Fern always loved spending time on the beach, often sitting on the sand for hours on end -- even staying out there all night once or twice. Something called him there, according to him: a force that he just couldn't fight.

Many thought him to be cursed by a siren, and in truth, so did he. The creatures below the waves were nowhere near as beautiful as the sea itself. The waves themselves were as deadly as any murderer could ever be. After all, nobody ever truly left St Mhairi. Those who tried would always return, or be dragged to a watery grave.

No family on the island was untouched by the ocean's curse. Hardly any child bore no markings at all from a foolish adventure into the waves. Those below five, mostly, and just three teens altogether.

Two of those were children Fern had only ever seen once, locked away in the grounds of the largest house on St Mhairi. He guessed they were the Destined -- the children fated to attempt to break the island's spell. The third was a mystery, though Lavender swore that she knew exactly who they were.

However, Fern had plenty of experience with Lavender, and he was pretty certain that she was a liar. Why else would she not tell him who this third person was?

But all the talk of the Destined recently had been enough to make any child's head explode, so he'd slipped away from the dining table as soon as he could, taking the walk along the top of the cliffs before stumbling down the narrow path leading down to the sand. It was almost Christmas, just a week until school broke up, so by rights nobody else should be on the beach.

Fern wished he'd brought a coat. Still, the icy wind was better than conversations about kids who were essentially prisoners. Drowning, even, would be better than that.

"Help!"

Stopping so abruptly he almost tripped, he turned as if instructed to do so, spinning to look back the way he'd just come. There was a huddled shape almost below the cliff, something that was probably not supposed to be glowing in the way that it was doing.

How'd he missed that?

"Help me!"

He realised his mistake almost immediately -- he wasn't doing any of this of his own accord. Whatever was calling for his help could only be one thing. With that strangely melodic voice... yes, there really was only one answer.

He tried, but there didn't seem to be any way of stopping himself from walking closer to the creature, cursing everything he could think of.

A dying siren was the most dangerous sort of siren, according to Lavender. They took hold of a brain without trying to seduce their victim, because what was the point? They couldn't force them to throw themselves into the ocean anymore. All they could do was hope to poison a victim with their magic.

Honestly... it sounded like it made sense. But since when did Lavender tell Fern the truth about anything?

And a few feet away, he found the strength to hesitate.

This was no old siren beaching themselves to 'poison the first person they met'. This was... they could be no older than twenty. Assuming they aged like humans, of course, but enough people had seen the creatures with hair as white as snow, with too many wrinkles to count, blind and deaf. Yet their voices were as powerful as they ever were.

But the young siren was bleeding. Maybe. The liquid coating its skin shimmered even in the dim light of the December evening, and there was so much of it. It looked sort of oily, he supposed -- thin and foul.

"How do I help you?"

Best to be polite now it could hear him.

It coughed, more of the strange substance splattering on the sand beneath it. "My name is Alcyone. What's yours?"

"I... Fern."

Were sirens like faeries at all? He hoped they weren't, but who really knew?

"The Nicanor boy?"

"Yes...?" How did she know his surname? Sure, there were no other boys named Fern on the island, but where would she have even learned that?

"Tried and tested before, then," she said quietly. She opened her eyes, finally, a blatantly inhuman coral-pink colour. "Take off the... things, boy."

Fern swallowed. This was... strange enough. Tried and tested -- what on earth did that mean? And did she want him to remove -- ah. No, that made more sense.

He pulled his glasses off and stuck them into his pocket before making eye contact with the siren again.

"Thank you."

Pain sparked along his arms, for some reason, along the scars from that barnacle-covered rock he'd had to save himself with... how many years ago was that, five? Probably five, there'd hardly been that many near-drowning incidents in his life that involved rocks and barnacles -- and, well, near-drowning incidents in general.

Then it stopped.

Alcyone nodded to herself, closing her eyes again and making a weird sort of keening sound. Was it time to run? Or did he wait?

Probably time to try and escape. He had no idea what was going on, and he really didn't want to find out what would happen if he stayed put.

Except he couldn't move.

Words in a foreign tongue spilled from her lips almost as easily as the blood had done. The world seemed to sway, and the blurry image of the dying siren turned blood red. Trying to swallow down the taste of iron was met with something like sharp glass in his throat.

And it burned.

