A/N: Right. I have nothing to say, but I feel the need to write an author’s note. I wish I could explain this story away, somehow, but there’s really no explanation. I suddenly felt the urge to write something that is entirely unlike anything I’ve ever written. Furthermore, I enjoyed it thoroughly, and hope you do the same. Now without anymore blathering from the author, the story:

A Stormy Silence

His hair was straggly and longish; it hung loosely over one cheek as he lay, his head in her lap, eyes staring. She brushed a finger over his lips, red where he’d bitten them, and tucked the hair behind his ear, gently, tenderly. It was soft in her fingers, though his face was scratchy with stubble, and she frowned in disappointment.

He was dead.

With distaste, the Siren eased his head from her lap and stretched him out flat on the rock, his arms limp at his sides.

She’d had such hopes for this one, watching him swim through the storm to be by her side, but like the others, he had flagged all too soon. She stroked his cheek with the back of her hand, the other resting tenderly on his chest.

A drop of rain landed on his forehead, and the wind swept the smell of brine into her nose.

His eyes were beginning to cloud, a gray film choking out the green. She wanted to remember them green, as they had been a moment ago, staring at her in utter worship. With a brush of her fingers she shut them, pleased by the look of dark eyelashes against his white skin.

Beautiful. The Siren smiled.

She leaned forwards then, as she always did, and kissed the lids, gently, lovingly, smoothed his hair, ran her hands down his arms.

As his body slid from the rock into the waves she sighed regretfully.

If he’d just been stronger.

The next one will be stronger.

Next time.

Always it happened the same way, and always she thought, expectation flooding back in, next time.

She turned her eyes to the horizon, watching. Another ship would come.

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And it did. The storm thrilled through her hair, a wild caress, and she sang to the rhythm of the waves, her breath quickening as one by one they leapt into the water, heads turned helplessly towards her, longing.

This time.

She longed with them, her hands outstretched, mouth open in song, demanding.

Hurry, hurry!

As always, her eye caught one, and she turned her song to him, euphoric, as the wind whipped her hair, smoothing out the knots, and lightening danced through her fingertips.

You are mine.

And as always, the men vanished, one by one, beneath the water, and with each one her euphoria faded. The song became plaintive.

Come, it begged, come to me. One of you come.

The last, the one she’d watched from the beginning, was dashed against her rock, dragged himself up, reached out to touch her foot, and stilled, water pooling with his blood under him.

She let her arms fall by her sides, the storm forgotten, and sank to her knees beside him, caressing his hair.

Not strong enough.

They never were.

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It was a week before she saw another ship, and the longing came back at the sight of the sails, stronger than before. She threw her head back, feeling the wind on her throat, and let the song build in her.

This time.

She sang her desperation, her demands.

Come to me!

And they came, throwing themselves to the mercy of the sea, their longing rivaling her own. She watched them as always, her eyes hungry, searching for the strong one, the one who would reach her.

And there, above the ship’s rail, poised to jump, she found him. Her eyes locked with his, blue and full of a desperate need to reach her, and she sang to him alone.

Come to me.

But he wavered. Behind him, a smaller figure, on its knees, was clutching his arm.

She put more power, more urgency into her song, but still the man wavered. It was then that she realized.

A woman.

The Siren snarled, furious.

Leave her! You are mine! Come to me!

He struck the woman who clung to him, hard, across the face, and turned to swim to the rock. She smiled, her breath light. He was coming.

But so was the woman. Clutching a barrel, it leapt from the rail and swam with all its might, the waves dashing into it with bruising strength.

As the Siren watched, it lifted its head, and their eyes met.

She had never seen anger in another’s eyes before, and it took her aback. Around them, the storm raged. Between them, the man struggled onwards. The difference in the woman’s eyes was this; it did not want to reach the Siren. It wanted her dead.

The man was barely alive when he reached the rocks, and she reached down, waves licking her fingers, to grasp his hair, drag him the rest of the way up. But it was too late. There was no life left in him.

The Siren shook her head, ignoring the storm. It would pass now that her song had ended. She went to her knees, pulled his head onto her lap, and rested her forehead against his own.

Not strong enough.

She slept then, the storm still raging about her, holding him to her and mourning, as she always did.

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She woke knowing that something was wrong. The storm had passed and the sun shone on the sea, clear and deep, with no clouds to be seen. The Siren reveled in stormy weather, but this sunshine did not irk her.

No. It was something else.

She was not alone on her rock.

The Siren whirled, holding the sailor to her, his head against her throat as if protecting him.

There, collapsed on the jagged edge of her rock, was the woman.

The Siren’s rock was not large, but then it did not need to be. It needed only to house herself and the occasional drowned sailor. She could walk the length in five steps, to where it sloped into the sea, where men sometimes clawed their way up, even in their death throes trying to reach her.

