There is no life at the riverbank. It does not sing. It does not move.
Most people cannot feel the earth moving. They carry on, day after day of their short little lives, wandering upon ground that is never stable. The world changes, every second of every day, yet they still assume that the ground will be the same tomorrow, a hundred years to yesterday, a second minus the future, and this moment of today. No, they say, the river cannot wash away the bank, not now. Some would call this belief stupidity. Crueler ones naivety. Unsavory ones trust.
Yet as time wears on, over hundreds and hundreds of years, that faith is chipped away, like a cliff face eroded by waves. Life is spent hearing every ticking of a clock, every held breath, every skip of a heart. Because to be unchanging in a world that always changes means clinging to that which does not change. Clinging, like a child, to watching the slipping sand, and adjusting your feet on the shaking ground, and waiting for the moment you fall from it all together.
In short, ground was stupid. Which was why Aria was sitting in a tree.
It was a sunny afternoon in the middle of April, though Aria would never have known that. The canopy of leaves above her was so thick that not even the tiniest ray of sunlight could penetrate it. The total darkness gave Aria a nice sense of pretend-seclusion, perfect for her pretend-nap.
There was nothing else she could do, really. Any other action would result in the most undesired occurrence: talking.
At first, the talking was fine. There would be plans: a new town to go to, a new job opening to snatch up, a newly vacant apartment to grovel for. The never-ending search to sing somewhere, anywhere, temporarily filled the empty days. Even if they were chained to that search, those chains kept them from falling. Chains bound the knees about to drop to the ground, the hands trying to claw at the dirt, the feet hoping to stay under the earth.
Aria winced. She looked down at her right arm, with a blue strip of cloth tightly wound around it. Even without proper medical attention, the wound still should have healed by now. She wanted to cry out in pain, but she held her tongue. To not do so would result in another undesired occurrence: screaming.
A part of Aria missed the screaming. It proved that there was still the will to fight for something, anything. All the silence did was scream in defeat.
A piece of bark was digging into her back. Carefully, so as not to tear the blue ribbon, Aria shifted position on the tree branch so that she was sitting upright. With an inaudible sigh, she leaned against the trunk and let her feet dangle in the empty air like a child on a swing. Back and forth, back and forth. The motion of a pendulum.
She could still feel the world turning.
Below her, there was a bed of river stones. Their dull grey surface glinted in the sunlight, reflected off the water. The water wove its way through gaps in between the stones like fingers running through hair, until the blue water did in fact give way to actual blue hair. The hair came together in a ponytail, with only a few loose strands falling around the face of Sonata Dusk.
Aria watched as Sonata lifted up each stone one by one. She rubbed them in her fingers, feeling their smoothness, coating her nails in gritty sand. Then she held them up to the sun in such a way that rays of light covered the stones like strands of hair. If she squinted, she could pretend it was a face. And perhaps, in those precious moments of gold, she could pretend it was hers.
When did it happen? When did a girl become accustomed to smelly, mismatched clothes? When did a girl stop trying to rub away the smudges of dirt between her spindly fingers? When did a girl lose track of the last time a guy took a second glance at her, and when did it stop mattering? When did a face collapse on itself like a dying star to form angles and shadows and strangeness? When did a girl simply stop being a girl? When did everything change?
Aria knew. With the turning of the earth.
Plunk!
Sonata started and jerked her head to the right, where she saw a shiny red apple in the sunlight. She shook her head, looked up at Aria, and smiled.
It was the smile that was the most changed. Longing gave it power: her smiling face was a face transformed.
Aria moved her leg, and the whole branch groaned. For the tree was from an old time, and approaching its time, and bending to time. Yet it seemed to take no time for Aria to nimbly jump from the branch: in a blink, she was lying with Sonata in the stones as if she had been lying there the whole time.
