Siren Queen

by Nghi Vo

The moment I stepped into the camera’s eye, I had entered some kind of magical circle. The air was thicker and somehow clearer, the colors more vibrant than they had been before. I had to stop myself from looking down at my hands, certain that they would be glowing against the umber light.

By turns, she clung to me and hid from me as if she was unsure about what I was becoming. To be honest, I wasn’t always sure either. There was a warmth and a weight deep inside me, something strange and new.

I was a strange case, orange and ocher and tan when they worked with peaches and strawberries.

As far as I know, they are there still, haunting the new condos that have taken over Hungarian Hill, haunting the new people with scents of starch and lye, not quite ghosts but no longer merely dolls.

The elevator stopped in a surprisingly close lobby, far more cramped than I would have imagined for the office of one of the three kings of Hollywood.

If I had imagined any kind of hovering preternatural monster, I was wrong. The monster in front of me turned out to be a very normal one, especially if you grew up on Hungarian Hill. The clothes were far finer than any of the ones that ever came into the laundry, and the alcohol was probably nicer as well, but it was familiar enough that I put up a hand to stop him when he came too close.

I could have told myself that it was just acting, but every star in the smoky Los Angeles sky knew better. For better or worse, it was always you there.

I stumbled out of the office with a terrible ringing in my ears, and every step I took I knew that I had done wrong. Somewhere across the city, my sister was crying, though she didn’t know why.

She smiled sweetly, and took my hand in hers. She smelled faintly of milk and honey and something warmer as well. Later, I realized that she was still very much on painkillers when we were having this conversation. “Of course it is, min skatt. Nothing’s hard but life, eh?”

Her words were a bridge. A part of me didn’t want to cross them, wanted to run straight back to the dorm, or even, shamefully, back past the gates where the wolves Sinister and Dexter kept out those who were not supposed to enter, but never cared for who wanted to leave.

Emmaline Sauvignon kept her own private and peculiar court around a fire that looked like a fallen star, and a distant drum that echoed my heart beat faster.

You could go practically anywhere with a name like Mary, and I wondered if she had made the best of it like she had made the best of the little button-eyed dolls.

There was a rising growl that shook the earth, and then, abruptly, it stopped. Not just the growl, but everything was still, as if it were holding its breath or stifled some other way.

She was warm, and her kiss tasted like apple wine, sweet and dry. I

On Friday nights, I chased Emmaline’s fire, and we curled together on her throne, as close as two halves of an almond.

Vaguely, I wished for a suit instead of the dress I wore, a gray Hartnell sheath beaded in ocean-like waves.

She showed me the chalk as if that would help me understand. There was something oddly candy-like about it, like it was an enormous buttermint; I knew though that I would only get a dry and bitter powder in my mouth if I tried a bite of it, and I doubted Greta had gotten anything else.

“In fall she gave birth to a little girl as dark as she was, but when my sister held her in the light at her first birthday, I could see words even darker on her cheek, her eyelids, her throat. Strange titles that you could almost but not quite read. She was beautiful just like her mother.”

Would I be as brave now, in the light of day? I already knew that being brave didn’t mean anything unless you were willing to do it again.

“Hello, I’m Luli Wei,” she said softly to me, and I wondered who she had been before this. There were a few stray stitches at her temple, and when I looked close, I saw the hint of blond hair underneath. Whoever she was, she had lost a lot to stand where she was now.

I spared only a single moment for horror before I started to scratch at them frantically, tearing them out with my suddenly sharp fingernails, desperate to uncover the jagged scales underneath.

The winds brought madness, of course, adding to the not inconsiderable amount that already hovered over the studios, but more than that, they brought fire, sheets of flame that ate away at the landscape and left it black.

This was real life, not another final confrontation between the siren and the captain.

Death in the Santa Ana fires was something that happened to the migrant workers, to the unlucky, to the foolish, not to us.

She wondered to me, brooding, if he had left something vital in Los Angeles, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t as if they could come back and get it. A heart of Norrland ash wood would have to suffice for a crown of stars, and only time would tell how well he could bear it.

You’re a monster, and eventually, CK, monsters go down.

“All right,” she said. “So we can’t be lovers, and we can’t be friends. What should we be instead?” “You’ll be the heroine, of course. And I’ll be the monster. And it’ll be a hit.”

“You smell gorgeous,” I murmured, and she laughed. “I smell like smoke and cigarettes,” she said, “but whatever works for you, darling.”

Su Tong Lin had never gotten to ride off in the sunset with a handsome hero, and now that I had the chance, I wasn’t sure I wanted to.