Locket Sirens

If there's something I'm not supposed to be doing, I've forgotten. The locket rests, heavy and cold, on my palm. I shiver, gooseflesh prickling my bare arms as the wind shifts course. In a frenzied game of tag, the curls I slaved over this morning dance and flatten across my face and I squint, trying to see through the thick locks. The locket hums again, haunted, and grows colder still. Frowning, I flip my palm upside down, trying to rid it of metal. The chain binds my fingers closed. The locket doesn't budge, but hangs instead from the gap between my life and heart lines. A pain, like pinching and releasing the skin, pricks across the flexes of my hand.

"You can't let it go now, Lees," Koto whispers beside me, his chrome-tinted eyes bulging and riveted to the necklace entangling me. There's a sheen to his lips I've never seen before; as I watch, his tongue sweeps across them again. A nervous habit.

Despite myself, I chuckle--a clipped, haughty sound that falls from behind my teeth like boulders down a cliff. My chest is tight with panic; I shake my hand again, trying to loosen the locket from its resting place. "What do you mean, can't let it go? Why not?"

"That's the siren's locket, that is." Koto's still whispering; his breath rushes out, tickling the back of my neck where he stands frozen.

I'm about to ask him what he means when the locket's tune changes. The metal warms, then burns--a branding across my skin and mind. Liquid fire pools from between the clasps, swirling paisley patterns up my wrist. My heart bobs between my ribs, a steady staccato beat I don't recognize. A long time ago, a wise man told me to never panic under stormy skies. I think of this and laugh again; I can't help it now the panic's started. There's no off-switch, no nozzle to turn.

Koto murmurs something against the curve of my shoulder, but it comes out muffled. He's faded into the background; I blink, trying to clear my eyes. More light ebbs from the locket latched to my hand, an impenetrable vortex of swirls painting themselves across the minute hairs on my arms. The wind picks up again, sweeping the billowing sleeves of my blouse up and away.

I hear her, then, the heartbreaking crescendo almost too much for my sensitive ears. She seeps from the light on my arm, a tiny fairy dancing along the curves of my elbow and the slants of my wrist. There's a mole high on her left cheek, I noticed, and her eyes--a brilliant color of almost-teal--flash from the shadows of her flitting movements.

For a moment, I forget again. About the locket adhered to my skin; about Koto waiting just behind me; about the fear. Sirens have a funny way of making the world seem beautiful before they drown you, after all. Sirens have a funny way of seeming kind.

When her song ends, I close the hinges of my jaws and blink. Between the shuttering of my eyes, I see her as she really is--monstrous. Her sharp teeth flash from beneath a hooded smile; her clawed wings stretch like tree limbs outside the windows of children late at night. In the shuttering of my eyes, I understand--and panic again.

"Koto, what do I do? How do I--"

But the siren doesn't let me finish. With a strangled hiss, she leaps from my forearm and disappears into the sea. I shake my hand again, a rough flailing of my arm that makes my bones ache. Still the locket doesn't move; the light has crawled up my shoulder now, inching toward my neck. I turn my head away and stretch, delaying the inevitable. "What do I do?" I ask again.

"I don't... I'm not sure there's anything you can do."

The locket screeches in my palm, angry now. The music, so tranquil and haunting before, cuts off mid-note. Once again, the world darkens, until all I see are the slopes of the necklace and the light streaming from the clasps. I gasp, squinting. Little dots speckle my eyes, a disco of glittering malice. Then, the locket speaks. "You will take her place."

"I... What? I don't understand." Confused, I try--more feebly--to prise the metal from my skin. Somehow, I wedge my fingers beneath the lip of the locket and pull, but to no avail. It won't budge.

"You will take her place!"

"What do you mean? Tell me what you mean!" I don't recognize my voice anymore; the shrill soprano slips from my tongue like water where once lived an alto.

"The singer slipped out to sea but I cannot be empty. I must have a singer. You will take her place."

"But I don't sing!  I swear, you don't want me!"  I think Koto's clutching at my fingers, trying to claw me back from the light, but he's too late. I probably should have listened when he warned me about the necklace. I should have left well enough alone.

The light flares once, then again, and lifts me from the rocky beach. I feel myself shrink as music sweeps through me, overtakes me. I squeeze my eyes shut. My heartbeat stutters, stutters, stu-tters...and then falls to silence. When I open my eyes, I can feel music where my veins used to be, a cacophony of noise.

I think I'm in the locket. Like a genie, I guess, but I don't remember sirens--at least, the ones I read about in fairy tales--granting wishes. There are music notes plastered to my skin; a burn oozes on my palm, the pain sharp. I try to focus on that, but the walls are too tight around me and I can't hardly move and just how much air can a locket hold, exactly?

I think I scream. For years, for decades, forever and then--

The music starts again.