Silent Echo (16 page)

“Mine is all around me.

It confuses and confounds me,

It shakes me and it quakes me.

Over burning coals it rakes me.”

Felix stopped throwing punches, sensing that something had shifted in the atmosphere of the room, the atmosphere of the earth. He scanned the café and saw Portia cradling the microphone in her hand and moving her lips.

“Is there a stain upon your shirt?

A place where your blood spurt?

Please, oh, please, just tell me,

Oh—show me where it hurts…”

He looked around at the faces of the audience, frozen, as if they were witnessing a modern-day miracle. Pushing his way through the crowd, he tripped over himself toward one of the giant speakers, placing an unwilling hand on top of it. The vibrations that met his fingers coursed through him like an electrical current. A punitive current. The kind that would penetrate someone in an electric chair.

“Growing pains can shatter,

Cause your teeth to chatter,

And the heart bleeds like no other,

Begging kisses of a mother.”

The audience was hypnotized by the raw beauty of her voice. Portia was sounding off bass notes along with their coordinating harmony with an ease that spoke of years of vocal training. Her range was mind-blowing as she wove a musical tapestry. The crowd drew nearer to the singing Goddess. Everyone, except Felix, who stood rooted to his spot at the speaker.

“Wounds of silence pierce,

Holding a dissonance that’s fierce,

And loneliness can kill,

But look, you’re standing still.”

The unfamiliar melody was carrying Portia through the song as she scanned the room to find Felix. She spotted him, standing off to the side, his hand on the speaker, tears streaming down his face. Seeing his hurt added another dimension to her voice.

“And
though the words we skirt,

The pain you can’t divert.

So, show me, baby, show me,

Oh—show me where it hurts…”

She stared at Felix, waiting for his reaction. His face was so twisted with pain and confusion that he no longer even resembled her Felix.

Suddenly, from the back of the silent room, she heard a familiar voice.

“Portia?”

She looked up and saw a dumbstruck Helena standing in the entrance of the café. She was with Natalie Fein, whose cheeks were stained with tears.

Portia felt like an action hero who had tried to traverse two buildings and had plummeted right into the gap.

She needed out.

Fast.

She remembered Wendy once sneaking her and Felix into the café through a rarely used back exit, which thankfully was unlocked. The cool breeze stung her skin as she tried to inhale deeply into her lungs.

What the hell was she thinking?! This was it. There was no going back now. Felix would probably never talk to her again. And her friends? And Max? They probably all thought she was some kind of hypochondriacal freak. How would she ever bridge the two worlds of her life? The voiceless and the voiced?

Hyperventilating, she recalled the pained look on Felix’s face when he had laid his hand on that speaker. She wished she could turn back the clock. How could she have made such a hasty decision? As her breathing growing more labored, a wretched bile threatened to rise up out of her throat.

And Helena? Why had her mother been there? She suddenly remembered the tears on Natalie Fein’s face. Had something happened?

Portia started to scream into the darkness, great stabs of anger piercing the emptiness around her. She crouched down to the floor as her screams gave way to clamorous sobs.

A sudden hand on her shoulder interrupted her solitude.

She looked up to see the endless green eyes of Ms. Leucosia gazing down upon her, much like a mother admiring her newborn baby.

“Portia,” the Siren said, her voice as smooth as silk, “we need to have a talk…”

♪

“What’s going on, Ms. Leucosia? How did you know I was back here?” Portia’s voice was heavy with tears.

“Portia,” Leucosia began awkwardly, “I heard through the grapevine that you placed into Mr. Morrison’s elective about
The Odyssey
.”

Portia looked at the school nurse as if she had completely lost her mind.

“What are you talking about, Ms. Leucosia? I’m a little preoccupied right now, you know,” she responded, exasperated. “Weren’t you just inside? Didn’t you see what happened?”

Leucosia slunk down to the ground next to Portia, hugging her knees into her chest.

“Yes, Portia. I was inside, and believe it or not I’ve rehearsed these lines in my head so many times. Now that this moment has finally arrived, I’m feeling quite nervous, actually—uncertain about where to begin.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Ms. Leucosia?” Portia was losing her patience.

“Did Mr. Morrison get up to the part about the Sirens yet?”

At the mention of the Sirens, Portia receded further away from the nurse, a blaring alarm sounding in her head. Something was off. Very, very off.

“He referenced it—why?” It came out as a whisper.

“And I think you already know that the names of the Sirens who unsuccessfully tried to lure Odysseus in were Parthenope and Ligeia, right?”

“I know those names…but…but it never said in the book or anywhere else that they were the ones who tried to lure in Odysseus. Wait—it was you? It was you messing with me that whole time?” A look of shock ran across Portia’s face. “Why would you do that? Why was it so goddamned important that I know a twisted fairy tale about some crazy made-up Sirens?”