For a while, the only sound at the riverbank was the smacking of cracked lips and the grinding of teeth out of practice and the gulping of throats fighting the feeling of choking. As they ate, Sonata stopped picking up stones in favor of gazing into the distance. While Sonata was distracted, Aria snatched up the third apple and took a bite. Sonata answered with a playful shove. All too eagerly, Aria shoved back.
But Sonata’s eyes remained distant.
Reluctantly, Aria followed her gaze to settle on a lonely figure, shrouded in day’s shadow. The sound of her heartbeat was deafening.
Only when another shadow passed over Aria’s face did she notice Sonata, standing up and brushing the dust from her pants. Sonata turned her pale blue eyes on Aria and stretched out her hand.
Aria shook her head. No. No, no. A million times, no.
Aria stumbled backwards, as if struck. Backwards and backwards, until her back met the old oak tree. Backwards and backwards and backwards to a place where there were no trees, no stones, no turning earth at all.
Siren magic was a mystical, volatile creature. It was not like the magic of land creatures, who could catch it and trap it and preserve it in books to be studied by future generations. It was a living and changing thing, waiting to be discovered. It manifested itself in the legendary coral reef Medusa’s Ribbons, as well as in ordinary ribbons hung from the underwater geodes in the center of every town on The Day of the Changing Tides. While the mouth of that fearsome stretch of ocean yawned open, Sirens would be dancing around the geode and spinning, spinning, spinning, until everything was a flurry of color and laughter and crying.
So did Siren magic spin miracles, great and small, great and terrible. A deadly case of scale rot healed with a simple brew, a deadlier tempest brewed, a pearl washed up in a wreckage of a home, a more precious Pearl washed away, a young female Siren ascended to the honor of coralis sirelle, three Sirens descended to the land-dwellers to supply the vacancy. All this greatness was brought about by emotion, the most powerful magic ever known. Yet there was one miracle that those peace-loving sea dwellers could not perform: the gift of fire.
The bark under Aria’s fingertips began to shrivel up black.
Meanwhile, Sonata resumed her task of turning over stones, but she continued looking up at Aria. Her head tilted to the left at a curious angle, to match her curious expression. It was both the expression of a child wondering about an outcome, as well as a wizened sage who already knew.
Aria could feel the charred wood yield, letting her sink into the heart of the tree. From the corner of her eyes she could see brilliant orange and yellow leap up from the ground. Still, Sonata betrayed no surprise, nor did the figure at the riverbank.
Tears stung in Aria’s eyes, and her whole body trembled. She willed the blaze to rise higher and crash down upon the figure, but the flames only continued rising around her. She arched her back, opened her mouth, and remembered the hidden purpose of the Ribbon Dance.
To drown out the screaming of others falling into the abyss.
All the while, Sonata’s eyes rested on Aria and the slowly burning tree. Only when burning leaves drifted down to earth like apocalyptic rainfall did her eyes look back at the figure, then Aria, then back again. Pressing her fingertips to her lips, she looked up at the sun, then held out seven fingers.
Seven suns. Seven days. But only one hand outstretched to Aria.
Smoke was a thick grey mourning veil around Aria’s head, but its vigorous shaking could still be seen. As the planets chained all things to themselves, so did Aria give the universal sign for no. Banishment, human form, and shattered pendants be damned, the Sisterhood of coralis sirelle ran deeper than all that nonsense. The Sisterhood stayed together through all things. They instructed each other, they defended each other when under persecution, they shared their possessions, they danced at times of jubilation, and they wept at times of sorrow. They sang together always, from the very first day of Induction, and they stayed together until…
The boiling pain was too much to endure, and Aria’s knees buckled, sending her tumbling towards the turning earth soaked with water and salt. There were no leaves or branches to break her fall. It was only her, trapped between the figure and the fire, with no way to hide.
