Below the Surface

 The light, that was so bright above, was just a soft trickle in this underwater cavern. Alusru watched as the faint rays caught on Leira’s jade tail, reflecting a collage of colors onto the rock walls. Alusru’s black body consumed any brightness that reached her. The sea witch was a dark blot in the cave, a stain, a shadow to the beauty that was Leira.

  An invisible hand tightened around Alusru’s heart and lungs. She could never quite tell who it belonged to, whether it came from jealousy or something entirely different. It happened whenever she looked at Liera with her long lithe muscular form. The auburn hair that rippled in the tides. Her pointed chin and eyes the color of the clear sky and seas.

       “You should’ve seen them, Alusru!” Leira said while trailing her thin fingers over her new trophy: a pair of spectacles. “There must’ve been nearly three dozen on the merchant vessel.”

Alusru barely listened to what she was saying, too busy imagining those fingers on her neck, twisting in her short white hair. The pair of spectacles would be added to Leira’s vast collection of trophies. There were the small trinkets like silver utensils and useless watches, big items like statues and paintings that Leira had Alusru help carry to her secret grotto. It had been like this for as long as she could remember, Alusru following in Leira’s shadow, helping Leira with her big dreams. The sea witch couldn’t remember when helping Leira with her trophies became Alusru wanting to be one of Leira’s prized possessions. Alusru wasn’t a collector like Leira, but she wanted to bottle up her best friend’s smiles and her laughs. She wanted to catch those moments in jars and display them as her own. But there were no trophies for second place. And Alusru would never come before Leira’s dreams of the surface.

 “I went under the waves, and they dove in after me. You should’ve been there, Ru.” Leira chucked. “You would’ve laughed at their faces when they realized they had no air left and the surface was too far away.”

        Leira, the seventh daughter of King Triton, seventh in line to a throne that would never pass to her. Powerless in everything but name. And to a siren, power was everything. The power of a song. The power to lure unsuspecting sailors. Leira’s voice was strong enough to take down an entire battleship and she did so against her father’s wishes. She wasn’t supposed to draw the human’s attention as they might notice when they lost half a dozen ships and hundreds of men in a season. But Alusru had seen the thrill that shot through Leira when the hunt was on, when a song filled her mouth, when the men flocked to her and crashed their own ships on the rocks. Alusru looked around the sea cave at the thousands of items lined up on makeshift shelves.

        “Ru? Alusru, are you even listening to me?”

        “Of course, I am. You were just telling me about . . .”

        Leira hmphed. “Honestly Ru, why do you even come if you don’t care?”

Leira swished her tail to swim out of the cove. Alusru immediately followed, her tentacles rushing over the sand to catch up with her friend.

        “I’m sorry, Lei! It just been hard lately with Ma.”

Leira halted, causing Alusru to bump into her from behind. When their skin made contact, an electric ripple sparked across Alusru’s body, and her cheeks heated. Alusru wasn’t lying, but Ma wasn’t the sole reason she hadn’t been listening. She simply hated when Leira talked so coldly about death. Alusru imagined all those humans with their families and friends back on the surface, never knowing what happened to their loved ones. She understood the sirens needed food, but Leira rarely killed for that reason. Something churned in Alusru’s stomach at the thought.

Leira turned in place and clasped Alusru’s hands in hers. 

“Forgive me, I wasn’t thinking. How’s Ma doing? Any better?”

Alusru forgot all about the drowning men when Leira’s eyes softened in sympathy. Leira loved Alusru’s Ma like she was her own mother. Leira always told Alusru that Ma gave the best hugs, wrapping all six tentacles tight, and always made the best seaweed wraps and fish sandwiches. Ma was the one to take an interest in Leira’s life especially when King Triton never had.

“Her cough has gotten worse. Her gills are constantly clogged. I’ve tried so many potions and spells, but nothing seems to work.”

“What can I do?” Leira asked.

