The Song

by Michelle Pichette and Holly Cushing

    She leaned against the barren rocks and watched the man standing on the conning tower of the vessel nearby. He was handsome, she mused, his dark hair shining in the setting sun, his dark eyes visible to her own sharp ones. He was looking out over the water at something, but she couldn’t tell what. Perhaps the faraway expression on his face was because he was not so much looking at something on or in the water as the water itself. The ocean was a wonderful hypnotist and many men fell to her mesmerizing movements, especially sailors. Perhaps he was thinking about some woman back at his home port, she mused, or perhaps he was thinking about something to do with his boat. Perhaps he was thinking of nothing more than the ripples as they moved across the ocean’s surface. All she knew was that he was relaxed and that made his handsome features even more appealing.

     “Tasty,” she whispered to herself, casually licking her own lips, thinking she was, indeed, hungry. If it had been a surface vessel, she wouldn’t have considered what she now was about to do, for in these strange modern times, women sailed more frequently and she couldn’t affect them as she could men. However, she thought as a predatory smile snaked across her lips, underwater vessels, like the one the man stood on, almost never carried women. If other men came out, she’d take them too. She had a lovely cave to store any she didn’t care to eat now. Yes, storing them made men nice and tender.

    Now she was ravenous, the hunger making her mind up for her and she opened her mouth and sang. Her song was primal, almost as old as the sea itself. It was the embodiment of the ocean’s beauty and power. It told of the how the ocean gives life to the world, but could also bring swift death. It told the tale of the cycles of seasons and weather and tides and even the misty air she sang into. It was a lure, an irresistible charm to any man, for it promised fulfillment of all their hopes and dreams and desires. Her song had brought down everything from simple fishermen to whole armadas. She watched the handsome, dark-haired man and waited for him to come to her, already fantasizing about how good he would taste.

    Then, to her unimaginable surprise, the man shook his head as if shaking off sleep, then he disappeared into his vessel. Stunned to silence, she watched as moments later, the boat disappeared gracefully beneath the waves.

    “I could have told you it wouldn’t work,” a sickeningly sweet voice said from the water’s edge and she grimaced at the sound of it. She hated mermaids. They were too fast to catch and knew the ocean’s songs too well to be ensnared by them.

    “Really,” she snarled as she moved across the rocks a little closer to the voice. Maybe this mermaid was slow, she mused, for she was quite hungry now. “And why would that be?”

“Because you sing to men’s unrealized dreams. He has his,” the mermaid told her. “He has the Seaview.”

    There was a splash and the mermaid was gone, leaving the Siren hungry and frustrated. As if a mere construct of metal could ever compete with her song, she sneered. She would watch this vessel, this Seaview, and someday she would feast on its crew and make its sunken hull her new home. Someday, she thought as she slipped back into her dark cave.

The End