The Siren (6 page)

We borrowed apartments from strangers. It was easy to get into empty flats, and after watching for a few days we figured out where some furnished but temporarily uninhabited ones were. We quietly moved in, listened to the tenant’s music, lounged on their beds, and disappeared. Things like that are simple if you just have your eyes open. I think this ability is wasted on thieves. And us.

This was just how we lived. We didn’t need a place to cook food or sleep the night away, but after so long, being outside was boring. At night all the shops closed and there was nothing to see, so we retreated inside. The Ocean was too far away for us to go and be with Her. Besides, I didn’t really care for the waters here.

From Paris, we silently skipped around Europe enjoying the sights until the War. I longed to visit London, but kept my distance. The place, the very word haunted me. I wasn’t sure I’d ever go there. Maybe I would once I was living my own life. That city held a sort of unanswered promise for me. But it, like so many other things, would have to wait.

War made me uneasy— as did anything unpredictable while we were such strangers to this world— but I had to be grateful. The War kept us unemployed, as it were, for a while, which none of us complained about. Well, perhaps Aisling was wherever she was hiding. With so much time on our hands, it really did take the reuniting with our sisters to distinguish between years and decades. Those moments of destruction were so striking; they were the only real things we had to mark time. Sometimes we tried to keep up with the seasons to celebrate holidays, but that was for the sole purpose of being entertained. It was like life happened all around me, but not
to
me.

I could watch mothers, but not be one. I could see women as sales clerks or students, but not become one. We had to lay low, so we perfected people-watching. Sometimes this was fun for me. Watching children in particular lifted my heart. They always had so much energy. Children who already existed brought me unimaginable joy. But sometimes, when I saw a woman who was glowing with the fulfillment of pregnancy, I had to turn my face from Miaka and cry. I wanted to be strong for her.

If I saw too many couples, their actions would dissolve into my daydreams of faceless partners who held me and kissed me. Sometimes, in my dreams, I was still like this— a creature of destruction. Somehow, I found someone who loved me beyond my condition. Other times, I was the girl of my last life, and I picked up where my own story had left off. It made me yearn, and since I couldn’t speed up time, I had to quietly endure it. Besides my own emotions pulling me, nothing was remarkable. So the 30s and 40s were quiet for us, with only being called upon to serve a handful of times.

Living with Miaka was quite a shift from being with Marilyn. Where Marilyn was as talkative as I was, Miaka rarely spoke up. I kept reminding her that it was alright to talk to me, that it couldn’t hurt
me
. She just said she wasn’t used to speaking first. So I started asking her questions all the time. First, I learned everything I could about her past; her memories were slipping faster than mine. And then I made an effort to get her opinion on everything, or even get her to have an opinion at all. We bonded slowly. Miaka and I had vaguely similar backgrounds. Like me, she was the oldest of three and the only girl. But where I had been loved, Miaka was only accepted. Her parents needed boys. She couldn’t do the work they did, so she just wasn’t as valuable.

Those were the exact words she used: not as valuable.

They got her to do small tasks on their fishing boat with her brothers since her mother could handle the housework. They didn’t care that their daughter feared the Ocean. Tiny Miaka cried every time they put her on the boat for years. And then, seeing that it made no difference for her and only angered everyone else, she learned to control that. She couldn’t swim and was very soft-spoken. She fell off her boat on a particularly choppy day, and no one even noticed. Now she was lost to her family because they refused to listen to her. I had to imagine that, even if she wasn’t the most favored child, this would still bring grief to any mother. And how strange that now the Ocean she had feared for so long was like a parent of sorts, protecting her from everything else.

I tried to show her things and teach her about the rest of the world. Miaka had no idea it was all so big. She had such a hard time saying how she felt that I would ask her thoughts on things that had no value at all. What did she think of that woman’s dress? Aren’t those stones in the wall pretty? Did she see any shapes in the clouds that day? Anything to get her to open up. I think asking all these tiny, detail-oriented questions eventually struck a chord in her. She knew I was going to ask them, so she started paying attention to everything. She started noticing things that my eyes missed.

“Look at that shade of yellow,” she said one day out of the blue.

“What yellow?” I asked. We were talking low. We could hear the movements of people above us and were trying to be extra careful. Gazing down on the street from our safe and empty apartment, the city was moving through some haphazard dance of errand running. The people who usually lived here must have been performers of some kind. There were tons of books and paints and musical instruments. It was the most interesting place we’d stumbled upon yet.

“In the sky. See how the sun is breaking through those clouds? It’s making the most interesting shade of yellow.”

“It’s really beautiful.” I smiled at her speaking so freely.

“It’s more than that. Look, it’s bright and muted at the same time; it’s shining, but it doesn’t hurt your eyes. It’s a miracle that such a color should be.”

I stared at her in awe. I had no idea that she thought this much or even had the words “miracle” or “muted” in her head. Soon after that, Miaka started to describe small things from her past life when she could remember it. She remembered her house very well, but then there wasn’t much of one to remember; it was minuscule. She used phrases like “the walls were weak with time” and “so brown it seemed the earth had given birth to it.” I was amazed. Once she chose to speak, she said the sweetest and loveliest things.

It was divine that we ended up in France first. Miaka came to love art. Since she could not describe things with words, she did it through paintings. Her delicate hands worked fast. Not needing to rest, she would sit in front of a canvas for days straight. I would pass every once in a while and watch as blank papers would blossom with images. She had a gift resting in her and had never even known.

It only took those first few years to get her to open up, and then I really started to see who she was. Miaka was polite and funny and warm. She was smart, without a doubt, and incredibly graceful. Each year I grew more and more appreciative that the Ocean had spared her. Not only was I thankful to have her company in particular, but I was happy that Miaka had a chance to become who she was now. None of her finer qualities would have been discovered in her tiny village as the lowest in her family.