Alusru shook her head, “Nothing I haven’t tried. There’s a healing spell that mentions vervain, yarrow, and elderberry, but I can’t leave Ma long enough to go to the surface.”

There was a spark in Leira’s ocean blue eyes. Her siren had always wanted to go up to the surface on her own two feet. She yearned for Alusru’s stories every time she went up for spell ingredients. She begged to come with her, begged to be turned into a human for a day, an hour, a minute. Leira saw possibilities and power on the surface world that she could not have on the ocean floor. Alusru knew what Leira would say before she opened her mouth.

“I’ll go!” Leira predictably exclaimed.

When Alusru thought about unleashing her friend on the topside, images of death and destruction met her, but it was not this that had her shaking her head.

“Leira, you don’t even know what the ingredients look like.”

“You can teach me.”

Alusru knew that if Leira went up, she would have no reason to come back down.

“King Triton would never allow it,” Alusru replied.

Leira shrugged. “Just a quick trip, he doesn’t even have to know.”

        Alusru would lose her to the wonder and power to be had elsewhere.  Alusru would lose her to all the things that she could never give her as a lowly sea witch.

        “No, you aren’t going!” snapped Alusru. Leira’s eyes went wide, Alusru rarely raised her voice and never to her best friend.

“I was only trying to help you.”

        “No, you were only trying to help yourself,” Alusru countered, but she could see that the spark had already been lit inside Leira. It would not be so easily shoved away. “I have to go. I’ll see you later.” Alusru muttered before swimming towards home.

        Something tugged at her heart when she turned away from Leira, but she could not stay while her siren talked about leaving their home, leaving her. She had to get back to Ma, anyway.

         It had been a week since Alusru had last seen Leira. Ma had gotten worse. She had only managed to keep down fish broth over the last three days. Her usually ample black body and tentacles were skinny and gray. Her lavender skin was the palest Alusru had ever seen. Both sea witches had dark circles ringing their eyes either from sickness or lack of sleep.

        She regretted not sending Leira up to the surface. The usual cures of kelp and coral hadn’t worked, no matter how potent Alusru made them. If she had just trusted the siren, then Alusru would already have the herbs. Ma would’ve been better, not barely responding, each breath rattling in her chest.

        A soft knock came at the door. Alusru’s heart leapt, knowing there was only one person who ventured beyond the coral reefs into sea witch territory, but she was still loath to open the door. Leira would see how she had failed Ma, how powerless Alusru was against this illness that could take her mother. As much as the sea witch didn’t want to see her best friend, Leira might be her only hope.

      Alusru reluctantly let the siren into her home. Leira looked nearly as bad as Alusru. Something shot through the sea witch’s veins at the thought of Leira missing Alusru as terribly as she did her. They hardly went a day without seeing one another, let alone seven. Seeing Leira’s face immediately filled some of the gaping holes in Alusru’s heart. The siren quickly gathered the sea witch in her arms, tentacles and tail wrapped tight.

Leira pulled back first and looked around. She had been inside these walls thousands of times, but not quite like this. Never without Ma’s loud voice booming through the rooms in welcome, without the smells of some new potion of Ma’s cooking in the cauldron. Emptiness permeated the space even with three bodies in the same tiny room. One lying prone on the soft coral couch. Two radiating worry.

Leira slowly approached Ma, taking her hand. She hummed a soft melody and the power behind the chords immediately settled the lines on Ma’s forehead.

“I’m sorry,” Leira whispered as if not to wake Ma from her not so pleasant dreams of sickness and fever. “I should’ve been here. I shouldn’t have mentioned leaving.”

Alusru wanted to hold those words close to her chest. She never wanted Leira to leave these walls. She never wanted to have these foul words leave her mouth.

“But I need you to go.” The words nearly got stuck in Alusru’s throat. “You have to go up to the surface.” Leira turned her wide eyes to her, fear and hope and determination flickering in her gaze.  

“Are you sure?”

