Siren Queen(82)
These digital days, when a single kiss can be played over and over again, I may do as I like. Many of my compatriots do not descend, finding earth too strange, their beauty rendered odd and dim by better cameras, more damning eyes and the noise of overloaded freeways. Emmaline will not come down at all, content to sit in silent splendor. She says less every year, but her smile is a thing of celestial charm, enduring even as the rest drifts away. Our names are linked together in books now, though they never get it quite right. They make one or the other of us the villain or the seductress, they talk about who she loved and who I loved as if there were words big enough and grand enough for it. She said she didn’t mind, and we let them believe some wonderful stories about us. For myself, I have never been more comfortable on earth or more tempted by the fun of it. My best dresses are fashionable again for those who don’t care about fashion, and my favorite thing to do is to walk the sidewalks along the movie theaters before buying my ticket on a silver-plated black credit card and going in to see the show.
Last night, as I waited for a showing of something ghastly, grim, and elegant, I saw two women on the corner. They were chattering happily about something, arms around each other’s waists. One was thin and elfin, the other sturdy and with thick hands adorned by beautiful gold rings. They hugged each other as if there was too much light and love in their own bodies, and they could only survive by passing that light between them.
They laughed, the sturdy one whispering something into her companion’s ear to make her throw up her hands in mock dismay.
“Well, shall we?” the smaller woman asked, and her partner nodded.
They walked arm in arm to the ticket window, where a woman with eyes lit up with neon and her hair in intricate knots sold them two tickets and then sold me mine.
“Have a good show,” she said with a wide smile, and I told her I would.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I started Siren Queen in the summer of 2017. Though it’s not my first novel published, it’s the first novel I ever wrote and completed. There’s something incredible and more than a little unlikely about it turning into a real book that I can hold in my hands today.
The first finished version of Siren Queen was completed in November of 2017, but that’s not the version you’ve got now. First it had to recover from being three novellas in a trench coat, and then I had to learn about things like stakes and consequences.
This novel as it is, better, bolder, brighter, and more ambitious than what I came up with in 2017, would not exist without the passion and patience of Ruoxi Chen, my editor at Tordotcom, and Diana Fox, my agent. Thank you both, so very much.
Thank you as well to the Tordotcom team who have championed this work since the beginning, including Irene Gallo, Sanaa Ali-Virani, Lauren Anesta, Alexis Saarela, Anna Merz, Isa Caban, Eileen Lawrence, Michael Dudding, Angie Rao, Amanda Melfi, Lauren Hougen, Christina MacDonald, Christine Foltzer, Juliana Lee, and Jess Kiley.
Thank you to Cris Chingwa, Victoria Coy, Leah Kolman, Amy Lepke, and Meredy Shipp—you guys know what you did.
As for Shane Hochstetler, Carolyn Mulroney, and Grace Palmer, I actually never know what you guys are going to do, but thank you so much for doing it!
Life’s only getting weirder from here, so let’s have some fun, okay?