I'm glad I'm a siren, even if I am a poor one. I used to look at people like Tad and Victoria as if they'd won some sort of cosmic lottery. The type that got to eat pancakes and ride their broomsticks underwater in the pond while I was learning to talk without a lisp and recognize the difference between a skin firming potion and a skin softening potion. When Mother and I shopped for the latest fashions, I used to peer in toy store windows and imagine what it would be like to play with rubber duckies that really quacked and ate bubbles out of your hand (instead of learning which colors brought out my eyes and which made me look like I was dying of consumption).
The pancake thing though...I'd had an obsession with pancakes for awhile. Sirens eat things like grilled okra with a hint of lime on a bed of sea cucumber, and I had a crazy notion that if I ate pancakes everything about my life would change. So one morning after sneaking a look at a client's "Witchkeeping For Holidays" I tried to follow the recipe and doubling spell for blueberry pancakes listed in the "fail proof breakfasts your kids will love". I measured every ingredient twice and practiced the doubling spell quite vigorously. I didn't know though, that food charms are really easy to do and really hard to stop. Mother came down for coffee and found me smashed up against the pantry door crying for help, pinned by a torrential explosion of blueberry goodness. You'd think I would have kept a respectful distance from pancakes after that, but I never was very good at knowing when I was beat. (I'm told it's all about the wrist flick....not that I've kept trying or anything).
Once I made the mistake of asking about my Father. It's not that it was a taboo subject or some kind of scandalous secret, it's that Sirens don't have fathers. Oh sure, we come into existence the regular way everyone else does, but sirens are a strictly female species and proud of it. It’s super rare for a siren to get married, they (er...we) like men...but more like exotic pets than a help mate you want to pick your nose and clip your nails around. It's hard to explain, but my asking about my father was tantamount to me throwing away my entire heritage. Like I’d scrubbed off my skin, gouged out my eyes and tried to become a werewolf or something. I was five though, and saw a little witch riding on her daddy’s shoulders as an ice cream cone floated up and down between the two of them, and well… I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to want that.
And I felt like that again as I walked through the modest wooden door of my new room. I saw the plain bunkbeds, stone basin and linen curtains and immediately felt tingles down to my toes. They say you can’t feel magic unless you’re born to it, but I swear I felt more magic with this plain old witchy stuff than I did with the lush cashmere bedsheets and silken window hangings that were my birthright at home.
“I’m moving in with you. Victoria stinks… as in literally smells like an old Rinthaven woman with a garlic addiction.” Cristina said, coming in unannounced. She was pushing the largest chest I’d ever seen and at least a half dozen various sized packages bouncing around her head.
I hadn’t noticed Victoria smelled like anything, but then again I wasn’t a vampire. Mostly I was trying to decide whether or not I was super annoyed, or secretly thrilled Cristina was barging in. She was so obnoxious and rude it made me feel even more welcome (maybe I have a problem...hmmm yes, I definitely think this would be classified as some sort of self immolation type of illness). All I needed was to role my eyes and complain to Victoria and I would have almost fulfilled all of my thirteen your old fantasies about having girlfriends.
“I don’t think they want us switching rooms.” I said. Wait, was that a two headed hellcat rug she was rolling out on the floor? A real one?
“Don’t tell them then, or better yet...YOU go room with Victoria and I can have this room by myself. How did you luck out getting your own room?... probably because you’re a siren”. She rolled her eyes.
Hey, the eye rolling was supposed to be my deal! And just like that, a little of the sparkle had gone out of the room. All the smugness I’d felt moments earlier about finally being just like everyone else had been replaced with the remembered realization the word “siren” wasn’t going to conjure any feelings of camaraderie around here.
“I didn’t ask for my own room.” I said quietly.
“Of course you didn’t...you just walked in through the front gates and the door warden probably couldn’t fall over himself fast enough to make sure you got your own room.” She said. She tossed a piece of lumber and a gaudy purple pillow onto the bottom bunk. I quietly moved my stuff to the top bunk. Just in time too, as the piece of lumber promptly started unfolding and unfolding itself into a funny looking box.
Oh right, vampire.
“I came through a back door.” I said, folding up my gray dress (it looked very outnumbered...possession wise) not that it mattered where I came in, but I didn’t like it when people got details wrong. With Cristina, there were so many it was hard to figure out where to start. “And if I could charm people without even trying, you wouldn’t be putting all your books in the bookshelf and hanging a pink fuzzy tassel over my lamp.” I pointed out.
Cristina threw her gaudy velvet pillow at me. “That’s because I’m too smart to fall for your wiley ways.”
“I thought you said people couldn’t help themselves around me.” I said, picking up the pillow and throwing it back at her.
"ladies, ladies is please! This isn't boarding school." A pencily thin lady with an apron so starched I wasn't sure who was wearing who, came in with a stack of linens. Her mouth formed a thin line as she took in the zebra print flung over the existing curtains, and the pink tassels. She turned to me. "I wasn't aware you were allowed to redecorate?"
I was confused for a moment....this whole "sirens are seductive nefarious beings" thing was still a new state of affairs for me. I mean, I knew some sirens were like that, but my mother had made it very clear I was lacking in all the usual skills. "Oh. Sorry, they're um..." I hesitated, not wanting to get Cristina in trouble. Did she really think sirens decorated like this? "...uh, they're family heirlooms." I said, hoping my grandmother Marguerite wasn't rolling over in her grave.
"As headmistress Evelyn of this floor, I expect you to at least keep it tidy and make sure it doesn't attract spiders." She sniffed, she set the linens down. "And you're going to miss supper if you don't get down to the cafeteria soon." She said. "It is strongly suggested you eat a light something before your first night, but of course experience is the best teacher and a fool learns from no other."
She left, and I took my parchment out to study the map. I'd been avoiding trying to go anywhere else, it'd taken me long enough to find these spires where our dorms were. Couldn't I just learn and do everything from here?
"Oh come on, we don't need that thing. You can smell the food a mile away." Cristina tossed the parchment on the desk. "Maybe they have really strong coffee."
I picked up our robes, dare I hand Cristina hers? Or would she make some comment about me boogey charming her stuff or something.
"Don't touch my stuff." Cristina said, snatching it from me, I couldn't shut off the siren part of my brain that registered the fabric as grade B scratchy wool.
"I don't want you to hex my robe to soil itself or something." she said.
...wait, did she just wink at me? At least I think it was a wink. It was hard to tell and I could easily talk myself into thinking I'd hallucinated it, but she was already striding down the hallway. I ran to catch up. There was no way I was finding the cafeteria without her nose. Of course, if I couldn't find the cafeteria, how was I supposed to fare on rounds tonight? My stomach lurched. On second thought, maybe food wasn't a good idea.
....unless. "Think they have any pancakes?" I asked as Victoria joined us, and we made a sudden right turn down a spiral staircase.
She wrinkled her nose. "yuck, for dinner? I hope not."
Ah well.
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