Siren Blood (2 page)

“Get back, men!” Zannan commanded.

The men who could still move ran. Many had to jump down. For some, it was too late.

One of the monsters had f
allen. It lay stiff as a board and foaming waters lapped over its feet, carrying some of its blood into the sea.

Zannan shouted the same spell in Latin. Another beam of gold light struck another monster. This one became stiff as a board and fell back too. Men cheered and clapped.

Zannan was able to strike a third monster, the one that had eaten uncle Gio’s leg. The other two monsters had enough time to move toward the sea and transform back into their siren selves before Zannan could get to them too. As quick as they came, the two sisters vanished into the sea.

Domenico escaped from his mother’s hold and ran back to the shore, once again braving the route of dead corpses that lay at his feet. He searched around the place where one of the monsters had consumed Luciano until he found his father’s knife, the one with the initials L. S. carved onto the wooden handle.

He asked the other men to help him cut the monster open. Perhaps his father was still inside, alive and well, like Pinocchio when a whale swallowed him. His mother had read him that bedtime story when he was younger.

The men with longer swords agreed to help him, but Domenico asked them to be gentle. He didn’t want them hurting papa by accident in case he was alive like he hoped.

After considerable effort, the men were able to slice open a big flap of the belly. Undigested human flesh spilled out: blood, guts, bits of clothing, hair. Then a face floated down on top of the rest, a bloodied face that Domenico smiled back at every day.

His papa.

The rest of him had been eaten away, and only a mutilated face remained. Domenico sobbed.

On numerous nights after the day of the siren battle, Domenico dreamed of his father’s bloody, disembodied face.

Chapter Two

Domenico woke up at dawn with a throbbing in his head. From his bedroom window, he could see the dark coast, dead and calm. As it should be.

He hadn’t dreamt about sirens for so long. The battle was ten years ago, long enough for him to purge most of the traumatizing events from memory, or at least try. Scars inevitably remained. The dead men, including his father, and what remained of them, were buried in the village cemetery at the entry of the forest, and a big stone cross was erected on top of the hill of houses to honor them.

His mother was buried in the cemetery too. She was never quite as happy after Luciano’s death, and two years ago, she succumbed to an illness and died. Domenico believed that she wanted to die, and she had really died not of a nasty flu, but of a broken heart.

Domenico brushed his teeth, still thinking about his nightmare. He’d dreamt of the battle as it had happened in reality, except for the end. He and the men were about to slice open the monster’s stomach when the thing began to transform back. Instead of one of the dark-haired sirens, the monster became Adriana. Beautiful Adriana with her spun gold hair and sky-blue eyes. Her belly had already been partly sliced and blood gushed out of it. One of the men pulled on the open flap of skin, despite Domenico’s protests, and they found a dead fetus.

He was used to having nightmares about Adriana, ever since she disappeared six months ago. They had been in love  - still were in love, very much so. Adriana was still alive as far as Domenico was concerned. Both 20, they had planned on getting married.

Then one day, she simply disappeared. Nobody knew where she went. A two weeklong search was held all over town, and in the forest. The villagers turned up with nothing. They’d even had some searches and investigations in the nearby towns. No one had seen her.

Adriana wouldn’t have gone into the sea. She was afraid of the waters. Her father had died in the siren battle ten years ago as well. Like him, she witnessed his death from her window on the hill and she’d been scared of the sea since. After all, that was where the sirens lived.

Domenico had been sick with worry ever since Adriana left. He’d felt as helpless as he did when he saw his father die. Nightmares about Adriana were so frequent that he’d dread going to sleep, expecting them. In the last one, he’d found her in the forest, asleep and dying among the mushrooms. When he tried to hold her, she crumbled like sand in his arms.

He loved her so much and sometimes he felt that he, like his mother, was slowly dying of a broken heart too.

After putting on his slacks, Domenico went out to sea. He was never hungry in the morning and skipped breakfast. He carried two fishing poles and a box of baits down to their dinghy. His father’s knife hung from a leather carrying case strapped to his belt, rain or shine, fishing or not.

