Sound of Sirens: (Tales of Skylge #1) (7 page)

“What else did you bring?” Royce’s smooth voice breaks the silence enveloping us after side B has spun to an end.

My eyes flutter open. “W-what?” I stutter dumbly.

He points to the shopping bag. “Looks like there’s more music in there.”

“Ah, yes.” I suddenly feel nervous about bringing my own stuff. Why would Royce want to listen to music I picked? “Well, I was just curious what Kathleen Ferrier would sound like on your equipment.”

He smiles, and his eyes no longer seem hard like iron. The songs have brought him peace. I think music is his religion, in a way. “Go ahead. Put your record on,” he says invitingly.

I comply. While fiddling with the controls to change the speed to 78, I already start humming
Ye Banks and Braes
. I push the button that start the turntable and lifts the arm, and then I wait.

When Kathleen’s voice floods the room, I stand there in awe. The sound is still crackly, but the usual buzz of the diaphragm is strangely absent. Kathleen doesn’t sound tinny or harsh when she sings loudly – it’s as if she is standing right in the room with me.

Slowly, I shuffle back to the couch, sitting down on the cushions very quietly. When I shoot a sideward glance at Royce, he looks mesmerized. He likes it – he likes ‘my’ music too. It makes me glow inside, and I no longer care why.

“I want to hear you play,” I say abruptly once the song is over. Somehow, I want to stop him from commenting on the record. Maybe a part of me is still afraid he won’t get it, or he’ll say the wrong thing.

“You’ll hear me play on Monday,” he says with an indulgent smile. “At Oorol.”

Stubbornly, I shake my head. “I want to hear what you were working on before I came here.”

Royce frowns, looking a bit taken aback. “Well, I’m not done yet. I’m still working on stuff.”

I smirk. “Do I detect a hint of perfectionism in your refusal?”

He bursts out laughing. The sound echoes off the walls as he gives me a surprised little smile. “Someone ever told you that you’re too cheeky for your own good, Enna?”

“Well – yeah. They have, in fact.” I bite my lip.

Royce rakes a hand through his floppy, black hair before patting me on the knee with it. “You’re cute,” he says.

It’s impossible to hear whether he means cute in a little sister kind-of-way or cute in a sort-of-hot-kind-of-way, but his warm hand on my knee makes me go so horribly red that he can’t possibly miss what I am hoping his words mean. Paralyzed, I stare into his blue eyes and wish the ground would open up and swallow me whole.

“Maybe I should go,” I squeak before he can say anything. “It’s getting late.”

“Yeah.” His voice sounds a bit rough. “Maybe you should.”

Avoiding his inquisitive eyes, I jump up from the couch and rush toward the turntable to take my records. With trembling fingers, I fix my gaze on the door and dump Kathleen and Jyoti in my bag.

“See you later,” I mumble, chancing a quick look in Royce’s direction.

He’s standing in the middle of the room, watching me with a mixture of amusement and keen interest. “When?” he inquires softly.

I panic when he takes a step closer to me. “Tomorrow,” I blurt out. “Evening.”

Royce cocks an eyebrow. “After the opening of Oorol?”

Crap, that’s actually quite late. “Yeah,” I say, not willing to back down. “Ten or so?”

“I’ll be here.”

“Good. Bye now.” I storm out the door and slam it so hard that I’m afraid I’ll rouse the spirits of dead Stortumers.

What the
hell
am I doing? In fact, what am I even thinking? I should stop deluding myself into thinking that Royce could possibly be interested in me
that
way. He’s twenty and I am only seventeen. He’s in college. He’s a Current celebrity. And I am a stupid little Skylger girl for agreeing to meet up with him yet again.

W
hen I get home, I’m afraid Dad or Sytse will be able to see it in my eyes – how flustered and confused and revved-up I am. But if so, they don’t comment. They’re both sitting in the kitchen peeling potatoes and cutting vegetables.

“Can you pour us a mug too?” my brother pipes up when I walk over to the stove to make some tea. “You’re home late.”

“Yeah, I was helping Alke with his German test,” I lie. “So I was busy. Dani is dropping by tonight so we can work on my own assignments, though.”

“Relax,” Sytse grins. “You have all weekend to do your homework. I’m not going to play the evil big brother and scold you or anything.”

