Light refracts from the surface world, staining the water various shades of azure. It surrounds me in an almost uncomfortably warm embrace and makes me long for the cold surety of the deep. Yet, I could not help but wonder what it would be like to bask in that light, to live as those on the surface do.
I shake the thought from my head. I have worked far too long and far too hard to be distracted by the trivial wishes of a naive guppy. I close my eyes and center my energies, grounding myself. One moment passes, then two. Then, with one powerful flick of my tail, I shoot along the reef.
The life along the vibrant seabed dances to the tune of an ancient song, perhaps one woven by the sirens of the long-forgotten past. A manta glides beside me, serene and peaceful.
It is almost as if she does not know the danger she faces, does not understand the sorrow plaguing her people as more and more of her kind are swallowed by fishers’ nets. My expression hardens. Or, perhaps she is like others of my kind and dismisses the surface dwellers as beneath her notice, too insignificant to bother with.
The manta’s path leads her elsewhere and soon I am alone amongst a crowd of fish. Within a few heartbeats, my fins take me to where the ocean floor rises to meet the surface. I pause for a moment. My tail flicks absentmindedly, keeping me in place.
The water darkens overhead as the shape of a large fish swims above, blotting out the beams of light. One, two, three heartbeats pass. This is far too large to even be a great blue. An aberrant mixture of wonder and disgust churns in the base of my stomach as I stare at what can only be what those on the surface call a ship.
I feel myself swimming forward. There is something about the unnatural color and shape of it that draws me as if by a tether. Before I know it, my hand is upon its body as it and I cut a path through the sea. It feels cold, almost dead, and rough like the rocks of the sea floor. So this is the creature which carries bringers of death to the sea. It is faster than I expected.
My stomach flutters as if filled with a school of minnows. I swim toward the surface, making sure to stay within the shadow of the ship. My hand still rests upon the ship’s body, as if disconnecting myself from it would allow it to escape. The murmur of strange voices fills my ears. They are so very unlike the sounds I am used to and their tones are a sharp stone to my nerves. The words clamor for attention. They are nothing like the melodious languages of the deep or even the ancient surface languages I found in the Collectors’ perfectly preserved tomes.
Something within me stirs, a predator of shadow who has long slumbered. Rage burns deep within my heart as images flood into my mind, images of the ships cluttering the seafloor, of fish entangled in nets and the mutilated corpses of whales. This ship was going down, and the humans along with it. My eyes narrow with steely determination.
A long-forgotten melody sits at the back of my throat. I close my eyes and begin the tune. It is as if waking up from a vivid dream, where remnants of the dreamworld still linger long after it has been slain by reality.
Something within me stirs, a predator of shadow who has long slumbered. The melody pours from me as if it were a tidal wave and I was but a salmon caught in its current. The clamor of voices fades into the background until they are barely a murmur in the restless sea.
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As I sing, the water around me, the net, even my scales themselves begin to feel as though they are aflame with the heat of a thousand suns. I cry in agony as my tail feels as though it is being torn in two. When, eventually, the pain subsides, I manage to sneak a glance at my tail.
Nothing has changed, but it feels strange somehow. Stronger. My hand rises to my throat and I grasp at it as if I could tear out my offending vocal cords and slay them with a Kaltai blade.
I go to pull my other hand from the ship’s hull but find it resting upon empty seawater. The area immediately around where my hand had rested was now simply gone. A hole lay in its place, round and the size of a dolphin.
Anon tal, I swear under my breath. What have I done? Songs are forbidden by the Council; they could send me to the Ravine for sure if they knew. It was songs that had started every war, every conflict known. Songs — and the mad fish that sang them — drove surface dwellers into the sea by the thousands during the Ever War.
My stomach churns, almost eating itself out of anxiety. Could I be a…. No. Sirens are all long-dead. The Collectors made sure of that centuries ago.
Muttering in a language I don’t recognize draws my attention. I look up to find a pair of eyes staring at me, round as jellies. They belong to a man, one with hair the color of sand and eyes like the Great Ocean.
Water pours into the ship like a torrent. Through the hole I see that he holds something of the same dead material as the ship. Perhaps he is trying to heal it.
There is so much water I can reach through the hole into more ocean, rather than the strangeness of the surface. I do, and my hand grasps around his arm. I pull him to me with a strength I didn’t know I had. Bubbles burst from his mouth as he struggles.
His eyes lock with mine as I drag him into the sea. They are large and filled with the fear of prey before a predator. We float there for a moment, taking each other in. He looks just as odd as I had expected, though I still haven’t figured out why surface people come in so many different colors and patterns.
After a moment he begins to pull me toward the surface. I shake my head and thrust my tail once, hard. The sun’s light becomes fainter. Noises spill from his lips as he tries to first pull me upward, and then pull my hand from around his wrist.
The rage fills me again as images of what he and his kind have done sear into my vision. “You will pay for the crimes of your people,” I say, and drag him further into the deep.
“Air!” The words are garbled, the accent archaic, but I understand. He speaks a derivation of my own tongue, the language of the sea. I turn to him. His face is almost purple, his expression pleading. He points toward the surface.
Just one more push into the sea and he will be the same as the corpses of the ships he sails, food for the crabs and a home for the barnacles. But, to actually communicate with one of the surface dwellers…
Fine. With a few quick thrusts of my tail, we reach the brightness of the sun. He makes a few loud noises for a second. They are pointed, but not words in the way that I am used to. He gasps for air for a few moments and then turns to me.
He looks around for something, but it is just us and the open sea. His ship has long-since either succumbed to its wound or fled to safety. He bites his lip, pauses, then says, “You are going to kill me. Are you not?”
“Why should I not? You and your kind have killed countless and you are poisoning the sea. At least if I kill you, I can set some of it right.”
His brows furrow. “Kill who? I only want to learn about you and the sea.”
The laugh spills from my lips before I can stop it. Sure he does. My eyes narrow and I feel the rage build once again in my bones. “Then learn, naket.” I grip his arm so tight he yelps.
One flick of my tail, two, three. The surface disappears behind me, a distant memory. As the darkness settles upon my shoulders once more, I can feel him writhe against me. Lyrics in the ancient tongue bubble up my throat and burst from my lips, an ode to the Sirens of old. All at once, the man grows still as I drag him down into the deep.