The Siren's Song by Amalia Carosella

Author:Amalia Carosella
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Thorskona Books
Published: 2019-04-04T07:00:00+00:00

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Aglaope did not climb back up the spire that day, and even though she did not sing, her voice was raw and broken by nightfall.

“You must stop this,” her mother said. “This weeping and wailing—it will leave you without a voice at all if you are not careful. Grieve as you must, but do not carry on. Thelxiope would not have wanted you to ruin yourself in such a manner. Not for her sake.”

They had wept together. Clinging and crying, at first. But Ligeia had torn herself away before long, swallowing her tears and her grief while she washed and prepared the corpse. Not for the pyre or the tomb, as they did upon the mainland or perhaps might have risked during a time of plenty even on their small sad island, but rather for the food and meat it might provide them through the long, looming winter.

“Will you help me?” Ligeia had asked, and Aglaope had done so—her tears mixing with the blood as they carved and cut flesh from bone, most to be hung and smoked in the cave, and some to be cooked for Thelxiope’s funeral feast. One thigh bone, and a share of the hard cartilage would be given up to the gods with desperate prayers for good, clean rains and the hope of an early spring with a multitude of ships.

But Aglaope felt sick.

“It is my fault,” she told her mother, the words hoarse. “It is my fault she has died this way, today.”

Ligeia sighed, not lifting her gaze from her careful work—they could ill afford to waste even a morsel of flesh with no other supplies to see them through the winter. “The fates alone choose our time, Aglaope. And if not even the gods can stop them, how could you?”

“I taunted her. I threw stones at her birds. It was not the fates who reached out to steal her breath, Mama. It was Circe’s falcons. Circe’s handmaid.”

“Then she has done us a favor, unwitting though she is,” Ligeia said, her tone sharpening. “Thelxiope will provide us with the strength we need, now, to see us through, and with one less body to feed we will survive that much longer.”

Aglaope’s eyes burned. “How can you be so callous? Speaking of her as if she were nothing but a burden before she is even cold!”

“Perhaps her body is not cold, but it is well-carved,” Ligeia said. “And Thelxiope would not want her life wasted with grief and sorrow. She knew the gift she could give us—would have cut her own throat had it come to that, if it meant you lived on. And all the more quickly if she thought it would bring your Akheloios!”

Aglaope shook her head, but the truth of Ligeia’s words would not be so easily disregarded. She felt them like barbs beneath her skin, worming toward her heart. Thelxiope would have sacrificed herself. And even if she had not said as much to Aglaope, she had certainly spoken of her own body as their nourishment after her death.

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