Her singed hair fell about her face as that same face was buried in her hands. A great moaning might have been heard if Sonata had not rushed to Aria’s side and, with a glance toward the riverbank, placed her hands over Aria’s mouth. Then, after a few minutes of letting smoke and ash bleed out of her ravaged throat, Aria opened her swollen red eyes and found herself looking into the face of a warrior.
Sonata stood up and held out her hand for the third time. Finally, Aria reluctantly took it. Then Sonata was like a young maiden skipping gaily through a meadow as she led Aria away from the fire. Along the way, her scuffed brown sneakers two sizes too large kicked some of the scattered stones. A rugged grey one and a slightly dented brown one were pushed down a snake’s hole, as deep and ominous as a whirlpool. A chipped black one was impaled on a burning twig. A smooth pebble the color of clouds was thrown into grass a poison green. Soon, there were no stones left.
Sonata’s fingers curled tighter around Aria’s hand.
Together, the two sisters stopped mere inches behind the figure. Sonata’s hand shook like a leaf too battered by the turning earth, and she let go to kneel beside the third girl. Aria knelt soon after, softly, silently. The figure couldn’t stand noise. Not talking, not singing, not the faintest whisper from a dying breath. Only the thrice-damned silence. Aria’s throat tightened with something more than ash and smoke, tighter and tighter, until the only things loose were her fingers hovering over the right hand of Adagio Dazzle.
Even when people stop, the earth keeps turning. Even when people fall, the earth keeps turning. And even when people die, the earth keeps turning. With this turning, there is spun a hope, that during the stopping and the falling and the dying, the mind can recall brief flashes of the world it knew, even when a force much stronger than gravity pulls that world from the sun and into the great shadow that touches them all. But perhaps it was lesser spun the unhappier tale of the moons, the witnesses who stood at the gates of the shadow and walked away. They saw the flashes, too. The flashes of a million lights, winking out one by one into the silence.
In Aria’s eyes, Adagio was nothing but flashes. Orange hair the color of embers. Baggy clothes that puddled at her feet and seemed to shrink her, inch by inch. Cracked lips sealed together. Boots damp from the river water. Sharp bones that threatened to break the blood vessels. Twig-like arms wrapped around barely substantial knees as she slowly rocked back and forth. Yellowed skin that was transparent. Eyes only capable of reflecting the flickering water.
The image of a specter.
Sonata rummaged through the pocket of her off-white dress and brought out an apple. Tentatively, she held it out to Adagio. Adagio didn’t even notice it, and kept staring into the river.
There it was again, that violent, fiery rage. In that moment, Aria wanted nothing more than to pin Adagio to the dirt and force the apple down her throat until she choked. It wouldn’t be hard, she knew. Adagio’s muscles would be thin like paper, her bones malleable like gold.
And that was the worst part of all.
Looking into that gaunt and silent face, Aria wondered if it was ashamed. Ashamed, so very ashamed of its weakness. A weakness that left her unable to change, unable to adapt, unable to do anything but cling to fleeting shadows that flickered across the eyes like a dark fire. Then Aria looked closer into those eyes, reflecting everything around them, and the answer to her wonderings made her want to wretch. Wretch, and scream, and rage.
So continued the perpetual cycle as the three Sirens sat close together at the riverbank. A powerful force in this world, the desire to be close. It was the same force that held fast the stars to the core of the universe, and the electrons to the nucleus of the atoms. And somewhere in between the grandeur of those universes and the vastness of those atoms, all clinging to each other like frightened children holding hands, lay little Adagio Dazzle, the only creature in the whole wide world who seemed to want to let go.
As if sensing this want, Sonata’s placed both her calloused, shaking hands over Adagio’s left. Sonata’s face was inscrutable, her misty blue eyes an ocean of unfathomable depths. Yet at its center, Sonata’s heart was not particularly complex. All it did was ask, over and over again, a very simple question:
Do you know it’s been seven days?
It didn’t have to be this way, they knew. After all, what was tradition to those who strayed so far? What was ceremony to those who lost so much? What was decency to those to whom the world gave none? Seven days was just a number.
