Andy poured candle wax into her palm and rolled it around until it formed a soft lump. She plugged one ear with it and began the process again. Everything was muffled. The screaming that came every few minutes didn’t sound as gut-wrenching and didn’t knock her to the ground. But she could still hear it. It still pierced through the wax.

They were sailing close to an islet made completely of dark rocks. Andy was certain that was where the screaming was coming from. It sounded like they were right on top of it, and it had only been growing louder and clearer as they got closer. With a telescope, Andy saw something moving on a slab of rock. It might have been a sea lion or baby dolphin, washed up and stuck and drying out. If that was all, they could shove it back in the water and let nature do whatever it wanted with it. Either that or Andy’s initial plan, to put it out of its pain, would be all they would do.

The crew gave up on talking, unable to hear well enough unless they were pressed close to one another’s wax-filled ears. Andy tapped Pinkey on the back. He was tall and strong and young. He would be the best to bring along.

Tobi readied a boat, and the three of them climbed in. Andy nodded, and they were lowered into the water. It was much colder on the boat than on the ship. The iciness of the ocean wafted up and wrapped itself around Andy. She pulled her jacket tight around her and kept her eyes on the rocks ahead of them.

She pulled out her telescope again to look at the dark figure. She saw thin limbs and long hair. An arm raised for a second and fell back down. Realizing that she was looking at a woman, Andy gasped. Neither Tobi nor Pinkey heard.

What was a woman doing in the middle of the ocean? Andy thought about the possibilities. She was a victim of other pirates, or she was a stowaway on a ship that threw her overboard when she was discovered. Maybe it was just a freak accident.

Tobi rowed closer, slowly, in ignorance. The woman watched them get closer.

Andy held out her lantern. The woman was wrapped in a fishing net. It was loose around her shoulders and chest but tightened as it went further down her torso. For a moment, Andy didn’t notice any bottom half of her body and she thought that maybe the woman’s legs had been cut off and that she was somehow still alive, hanging on until someone could bring help.

But looking down at her and moving the lantern closer, Andy realized that the bottom half of her body wasn’t missing. Where she should have had legs, she had a thick, long tail. It was gray and easily blended in with the rocks she laid on. Scales crept up her body from her waist, tapering off before they could reach her chest.

The three pirates stared at her. No one moved. Pinkey’s mouth was open, and his eyes were wide. Even Tobi, an old veteran of the sea, who had claimed to have seen it all, almost lost his grip on the boat’s oars.

“It’s a mermaid,” Pinkey said, breathless.

“No, a fucking siren,” Tobi said.

Andy dug out the wax in her ears and motioned for the men to do the same. The woman on the rocks hadn’t made a sound since they got to her. The balls of wax fell to the bottom of the boat.

Andy held the lantern up higher. The siren’s eyes reflected the light. They were two, bright, white spots in the middle of her head. Her breathing was labored, but she raised her hand to look at Andy.

Andy should have looked away. She knew the stories of sirens. Eli had told the crew long ago that they weren’t to be trusted. They were to be killed on sight before they lured anyone under the water. They were nasty, cruel creatures.

Eli had claimed he watched a siren devour a friend when he was young. They were stowaways on a merchant ship. One night, they heard what Eli described as the most beautiful voice he had ever heard. It sounded like a mother’s lullaby. It was warm and comforting, and it was as if it was especially for them. They were pulled out from their hiding places and crawled to the top deck.

A woman sat at the edge of the ship. She had held the boy's face, smoothed her hands over his cheeks. Like a mother, she cradled him and looked into his eyes while she continued to sing. And then, her face peeled back to reveal three rows of teeth and bright, beady eyes. She pulled him in, head-first, and swallowed him whole. The shock of seeing the monster pulled Eli from her spell, and he ran back to his hiding spot with his hands pressed into his ears.

But Andy was never sure if she believed him. It sounded too much like a fairy tale, and it didn’t match any of the other witness accounts of sirens—the few that existed. There had never been any stories of gaping mouths with sharp teeth and motherly voices.

It was clear, now, that the story was nothing more than that. A story.

Their boat bumped the side of the rocks, and Andy climbed out. If the siren hadn’t struck yet, then maybe she never would. Maybe they would help her out, and she would be on her way, thankful enough to not kill them.

But she noticed the siren’s eyes were not on her anymore and were set behind her. Andy looked over her shoulder. Tobi sat in the boat, his gun trained on the siren.

“Don’t,” Andy snapped.

