I can feel her with my skin before I see her. Canosa seems to materialize out of nowhere. Surfacing next to the rowboat, she props herself up on its edge and pops her head close to our ears to deliver her message, grinning, whispering with her usual condescending drawl, "Ailen Bright, my favorite food kisser, I asked you to wait up, didn't I? Was it so hard to do?"
We break the kiss and turn our heads, startled, but there is no time to react, and I'm slow, still enthralled in Hunter's warmth. She grabs the left side of the boat, curls her fingers around its rim, and adds, "But no, you made me follow you for over two hundred miles! All because of some boy!"
She yanks the side of the boat up. I barely have time to register what she's said. The old wooden boards creak with a sodden sigh and we tilt to the right. Our heads bump once mid-air, our gazes cross in that bewildered amusement that precedes a bout of fear. Another second, and we tip, dunking into the freezing ocean water. The boat follows, covering us with darkness.
Every single sound dampens. Water gurgles in my ears and my gills unfold, grateful for the relief, gulping it and siphoning it out on instinct. I flap my arms and legs like mad and turn around to see something I've seen before, only it's not my father now, it's Hunter who's entwined in Canosa's hold, her arms and legs resembling the long white tentacles of an octopus. I almost expect her to expulse ink to make it harder for me to see. No need, the water is dark on its own, dark and thick like plasma brimming with salt. Hunter's face opens into an inaudible scream through the murk. Canosa's hands circle his neck, her fingers closing under his chin to suffocate him. She sports a victorious smile, her mad hair flowing around her shiny body in the crazy halo of a sea monster. I kick toward them and, this time, I know exactly what to do to make her let him go.
She doesn't flinch away, as if she expects my attack. She's confident in her invincibility, as if this is a game for her, to see how I will react, or even, to make me react. I'm now ten feet away from them, now five, now I'm upon them, twisting my body and making a u-turn to position myself directly behind her, away from Hunter's eyes lest he distracts me and causes me to do something stupid.
Canosa spins to face me, but I spin behind her. For a second or two, we spiral into a downward whirlpool, until I sense the perfect moment, her hair trailing around her in a silky helix and exposing her neck. It flashes directly in front of my eyes. I pull the sleeves of my rain jacket over my hands so that the sharp edges of the Velcro closures sit on top of my forefingers, then I raise my arms and stick both fingers into Canosa's gill openings, pressing hard, turning once, feeling the edges of her frayed skin rip.
She utters a high-pitched shriek that pierces me with its agony and travels for yards, scaring ocean life into crevices to hide. I yank my fingers out just in time. She lets go of Hunter, lifting her arms and covering her gills as she bends forward and doubles down. I swim up and push her away by kicking my feet into her temple, doing a somersault, and twisting at the same time, ending up inches in front of Hunter's deathly pale face; his eyes bulge out of their sockets, and bursts of air bubbles are coming out of his nose and mouth.
I press my hand over his mouth and pinch his nostrils. He gets the message and stops exhaling, nodding to me once.
"Hold on!" I yell, not knowing if he can hear my voice underwater or not. He does, immediately reaching and digging his trembling hands into my shoulders. I seize him under his armpits and throw my legs into a speedy scissor kick, creating a powerful stream of water that propels us upward. We're not very deep, perhaps ten feet at best. A few seconds and we breach the tumultuous ocean surface, rolling into waves and gasping for air.
Well, I don't exactly gasp for air, not feeling deprived of oxygen in the least. But out of habit, I act the same way Hunter does and mimic his panic, gulping for air in quick, short inhales and shivering all over.
"She nearly killed me! She..." His teeth chatter. "Man, she's strong. Did you see what she did to the boat?" His lips are quivering, two purple lines across his ashen face. His dancing fingers stop shaking and clamp onto me like iron grips. "How the hell did she find us?"
"That cow," I say through pressed lips and turn my head around to look for Canosa. She's nowhere in sight. Instead, the annoying clickety-clack of a diesel engine looms over my back. I twist in time to see the trawler advance upon us.