A smaller rock, big enough to crouch on, was connected at one end to her rock, when the tide was low, as it was now. That was where the woman lay sprawled.

The worst part, the part that made the Siren’s breath quicken in anger, was that the woman was alive.

Alive, the weak creature, while this strong, bold man was dead.

She glanced down at the man, stroked his hair lightly. He was beautiful, his skin purpled with bruises, his hair matted with salt and seaweed. She would give him to the sea soon, before his body began to rot, but for now she would attend to the woman.

Leaving him stretched out on the rock, the Siren strode to where the woman slept, and looked down at it. The remains of a barrel were caught beside it, and the Siren frowned. This would not do. This intrusion was more than she could bear.

Her hand hovered for a second over the woman’s hair. Such a weak creature. She would have no difficulty drowning it…

She turned and strode onto her own rock again, uncertain, and looked out at the sea. The man was behind her, and she could see nothing but ocean and sky. This had never happened before.

There was a sound behind her and she whirled again. The woman had moved, had crawled onto her rock, and was touching the man with outstretched fingertips, moaning softly.

The Siren took a step forwards, suddenly angry, but the woman ignored her, collapsed on the man’s chest, and rocked him back and forth, crying.

“Oh my love, my dearest, no. No.” The woman kissed his lips, his hair, his hands, pleading with him, and the Siren looked on, intrigued.

“He is dead.” She said it flatly. “I have seen it many times; he will not wake for you, nor for me.”

The woman’s head snapped up and their eyes met again. The Siren stepped back once, unnerved by what she saw there.

“You!” The anger of the night before was there again, drowning out the grief. “You lured him here! You killed him!” Tears rolled down the woman’s cheeks, and the Siren watched them, curious.

“He was not strong enough.” Again she said it dispassionately.

The Siren was a creature of passion, but she had never spoken to another creature. This woman was passionate too, but there was no reason for her passion. Disappointment was reasonable, but not this wild grief and anger.

“If he had strength enough, he would have lived.”

The woman shrieked and flew at the Siren, beating at her with clenched fists, sobbing unintelligible things. The Siren, shocked, allowed one fist to land on her shoulder before grasping both wrists hard enough to bruise, and holding them over the woman’s head tightly. She was nearly a head taller, and she looked impassively on as the woman struggled in her grip.

The Siren inspected it, frowning. “This is what I saw in your eyes during the storm. You wish me dead.”

The feeble thing strained against her iron grip and she eyed it, dispassionate. “But I am not afraid of you because you cannot make me dead, no matter that you wish it.”

At that the woman went limp, tried to go to its knees, let out a great gasp. The Siren held tight to its wrists. “You are a curious thing,” she said, finally, releasing it. “You mourn for him, but will not give him to the sea, and give him tears when it will do him no good. He is dead. You cannot heal him.”

“He is dead because you have killed him, you heartless creature!” The woman sobbed.

The Siren laughed, lightly. “He is dead. It is a disappointment, surely, but there is nothing to be done. The next one will be stronger.”

The tearstained face turned up to look at her. “What does it matter how strong they are? You kill them all.”

The Siren had, felt fear, a second ago, an utterly foreign emotion, at the anger in the woman’s eyes, and now felt anger herself. Without knowing why she did so, she struck the woman across the face, hard enough that it fell down upon the rock, weeping still.

“Be silent.”

The wind, feeling her fury, swirled around her as she strode away from the woman, towards the dead sailor. Ignoring her unwanted visitor, she knelt again, and took his hand in her own. There was a choking noise from the other end of the rock, and she pretended not to hear it.

His eyes were closed already, and she was pleased. She pressed a kiss into his palm and shut his mouth, seeing that the jaw hung loose.

“Not strong enough.” She whispered in his ear, and kissed his eyelids, gently, lovingly.

“Leave him!”

The woman was back, flinging itself over his chest, between the Siren and the man, weeping again.

The Siren, astonished, leaned away. “Do you weep again?”

“Don’t touch him, you monster!”

She grasped the woman’s hair and pried it away from him, forcing it to sit.

“You do weep.” She heard the surprise in her voice. “But why? You will do him no good. He is dead, and you cannot heal him, not with all the tears in your body.”

The woman was silent for a moment, its sobs at an end. Then, bitterly, it spoke. “I do not understand.”

The Siren stood, confused. “You weep to heal him, do you not? But he is beyond healing.”

The woman stared at her.

“Do your tears not heal?”

Then, at last, understanding dawned on its face. “My tears don’t heal anything, no, and I’m crying because I loved him, and you have killed him.”

Again the anger, but she suppressed it this time, in favor of learning something. “Love?”

This drew a bitter laugh. “Yes, you wouldn’t know anything of that, would you? You would not understand if I were to tell you.”

