Heartsong

Part 4: Learning

Adeliyah watched him as the reservation within her built; she had never known humans to be happy in such closed quarters, much less in the hands of a captor who could so easily kill her prisoner, if she wanted to. (And she would—eventually...)

He noticed her confusion. "What?" he said with a shrug. "If I'm going to be here till doomsday, I might as well make the most of it." He peered into another barrel and nodded his approval at the contents. His jovial mood dropped, and he gazed at her with a pained expression.

"Were there a lot of sailors, Melody?"

Adeliyah flipped her fin in the negative, and sang a song to assure him that these were just pirates sailing a stolen ship.

The smile returned as Kellan listened to her song, and abruptly, in the middle of her recital, a second voice—stronger, deeper, and altogether different—joined hers, and Adeliyah stopped in surprise.

"Dee-diddle-dah-yah!" Kellan sang, mimicking the tones she had used. Adeliyah received the uncomfortable sensation of hearing a song of power billowing out of a throat that carried none of that power. It was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard. No other creature had ever tried to copy a siren's song.

Kellan's grin widened, and his song slipped away into a bout of laughter. "Oh Melody!" he hooted. "You should see your face right now!"

Adeliyah watched this man tease her; she would show him! She opened her mouth and mimicked the sound of his laughter perfectly, rising with her shoulders out of the water as she did so.

She saw him cringe as the noise reverberated off the rock—but his smile never dimmed. Instead, he lifted his head and gazed at her with admiration.

"Melody," he murmured softly. "That... That was beautiful!"

Adeliyah heard his heartsong surge within her; she could sing it, she knew it would happen! Kellan would drown—him and his silly laugh, gone forever!

Meanwhile, the young man stared at her exposed throat. "What's that?" he pointed.

Adeliyah sank to her customary level; she had all but forgotten about the locket hanging around her neck, the one that had meant so much to her as a human, now nothing more than a bauble her new eyes could not see, with a clasp her new hands could not move.

Kellan was gazing at her with new understanding in his eyes—but what did he understand?

"It looks like a necklace, one we humans would wear. But that might mean... Melody," he gasped. "Are you—did you... Were you once human?"

The heartsong roared in her ears, but Adeliyah could not so much as open her mouth. Kellan usually interpreted this as a response, anyway.

"You were! Are all sirens former humans then? Are they all women, or are there some men as well?"

Adeliyah found within herself a song that she could sing, to make up for the elusive melody thundering through her mind at the moment. She sang, in a torrent of notes worthy of Kyrran herself, of the terrible injustice done to women, how this was a form of redemption for the fair sex, so flippantly pushed aside and even tossed overboard in the name of luck. She didn't wait to see his response before she swam away with the ebbing tide.

Kellan did not see the siren again before the next waning of the tide. He reached up and took down the satchel of dry clothes she had delivered. He recognized the style; many sailors in his father's fleet wore the very same black trousers and plain white shirt. A bit of colored fabric nearly dropped down to the water below, but Kellan caught it in his fingertips—only to fight the urge to drop it again. He knew that pattern!

Sailors who worked on ships requiring some sort of uniform commonly wore neckerchiefs that were as unique as they were. This particular pattern had been the favorite distinguishing mark of Hans, the wise deckhand who had saved Kellan's life; to be wearing his clothes now could only mean—Kellan swallowed back the lump in his throat. He would not dwell on what might not be. Perhaps this was just a second set of clothing Hans had packed away on the voyage Kellan had been on: never worn, left behind when the ship sank. Kellan munched away on his meal, but the tack was hard, the berries were sour and even the water left a bitter taste in his mouth. He fell asleep to dreams of Hans and of sailing on the ship with all those men who drowned.

When he awoke, the tide was just coming in—and Melody was waiting for him. He could see her staring coldly at him from just beneath the surface. The water just barely touched his feet. He could see that she towed a few barrels behind her on a rope, floating on the surface of the water. Rising just above the water level, Melody gaped and panted, disused to breathing air, but she remained long enough to see that Kellan could reach the end of the rope and pull the barrels to him. She sang a song as he opened the barrel of food, one that made him feel happy with the way he looked. Kellan interpreted the song as a rather primitive way of complimenting his clothes. He shook his head, and she tilted hers sympathetically.

"It's not that I don't like the fresh, dry clothes, I am grateful; but these ones..." He let his voice trail off. "I knew the man they belonged to." He looked sharply at her. "Did you kill him?"

Melody watched him carefully, assessing his mood before opening her mouth and singing a song that immediately reminded Kellan of Hans, capturing his personality in the notes she sang. Then her song altered a bit, and Kellan relived the memory of Hans—brave, clever Hans—surviving to sail on another ship after Kellan risked his life to save him... Only to drown (for certain this time) while Kellan sat in a cavern underwater.
The young man felt his frustration climbing. "That's not fair!" He declared. "Who made you ruler of the sea, that you can just decide that all men must die? Simply because women like you were cast overboard by wicked pirates doesn't give you leave to destroy every ship you see!"

Melody didn't seem to appreciate his tirade. She began singing a song in the midst of Kellan's words, something like the idea that even the most noble of men regularly mistreat their women, but he was too angry to care.

"Men like me, like Hans, are every bit as innocent as you were! And yet you kill us? At least you women have achieved some strange ability to change, but you won't give men that chance? Where is the justice in—" His voice died in his throat, and he couldn't make another sound. Melody's strange song had seen to that.
The siren, seeing that there was nothing either of them could say to each other, promptly left Kellan to a lonely meal as the water climbed to its normal level. >>>>>>>>