Together, we took in everything we could. We went to museums and art shows. I marveled at the statues and oil paintings. How could human hands create things so divine? What took Miaka days must have taken their slower bodies months. Miaka saw even more in them than I did and tried to write me notes about what she saw in the paintings, but her notes were in Japanese, and I couldn’t understand them. That meant that once we got home, I’d have to brace myself for her onslaught of words. She would not pause until every detail she’d enjoyed had been thrown out into the air. In that creativity, Miaka became satisfied.

I was jealous that my desires were not so easily met.

We also enjoyed an array of food. I didn’t know how many different kinds of cuisine there were. Using French translation books, we would go to cafes and point to phrases to ask for what we wanted. We were lucky that most of the waiters we came upon were so understanding. Cake was by far my favorite indulgence, but I loved the little tarts and pastries we discovered there, too. I vaguely remembered American food, and I had already experienced the spices and brightness of Spanish food. French food was savory and designed to be enjoyed slowly. So we took our time discovering it all.

And when we couldn’t walk around anymore, we went to see movies— that was our favorite. Later we would gush and gush over actors and actresses and favorite scenes. By now movies had sound to go along with the action, and this made them so much more enjoyable than what I remembered of the movies in my old life. I couldn’t get enough of a good love story; it was my own personal escape. Always, afterwards, I’d live through the whole thing in my head with myself as the heroine.

Maybe, when I had my second life, I could be an actress. I already had several years of experience under my belt at acting normal, average. Maybe I could act out other things, too. Then again, maybe not. Not even a third of this life had passed, and I was tired of acting.

I couldn’t say it then, but all that time I was bitter with the Ocean. I knew She was the crux of this life I led, but I didn’t want to have anything to do with Her. It was so tedious. The world I got to see was interesting, but I didn’t just want to see it; I wanted to be a part of it. And then the boredom of my wanderings was marked by moments of acting in the most revolting way I could— as a killer. I tried to distract myself, but it was all so empty that I never got very far. For all those years, there was nothing more for me in my life than being a beautiful, poisonous nomad. There aren’t words to explain it. I never imagined the toll loneliness could take on a soul.

Even with Miaka there, I felt like no one could touch me. Though I was attractive, I felt utterly repulsive. The Ocean was there to guide if I needed Her, but I felt like I was adrift in confusion almost all of the time. I knew it wouldn’t be like this forever. But still… what year was it? 1945? Seventy-six more years. Seventy-six years of silence and killing and loneliness. It was like being in the bottom of a well, seeing the light and knowing fully there was no way to get to it. Not yet anyway.

We left Europe for good in the late 1940s to see what we could of the mysterious lands of Egypt, Morocco, and Greece. These locations were classic. History seemed to hold them in place as time ushered their existence along. During this exploration, something worth mentioning finally happened: We got another sister.

Her name was Ifama, and she came to us from South Africa in early 1953. Miaka and I were glad to take her with us. Aisling didn’t even suggest taking her in herself. Ifama was beautiful in a whole new way. She was physically and emotionally dark and strong. I couldn’t help but be drawn in by her. There was something regal about the way she carried herself. Maybe it’s because she was a mystery. Ifama did not want to share the reason she was swept out to Sea, and we didn’t push her. As with all of us, the Ocean admired Ifama for some reason or another; we assumed it was her pride. Even sitting on the abandoned coast after the Ocean had saved her, she wasn’t bawling the way I had. She didn’t even have the steady jerks of Miaka’s moment. She did cry, but it was one desolate tear at a time. She didn’t want them to escape, but one by one they hinted at her sadness. I got the feeling that when she asked to live, she didn’t know what she was getting into. But who of us did? I explained the rules to her. When she agreed, she seemed reluctant. Hesitantly, she came.

Ifama didn’t speak. Whereas Miaka had been standoffish because of her meek nature, Ifama had no desire to engage in conversation with us. We did everything we could to include her. I tried the technique I used on Miaka; I asked her questions about her family so that she would remember them.

“I had a father, a mother, and a sister. We loved each other. Now I am gone.”

She finished her sentences with such absolution; there was no way to follow up. It seemed she just didn’t want to think about the life she had left behind. I couldn’t blame her for that. It was hard to move on. So I started to ask her about trivial things.

“What do you think about that woman’s dress?” I asked one day.

“It is a dress. We are more than our clothes,” she replied.

So final. Maybe that was just who she was. Maybe she just didn’t need small talk. But all of us needed something, right? Maybe she just didn’t know how to relate to
me
. After failing again and again to make Ifama comfortable, I went to Miaka.

“I’m worried about Ifama,” I told her one night. We were in Sumatra. A small house near the edge of a tropical rainforest had been abandoned, and we made it our own. Ifama was inside, doing and saying nothing. Miaka and I were balancing on a fallen tree.

“I am, too. I don’t know what to do.” Miaka was sweet. She would want this as much as I would. It hurt to even think this, but, for the sake of us all, I had to try.

“You know how you were shy at first? Maybe Ifama is that way, too. Maybe she feels uncomfortable with us both here. Maybe if I let you try to talk to her alone…” I trialed off. Either Miaka would dread it or she would love it.

“Do you really think I could?” She seemed astounded that I believed in her.

“Of course, Miaka. You’re a big sister yourself, now. And you’re very kind and warm. I’ll bet if it was just the two of you, she’d open up.” I let the offer hang. Miaka sank into thought.

“Where will you go?”

I put on the classic brave face. “Oh, I don’t know. Anywhere I want, I guess. But I promise I won’t stay gone for very long. Two weeks maybe. Or a month. Then I’ll come back to you and your new best friend. Probably won’t even want me around anymore.” I winked.