I'm back to posting on tumblr. I forgot I had this account and was mainly on tiktok oops. They loved this one over there though (plus it's a personal fave.)
There is a difference between a mermaid and a siren.
Sirens are born from violent, watery deaths. Drowning, being murdered at sea, their bodies being thrown in to the water shortly after their deaths, stuff like that. They are the ones that sing to sailors (or anyone) and drag them to their deaths when they get too close. They are born anytime.
Mermaids are born when someone who has a great love for the sea (or any other body of water) dies. These deaths have to be peaceful, though people who commit suicide are sometimes brought back at mermaids. All mermaids are born on either solstices or equinoxes.
They bound her legs. She stood at the edge of the ship, where the water lapped up the side stinging her ringed ankles. Her white dress ripped at its seams, her golden hair, long and wild, bled into the light like a glowing halo. She drew no more tears but the lines down her face were stark and clear. Her throat burned but she was silent now, staring towards the crew who continued working the ship. The show was long over, after her voice gave up. No one was looking as a sympathetic swell crashed into the side and she stumbled over.
Elizabeth scrambled on board, carrying pallets of boxes with her, the other boys around her doing the same. Others pulled ropes and lines on large wooden pillars that disappeared under the rays of sun, and some climbed the masts, rolling the white sheets that shaped the wind. The ship creaked under the weight of moving boots and feet, her name in golden brown on the side – La Carina. She carried them all, yanking at the rope that held her to port, desperate for the sea. The sun was unyielding, blanketing the crew in heavy sweat. Though none felt it more than Elizabeth, wearing more layers than the men who brandished their bare chests to the winds. She set the pallets down and the young Jack did the same.
‘Soon,’ he answered. The captain retreated to his quarters, as the quartermaster signalled to the helmsman to take his place. The anchors went up and the sails were ready to fly.
La Carina streamed the sea, away from the lands that spilled into the water. Here the only laws were the winds and current. Jack sat with Gibbs on the deck tying ropes. Gibbs was the oldest of the crew; he claims he has been with La Carina since her maiden voyage.
‘There’s no such thing,’ Jack said laughing.
Gibbs clicked his tongue at him in dismay, ‘You don’t know the half of what’s out there.’
Elizabeth sneaked past them hoping not to drag herself into Gibbs’ tales. The crew’s quarters were on the lower deck just past the dark corridor and down the stairs. Her feet were light and deliberate when a soft humming tickled her ear.
‘Hello?’ Elizabeth called out to the empty hall. Nothing. She descended the steps, the humming grew louder and clearer. Her heart beat faster at the sound of a feminine voice behind the door of one of the stockrooms. Was there another woman on board? In disguise as she is. Elizabeth entered and hurriedly shut the door behind her, letting only the lantern that swung in the middle column dimly illuminate the room.
It was clear now, the husky voice that drew Elizabeth to the starboard window. It seemed to glow in fluorescent light, she floated towards it.
Dark the oceans and dark the skies,
Come and follow the ocean tides,
Sway into sea and maybe you’ll see,
Come sweet hearty, come
Sweet sea.
Hush the oceans and hush the skies,
Hear the rolling sea lullaby,
Sway into me and listen closely,
Come sweet hearty, come
Sweet sea.
‘Did you do that?’
Elizabeth spun around. Abed was on the other side of the room. She straightened her body, unnerved by her uncharacteristic obliviousness. Was Abed in here the whole time? Who was singing? Did Abed see her?
‘What?’ Elizabeth’s voice octaves deeper than her usual disguise.
‘You know what, I heard it when you came in,’ Abed stepped forward, his body grew over her. Elizabeth was not small in stature by any means but the minute action made the room walls closer yet the exit farther. ‘It sounded like a w-’
The cabin door swung open. ‘Eli!’ Jack called out his hair and clothes damp, his face flushed. He huffed, ‘Abed, it’s all hands on deck!’ He rushed back out, the glow from the window going with him. Elizabeth forced her legs to move, avoiding Abed as she followed Jack out.
