Elegy

THIRTY-TWO Disavowal

The room smelled of violet—not the flower, but the color. That didn’t make any sense, not even to Gemma, who’d come to accept oddities more readily, but there really wasn’t anyway else to describe it. It was a rich, almost velvety scent, and when she closed her eyes, all she could see was amethyst.

Since the gods and goddesses had slowly been picked off the last several centuries, Diana assumed that every supernatural being who tracked her down planned to torture and kill her, and she’d instantly pegged Gemma as something more than human.

Once Lydia had convinced Diana that none of them meant her any harm, the older woman had led them to a small sitting room at the back of the flower shop, so they could talk. Lydia had instantly gone to the shelves, excitedly but carefully admiring all of Diana’s collection.

It was filled with so many antiquities—books, statues, art, tools, musical instruments. The collection appeared to have begun with the dawn of time. Despite the number of things in such a small space, the room didn’t feel cluttered. Everything had its own spot, carefully displayed on the shelves that lined the walls.

Gemma sat on a lush velvet settee next to Harper, while Diana poured them tea. Gemma had tried to decline, but Diana insisted that she needed some. While there was plenty of room to sit next to Harper, Marcy had chosen to sit cross-legged on the floor by the window, where a fat, fluffy Siamese cat basked in the sun.

When Diana returned carrying a tea tray, Harper stood up to help her, but Diana shooed her away, insisting she had it herself, and set the tray down on an elegant coffee table in front of the settee.

Gemma would’ve offered to help, but the watersong was reaching a level of unbearable pain. It buzzed in her left ear—the side facing the East Coast—and the vision in her left eye had begun to blur.

“I see you’ve made friends with Thallo,” Diana said to Marcy as she made herself comfortable in her high-backed chair across from the settee. “She’s always been a lover. Her sister, Carpo, is much happier watching us than making friends, I’m afraid.”

A thin Siamese cat posted at the top of a bookshelf meowed at the sound of her name, and Gemma glanced back up at her.

“She’s a nice cat,” Marcy said noncommittally as she ran her hand through Thallo’s fur.

Diana had poured five cups of tea, but only she and Harper had taken theirs. Lydia was too immersed in a book she’d found, and Gemma felt too sick to even think about drinking anything.

“I’m not sure if I’m naïve for letting you in here.” Diana settled back in her chair and sipped her tea. “You have only brought three mortals with you, so I suspect that you haven’t come here to battle.”

“No, I don’t mean you any harm,” Gemma tried to reassure her again.

Before Diana had led them here, Lydia had used her extensive knowledge of paranormal elements and powers of persuasion to convince Diana that they weren’t there to hurt her. But now that Diana seemed comfortable with them, and Lydia had the distraction of ancient artifacts, she was content to let Gemma do her own talking.

“You are a siren, aren’t you?” Diana asked, eyeing her above her glasses.

“Yes. I am.” She waited a beat before asking, “Are you Demeter?”

“Demeter.” Diana smiled, as if being surprised by a forgotten memory. “I haven’t been called that in a very long time, but yes, I was once Demeter.”

“But you’re not now?” Marcy looked up from the cat. “Aren’t you still a goddess?”

Diana laughed warmly. “Goddess. You say that as if it means something.”

“Doesn’t it?” Marcy asked.

“Not what it used to.” Diana took another drink of her tea, then set the cup on a nearby end table. “All my friends, my family, anyone who really knew me, is long since gone. I am alone, with no one to worship me, and why would they? What little magic I still have I only use on my flowers and plants. I’m an old woman now.”

“But don’t you choose this form? Can’t you be young again if you wanted?” Gemma asked.

“I chose this form because it suits me. This face, this shop, this life, it’s what I am now.” She gestured to the room around her. “The goddess within me is all but extinguished.”

“Why? I’ve read the stories about you. You were so powerful,” Marcy said, as if trying to give Diana a pep talk. She’d been so set on seeing something amazing that she didn’t seem ready to let the idea go. “You helped the earth. You saved people. Why give all that up?”

“Immortality is not what you think it is. Neither is power. It’s not the answer to anything. It’s just a different way of being, a much longer way,” Diana tried to explain. “Anyway, if you’re not here to kill me, then what have you come for?”

“I want to break the curse,” Gemma said.

Diana looked down at her lap, smoothing out nonexistent wrinkles in the fabric of her dress. “Oh, well, I can’t do that.”

“You can’t?” Gemma took a deep breath and tried not to let that get her down. Maybe she’d misunderstood. “But … you’re a goddess.”

“I already told you. That doesn’t mean much anymore,” Diana reiterated.

“Didn’t you help my great-grandma, Audra?” With a book still in her hand, Lydia came over and perched on the arm of the settee next to Harper. “She came to you with a muse around fifty years ago, looking for a way to become mortal. She said you helped her.”

“That’s how you found me then,” Diana said. “Are you a soothsayer?”

Lydia smiled demurely. “No, I’m not. But I followed in Audra’s footsteps, trying to help those who need me.”

Diana appeared bemused by her answer. “And you think helping a siren is worth your time?”

“I’m not a siren.” Gemma shook her head. “Not like the others. I don’t want to be a monster. I want to end this.”

