Under City by N. Florence

Author:N. Florence [Florence, N.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: N. Florence Author
Published: 2023-11-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter twenty

Annalise

Long figures moved elegantly between the swirling, rising heat of the large pool. Even from afar, these creatures were near identical to the gruesome pictures in my mother’s book, which lay heavy in a leather satchel by my side.

I’d brought it on a whim, feeling the need to be closer to her. I didn’t dare reach for it now.

Two of the Nine Daughters of the Sea, creatures who featured heavily in that old book, sat among a cluster of rocks surrounding the waterfall’s base. Their torsos elongated into two-pronged tails. At first, the half-human beasts looked to be skinless from the waist down. With a longer gaze, I noted they had adorned themselves in a collection of skeletons. Shark teeth, bleached coral, crab claws—treasures from a watery grave decorated a cascading frame of human-like ribs. Opalescent scales glinted under that haunting web of white bone.

I shuddered, thankful that my feet refused to bring me to the water’s edge.

Dariush had warned me they’d look different from me and my mother, they weren’t really sirens after all. These ancient creatures had prowled the deepest depths of the seas for millennia, godlike and ungoverned by the current powers of the fae world.

One story in my book told the tale of Dröfn, the middle sister of the Nine Daughters who’d fallen in love with a sailor she’d only ever seen from a distance. Dröfn had a beautiful voice and liked to collect shiny things that fell off the sides of ships into her waters, but she wanted nothing more than to raise a family with her sailor. She made a deal with the gods; they would let her have his child, and in return, they could take any one of her precious things.

The next time she saw the sailor, she sang to him, and he was instantly infatuated with her. He dove into the water to embrace her, and afterwards she brought him down into the depths of the sea to show him her collection of precious shiny things, but the human man couldn’t breathe underwater, and he drowned. Nine months later, Dröfn gave birth to the first siren.

The chapter Dariush had given me to study confirmed the details of this reproduction myth.

An illustration that sat underneath the text was that of a seaweed-covered skeleton surrounded by old gold vases and coins. A younger me had given the skeleton a pirate hat and an eye patch. It was the kind of story that should have readied me for seeing one of these beautiful monsters up close.

It didn’t.

Neither had spotted my presence. They were too busy in their own worlds.

One lay on a low rock, head tilted back to allow her long, yellow hair access to the steaming water. She was keenly observing something gold and small, biting it every now and then like the action might make it open. Until the other, the personification of a translucent lake, rose from her perched spot above and dove into the water inches from her sister. The lazing daughter jumped and growled at the transgression as a small wave covered her.

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