Alusru buried her face between her friend’s shoulder and neck while shaking her head. She fingered the shell around her neck, the one that granted her own powers to go to the surface. She wished she could make this journey herself, but she worried what might happen even if she left Ma for a day. Ma who couldn’t lift a bowl to her mouth or speak without coughing. She inhaled her siren’s salt and sweet smell that reminded her of home.

“No, but I’m afraid . . . if you don’t . . .”

Leira brushed her fingers through Alusru’s hair and down her neck, soothing her. “I’ll go up and I’ll come back with the ingredients. I promise I’ll come back. For Ma. For you.”

Alusru nodded and took Leira’s hand to bring her to the room with the cauldron. Alusru wondered how she could give Leira such unlimited power and still have her come back to a world where all she had was shipwrecks and no chance at a throne. Leira could rule the human world if she wished, they would adore her, worship her, flock to her song. Why would she give up exploring a new world to come back to a sea witch too weak to save her own mother?  Alusru began to slowly gather the items needed to make Leira’s own shell necklace. But what if Leira had no choice but to come back?

“I will make you a potion that will turn you into a human for three days,” Alusru told her. “Three days to find the yarrow, elderberry, and vervain. After the sunset on the third day, you will once again turn into a siren.”

Alusru wasn’t anywhere near skilled enough to put a strict time frame on a spell, but Leira didn’t know that. Leira would have no choice but to return, no choice but to be Alusru’s ever after. Alusru wondered if that was disappointment shining in her best friend’s eyes or just a trick of the light.

“And,” Alusru said, coming up with this on the spot, “you need to give me your siren song in exchange for two legs.”

“What?” Disbelief colored Liera’s tone.

“It’ll just be while you’re on the surface.”

“You failed to mention this before,” Replied Leira warily.

“This wasn’t a possibility before. You give up your siren song or you can’t go up.”

Leira watched Alusru carefully, eyeing her necklace, then looked back as if she could see Ma in the other room. “Fine.”

Alusru released a long breath then began to make the potion. She stirred in a mixture of herbs, dried fish parts, shark teeth, and a drop of human blood. Then she began her chant that had the brew bubbling and steaming. The sea witch found a small conch shell amongst her various jars and dipped it into the cauldron, filling it with the potion. The small shell was then strung on a cord that would hang around Leira’s proud neck. Before finishing the spell, Alusru held a hand in front of Leira’s throat and plucked out her siren song. The powerful magic glowed in a small orb that heated her fingers before she tucked it safely into her own conch shell necklace. Leira would now be more powerless on the surface world than she would be down below. Surely that would guarantee her return. Her control. Her power. She had three days. Ma just had to hang in there for three more days. 

Alusru took Leira’s hand and led her out of the house past Ma’s limp form. As they swam toward shore, Alusru advised Leira on the herbs she needed to acquire until they could see land in the distance. The sea witch stopped, knowing she shouldn’t go any further. She rubbed the new conch shell in her palm and hesitated before handing it over.

“I know you’ve always wanted this,” Alusru couldn’t quite meet Leira’s eyes. “but don’t forget about all of us down below. About . . . Ma.”

Leira lifted Alusru’s chin with her knuckle. “I could never forget about you, Ru.”

Her siren leaned in and Alusru’s breath caught as Leira pressed a small kiss against her cheek. Before she could lose her nerve, she took both of Leira’s hands and placed the spelled conch shell in the middle. She barely managed to say, “Please be careful.”

“Of course. I always am,” Leira said with a wicked grin.

Alusru gave her a skeptical look, but Leira just winked before swimming away. She had already been told not to put the necklace on until she reached the shore. Alusru stayed longer than she should’ve, watching Leira’s form disappear into the blue, wondering if she had made the biggest mistake of her life.

She spent the night pacing. Every time she tried to rest, Ma stirred, or she thought she heard a knock at the door. She couldn’t miss Leira’s return. Ma needed those herbs. Alusru needed Leira back home. When morning dawned, she made breakfast of broth and mollusks, neither of which Ma ate. Ma begged the food away when it refused to stay in her stomach. The day was quiet. Each hour passed at the speed of a starfish. Alusru wondered how ocean life could still go on when Leira’s absence was so palpable.