He was a fisherman, and six days a week, he set sail with his uncle out to sea. Uncle Gio was always late, or Domenico was always early. It didn’t matter because Domenico grew accustomed to waiting every morning. It was a ritual to sit on the dinghy that was still on the sand as he waited for him. He liked to look at the waters with the sun behind him and clear his mind before a full day’s work.

It didn’t happen today. He thought about the dream, about sticking his knife into Adriana’s belly, killing not just one life, but two. The fetus had been covered with so much blood that the skin looked red. And what a face – all snarling and ugly – a real devil. When the thing was placed in Little Domenico’s arms, it turned into black stone and crumbled. He wondered what the nightmare meant and what it signified

Other fishermen passed by him. Domenico greeted them, sometimes asking them about a wife or a child to be polite, then watched them sail away on their own boats. The fishermen were all friendly toward each other, but there was an unspoken distance between them that prevented real intimacy. They were all competitors, after all, and they were territorial about their fishing spots.

He looked back to the houses and sure enough, uncle Rio was descending from the hill. After losing his leg to one of the siren monsters, he walked with a wooden leg. He still limped quite a bit, and when he was tired, he used a cane. It was only on a boat that Gio felt like a competent man, able to float at sea and reel in the fish like the best of them.

By the time Gio reached the dinghy, a new suspicion had already formed in Domenico’s head about Adriana. Before Gio could greet him, he blurted it out.

“What if it was the sirens?” he said. “What if they took her somehow?

Gio frowned and smoothed out his mustache with two fingers, a self-pacifying habit.

“They’re gone, Dom. The sirens are too afraid to come back here.”

He began to push the boat into the water. Domenico jumped out to help him, and then both men hopped back onto the boat and rowed. The sun was making its appearance, illuminating the hill and the waves of the water were dappled with gold.

Domenico described his nightmare, and his fears that it was a clue to where Adriana could’ve gone.

“It’s only natural,” Gio said. “To make the connection to sirens. You lost your father to sirens and now you’ve lost Adriana. It doesn’t mean that they’re back. It’s over. They haven’t come back once in ten years. No one has vanished at sea. It’s only fear, son.”

“I just suspect that Adriana is in trouble somehow,” he said. “What if the sirens have something to do with her disappearance?”

Gio shook his head, and put his hand in the water. He swirled his hands and sighed.

“Domenico,” he started. “The whole town looked for Adriana day and night.”

“Precisely,” Domenico replied. “There’s no trace of her. I just don’t know where else she could be except into the sea.”

“Think about it. What would sirens do with her? They prefer the meat of men. A woman would only make them sick. Zannan told us that. They’d rather eat catfish. Plus, Adriana knew the incantation like the rest of us. I’m sorry that there’s nothing you can do to get her back, Dom. You’re just going to have to move on.”

“I can’t,” said Domenico.

He buried his head into his hands. He felt like crying, but he wouldn’t in front of Gio, who was so brave. It would almost be like crying in front of his papa. When he a boy he had been a lot stronger. Now that he was a grown man, he was vulnerable, weak, and helpless. Both his parents were dead. Adriana was gone. He had no family except Gio.

“Adriana could’ve gone herself,” Gio said. “She could’ve run away. You know that she never got along with her mother.”

Domenico shook head. The sun was getting higher and brighter. The throbbing in his head was back. Although he was used to love being on the water, he felt seasick.

“No. She would never do that. We were so happy. If she had planned on it, she would’ve told me she wanted to leave and we would’ve gone together.”

Uncle Rio’s eyes darkened before he looked away. He shrugged.

“You just never know sometimes with women,” he said.

Gio would know. He’d been engaged twice and had always been left heartbroken and single in the end. One of his ex-girlfriends had fallen in love with another man in Tetro and he had to be reminded of their happiness, the happiness that eluded him, when he ran into them at the village, which was quite frequent.