This is the bad thing about lying – you always want to make the lie sound too perfect so you end up saying too much. “Thanks,” I mutter, lighting the gas stove and watching the kettle as it heats up.

When Dani shows up here after dinner, I will have to focus on the anthology and nothing else. No more daydreaming about Royce. I don’t even want to tell my best friend how silly I’m being – she already warned me before.

As I sip from my hot tea and stare out the window, I see storm clouds drifting in. Let’s hope the rain will fall during the night, not tomorrow afternoon during the opening ceremony. The Currents are always seated under a big tarp covering the main bleachers, while we are gathered on the town square, out in the open. That’s just the way of the world.

Once we sit down for dinner, the mashed potatoes, onions, and carrots topped with mackerel feel like a brick in my stomach. I can’t eat more than a few bites before giving up. “I’ll save it for later,” I mumble when I see my father’s worried look. “I’m not that hungry yet.”

“Eida has offered to take Dad and Grandma Antje to Brandaris tomorrow,” Sytse announces cheerfully. “She’s bringing the cow-drawn carriage to town, so they can hitch a ride.”

Our neighbor is a darling. This way, my grandmother won’t have to walk and I won’t have to worry about transporting my dad by bike, running the risk of making the pain in his joints unbearable for the rest of the day. “That’s great,” I say with a smile.

After Sytse and Dad are done eating, I clear the table and put on another kettle to boil some water for the washing-up. No dessert tonight, so I have it easy. I just have to scrub the pots and wash some plates, cups, and silverware. I sing softly to myself as my hands dip into the hot, soapy water to rinse the forks.

“What’s that?”

Sytse suddenly pops up next to me. I hadn’t even heard him get up from his seat at the kitchen table – I thought he was reading the paper.

“What is what?” I say, looking up at him in confusion.

He narrows his eyes at me. “That tune you were humming.” When it still doesn’t click, he adds: “Enna, you were singing one of the songs from
Phoenix
. That LP.”

Oh, crap. He’s right. One particular song has been stuck in my head ever since I left the cottage a few hours ago.
Weaving Web
.

“N-no,” I stammer, groping around for a plausible excuse. “I just – came up with that melody today. I...”

I start when Sytse slams his fist on the counter. “Don’t lie to me,” he growls. I’ve never heard my brother speak to me like that. All of a sudden, he feels like a stranger with a secret side I should never have found out about.

“Okay,” I squeak.

“So. You listened to that record. How? When?”

My jaw tenses. “Who are you to interrogate me like this?” I throw back. “It’s none of your business.”

His face falls just a little bit. My words hurt him. We used to be so close before he left to work at sea. “Enna, it
is
my business,” he insists. “I gave you that record. Now, I want to know how you managed to listen to it. I didn’t mean to put you in any danger. Come on – I hate it when you lie to me.”

“Well, I’m not the only one keeping secrets,” I fume, my voice rising a notch. “What about your nightly visits to Stortum? When were you planning on telling me about those?”

“What the...” Sytse staggers back, then grabs my upper arm and forcefully shoves me away from the sink and out of the kitchen without saying anything else. He marches me into his room, kicks the door shut, and sits me down on the bed.

“Okay. Now tell me everything.”

His stern look makes me draw up a blank as I contemplate lying to him. Sure, I could tell him I saw him sneaking out of the house so I decided to follow him, but that still wouldn’t explain how I know about the music on my new record.

“Royce Bolton came up to me at the harbor,” I mumble. “Said he wanted the LP you gave to me. I refused. So we struck a deal – he said I could use his electric turntable if I agreed to listen to it together.”

Sytse lets out an incredulous sigh. “Enna, that’s dangerous,” he groans. “What if his family finds out? What if his mother barges into his room when you’re visiting?”

“I didn’t go to his house,” I argue. “He owns an old cottage in Stortum that used to belong to his grandparents. And he doesn’t have a mother anymore.”

“Stortum,” my brother echoes.

“Yeah. That’s how I found out about you. I was there two nights ago.”

Sytse shakes his head and sits down heavily in his desk chair. When he fixes his gaze on me again, his next words shock me.

“Was it you who stole the book from the house?”

I can feel the blood drain from my face. So he knows. The anthology must have been important to him if he noticed it’s missing so soon.

“It was,” I admit softly. “I just – I was looking around and I saw all these books, and they seemed so old. I was intrigued.”

“Is it in your room?”