The next day wasn’t any better. She wondered if her instructions on the herbs had been clear enough. She berated herself for giving Leira three days when Alusru would have collected them in one. There was no way to contact Leira across the great land and sea. Perhaps Ma could’ve, but if her mother had been up to making magic then Leira wouldn’t have had to leave in the first place.

Alusru often resorted to holding Leira’s orb of siren song. She held it out to her ma as if she could also feel Leira’s presence through this kernel of power. Perhaps Alusru just imagined the creases disappearing on Ma’s forehead. She could’ve sworn that her mother had even mumbled Leira’s name at one point. But that mumble had turned into a coughing fit that left specks of blood floating in front of her mouth.

Alusru didn’t sleep that night, watching every movement her mother made. She remembered the times that Ma had done this for her. When Alusru snuggled in with her when she was sick and inevitably gave it to her mother. She wished her Ma could run her hands and tentacles through Alusru’s hair to soothe her worries away. She told her Ma about letting Leira go to the surface and recounted the feeling in her chest that made her heart thunder and fly whenever she was in Leira’s presence. She imagined her ma calling her on her dramatics and telling her ‘you just gotta kiss the girl’.

The sun rose on the third day with that thought in Alusru’s mind. Leira back in her arms, officially hers. Her siren would never need to venture to the surface again. A life safe below. Leira forever collecting trophies from her fallen. Alusru would help crash countless ships if that’s what it would take to keep Leira content.

It was on this third day that Ma clutched Alusru’s arm with the weakness of the dying and asked Alusru to take her to the reef. Alusru closed her eyes and adamantly shook her head. “It’s not time yet.”

“Oh, child,” Ma rasped, blood floating past her lips. “You are everything I could’ve hoped for. You are strong and brilliant and ambitious. I only wish I could be there for the rest of it.”

“You can, Ma. Leira will be back soon with the herbs you need.”

Ma’s smile was filled with pity. “Take me to the reef, daughter, before I slip away.”

Alusru carried Ma’s thin form in her arms as she made the short trek to the reef. Her mother was so weightless she had to keep looking down to ensure Ma hadn’t already turned into seafoam. Alusru set the dying sea witch down on a bed of soft corals. Ma gripped Alusru’s conch necklace, the same one that held Leira’s siren song.

“I will always love you both.” With each of her words Ma’’s grip slipped, and she slid further away until she became just a string of ocean foam floating toward the surface.

Salt poured from Alusru’s eyes as she rushed away from the coral reef. She refused to go home, back to the place that held so many memories of Ma and would never make new ones. Instead, she went to Leira’s secret grotto where she would wait for her siren’s return. 

The cavern was dark, only a couple of puddles of light shining on the rock walls. She ran her fingers over Leira’s trinkets, trying to think of anything but how alone she was in this underwater world. Alusru paused on the new pair of spectacles. She took in the gold wire rims and the glass clouded from Leira’s fingerprints. That felt like so long ago, before everything fell to pieces. 

Her eyes trailed to the left, to the jars with cork stoppers. The smallest one held dried muted yellow flowers. Slowly, she spun the container to view the peeling labeling that said yarrow. The vessel to its left contained small dark dehydrated fruits, elderberry. The last could’ve been any dry herb, but Alusru knew it to be vervain even before she saw its label. Perhaps Leira had just forgotten she had them. Maybe she didn’t know the herbs could be dried. It was possible that she never looked at their labels. Alusru ran out of excuses and looked at the fingerprints that were still present on the jars, the lack of sand that covered their surfaces and knew.

