Sound of Sirens

It’s the cry of the albatross that rouses me in the morning.

The bird has been coming to my bedroom window for a few months, always just after sunrise. When I open my curtain, it is there, on the windowsill, cocking its head and looking at me curiously. Meaningfully, even.

The elderly people on the island of Skylge might have told me that an albatross is a pure, human soul taking flight on earthly wings after death, but I’m not so sure I believe that. Mostly, they pick fights with the gulls on the beach at low tide, trying to grab the best food once the rocks littered with mussels rise above the brine. Doesn’t look very pure to me.

But this bird is different. It seems to want to talk to me. Enna, how are you? I can hear my mother’s melodic voice in my mind. It is me.

But of course, it can’t be her. The sea took her. By them. Or rather, she walked into the water willingly, looking for an end to suffering. Even though she had Sytse, Dad, and me. We weren’t enough for her to resist the call of the Nixen—the seductive sound of blissful freedom.

Freedom.

Strangely, anyone could feel boxed in on this little island. The land of Skylge is flat, flat as far as the eye can see, running into the endless sea on all sides. The infinite sky is never out of reach, though it’s often overcast with dark grey, rolling clouds bringing rain, thunder, and lightning to the Skylgers. It’s the only time the Currents cannot stop us from experiencing electricity – I have been told that those fire bolts in the sky are caused by the same force they use to power up their homes, cars, and mysterious appliances. The Brandaris Tower, jutting out of the even landscape on the island’s west side, is where they keep their patron saint’s holy fire. The priests say that he travelled from afar and came to the island to protect us from the Nixen. But St. Brandan’s clerics overlook that the only people genuinely protected from the merfolk waiting for us in the treacherous waves of the Wadden Sea are the Currents.

If Brandan had come here to protect all of us, the Nixen would never have taken my mother.