The Siblen & The Siren

Chapter One-2

“Don’t you want to know?” Winter asked him. “After all this time?”

Isidor studied him and then looked away, his eyes on the horizon, searching it.

“Yeah,” Isidor finally said, releasing his breath. “Yeah. Let’s go to Nanine.”

#

It was eleven days to the Brecca Islands, another three to Nanine. On the third day they would actually enter the mouth of the Brecca Straight, Nanine not far. Isidor was at the helm. Winter was busy ensuring they captured the wind, his mind on the tasks, trying not to think about where they were going. They had both been quiet all day. Tense.

It was afternoon before they began to see the black Brecca rocks jutting out of the sea on their starboard side, going carefully, the shoals treacherous. Winter eyed the rocks uneasily, something he’d seen in illustrations in books, heard in their tales. Land appeared. Caves slowly rose behind the rocks, rows of tall and thin perfect arches opening in the black cliffs. Nobody knew who’d carved them or where the openings led.

And a siren could come out of any one of them at any moment.

Siblin didn’t come near the Brecca Straight, not even this far out. He and Isidor would only be going into its mouth a small ways, but that was no guarantee.

Sirens came out of the openings to stand on the black rocks of the Brecca Straight and sing sailors to lust until men sailed their ships straight into the rocks. They sang to men until they despaired with longing and threw themselves into the sea, sang them to madness. It didn’t matter how far away you were or what you stuffed into your ears.

Paintings and lithographs showed the sirens taking the form of beautiful women. There was lore throughout the world, art showing sirens who looked like women but were monsters, mostly naked, peaked ears, sharp pointed teeth, mindless pale blank eyes, long hair that drifted in the sea winds, beautiful and cruel, hunters who ate the flesh of the men they lured whether they were dead yet or not.

Some illustrations showed that too, gruesome images. Sometimes the women were part fish, sometimes part bird, always with their mouths open, singing.

Siblin weaved them into their own tales, terrifying stories he and Isidor had heard since they were boys. Tales of the sirens had used to give Winter nightmares. But regardless of legend and myth, regardless of what common sailors believed, Siblin knew the sirens were real and that their song was deadly. He and Winter would never go near the Brecca Straight under any other circumstances.

#

Winter thought he saw movement in one of the tall arches in the cliff. He got the glass, Isidor at the helm. Winter scoured the nearest rocks off the starboard bow. He didn’t see anything on a fast pass, coming back slower.

“Winter,” Isidor said low, pointing to the rocks ahead on the same side.

Winter advanced the glass, seeing long boards cracked on the rocks, fresh wreckage, a broken hull rising, smaller items floating strewn in the surf. The ship that was in pieces there had been taken in the last few months, maybe, the colors of the paint on the wood still vivid under a hot sun.

He saw another wreckage, this one older. Through the glass Winter focused on a skeleton flung on a small shore on its back, arched, its mouth gaping open, eye sockets empty and staring. Winter felt a wave of pity and horror, moving on. Shattered crates, their contents spilled, barrels. More dead bodies. So many bodies, although they decayed fast here, mere weeks before they were skeletons wrapped in tattered cloth.

In Siblin, the phrase on the black rocks, meaning a very bad turn of events, referred to the idea of being abandoned here.

More black rocks appeared off the port bow now on the other side of the ship, more wreckage, ragged strips of canvas, a ship’s wheel on its side. So many crates. Over two hundred years of wealth shattered on these shoals, every kind of merchandise and bauble imaginable, and there wasn’t a thief stupid enough in this world to try for them.

They were in the worst of it, Isidor guiding them through. The silence was stark, only the raucous voices of the sea birds squabbling, nesting among the crags. The dead were silent, their bleached bones peeking out among the rocks.

Winter focused on movement, finding it. A sea dragon, as long as a man’s leg, slithered down between two jutting rocks, surging into the shoals, hunting.

Winter walked across the deck to the port side, lifting the glass again, scanning the rocks, the cliffs. Now they were in a long thin channel. If a siren came, there wouldn’t be anything they could do about it. They would join the dead men on the black rocks, The Singsong’s hull broken, their kegs of Dorsan wine claimed by the sirens as so much had been before. Luck was all they had to see them through, and nobody sane liked to rely on luck.

“Where do they live?” Isidor asked from the wheel in a low voice, his eyes roaming the cliffs.

“Through the arches, I guess,” Winter replied as quietly, crossing again, a crawling sensation in his gut, focusing the glass on one of the tall, thin, perfect openings, black shadows just past its entrance.

One illustration that had especially terrified him as a boy had shown a writhing nest of sirens just past the entrance to those same openings, beautiful figures draped over one another, some asleep, others fighting over the entrails of a man not quite dead yet, trying desperately to crawl away, madness on his face. Winter lowered the glass, the black rocks abruptly much farther away, all the detail gone.

#

They hadn’t wanted to risk coming here, but they had searched for Maren for years. It was the last place to look. Maren had been the twain who had taken them in, raising them after their parents were killed in a storm when they were seven. It was traditional for a Siblin who had lost his brother to adopt Siblin orphans. Maren’s brother Dane had been killed in a port accident. Maren had been everything to them, like a father, all the family they had left.