I shake my head. When Sytse’s eyes widen in alarm, I quickly add: “It’s with Dani because she wanted to read in it some more. She’s bringing it back tonight, okay? We didn’t intend to keep it. We wanted to give it to the Skelta tomorrow.”

A tired little smile pulls at his lips. “Well, that’s laudable. Since it belongs to the Skelta in the first place.”

“Huh?” I stare at him in amazement.

Sytse’s dark eyes lock onto mine. “That entire house does,” he continues. “And all the stuff in it. Including the radio.”

What the hell is a radio? “I – I don’t understand.”

“Once Dani gets here, I’ll explain it to you both,” he says. “But you have to promise me you won’t tell a soul.”

“Of course,” I say indignantly. “Your secret’s safe with me. With us.”

“You don’t even know what it is yet.” He smiles wistfully.

“Well, I do know that you can trust me. Don’t you?”

“Yeah.” Sytse frowns. “I do. But for the love of Fosta, please stop seeing that Current guy. He’s my age. Royce shouldn’t be hanging around with young girls like you.”

My jaw tenses. I’m not
that
young – I’m almost old enough to get my own house. At the same time, my blood runs deliciously hot at the thought of Royce wanting to hang out with me despite the age gap. The allure of the forbidden makes me feel desired.

“Sure,” I grumble, not meaning it. “If you think that’s best...”

Sytse unexpectedly pulls me into a hug and holds me tight. “How did you grow up so fast?” he muses a bit forlornly.

“It just happened. While you were at sea.” I add a bit venomously: “While you decided to become some sort of spy for the Skelta.”

He scoffs. “Don’t be ridiculous.” Rubbing his face, he continues: “I just want to help my own people. And if that involves breaking the rules and stirring up a shit-storm of trouble, I don’t care. Who made those rules anyway?”

Right at that moment, I hear voices outside Sytse’s window. My dad is sitting in the front garden smoking his pipe and talking to someone, so I guess Dani’s here.

“Enna!” he bellows. “You have a visitor.”

“Coming,” I call back. Quickly, I get up and bump into Dani in the kitchen. She’s just putting her bag on the table to take out the old book.

“Hey, Enna,” she says, her breath hitching when Sytse enters the room after me. “Oh, uhm – let’s go to your room, shall we?”

“Whatever you need to discuss can be discussed here,” my brother states calmly.

Dani blinks up at him in surprise.

“He knows about the book,” I clarify.

“Oh.” My friend shoots me a bewildered look. “Okay. But
why
?”

I don’t reply. Instead, Sytse gestures at the comfortable couch in the corner, inviting us both to sit down. He takes a seat across from us in my dad’s lazy chair. Gingerly, Dani puts the old leather tome on the table, as though she’s still not sure Sytse is allowed to see it.

“A few years ago,” Sytse starts out, “I befriended the Skelta’s son, Omme. He was part of the same debate team in high school. When I told him of my plans to become a sailor and merchant, he told me that his father was looking for trustworthy people sympathetic to the Skylger cause who could be liaisons between him and important people on the mainland. Fryslan, mostly, but other countries too. People who were fed up with being the Currents’ doormats.”

“But the Currents have protected us for centuries,” Dani interrupts him. “I don’t like being a second-class citizen any more than you do, but the ruling class isn’t just at the top of the hierarchy because they are bullies. They actually help us.”

“The Skelta thinks their claims are exaggerated.” Sytse points to the book on the table. “If the two of you have taken the time to look at the illustrations in that book, you will have learned by now that the Brandaris Tower was never built by the Current invaders. It is
our
tower.”

We both nod silently.

“I have learned something else,” Dani says, almost inaudibly. “There’s an old legend about Dead Men’s Casket Lake – and it flies in the face of everything we’ve been taught about the place.”

I turn around to face her. “What have you found out?”

Dani bites her lip. “The Current legend states that some of the Nixen’s victims washed up on our beach a long time ago, after the sea decided to give back the bodies to the grieving Skylger and Current families. And the deceased were placed in coffins to be buried at the bottom of the lake, to honor the earth and the water at the same time. Hence the name Dead Men’s Caskets. But the older, Skylger legend in this book says that the Nixen brought those bodies to us willingly, after a violent storm had destroyed one of our sailing ships and killed scores of sailors. It was an act of friendship.” Her voice turns rough. “The story claims that we weren’t enemies once.”