The Siren's Song

A siren's bones are made for the sky...

A man's bones are made for the earth,

and a sailor's are made for the sea,

but a siren's bones are made for the sky,

where she waits eternally.  

-       Children’s rhyme collected from the village of Strand, 78 years after the Great Drowning

At the farthest edge of the kingdom, beyond the lines of any map, a ragged village on the sea strand held stubborn ground against endless tides. Squalid, wind-whipped, stained with salt and smoke, the village wrestled a meager life from the ocean’s jealous fingers. But children slept warmly in their beds, bellies often full, so the people endured their perilous existence.

Above Strand’s desolate harbor, a crumbling tower spiraled into the sky. It had stood there long before the village, and it would stand there long after. Its original purpose was lost to time. In the time of our telling, it was both guard tower and prison, looming over the people below.

A dark figure with sea raven hair and skin like the hidden side of an oyster shell leaned out from the tower’s highest window. Not yet old, but no longer young, she braced herself with a weary hand as sea spray and wind cut to her birdlike bones, trying to lift her but instead tearing at her hair and shawl. The prisoner watched over the harbor, the unwilling protector of the ships and sailors, singing into a twilight strung with stars. Her song filled the sky with longing, enthralling the men and billowing their sails with a power pulling them back toward land. She sang of the winds and wild water, of claws and meat torn straight from the ocean. But when her song touched the men’s ears, it promised women and warm fires waiting.

The prisoner watched, sullen, as the first boats sailed in. The sailors steadfastly eyed the deck and covered their ears as they passed under her window. Night after night, she sang for a never-ending onslaught of men. Any time she had not was long forgotten, and her eyes had grown dull from watching the horizon.

She ached with a heavy, dragging timelessness, but that night a scene of violence made her heart kick harshly. The largest ship bobbed and groaned, dragging a massive beast in its net. The monstrous creature thrashed, bleeding in the water. Its ponderous eyes rolled as its coils whipped the waves into an ominous burgundy froth. It struggled in vain as the men hauled it onto the shore to finish the cruel work begun at sea. 

Harsh cries and low moans filled the air. The prisoner’s song ended abruptly, and she turned, hands over her ears. She retreated, tightening her shawl, her duty to the village fulfilled for the night. The people would feast on their kill outside her window and fill the air with bloody, raucous celebrations and the roar of bonfires below.

She swallowed bile and hate. The tower’s walls bore down, unbearably close. She lay on a straw bed, wrapped in her feathered shawl and reaching for any memory or life before the village. At last, a wine-dark sleep came. She dreamed of flying, wings carrying her away from the kingdom’s last shore to a field of flowers and bone, where she remembered.

Once, winds had lifted her, and her voice, lilting alongside her sisters’, had filled the sky with awe and terror. They had lured sailors into the great maw of the ocean, sending them to a kingdom of bones on the seafloor. But as the sole fledgling in a brood of immortal creatures, she had felt a reckless pull toward the ships. She had been a daughter of monsters, but men had pulled her from the sky just as easily as they had pulled that poor beast from the sea. Beaten her. Starved her. Held her down with dark spells and caged her on the land. These men cared for magic creatures only for the threat they posed, the labor they offered, or the meat they could provide. They stole life from the ocean and wonder from the air.

The siren woke. She remembered. She ran her cold fingers through the frayed feathers of her shawl. Ragged. Soiled. She had languished in the tower as villagers were born, grew old, and died. She had grown weak eating the dead food the sailors’ wives left at her prison’s base, spitting and crossing themselves as they hurried from its shadow. Too long had she endured, lulling generations of men back to their homes, while she remained locked between sea, land, and sky.

She rushed from her bed to the tower window. She leaned deep into the salt-laced darkness, wrapped in feathers and memories of flight. The tides had swallowed the sea beast’s remains and faded from dark ruby to the deep sapphire of a coming dawn. She cried out and was greeted with silence.

She cried out again.

She sang desperately, and from far off, sea ravens echoed her siren call. Sturdy, ragged, mortal creatures, but they held wind and wild within. They flew above and rained feathers into her outstretched arms. Sky-scented, dark and glistening, each feather was a gift.

They watched as the siren began to weave their feathers into her shawl, a poor shadow of her magnificent wings. But she sang quietly as she worked, and the shawl began to glisten and take on new life. As the dark turned to dawn, she settled the iridescent black garment over her back, and, laced with siren song, it poured down her shoulders and knit into the skin where her wings had been, taking the shape of something fearsome.

She stepped onto the window ledge and dove into the diamond sky. The wind grew frantic around her. It tugged and tore, but she plummeted toward the earth out of a sky filled with raven calls.

At last, she spread her newly woven wings. Rising in the wind’s graces, they bore her back into the wild sky. She circled, laughing, joyous. A beautiful monster again.

The siren circled three times, soaring over the village, where sailors blithely boarded their vessels. Her eyes narrowed as her shadow fell over them. She drank deeply of the wild wind and began to sing, calling the men toward the endlessly hungry sea.

Author's Biography

Alison Weber is a writer and illustrator exploring fairy tales and the wild edges of enchantment. Inspired by the Golden Age of children’s book illustration, she creates stories and pictures for everyone still refusing to outgrow magic. She lives near Seattle with her tiny family and beloved creatures.

Her stories have appeared in The Fairy Tale Magazine and The Otherworld Magazine, with “The Sea Witch” winning the 2025 Prose Writing Contest in The Fairy Tale Magazine.

More work can be seen at faeriescribe.com