"Make it stop!" he yelled -- or tried to. But there was no sound at all leaving his mouth. He screwed his eyes shut, praying to the god that failed his mother for it to stop. And her voice was quieter now, scratchy and just... painful.

Then silence.

He kept his eyes closed even so, pushing his glasses back on. It was over, he guessed, but he didn't want to look.

And anyway, he should be getting back. His dad would have noticed him missing by now, surely. He'd complained so much about Lavender -- seventeen years old and responsible as anything -- disappearing off to a friend's without warning that Fern vanishing for any length of time to anywhere would probably be much worse.

The world wasn't red anymore.

Good.

| | |

"Ow!"

"Sorry Fern!"

Lavender was either drunk, or high, or anything that screamed 'I didn't go to Isabel's to study' -- not that she'd ever claimed to have done so. Was he surprised to see her like this? Not particularly so, since Lavender wasn't much of a liar by omission.

Was throwing a glass across the room when he walked in the sensible thing to do? Absolutely not, especially because her aim had always been rubbish.

"You idiot. What's Dad gonna say?"

"Who knows? He's out looking for you." She turned back to the sink, cleaning something off her hands. "Irresponsible bastard. The dustpan's under the couch."

That explained it. Lavender would only call him a bastard to his face under one circumstance -- her blood sugar taking a nosedive. Even drunk (Christmas was a lenient time), she had never said that. She probably wasn't thinking straight at all.

"Have a biscuit or something. Why... oh my god, how many glasses have you broken?"

"Like two. Maybe you've got a point..." Something else smashed as she turned away from the sink again, going to rummage through the cupboard. Fern let it slide, deciding he'd probably be better off cleaning up the glass before Dad got back. They were both wearing shoes, so they'd be alright, but whenever Dad got worried enough about one of them he was liable to go running off without his shoes on at all.

Now that he wasn't wondering what Lavender had gotten herself into, having likely skipped tea at Isabel's and forgotten to eat earlier in the day as well, he found himself frowning. That had sounded wrong. Not like him at all. Still male enough though, so it wasn't like that siren had done something to switch their voices or something stupid like that, and it had literally sounded normal a sentence ago.

Weird.

He found the dustpan with little difficulty, trying to put it out of his mind, but Lavender's actions were still off. Even for a hypo... she never listened to him when she was low. She'd be more likely to just tell him to fuck off, call him a bastard again, or just throw something else at him.

Yep, something was certainly wrong.

The door slammed as Fern tipped the last dustpanful into the bin with a crash of glass, and he dropped it in his haste to reassure his dad that he hadn't actually drowned.

"Where've you been?"

"The beach. Dad, guess what -- oh, Lavender's low, she broke a few glasses --"

"You're bleeding! Honestly, Fern, it's a miracle you're still alive."

"I... am?" Hm. Maybe he was just imagining the weirdness in his voice, then. Blood loss, or something.

"And you sound funny. How long have you been like that? Here, sit down -- no, what are you doing?"

"What did you just say?"

No, no, no.

"You sound odd. Sit down."

Fern slid into a seat, trying not to show just how worried he was. That wasn't a good sign at all. It meant something had most certainly changed... but what, and why?

His dad hummed one of those annoying songs neither of the siblings liked at all as he stuck plasters to Fern's forehead. He dealt with it, just about, although another note and he'd have probably screamed. It sounded even worse than normal, somehow.

"Night."

"Already? It's not even nine yet."

"I don't feel too brilliant. You know, it's really cold at the minute." He sneezed convincingly enough -- hopefully. "I left my coat. Can I go?"

"You really are an idiot sometimes."

"Must be from my dad."

The expression on his dad's face at that was darker than normal, and he was almost ready to correct himself before Lavender walked back in.

"Please don't be like that!" she said quickly, twirling across the tiles to squeeze him into one of the painful hugs that took way too long to be over. "I'm sorry."

"Well, it is true, isn't it?" It was unfair to Lavender, really -- she'd always been awful at keeping her mouth shut, and her brain-to-mouth processing never worked right when she was having a hypo -- but everything was wrong tonight. And she wasn't exactly incorrect, was she?

"Don't, Fern."

With both members of his family mad at him in one way or another, he had to go. And yet Lavender just wouldn't release her grip.

She'd listened before.