“Because, my dear, those crazy made-up Sirens were my sisters. Parthenope and Ligeia were my sisters.”

Portia stared at Leucosia like she had just sprouted a second head. If she wasn’t so distraught over the events of the last hour, she might have even laughed.

“Ms. Leucosia, have you taken leave of your senses?” This was an expression Helena favored. It seemed fitting at the moment.

Of course this was the reaction that Leucosia expected from the young girl. She herself could hear how laughable she sounded. Rethinking her strategy, she tried backtracking a little.

“Portia, do you remember when you were last in my office, I placed my hand over your throat? The reason I did that was to see how far along the development of your syrinx had come.”

“My what? Only birds have syrinxes, Ms. Leucosia.”

The older Goddess was visibly impressed at her charge’s knowledge of bird anatomy and decided to stick with birds as a segue into the inevitable bomb she was about to drop.

“Ahh—so you’re a bird person. Then you already know that the syrinx is an anatomical wonder—a magical voice box that splits into two bronchi, enabling two different notes to be sung at the same time—”

“Ms. Leucosia,” Portia interrupted the nurse impatiently, “I’m kind of not in the mood for a biology lesson right now.” Her mind was racing, her thoughts fragmented like fireworks through her head. She really needed this lunatic to leave her alone.

The nurse continued as if Portia hadn’t even spoken. “Well, the syrinx is what enables birds to call out as they do. But Sirens have both a larynx and a syrinx, making something like this possible…”

Leucosia looked up at the night sky and let escape from her mouth a simultaneous symphony of notes.

Portia stared wide-eyed at her, mouth agape.

“That was beautiful,” she admitted when she recovered herself. Was there no end to the bizarre ways in which this day was unfolding?

“Thank you,” responded Leucosia, “Although I suspect that you’ve been able to execute the same vocal feats lately.”

Portia nodded reluctantly.

Leucosia took Portia’s hand and placed it at the base of her own throat. She emitted another glorious sound, a silkworm releasing a melodic thread, and Portia could feel an intense vibration travel through her hand. She wanted to move her fingers away, but the nurse’s delicate throat was like a magnet. Finally Leucosia stopped singing, and Portia dropped her hand immediately.

“OK, so maybe somehow we have the privilege of having syrinxes. So what?” She knew she was being rude—she never spoke to adults this way. Well, at least not until her recent run in with Mr. Morrison. But her emotional well had run dry, and she just didn’t have the energy to check herself.

Leucosia decided to go in for the kill.

“Portia, I know you tried to kill Charlotte Trotter’s father.”

Portia looked up at her in shock. The nurse suddenly had her full attention.

“Portia, listen to me. For as crazy as this might sound to you, you are indeed a Siren, just like the ones described by Homer. Not that he even knew everything about Sirens, but boy, he did like to hear himself talk. My dear friend Athena—you know, the pale-eyed Goddess from
The Odyssey
; actually they’re more of a grayish tone—anyway, she can shift her shape, remember? So we caused Mr. Morrison to have a slight case of food poisoning for the first couple of days, so that Athena could deliver his lectures for him. As him. She needed to start planting the seeds in your head that the world of the Gods is a real one.”

“That’s impossible,” Portia replied.

“Portia, all these Gods—Athena, Morpheus the God of Dreams, and others whom you will come to know—made a collective decision at your birth to slow the development of your syrinx so that you would not achieve your full powers until you were mature enough to handle them. They—we—couldn’t risk you turning out like my sisters. But now, here you are, a young woman with a voice whose powers are…are…immeasurable. And I am going to help you learn how to master your tool.”

Portia did begin to laugh then—a nervous laughter that one might let out at a funeral. Scanning the alley surrounding them, she began planning her best escape route from this lunatic, who she prayed to God was harmless.

“You can run, Portia, but you’ll be doing yourself a huge disservice. There are forces out there that would have you use your voice purely for purposes of destruction. Parthenope and Ligeia are trying to encourage you down the same path of evil upon which they traveled. You must trust me so that together we can ensure that the goodness in your heart remains there. Forever.”

“Ms. Leucosia,” Portia tried to be as diplomatic as possible, “you are talking to the only teenage girl on the planet who never truly obsessed over Team Edward or Team Jacob—OK, maybe I did a little. But do you know why I never lost sleep over it? Or bought a T-shirt? Because ultimately vampires and werewolves don’t exist! And neither do Sirens. I’m not sure what exactly is going on with me, but I guess now that the cat is out of the bag, my parents will force me to do the whole doctor circuit again, and then we’ll find out.”

