Lost at Sea

-February 1, 1787-

Ten years, five months, two weeks, and 3 days later, Eleanor is a killer.

Or so she tells herself she is.

Self-hatred is not common amongst the sirens, but it is something that she has become accustomed to. She wasted a year or two looking for someone like her, who thought like she did, but none exist. Her sisters feel no remorse for what they do; they feel no disgust when they rip out the throat of someone who might have been a child’s father. They feel no reverence for the life they have just ended, as though that sailor did not have any hopes, dreams, or aspirations.

She knew that she, too, shouldn’t feel that way when she kills. After all, people just like them had thrown her and her sisters overboard and left them to drown in the cold waters of the Atlantic. However hard she may try, she still grieves for the lives she has ended. She hates who she is and what she has become, and longs for the life she used to have. The one that gives her just the very edges of its memories. The one that, when she just barely grazes her fingertips against it, jolts out of her grasp.

In her dreams, it visits. It teases her with the sounds of unadulterated laughter, the kind that comes from the very toes. The taste of something so milky and sweet, an explosion of flavor so fulfilling and indescribable, the name of which eluded her and slipped through her fingers like the sunlight. The smell of freshly cut grass on a hot summer day and the large, leafy plants that don’t grow in the oceans give her a sweet reprieve from the sun’s unforgiving rays.

And perhaps her favorite is the man. He visits the most often, with his dark eyes and sandy colored hair. He had the most captivating smile that Eleanor could ever imagine. Even with their supernatural good looks, her sisters could never even hope to have such a beauty as he. Some nights, when she was particularly exhausted, Eleanor could feel his rough hands against her skin. The way they brought up chills and warmed her at the same time, how beautiful and safe she felt under his touch, and the hot trails they left in their wake. She always woke longing for him, a stranger, and not a single clue what his name might be.

James, she sometimes thought. It sounded so familiar on her tongue. Perhaps this was the man’s name? Maybe, just maybe, she was beginning to remember more? Then again, every other name she could possibly concoct seemed just as familiar.

Her fingers trailed over the edges of a the jagged rock she sat on, her lungs aching from the use. They still worked in their shrunken form, but being out of the water made her skin itch so much that she hardly used them. The air was foggy and warm, though, just the way she liked it.

Behind her, a swell of rock rose proudly into the sky. Black as the night and as unforgiving, too, it served as a sort of meeting place for Eleanor and her sisters. It had several other, smaller rocks like the one she sat on that jutted out from the choppy waves, forming a ring. They sat there so often that the shape of their scales had been imprinted into the stone.

“You said one would be here,” snarled a siren behind Eleanor. Impatience dripped from her words like a rainstorm.

“One will be,” Lizbeth replied, her violet eyes watching the horizon intently. “I can feel it.”

Lizbeth. The oldest of their clan. The most wise, the most respected, the most ruthless. Her soul burned fiery and hot in her eyes, her every thought blazed across her forehead like a beacon. Her wish was every sister’s command. Rules did not apply to Lizbeth the Great.

When Eleanor was first awakened, Lizbeth was already there. She explained what had happened; that she had been tossed into the sea and left to drown, that the sea had breathed a new life into her. She taught Eleanor how to breathe, how to swim, how to hunt, how to think. She was Eleanor’s life line, and she owed everything to her.

Eleanor hated her.

“There,” she whispered, those strangely purple eyes glinting with pure malice. Eleanor shivered, the look on her eldest sister’s face reinforcing her earlier thoughts that she was truly alone.

On the horizon, a ship glided across the seas. With their heightened eyesight, they could just barely make out the shape of it against the rich azure blue of the sky.

Eleanor eyed the dark-haired siren beside her. She was new; she felt the hunger more deeply than the others. In the beginning, it was hard to handle. Their pain is so new and fresh that they could sink a dozen ships in their first few hours before the edge began to lessen. Still, Eleanor was convinced that the girl was taking it too far.

With unswerving unity, the sirens began their song, their husky voices stinging in their throats. It was eerie and beautiful, without any words. Their melody echoed off of the spires of rock around them and reverberated in the clouds, binding them together into a storm Poseidon himself would quake at the sight of. The churning blackness of the skies twisted and deepened to the rising and falling of their voices.

As the ship began to weather the storm, the sirens dove into the water. To a normal person, the water would have been frigid, but their blood had been chilled and now ran through their bodies as though on ice. They didn’t feel the cold. They glided below the waves swiftly, making it to the ship with a few strokes of their powerful tails. The moment their heads surfaced-- all seven of them-- they were face to face with the wreckage they had caused.

The men clung to anything that floated better than they. Lizbeth gave Eleanor a sinister grin, then dove down below to round up any drowning sailors.

The rest began to sing, a different song. One that wove the sailor’s most intimate hopes and dreams into a veil that covered their mind’s eye. Almost instantly, their pupils expanded and they abandoned their flotsam junk in favor of a siren’s arms. They clung desperately to the last strains of the ballad with a ravenous hunger in their eyes. Some babbled, some only cried.

Shortly after their meal began, Lizbeth returned to the surface with two more men. They were wide awake and aware, their eyes wide with terror. Eleanor began to feel her gut churn as she realized what Lizbeth was doing.

“Why do we numb their senses?” She began, that same hard edge to her husky voice. “Why do we give them that mercy when they didn’t do the same for us?”

“What are you talking about, Lizbeth?” Eleanor asked, her eyes narrowing. She thought knew, but she didn’t want to.

“Why should they not suffer the way we did in our final minutes?”

“Because we will not stoop to their level.” Eleanor’s voice had hardened, causing Lizbeth’s cheeks to redden.

“We will do as I say,” she snapped, holding out the terrified sailors in her hands. “And I say we will kill them fully conscious. Anyone who fails to do so will be exiled and turned away from every clan under the Atlantic sea.”

“That isn’t your decision!” Eleanor shouted.

“Stand down, sister,” said a girl behind her, coming and placing a soothing hand on her shoulder. Eleanor grit her teeth, but said nothing more. “Lizbeth, this is lunacy. Our ways have been set in stone since the beginning of time by the lord Poseidon, and you don’t have the right to change his word. I think I speak for the rest of us when I say we will not carry out your blasphemous bidding.”

Eleanor nodded slightly at the siren beside her who had just finished speaking, and wished she knew her name. She had made a point that she would only hunt with her sisters; she did not socialize with, store her belongings with, or know anything about anyone. With the exception of Lizbeth, Eleanor only knew one person. Herself.

Her anger still burning in her chest, Eleanor dropped the dead body in her arms disgustedly. He tumbled off her lap and into the ocean, what was left of his body being torn to shred by the small sharks that congregated there. She dove in next, but the creatures let her be. In truth, they were terrified of her. She swam away from that rock that she hated so, headed for the only place she felt truly herself.

Soon, she found the island. Just where the stone column that held the island above the surface began to give, she recognized her entrance. With her hands, she felt for the hole that she had hid. Where the algae gave, she swam through.

The water there was decently deep, but turned shallow quickly to meet a crescent moon of pure white sand. The stone reached up high, forming a dome-like structure over Eleanor’s head, with a hole in the top that the sun was burning through. It was her own personal paradise.

As she lay on the sand at the bottom of her hideaway, her eyes fluttered closed. In her dreams, Lizbeth didn’t exist. In her dreams, a beautiful stranger swept her worries away.