Siren

By Sayantika Paul

Pain is the only constant I’ve felt in these ever-shifting sands of time. My curse is eternity.

How long has it been? Twenty years? Two hundred years? I stopped keeping count at ten, actually. Now I just wait for time to pass me by, while I lie here in my lonely, silent island – beautiful and ageless, waiting for the next batch of humans who will be unfortunate enough to make my acquaintance.

The only thing second to the pain is the hunger. The overwhelming hunger, the thirst that grapples with my throat every minute of every day. The feeling of sandpaper rubbing against every vein in my body has somehow become as familiar as the recurring waves I see lapping up against my shore every evening. They are calm, gentle, beautiful, even. Sometimes I almost forget my misery and stare out into the foamy water, wondering about my life before the curse.

But then, it comes. The grey sky, the waves slowly turning rough and turbulent, the thunder, and the angry, violent sea. That’s when I know it’s coming. Another miserable lost ship being delivered to my clutches. A reminder of the monster I truly am. The monster I have become.

Sometimes my loneliness almost overrides my hunger, and I ponder – maybe, just maybe, if I could keep just one of them alive, maybe if I could just hear the rare sound of someone speaking to me once again: maybe it would change me. Maybe I’d gain control over my bloodlust, learn the ways of civilised men again, and prove the curse ineffective.

But it never happens. No matter how hard I try – the moment I hear the throbbing of their blood in their veins, the moment I smell their fear as they perceive me, the truth of what I am dawning on them, the light of life flickering in their eyes as the realisation of their impending fate consumes them; I cannot contain the monster. He reaches out from within my parched heart, claws out and fangs ready to drain the life out of yet another miserable sailor.

And after its done, after the remnants of the ship and the signs of any living being in it have been completely erased, and the sea goes back to being her gentle, deceitful self; I once again sit on the rocky shore of my island, staring at my reflection in the water, wondering how it never occurs to my banisher that the punishment she inflicted on me is so much greater than my crime.

Augusta was beautiful. The only creature more beautiful than me to exist in the Divine Glade, where we had resided in peace and abundance for a million years. It was a realm that knew no death, no disease, and most significantly – no pain. Just complete and absolute happiness.

And Augusta and I were happy, yes. I cannot remember a time in my life when I was happier than when I was with her. And my lifetime being stretched well over eternity, that is saying a lot. Indeed, falling in love with Augusta was pretty inevitable, I must say. She was a dazzling light, and you could not help but be drawn to her like moths to a flame, knowing well she had the power to brighten your horizon or destroy you completely.

We could have been together forever. It would be a worthwhile way to spend eternity, I can vouch for that. But I had only seen Augusta’s beauty and youth, her love and protection. I underestimated her rage, her vengeance. Until she unleashed it upon me.

I had disobeyed her. Broken the foremost rule she had for me: to never sing for another.

My beautiful singing voice was the only thing I possessed that she didn’t. Perhaps that is why she was determined to always have it for herself. Quite a conceited woman, she was. But I never understood the gravity of her demand until I made light of it, casually one day. The fateful day that I decided I wanted to sing, and not just for her ears.

She punished me by inflicting upon me a curse that would never allow me to sing again, not without having death follow my notes like a stealthy shadow.

Beautiful beyond earthly definition: dangerous beyond earthly description. That’s how the humans see me now. My tale has become a legend, told and retold in different ways; but the conclusion remains the same. My beauty is a trap – and my voice a lure. I am nothing but an incredibly intriguing, bloodthirsty demon: doomed to relive the memory of the blood on my hands every day for the rest of eternity.

So I resign myself to it, exhaustion seeping into my bones after hopelessly fighting against my curse for years. I cannot escape the monstrosity Augusta has created; devoid of love, she knows no mercy.

And so I, Anubis, once a God, am now a demon.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, indeed.

By Sayantika Paul