“Please!” he cried still. “Please, we must stop. Do you not hear them? Do you not hear their song? We are all the hope they have left!”
Her mother’s voice died again when the ship did not slow, when the men bent over their oars only to work them harder, and the sail filled to speed them on, Odysseus’s shouts carried off by the wind.
“It will not serve,” she said, when Aglaope did not stop her song. “We have lost, my dear one. We have lost. Circe and her women have conquered us, at last. Conquered even Akheloios, himself. You must save your voice, now. Save your song.”
For what?
What purpose would it serve to save her voice? If Akheloios himself could not reach them, no other man could. They would survive this day only to starve, and Aglaope did not intend to carve the flesh from her mother’s bones as she had her grandmother’s. She did not mean to watch her mother die for her sake—that she might live a half life for a few months longer, always hungry, forever on her own.
But her voice broke, all the same, a sob thickening her throat and choking her song. She strangled it and tried to sing on, to put all her desperation, all her strength into her voice, to turn the ship around. To slow them, at the least.
“Oh, Aglaope,” her mother said, drawing her in and holding her close. “My sweet one, my dearest girl. There is no use. No purpose in singing to men who cannot hear. You only torture Akheloios, now, making him thrash all the harder against the ropes. It is cruel—too cruel, to keep on.”
Aglaope’s song became a wail, despair tightening around her heart just as the ropes tightened around Odysseus-Akheloios. And she wept. She wept and wailed until she heaved, her breath lost, her lungs broken and sore. It did not take long, for she had exhausted herself already with her song. Ligeia stroked her hair, murmuring soft words of comfort, nonsense words that meant nothing at all, for there was no comfort to be had, no reassurance to be offered.
“I’ll fetch water for you,” her mother said, smoothing the tears from her cheeks when she lifted her head. “And you must rest, my love, or your voice will be a ruin come tomorrow.”
Aglaope had not the strength to argue against the preservation of her voice, against the use of singing ever again. She turned her face back to the sea and the ship, not so distant that she could not still see Odysseus-Akheloios, his expression filled with grief, but without her singing to drive him, no longer struggling against his bonds. Just limp and drained, broken as he stared back.
Ligeia squawked, a sharp awful sound, causing Aglaope to spin, something dark and fast teasing at the edge of her vision. Her mother had slipped in her climb, her arms and legs too frail, too weak, and she hung by just one hand now, then just two fingers. Aglaope threw herself across the nest reaching down, stretching out her hand, the stone digging sharply into her waist, tempting her to fall herself.
“My love,” her mother said, her eyes wide and flickering as her fingers lost their grip. “Do not waste my life.”
Aglaope stared, frozen, at Ligeia’s broken form, tortured and bent by the rocks below. She stared, half-hanging from the nest, her arm still stretched, a cry of shock and desperate fear still echoing in her ears.
The waves crashed against the rocks, filling the silence that followed—the emptiness that she was not certain how to fight. The waves, dull and roaring, and something else, as even and steady and strong. The splash of oars, still not so far gone.
Slowly, Aglaope rose, careful of the lip of the spire and mindful of the steep drop. She closed her eyes when she had found the center of the nest again, but it did nothing to block the sight of her mother, fingers slipping over and over again in the darkness behind Aglaope’s eyes.
“Siren!”
She turned her head, and there was hateful Anthousa again, floating cheerfully upon the water. It was only then that she saw the shadow of the falcon, soaring high above. Aglaope lifted her gaze, watching it dip and dive, its sleek curved wings spread wide. And she knew.
She knew.
Ligeia had not only slipped from weakness or exhaustion. She had not only fallen. Circe had not been content to let them slowly starve. She had not been satisfied by tying Akheloios to his mast and stopping the men’s ears with wax.
“What will you do now, Siren? Now that you are truly alone—and no ship, no hero to save you? For I promise you, every crew that passes will be the same. No ship will hear your song again.”
Aglaope took a breath, steadying herself, and rose to her feet. The swift, black ship had not gone so far that she could not still see it clearly—hear Akheloios’s moans, his pleading when the wind shifted, snapping the sail. And had not Butes-Akheloios swum to them across the sea?
“You will die, Siren! And slowly! Even if you live upon your mother’s corpse, you will still starve. There was not much meat left upon those old bones.”
She did not look at Anthousa. Did not care what words she threw, sharp as knives and cutting. The water would burn the blood away, the sea would soothe her pain. And Akheloios—he would give her strength.
One step, two, and she threw herself into the leap. The wind pressed against her body, pulled at the edges of her ragged gown, and for that briefest moment—the longest breath—she was soaring.
Soaring as she did in her dreams, but when her wings would have swept against the sky, buoying her up, she arced her arms and her body forward, slipping clean and fast into the water below. Cold and shocking, for all she had braced herself against it all. She kicked down, desperate to get beneath the waves, and put all her will, all her being into swimming.
Akheloios, I am coming.
The water beat against her, even as deep as she had dove. It pummeled her, and she struggled, her chest burning for air. And still, she forced herself to take another stroke. Another kick of her legs, aiming for the light, for the sky above it.
I am coming.
Too far. Too far, and her lungs were bursting, her arms and legs just so much gold, dragging her down. She fought against the need to gasp, to draw breath where there was no air. And part of her knew, then—part of her had always known, from even before she leapt—that even if she reached the surface, it would not be enough. One woman’s arms would never match thirty oars for speed, not even in the smoothest seas.
I am.
Water filled her nose, her throat, her lungs, and around the edges of her vision, the water had turned black. It was not a waste. It was not a waste to take her fate into her own hands. And for that breath, for that endless breath, she had truly flown.
I...
She was nothing.
Calypso’s Vow
David Blixt
I am so tired. Tired of the sea. Of the relentless sky. Of forcing breath in and out. So tired...
I do not remember a time when I was not tired. When I slept well. When I wasn’t hungry, or angry, or empty. Is this age? The result of a life worn thin? Zeus, when was the last time I laughed?