“I’m sorry, but I’ve already explained,” Diana said, though Gemma didn’t think she sounded even slightly apologetic. “I can’t help you.”

“There’s nothing you can try?” Gemma persisted. “You created the curse. There has to be something that you can do. Something you know.”

“I’m afraid not.” Diana was beginning to sound weary of the conversation.

“Can’t? Or won’t?” Marcy asked, echoing the same thought running through Gemma’s mind.

“Perhaps it’s both,” Diana admitted with a slow shrug of her shoulders.

“I have the scroll,” Gemma said. They’d left it out in the car, but she could get it in a flash if she needed to. “I know that if I can destroy the scroll, the curse can be undone, like with Asterion and the other minotaurs.”

“If you have the scroll, then you’ve tried destroying it, and you’ve failed,” Diana said.

Gemma exchanged a look with Harper, wondering if she should admit the truth, but decided there was no point in lying to Diana. Not about this. “I’ve tried everything I can think of, and nothing even makes a mark.”

“Of course it doesn’t. The paper wouldn’t be worth anything if it did,” Diana replied.

“Is the paper cursed? Is there a way to destroy it?” Gemma asked.

“No. The paper is absolutely and completely indestructible,” Diana confirmed their worst fears. “The curse is in the ink.”

“The ink?” Harper asked, trying not to appear too eager, most likely remembering her own experiments with it. “So what happens with the ink?”

“I’ve already told you that I’m not going to help you, so if you’ve come all the way for this, then I’m sorry that we’re going to have to cut this visit short.” Any niceties evaporated from Diana’s voice. “There’s no reason to continue if you’ll only keep asking the same question over and over.”

“Why wouldn’t you want to help me?” Gemma asked. “Penn has been running around doing whatever she wants for a couple millennia. This is supposed to be a curse, but she acts like it’s the greatest gift ever. With all due respect, if you want to really punish her, then you should end this.”

“Penn?” Diana sounded intrigued. “Is that what Peisinoe is going by now?”

“Yeah. Penn is one of only two original sirens left,” Gemma said.

Diana nodded. “I always suspected that she would outlive the rest of them.”

“She’s going to live on, happily ever after, if we don’t do something.” Gemma leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, and tried to convey more confidence than she actually felt.

Diana cocked her head. “How old are you?”

“I’m sixteen.”

“Is that your human age, or how long you’ve been a siren?”

“Human,” Gemma said. “I’ve only been a siren for a few months.”

“Sixteen years is your entire life. It’s all of time to you, but it’s a blink of the eye to me. You can’t even fathom time as I do,” Diana said with a condescending tone that Gemma did not care for.

“I don’t understand what this has to do with punishing Penn,” Gemma said.

“Because time has everything to do with it,” Diana said. “I am very, very old. Not quite as old as the earth, but close. In the beginning, there was only us. No mortals. Just gods. But time kept moving, and we stayed the same. We squabbled and bickered among ourselves, but it soon became meaningless. It wasn’t until the humans came around that life truly began.

“I waited a very long time before I bore any children,” Diana went on. “I knew what life was like to be alone, to live forever, and when Persephone was born, that changed everything.

“When Penn and her sisters were supposed to be caring for my daughter, my beloved Persephone, they were out swimming and singing, trying to impress suitors. They were supposed to protect Persephone. Instead, they were having the time of their lives while someone raped and murdered Persephone,” Diana spat. Her lips were pulled back in an angry grimace, and her eyes blazed. “I found her bloody body discarded in a field, wrapped in the shawl that had been meant for her wedding.”

But then she took a deep breath, and her whole body slacked as the anger was replaced by sadness. “Persephone was the sun to my earth, and without her…”

She paused and stared out at the window. Tears welled up in her eyes, and other than the sound of Thallo purring next to Marcy, the room was silent as Diana composed herself.

“It’s been thousands of years since my daughter died,” Diana said at length. “And yet, there is not a day that goes by that I don’t think of her. Not a day when my heart doesn’t ache for her. This pain that I feel, the one that I endure every day, this is what I wanted to give to Penn and her sisters. Death is easy compared to this.”

“The siren curse sounds like a fair punishment, except that Penn has never and will never feel that kind of pain,” Gemma said. “She’s never loved anything enough to feel like that.”

“She hadn’t, no, not when I turned her into a siren. Which is why I did it.” Diana turned away from the window and looked back at Gemma. “She was a selfish girl who cared nothing for anyone, and her negligence killed my only child. How could I hurt her as badly as she’d hurt me when she’d never loved, when she wasn’t even capable of loving the way that I had?

“The curse itself—the swimming, the singing, the men—that’s only part of it,” Diana explained. “Those were the only things in her life that mattered to her, and her sisters, and I wanted her to do them again and again and again. Hell is repetition. I learned that in the years I walked the earth before humans, before Persephone. I wanted the only things in life that gave her pleasure to eventually mean nothing. Her only joys would eventually make her numb.

“The second part of the curse, the worst part, she didn’t even understand.” Diana smiled bitterly. “Not for centuries. In fact, it became so long, I thought it might never happen.”

“What happened?” Gemma asked.

“She fell in love,” Diana said simply.