Page 46 of The Sirens

45

LUCY

SUNDAY, 17 FEbrUARY 2019

Lucy breathes hard as she climbs down the staircase, stones skittering to the deep. The muscles of her calves quiver. Below her, the sea shimmers and ripples like skin.

Ten more steps.

She clings tight to the rope, which is frayed and damp, blistering her palm.

As she gets closer to the water, she has the strange sense that she is being pulled by something, a fish with a hook through its gut.

Then she feels it in her bones; in the patches of skin that tingle at the water’s touch, in the place where her pulse beats in her neck.

She has been here before.

Her fingers slip on the rocks as she pulls herself over the ledge. The sea is louder now, thundering around her; the cling and push of strong white hands. The wind moans through the rocks, whipping the hair from her face.

She can see the cave up ahead, a dark gash in the rock. ‘ Jess! ’

She screams, but the wind whips her voice away.

A wave curls towards her, an animal ready to pounce. She grips the rock tight, driving her fingers into the sharp grit so hard it hurts. Bracing herself.

But when the water comes it is soft and gentle. Soothing.

She feels her grip on the rock loosen, the temptation to let go, to float away, seizing her.

‘Lucy?’

A face, pale and wild, peers over the lip of the cave. It’s Jess, her eyes wide and full of sky; her hair tangled with the sea. There is something wrong with her neck; it blooms pink and ragged beneath her jaw, opening and closing in time with her pulse.

‘Take my hand,’ says Jess. Lucy does not hear the words so much as feel them, a song humming in her bones.

Jess grasps Lucy’s hand – her skin feels moist and smooth and strange – and pulls.

I have been here before , Lucy thinks again as Jess leads her into the cave. They crawl on their knees, the rocks making indents in Lucy’s skin. The sea’s roar is quieter here, musical. Above her, daggers of rock glisten like teeth.

When they are inside, Jess stops, turns to face Lucy. ‘You came,’ she says, putting her arms around her.

Lucy rests her head on Jess’s shoulder. Her skin does not smell of linseed and vanilla as Lucy remembers, but of something sharper, animal. A smell that might come from Lucy herself.

The sound of Jess’s heart beating fills her ears. She feels her breathing slow, the blood settling in her veins.

She would know it anywhere, that sound. The first she ever heard.

* * *

Jess’s skin is grimed and crusted, her hair plastered to her forehead. There is a cut against one sharp cheekbone, vivid red. The wounds on her neck flutter.

‘You’re hurt,’ Lucy says, reaching out a hand. Panic fizzes through her body. She needs to get Jess out of here, to a hospital. ‘What happened? Where’s Hennessey?’

Jess swallows, her eyes bright as coins. ‘How did you—’

‘The police,’ Lucy says. ‘They found his car.’

Jess closes her eyes, takes a breath that sounds to Lucy like relief.

‘OK,’ she says. ‘OK.’ ‘Where is he?’

‘Gone,’ says Jess. ‘Drowned.’ Lucy’s breath catches in her throat. ‘You didn’t—’

‘No. No, it was an accident. We struggled. He – he fell.’

Lucy swallows. She thinks of Hennessey’s face, the age-softened jaw. Imagines it greened by the sea.

‘Was he,’ Lucy trembles as she forms the words in her mouth, ‘my father?’

Jess shakes her head violently, and Lucy closes her eyes with relief.

So it must be Max. Max, who is gentle and kind. Who had pulled Jess from the water and put his arms around her. Who had loved her.

‘Did he do this?’ Lucy says, tracing the frills on Jess’s neck. There is something familiar about the sensation of the skin beneath her fingertips, the pulsing heat of it.

‘No,’ says Jess, placing her own hand on Lucy’s neck. There is a stinging pain, so sharp that Lucy winces. Jess is drawing something from her flesh, some ancient thing stored in her cells. Then the skin of her neck splits; she feels it open, come alive, under Jess’s fingers.

‘You asked me once,’ Jess says, her voice breaking, ‘if you could shed your skin like a snake.’

Lucy thinks of the painting – The Sirens. The two women, their scaled skin. She nods, eyes brimming with tears.

‘And I said no. No, you couldn’t. But you can, you have. We both have.’

Tears run into Lucy’s mouth. ‘I’ve been here before, haven’t I?’

Jess nods, and Lucy sees that she is crying, too.

‘I carried you here, in my belly. I’d seen it, in my dreams. This dark, safe place; a place between land and sea. I was so frightened, Lucy. I had been for months. The fear grew and grew so that I worried it would choke me, kill us both.

‘I got a coach to Sydney, another bus from Batemans Bay. I wanted to see it – Cliff House, Devil’s Lookout. The place I started from. I was in the house when the pain began. That’s when I heard them for the first time, singing. Like they were calling me. And then I was here, with the rocks cutting into my hands and the tide beating in my ears, and then I pushed and pushed and then you were here, too. The most perfect thing I’d ever seen. I remember your little hands,’ she clasps one between hers now, squeezing tight, ‘they were so tiny, but they seemed to contain all of me. My whole heart. I called you Lucy. I wanted you to have the sea in your name.’

An ache spreads through Lucy’s chest.

‘But why?’ she says, the words small in the echoing space of the cave. ‘Why didn’t you want me?’

‘Oh, Lucy,’ says Jess. ‘I always wanted you.’

She holds up one of Lucy’s hands, stroking the webs of flesh between her fingers.

‘I wanted to take you home, to the sea. I never wanted you to feel like I did, like you didn’t belong. But then, they found me. I don’t remember much of what happened next.’ She closes her eyes. ‘Only flashes – a hospital; your cries. The skin peeling from us both, my whole body thirsting.’

She takes a breath, then continues.

‘There was a woman from the government. The Department of Communities and Justice. She told me that I was unfit, that I had put you in danger, bringing you – birthing you – here. They were going to take you away from me.

‘Mum and Dad stepped in. They applied to become guardians, and we decided – or it was decided – that you would be my sister.

‘We were going to tell you the truth when you turned eighteen. But then …it wasn’t so easy.’

‘But – I don’t understand. What do you mean, you wanted to take me to the sea? Are you saying,’ Lucy licks her cracked lips, ‘are you saying that you wanted us to drown?’

‘It wouldn’t be drowning,’ says Jess, stroking Lucy’s cheek. ‘Close your eyes.’