The Siren

by McPoodle

Interlude 2D

The next day, with repairs to the town completed, the Pillars and Stygian set out on their way. Stygian pulled the cage—it had been equipped with wheels and a harness and covered with a strapped-down tarp.

Sonata couldn’t find any comfortable position in the cage while they traveled. If she tried to levitate, then inertia would cause her to keep bumping against the bars at the back of the cage. If she tried to just rest on the bottom she would slide around, so she was forced to hook her hooves around the front bars and hold on for dear life. The unexpected advantage of this was that she could see a great deal of the road as the corners of the tarp blew around. Stygian seemed to be quite concerned that she might be spotted by the public, but the inside of the cage was shaded enough on this bright day to keep her obscured.

The Pillars spent the time walking—or flying—finding ways to insert tales of their exploits into observations of the weather or the local plant life. Sonata liked Somnambula’s stories of Southern Equestria the best, but the few times that Mistmane spoke up she always paid attention, because those were sure to be the wisest and most inspiring. (The blue pony, the healer Meadowbrook, almost never talked of her past.)

The seven slaves the Pillars kept were probably back behind the cage, but Sonata never bothered to look. Nopony talked to them, and they weren’t allowed to speak among themselves—just like her—so she didn’t really think about them.

The wizard said nothing during their trek. Sonata saw him peer in at her several times, and stare suspiciously at Stygian a lot more times. So she knew better than to try to talk to Stygian, or anyone else. At least until after the lunch break—that was when she drained some more anger out of the wizard. He started telling stories after that, which meant he was far enough away from the cage for Sonata to speak up.

“Where are we going?” she asked in a low voice, pulling the tarp just slightly aside so she could see the back of his head.

Stygian turned his head slightly, so he could look at her with one eye. With an amused smile he said, “A colt from the next town told us that his town had been eaten by the forest, so we’re going to take a look. We’re sort of heroes for hire now.”

Sonata nodded to herself and smiled. She had thought that she would be spending the rest of her life in that cave. This was much better. She moved the tarp just a little bit more so she could see the skipping green earth pony who was leading the group, then quickly pulled it back before his turning head could spot her.

~ ~ ~

It turned out that there was a monster plant named Tiger Lilly who had gained the ability to think, had taken control of the forest, and was setting out to wipe out the whole of ponykind, all by herself.

She really was rather pathetic when it came down to it—any one of the Pillars could have stopped her alone, and all six of them completely humiliated her. But Sonata admired her ambition anyway. She didn’t have any abilities that the wizard didn’t know about, so she didn’t end up in a cage.

And after the repairs to the town were completed by the Pillar’s slaves, the group set out once again.

And so it went.

---

Time passed. The Pillars traveled from one end of Equestria to another, saving town after town from monsters. Stygian was key in planning how to handle the more difficult threats. But he was useless when it came down to action—“I’m no hero,” as he would say. So, he and Sonata would talk.

And when Stygian was busy, Sonata created songs. Adagio had taught her how to create pony songs and she was good at it. Maybe even better than Adagio, although the head siren would never have admitted it. She made a song about the Pillars’ latest triumph based on Stygian’s account and sang it back to him. Later, he convinced the Pillars themselves to listen. The wizard was ready with his spells to protect them, but Sonata was perfectly capable of singing a song without using her magic, and the Pillars (minus Meadowbrook) loved it. This feat kept Sonata useful to the Pillars, even as Stygian’s research into Siren abilities gradually dried up.

~ ~ ~

(“Why do you hate me so much?” Sonata asked Meadowbrook one day when the two of them were alone.

“One of you killed my mother,” the blue pony said without emotion. “She came to our cottage seeking shelter from the rain. She sang a song that got my mother and I to fight, and she drained our magic until Mamma collapsed. She never woke up.”

Meadowbrook poked Sonata’s chest through the bars of the cage. “No race that needs hatred to live deserves to survive,” she told the siren. “I love every creature on the planet. But I will not rest until every Siren in Equestria has turned to mist.”

“Including me?” Sonata asked playfully.

“Stygian cannot protect you forever. Star Swirl will tire of studying you. And then you will be mine.” This last statement was coupled by a blood-curdling smile.

Sonata did her best to stay away from the healer pony after that.)

~ ~ ~

I said that time passed. The problem for Sonata was that she could not tell how long. It might have been a few months. It might have been longer than she had been alive as a Dazzling. Sonata really couldn’t tell.

The problem was that either the wizard or the healer kept turning her to stone for no reason. The first time had been at night, when the tarp was off the cage and Stygian was trying to work out how she managed to breathe so well both normally and underwater. A mare ran up to the camp to tell them about the next monster she wanted them to fight and pointed in fear at Sonata. “It’s one of them!” she screamed.

