Siren Queen(80)

“Thank you.”

She sighed.

“Can’t help being yourself, can you?” Emmaline asked, almost unwillingly fond.

No, I couldn’t.

She returned to her mark, and two crewmen came forward to hoist me up on the rock again. Soon enough, Jacko was back next to the camera, he shouted, and the girl with the clapboard set it all in motion again.

I drifted from myself, watching with interest as the siren clung to the rock and begged for her life. She was desperate, but it wasn’t just her end she feared. It was the end of everything she was and of the people she had come from. They were already mostly gone when she was young, and this was their final death knell. The girl who had slain her watched with dispassion as she begged.

No, not dispassion.

Nemo’s daughter held a light in her, pure and silvery, and it was not fueled on hate. It burned steadily in her heart, so strong that surely it would never go out, never be extinguished, and the siren could feel herself reach for that.

Beautiful but not pure, my mind whispered while I begged. Nothing we had done in the shadows of the Friday fires was pure. It was better than that. It was true. It was everything I was and everything I could be—was meant to be—if only I dared. It twisted inside me, hungry and vicious and clever.

It was worth dying for, it was worth living for, and now Nemo’s daughter was walking towards me as I writhed in the sand.

I pulled myself up painfully to rest with my back against the rock. I didn’t look at my precious tail any longer, not because it was so terrible to look at but because Nemo’s daughter filled my world. I thought of a boy on a stage far away who pulled out his heart for everyone to see, and then I could only see the shining woman in front of me.

She had a saint’s sternness as she approached me. Of course I saw the sliver of steel in her hand, what predator would not? It didn’t matter. My mouth opened slightly as if she was something good I could eat. She came to kneel in front of me, the blood and sand not marring an inch of her white silk dress.

“Good-bye, monster,” she said, and one hand came up to cup the side of my face. It felt so familiar, as if she had done that same motion before in some other life, but of course she hadn’t. No one had ever touched me like that before.

She leaned in. In that moment, it wasn’t fear or dread that I felt. Instead it was awe, and I gave myself to her entirely. My arms came up, and I pulled her to me, and her mouth came over mine as if this was what we had been destined to do from the first, not bleed, not war, but kiss.

Her mouth was warm and growing warmer. It fed me, burned me with her brilliance and made me live again. She was giving me something instead of taking it away, and underneath all of it was her desire, her need, her fear and her pride rising to meet their match in me.

My heartbeat filled my ears as we both pulled back, but the air went up in cold fire. I could see shadows around us, rocks, cameras, people shouting with fear and confusion, the clatter of steel on concrete, and then it was too brilliant to see anything at all. The din beyond the light fell away to an incessant ringing, or perhaps, a distant tolling that did not cease.

I couldn’t feel Emmaline any longer, but in some other distant and primal way, I was aware of her. I could feel how the blood coursed through her veins, the way steel pins pulled at her hair, how the silk sat on her skin and was grateful for her warmth.

“Emmaline,” I whispered, or at least, I thought I did.

Well, you’ve done it now.

I wasn’t sure if I had imagined those words or if she had actually spoken them. I was fully in my body, fully in my own mind, it felt, for the first time in my life, and the reality of it pierced me with sharp delight and power. I was bursting from my own skin. At any moment, I might spin out into the sky and be lost.

The glow faded, and my body was cold because for a few moments, it had been lit up with fireworks. I slumped back against the rock, Emmaline sat back on her heels, and we looked around at a changed world.

The ground around us was scorched black, a few of the rocks close by reduced to singed scaffolding. The cameras stood, glass and steel bastions, and so did the men behind them, because they were trained for this very eventuality, prayed for it, as a matter of fact. Still, I could see some of them reaching for the iron icons sewn into their hidden pockets, and a deep thrill coursed through me.

Tara was on her knees, hands pressed to her mouth. She would lose the awe sooner than you might think, but for now, her eyes shone with the love of the acolyte, a talent for worship that I had as well. I do love her, I thought absently.

Jacko sat flat on the concrete, his legs straight out in front of him. His face was closed, but unwilling tears dribbled from his eyes as his hands opened and closed. I realized belatedly that he was as much a worshiper as I was, as Tara was, as Harry or Emmaline were. None of us would be here if we weren’t.

All eyes were on me. Emmaline was a monster they knew, and in a way, so was I, but today, I was something they had never seen before. A monster, a miracle.

A star.

I stood up, my tail burned away to scraps of rubber that still sizzled on the ground. I was still hung with seaweed drag, but I didn’t even mind that. Under Emmaline’s careful and faintly amused eye, I took a few steps, shaky as a newborn lamb. A phosphor glow was fading from my skin, and I held my hands up to watch it go. When it was gone, and I was just flesh again, I started to laugh.