Her tentacles propelled her out of the cave faster than ever before. She flew faster than the ocean currents until she reached the surface world and used her conch shell to don her two-legged disguise. The necklace that held the siren’s power seemed to lead her to its counterpart. No one stopped her as she went past the markets and the ramshackle houses, all the way to the palace that loomed over the town. It was just outside that she found Leira standing under an altar in a white dress with a stately man. The ocean, their home, stood as a backdrop alongside the setting sun.

Alusru couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She wasn’t sure she had truly breathed since Ma floated away on the tides. Something broke in her chest when Leira pressed her lips to the man’s. Alusru let out a guttural scream. The two broke away and the man’s glazed eyes met Alusru’s. She had never killed a man before, but she suddenly understood the appeal. She staggered forward. Leira rushed forward to meet her, snatching Alusru’s wrists to keep her from getting any closer to the man.

“How could you?” whispered the sea witch.

“I was going to come back.” Liera searched Alusru’s eyes. “Give you the herbs and then ask for a stronger spell. More time.”

“It’s too late.” Leira gazed at the setting sun. Alusru never realized how much brighter the oranges and pinks were above.

“We could come back together,” Leira pleaded, “I’m going to be their queen. Think about all we could do. What we could be.”

“It’s too late,” Alusru repeated, and it seemed to finally connect for Leira. “You lied to me. Ma died waiting for you.”

 “Alusru . . .” Leira reached up to touch her cheek, but the sea witch brushed her away.

Not even a week ago she would’ve clamored for that touch. But now each soft touch seemed to remind her that Ma was no longer there. She had always known that the siren was a killer, just never thought she would turn against her. The betrayal and still lingering desire mingled together within Alusru. And still she knew she could not let the surface world have Leira. If she couldn’t have her, no one could. Alusru tried to tug Leira away, bring her back to the beach, to their home. Leira stood firm.

“I’m not going.” Leira pointed to the sun that had disappeared beneath the waves. Liera still had her human legs despite the sun setting on the third day. Alusru had never seen eyes so devoid of warmth. “You lied to me too.”

“Please, you’re all I have,” Alusru begged.

“You fail to see that you never truly had me.”

Leira began to turn away, but Alusru wrapped her fingers around Leira’s necklace as if to rip the spell away. She would drag her back to the ocean if she needed to. Leira caught her hand before she could. Ire shined in her ocean blue eyes.

“I love you,” tried Alusru, but Leira laughed.

“Wanting to possess is not love, Ru. Believe me I would know.”

“Ma loved you.”

Leira’s plush lips set in a hard line. “Go back to the sea.”

“I’m not leaving without you.”

“Then I guess you won’t be leaving at all.” Leira said and nodded at someone over Alusru’s shoulder an instant before something sharp plunged into the sea witch’s gut. “I’m more powerful than you could’ve ever imagined, Alusru. You took my song, but I learned I didn’t need it to lure them in.”

Alusru sank to her knees. Leira’s prince stood over her; he had the glazed eyes of the mesmerized and a knife in hand. Liera took a step closer, bent over and placed a kiss on the corner of Alusru’s lips before snatching her necklace away. The spell receded from her skin. Her two legs turned back into six tentacles. The small kernel of power slid from the inside of the conch shell, landing in Leira’s palm. The orb pulsed before the siren swallowed it and returned it to her throat. Leira smiled. The pain in Alusru’s gut and the beauty before her had something dripping down her cheek, salty and wet. The ocean poured from her eyes. It was a sensation she had never experienced and never would again. Her limbs melted away. Her heart broke into pieces. Like all merfolk who had come before her and all who would come after, Alusru dissolved into sea foam and returned to the seas, knowing that one day Leira would join her. 

About the Author

Sydney is a senior English major with a concentration in Creative Writing and a minor in History. She loves the fantasy genre (especially anything with dragons in it), but can also be found writing and reading some other stuff. She enjoys art such as crocheting and felt animal making (please ask). She grew up in Houston, Texas, but does not consider herself a Texan by any means. Back in Texas, she has two dogs and a turtle and is always willing to show pictures to anyone who asks