Lydia the Siren's Arc

Chapter 23 of 37

The plate was clean. Lydia set the fork down without dropping it. She felt proud of a small thing. But a bigger want pulled at her. She had a voice once. She wanted to find it again. Bastion sat by the window, humming his mother's tune while he oiled his blade. Lydia opened her mouth to match him. She reached for the note that used to bend men toward her, She sang. The sound came out thin. It cracked in the middle. No echo lifted it, no pull curled inside it. It was just a woman's voice, plain and small in a wooden room. She stopped. Her face went hot. "Again," she said, to herself. She tried a higher note. It wobbled and died. She tried the low hum that once dropped travelers to their knees. Nothing answered. The cabin stayed a cabin. Bastion stayed himself, calm at the window. "I can't," she said. Her hands shook. "It's gone.” Bastion set the blade down. "You have a voice," he said. "You used it just now." "It's ugly." She hated how her throat tightened. "It doesn't work." "It's new." He turned to face her. "You didn't sing like a siren the first day you were one. You learned it. Years, I'd guess." She glared at him. "I don't have years." "You have more than you did as a beast." He said it plain and stopped there. Lydia opened her mouth to argue. Then she understood what he meant, and it was worse than an insult. The song had never been hers. The stone made it. The hunger made it. Without them she was a beginner, clumsy as her hand had been with the fork. She would have to grow this too, slow, from nothing. It was too much. The eating, the fork, the human stomach, and now this. She had been the most beautiful sound on the western road. Now she squeaked like a bird with a stone in its throat. "I'm done," she said. She stood, crossed to the bed under the painted stars, and pulled the blanket over her head. The wool smelled of him. She curled small and shut her eyes. The dark helped. Nothing asked anything of her here. She heard him cross the floor. He did not pull the blanket back. He sat on the edge of the bed, near her shape, and began to hum. His mother's tune, low and even. He did not need magic to make it beautiful. He had only practiced. Lydia stayed hidden. But she listened. Under the blanket, in the dark, she moved her lips and shaped the notes with him, so quiet he could not hear. She could not sing yet. She could learn the melody.