The Song of the Siren

The Song of the Siren

... an excerpt from my novel, working title

Find the River

Diana Morrison

I

I

The sun rose in watery splendour, outshone by a cyanic, cloudless sky. There was no warmth in it and Syl shivered violently, feeling the gooseflesh step across his skin and a deepening of his despair. The confused sea carried his painfully uncomfortable body on a displeasure cruise to oblivion.

All night the storm had seethed, hurling the brine into frenzy. Sheets of angry rain and spume had lashed him relentlessly, jagged bolts of vivid lightning had fractured his vision and the deafening thunder had ricocheted through his body until he could feel his bones rattle. He had been embroiled in the ceaseless feud between sea and land, buffeted and shaken like a rag doll in the jaws of a pit bull.

As the remains of the dark turbulence melted into the wan light, he wished fervently that the end would come. He was going nowhere, adrift without direction in emerald green water with no sight of land.

That life still coursed through his veins in some parallel universe, he had no doubt and whilst that life force ebbed through him, he was fated to drift, bruised and aching savagely, tired and desperately lonely, in these cruel and uncharted waters.

 Where was this sudden, indestructible will to live coming from? It was so easy to acknowledge now that his thoughts and tendencies towards suicide had only ever been half suppressed and had never been more than a couple of traumas away. Yet, he’d had more than his safe quota of stress just recently and not once had he wanted to let go. Now, presumably he could not and had condemned himself to this surreal aqueous half-life. Something had obviously shifted in his head and somewhere deep in his subconscious he had stumbled upon a powerful reason for him to carry on, to wade almost gladly through the pile of shit that grew at his door. In a remarkable flash of insight, Áine’s image thrust its way from the depths of his subliminal mind. 

The wind whisked a puffball of newborn clouds across the pasty face of the sun and the darkness returned.

II

Was it a mirage or was there really a break in the unremitting expanse of chimerically green water, something solid and dry where he could rest his jaded body?

Syl blinked his heavy, glaucomatous eyes expecting the vision to fade. Instead, it appeared closer. A twinge of relief hit upon him. Respite! Relative safety! Surely, he would be permitted to rest and re-gather his strength. He had come such a long way to nowhere.

The sickly sun failed to warm his sodden and shrivelled skin but a sudden great resolve and a boost of energy ripped threw him. He dived, with the agility and grace of a dolphin, beneath the water as if to invigorate himself before re-surfacing and launching into a fluent and powerful breaststroke feeling energised and liberated.

The inimical rocks rose steeply from the water, spewing the foam from the indolent water in languid streams of white bubbles; six wickedly serrated pinnacles, like Hell’s teeth pointing accusingly at the sky. These hostile rust coloured needles appeared to house the distorted features of pained and disapproving faces. As Syl focussed his gaze, he realised that he knew every one of the faces trapped for all eternity in the rock. The eyes of his peers and tormentors gaped down at him, antagonistic and disdainful, from the crushed and twisted layers of compressed rock, unnerving him and halting him in his piscine stride.

Ghostly music rose and echoed around the garish land and seascape. He did not know the voice but his throat tightened and his eyes smarted as he recognised the song. Song to the Moon, it was his favourite aria and it never failed to move him.

 His Rusalka revealed herself; sitting on a ledge projecting from the otherwise sheer face of the tallest of the orange fangs. She was tantalizingly close, yet still beyond his reach. Her satin, rubicund hair was twisted seductively around her naked eburnean body. Her skin was as smooth as glass, her voice as sweet and clear as honey. The song and the singer filled his head until he felt intoxicated by her.

As he reached the base of the rock, her song ceased and she gazed down upon him with fond pity. He risked a glance into her eyes and was swallowed completely by the promise of something in them.

The exquisiteness of the aria, the radiant loveliness of her coupled with his own physical frailty and emotional vulnerability left him feeling weak and undeserving of her attention, unworthy of this majestic queen. He could no longer deny his overpowering love for her. It slapped remorselessly at him, rasping and chafing until his heart ached with savage yearning. He had never craved his mother’s love as much as he craved the love of this supernal siren.

His flooding eyes pleaded with her to help him, to rescue him from the tangle of his thoughts and the prison of his nightmare. In desperation, he tried to ease himself out of the slopping water but the rock had been polished. There was nothing to cling to, no foothold, no flaw in the column’s face.

She looked down at his floundering hopelessness. He knew that she could see inside his head, that she had caught a glimpse of his fierce love for her. Caught between hope and desolation, his eyes widened as once more they beseeched her.

  ‘Áine, help me. Don’t let me drown. Please, I love you.’

His entreaty made her smile. She threw back her hair and watched with spiteful amusement, the mesmerised eyes that greedily absorbed her as she taunted him with her body. Tentatively, he raised his hand to her, his head bowed in lowliness expecting nothing but hoping for too much. She knelt down and grabbed his loose lank hair, pulling his head back and forcing him to look at her. She laughed at the fear and timidity in his eyes, the uncertainty of the child.

His head began to ache with blinding intensity and waves of instability wove their way through every fibre. She saw the clarity fast deserting him and offered him her hand. His heart leapt and he reached up to grasp it. As his cold fingers curled around her soft, warm hand, he felt enormous pressure on the top of his head. It took him a moment to realise that it was her foot, pushing him down below the surface of the water with all her strength. He tried to fight her but she was stronger.

Howling with mechanical laughter, she watched his courage dissolve and despair sit resolutely upon him as he struggled, spluttered, and finally yielded to her pertinacity. Ghostly hands took him gently away from her as his senses failed him and plunged him into nothingness.

When he became aware of himself again, he was riding on a humpback whale, his aching head cradled on a soft cushion of blubber. Many miles lay between them but still she sat, her mouth wide open and in full voice once more. This time the divine aria resembled a peculiar mechanical hiccough.

The oblivion of a flickering tunnel, vibrantly lit with green, pulsating light lurked on the periphery as the agony of his rejection and loneliness rose up and almost garrotted him. He opened his mouth to vocalise his distress as the rush of air sucked him up inside the swirling mass of green.

   ‘Áine. Áine. Áine.’