But with the old tree burned away, the girls could see more than they ever were able to in those seven days. They could see the clear blue sky, the distant skyline of a city, the edge of a bountiful woodland, the birds flying overhead, the lush green plants, the squirrels and occasional brown rabbit scurrying in the tall grass, and the sun smiling on their faces. They could see all of it, fully and unhindered, and were in awe.
But all Adagio wanted to see was the water.
Aria scooped up a handful of river water. Faster than sand in an hourglass, it dripped through her fingers. She looked up at Sonata and nodded once.
All at once, a wave of reality crashed down on Sonata. Forcing her fist in her mouth to keep from crying, she desperately pressed the apple into both of Adagio’s hands. Instead of lifting it to her lips, however, Adagio simply interlaced her fingers, forming a cocoon around the life-giving fruit.
When she opened her hands, a flow of water streamed into the river, leaving the apple shriveled black.
Nine months ago, Aria would never have done anything for Sonata, but time has a funny way of changing the impossibles and the never-would-haves. Behind Adagio’s back, memories of the horribles and never-should-haves lay in the hand Aria now held tightly to keep from shaking. Painful memories that burned her palm whenever it brushed against one of Sonata’s bruises, barely noticeable to eye as they lay hidden beneath her blue skin. How frail that blue hand seemed, yet it was a hand that had bruised many others in more ways than it knew.
And from that time when all that was known was fighting and bruising, Aria knew only this: She was the color of a bruise upon impact. Sonata was the color of healing. But Adagio was the color of a wound not fully healed, barely able to be seen, but always throbbing under the skin.
Sonata and Aria’s fingers interlaced perfectly, like the brief second when the rising sun meshes perfectly with the ocean’s horizon to form ripples of fire. The ripples grow into waves, and the waves crest, waiting. Waiting until the very last second they can before finally letting go and crashing upon the sand. That was the second when a hand became more than a hand, when a hand became a cupful of gritty sand, and a wave of greeting, and a familiar memento of home.
The only thing that felt like home to Adagio was the water.
And then, just like that, it was time. Lifting her up on both sides, Aria and Sonata helped their leader stand. Once her feet were steady on the turning earth, they began the slow process of helping her forward, inch by painful inch, into the water. Many times, as the frigid waters grabbed her ankles and the submerged boulders threatened to have her stumble, Aria glanced at Adagio’s face. She found it to be blank, but not in the way that a mask is blank. Blank in the way that a mask is removed and nothing is left beneath.
Finally, the three Sirens reached the middle of the water. Sonata counted down from seven with her fingers, and when both her hands were fists, she slipped out from under Adagio’s arm. For a second, Aria winced as she felt Adagio’s full weight press down on her injured arm, then sighed in relief as it was lifted.
The river’s fast-running current must not have had the heart to fight against Adagio, for her footing was sure, even when Aria and Sonata headed back to the bank. During their silent trek back, Sonata let her hair fall loosely around her face. Try as she did, all that Aria could see were indents of eyes and shadows of skin. And for a second, Aria believed that even if Sonata were raising her eyes to the setting sun, that was still all she would have seen.
There came a point when Sonata stopped walking, and her whole body started shaking. A shuddering gasp, and then she was turning around when Aria firmly grabbed her wrist. Sonata flailed about helplessly like a captured fish in a net. Wordlessly, Aria wrapped both arms around Sonata’s torso and waited patiently until she fell limp. Then placing the skinny blue arm over her neck, Aria had Sonata lean on her bandaged arm. Together they walked as children taking step after wobbly step, steading each other against the turning of the earth. Only when water changed to gravel and gravel changed to dirt did they sit along the riverbank, look out to the water, and wait.
It was the face that went first. Eyes, ears, nose, lips, all of it ran down Adagio’s torso like paint washed away in the rain. Drip, drip, drip they fell, forming ripples in the water. Within seconds, one of the ripples lapped at the riverbed. Aria’s heel stamped the dirt.
