Under Murky Waters
Chapter Eight

SHE WAS THE sort of nightmare that border-lined a dream. The sweetest of lies, Zale was afraid to believe she was real.

When she swam a little closer to him, he could not help himself but instinctively flinch away as if he had been stung. However, no matter what was the distance that he tried to place in between both of them, she closed in on him three times as fast. Zale could feel the powerful flicks of her tail beneath the water’s surface, sending the currents swirling around them.

“You reek of fear,” she observed. Her glazed eyes never left his skin and Zale could feel the hair that grew there stand.

He swallowed the bile in his throat, afraid to speak his mind. However, it seemed as though his lips had plans of their own. “Most beautiful things are frightful.”

“Yes,” she agreed. A splash went off in the background, the last of the men pulled beneath to meet their maker. “Like the lightning that splits the sky during a raging storm. Or the fires that burn through forests during a drought. Beautiful, mesmerizing, things are often the most deadly.”

“And that is you as well?”

The siren cracked a small smile. Her lips quivered, one corner lifting. “No. I am not beautiful. Not very deadly either.”

“You cracked my ship into two. Half of it is already on the way to the bottom of the ocean while the other half is following after. My men are dead, best friend murdered and blue, and I heard that you took down an entire ship on your own one year ago. If that isn’t deadly, I do not know what is.”

Her smile grew.

“What made you assume it was me?”

“You asked who was the woman we sang of when you knew. You are Cordelia.”

“I was Cordelia. I had not been her for years.” She grew solemn, her smile fading as she swam a short distance away. Yet, Zale knew it was futile for him to swim away for her in a grand escape set out to fail.

The siren could easily catch up with him if he ever tried to escape from her grasp. Besides, the water tendril trick she had pulled before would prove useful in capturing him again. This time, she might not be as benevolent.

“Why not?” He asked.

The siren grew incredibly silent, only the soft sloshing of waters filling in as background noise. The storm had died down, the sea calmed and tamed. When she looked up, Zale thought he saw a bit of longing and misery in those fog-tainted eyes of hers.

Without a word, she swam closer to him. Zale could feel her hands wrapping around his arms, her long fingers holding onto him tightly but without much threat. Then, she took off, swimming in a direction that headed towards nowhere for as far as the human eye could see but not exactly pulling him underwater.

That was enough for Zale, knowing that she wasn’t about to kill him.

Yet.

Somewhere along the swim, he must have fallen asleep. That was because when he had awoken, the sun was already beginning its ascend, bright and dazzling golden rays coloring the heavens like it was glitter.

By now, Zale could see the shore of a deserted island. Lush greenery lined cliff after cliff, hill after hill. Water surrounded it, making it truly a paradise in the middle of nowhere. However, unlike the waters at night, the waters in the day were clear and crystal blue, a color that reflected the skies as if the liquid was a billion little azure sapphires in all of its shimmering glory. And though the sun was a ball of gold, it was also a painter that colored the world a bright red.

Zale could feel the sand beneath his feet not long later. When the toes of his boots grazed the sand, he struggled to stand, muscles a little too weak and stiff from all night of swimming.

Slowly, he felt the siren’s hand detach from his arms, allowing him to try and stand on his own. When he rose to his full height, the water only came up to his chest, barely even grazing his collarbones.

“What are you—?” Zale tried to ask but the siren had already swam a good distance away.

She turned back upon hearing his voice, casting him a look over his shoulders.

“Yes?” She asked, voice melodious and filled to the brim with genuine naive curiosity.

“You are letting me go? Why?” Zale blurted out, confused.

She smiled sweetly, like the serene blue of spring skies or the slow fall of snow during the start of winter.

“I hope to see you again, my fair sailor,” she cleverly evaded the question before diving under the water’s surface, disappearing into the deep blue and leaving Zale alone on a foreign island all by himself.