"What the fuck is that?" Hunter mutters through dancing teeth, jabbing his fingers deeper into my shoulders.
"I dunno. Some fishing boat? A trawler, I think it's called," I say, cradling his waist to keep him from sinking.
An inverted creature, the thing glides on its hull like on a scaly back, the only image missing is its protruding outriggers twitching the way an insect's legs jerk when its body is upturned on a polished floor, not letting it tip back over and scuttle away. The trawler's black tire fenders act as its eyes, and the wire pattern of its rusted handrails look like the teeth an insect might use to tear you apart and eat you. It rocks forward, bobbing on the waves, closing in on us, barely twenty feet away.
In a split second, I narrow my focus and detect three human souls onboard, not necessarily appetizing; they're mostly salty like seawater, and reek of a fishy taste. One must be the captain, standing behind the wheel in the pilothouse. Another one crouches on the deck, and the third one is on the nautical bridge, hiding behind the railing like an inexperienced troublemaker. I only have time to see his orange bib peek out as he rises and throws his right arm full out, a toothy grin spreading between his beard and his knit beanie, his gloved hand holding a plastic loudspeaker aimed at me. Only it's not a speaker, and I've made this mistake before, identifying it wrong. I open my mouth in surprise when a shot rings through me.
Crack!
A powerful sonic blast hits my right side, the one conveniently turned toward the trawler. I go limp and begin losing my hold on Hunter's waist, but not before registering how the man who shot me throws both his arms up and jumps with glee, shouting, "I got it, I got it!" like he never shot anything in his life before.
"Ailen! Ailen, oh my God, are you okay?" Hunter shouts in my ear.
"Where the hell did you get that thing? Who gave it to you, you asshole? Who—" Hunter yells at the guy on the trawler. The rest I don't hear, turning inward.
A searing pain traces my throat and my eyeballs threaten to pop, my eyelids drooping over them for protection. The world takes on a blurry quality as if viewed through a thin layer of dirty water—wobbly, muddy, discolored. Hunter's still holding on to me, shouting something in my ear, but it comes in as ringing noise, distorted by my momentary deafness. I move my legs weakly, struggling to stay afloat. I dip my head backward, pivoting my body into a horizontal position, hoping to relax and make myself buoyant, yet feeling the weight of Hunter's body pin me down and push me under.
Two of the three fishermen, both in knit caps and what looks like protective headphones on top, lean over the railing. The bearded one aims his sonic weapon at me, like the one my father used, only bigger. It looks like a gigantic plastic toy in his stubby fingers. He's short and squat, and the other guy is tall and scrawny, his soul sounding nervous. Before I have enough sanity to wonder where they got the gun and how they learned to use it, and more, who to use it on, we sink.
One second I inhale air, the next I'm under the surface, my gills beginning their steady pumping job, the clacking of the trawler engine subsiding into an annoying echo. My grip loosens completely and Hunter drifts out of my arms. I splash in a tangle of surprise and fear, too slow, too chaotic to move me in any direction. Flailing aimlessly, I drift around in one spot. It feels like being in a dream and trying to run through a pool, trying to control muscles that are not listening as if they acquired a mind of their own and are in no particular hurry, no matter how loudly you scream or yell, no matter how hard you to kick, deathly in danger or not.
I struggle for a moment and then cave in to unconsciousness, weakened by the long journey and needing food to gain new energy. Alas, I'm empty, and the temptation to simply give up is too strong to resist. My eyelids close fully and I can only hear distorted noises through the thicket of the sea—some distant grinding and revolving and metallic crunching, first to my right and then above me. A feeling of dread takes hold of my mind and I attempt to move, even if for a little bit. The effort seems to take forever. I finally manage to lift my hands and force my eyelids apart. It's dark and I appear to be drifting directly under the trawler's belly. There's a pattern of some sort hanging in the water making it appear checkered. It takes me several blinks to will my vision into focus.
