Tales of Arilland by Alethea Kontis Page B

her finger on the map to an island just off the coast of the country bearing her lover’s symbol. She pointed at Lawson, and then stamped her finger back down on the map.
    “There? What’s there?”
    She threw her hands up in exasperation and scanned the room. She held up the medallion of her necklace to him.
    “Gold?”
    She nodded and kept searching. She found his knife on the table, picked it up, and then shook her head.
    “Swords?”
    She shook her head again.
    “This?” He removed the pistol from his belt and held it out to her. She nodded emphatically.
    He cocked his head and grinned. “Siren, if ye’re right about this, I’ll take ye anywhere in the world.” He strode out of the room and hollered to his first mate. “Hard to port, matey!”
    “Cap’n?” the first mate asked.
    Lawson hooked his thumbs in his belt. “We’re goin’ ‘ome.”
    The greatest tale of Bloody Lawson and the Siren is the Massacre at Windy Port. Legend has it that their ship, cloaked in dark magic, slipped by the watchmen unnoticed. Once docked the crew cut a gruesome swath through the town, led by Lawson and his Sea Witch. Lawson brandished a rapier in one hand, a pistol in the other. The Siren, dressed in fine burgundy velvet, marched through town before him, seducing men to their grisly deaths. Her eyes were as black and cold as a shark’s, her hair a mass of ebony fire waving about her. They left none living in their wake, took what they wanted and stole back into the night as invisibly as they had arrived.
    Like most legends, not a word of it was true.
    They sailed into Windy Port under a royal flag they had appropriated from a previous hunt. They docked without incident, the crew scattering to the winds to pick up intelligence, hefty bar tabs, and the occasional whore.
    The moment Lawson set her down on the dock, she fell. The hollowness inside her throbbed. She could not believe anything could have been so still as land. There was no life in it. The air was not strong enough to keep it fluid. It was rock. Still, empty, dead rock. She was but a shell, a humble reconstruction of the world upon which man walked every single day. How did they survive without a connection? She hugged her stomach, doubled up and gagged, only emptiness escaping her dry heaves.
    “You okay, honey? Take it easy. It’ll pass soon.”
    The words spoken to her had a cadence she had never heard before, and it surprised her so much she didn’t understand them at first. The hands that pulled her hair back away from her face were small and delicate. The woman had on a black dress. Her hair was pinned up on her head and decorated with shiny black beads. She smelled…soft and nice. And she was gentle when she accepted the Siren’s embrace.
    “It’s all right,” the woman said as she patted her back. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
    She didn’t scream when pointed teeth pierced her flesh.
    Everything was going to be just fine.
    Suddenly conscious of her appearance, she pulled her dress over her head and began tearing at the woman’s clothes. Lawson knelt beside her and motioned for his men to surround them so as not to draw attention to the scene. “Discovered vanity, ‘ave we?” he chuckled as he helped her undress the woman’s corpse. Once she had changed, the men weighted the body and rolled it into the ocean.
    Lawson helped her stand. He tossed a dark cloak about her and covered her hair with its hood. She was glad he didn’t force her to wear shoes—it was hard enough enduring this much separation from the water. She didn’t know how much more she would be able to bear.
    The inn they went to almost pushed her sanity over the edge from sensory overload. The room was filled with people of all shapes and sizes. There were smells from the food, the ale, the dogs in front of the fire, the fire itself. Men and women talked and shouted and joked and laughed. A scrawny youth crawled up beside the dogs at one point and sang for his