The Siren Who Wouldn't Sing

Chapter 1: A Song I'll Never Sing

Yes, inside and out, Aiyana was beautiful. Save for one thing—her willingness to kill.

"No." Vivian wished her voice to be firm, but it came out shaking instead. Shame quickly crept in, coloring her cheeks even against the cool water. Shame because of her fear and because of her refusal to do what every other siren could do without hesitation.

Aiyana's mischievous grin morphed into a softer look of pity. "I'll help you," she offered. Vivian felt sick to her stomach. Her sister thought her hesitation was because of a lack of self-confidence, not a moral dilemma. "You don't have to do it alone."

Four.

The number echoed in Vivian's mind, louder than the sound of waves crashing against rocks. It was the number of men that Aiyana had sung to a watery death. She was barely twenty-two years old. Her first was when she was fifteen, the average age for sirens to begin their lives of seduction—yet, only a month from turning eighteen, no man's ears had ever heard Vivian sing. There was no longer any true purpose for hunting. There hadn't been for centuries. Sirens lived easily off of many types of fish and underwater plants and had no real need for human flesh in their diet. In fact, most sirens left the bodies of their victims to the ocean when they were done with them rather than making them into a meal anyway. Hunting now was used as a way to create offspring and as a rite of passage for young sirens. A tradition of sorts.

Vivian's pod knew well that Vivian couldn't kill as they could. But they stayed hopeful that she would grow out of it.

Vivian was running out of time, and she knew it better than anyone.

The ways of siren society had been the same for generations—during the spring, if a siren had reached sexual maturity or her daughters were able to swim and catch food on their own, she would go onto land to mate with a man, lure him out to sea with her song, and swim downward. She would continue to sing underwater, her voice beautifully distorted, and the unlucky man, desiring only her, would follow her deeper, deeper, deeper...until he drowned.

While the humans mostly thought sirens to be only myth, they weren't clueless. They realized the number of deaths by drowning skyrocketed in the spring. Stories of beautiful women with razor sharp teeth and a thirst for blood spread across the land like wildfire, effectively halting the desire of Proghundese and Dralian men alike to bed random maidens they find on the beach or in a tavern. During the spring, at least.

So the sirens adapted. Instead of mating during the spring like other animals, they took to the land whenever they felt. Alone, rather than in hordes, and during spring or fall, summer or winter, rain or shine. This way, it was impossible to predict if the woman in your bed was a human or a siren.

The foolish men soon forgot about the mythological danger and slackened their caution as generations passed, to the delight of sirens everywhere, and hunting continued as before.

"I don't need help," Vivian replied.

What a lie her words were.

By the age of eighteen, every siren is expected to have mated with and led one man to a watery grave. If the siren fails, for whatever reason, to complete this task, she is cast out of her pod, away from safety, and into the jaws of the perilous ocean. She'll be completely alone then; no other pod will take her in. Outsiders are not accepted, precisely for the reason that they may have been cast from their own pod. It is for fate to decide whether or not the ostracized siren will survive or perish. Usually, it is the latter.

And poor Vivian, just twenty-eight days from the deadline, had yet to shed a drop of blood.

Aiyana swam closer to her sister, her light hair trailing behind her. Vivian's could not have been more different. The two of them were like night and day when it came to their hair, and Vivian wouldn't have it any other way.