A net. It's a fishing net. I'm inside a net!
I grope around and feel a stretch of rope, multiple ropes, rough to the touch and slippery, covered with a layer of mold and some other oily grime. I glance around, moving my neck with difficulty. The net looks like a cone, with me slowly drifting into its narrow end. The checkered pattern shrinks rapidly and envelops me like a gigantic cheesecloth.
The noise intensifies and the net digs into my flesh, pushing something toward my back. I'm unable to move around to look, but I feel his warmth through the thin fabric of my rain jacket. It's Hunter, I can hear the barely detectable echo of his soul, my personal torture. Although, right now, his out of tune notes give me comfort.
We're inside a trawl net being pulled up like the catch of the day, together with a few fish trapped by accident, flipping their silvery bodies around me, desperate to escape. Another second, and we're lifted out of the water, crushed into one another like fresh cheese, me on top of Hunter, and a few fish on top of me, doing their crazy dance. The racket of the machinery erupts and intensifies, constant in its buzz, as if a cloud of bees decided to descend upon me all at once, their humming magnified ten times. I want to cover my ears but I can't move; my arms are pressed to my sides. My legs are bent with my face jammed into one of the square openings of the net, its ropes cutting across my forehead and over my lips, and another two tracing vertical lines on my cheeks, with my nose sticking out right in the middle.
What worries me most right now is not how I feel, but what I feel behind me. There is no talking, no movement at all, only a limp body. I can't even detect breathing, only his remaining warmth. I don't know how long it will last, hoping Hunter can stay alive. I struggle to move but fail, so I open my mouth to sing, emitting a sad low croak.
A crane arm creaks, slowly lifting us up. From the corner of my eye, I see a drum turn winding on one end of the net, tightening it, like a gigantic spool on top of a floating sewing machine, ready to pass us under its needle and stitch us into a pattern of misery. There are shouts underneath. The two men in orange bibs are directing the guy in the pilothouse where to move the net and how high and more to the left and now a little bit to the right and now a bit forward. I smell machinery and this tangy electric stink coming from some sort of exhaust, straining under the load. I have no muscle strength to tear the ropes to get out, so I decide to make another attempt at singing, to move the ocean water like I moved the lake. I clear my throat, take in a deep inhale, and—
Boom!
Another shot passes through my ribs and I faint. Blackness is absolute and soothing.
The slow throbbing pain in the back of my head is akin to dipping in and out of reality, bumping your skull in the process—a small price to pay for this blissful quiet.
The net must be swaying. I feel its gentle motion from side to side, an easy rocking. Perhaps I'm small again—I'm a baby and my mother is rocking me in an old-fashioned crib, and she's singing me a lullaby. I hear it and I don't, drifting into that twilight between wakefulness and sleep.
It's dark around me, like I'm in a bag made of the darkest, blackest velvet. I can't even see my own hands, although they're inches away from my nose. Can happiness be found in this gloom? Forget it. I'd rather suffer from blinding light, no matter how ugly it makes the things it illuminates, no matter how clearly it shows their imperfections. This is life, and it's never perfect. I guess I don't want to die, not just yet. I want to wake up.
I open my eyes and take a breath.
Not much has changed, I must have blacked out only for a few seconds. My body is still on top of Hunter's, firmly pressed together inside the latticework of ropes. The light assaults my eyes with its brightness and I squint to make it bearable. A migraine hits me, prompted by a combination of the blinding glare, the saw-blade noise of the net drum, the whine of the wind, the shrieking of the seagulls, and the shouting from the trawler's deck below. Did I mention that it stinks on top of this? It stinks in a way that would butcher your nose if you dared to stick it into a pile of rotten fish guts in the back of the fish market, right there, by the trash cans.