“You don’t know her as I would,” Domenico said more defensively. “She would never just get up and leave like that. She would tell me. She would never, ever do that. You have to believe me.”

“Okay,” Gio said, more softly. “I’m sorry. I believe you. I don’t know the situation. Nobody does. Adriana was – is – a nice girl. One day we might find out just what really happened, but now, it’s best to think about something else.

“I know Zannan could help if only we can convince him to. If Zannan had the power, he should use it for the good of others.”

“Yes, but you know what happened to his wife. He has never recovered. Frankly, I don’t blame him. Magic can do a lot of harm on humans.”

Zannan’s wife had not been a witch, but a human. Rumor had it that the reason she died was because she consumed one of his potions gone wrong. She died shortly after the birth of their daughter, Mistico.

“I suppose,” he said.

“Magic is not always good,” Gio said. “It can kill and destroy many men, and it has.”

“He’s my only hope,” Domenico said. “Mistico’s been trying to convince him. If anyone could convince him and get him to help, she could. Zannan is a good man – I mean wizard, even if he pretends otherwise.”

“There’s no stopping you, is there?” Gio said.

Domenico shook his head.

             
“You’re stubborn.” Gio sighed. “Just like your father.”

             
Domenico beamed with pride, as he did whenever someone told him he exuded one of his papa’s qualities, even the bad ones.

             
“I’m sorry she’d gone, but can you just try? Can you try to move on?” A smile played on Gio’s lips. “I’ve seen the way you are with Mistico sometimes.”

             
Domenico looked shocked. “Mistico? What are you suggesting?”

             
Gio shrugged. “That there is always plenty of other fish in the sea.”

             
“Uncle Rio, with all due respect, Mistico and I are not romantically involved and will not be. She’s Adriana’s best friend. We’re friends too, and that’s all.”

             
“I’m just saying, Mistico’s clever and smart. Pretty, too. She seems to like you. Maybe you’re not ready now, but someday you’re going to have to be open to the possibility of other women.”

             
“Just like you are?” Domenico asked sarcastically.

             
He immediately regretted it. Rio looked hurt. He stiffened.

             
“I’m sorry, uncle Rio. I didn’t mean to.”

             
“That’s okay,” Rio said. “We are all in pain. The whole world’s a bleeding wound.”

             
“I just feel like something’s wrong, very wrong with Adriana’s disappearance. She’s alive, I know it.”

             
“Dom, stop.” Gio put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re hurting me to see you get this upset about this situation. I don’t want you to waste your life, like I have, over one person and be closed off to other possibility of happiness. I want to see you better again. Please, son. Please be well for me.”

             
Domenico looked at Gio, the pain in his brown eyes. How sad and pitiable he looked with his wooden leg. He wondered if any woman would ever love him again, if he would ever love himself. The mustache made him look tough, but Gio, too, was frail like he was, beaten with too much horror and hardship in life. Sometimes it felt as if they would both never recover. He didn’t know what he would do if other tragedies were to befall him.

             
Perhaps Gio was right. He was too obsessed. It was driving him crazy.

             
“I’m just so frustrated,” he muttered. “I wish I could do something.”

             
“I know you are, son.”

             
Domenico couldn’t hold it in anymore. Tears welled up in his eyes.

             
“I just hate sirens so much,” he said through clenched teeth. “This whole town is cursed because of them. Even if they’re gone now, I’m reminded every day by looking out at the sea. When I was a child, I would see freedom, but now, all I see is darkness.”

             
Gio could do nothing but nod knowingly.

             
Domenico’s anger rose to match his frustrations.

             
“If I ever see those sirens again, I’ll slit their throats.”

              “You and me both,” Rio said. “You and me both.”

             
After sitting for a while, staring at the hill, which had grown noticeably smaller in the distance, they set up their fishing rods.

             
“If only it were as easy to catch sirens as it is to catch fish,” Domenico said.