But twenty years ago, when he and Winter were seventeen, Maren had disappeared. The brothers had been stuck in Dorsa in port on a job. Maren had taken his Siblin ship, the Wandering Eye, out alone. Maren hadn’t told them where he was going, but he’d always come back before.

So the brothers had waited, getting a room on land. The days had turned into weeks. They hadn’t worried until the weeks had turned into months, and the months had turned into the more solid creeping certainty that something terrible had happened and Maren wasn’t coming back. They hadn’t even known where to look for him.

By the time five years had passed, both Winter and Isidor had resigned themselves to the idea that Maren was dead. By then, they had gotten their own ship, Siblin-made, The Singsong. Four more years had gone by, both of them busy establishing trade and taking cargo, building relations with different port authorities.

And then one day, eight years ago, the Siblin ship The Mockery had hailed them, slipping beside them into port at Minsk. Leet and Havish, two of the roughest tusks they knew, had boarded. The captains of The Mockery said they had picked up a letter addressed to Isidor and Winter from the Siblin ship The Farshore. The Farshore had picked it up in Dorsa where it had been left for four months before the ship came through to trade. It had taken the letter almost a year to reach them.

“I’m afraid it’s been damaged, Winter,” Havish had said regretfully, pointing to the water stain on the bottom of the envelope. “It came to us like this.”

Winter had looked down at the thick parchment with a sense of shock, recognizing Maren’s handwriting.

#

“You’re making me nervous,” Isidor said.

Winter snorted, raising the glass again, following the silhouette of the black rocks with the glass, stopping, going back, moving on.

“You should be,” Winter replied. “If a screecher shows, we’re dead.”

“It’s going to happen or not, Winter. Stop being a tsutsul.”

“f**k you, Isidor,” Winter retorted, his mouth twitching at the childhood joke, a tsutsul a creature whose face resembled an asshole.

#

He and Winter had both sat, looking at the letter. Isidor had finally reached and opened it, Winter looking over his shoulder. They unfolded the paper inside. No greeting, no explanation regarding where he’d been for the past eleven years. Just a set of coordinates.

Regardless, those coordinates said Maren was alive. He was alive, and he wanted them to find him. But the crease where the paper touched the bottom of the envelope had gotten wet. The ink was smeared. The final two numbers were illegible. They had no way to determine exactly where Maren had meant to send them.

They had an idea. The coordinates they could read covered roughly a total of five islands and a part of a sixth, the Brecca Islands, and for the next eight years he and Winter had searched each island, coming whenever they could. They hadn’t found any sign of Maren.

Except for the last island. They’d never been there.

Nanine.

#

“How far out are we?” Winter said.

“Not far. The cove is ahead.”

Winter came and took the wheel. Isidor blew out some of his tension as they left the black rocks behind. Their luck had held, although neither one of them forgot they’d have to come through the same black rocks to get back to open water.

The sea was choppy here, green with whitecaps, a good wind. Isidor took out the glass, aiming it at the cove.

“Winter.”

Isidor came to Winter’s side, pointing, taking the wheel.

Winter brought it to the bow, bracing his leg, scanning. He passed it, a dark blur in the glass, and then returned, adjusting.

The Wandering Eye filled the sight. Winter’s gut tightened. Maren’s ship. She was there, in the cove, anchored, as she must have been since Maren had sent that message nine years ago. This is where Maren had meant to send them.

Winter felt a surge, hope and then doubt, the ship’s familiar lines tugging at him, colorful paint, colorful canvas, his whole world when he and Isidor were ten. Maren was here, one way or another. Winter almost couldn’t believe it. They’d found him.

#

By the time they anchored, it was evening, but they didn’t want to wait until morning. They went down the ladder to the dinghy, Winter holding a lantern. Isidor rowed them to The Wandering Eye. Winter came off the ladder and stepped onto the deck on which they had spent their youth and that he hadn’t walked in twenty years.

They had already tried hailing him, could already tell Maren wasn’t here. Winter opened the cabin, the door swollen, sticking. Nobody had been on her for awhile, the deck a filthy mess, sea birds using her to rest. Her innards were cleaned out, dusty, motes hanging in the lamplight.

There were still two beds, one larger where he and Isidor had slept and that Maren had built when he adopted them. Both the beds had been stripped. Winter searched all the drawers, the cabinets and closets. Isidor came in.

“Any sign of his journal?” Isidor asked.

Winter shook his head. There was hardly anything here. They explored the whole ship together with one lantern.

“I’ll go through supplies in the morning, see what we’ll need to search the island,” Winter said.

They boarded The Singsong again, Winter leaning against the rail. The lantern’s light was lonely in the surrounding darkness, a beacon that could be seen from land if there were anyone to see it. Winter was looking toward the dim outline of the shore. Isidor came and leaned next to him, both of them listening to the lap of water against the hull. Both of them thinking about Maren.