The Siren sat down, her legs folded beneath her, a light breeze floating over her skin. “Tell me.” It was an order.

The woman’s eyes rested on the body. “I love him. I would…I would die for him, I suppose. Now that he is gone my life is nothing.” It glanced at the Siren. “I want nothing more than to be with him.”

The Siren stood, facing the sea again. “Is it a longing, you feel?”

“Yes. You cannot understand. You are nothing but a…”

“I have felt it also.” She interrupted. “I have felt it at every coming of every ship. I too loved this man. And yet none of them come to me.” She spoke with a hint of uncertainty, which she immediately quashed.

There was another sob behind her.

“Save your tears.” Her voice was dreamy. “I will give him to the sea now.”

And, ignoring the wails, she did so, smiling as his body slipped beneath the waves.

Next time.

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It was some time before the woman became interesting again. The Siren watched it, unblinking, as it gave itself up to grief. She had stared at ships, and the sea, and the sky, but never a being like this.

Finally, when a day had passed, the woman ceased its crying and lay still, in apparent exhaustion. Still the Siren watched. The woman moaned, softly, and the Siren had to lean forwards to catch the word.

“Water…”

She laughed. “There is water all about you, if you have need of it.”

Another dry sob. “I cannot drink it. Not seawater.”

“What then? What other water is there?”

“Rain. Oh what does it matter? I will die here, like Henry.”

“Henry? You speak in riddles, woman.”

The woman, despite its apparent weakness, fairly spat its next sentence. “Henry was the dearest love I have ever had, the one you have given to the sea.”

“And what do you need this water for?”

“To drink, you harpy!”

“And if you do not drink?”

“I will die, and be glad of it.”

The Siren wheeled to face the sea again, looked to the clouds, and smiled. A drop of rain splashed onto the rock.

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The creature went from desperation to anger to exhaustion.

“Why are you helping me?”

“You intrigue me.”

“But why?”

“I want to understand love.”

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“He was going to marry me. He said he would.”

“If he had lived, he would have been mine.”

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“When are you going to kill me?”

“When the next ship comes.”

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Days passed, and the woman stopped asking questions at all. The Siren simply watched it, wondering at the anger it displayed.

“Why do you say I killed him?”

She had never thought so much about one of the men. They simply swam as hard as they could, died, and were forgotten. To remember this way, to agonize over every detail, to relive his death, seemed barbaric.

“Because you did!” the woman rose up from its position, gazing out at the horizon, and clenched its fists. “You call them with your song, and they lose sight of all else! You call them, and they dive willingly into their deaths! No one is strong enough to survive that! You are killing them all, and you do not even realize it!”
“Be silent. You understand nothing.”

“None of them will reach the rock. They will all die!”

She crossed the space between them with one stride and pushed the woman hard on the shoulders, glared down on it as it lay on the hard rock.

“You are a fool.”

“I don’t care! I don’t care that you can kill me; you will anyway. But try to escape the truth if you want, I know you see it. You’re singing them all to their deaths.”

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Sometimes she longed for a ship to come. It was a new feeling for her; time had been meaningless before the woman had come, but each day now dragged on and on.

Other times she feared the coming of the next ship.

None of them will reach the rock.

It was always in the evening that the woman spoke, and always without warning. When the sun kissed the top of the water, she would tell the Siren of her life, of the dead man, always looking out to the ocean, never at the Siren.

This night she spoke of another man.

“I thought for the first day that he’d come for me. They were only a day behind us, and I thought he’d rescue me from this rock, but I know he won’t now. Eight days is too long. They’ll have gone on.”

“Who?”

“My brother.”

“You…you love him?”

“Not in the same way as Henry.” The woman faltered. “He is family, and that’s different.”

“Tell me of this one.”

“He’s always been there for me. He convinced Father to let me marry Henry, and that we’d be able to make a new life for ourselves overseas. He never thought this would happen.” It laughed. “None of us did, I suppose.”

The woman took something from around her neck and held it out to the Siren, still watching the setting sun. “Open my locket. There’s a picture of him and Henry inside.”

The Siren, after a moment’s struggle, opened the tiny compartment and gazed at the likenesses inside. One she recognized as the dead man—Henry. The other…

The other stared out in defiance, his eyes a clear blue, his eyebrows thick. She shut the locket.

“He will come for you.”

The woman started.

“He will come for you, but he will come to me in the end.”
“No!”

“He is strong enough. I can see it in his eyes, the strength. He will come here, and you will go home on the ship, and he will stay with me.”

The woman fell to its knees, grasping the Siren’s hand. “Please don’t. Please don’t sing if he comes! I can’t bear to watch him die too.”

The Siren shook of its hand coldly. “He will not die, you foolish creature.”

“Oh, why can’t you understand? No man will ever reach this rock! How long have you been here? A hundred years? And how many men have you sung to, and how many have lived?”