It was raining, but the winds were steady. Yet the captain was on deck, talking to Bayek; eyeing her as she made her way to the deck. He spoke to the quartermaster once more before heading back inside. Elizabeth could hear her heart over the pounding feet.
‘Tie everything down,’ Bayek ordered.
‘Aye,’ Abed appeared at the door. Elizabeth’s breath got caught in her throat, her mouth bled dry.
Thunder crashed in the distance and the crew moved at its command.
‘Eli! Move,’ Bayek shouted. Abed turned to her, as the waves crashed into La Carina sending her masts tipping. Elizabeth lumbered as though her feet were bound to iron, the winds roaring behind her.
‘There’s something in the water!’ the boy hanging off one of the shorter masts shouts, his body leaning towards the starboard side of the ship. The crew ran towards the side looking over. The water moved like always, the azure blue yapping on the side of La Carina.
‘Off with ya lads,’ Gibbs called, ‘you’ll tip her right over.’ An undeniable splash rang out from the opposite side of the ship.
‘It’s huge!’ the boy calls out again, hanging off the rope as far as his body would let him, the crew ran off towards port side. As the first man reached the railing, something crashed into the side they had just left, the wood screamed as a man went overboard. Rain pelted down. As Elizabeth heaved one of the lines towards the railing, another crew member trips over her.
‘The hell is goin’ on down there?’ Bayek yelled over the helm’s railing.
‘Man overboard! Quartermaster,’ someone replied. Elizabeth got up and stumbled to the side of the deck leaning over to see flapping arms.
‘Hang on Georgie!’ She noticed some of the crew running to the other side of the deck, investigating what hit the ship.
‘You think we hit a reef?’ Jack asked another man. ‘A reef? Are you daft boy? It’s been ages since we left the bay.’
‘Oi!’ One of the younger men hanging over portside called out. ‘Someone may want to fetch the captain, there’s something in the water.’
The boat swayed to one side and she saw it. Something large and dark in the water. A tail? A tentacle? It was too strong and fast to decipher. It disappeared quickly under the boat. Elizabeth threw the rope down to Georgie, panic hitched her voice, ‘Swim Georgie!’
But something caught his attention; he swam away from Elizabeth’s rope. ‘Georgie!’ she screamed with terror resonating through her voice.
‘Kraken!’ Gibbs yelled, desperately holding down the ropes, ‘It’s the Kraken!’ It struck again. Elizabeth had almost mistaken it for thunder crashing, but something had hit the hull of the ship again. The crew hit the deck tumbling over themselves, Elizabeth clutched onto the railing. She noticed Georgie no longer struggling in the water, his back was to the ship but he seemed to be in conversation.
‘Quartermaster!’ someone called, ‘Breach in the hull! Port side.’ The instant he finished that sentence, another crash had tripped the man overboard, his scream falling with his body as it hit the water. If it was panic then, it was pandemonium now. The wind and sea stirred La Carina’s crew into pure chaos. Elizabeth hauled herself over the railing once more and heard a gut-wrenching scream. Georgie was gone.
‘Georgie!’ Elizabeth gripped the railing as another crash hit the ship, her knuckles bone white as she willed her eyes to find him in the murky deep. A humming grabbed her mind, unlike before, but she quickly snapped out of it like jerking out of an oncoming sleep. Most of the crew were by the ship’s railing, their bodies a bewitched calm as they looked over the side.
A sharp whistle shot through the crew; the captain took his two fingers out of his mouth. The men jerked back unaware of how close they were to the biting waves.
‘Bayek, bring some men and get that hull patched.’
‘Rest of you, sails up!’ A switch flipped in the crew, and they were in motion again. ‘We’re getting out of here.’
The crew echoed their ‘Ayes’ and the captain stood behind the wheel, eyes on the horizon.
‘Captain! Georgie’s gone. Something pulled him under,’ Elizabeth said.
‘Jose’s gone too!’ yelled Jack.
The captain looked at their lips move, ‘Get down, go help the others.’
