Sound of Sirens by Jen Minkman (new reading txt) 📖

against her hip as she’s tying up her white-blonde hair for the windy trip ahead. “We’re gonna be late!”

“Sorry,” I pant, coming to a stop in front of her. “I stumbled upon a lovely breakfast and I just couldn’t help taking my time, savoring the taste of my omelet.”

Dani always meets me here by the water’s edge at eight o’clock sharp. We both live in Kinnum, which boasts a population of one hundred souls. It’s a twenty-minute bike ride away from Brandaris, our capital city, where we go to school.

If we were allowed to ride the Current bus to school, the trip would only take six minutes. But we aren’t – and it’s not like the bus stops in Kinnum anyway. Our village is a pure-blood community inhabited by Skylgers. The Currents, who once came from across the sea and pronounced themselves the ruling class on our island, are not welcome here.

“You’ll regret that big breakfast in a minute,” Dani warns me with a giggle. “Last time you had a heavy meal you couldn’t cycle very fast, remember?”

“Well, maybe we should knock a Current on the head and steal his ID card,” I mutter sourly. “So we can hitch a ride on the Brandan Bandwagon.”

Dani sucks in a scandalized breath. “A lowly Skylger girl riding a Current bus? Feeling brave today?” Her brown eyes, just as dark as mine, sparkle with mischief.

“Come on, let’s go,” I just say. “We only have a few classes in the morning, so they’ll be extra strict with tardy passes today.”

“Long live St. Brandan,” Dani chuckles. “Thanks to him we’re off by noontime. You going to the harbor after classes?”

“Of course. Sytse is coming back. I hope he’s bringing us lots of new records.”

“Oh, yeah! That’d be awesome.”

Dani and I both love music. My friend can’t sing worth a flip, but she plays the guitar like a pro, and I accompany her with my vocals, which aren’t half bad. Also, my family owns a wind-up gramophone and I try to hoard as many shellac records as I can. New music is brought in from the mainland all the time, but those recordings are usually sold to the rich people. Which means they’re on LPs – and can only be played by the electronic devices owned by the Current class. Sytse knows there is a high demand for mainland 78-records among Skylgers, though, so he always makes sure he and his friends bring in whole crates of them whenever he comes home. And he keeps a few aside for me because he knows my favorite artists by now. Marlene Dietrich and Kathleen Ferrier never fail to tug at my heartstrings.

“Drink to me only with thine eyes,” I start to sing on our way to Brandaris. “And I will pledge with mine.” It used to be one of Mom’s favorites.

Dani listens to me with a smile on her face. “I wish we could just stay out on the dyke all day and stare out at sea and make music,” she says longingly. “First period is history with Mr. Buma. Yawn. He’s just going to harp on about the mistakes of our ancestors anyway. St. Brandan’s Day is the perfect opportunity for that.”

I roll my eyes. Dani is right – Buma is a sell-out fawning all over the Current elitists. “Be reminded, children, of our neighboring lands, the sunken islands of Amelan and Flylan,” I intone. “Taken by the waves and the merfolk because they wouldn’t submit to Brandan’s guidance and protection. Smitten because they worshipped Freda and Fosta. Punished because they wanted to disturb the natural order of things.”

And the natural order of things means that the Skylgers stand mostly defenseless when the sea attacks. The Currents hole up in their fortified high-rise apartment buildings in the middle of the island while we watch helplessly as the seasonal floods bring the Nixen to our coastal towns. When the merfolk call to us in the darkness of winter, the Currents drown out the sound with their loud, electronic music, booming from the gigantic speakers in their gaudy night clubs. Their territory is equipped with a loudspeaker system warning them of a Siren attack with a high-pitched beep which they, ironically, call a siren. Go figure – they named their warning signal after the devious creatures luring humans out to sea.

But we are forbidden to use electricity, reaping only the dubious benefits of being protected by their patron saint of coastal light, St. Brandan. His tower stands proud in the middle of Old Brandaris, repelling the Sirens with its bright, electric light, chasing away the darkness filled with mer-song that threatens to overtake so many islanders prone to melancholy.

Sometimes, I am truly scared I am too much like my mom. One day I might walk into the sea and never look back. And not my family’s love or Dani’s friendship will be enough to stop me from harkening to the sound of sirens.

3.

“Miss Buwalda,” a stern voice addresses me when I slip into the hallway ten minutes before noontime. “Where do you think you’re going?”

I look around and meet the caretaker’s eye. Old Olger has the ‘strict janitor’ act down to a tee, but we all know he has a heart of gold. Plus, he’s an old friend of my dad’s, so he cuts me some slack every now and then.

“Toilets,” I say, flashing him my hall pass.

“You couldn’t wait for a few more minutes?”

