Page 5 of Song of Lorelei

Chapter Two

LORELEI

Participating in the research of a fellow siren never stopped feeling strange.

Taking Nireed by the hand, Lorelei helped her out of her aquarium and onto the metal-grated platform connected at the top. Nireed leaned heavily into her, legs wobbling as they adjusted to holding weight on solid ground.

Water seeped through Lorelei’s blazer where they touched, but she didn’t mind.

A damp shoulder was nothing compared to what had become Nireed’s life—strange surroundings and daily scientific poking and prodding. The ocean-raised siren was a literal fish out of water, and although Lorelei taught her how to walk months before, the activity still gave her trouble. Nireed spent most of her days swimming inside the aquarium, through one million gallons of piped-in seawater, her legs fused together, and feet stretched out into flowy fins.

She only ever walked long enough to reach a medical chair.

Glancing over the railing, Nireed sucked in a long, rasping breath, the sound tearing in her throat like paper. Lorelei touched her own throat briefly, remembering how scratchy and dry it could get during winter. Nireed’s affliction was like that, but worse, because for her entire life she filtered oxygen from the water through her gills. Before coming to shore, her throat and lungs rarely felt the passage of air.

How merfolk had both respiratory systems was an evolutionary mystery. Maybe the answer could be found in the study of lungfish…but that was Lila’s domain.

The siren lifted her elbow and expelled a wracking cough that shook her whole body. Lorelei placed a hand on her shoulder to steady her. The last thing she needed was for Nireed to topple over the railing and plummet to the floor thirty-five feet below.

Rooting through a hole in her blazer pocket, Lorelei grasped the lozenge that had fallen into the lining with her fingertips. She unwrapped the hard tack and handed it to Nireed. After popping it into her mouth, Nireed touched her chin with her fingertips and lowered her hand toward Lorelei.

“You’re welcome,” Lorelei replied.

Straightening, Nireed braced her weight against the handrail. But her legs still trembled, and she grasped Lorelei’s hand again. The handrail groaned, and Lorelei winced, the siren’s grip crushing both bone and metal.

“I hate this floating feeling.” Nireed gulped, glancing down through the metal grating. She squeezed her eyes shut. The hard tack clicked against the siren’s teeth as it rolled around her mouth.

Lorelei worried her lower lip.

Nireed was paler than usual. And for a creature that rarely saw the sun, living deep beneath the waves, she had been pale to begin with. When they first met, her skin was nearly translucent, every purple vein charting a course beneath her skin like branching coral, but iridescent in its pearl-like shimmer. But standing here, thirty-five feet above the ground, there was no trace of her skin’s healthy luster. While she was opaquer now from a year of living in photic waters, i.e., a tank on land, she also looked grey. Sick.

With a growing knot in her stomach, Lorelei suspected the siren’s life in captivity played a part in this, not just her fear of heights.

Nireed searched for the stairs with her foot. “Just as bad as the first time.”

Falling was a new, terrifying concept to a siren used to living in constant suspension. “I know,” Lorelei murmured, coaxing her down onto the first step. “You’ve been very brave.”

The siren kept her eyes closed the whole way down and did not open them until her toes touched the observation room’s sterile, white-tiled floors. Nireed hated that the steps had open backs, and Lorelei didn’t blame her, she herself having an irrational fear of them. Some illogical part of her brain was sure she’d fall through, a holdover from childhood, despite knowing she was much too big to fit through even if she tried. Sometimes walking up and down them made her woozy.

Lorelei passed Nireed a terrycloth robe.

Nakedness didn’t bother the siren, but she put it on anyway, not because she cared about observing “two-legger” clothing decorum, but because she saw the robe as a gift.

Without toweling herself off, Nireed wrapped the robe around her body and tied it in a bow like Lorelei taught her.Being dry was another foreign and disturbing concept to the siren. As she crossed the room to sit in one of the office chairs for their daily language lessons, she dripped water onto the floor, leaving behind a trail of puddles. Lorelei skirted around them so she didn’t slip. She would mop it up after Nireed returned to the tank.

Lorelei sat across from her and rubbed her eyes, aching from months of little sleep. The lab’s harsh overhead florescent light hurt, but they also kept her awake while the world outside was still bathed in the dark hours of early morning, well before any members of the research team were due to arrive.

Except for Lila, Lorelei stayed out of the scientific team’s way as much as possible. While she had her own keycard into the Mermaid Lab at Haven Cove Marine Research Center, Lila’s team didn’t like that Lorelei could come and go as she pleased, a non-scientist employee. Director of the research center’s new affiliated museum gave Lorelei some weight to throw around, but it wasn’t an appropriate credential to earn her a seat at the lab’s highly competitive table.

And yet, Lorelei was the only one Nireed would talk to—so the scientists needed her—and it bothered them that they didn’t know why.

Sitting next to Nireed, Lorelei pressed a closed fist to her chest, saying ‘hello.’ The sirens spoke with their hands beneath the waves.

Sound travelled far in water—the sharp clicks and whistles of dolphins, the deep lowing of whales, and far less pleasant, the constant onslaught of noise pollution—but the sirens preferred silence. In a loud ocean, it was stealthier, yes, but also a reprieve.

Silence was a gift. A choice.

With research, Lorelei recognized many of the hand signs they used. Not all were the same as the ones used in American Sign Language, but they bore a lot of similarities. Having a base to work from, and the ability to practice with how-to videos and diagrams at home, made learning the sirens’ language easier.

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