Elizabeth and Jack ran to the bilge. Jack climbed down the ladder first, Elizabeth was halfway down when the wall to their left exploded. She fell on her leg, a sharp pain bursting from her right thigh. Something was wrong. Jack raised her but her leg was throbbing, her trouser stained red. Blood was seeping into the water that was quickly filling the ship.
‘Go get help!’ she pushed Jack away.
He stumbled in legs and words, ‘But-’
‘Go, I’ll catch up’
The ship creaked with a pain-like shrill. Jack ran. Elizabeth heaved herself up, the pain clouding her eyes, she almost made it to the breach when something pulled her all the way towards it.
The water enveloped her. The shouts and roars dulled under the sea, the water rocked her and she struggled to keep her eyes open. A myriad of blurred shapes pushed past her, gripping and pulling her limbs in different directions, but a stronger pair of hands held on to her.
Elizabeth woke up with sand under her and the sun above. She sat up at the beckon of a gentle voice.
‘You’re a woman.’
A strange woman sat beside her, her golden hair surrounded her naked body like wings. Her bottom half, however, was a large scaled tail. Elizabeth stood up, alarmed, but quickly remembered her injuries. She patted her leg, red stained her fingers. But when she lifted the end of her trouser, there was nothing. She felt nothing but the distant memory of what it once was. The woman tilted her head, her golden hair falling to one side, the tendrils circling her limbs like an eel.
‘You cut your own hair?’
Elizabeth stared at her, she was beautiful, though there was almost nothing human about her. The dark blue scales on her tail glistened silver under the light. Even her eyes were inhuman; they shrouded like the sky warning sailors of oncoming volatile squalls. She dumbly nodded at the woman in response.
‘Do you miss it?’ her voice echoed like it came from the depths of a cave. She reached out to touch the dark ends of Elizabeth’s hair that framed her face, she almost shut her eyes. Instead, she shook her head.
‘I could never do that.’
Elizabeth had finally found her voice, ‘Do you have a name?’
‘I did once, when I sailed on ships amongst men,’ she leaned in, ‘like you do.’ She dropped her hands from Elizabeth’s face, she could almost feel the heat retract.
‘My name was Jezebel,’ she continued. ‘And yours is Eli.’
‘Elizabeth. My name is Elizabeth.’ She said it so defiantly despite never having said her given name out loud in years.
Jezebel smiled and Elizabeth felt a pull not too different from the one that made her step on a boat full of men, just to feel the rush of the winds and the swell of the sea.
‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡
La Carina had finally caught up to them; their sanctuary could only be a sanctuary for so long. The thundering of cannon fire and rumbling of debris echoed throughout the hollows of the island’s cave.
‘They found them,’ Jezebel turned to face the sound, her face a ghastly white. Elizabeth took a step towards the exit of the cave.
‘What will you do?’ Jezebel asked.
‘I’m not sure,’ Elizabeth eyed the stone floor. She turned to meet Jezebel’s eyes. Elizabeth was never one for stargazing, finding more solace in the deep blue around her than up above, but gazing into Jezebel’s eyes she understood. Her dark eyes and the night sky is the reason why people looked at the stars, to see the dark abyss and know there is so much more. So much more than the mere ten years they have had together, more than a life hiding away from an incessant war between their kind, just more.
Elizabeth’s lungs were heaving like never before as she ran. The plan was simple – rig the ship’s cannon to blow up within itself. Easy enough. She had used the exact one before and had been warned against loading it with too much gunpowder as the result would be an explosion. She was already a fair distance away from the ship when the perfect explosion sent metal and wood flying into the sea. A rampant fire began engulfing its side. The beach was a chorus of screams and death. It was hard to hear now, but it did not matter. Jezebel should be waiting safely with a rowboat on the other side of the cove, away from the crew who should be running back to save their ship from its growing flames. Elizabeth looked out to the cove and saw them.
