Lydia the Siren's Arc

Chapter 12 of 37

Weeks passed on Timbermane Cliff. Lydia healed, but she could not sing the way she once had. Her cavern gave her song its reach. The stone walls caught each note and threw it far down the road. Now she had only open air. Her voice slid into the trees and died. Without that reach, she could not draw Gregorio close, and without a strong close song, she could not hold him once she did. She needed a new vessel for her voice. She thought of his ocarina. A small thing of bone, yet it carried sound across a whole clearing. Bone. That was the answer. She had eaten many creatures on this cliff and left their bones scattered in the moss. She gathered a long, hollow limb bone and cleaned it. She hollowed the marrow and shaped the ends with her talons. Then she raised it to her lips and hummed through it. Her voice came out changed. It pushed forward, thin and bright, and carried past the far ferns. Lydia lowered the bone and smiled. It worked. But the horn was small. The sound it threw was small too. A rabbit's bone could not hold the weight of a real lure. She needed something bigger. She needed the long bone of a man. Animal bone made the horn, but animal flesh could not feed her. She had learned that in her cavern. Fish and rabbits filled her belly, yet they left her hollow and weak underneath. Only human blood sharpened her song and steadied her power. To build a horn strong enough for Gregorio, and to feed the strength she needed to use it, she required a human. She waited at the cliff's edge and watched the broad crossing below. On the third day, a lone traveler came up the wooded slope, following an old trail. He carried a pack and hummed to himself, unaware. Lydia lifted her small bone horn and sent a low note down through the trees. His humming stopped. He turned toward the sound and began to climb. She let him come. When he reached a mossy ledge near the top, she dropped on him from above. Her talons took him before he could shout. She fed until her power rang through her like a struck bell. Then she took what she truly wanted. She cut the long bone from his arm, clean and pale and strong. Back on her high perch, she shaped the new bone through the night. She hollowed it, smoothed it, and cut a mouth for her voice. When dawn touched the cliff, she raised the finished horn and sang a single note through it. The sound leapt from the cliff, crossed the whole broad crossing, and rolled far down the western road. It reached farther than her cavern ever had. Lydia lowered the horn and looked toward the road where Gregorio walked. She had her voice back, and this time she would carry it to him.