song lured us away,” he said. “There was no way to resist. If it hadn’t been for Whisper, I don’t know where we would be now. Once she realized what was happening, she bolted in the opposite direction as fast as her legs could take her. It was all I could do to hold onto Asher, and let her take control.” He reached down to stroke Whisper’s sweat-soaked neck. “I have no doubts that she saved us. We would have gone on our own accord—that’s what bothers me the most. I didn’t even try to fight the compulsion.”