“Lookie here, lookie here. Looks like we’re getting a little hankie pankie by the shore,” the pirate with the net sneered.

Kradr pushed me behind him. My back was flat against the rock and his body was shielding my front.

“Oh no, don’t worry, island savage, we’re just looking for some treasure. Our guide seems to have gone missing in action,” another stated.

“No treasure,” Kradr said.

They whispered among each other and pointed, looking from the sea where Kradr and I once stood and then back to us.

“What’s that creature behind you, then?”

I cast my gaze downward and tried to will my glowing amber eyes to diminish and my translucent scales to recede. My mind and body were torn. I was terrified and there was nothing I could do to hide my nature. My pupils dilated. My pulse slowed. My body was readying itself to change. To flee to the safety of the ocean where I knew the pirates couldn’t hurt me.

“You touch. I kill,” Kradr warned.

One of the pirates held up his hand. “Okay, island savage. We don’t want to fight. We want to trade.” The pirate illustrated the word for trade in sign language. “Trade, you know…like trade.”

Kradr growled.

“Okay, okay…” the pirate continued, taking two steps back. “We have something you like. Grain. Rice. From the Isle of Ivailles.” He held up two fingers. “Two sacks. One Undine.”

Undine. It was an ancient name for mermaid. They wanted to trade me for the food. Food that would probably last the residents of Kradr’s village for months. It wasn’t uncommon for pirates to trade with the inhabitants of the Quag. And in this era, trading was the way of life.

“No deal,” Kradr said.

The pirate grunted. “Four sacks for the Undine. That's two sacks of grain and two sacks of rice. Will last an entire season."

“Go away,” Kradr grunted.

“Okay, island savage, we tried to play nice,” the pirate said, grabbing a weapon from his waistband. “Move away from the creature.”

I gasped, recognizing the weapon right away for what it was. A pistol. Pirates always carried them, and sometimes they meant instant death.

Kradr gestured to the water crashing against the rocks behind us and said, “Swim, Celeste. Swim.”

Before I could protest, he extracted his spear and squared off in front of the pirates. My body was still partially concealed by Kradr. If I wanted to, I had enough space between the pirates and me to make a run for it.

The pistol went off and my heart jumped. One moment later, Kradr’s spear sailed through the air and caught the first victim in the gut. Then, he kept on charging them and dodging bullets. Even more pirates came out of nowhere, running from what looked like a small boat waiting in the ocean. Their ship must not have been too far off.

I crouched down low and snatched a knife from the belt Kradr had left behind just as a pirate came at me with a net in his hand.

“There, there, little mermaid. No one’s going to hurt you. That’s what you are, right? We saw you trying to lure that savage to his death.”

I snarled and hissed.

“Put the knife down, huh?”

“Let us go,” I commanded.

“Too late for that. The savage must pay for what he did, and you, little mermaid, you’re coming with us. You’ll be a nice little maiden wench for us leading us to all the treasures below the sea.”

I backed away with the knife still gripped tightly in my hand. My attention was split in so many directions. Every time Kradr made a connection with his spear, the sound would echo through the air. Every time the pirates shot their pistols, my heart would skip a beat.

“Don’t come near me, please.” I held up the knife.

He laughed and lunged at me with the net spread wide. I jumped out of the way, but he had my ankle in a vice grip. I threw the knife, staking him right between the collarbone. I hadn't thrown the damn thing hard enough to injure him seriously. He yanked it out and flung it aside.

“Now you’ll really pay for that, you stupid wench.”

I got up and took off running with the net still stuck around my ankle. I didn’t make it very far. Something heavy thumped me in the back, striking my spine and knocking the breath right out of me. I stumbled forward, hitting my head on a boulder.

When I opened my eyes, it took me a while to see clearly. A dark shadow loomed over me and then I felt cold, clammy hands grab me by the legs and jam my ankles together. His crabby fingers groped my thighs. I didn't know what came over me, but I reacted, jumping up and grabbing the pirate’s head and bashing it against the rocks. There was a sickening crack and then he went still.