It was a massacre. It did not matter what she had done. Another ship had arrived, bigger than La Carina, carrying rowboats and gunships that now sailed through the shallows of the cove, killing anything in the water that moved. Elizabeth spotted one of them rise out of the water, her tail jutting behind her just as dangerous as the metal trident in her hand. She held out an empty hand in front of her, shut one eye and took aim. The weapon sailed through the air and struck the chest of a boy on a rowboat. One of the men shrugged the corpse off and yanked the flintlock out of the boy’s holster. He locked eyes with her and before she could dive back into the water, he fired.
Where is she. Elizabeth climbed down towards the cove, making sure to stay out of sight. The closer she got the more she saw that the washed-up debris was not that at all. Elizabeth saw nothing but the corpses; the faces of men and women unblinking in the harsh sun. Their blood spilled in to the sea seamlessly. Clean slices across scales and skin, flesh gurgling out as the waves picked at them again and again. Their blank stares and gaping mouths were a sign of the unholy, an undying image of the last thing they saw. The scorching sun above them as their bodies hollowed out in gulping breaths. They were grey and falling apart, the earth already receiving them. Sinking into the sand, their limbs curled like washed-up kelp and scales littered among the debris. All that remained was the smell of fishy decay and the sound of eager squawks and shrills above them.
She looked for her among them, forcing to see beyond just skin and flesh. A hand grabbed her ankle forcing her down next to a bleeding body. Jack. The young boy no longer existed. He was now a man weathered by war and dying for it.
‘So it’s true. You are helping them.’ She struggled against his icy grip.
‘You would’ve done what you did to them to me as well,’ she told him, detesting having to answer him but the disgust in his eyes, the hatred towards the one she loved, urged her. ‘You don’t get it do you?’ She almost laughed. ‘I’m a woman just like all of them. You made them you know, all of you men. I guess all your stupid superstitions about women onboard were true after all; because once you bounded us and dropped us into the ocean, you gave birth to a creature full of wrath and malice for sailors and ships.’ She could not stop her onslaught of words, or tears, now.
‘You poisoned them and they still made a life of their own. They are not stronger than you – stranger maybe – but we all want the same thing and the sea has always been more than big enough for all of us.’
His grip loosened and she ran. It did not matter if he heard her; arguments worth mentioning are never heard in a war anyway.
Elizabeth’s eyes gravitated towards a halo of golden curls by the rocks and she succumbed to its pull. She limped through the wasteland of blood and sand, trying to hold every part of her together. The injuries she once obtained – healed by her lover’s touch on the day they met – were no longer a memory. They had come back to finish her. She blinked; the ground and sky were blurring into one but she kept moving towards the halo. She knelt by Jezebel, filling her into her arms, ‘You’re dying.’
Jezebel touched the stain that grew on Elizabeth’s clothes. ‘Go, you have time. I will hold on until you find a healer.’
The tide was receding. ‘The water, you need the water,’ Elizabeth croaked, her limbs shook to lift her. Jezebel shook her head, willing her to put her down. She was tired, and her Elizabeth was tired. Jezebel caressed the grains of sand that trailed around her fingers, she grew to love the land. Elizabeth grabbed Jezebel’s hands into her own. She has the ocean in her eyes, Jezebel thought, and maybe that is enough.
Rain and thunder pummels the house below it, without a care for the brewing storm inside. The home bore its own threads over the years. Never-ending threads in every shade, of every colour connecting every crack and crevice of the Earth.
Jane steps down the staircase, the descent growing longer and steeper than before, a pulsing red thread under her left rib trailing after her. “I have to go. I can’t do this anymore,” her eyes and heart wells, struggling to see the next step.
Jasper appears at the top of the staircase panting her name.
The sound was a memorial of summer days.
“Jane! Jane! Janeey!” a youthful Jasper called.
Jane snuffled her laugh with her palms, as Jasper edged closer to the hedge of overgrowth that hid her. Butterflies emerged from the wildflowers that scoured the ground, the flowers filled the forest with fresh aroma. Jane laid her hands on them crushing them under her weight.
“Boo!” Jasper had crept around the bush, and yanked the ribbon that held Jane’s light hair. “Catch me if you can,” Jasper ran off the ribbon dangled deeper into the woods.
“Jasper! That’s not the game,” Jane scuttered off after him, her hair flew around her.
