A Song Below Water (A Song Below Water, #1)

by Bethany C. Morrow

“Effie, you’ve got your mama, you’ve got me, and you’ve got Paw. That’s three people who love you and would die for you. Don’t give up on the real life you’ve got to go chasing after make-believe.”

Everybody wants to be a siren, but nobody wants to be a siren.

tips of her fingers are swathed in silk. It’s the same on the other hand, and I take that one into my lap and study it. When we were bored freshman year we used to drip Elmer’s glue down our fingers and let it dry before peeling it off like we were removing a second skin. But this is something else. I take the silk covering her middle fingertip and peel it off. Whatever it is, it shimmers. When the light catches it, it’s not just white but an iridescent green and even a pale pink. There’s something faintly imprinted on it, but it’s too small a piece to tell what.

He doesn’t bake like Mama Theo, but I always think his hugs must feel like warm cookies taste,

Portland loved that picture. Because that’s what’s gonna heal the world. If we’re the only ones crying, offering unlimited love no matter what’s done to us. No matter how obvious our distress and discomfort.

I unfurl the heat in my throat and it shoots down the center of me, simultaneously pooling in my core and coursing through me like it’s taken the place of my blood. This is the part I love, the part I rarely let myself feel before Naema made space for me this morning—when it plumes all the way back up. When I was little, I imagined it like a Victorian collar growing up my neck and folding open beneath my chin like flower petals. I didn’t know about silencing collars then, so the one that I imagined made me feel beautiful.

Black and female and a siren is just layers upon layers of trauma.

One time I said she’s too young to deal with this, and she said we don’t get to be.

I get it, fantasy wasn’t created with me in mind. Move on.

Now that he’s rejoined them, they give him all the teasing he’s likely to get, which is a few blown kisses and a pair of lips planted on the back of his hand. He’s smiling like he’s used to it, and it’s more than mild as teasing goes, compared to what I got. Nobody’s ever asked him if it’s “historically accurate” to be in the faire. If he hadn’t been a legacy—if he wasn’t Second Smith to his father’s legendary Blacksmith title—his backstory options would have been endless. His imagination could have run wild and no one (especially not someone who didn’t even bother dressing up) would dare ask whether he’d “come to be there by laws of servitude.” Like every explorer looked the same or like history is what’s written in books. Tavia’s people know better than anyone that’s not true.

And I’m awake. I’m not gasping for breath or sitting upright like I’ve been chased out of a nightmare. Nothing like the movies. I just open my eyes and I’m home, lying in bed in the attic bedroom I share with Effie, who is sleeping beside me.

I can imagine it now, the way the roof tiles will shoot out of his way like throwing stars and how the last thing I’ll see is one of the projectiles flipping toward my forehead. I’ll wake up three days from now at OHSU, just in time for my dad to disapprovingly tell me how much it’s gonna cost to repair the roof.

“I know you’re here for me, I mean that’s what everyone thinks.” I pause when he blinks. There’s something so strange about it, like he’s imitating human behavior. I can’t imagine stone eyes need lubricating. “So … anyway, I need a favor. From you.”

When Gargy sets me back on my balcony and floats backward to perch on the spire, I’m not ready to go back inside. I’m too spread out to be contained right now. I’m too big to fit in my bed.

I’m too bitter and it’s too sweet, so I hurt myself forcing it all down my throat at once.

“You’re gonna be all right,” he says like there was a whole lot in between. “How do you know?” “’Cause it’s all anybody wants. Even when we disagree.”

There’s tension and it’s building, the way a good gospel number does right before the powerful, sometimes arresting release.

“He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.”

“Aw?” Tavia scrunches her face.

not so endearing anymore. Not since I stood in the middle of a tide of people who convinced me it’s better to make peace than to keep it. (My imaginary Mr. Monroe would understand the difference.)

I’m waiting for two words and then I can stop holding back. I hate the feeling. I detest it, forcing myself to be something else, to be hard when I want to be soft. I’m no good at it. Maybe no one is, but it eats me up inside. It never makes me feel strong, just cold. Lonely. Finally she says it.