Would she listen now?

It normally took way too much squirming and almost begging her to stop, so if she listened in one go now, it'd be a miracle.

"Let me go."

Her eyes went blank for a moment, a sickening emptiness that was terrible to see flickering out of them as she let him go without any sort of fight. He stumbled backwards while she shook her head, looking as confused as he felt.

"What was that?" she asked.

"I don't know!"

He couldn't stay downstairs now. Without waiting for Lavender to speak again, or for their dad to add his thoughts to the mix, he ran out of the kitchen in a blur of panic. Up the stairs, along the landing, slamming his door closed behind him with force enough to send something to the floor.

She had done something to his voice, hadn't she? What had she actually said?

"Bho mo bheul gu do bheul, thig mo ghuth gu bhith nad ghuth. Leig le fortan tuiteam ort, cridhe neo-chiontach, agus bi sàbhailte le mo shluagh."

... okay, that was absolutely not a good sign, considering the fact that he really hadn't been listening.

With the words in his head and silence elsewhere in the house, he began his attempt to translate it.

| | |

"She said what?"

"According to this, nothing that makes any sense. It's not even like a siren language!"

He'd gotten somewhere with working out what had happened, he hoped, but where that somewhere was was anybody's guess. Callie was much more likely to know something about the language, and about what it meant.

She took the page from his hand and laughed.

"That's because it's Scottish Gaelic, you weirdo."

"Oh. So what does it mean?"

"Give me a minute! And a pen."

Fern glanced around the yard as Callie scribbled across the paper, muttering to herself. People were walking around like nothing weird had happened, because it really hadn't. Nothing had changed for them, had it? The Destined were the only source of gossip right now.

Nobody even knew their names, unless you believed Lavender and Kaden Donovan -- which most people didn't.

"Uh. Fern?"

Did he want to know?

Obviously.

"Yeah?"

Callie's face was way too pale as she shoved the paper back towards him. "Rough translation, but does this look like it makes sense?"

From my mouth to your mouth, my voice becomes your voice. Let fortune fall upon you, innocent heart, and be safe with my people.

Her handwriting was increasingly messy as the words continued, presumably from fear. And it definitely seemed to prove the 'voice switch' theory... but why would she have done that?

"So. Did you, like... kiss it?"

"Wha- ew! Callie, are you stupid?" Why on earth would he have kissed her? That'd be disgusting, right? Like... ick.

"Well, I don't know! Aren't they all seductive and shit? You know."

Of course he did.

"Dying sirens don't do that, according to Lavender," he sighed. "What's the point? They're not getting them to drown anymore, are they?"

Callie shrugged, taking the paper back from him and rummaging through her pockets. Somehow, there was always a ton of rubbish in them -- from paper to cigarettes, for some inexplicable reason. She didn't even smoke, or sell them to people who did.

Unless she did. After all, Fern wasn't exactly best friends with Callie. They were more like acquaintances than anything else, only ever going to each other for favours.

"So you're like, what, the resident siren of St Mhairi? I mean, you're 'safe with her people' now, if that's to be believed."

"I shouldn't have gone to the beach! How's any of that a good thing? God, Callie, I really am cursed or something!" Tried and tested, tried and tested. When? When on earth had he been tried by the siren court or whatever their judicial system even was?

Now they were staring. Here they were, witnesses to Fern Nicanor's mental breakdown. Something new to talk about.

Maybe they'd ship him off the island and cut him up to find out if his vocal cords had changed or something. Maybe he'd just end up in a mental hospital. It'd be a way off St Mhairi, at any rate.

"Shut up, Fern." Callie arched a brow, wrinkling her nose in what he assumed was distaste -- she never had time for what she deemed 'excessive reactions', and this was exactly that. "People are watching."

Of course they were. Something to whisper about, laugh about, mock him for later. New. Not talked over a thousand times, a topic that would spread like wildfire just like the lack of real news on the Destined had last month.

Tap, tap, tap.

He bit his lip, almost gagging when he tasted the blood. While not exactly a fan of the metallic taste it was meant to bring, this weird brackish substance or whatever it really was tasted so foul he almost wanted to be sick.

"Oh." How was her voice so flat? "You're bleeding... what's wrong? Dude, you're covered in plasters, you've already been injured since last night."