Two feral children stood at the back entrance of the kitchen. The heat from the stoves surrounded the musty state of their clothes and skin. Madam towered over them, rod in her hand. “Your father will have your head for this Jane, running off instead of tending to your studies! And you-” the bitter part of the rod pointed squarely at Jasper, “the Haverfords are saints for taking you on and this is how you repay them. Hands!” she ordered.
“No! I wanted to play in the woods,” Jane stepped forward her arms fluttered in exasperation, her bright hair laid around her like wings on her back. “Jasper was just gentleman enough to amuse me! I forced him!”
“Hold your tongue!” Madam’s rod swayed side to side, its prey in its eyes. “Does the boy not think for himself? Is he so weak and feeble to follow? Huh boy?”
Head bowed Jasper raised his arms in front of him.
“No!” Jane grabbed his arms and forced them down.
“Stop it, Jane,” Jasper hissed.
The look from his eyes silenced her. Madam huffed. “He will get twice the flogging for that, girlie, the flogging meant for you.”
Jane refusing to look back to the top of the stairs, shaking her head frantically, “Stop this,” she called out.
“Jane,” Jasper pleads her name like a prayer. “Don’t go where I can’t follow! Jane please.” Jane clutches her chest, her heart echoing the pounding of the rain.
“I have to go back,” Jane says strangling the handrail, the lightning glinting off the ring on her finger.
Cristopher had been courting Jane for a few weeks now. But the war played with her much longer, and though she had not seen Jasper in many years, she never forgot him, the news of war was news of him. Cristopher, however, was of impeccable descent and found himself easily avoiding the frontlines. He had walked Jane home but she did not want to submit herself to the cold walls, and had decided not to put the summer’s day to waste.
Jane entered the woods and had found a figure stood among the trees, bathed in the ray of sunlight that found its way on to the forest floor. His dark hair and lean body bent to the breeze that greeted him like an old friend. Jane walked carefully towards him afraid that her intrusion would make the wondrous mirage disappear.
“Jasper,” she whispered.
“Jane?” His cheeks were hollow and his eyes drooped but the mirage could not possibly have captured him perfectly. “Are you real?”
“I don’t know.” Jane answered, “Are you?”
Jasper turned his back to her, “I’m not sure either.”
Jasper had walked deeper into the woods. Jane quickened to match his stride and Jasper slowed so they walked side by side. Jane’s hand touched his, and Jasper gulped his breath at the sudden flutter of skin. He stretched his fingers at this newfound sense, and leaned in succumbing to the crave. She found him. All the bumps and craves, the bends and nicks. His fingers were loose, flying atop the waters, but found no hostile tides there. And she slid into them, exhausted then relaxed. Jane leaned in, falling deeper into the dream forgetting all that was real, Cristopher, a proposal, her father, the war, gone.
“Why?” Jasper pleads, his foot on the staircase. “We could have it all, leave it all behind and disappear with me,” his voice cracks with a million broken dreams and promises.
“What would we have, Jasper?” The trees raked their fingers across the window panes, Jane grimaced, “Nothing to your name, and nothing to mine.”
“How could that matter? We will be together, please Jane. Is that not what you want?”
“Want? Want? I’m suffocating here. I want to breathe. I have to go back.”
He was back, he always came back. Mother had told Jane that a young man had rented the house next to theirs for the summer. Only separated by a wall, Mother had had done after Father had died, half of their home for an income. Jane had heard the talk that jumped around town, the Haverford’s illegitimate son was returning, the adopted son seeing to the family house, returning after years of estrangement. The Haverfords had another child that had passed and they went not long after; the illegitimate, the adopted was the only one left. But only in dreams would Jane have dared to think of him.
Jane and her mother went down to greet him, Jane’s heart fluttered. He carried his luggage off the carriage, sweat upon his forehead he still moved like a working man, but he dressed clean and his hair done neat, so unlike the image she carried in her mind.
“- and this is my daughter Jane,” Jane curtsied in response. She tipped her done up hair towards him, a pretty butterfly trapped in a net. Jasper looked at her.