With blood on my hands, I ran across the beach, scooped up a spear from the sand and went to help Kradr fight off the others. Two pirates had him cornered with two more lying motionless on the ground.

“He’s not human either,” I heard one of them say.

A gun went off before I could charge and Kradr collapsed to the ground. I sent the spear flying through the air with all the strength left in me. Throwing a spear in the deep blue was different from throwing one through the air. My aim was rusty. The sharp end staked the pirate in the left back shoulder. It was enough to stop him from shooting another bullet. He hollered and spun around. His eyes widened when he saw me coming. While the second pirate worked to extract the spear lodged in his shipmate’s shoulder, I threw myself on the ground next to Kradr.

“What did you do to him?” I screamed.

After realizing that Kradr wasn’t moving and seeing the blood puddling in the sand beneath him, I screamed. My blood-chilling cry rent the atmosphere and seemed to vibrate the very air around me.

Both pirates doubled over and covered their ears. The pitch was too high for their human ears. I hoped they were bleeding from the eardrums.

They stumbled back and took off running to the shore where their boat awaited. There was a third pirate on the boat, waving them back to the ocean.

I sat in the sand and pulled Kradr’s head onto my lap. “Kradr, please come back to me.”

I checked his pulse, shook him a bit, and pried his eyelids open with my fingers. Nothing would wake him. And those coward pirates were now halfway back to their ships, rowing like mad to flee the scene.

“Kradr. Please wake up," I pleaded, stroking his face.

Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw something creeping out from behind the rocks. On instinct, I pulled Kradr to my chest and waited on bated breath, ready to kill again if I had to. Not only did one figure stand up from behind the rocks, but a second did too.

“Who’s out there?” I called.

A woman and a younger man revealed themselves, closing the distance and walking up to where I sat with Kradr.

When I looked up, I couldn’t believe it. The woman had amber eyes, identical in color to mine. She was inked from head to toe, with markings all over her body. Her clothes were nothing but sheets of silk fabric covering her chest and legs. The young man’s eyes were black as coals and he remained behind the woman. He held a spear just like the ones we made in the ocean.

“You called,” the woman said, in a deep husky voice.

“I don’t know who you are,” I replied.

Her gaze lowered down to Kradr. She pointed. “Zaqwar. Enemy.”

“No.” I shook my head. “Part Zaqwar. Not enemy. Friend.”

She snarled and hissed. “Not Siren. Enemy.”

“No. He’s not Siren. Are you a…s-siren?” I asked.

She nodded. “Like you, yes.”

I gasped. My fellow Siren. I had so many questions. I had so much to say.

“Come with us,” she demanded.

“I can’t leave him. He’ll die.”

"We'll help him live, and then you come with us," she urged.

“You can help him?”

The young man poked her in the back and they huddled together for a moment and spoke in a language I had locked away in my memory.

“He won’t kill you,” I said, after listening in on their conversation. “He is Kradr. Man of the Quag.”

The woman turned back around and walked cautiously toward me. Then she knelt in the ground and placed her palm on Kradr’s forehead.

“You said I called?” I asked.

“We heard your warning and your cry for help. Pirates attacked you.” She pointed out to the ocean where the men rushed away in their boats. “Ship surrounded. They will pay.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I am like you,” she stated.

“I know, you said that, but where did you come from?”

The woman turned around and looked at the young man, who gave her a disapproving stare. I grabbed her arm and she shifted her attention to me. She looked at my hand wrapped around her wrist, gently removed it, and then placed her palm against mine.

“You are a healer. Like me,” she said.

“Healer?”

“Yes. Like doctor heals with medicine.”

I opened the pouch at my side and pulled out the leaves I had collected to use on Kradr’s wounds and showed them to her.

“For wounds. For Kradr’s wounds. This will help him, won’t it?”

She shook her head, took the leaves away from me, and threw them down in the sand. “You don’t need that. Like me, you heal with your heart.” She pressed her palm to my heart. “The knowledge is here.” She pressed two fingers to my forehead.

