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

they take our bodies as well as our souls.”

“Well, that settles it then,” Royce says, his voice flat. “My mom was taken by the Sirens. She’s gone. And so is yours.”

Tears well up in my eyes. “Don’t say that,” I whisper, sounding choked.

His hand gently slips around my upper arm and he turns me sideways to face him. His blue eyes are dark with pain and regret. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “That was uncalled for. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

I look up at him, shyly taking a quick step back when he raises his hand to wipe my tears away. That’s just way too intimate. This whole discussion is, in fact. “Let’s just listen to the LP, okay?”

Royce hesitates for a few seconds, then nods. “Yeah, let’s.”

We sit down on the couch. This time, I don’t try to scoot away from him as far as possible. I don’t feel the need to. As the first song starts to play, I close my eyes and imagine my mother sitting by the seaside, her brown eyes forever sad and her blonde hair dancing in the wind. In this moment, she is here with me. She’s not lost forever, and she is watching over me as a winged creature of the Heavens, sent down by Freda. Maybe the Nixen have allowed her to come back to me as the faithful albatross that visits me so often. Maybe we don’t know what the real truth is, because the strange book we found showed me that we might have been wrong about other things, too.

“What else did you bring?” Royce’s smooth voice breaks the silence enveloping us after side B has spun to an end.

My eyes flutter open. “W-what?” I stutter dumbly.

He points to the shopping bag. “Looks like there’s more music in there.”

“Ah, yes.” I suddenly feel nervous about bringing my own stuff. Why would Royce want to listen to music I picked? “Well, I was just curious what Kathleen Ferrier would sound like on your equipment.”

He smiles, and his eyes no longer seem hard like iron. The songs have brought him peace. I think music is his religion, in a way. “Go ahead. Put your record on,” he says invitingly.

I comply. While fiddling with the controls to change the speed to 78, I already start humming Ye Banks and Braes. I push the button that start the turntable and lifts the arm, and then I wait.

When Kathleen’s voice floods the room, I stand there in awe. The sound is still crackly, but the usual buzz of the diaphragm is strangely absent. Kathleen doesn’t sound tinny or harsh when she sings loudly – it’s as if she is standing right in the room with me.

Slowly, I shuffle back to the couch, sitting down on the cushions very quietly. When I shoot a sideward glance at Royce, he looks mesmerized. He likes it – he likes ‘my’ music too. It makes me glow inside, and I no longer care why.

“I want to hear you play,” I say abruptly once the song is over. Somehow, I want to stop him from commenting on the record. Maybe a part of me is still afraid he won’t get it, or he’ll say the wrong thing.

“You’ll hear me play on Monday,” he says with an indulgent smile. “At Oorol.”

Stubbornly, I shake my head. “I want to hear what you were working on before I came here.”

Royce frowns, looking a bit taken aback. “Well, I’m not done yet. I’m still working on stuff.”

I smirk. “Do I detect a hint of perfectionism in your refusal?”

He bursts out laughing. The sound echoes off the walls as he gives me a surprised little smile. “Someone ever told you that you’re too cheeky for your own good, Enna?”

“Well – yeah. They have, in fact.” I bite my lip.

Royce rakes a hand through his floppy, black hair before patting me on the knee with it. “You’re cute,” he says.

It’s impossible to hear whether he means cute in a little sister kind-of-way or cute in a sort-of-hot-kind-of-way, but his warm hand on my knee makes me go so horribly red that he can’t possibly miss what I am hoping his words mean. Paralyzed, I stare into his blue eyes and wish the ground would open up and swallow me whole.

“Maybe I should go,” I squeak before he can say anything. “It’s getting late.”

“Yeah.” His voice sounds a bit rough. “Maybe you should.”

Avoiding his inquisitive eyes, I jump up from the couch and rush toward the turntable to take my records. With trembling fingers, I fix my gaze on the door and dump Kathleen and Jyoti in my bag.

“See you later,” I mumble, chancing a quick look in Royce’s direction.

He’s standing in the middle of the room, watching me with a mixture of amusement and keen interest. “When?” he inquires softly.

I panic when he takes a step closer to me. “Tomorrow,” I blurt out. “Evening.”

Royce cocks an eyebrow. “After the opening of Oorol?”

Crap, that’s actually quite late. “Yeah,” I say, not willing to back down. “Ten or so?”

“I’ll be here.”

“Good. Bye now.” I storm out the door and slam it so hard that I’m afraid I’ll rouse the spirits of dead Stortumers.

