Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower - Tamsyn Muir Page 0,40

ducked your head in a pool. Her face was very wistful, and lovely in a different way to Cobweb’s. Cobweb had such dear features, but the siren had a thin, soulful mermaid sort of face, with her teeth like sapphires and her eyes so keen. The siren looked sorry for herself, which Floralinda sympathised with, being very sorry for herself too.

“I’m afraid I ought to kill you,” Floralinda said, though her voice sounded to herself like nothing much.

The siren opened her mouth again, and Floralinda said “Pardon?” before she realised that of course she couldn’t hear a reply; and the siren let her long seaweedy hair fall over her face, and looked sad. Floralinda kept her spear in front of her, but she advanced a few steps.

The siren stood, and Floralinda now summoned up the gumption to lock all her arm muscles in place, in preparation of a thrust; but the siren sort of undulated at her, with a very speaking look. It was very persuasive. Floralinda got quite muddled, and didn’t pay attention when Cobweb started pulling on a lock of her hair; she just looked at the siren, and thought that it might be nice to have someone else in the tower room to talk to. Of course they would all have to plug their ears all the time, but that might make her goal of loving Cobweb easier, and if the siren was at all warm she could use her to warm the bed. The siren approached very slowly, and very hesitantly, holding her hands up to show she did not mean Floralinda harm all the while. She moved past the envenomed tip and reached out her arm in the most caressing sort of way, and put her fingers—webbed fingers!—on the shaft of the spear, and stroked them over Floralinda’s fingertips.

Floralinda had not been touched by anyone but Cobweb, and Cobweb did not touch her caressingly, or pet her. The siren’s fingers were cool but not clammy, and she looked so deeply into Floralinda’s eyes that Floralinda was sure that the siren was trying to speak with them, and her heart got quite princessly and soft.

Then—thwip!—the siren leaned past her, and seized the plug of orange-pith that had been in Floralinda’s right ear!

And all at once she sang, and Floralinda staggered. The song hurt her: it hurt her heart, because all at once she knew that the siren was not evil at all, but imprisoned like she was, and beautiful; that the siren wanted to love her, and to be her friend, and to listen to all her problems, and to stroke Floralinda so sweetly again. It also hurt her brain, because sirens sing on a special sort of frequency like an opera-singer, one that makes you dizzy and fall over, upsetting your balance so that they can strangle you. Floralinda went down like a sack of potatoes, dropping the spear, and the siren went down with her, and put those webbed fingers around Floralinda’s throat.

Floralinda did not even quite understand that she was being strangled, which is also part of a siren’s technique. It was only Cobweb who saved her. Cobweb pulled out a bit of tapestry-needle, and she drove it into the back of the siren’s right hand; the siren thrust Cobweb away and stopped singing, which broke the spell she had laid over Floralinda. Floralinda’s ear was ringing, and she was confused; but she threw the siren off her, and looked around in a panic for Cobweb and the spear, and when she found the spear, she recklessly stabbed it into the siren’s side.

The siren opened her mouth again, but Floralinda stuck her finger in her ear, and dropped the spear, and looked around desperately for Cobweb. Cobweb was lying a little dazed on the ground, but was otherwise not badly hurt, apart from having been caught by a glancing blow from Floralinda’s rings as she fell. Floralinda picked her up, and by that time the siren was choking to death, and couldn’t sing anyway.

“What a fool I am,” Floralinda groaned,—which was perhaps the first time in history a princess had said anything like that.

“I have said that all along,” said Cobweb. “Why did you let her get so close? She very nearly had you; I can’t think why you dropped your guard.”

“I’m lonely,” said Floralinda falteringly, “and she looked so sweet, Cobweb, that’s all.”

And Cobweb was disgusted, and said she had grown soppier than ever, just when Cobweb had thought the opposite.

They burned