I shook my head. “I’ve lived in the sea as Mer for a very long time. As orphan and a prisoner. I don’t have the kind of knowledge you have.”

“You do. You have to believe. When you believe, the magic will come.”

I frowned. “Spells?”

“No spells. Magic,” she corrected.

“Show me,” I demanded. “Show me how to wake him.”

“I show you. You come with us.”

I was torn. Again. I didn’t want to leave Kradr, but I wanted him to live. The woman must have noticed my indecisiveness because she said, “You are one of us. Not one of him.”

“I can’t just leave him. I have to help him. He’s good. He saved me.”

She looked down at Kradr and swept back some hair from his forehead. “You love him?”

I nodded. “Yes. Please, just do it.”

“Then your heart has decided,” she stated. “You will not leave. I cannot stay.”

“No, I won’t leave him. Help me. Show me how to help him.”

“You already know how.” She pressed my palm to his chest and placed her hand above mine. "The gift is in your blood. Believe."

I closed my eyes. I had to believe. Of course, I did. My mother once told me that a day would come when I had to believe the impossible. ‘You call and they will come.’ She had always assured me of that. Sure enough, they had. The Sirens had come. I took a deep breath, and when I released it, Kradr coughed and tried to sit up. My eyes flew open.

“Kradr?”

“Celeste…the pirates?” His voice was strained. He was in pain as evidenced in the way he grimaced.

I looked behind me at the ocean, hearing the sound of gunshots ringing out in the air and deadweight hitting the sea in the distance.

“The pirates are gone. The sea took them,” I said.

The pirates weren't the only ones gone. The young woman who had helped me and the young man who had accompanied her were nowhere in sight. It was like they had vanished into thin air. But where did they go? Were they on the land or in the sea?

“Hello?” I called out into the darkness. “Are you still there?” Silence.

“Who are you talking to?” Kradr asked weakly.

“The Sirens. They were here. They helped me.”

He smiled. “I only see one beautiful spellsinger here and that would be you.”

I grinned. “You were right.”

“About what?”

“The magic.”

“Why didn’t you go? I held them off as long as I could. You were supposed to run,” he said.

“I don’t run,” I told him.

He tried to grin but cringed instead and pressed his head back into the sand.

“Oh, don’t try to move. I think you were shot,” I said.

“I’m so sorry, Celeste. You shouldn’t see me this way.”

“I’m just glad to see you. I’m free because of you. You bled to save me.”

“I am warrior. I bleed…” His eyes closed and he said no more. His lips were parted and I lowered my head down to make sure he was still breathing. He was alive and the blood had stopped leaking, but before healing him, he had already lost so much.

I stood up, turning this way and that way, looking all around, trying to decipher where the Siren ran off to. I wanted to thank her. Someday, I would. But I had to leave and she could not stay.

Some noise near the edge of the shoreline caught my attention. Something was rocking back and forth. I left the sleeping Kradr where he lay on the sand and ran out to see what it was.

It was a piece of a dinghy. Probably from the pirate ship taken down by my fellow sea people. The waves were pushing some of the debris back ashore.

I chuckled at my peculiar luck.

I dragged the wooden plank onto the beach, scavenged around for some nets, and made something to slide Kradr onto so I could pull him to shelter. We couldn't stay out here in the open. The recent incident had taught me that danger lurked everywhere.

When I reached the safety of the Quag, I didn’t stop there. I kept going in the direction we planned to travel before we took a detour to see the ocean.

I used the peak of the volcanos of Volming as my guide and never stopped.

When I reached the village, I was so weak and worn out that I could barely make out the faces of the people that ran outside the gates to stare at me, speaking in some weird language I did not know.

My legs gave out as a crowd of villagers surrounded me…

I kept fading in and out of consciousness…

There were hands on me. Soft hands. A woman’s voice called out to me. Her eyes were icy blue. Her hair was black as night. She was speaking to me.

“Thank you for bringing back my son,” she said.

I closed my eyes and slept.