“I will strike you again if you are not silent. He will live.”

The woman cried, a desperate sound, and did not speak again.

The Siren ignored her. He would come. In the morning she would force the woman to tell her more of this man, but for now she was content to imagine.

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In the morning, the ship came.

The Siren greeted its sighting with a proud toss of her hair and a smile. The woman greeted it with a sob.

“It is him. I beg you not to kill him as well.”

“Be silent.”

And then, as the ship drew closer, she raised her chin to the wind, feeling it swirl around her, laughing with sheer joy at the power of the coming storm. Then, with the clouds gathering behind her, she opened her mouth and began to sing.

At first the melody faltered, and she did not know why, but soon enough it flowed from her as it always did, and she saw the figures on the rail, poised to leap.

And then something—the woman—hit her from behind and knocked her down, and the song faltered.

So did the men. She could see him now, the strongest, shaking his head and waving an arm at the others. With one hand she grasped the woman’s hair, hauled it in front of her and forced it’s head into the ocean, holding it steady, and began to sing again. She sang only to him now, and the others held back, frightened of the madness they’d felt.

In her other hand was the woman’s locket.

He, the woman’s brother, dived gracefully, the choppy water welcoming him. Come to me!

He would reach her. She was sure that he would.

The woman struggled beneath her arm, floundering to raise its head from the water, to breathe, but the Siren held it fast. It would not interfere.

He was swimming, his strokes long and powerful, and she beckoned to him with her free arm, her song thrilling through her blood.

And then, close enough to her rock that she could hear his labored breath, a wave rolled over him.

She waited, expectant, for him to appear above the water again, to reach the rock.

The woman ceased struggling beneath her hand.

The water was a dark mass of rolling waves, and he was nowhere to be seen.

None of them will reach the rock! They will all die!

Her song faded and she pulled the woman from the water, shook it by the shoulders. “Help me!”

But the woman’s head was loose on its shoulders; its eyes were shut.

You have killed them!

Water gushed from its mouth and it coughed, a horrible, wrenching sound, and the Siren rejoiced to hear it, but could wait no longer.

She slipped from the rock into the water.

It was dark under the waves, and she was buffeted from every side, but not in an angry way. The waves were simply a playful lover, embracing her.

She looked around, her eyes wide in the gloom, her hair streaming out behind her. He should be here. He must be…

There.

Amid the darkness, a darker shape drifted, a little ways beneath her. She swam to him, grasping him by the arms, towing him to the surface. He was limp in her hands, but she hauled him onto the rock, seawater streaming from her.

The woman lay stretched out on the rock, gasping, and she shoved it aside, laid him out on his back, pushed his hair from his face, frantic.

I will not kill another.

But it was too late. She had known from the way he drifted beneath the waves, the way his arms had been limp, and from the way his eyes stared. She had seen enough death to recognize it, and he fairly reeked of it.

“No.”

She did not know if it was her or the woman who spoke.

You have killed them!

It was unbearable. The cold part of her, the part that still thrilled from the song, from the storm, was frightened at the emotion she was feeling. She recognized it from the woman.

The Siren fell onto his chest, her tears swallowed up by the seawater saturating his clothes. She looked at the woman, her face streaked, and choked out, “This is love, woman, and I regret that ever I wished for such a thing.”

The woman did not hear her. It looked at the man’s face with an expression beyond grief.

She could not bear this.

Her lips trembling she bent down and kissed him, her tears falling on his face now. And an idea struck her. There was life in her. She touched it when she called the storms, the wind.

The Siren bent again, touched her cold lips to his still ones, and reached.

For an instant it seemed to work. She felt something answer inside him, felt life trickle into him…

And out of her.

There was not enough.

Almost she took it back. The drain, the tired feeling in her chest frightened her, and almost she jerked away.

But he was alive, or nearly so. She did not need to give him everything…

Again she kissed him, felt her life flow away, and this time she did not stop. A little more…only a little.

She felt his chest move, felt him take a deep, shuddering breath, before she collapsed.

The Siren smiled as she felt her breath falter.

No more ships. It is at an end now.

She did not see him sit up, did not feel her head slide to his lap, her clouding eyes staring up at him.

She did not hear his sister’s disbelieving cry, did not hear the intake of breath from the men gathered at the ship railing.

The Siren did not hear anything. She was drifting, her mind racing through currents, embracing the waves and the wind, no longer anchored in her rock or her body.

She did not wake, even as the man who held her gently shut her eyes, pressed light kisses to the lids, dropped tears like seawater into her hair, closed her fingers around the locket she still clutched.

A/N: Please don’t review to tell me what crap this is; I know some parts of it are really pretty bad, so I don’t need telling. If you’ve got some ideas on how to make it better, or, God forbid, you actually LIKED it, that’d be good to hear. :-)