Page 37 of Rise of the Melody
CooShee trotted along next to me as we passed all the shops. It was already getting busy at ten in the morning. All along the street were bunches of colorful lobster buoys hanging, adding to the town’s nautical feel. I went all the way down the hill and found myself at the marina. We passed a busy restaurant at the water’s edge, with brunch smells of pork and pancakes wafting out. I kept riding down to the docks, drawn to the water.
I stopped and rested my bike against a wooden rail, dilapidated by weather erosion. The rail had a faded Missing Persons picture tacked to it with two images: a man and woman in their mid-twenties. Both looked like social media pictures with their backpacks and hiking clothes. I thought about the horror they must have faced when they met the kelpie.
“Don’t worry,” I whispered, my throat and chest feeling tight. “I’m going to capture it. It won’t hurt anyone else.” The flyer flapped in the breeze, its only response.
CooShee let me snap on the leash and we walked down the parking lot where boats were docked, some leaving out and coming in. An old woman stood at the rail staring out. I stopped a small distance from her and did the same. The breeze was to die for. The smells, not so much. I stared over the edge at where mollusks came to die. The tide was low, allowing the natural stenches of the sea floor to hit the air. A light swishing sound of water paired with the steady creaking of the wooden docks soothed me. I stared out at the barrier islands. The farthest one could be seen clearly across from my house. I looked farther down the docks and saw the crabbing and lobster boats docked, with cages stacked high on them. I wondered if the boys had been out this morning.
“This is where she did it,” the old woman said with a Scottish lilt. “Just down there.” She pointed to the end of the docking area. I wondered if she had dementia, talking to herself. But then she turned and looked me right in the eye and said, “Your grandmother.”
A strange feeling flitted through me. “Mygrandmother?”
“Aye. You’re the MacIntyre girl, ain’t ya? Bonny, like your kin.”
My heart picked up speed. “Y-yes, I’m Letty. Colette. What’s your name?”
“Iona Barclay.” She stared back out at the water. I moved a couple feet closer and felt the heat of her magic now.
“You knew the women in my family?”
“Aye. Your mother and her mother. I was your grandmother’s only friend when she moved here. People were as afraid of her as they would be of your pal there.” She motioned toward CooShee with her head.
“Thank you for being her friend,” I said, feeling sad for my grandmother. “But what happened with her here?”
She turned to me with a look of surprise. “It’s all been kept from you then. Of course it has.” I felt that silly, embarrassed feeling of not knowing something I should. Again. Thankfully she went on without my prompting.
“Oh, when was it…eighteen-something. Fifty-three, perhaps?”
“1853?!” I exclaimed. “My grandmother was alive then?”
“Child, how young do you think I am?”
I was bad at ages and scaled back a few years so as not to offend her. “Seventy-five?”
The laugh that burst out of her was so loud it startled me. “I’m over three hundred. Begun to lose count now.”
I stared, mouth open like a dead fish, and she laughed some more. “I’m sorry for laughing, but your face is priceless. I can see your grandmother there.”
“I didn’t know….” I shook my head. I didn’t know so much. The age thing was wild, though. “Okay, so it was 1853?”
“Aye.” She sighed sadly. “We didn’t have police on the island then, per se. Just powerful men who the general public went to for justice. But your grandmother, Isla, she witnessed something awful happen while she was taking a walk one night. Two men, local fishermen, had a woman down here at the wharf. All humans. They were hurting her. That’s putting it lightly. Isla was as brave and outspoken as any man, so she went down to investigate. What she saw enraged her so badly that…she sang.” I froze, terrified as I imagined it. “She sang those men all the way off the dock and into the water. She stood right there and sang as they drowned. Another fisherman spied it happening from his boat on the other side of the marina. He couldn’t hear her. He saw what appeared to be a woman refusing to help two drowning men. But when he explained to authorities what he saw, the fae-blooded knew.”
“My God,” I whispered as acid crept up from my stomach.
“Indeed.”
“They killed her, didn’t they?” I asked, getting choked up.
Iona Barclay stared out, her face downcast. “Poor Isla. It didn’t matter that the human girl died that night of her injuries. It didn’t matter how apparent it was that the two men had done atrocious things. All that mattered to the fae-blooded was that a siren had used her song to kill. Had a druid come upon the crime and punished those men, it would have been called justice and he would have been shown mercy. But there’s no mercy for a siren. It was good that she’d hidden her pregnancy with your mother.”
“She did?” This woman was spilling my family’s tea, pouring it straight out, and I was holding out my cup to catch as much as I could. “How?”
“When she began to show, she stayed indoors until she went into labor. I delivered your mother. And when your grandmother was killed, I took your mother to Scotland to be raised by a woman I trusted. Your mother was six. I told her the dangers of singing. Her foster parents told me they never heard a note from her. And then at a Samhain festival she met your father, who was visiting from Shehan, and they fell in love. That’s how she ended up back here in her homeland, quiet as a mouse.
Tears were falling from my burning eyes now, and I wiped them with anger on my grandmother and mother’s behalf. No wonder my mom was a homebody. She was probably scared of doing anything that could be perceived as wrong. Afraid of her instincts.
“You never told anyone?” I asked thickly.
“Not a soul.” Ms. Barclay peered down at my cuff for a long moment and sighed. “You’re here for the kelpie, aren’t you? Those cowards.”