“It’s just a warning,” Tobi said.

Andy’s hands shook. She kneeled next to the siren. Her clothes were getting soaked from the ocean spraying them, and it was making her chills much worse. She tried to grab her knife, but she couldn’t hold it steady enough.

“Pinkey, get over here,” she said.

“Sir?”

“Cut her loose.”

He stepped out of the boat. There wasn’t much room on the rocky island. They squeezed together.

Andy shoved her knife at Pinkey and tried to keep the lantern still. Pinkey grabbed the net where it laid across her chest and sawed through it easily. He kept going, working his way down until he reached her tail. He hesitated either because the thick rope cut into her tail, leaving hardly any room to work. Or because he was taking it all in. It was a real siren tail. Right in front of him. And he had to touch it, free it.

The siren had laid back down. Her eyes were half-closed, exhausted. She let Pinkey do what he needed to do.

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

“Keep going,” Andy urged. “She won’t hurt us.”

“How do you know?”

Andy held the lantern closer to the siren’s face. She didn’t know what a siren was supposed to look like, but this one looked like a sick human. Her face was gray. Her mouth was open, taking in weak breaths of air. All over her, the net had burned and wounded her. Deep gashes and mangled flesh were on display.

“I don’t think she can,” Andy said.

Pinkey tried grabbing hold of the net at her waist. He had worked in fishing markets, and he was used to working with slippery, slimy things. But her tail was different. He didn’t want to touch it too much. He pressed the knife into the top of the rope and tried to saw through it. The net pushed further into the siren’s tail and wiggled around in the wound it had already made. The siren’s back arched, and her face scrunched up in agony.

Andy pressed her hand over the siren’s mouth to stop her from screaming. If they were on the ship, Martin would give her a belt to bite on. But they weren’t, so Andy kept her hand over her mouth.

Pinkey sliced through the rope with long strokes of the knife. It didn’t free the siren much. He sat back and examined the mess. He began pulling at what he could, untwisting what was loose. The rope squeezed at scales, yanking them out in chunks and leaving splotches of exposed, pink flesh all over. Her tail had been rubbed raw in some places.

For the next hour, the knife dulling quickly, Pinkey cut away small sections of net and pulled away what he could. Blood ran freely from the siren’s tail, darkening the scales that remained and staining Pinkey’s clothes and hands. He concentrated even though the splashes of seawater flattened his coily hair and plastered it to his face. He kept working, and Andy felt respect for him start to spark inside her.

She shivered over the siren. Her hand didn’t press into her mouth as hard. Her fingers were numb. Her limbs were starting to burn from the chill, and her head felt like it was about to roll off her shoulders. She watched Pinkey work, wishing he could go just a little faster, and then turned to the siren.

She looked probably just as Andy did. She began to shiver as well. Her thin arms lay over her bare chest, crossing as if she was trying to hug herself. Andy took off her jacket. It wasn’t keeping her warm, anyway, and she was too ill to be callous and watch a naked thing convulse from the cold.

Andy laid the jacket over the siren’s chest. The siren dropped her head closer to it, tucking her chin into whatever warmth it provided, and closed her eyes. She looked almost dead. Her long, black hair, what Andy could make out against the dark rocks, fanned out around her where it didn’t stick to her face. It made her face look as white as a ghost. Even her lips, now, were pale.

Pinkey gave a triumphant cry. He cut away the rest of the net and spread it on the rocks. He looked behind him and awkwardly turned around to examine what he had left. The siren seemed aware of what he needed, and her tail weakly lifted out of the water and bowed towards them before flopping back down. Pinkey sighed and leaned over the edge of the rock and sank two arms into the water. He hugged the tail to his chest, now clearly more comfortable with handling it, and pulled it onto the rocks, twisting the siren around. She didn’t seem to mind being manhandled or, at least, could not protest against it.

Pinkey moved the lantern closer to him. The tailfins were an even bigger mess than the rest of her tail. They were folded over and tied up in the net. There were, at least, not as many gashes. Pinkey got to work.

“We’re bringing her on board,” Andy said.

“Absolutely not,” Tobi said.

“If you disagree, you can mutiny later. But if she stays here, she dies.”

“And why does that matter to you?”

Andy wasn’t sure why. Leaving her behind would be like abandoning an injured animal. Maybe her own illness made her more emotional, clouded her logic, but she didn’t want to wonder the next morning if the siren would have made it if they had just stayed with her. It would be a level of cruelty Andy couldn’t commit to, to help something just a little yet still leave it on the brink of death to squirm and suffer until it finally passed.