The crane's arm positions us directly over the deck, all the while producing a racket that punctures my eardrums with its intensity, adding to the strain and the creaking of the gallows, suspending us for our execution. The bright orange flotation work suits of the fisherman reek of mildew, the way rotten eggs do. The rough twines cut into the skin of my face. I ignore the discomfort, peering down, famished. My only hope to gain any strength is the sound of those three souls below. I don't care if they taste salty or fishy. They're food, and that's all that matters at the moment.
The gantry crane stops abruptly and lowers us. We jerk forward and swing back on inertia, dangling from the hook, moving down until we're about five feet over the deck's sole. Another lurch and we stop, swaying in rhythm with the rocking motion of the trawler.
Two of the three men onboard, looking rather funny in their clunky headphones over their tight beanies, peer at me through the ocean mist with their sharp and sinister features. I sense a lurking fear in their bones; hear their souls afire with trepidation. It gives me immediate satisfaction, even a smile, which I do despite the rope cutting into my lips.
They're afraid of me, and they know that I know it. I'm a beast they've been instructed to catch, I'm sure, without prior knowledge of who I am or what I can do—and that thought gives them the shivers. I don't want to think about who instructed them, and chase the thought away.
The squat man points the sonic gun at me, holding it with both hands as if it was made of steel. The other one, the tall, haggard forty-something-year-old man with irregular stubble on his chin, points a flashlight at me. Blinded, I scowl. My elbows dig into Hunter's stomach and he groans. Good, he is conscious then. I let out a sigh of relief.
The echo of his melody never left me, only retreated a bit, and now it's back at half the volume, the distorted concerto of what used to be a divine symphony. It makes me loath his sound again. I manage to twist my hand, find his neck, and feel for his skin. It's cold. He's suffering from hypothermia. I need to get us out of here and warm him up before it's too late.
Somewhere, a heavy chain begins rolling with a terribly loud drone. It makes me wince and I try to cover my ears, but my arms still won't budge. Not that it would've helped any, it's too loud to ignore.
Focus, Ailen, focus. Find out who's manning this trawler, where they got the sonic weapon, and how they knew how to use it.
These questions swirl in my head one on top of another like a pile of restless maggots. That's a good thing, I suppose. I'm gaining some degree of sanity, finally. When all else fails, facts are my crutch. Let's see, if I were to divorce myself from my emotions and apply logic...the logical thing to conclude would be that there are other siren hunters besides my father. In theory, there could be, right? I mean, what if there are other places with—wait, does this mean there are other sirens out there? Perhaps not one or two, but hundreds, or even thousands? It strikes me that the ocean is vast and I have no idea how many there might be. But it makes sense, doesn't it?
I curl my fingers around the ropes of the net, stretching my neck to listen through the racket. It's still the same number as before. There are three human souls—an auditory version of mixing different colors of paint into one ghastly brown mess. The one on the bridge, the skipper, promises to taste like stale fish. I stifle my gag reflex, wondering if they seem so rotten on purpose, like a protective measure from a siren. That would be clever; even cleverer would be if, once you swallow the soul of a fellow like that, then it poisons you from the inside out. I shake my head to concentrate on the task at hand.
Keep counting, Ailen, keep counting.
Three souls, and that's all. I hear nobody else. Could there be a siren hunter on board, the one I don't know and can't hear? Because if my father is alive, I would've heard him, since I've managed to revive his soul. This intense thinking takes me barely a second. Hunger overpowers the rest, and I open my mouth to sing, but I can't make a single sound, can't even cough to clear my throat. Great. I must look like beached fish.
I realize the tall man is staring me in the eyes, about six feet away, our eyes perfectly level, him standing on the swaying deck of the trawler, and me hanging in the swaying net.
He whistles, clearly astounded. I grin back, trying to look sinister. It works. He blinks several times and takes a step back.
"Are you out of your fucking mind, Jimmy? You never whistle on a boat, it's bad luck!" the squat man shouts at the tall one, sending one of Jimmy's headphones askew with a slap from his meaty hand. The short, beefy guy is still firmly holding the sonic weapon in his other hand and pointing it at me. I'm sure this was done in an effort to make Jimmy hear what he just said. It seems like the tall guy is an amateur.