What the hell am I doing? In fact, what am I even thinking? I should stop deluding myself into thinking that Royce could possibly be interested in me that way. He’s twenty and I am only seventeen. He’s in college. He’s a Current celebrity. And I am a stupid little Skylger girl for agreeing to meet up with him yet again.

10.

When I get home, I’m afraid Dad or Sytse will be able to see it in my eyes – how flustered and confused and revved-up I am. But if so, they don’t comment. They’re both sitting in the kitchen peeling potatoes and cutting vegetables.

“Can you pour us a mug too?” my brother pipes up when I walk over to the stove to make some tea. “You’re home late.”

“Yeah, I was helping Alke with his German test,” I lie. “So I was busy. Dani is dropping by tonight so we can work on my own assignments, though.”

“Relax,” Sytse grins. “You have all weekend to do your homework. I’m not going to play the evil big brother and scold you or anything.”

This is the bad thing about lying – you always want to make the lie sound too perfect so you end up saying too much. “Thanks,” I mutter, lighting the gas stove and watching the kettle as it heats up.

When Dani shows up here after dinner, I will have to focus on the anthology and nothing else. No more daydreaming about Royce. I don’t even want to tell my best friend how silly I’m being – she already warned me before.

As I sip from my hot tea and stare out the window, I see storm clouds drifting in. Let’s hope the rain will fall during the night, not tomorrow afternoon during the opening ceremony. The Currents are always seated under a big tarp covering the main bleachers, while we are gathered on the town square, out in the open. That’s just the way of the world.

Once we sit down for dinner, the mashed potatoes, onions, and carrots topped with mackerel feel like a brick in my stomach. I can’t eat more than a few bites before giving up. “I’ll save it for later,” I mumble when I see my father’s worried look. “I’m not that hungry yet.”

“Eida has offered to take Dad and Grandma Antje to Brandaris tomorrow,” Sytse announces cheerfully. “She’s bringing the cow-drawn carriage to town, so they can hitch a ride.”

Our neighbor is a darling. This way, my grandmother won’t have to walk and I won’t have to worry about transporting my dad by bike, running the risk of making the pain in his joints unbearable for the rest of the day. “That’s great,” I say with a smile.

After Sytse and Dad are done eating, I clear the table and put on another kettle to boil some water for the washing-up. No dessert tonight, so I have it easy. I just have to scrub the pots and wash some plates, cups, and silverware. I sing softly to myself as my hands dip into the hot, soapy water to rinse the forks.

“What’s that?”

Sytse suddenly pops up next to me. I hadn’t even heard him get up from his seat at the kitchen table – I thought he was reading the paper.

“What is what?” I say, looking up at him in confusion.

He narrows his eyes at me. “That tune you were humming.” When it still doesn’t click, he adds: “Enna, you were singing one of the songs from Phoenix. That LP.”

Oh, crap. He’s right. One particular song has been stuck in my head ever since I left the cottage a few hours ago. Weaving Web.

“N-no,” I stammer, groping around for a plausible excuse. “I just – came up with that melody today. I...”

I start when Sytse slams his fist on the counter. “Don’t lie to me,” he growls. I’ve never heard my brother speak to me like that. All of a sudden, he feels like a stranger with a secret side I should never have found out about.

“Okay,” I squeak.

“So. You listened to that record. How? When?”

My jaw tenses. “Who are you to interrogate me like this?” I throw back. “It’s none of your business.”

His face falls just a little bit. My words hurt him. We used to be so close before he left to work at sea. “Enna, it is my business,” he insists. “I gave you that record. Now, I want to know how you managed to listen to it. I didn’t mean to put you in any danger. Come on – I hate it when you lie to me.”

“Well, I’m not the only one keeping secrets,” I fume, my voice rising a notch. “What about your nightly visits to Stortum? When were you planning on telling me about those?”

“What the...” Sytse staggers back, then grabs my upper arm and forcefully shoves me away from the sink and out of the kitchen without saying anything else. He marches me into his room, kicks the door shut, and sits me down on the bed.

“Okay. Now tell me everything.”

His stern look makes me draw up a blank as I contemplate lying to him. Sure, I could tell him I saw him sneaking out of the house so I decided to follow him, but that still wouldn’t explain how I know about the music on my new record.

“Royce Bolton came up to me at the harbor,” I mumble. “Said he wanted the LP you gave to me. I refused. So we struck a deal – he said I could use his electric turntable if I agreed to listen to it together.”

Sytse lets out an incredulous sigh. “Enna, that’s dangerous,” he groans. “What if his family finds out? What if his mother barges into his room when you’re visiting?”

“I didn’t go to his house,” I argue. “He owns an old cottage in Stortum that used to belong to his grandparents. And he doesn’t have a mother