How (Not) to Soothe a Siren (Cindy Eller Book 9) (14 page)

T
ime had no meaning in the mist. The siren could have been combing her hair for hours, or mere moments.

It felt like an eternity to me.

As abruptly as she had changed the last time, she changed again. This time she took the form of a great white horse, the color of sea foam. It was draped all around in nearly-transparent veils. My insides twisted at the sight of it.

A kelpie. The siren had turned into a kelpie in front of us.

She charged at us, clapping her teeth harmlessly through our arms and clothes, driving harmless hooves through our bodies.

She changed again and again—becoming sea monster after sea monster—great and small, but all terrible. She became creatures with hundreds of teeth, and great, slimy creatures with no teeth at all. If ever man or Fae conceived of a sea monster, she took on its shape and form.

Part of me stirred with hope. I could tell that the siren was growing desperate. Maybe she would give up and leave us and the others alone.

Just when I thought she had reached that point, she raised her arms and called the storm down upon us.

The siren herself might not have been able to touch us, but the storm sure could. The wind tore at us with tooth and claw, while the water drove dagger-like through our clothing. Lightning struck a heart’s beat away, filling the air with the scent of scorched earth and ozone.

Asher’s rainbows faltered. He buried himself between Timothy and me, as we held each other against the storm. I could not hear if he was crying, but I could feel the shaking of his tiny body.

“Enough!” I screamed. “You have no power over us! We have broken no vows! I am sworn to protect Faerie, and Faerie is sworn to me—that make you the oath breaker here!” I spat out a hank of my hair that the wind kept blowing into my mouth. “Do not underestimate me, siren.”

The response of the wind was a blast that threw me against Timothy and nearly sent the three of us flying. I could vaguely see the others, clinging desperately to each other, trying to outlast the storm.

Still, I hesitated to use my Magic against her. She might be ruthless, and no doubt, she was a killer, but I did not have it in me to follow the same path. I was not a killer. I hadn’t been very successful at anything to do with healing, but that didn’t mean that I was by nature someone who could harm others.

I couldn’t do it.

The others would have died.

Possibly.

Would have.

If it hadn’t been for the arrival of the ice giants and the selkies at that moment.

In the midst of the storm, all I saw was a rush of lavender pale legs, and a grayish braid of hair swinging. A flash of lightning revealed Kate’s face, then Grace, then Hannah. And others—ice giants! Many, many ice giants!

I squeaked as I pulled Timothy and Asher out of the way of a large falling body. The body sprang back up to his feet and ran back into the storm, bellowing and laughing as he went.

I had a feeling that most ice giants weren’t as… civilized as the ones I had been acquainted with.

Something soft brushed against my leg. I looked down and saw a seal looking down at me, but when the lightning flashed again, the seal was gone. In its place, Midir crouched, a feral grin on his face.

I could feel the warmth of the selkies gathering around my companions and me.

The ground shook ominously.

I smiled to myself. My mother was getting in on the act.

I’d been in battle before, and I had hated it as much then as I hated it now. I didn’t know if it was because I couldn’t think fast enough to process everything, or just the entire concept of trying to smash someone with something, but I ended up more confused than elated.

Timothy, on the other hand, had earned his scar fighting for Magical Rights. He had been a hero of the War of Magic. Unlike me, he knew how to keep his head in calamity. He pressed Asher into my arms and took a wicked-looking blade from one of the selkies.

I pressed Asher closer to my chest. A bubble of fear climbed up my throat and threatened to burst from my lips. I knew that I whimpered. I only hoped that the storm would cover the sound from any who didn’t have ear plugs.

Had it really come to this? Anger, rage, hate, violence? We had come with pieces of the puzzle, not weapons.

Though, I had not forgotten that we still had one more group to free—the stone people.

But this, this wasn’t going to resolve anything. If we couldn’t capture the siren, a lot of ice giants and selkies were going to get hurt. And if we could capture the siren, what then? What if she were killed? Who would find the stone people then?

I pursed my lips together and blew.

I wasn’t sure that it would work, but it did.

Faerie’s power superseded that of the siren.

The wind blew away before me.

Still clutching Asher in my arms, as he again set the prism to making rainbows, I marched forward, blowing the mist out from before me.

I didn’t know what I was going to do if I found the siren. I would have to figure that out if—and when—I did. My Magic was bubbling through my veins, painting the outer rim of my vision scarlet.

Before me, the selkie folk and the ice giants stopped where they stood and bowed their heads respectfully. They recognized the Seraphim, not me Cindy, but the mantle of my power and authority.

I marched on, blowing the mist out in front of me.

There the siren stood, her hands clenched into fists, her face defiant and full of hate. She spat at me. I could tell that she was screaming again.

I was truly grateful for my mother’s ear plugs. I could picture the sales slogan now ‘blocks out sounds so well, you won’t even hear a siren yell!’

I would watch that infomercial.

I blinked back to myself.

Magically, the siren was still protected by the oath that still had not been fulfilled. Everything she had done had technically been within her rights.

It had been slimy, but technically on the side of legal.

I had no right to her.

My Magic bounced with frustration, but I could see the patterns around her clearly. I could not intervene, when justice rested on the side of the siren.

Magic didn’t care if she was manipulative, or a horrible creature. Magic didn’t care if she had set out all along to steal power and Magic from her victims.

All it cared was that an oath had been made, and it had not been fulfilled.

Nothing in the Magic around the siren could tell me how to obtain the tears of a man who was not a man.

I could not win.