"Sweet Jesus, mother Mary, the blessed virgin, save me," Jimmy says in a fast blur, sounding like sweet-Jesus-mother-Mary-the-blessed-virgin. "Would you look at that..." His soul jumps in fear as he points with his index finger in our direction. "God almighty, it's just a couple of kids! It's just...I didn't sign up for this, no way." He shakes his head and falls quiet. His long face turns gray. He gapes at me, massaging both sides of his open mouth with his thumb and forefinger, and scratches his stubble with the pallid resin of his glove.
The squat man pulls down his own headphones, letting them sit on his thick neck, and jerks Jimmy's headphones off his beanie completely, sending them flying across the deck. He tiptoes to lift himself up and yells into his ear.
"You heard what the man said, he wants them alive. We get the cash and wash our hands. So quit your whining and stop being a sissy. Let's be done with it." He grins an unpleasant smile that cuts through the middle of his round face, scathed by ocean winds into the red muzzle of a beer drinker.
Jimmy glances around, perhaps to locate his headphones, and then sticks his hands in his pockets, kneading them. "He didn't say they'd be kids, did he? If I woulda known...He said—"
"Never mind what he said!" The squat man cuts him off. "You want to repair the roof of your house or not? How many years has it been now?"
"Since Tammy..." Jimmy mutters under his breath, takes out one hand and folds fingers into his palm, mouthing the numbers. "Three, I reckon. That sounds about right, three years."
"Hey, Glen, what's the holdup?" The third fisherman leans over the railing of the pilothouse, shouting and waving his arm for the guys below to hurry up. That means Jimmy is not important. I get the hierarchy. Whoever is paying these guys is the boss.
"Just a minute, Stevie! Getting her situated here," the squat man, Glen, shouts back.
"All right, you're worried about them, Jimmy? How about this. How about we ask them to quiet your mind, eh?"
He looks up at me, points the sonic gun again, and opens his mouth so wide I can see rows of yellowing teeth framing his purplish tongue. I try not to think about what his breath might smell like.
"Hey, kids, you all right?" he shouts. I try to pull myself up from Hunter, but my muscles give out, and all I can do is curl my fingers into fists of weak hate.
"There. See, they're fine." Glen slaps Jimmy on the back with his free hand and waves to the skipper, Stevie.
"But they didn't—" Jimmy begins.
"I said, they're fine," Glen says with finality, and I see Jimmy give in to his authority, averting his eyes and kneading his pockets once more as he studies his huge black rain boots.
The drums begin its rolling dance again, cling-clang, cling-clang. We descend another several feet, jerking, and now hover over the floor, nearly touching it.
"Unzip her," Glen commands with a wave of the gun.
Jimmy nervously steps closer, grabs the rope from somewhere underneath me, pulling on it, and then stops.
"Glen, I'm not sure about this."
"I can't hear you, you idiot." He taps on his headphones which he managed to put back on, then shouts into Jimmy's face. "You want your pay, you keep your mouth shut. Haul them in and be done. Let her loose!" By her, I suppose he means the net; must be some affectionate fishermen term.
Jimmy glances at us again, unsure. With a heavy sigh, he yanks at the rope. It unzips underneath Hunter like the loose thread of a sweater, loop by loop. Another jerk and we fall out of the net and onto the slimy deck with a sickening crunch and the sound of slapping on bare skin. Hunter moans when I land on top of him, then the floor begins moving. No, it's not the floor. It's the white plastic side of a chute of some sort, an opening on the deck that I didn't see. And it's not moving, the trawler is moving, causing us to slip into a square opening the size of a large manhole, cold and stinky. For a beat, we hang folded over its rim. It reminds me of the polished rim of my bathtub. Then, with an unceremonious rain boot shoved in my ass, Glen sends us both flying down.
Down the rabbit hole, crosses my mind. Down the rabbit hole I go.