Isme drifted and found sleep waiting for her, but it flowed and ebbed the way waves at the shore did. Her eyes closed but felt like they were open, her feet twitched under the blanket and suddenly she was running through the woods, fleeing the taunting voice or rushing to the beach to stop herself from singing. Or perhaps she wanted to warn the turtles. Of what, she did not know.
And then she was holding something in her hands, a turtle shell. The turtle was small enough to be carried, but not so small as the hatchlings that would emerge in a few moons. When she turned the shell over, she saw that the belly plate was missing and the turtle’s insides were gone: instead, within the cavern there were little threads of sinew, stretched side to side. Horrified, Isme touched one with a finger, and to her surprise the turtle’s head emerged from its hole. It gazed orb eyes at her, and she said,
“Thank goodness. I thought something terrible happened to you.”
Without words, the turtle blinked back at her, seemingly to say that it was quite all right. Touching the threads again, Isme discovered they made a sound. She began to pluck them, soft notes came that seemed to drown out the storm outside the cave.
And she was walking through the woods down to the beach, the turtle in her hands watching her and listening to the music. She sang, and knew that the sound of her voice and the sound of the strings matched perfectly, but she could not hear her words, because they were not hers. Not really. They belonged to Grandmother Kalliope—as always...
From far off came the sound of yelling, howls and screeches like animals approaching, chanting strange words, and the turtle looked concerned. She told it, “Don’t be scared. It’s all right. These are my friends.” But she did not know why she had said this. Especially when, as the sounds came closer, they sounded even less friendly than before—
And then the voice that made her tremble said: “Isme, you are not dreaming.”
Awareness returned. Isme realized she was indeed standing in the middle of the forest, but was drenched entirely down to the marrow of her bones, and with bruises on her arms—she had instinctively protected her face from branches whipped by wind.
Where was her father? How had she been able to leave the cave with him there—surely, he would have felt her move and stopped her from leaving. Unless he had left first, probably thinking that she would be safe alone under the blankets.
Cresting the hill, Isme made her way back down to the beach. She was aware that under the howl of the storm there were footsteps following her and that the voice was not part of the dream, if indeed carrying the turtle-harp had been a dream.
Perhaps this was the dream and before she had been awake.
She found her father standing on the top of the ridge just before the beach. Wadding her way through the scrub grass, Isme joined him. Overhead, the storm raged with lightning and thunder, wind strong enough that they both had to stand at angles, muscles taut to avoid being blown over. All of her senses strained to their limit. Touch, sound, the smell of salt and water, the taste of the air bitter. And yet in her sight—
Isme had buried them on the beach, at the sand where the tide did not reach. Only storms came that far inland. She and her father stood there and watched as the sea came in, unearthed the mounds, and carried away the sailors back to the depths.
~
They returned to the cave drenched, shaking from cold, wrapped each other in blankets, patting skin and hair dry. Through her chattering teeth, Isme began to speak. She told him everything—of the turtles, of the ship, of the many shadows that had lain on the beach until she found a home for them—except for one thing.
She did not mention the voice in the woods.
THREE.
~
After Isme finished confessing, her father sat back on his own weight and adopted a look of consideration. Isme waited for him to speak, knowing that look—it was the same expression he held when telling her some new rule about preparation for the end of the world. She had not seen him like this for a while.
Then he said, “What do you think happened? Why were they on the beach?”
Isme said, “They came for my song, didn’t they?” She did not say that she had felt this was true from the start and that the voice in the woods had confirmed her fears.
“Why do you think that?” asked her father. “Simply because a thing happens after another thing—that does not mean the first thing caused the second.”
And, all at once, Isme found that she did not want to tell him about the voice. She had been hesitant before but now telling him about the voice seemed beyond her ability to endure. To tell him that something—man, beast, genius, or god—was in the woods, revealing her guilt. She wanted so badly to forget what had happened, and having some mysterious force confirming her fault was the most terrible thing she could think of.
So, she found some other excuse: “Because that is what happens in the stories. The sirens lure men to jump overboard and drown. That is what happened with me.”
“Yes,” said her father, and Isme’s heart sank, as he acknowledged her fault even without knowing of the voice. “But you are not a siren. You are something different.”
Raising her eyes, Isme gazed at her father and the troubled look on his face. He seemed to be blaming himself for something. She opened her mouth to ask, but he was already prepared to tell her:
“You became a woman last winter. I had intended to explain to you