To a stranger watching from afar, it would have seemed that the water level was merely rising rapidly. Adagio’s ankles, knees, thighs, and torso disappeared beneath the water, yet for once, it was not the water that had changed.
Sonata covered her eyes, but Aria gently pried her hands away. That was the rule: stand vigil to the very end.
Typically, there was a farewell song that was sung, but neither Siren could bring herself to start it. Perhaps it was uncertainty in their voices after the Battle of the Bands. Or perhaps it was the knowledge that once they started it, they would have to end it.
At any rate, there wasn’t much time for a song anyway. Now the water was up to Adagio’s neck. In the fast fading sunlight, Aria failed to make out Adagio’s face. Of course, there wouldn’t have been much to see; all her facial features had melted away. But at the same time, didn’t there have to be something more than the pain and the water and the silence? Deep down, didn’t she want to swim with the changing tides?
One day, the very last day life will ever witness, the stars will blow out like birthday candles. Galaxies will crash and burn. Universes will be torn asunder. This turning earth will collapse into darkness. The whole of reality will crumple like a piece of paper to be thrown away and forgotten, but it won’t happen with a cry, or a scream, or a prayer. It will happen in silence.
Sonata blinked, and now all that remained of Adagio Dazzle was her hair like fire floating on the water. It was an image both she and Aria had seen before. Stones crumbling, fissures opening, earth shaking. A whole world tumbling into flames. A horrible flame, wild and raging and all-consuming, leaving everything hollow and empty. And still she stood upon the coral reef with a whole other world in her reach, and she sang wonderfully.
Sonata felt the memory of fire prickle in each of her nerve endings. Aria’s touch seemed only to augment it as they remembered the screaming, the terrible screaming, when their song of lamentation tore wide Medusa’s Ribbons and raised all of its dead.
And all of a sudden, a pressure of a thousand drums built in Aria’s ears as she remembered with perfect clarity:
The last time she looked at me, I screamed in her face.
Then came her prayer: Please, my Goddess, take her now.
There was a swoosh of a particularly fast-running current, and the river swallowed Adagio whole.
Aria didn’t know how she came to stand, or even breathe for that matter, but in a blink she was looking down at Sonata. Her eyes were hard, her face unreadable, as she stared into the water. Aria watched as she held a single white stone in her hand. It was so very small, but her hands were clenched white as if the stone weighed a thousand pounds. Yet she tossed it ever so delicately, as if it were a bird about to take flight, but all it did was land with a plop! in the water. For a moment she stared into her rippling reflection before coming to some unknown conclusion and standing to join Aria. There were no tears in their eyes.
The tree was now nothing more than a few smoldering embers, but a fire still burned in Aria’s skin as Sonata dug her nails into her bandaged wound. It was a quiet kind of fire, the kind that will continue to burn in perpetual motion, even when the turning earth pauses, slows, and stops.
Yet even now, when such an end is so far off, the earth is old. And when she is old, she forgets. She forgets all the little riverbanks of the world. And those are the most dangerous places we can ever face in our lives. Which is why we can never forget.
There is no life at the riverbank. It does not sing. It does not move. So together, standing back to back behind the embers, Sonata and Aria gazed up at the moon and the stars and the whole wide universe just now coming back to life. Sonata pointed her feet to the left, where the lively, bustling, mysterious city lay, and Aria faced right towards who-knows-where. But the world wasn’t going to wait for them to figure it out. So they took step after step, each more certain than the last. As they walked, Aria didn’t notice the slight pain in her right shoulder, nor did Sonata’s clenched fingers register the little blue ribbon trapped in her hand.
In this way, the earth turned round, Sonata turned left, Aria turned right, and the poor little current turned every which way. Turning, turning, turning, until the little blue ribbon snapped and turned to ash.