But, I could not accept defeat either.

It was a stalemate.

A hand touched my shoulder.

It was Midir.

He approached the siren.

I saw her recoil from him.

He knelt before her.

And wept.

Seven tears from a selkie man—a man who was not a man.

I read the siren’s defeat in her face. She reached for the comb she had tucked back into her belt.

I knew how it would happen. She would glamour our allies and find a way to bind them to her as she had before. Her voice and her Magical comb together would guarantee that, sooner or later, she would get what she wanted.

Her defeat was that of an instant.

As Seraphim, I had the power to defeat her, but not the right.

As Cindy the woman, I had the right to defeat the creature that had attacked my family, but not the power I would need to make her punishment stick.

I felt the air behind me shift.

I turned and looked up at the Huntsman.

T
he Huntsman did not meet my gaze. His head, what I could make of it, was turned towards the siren, who appeared to be frozen at the sight of him.

He slid off his great, antlered mount. I thought I could feel the impact of each step he took as he walked the short distance to the siren.

He looked down at her silently.

I fumbled with my ear plugs. I had a feeling that I wanted to hear what was happening.

The siren looked up at the Huntsman. Her lips curled in a sneer as she took in the furs and antler that he wore. She raised her head in a regal way, lifting her nose to look down at him from it.

Still, the Huntsman did not move and did not speak.

Shrugging her dainty shoulders, the siren lifted up her pewter comb. I watched in fascination as she slid it silkily through her smooth tresses. The comb made a soft, hissing sound.

Brush. Brush. Brush.

And then she began to sing.

I reached for my ear plugs, but could not bring myself to put them in. Her face, as she sang, was angry and defiant, but the song she sang was quite different.

Her song made me want to weep for its sadness.

I’m lonely
, it cried.
You left me, and without you, I die.

I could not understand the words she sang, but that was the message I heard. Her voice was high and true as she sang of loss and heartbreak and loneliness. She sang with the raw agony of a broken heart. Her song wept and sobbed, bringing me and all others who heard it to tears, as well.

Only the Huntsman seemed unmoved.

He stood there, an immovable object, with the music breaking around me.

Love is dead
, the song cried,
hope is lost. There is nothing, nothing at all. Was it all a lie? Was none of it real and true?

The song was the siren’s soul, I realized, and how could such pain be held in a soul without damaging its vessel? She was broken beyond repair. And for what?

Love, love, you did not come. Where are you? Where did you go? Why did you break your promises?

Her voice vibrated, the notes high and pure, they wept with the purity of the finest wooden flute, that weeping sweep of a cello bow. The music was her soul, and her soul was fracturing into thousands of little pieces.

A deeper voice joined the song.

It wove in counterpoint to the siren’s melody, coaxing depth and richness from her voice that had not been there before. It matched pace with hers here, and then moved on its own, making a new song out of two halves of the whole.

As high and pure as the siren’s voice was, this one was as deep and rich. They exulted in the opposites they were. Land and sea, day and night, summer and winter, they were all captured with in the song.

Timothy touched my arm. He gestured in front of us.

That’s when I knew.

The Huntsman was the second singer.

They sang on and on, their voices incandescent. A kind of luminous quality replaced the madness of the siren’s eyes. She drooped, her voice suddenly cracking in mid-phrase.

She looked up at the Huntsman, a stunned look on her face, as he sang one more phrase of music alone, and then was silent.

He pulled back his hood and showed her his face.

She recoiled in reaction, but just as suddenly, she threw herself forward, her delicate arms struggling to reach around the enormous breadth of the Huntsman’s form. She clung to him as ivy clings to a tree. She held onto him as if she could be no other place. The soft sound of weeping filled the air.

These were not tears of anger, bitterness, or fear. These were the kind of tears that healed, the kind that swept out the cobwebs for hope to move in.

Her shoulders shook as she wept. Tears fell at her feet, turning at once into pearls. They rolled away from her on the grass, dark and light, pinks, blues, all possible colors, gleamed up from her tears.

The Huntsman pulled her away from him. He lifted her into his arms and carried her silently to where his mount waited. He climbed on, somehow without ever letting the siren go. He sat deep in his saddle.

Now his eyes met mine. He gestured for me and all the others to cover their eyes. I shouted the order.

“Do not open your eyes,” I said. “No matter what you think you hear, do not open your eyes until you hear the signal.”

The huntsman, his lady riding pillion behind him, raised his great hunting horn to his lips.

I closed my eyes and covered Asher’s eyes with my hand.

The baying of hounds and the neighing of horses filled the air. I could feel them, all around us, as the Wild Hunt gathered to chase evil from the world.

The evil the siren had left behind as her one last promise, the promise of her sworn love, was fulfilled. That would be the quarry for the hunt this day.

I listened until the baying of the hounds was completely gone. I opened my eyes.

The hunt was gone, and with it had gone the remnants of the mist. All around us, the green grass grew, dotted with small, round things with huge eyes—as they appeared to me made entirely of stone; I assumed that these were the rock people the swan sisters had told me about.

The air felt fresh, bright, as if it had been scrubbed clean. It was not just the air after a storm, for I could see that the Magic here, too, had been… refreshed, for lack of a better term.

“You can open your eyes now,” I shouted.

All around me my family, friends, and their clans, stirred into motion. They looked around with the same stunned expressions that I felt mirrored on my own face. Voices rose in questions and conversation, but I only had eyes for two faces.

“I’m ready to go home,” I said. “And, this time, I’m not talking about the bakery.”