SIREN BLUES

“Mother, why do we kill sailors?”

The elder siren paused, surprised she needed to have this discussion so soon, but her daughter was getting older, and the barbs on her talons were getting sharper. “To eat them, of course, dear. That’s the purpose they serve in our ecosystem.”

“We eat fish though, too.” Her fledgling wings flickered with translucent plumes as she gnawed on a purpled tibia. “But they don’t look like us, or talk like us. And isn’t that why we don’t eat each other?”

“Well, I suppose that’s partially true.” She was about this age, as she recalled, when her mothers had told her the stories. “For a long time, our people were entrusted to guide their souls, lost at sea, to the lands of the dead. In their battles, they’d be broken, burnt, and gnashed apart by each other’s hands, and too far from home to be buried. They’d wreck their ships on our shores, seeking guidance, and we’d clean their bones in return. This is where our song of a thousand and one verses came from; we’d sing their bodies to sleep, so their ghosts would know peace.

“Eventually, in their madness, humans sealed their own passages to the underworld. In believing they could overcome it through their genius, they forgot the meaning of death, and began to fear it above all other things. We could no longer guide them, nor could their gods, so they came to see us as nothing more than scavengers to loose their arrows upon. Now, they seek to order all of reality in their image, and would cull us from these stones if they could.

“Our song, however, still calls to them. When they hear our melody, even though it is sung in lost tongues, something in them remembers. They do not understand the impulse, their own yearning to give in to mortality, but it has always been a part of them, and has carried them further than any ship ever will. They still come as they always have, at peace with their own ends, and make banquets of themselves for us. Someday, their kind will realize they miss our song, at which time the earth will open, and the living and the dead will be reunited.”

The little siren tilted her head, then returned it upright in understanding. “I think I get it, mostly. But then why don’t we eat any girl sailors?”

“Well," she couldn't help but chuckle. "We can talk about that part once you get just a little older, okay?”