Chatterbox: Inkwell

Jeanine (Jee-Jee)

A Human

Have you ever had the feeling someone’s watching you, but then when you turn to look, there’s no one there? Most people have that feeling at one point or another. Have you ever had that feeling while in a boat, or on the beach? Have you ever looked out at the dark waters of the ocean, and thought you saw someone out there, even though no sane person would be swimming at this late hour? Have you ever heard, at night, a strange, almost musical sound, coming from the sea? You have, haven’t you? I can see the answer on your face. Whenever you’re sitting by the ocean, and you see that dark swimming figure, or hear that song, or simply feel like you’re being watched by someone, beware. For they have set their sights on you. And if you ever wake up on the beach, but don’t know how you got there, look at your neck to make sure it’s not bleeding, for they always mark their victims ahead of time. Make sure you don’t have a teardrop shape carved into your flesh. If you do, they’re coming. They will find you. They will take you with them when they go.

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The notes of a song float through the night air. There have been many nights like this one in the last few weeks, where from the gentle waters near the shore would come a melody, and words that no one would understand had they heard the song. Of course, no one else can hear the music. Only a few. Me, and Eli, and Kaia. The music comes to each of us, and it has its effects on each of us.

For Kaia, as she told me last Monday, the music causes all of the painful memories of her past to return. She’s never told us what those memories are, however.

Eli, or so he says, feels drawn to the music, as if it’s calling him. He says that it makes him feel longing, though for what he doesn’t know.

And I feel scared when I hear it, for it brings pictures into my head, horrible images of my loved ones dying, the earth crumbling to bits, people being killed before my eyes. I fear that I will go insane from the music and its horrific drawings. I made my dad buy me earplugs, so I wouldn’t hear it, but still the song creeps into my mind like a spider crawling in through the tiny space between the door and the ground. Even if I’m awake, I see the images as clearly as if I’m living them, just like I would a dream. I think I might be going crazy. After what happened to Eli last week, I also worry that we might not live to see December.

We had all been sitting on the dock, listening to the music and half knowing, half wondering who was singing, me twirling my red hair around my fingers, when Eli suddenly got up, his eyes glazed over, and jumped into the water. Me and Kaia called to him, but he didn’t resurface for nearly a minute. His eyes were clear when he pulled himself up onto the dock, but he talked like a madman, saying he had seen a creature under the water, and that the creature was the one singing, a woman with claws and pointed teeth, and a tail like a fish’s. We all knew what he had seen, and we had known who was singing all along. We just didn’t want to admit the truth to ourselves. We didn’t want to believe it, even though we knew it was true. The Syrens had returned.

8 Years Earlier:

July 21

Eli, Kaia, and Jeanine all ran to the edge of the water, feeling the cold waves relives their toes of the sand’s heat. Only 7, the three young kids thought they were alone, save for Kaia’s father. They were wrong. Out in the water, watching them, was a creature, a woman with sharp claws, pointy teeth, and a fish tail. Her gills opened and closed on the sides of her neck, and her webbed fingers sliced through the water as she floated on top of the waves. She watched the young humans splash, and listened to their gleeful screams as the cold water hit them.

One of them suddenly looked out to the ocean, and the Syren ducked into the water, afraid that the girl had seen her. The girl looked out at the sea for a moment, then turned back to her friends.

The Syren swam close enough to see the children’s faces. One was a boy who would no doubtingly be a handsome young man when he grew older; his brown hair waving around his face in the breeze, his skin, a shade darker than the girls’ skin, almost shining in the sunlight.

The shorter of the two girls, her long red hair pulled back into a pony-tail, was splashing the boy. The Syren didn’t notice anything special about her, she was just an ordinary little human, plain and stupid like the rest of them.

The taller girl, the one with long black hair and pale skin, looked almost like....like a.......Syren.........but no! It couldn’t be! Yet it was. The black haired girl was a halfling! The Syren glared at the children, especially the halfling; the child who belonged to both worlds and neither world at the same time. The Syren’s anger made the waves grow higher and more dangerous. She couldn’t believe that one of her kind had actually mated with a human! Humans were so......so.......weak minded. Halflings were an abomination, they had to be wiped out.

The Syren’s grin was frightening and dark, even in the daylight. The wave she had conjured up was getting higher and higher, now nearly 15 feet high. Using all her energy, she pushed it toward the shore. The man sitting on the beach called the kids away from the water when he saw it coming, but they were still yelling and splashing, so they couldn’t hear him.

The man ran to the children, trying to get them away from the waves. He was too late. The wave that the Syren had created washed over the humans and the halfling, washing them out into the open sea, where she was waiting. The halfling changed form immediately, but looked shocked. She hadn’t known her heritage before then, and had had no control over the change. The Syren used one claw to carve a deep teardrop shape onto the side of the girl’s neck. The girl looked at her in horror. The Syren washed the halfling back to shore and went over to the humans, her silvery-black hair flowing in the water behind her. The other two children were unconscious, and so was the human man.

The handsome little boy would most likely be a marvelous young man when older, the Syren decided. She would sing to him once he became a man. She carved a teardrop shape on his neck as well. He opened his eyes, jerked awake by the pain, but soon lost consciousness again from lack of air.

The red haired girl wasn’t of much use to her, being a female human who couldn’t be bewitched by her singing, but good things come in threes, she supposed. The Syren cut a teardrop in the third child’s flesh as well, but closer to her shoulder, signifying her lack of importance. The girl’s eye’s fluttered, but she remained motionless. The Syren doubted the girl had seen her.

The man wasn’t the halfling’s birth father, the Syren could sense that. He was not worth killing.....or even marking for death! So the Syren washed the humans back to shore, where the halfling was curled up in to a ball, sobbing with fright, her legs finishing shedding their scales, the girl’s fingers no longer webbed as they had been in the water. The Syren swam off, her work done. The children had been marked to be taken by her and her sisters. The halfling would be destroyed, her friends along with her.