Content Warning: Child death; adult death; anthropomorphic violation and grief.
I am the sea, and the sand, and the seaweed. I am the scent of sea-spray and the sound of waves crashing. And I watch your son playing on my shore. His blonde forelock kite-like in my sea breeze. Beside him, a red metal bucket gently rocks, forgotten, as he rips the sand from my body and toils to mold a castle from my flesh. You help his messy, sand-caked little fingers poke holes for windows as his baby teeth peek out from behind his delighted squeal. I suffer every finger’s jab.
You watch a while with mother’s pride. This squat pile of mud with crooked spires he’s made. To you, it’s Camelot in days of glory. And he’s Michelangelo.
But eventually, you relax, book in hand. Your unholy bouillabaisse simmers atop the driftwood fire. Seaweed and shellfish stolen from my rock pools. You raped my lands, stole my children, just to feed your own. Not the first time. But perhaps the last.
At first, your son shelters under your watchful eye. But slowly, sated on seafood soup, the hot sun melts your attention, turns your gaze into glances. The artificial world of your book draws you in, untying the knots of his last safety line. And when the fiction has you finally trapped, I begin to sing.
I sing a gentle siren’s song, slowly siphoning my water from the sand beneath him. Piece by piece turrets tumble, brittle walls slide, as now-parched sand flows lava-like out of form. Scooping here, patting there he struggles to save his creation, just as you will soon fight to save him. But some things are inexorable. No one can build a castle from dry sand. No one can withstand my siren’s call.
Scraping up his bucket, he patters down to my ocean edge, but not quite close enough. Seawater slops over the bucket’s rim as he waddles away with his stolen prize.
But I am patient. Soon, his tiny feet will come willing, deeper to my lair.
I sing harder, yanking every last mother’s tear of moisture from the beach. Trip after useless trip he makes as we lock in mortal battle. Each time he nears, I slap at his feet trying to drag his little body under. But in these soft shallow waves I lack the power.
And so I turn to older tricks. I will tempt him. Just as I did his forefathers. But what can I use? No illusions of naked-breasted women, slick silvered scales for a tail, will work with him.
I get a flash of his sad little sandcastle on the shore. My weapon is obvious. And as he bends to dunk his bucket in the waves, I sing a lullaby. I let him catch a glimmer in the seafoam of the sandcastles of which all little boys dream. Sandcastles in the air. Sandcastles underground. Sandcastles deep, deep, under the sea.
And with a lilt of my tongue I twist the waves and I spin for him a castle, nay a palace, built on a blanket of starfish and shining limpet shells, walls of seaweed in vermillion and jade and umber, silvery spires of seafoam, and moats of spray.
He stops.
Takes a step further.
He cranes to see.
Deeper now than he’s ever been.
I keep my mirage dancing, just out of his reach. My song pulls him on. Deeper. His ankles. The saltwater rises step by step. Inch by inch. I reach my icy fingers around his calves. He’s so small. All it would take is a quick jerk and I would have him down, but his screams would reach your ears. And you would drag him free. And so I tempt him further. Another step, just one more. Out beyond the seaweed line. And soon I’m lapping, licking at his waist, his chest. I sweep his feet clear. His tiny toes flailing, can’t touch the bottom.
And now it’s all too late.
One last quick pull and he glides inexorably into my silent realm beneath the waves. He struggles, of course. But here, I rule. I slap one watery hand over his mouth, my fingers invading his nose, down his throat. I rob him of his choice. His breath.
His struggle stills.
And he will swim forever with me. A gift I have given. An unexpected form of immortality, wrapped in my seaweed, his pale features, beautifully bloated and sodden.
And then I hear your scream. A scream so wretched, so powerful, part siren you must be. Or perhaps just a mother, like I? I’ve taken your child like you harvested mine.
But my revenge is not sated. Your son a mere appetizer. His loss too quick achieved.
And how can I get you to follow? To cast all sense aside, and plunge into my icy depths. What siren call will you attend?
You scan the beach, and then your eyes come to rest on Camelot. Now fallen. I embrace it, deep in my waves, licking at its foundation, its walls crumbling into my sea. You run towards it, as if it could be hiding him inside. And you fall upon it in the surf, staring wildly out to sea.
You’re almost in my reach. Just a little deeper. I let you see a glimmer of the little red bucket bobbing in the surf. You’re up. Feet pounding deeper. Another yard, and I will claim you too. And as I show you his face, spinning, glassy, out among the seaweed it becomes inevitable. Though you know to go deeper is surely death, as any mother, you cannot live with leaving him there. And so I wait, as you come closer. Your sunskirt hoisted up as you churn the water, deeper and deeper. I am patient. As I open my arms wide, along with you, the last of the abandoned bouillabaisse washes ruined into my sea.
The seagulls cry.
I am the sea, and the sand, and the seaweed, and now, so are you.
The Siren Sings of Sandcastles is the winner of the Apparition Literary Magazine November Flash Fiction Challenge.