“We’ll drop her off somewhere else when she’s stronger,” Andy said. “Or we use her as a crewmate. She owes us her life now.”

“And if she retaliates? She’s not a human. She’s a monster. She won’t be loyal.”

“If she gives us trouble,” Andy said, grasping for an excuse, “we keep her as insurance. In case the Navy finds us. We hand her over, and they let us go. And then she’s not our problem anymore.”

Andy was impressed with how quickly she thought of that with how sluggish her mind was running. Tobi didn’t say anything, so Andy knew he was okay with the arrangement. Or he, at least, couldn’t argue with it.

The air managed to get even colder, and Andy no longer had any warmth anywhere in her. Every spray of water that hit her felt like a slap of ice. She was drenched. She wondered how neither Tobi nor Pinkey seemed affected. They wiped water out of their eyes and pushed back their drooping hair, but Pinkey kept sawing away at the rope.

Tobi continued to watch, gun still pointed at the siren. Surely, it was too wet to work. The gunpowder had to be useless. It would never ignite. But Tobi’s threat and distrust couldn’t be taken back. He had to keep the gun steady if he wanted to maintain any control over the situation. Over the siren. Over Andy.

Andy wanted to hide away in her cabin once they were back on the ship. She would lay under every blanket she owned. Martin, unfortunately, would want to bleed her. She was definitely burning with a raging fever by now.

“Captain,” Pinkey said, drawing Andy out of the cloud of her self-pity. “She’s free.”

Andy nodded, slowly. Her mouth was so dry, her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She peeled it off and croaked, “Get her on the boat.”

Andy stood. Her vision left her for a moment. The fog grew darker and thicker until suddenly it cleared. Pinkey was pulling the siren into the boat. He held onto the upper half of her body and dragged her tail across the rocks. She was limp, offering no help but not resisting. She was either resigned to the fact that she was going to be brought onboard a strange ship or was hopeful that she would be getting help.

The four of them barely fit in the boat. It sat low in the water, and the siren’s tail was draped over the edge, dragging behind them in the water and nearly tipping them over at times. It was awkward getting back to the ship, but they made it without drowning. The crew lifted their boat back up to the deck.

The jerking and tilting of the boat as it was heaved up in the air made Andy more dizzy, more sick. She looked at the siren. She didn’t look well, either. She rested against Pinkey now who held her almost like she was a pet.

Tobi was out of the boat first. Then, Pinkey. Together, they pulled the siren out while the crew gawked. Andy could see, now, how magnificent she was. Her tail was long and thick and if it hadn’t been covered in open sores, it would have been beautiful and shiny all over. In the light of the crew’s lanterns, Andy could see how the unharmed scales reflected the light like a hundred tiny rainbows.

Andy’s jacket had fallen off of her as she was laid out on the deck. Her waist was thin, but her shoulders and chest were broad and had good muscle on them. Her torso was built like an upside-down triangle. Her arms, weakly trying to wrap around herself, were unsettlingly long. They seemed to stretch for a mile. Her hands, too, were large. Her palms were huge. Her fingers were spindly.

Everything about her looked just a little off. Her awkward proportions, the combination of her muscle and slender frame. Even her face was a little off. Her eyes still glowed in the light when it hit them just right. Her cheekbones were unusually high.

She was beautiful. Andy wanted to look at her for hours more. She wanted to take notes on her body and poke and prod her. When she would make Martin tend to her wounds, later, Andy wanted to join and feel if her skin was soft or maybe rough. She wanted to touch her hair and find out why it refused to tangle and mat despite dripping in saltwater and blood. She wanted to feel the hard muscle on her biceps and the subtle softness of her belly.

The siren was a mystery that Andy was going to solve.

Martin stretched over the side of the ship and offered his hands to Andy while the rest of the crew stood over the siren. Andy took his hands and slowly stood. Her soaking wet clothes clung to her body and made her feel like she had a hundred pounds tied to her. She was so cold and tired that she could no longer shiver. Her bones creaked as she moved, and when she swung her leg over the edge of the ship, her vision started to darken again.

It never cleared. She tried to get her footing, but the ship’s deck felt so uneven. She felt her knees slamming into the ground before she realized she was falling. Martin’s hands grabbed at her shirt, at her slippery arms, but she fell further forward. On her way down, the rest of her vision left her. Her head hit the deck, and she was out.