“I wouldn’t recommend that.” Her tone was menacing. “Unless you want to spend the rest of your life visiting a steady stream of doctors who are determined to figure out what makes you so ‘special.’ I think you’ve had enough of that in your childhood already, right?”

“All right, that’s it. I have to go.” Portia stood up and readied herself to make a break for it when Leucosia once again began singing. Willing her feet to start walking, running even, she found that she was paralyzed. She focused all of her energy on taking the first step that would lead her back to the real world, but as Leucosia’s voice grew louder, Portia’s legs became more inert.

The redhead’s voice was glorious as foreign lyrics spilled effortlessly from her mouth. To her horror, Portia found that she was not only unable to take a step forward, but was also unwittingly slumping down along the alley wall again as Ms. Leucosia continued to sing. When her fingers felt the cold stone of the pavement beneath her, her mind suddenly flashed an image of Harold Trotter’s bloodied knuckles scraping the stone edge of the well.

She scrambled through her memories of the past few weeks, wondering if maybe Ms. Leucosia might be on to something. Nothing mythological, of course, but perhaps some kind of spiritual or karmic explanation for her sudden metamorphosis.

“Please start at the beginning.” She couldn’t believe she was encouraging this madness.

“You already know the beginning, Portia. Let me start where we left off…”

♪

Leto bore a daughter from the great love she shared with Nereus. The child was called Melina, for she was as sweet as honey and was the greatest source of joy that Leto had ever known. But though Leto prayed to the almighty Zeus to grant her daughter immortality, it was not meant to be.

Melina was beautiful among mortals and found love with a man, Nikolas, who knew only goodness in his heart. Four daughters did they bear, one more mortal than the next.

Leto’s heart was ever filled with sorrow as she appealed to Zeus in her every waking moment to spare her the pain of burying her own child.

But there are chapters in the books of the Gods that can never be rewritten.

And so came the dreaded day when Leto held her dying daughter in her ageless arms. Snowy gray was the once-red hair of the aged Melina, her skin deeply lined and freckled with brown spots.

“Dearest Mother, for my mortal soul I beg you, do not weep. For I have known great happiness with Nikolas and the many daughters with whom the Gods have blessed me. And above all, I have known the love of a mother who has never once uttered a harsh word unto me.”

Leto felt a pain such as she had never known.

“Mother,” continued the dying mortal, “as the hour of my death is upon me, I beg you only one request.”

Her heart brimming with love and sadness, Leto said to her daughter, “Dearest Melina, be not humble in your request, for there is nothing I could deny a daughter such as you.”

Melina then spoke these words:

“Though we have not often spoken of it, Mother, well known among Gods and mortals are the evildoings of your sisters, Parthenope and Ligeia. I beg you, remain upon this earth until the next Siren emerges. You must guide her down the path of goodness, so that she does not follow in the evil footsteps of your sisters.”

A great panic descended then upon Leto, who was ever exhausted by the trials of her immortal life and by the very oath she had already sworn to her own mother, Terpsichore. But her love for Melina was great, and she could deny her daughter nothing.

“My sweet Melina, I swear to you that I shall guard our kin like the lioness guards her cubs.”

Melina then spoke the words that carried the great Goddess Leto through her many years on earth.

“When the next one does emerge, speak to her of your daughter Melina, who even now at the hour of death feels she has been a great disappointment. For always I wished to possess the Godliness that has blessed you.”

Leto’s heart shattered into a million pieces.

“Melina, a better daughter than you a mother has never known. You are kind and true, so much like your dear father, Nereus.”

Leto stroked the aged cheeks of her daughter with a hand young and supple.

“Mother, I feel the grip of death growing ever stronger upon my wretched aged body. I beseech you, each of your days shall you imagine the many words that you will one day speak unto the next, telling her of all the goodly mortals that came before her…”

With these words, the timeworn eyes of the once-lovely Melina were sealed shut with the kiss of death.

♪

“You’re Leto.” Portia blurted out incredulously. “Is that why I could never see her clearly?”

“You did see her, Portia. You saw the whole thing, the whole story. It’s just that, well, Sirens can develop this ability to erase a memory—you’ll get around to it. And I’m a pretty experienced Siren, so I can actually do some selective memory erasing—it took me two centuries to master that one. Anyway, remember that song that would play at the end of each video segment—you know, while the credits were rolling? That was sung by me—a song meant to make you forget parts of what you saw until it became time to remember.” Leucosia took Portia’s hand and gave it a not altogether gentle squeeze. “And now it is time to remember,” she commanded.

And then, like a defroster had suddenly been activated in her brain, Portia was able to remember the face of the third sister. It was indeed Leucosia’s face. Down to the last freckle.

“I am Leto, Portia. Leto is my, um, nickname. It means ‘hidden one’—a nod toward my reluctance to be in the spotlight, I suppose.”