I give him a deliberately awkward smile. “It’s that time of the month.”

Olger grimaces. “Never mind. Off you go. I don’t want to know.”

Smiling to myself, I head for the restrooms. Works every time. I just want to be the first one out the door to get down to the harbor. The ships are coming – I can sense it. A quiet buzz runs through the entire town of Brandaris, as though the electricity powering the rich homes sparked a current in all of its residents.

I slip inside and wait until Olger has strutted off before I come back out again and make a run for the main doors. If no one else sees me, I’ll be the luckiest girl on the island today.

I let out a sigh of relief once I’m off the school grounds. Dani will have to forgive me for sneaking out without her. Two girls with hall passes at the same time would have set off the Sirens for sure, so to speak.

Mounting my bike, I hoist my backpack onto my shoulders. The sea wind is calling to me with an excited cry of freedom and the salty tang of the Wadden Sea tickles my nostrils. I speed along passing my own school, down the street, zipping past the Current high school that’s only a stone’s throw away from ours. When I once wondered out loud why they built it next to the Skylger School in our sector of Brandaris, Sytse told me that the Currents just like to rub it in – the fact that their institute is far superior. St. Brandan High has artificially-heated classrooms, flashy audio equipment, and special evening classes under electric light.

Personally, I like reading books better. And I quite enjoy the fact that classes are canceled when the weather gets too severe. Long live the impractical fireplaces in our building.

––––––––

When I arrive at the Kom, our main harbor, a group of Currents has already gathered on the quay. With eager, grabby hands, they await the ships and the goods our traders are bringing home. No matter how much their own priests frown upon acquiring merchandise from the mainland, there’s always a few who feel they stand above their own laws because they’re just too damn rich to be bossed around by anybody.

One of those people is Royce Bolton. Partial heir to the Bolton Industries fortune. His great-grandfather invented and produced the Siren system, so his family is loaded. Royce is the youngest of three brothers and he’s about Sytse’s age. As I get off my bike, I secretly observe him. His piercing, blue eyes scan the horizon and a slight frown of anticipation creases the skin between his jet-black eyebrows. The few girls clustered around him look up at him in admiration, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Instead, he focuses his attention on the sea, waiting for the Skylger ships to come in.

“Why so anxious, Royce?” I want to ask him. “Afraid you won’t get any toys to play with this week?”

Everybody on the island knows who Royce is. Apart from being a rich, spoilt brat, he also happens to be a gifted musician. He always plays the piano during the Oorol festival, usually accompanied by one of his gushing girlfriends singing along. It’s not fair that such an insufferable person is so talented, in my humble opinion. I wish I could hate the guy, but after hearing him play, I honestly can’t. His music is heartrendingly beautiful. If his songs were ever pressed in shellac, I’d buy them in a heartbeat. I’d probably cover my tracks out of embarrassment, but still.

Before they can spot me or ask me why I’m here this early, I scurry away like a frightened crab and sit down on the sand, my back leaned against a mooring post, my chin braced upon my raised knees, and my arms circling my legs. If anyone were to draw my portrait now – or snapped a picture of me with my dad’s clunky, old-fashioned camera – the result would be called ‘Girl In Contemplation’, I bet. I wonder if the uncrowned prince of Brandaris and his minions ever stare at the sea with such a mixture of fear and reverence.

My grandmother says that we were born of the sea. Our ancient, pre-Brandan legends teach us that the Frisian gods cast us upon the land when we started to grow legs instead of fins and tails. Our ancestors are the Nixen, who still call for us, imploring us to come home. But this is our home now – and we can never go back. Yet, we silently worship the sea out of respect for what it has given us, and is still giving us now. Life. Sustenance. Water to desalinate and fish to catch in our nets. And we have our own rituals to appease the merfolk. Once a year, during Oorol, we sing to them. The Baeles-Weards priests would ban our songs of old if they knew. When the Skylge Choir gets up on stage and performs the old hymns, the choir members’ voices carry these spellbinding melodies to acknowledge their existence, and to warn them off at the same time.

“We stand as still as stone

while the mermaid sings

and her melody rings

like a memory calling us home,” I sing, almost inaudibly.

Of course, we don’t sing this in the Currents’ language. As per the Skelta’s instructions, the choir chants it in the old Skylger tongue, which is slowly disappearing. Anglian has replaced our own language. Grandma Antje, my mom’s mom, still know how to speak Skylgian fluently, though, and she taught me the language too. This means I understand the songs our choir sings every year. She also told me what my name, Enna, stands for. I was named after Grandpa Enno, whose name means fear or terror because it derives from an ancient word meaning ‘the edge of a sword’.

The name may have fit my grandfather, but I am not nearly brave enough to carry it with pride. I don’t