“How do you do, Jane.”
Jane stood numb, Mother answered in her stead. “She is in the room right next to where you’ll be staying,” Mother stepped aside, and invited him in, “if there is anything you need please don’t hesitate to ask either of us.”
That night a knock sounded from the wall, Jane pressed her ear onto it and knocked in return. Jasper leaned his head against the calloused wall and tapped back. The thread reached across the solid wood, nothing was impenetrable for the pulsing thread. She knew he was there, and he knew she was there, and it was as if the wall was not there at all. She inhaled deeply and the breath filled his lungs.
“Look at me. Jane, look at me,” Jasper whispers and Jane’s heart betrays her. “Tell me its wrong. That you don’t feel it. We are the same Jane, whatever particles that make up my being and the ones that make up yours are one and the same. The gravity that keeps the Poles in place, the push and pull of the tides-,” thunder cracks above them, “Ha! Even the weather won’t permit us to be separated. Don’t you feel it?” he begs. “Is this what you want? I will live a half-life, Jane.”
Jane bites her lip, afraid that even breathing would deceive her, so she trembles in suffocation, copper filling her senses.
A cruel laugh escapes Jasper’s mouth, “You’re killing me, and I won’t ever forgive you not even with dying breath.”
“Stop! You think this is easy, that because I have chosen this I can escape you. I betray my own heart from this day out and my soul will strip bare. And if you choose to leave me this way you will haunt me and I will die sooner.” The winter air creeping onto her skin, Jane folds in with every word. Her palms filling the hollow of her eyes, pushing further and further in with each sob.
“I’m sorry,” the rain pelts bullets onto the window frame, “I’m sorry.” Jasper leans down.
“Stay there, Jasper, don’t come any closer,” she steps down the staircase, thunder shakes the walls.
“I’m sorry.”
The thread tugging at her ribcage, as she steps further away, threatening to snap through her flesh.
“I’m sorry, too.”
The door slams close and the red thread circles around his throat, like a snake to its master.
Who’s to say I am not real? I have lived through the generations,
in an infinity of greats. I will outlive your son’s daughters,
and their daughter’s sons. I dwell in their dreams as I do yours.
Don’t ask me if the tree made a sound. That is a question for men
with white beards to ponder. My red bed is irrational and I lie in it.
I am the three-eyed Fates that write your cookies.
I am the pixie dust that flies your planes.
I am the pulsing red-thread that ties you to him.
I am.
What don’t you understand, little one? I am she: the mother, the maiden, the crone.
Many have lied on my pillowed breasts and discover epiphany in their rises and falls.
The map to Atlantis lies in the blue of my eyes, where pirates and sailors have drowned.
But if you dare brave the strange siren call, I’ll give you the key to it all. I lean in, cupping my whisper, a strand of stray hair feathers your cheek,
There is answers in lies and truths lies in questions. Together we’ll decipher them all.
Rub off their dear, their darling, kid and baby. No longer will they laugh, or prod.
Pointing and sticking, their frail small minds can only comprehend, their hypothetical tree and its hypocritical fall.
Here my son, my love, I give you this. A stone from the head of an adder, no poisoned tongue will sully you now, no banishment, nor cruel exile. I lay my palm over your beating chest,
there is no Achilles here. And with a kiss on the strength of your brow,
I give you safe haven and pillowed soft ground, your homeland is within warm embrace.
Whoever Goliath may be, he stands no chance, go forth and take their fall.
And for my daughter, my darling girl, O, how they drown, boil and burn you.
He who took your head and your stone-bearing glare shall suffer in all nine circles.
I brush your hair that gives you strength, dripping ambrosia on thy lips. I give you, a chariot for the stars. Cortana, Excalibur, an armor of gold, name a price and I will pay. For you have paid your dues.
Mark your path in concrete, where others will tread the same. They cannot erase what the rain will not wash, your name, your NAME, YOUR NAME.
See,
I make no sound that you can hear, just like their fallen tree.
Here,
lay your head on the stark red bed, I bid you shut your eyes.