She wouldn't be quiet. Why was she still rambling, why wouldn't she stop?

"Just shut up!"

Her mouth snapped shut almost mid-word, and the sheer horror in her eyes told him everything. He was doing it again. Making people do stuff against their will. Snapping away any control they had, and taking it for his own.

She was trying to speak, but her mouth just wouldn't open. And it scared him, and it was clearly scaring her, and people were whispering-

"No, no, no... uh. God, please say something. Anything, I don't care!"

Fern backed away as Callie began quite literally saying whatever seemed to come to mind. He'd messed it up again, somehow.

What did he say? Could he say anything that would stop an eternal loop of silence and incessant randomness? What could he do? They were definitely whispering now, and two of the nastiest kids in the year were making their way over (why did he have to talk to Callie during lunch, of all times?) to them...

A question with a short answer? But that wouldn't work, it wasn't an instruction; Alcyone had told him to help her, she hadn't asked... ah.

"Tell me your name."

"Callie Fletcher." She shook her head violently then, sending her ponytail whipping around to the point where it nearly hit her in the face. And then her eyes.

They were cold.

"I'm sorry!" he tried, but they grabbed hold of him anyway.

Laurie Dewitt and Theo Hoyt were bullies through and through, haters of all things strange. Fern was usually given crap for his name being a girl's name, but that was generally it. Today, it was being some sick amalgamation of an awkward teenager and a siren -- not that they really knew that. They couldn't know it yet.

"What's wrong with you?" Theo asked, his voice thick with disgust.

"What did you do to her?" Laurie was always a little nicer to Callie than most other kids outside the little gang he had. That was probably because they were cousins, but how many times had Laurie been a total dick to his own twin with no remorse?

"I didn't mean to! I didn't mean it!" Fern struggled with what must have seemed like an excessive desperation. "I didn't know."

"Of course you knew," Laurie laughed. "Aren't you always the smart one?"

A trick. It was a trick, it had to be. He'd make Fern either agree and then tell him that he obviously thought he was the smartest between them all (which, in all honesty, he might well have been), or disagree and then be given it for lying.

Except for the fact that Laurie was like the worst manipulator in the history of manipulators. That didn't line up with what he was thinking.

It didn't matter: he'd remembered something.

"Laurence, don't hurt him." Callie still looked scared of him, though. Scared of Fern, who never meant to hurt a fly.

It hurt.

As, frankly, did the way the boys were twisting his arms behind his back. A way of making him surrender? Who knew? He didn't.

How did this work? It seemed to be the instructions, but surely he'd said other instruction-like things today... desperation? Panic? But with Lavender, he wasn't panicked...

"Let go of me."

And they let go of him, and they stepped backwards in perfect sync, and then the awareness sparked back into their eyes. Theo clenched his fists.

Fern ran for it.

Through the narrow streets, avoiding the main ones and sticking to back alleys. Along the cliff top, down the narrow path -- stumbling at the bottom and rolling straight down into the sand. Really wasn't his day, apparently.

The beach was deserted, thank God. Who'd even be on it in the middle of the day?

Well. Maybe someone who'd given everything up... like him, he supposed. Safe with her people. The sirens. He'd be safest away from the rest of the islanders now, with his new curse.

Or...

"Take it back!" he screamed, over and over until the voice was almost gone, tears streaming down his face. "I don't want this!"

Searching for a saviour among the villains, you're doomed to fail. He'd forgotten that key thing, somehow -- in all the tales of the faeries lurking all over St Mhairi, there'd only been that singular lesson. Don't accept a gift.

The song was hardly as beautiful as those who escaped it claimed. Did they hear the words, or was it all in a real siren's language to them?

"I thought she said he'd be grateful."

"Well, he's not even gone a full day." This second voice was so full of contempt a person could probably drown in it. "So. Tested again, and failed."

Fern wasn't quite sure whether he was meant to respond, but he did so anyway. "I don't want to scare people. I don't... I didn't ask for this. Why?"

"Pathetic," the first sniffed. "What did you really think those who die violent deaths are going to do?"

"... I haven't died a violent death?"

Their laughs were even worse than the song, somehow.

"Ungrateful wretch. Maybe you should see what it's like."

And their song began again, the words still as twisted as before, but now he couldn't fight it at all.

He followed them into the waves.