Sonata opened her mouth to say something, but then she saw a magical beam fly from the wizard’s beam right for her necklace.

Something happened.

And then she could move again. They were somewhere different, it was morning, and the tarp was back over the cage, lifted up at one corner.

Through that corner, the wizard was staring at her in a cold rage. Like it was her fault that she had been seen. “That was necessary to prevent a panic,” he told her. “I reserve the right to do so again.” He softened, almost imperceptibly. “Was that painful?”

Sonata thought for a bit. “No,” she said.

“Alright.”

Sonata spent the day thinking about that something between when the necklace had been activated and when it had been inactivated. It wasn’t nothing. It was in fact a whole mixed-up jumble. Sonata couldn’t pull any individual moments out of it, except for a pale orange siren exploding into sea mist all over her.

Sonata blinked in shock as that realization washed over her. She looked down, but she was now dry. It took a little searching before she found a corner with a wet spot on it that smelled like the sea.

---

One time when the wizard unfroze her, he told her that it was “once again necessary.” He also mentioned that he had left her in stone for eight months, “to see if the stone would degrade.” The eight months coincided with Stygian leaving the group for a time so he could collate his notes into a book on Sirens. He hoped to have copies of it made, for distribution at the noble courts.

The wizard seemed to expect some sort of reaction from her at this revelation. Instead, she smiled innocently at him. “That’s alright. I’m your slave. You could do far worse.” She was quoting Stygian. She spent a lot of time thinking about the eight months of something she now had stuck in her head.

The next day when she had Stygian to herself, she asked him what he had done during her “vacation”. “Books are important to ponies, right?” she asked after he had told her.

"Very important. It’s our way of becoming immortal.”

“‘Immortal’,” Sonata repeated quietly. “That’s the difference between you and I. Between everything else and ponies.

“Monsters are terrified of eternity, just like animals are. Like any same being should be. How can anything last forever? Keep some important part of itself still?

“We tried to enslave the Princesses once.”

“What?” Stygian asked in utter disbelief. He was completely unable to follow the Siren’s change of subject.

“It was right after Adagio had written her first song, which seemed to work on any pony we tried it on. We were near this battlefield, and the Princesses were there, so we crept up on them.

“But when we looked at them, we saw their immortality, and we fled in a panic. Well, I was the only one willing to admit that I was scared, so I guess Adagio and Aria made a ‘strategic retreat’.”

There was a silence, as a stunned Stygian tried to imagine the consequences if the Dazzlings had succeeded, and Sonata tried to organize her scattered thoughts.

“I never thought I’d ever want anything to do with immortality again. Until I had it forced on me.

“I was immortal while you were gone.”

“What does that mean, you ‘were’ immortal? It can’t be immortality if it ends.”

“I know the words don’t make sense, but it felt real. Star Swirl turned me to stone, and then later he turned me back. And in between, I was immortal.”

She looked up, pointing at the stars of the night sky. “I felt like those. I felt like I had been around forever and would keep being around. I could look at what you ponies were doing. And I knew that some of those things happened because of things that I had done. I see it now.” She looked back, looked intently into Stygian’s eyes. “I understand why ponies want to be immortal. I wonder: is that all it takes? Am I a pony now?” She looked so desperate to Stygian.

“I, uh…don’t think that’s how it works,” Stygian said, trying to bring the monster back to reality.

“Your books,” Sonata said. “Reading them made you who you are. The ponies who wrote those books might be long dead, but they had a hoof in who you are now. This book that you wrote about me—it might do the same for you!”

“I…guess,” Stygian stammered. “Assuming that anypony ever finds it useful. Could…could we change the subject?” He turned to organize his portable library.

Sonata was quiet for a while as she tried to think of something else to ask about. Eventually she asked Stygian how many books he had read in his life, and he told her.

“That’s so many!” she exclaimed. “How do you keep all the facts and stories from all of those books straight?”

“Oh, you just have to organize them,” the unicorn told her. “Pony brains are not made to hold collections of abstract facts. You make a little house in your head, and you attach the facts to pieces of furniture that work for you. Or maybe places on a map of Equestria, like I have been doing. I guess you could convert them into song lyrics.”

“Yes!” Sonata exclaimed, attracting the attention of a couple of guard slaves. (They were a different set now, as some buying and selling had occurred during her “vacation”.) She was very good at song lyrics.

~ ~ ~

Sonata was frozen and unfrozen many, many times after that. Always when a siren was the monster that the Pillars were hunting. It seemed that they failed to believe her when she said that she hated the other sirens, and the other sirens hated her. Just as they hated each other. And Sonata used her lyric abilities to tease out all of the memories bunched into her frozen moments. Ponies tended to say a lot of things around her when she was a statue that they didn’t want others to hear. Especially the wizard. And she didn’t like what she had heard.