Wake, Siren Read online

  PROCNE AND PHILOMELA

  Have you ever ridden on a swallow before? No? Oh. I hope you’ll like it. Some people get a little airsick, I’ll warn you, the darting and swooping, and speeds that might surprise you. So if you start to get queasy, find the horizon with your eyes and just hold your gaze there. And here’s a pack of wintergreen Life Savers. They can help, too. Ready? Use the step stool there and just climb on and sink in. My feathers will wrap around you, that’s right. Just let yourself sink in. Right, yes, yep, they’ll absorb you. If you get too warm, just let one of your legs dangle, like you would in the bed, out from under the comforter. We’ll be moving shortly and you’ll find the air all around you—most people don’t get too warm, but I always like to say it just in case. The tour lasts about forty minutes, and, as you know, some of what you’ll hear will be challenging. Maybe more so than you’re anticipating. Good, no, I know, I know, that’s why you’re here. I understand, and I’m glad you’re here. I just need to say it—some people have complained. Yes, I mean it. Oh, just that it’s too much, and that I should’ve warned them, and that if they’d known how awful it was going to be, they never would’ve signed up. I want to respect each one of my guests, each person who climbs on and sinks in and listens. It’s hard, believe me, I know. It’ll get harder than you think. So. There you go. You’ve been warned.

  So now, as long as you’re settled?—good—we’ll ease into things. You’ll feel a bump and then a lift then it’s on our way.

  All right now, oh, it’s beautiful. You’re lucky to have such perfect weather. It’s about sixty-one degrees up here right now, about twenty degrees cooler than on the ground. The winds are coming from the southwest, and I think we’re in for a real stunner of a sunset. Oh, I can tell it’s just going to be a beauty. There’s that milky late spring air that always gives me hope. As we head toward our first stop, I’ll start with some facts. We’ll ease in.

  There are eighty-four species of swallow. It’s said seeing the first one of the year means good fortune comes your way. I’ve been a swallow now for, well, you don’t need to know how long! Let’s just say it’s been a while. We make our nests in places with wide doors, places like stables and barns and sheds. On average, it takes about twelve-hundred back-and-forths to make a nest. And it’s the work of the female swallows.

  Hoopoes, in the Upupidae family, have this hideous flare of feathers on their heads. Sometimes it’s pointed back like a crown, other times flayed out, and the tips of the crown are black, like it’d accidently dipped its head in tar. The rest is a peachy orange. Yes, but not as vibrant as that. And the wings are bold striped, black and white. Ha, yes, a little like a prisoner, you’re right. They’ve got long beaks and I don’t have to tell you what that’s a stand-in for. They use it to probe. I hate that word, don’t you? They eat creepy-crawlies like cicadas and earwigs and ants. And they’re aggressive. In finding and securing a mate, they battle, men and men, men and women, stabbing at each other with their long, sharp beaks. Do you know how many one-eyed hoopoes there are because of this? A lot. And the female makes a secretion that stinks of rotting meat while she’s sitting on the eggs. It’s to keep away predators. And, ugh, the most horrid thing, the babies, once hatched and living outside the egg for less than a week, hiss at threats like they’re snakes, and if an intruder enters the nest, they aim streams of feces at them! Yes, I mean it! Oh, ha ha, yes, that’s another way to say it. Oh dear. But I will say they have a nice call. Thwoo-wooot. Thwoo-wooot.

  Nightingales build their nests low, close to the ground, not high in the trees, and they eat insects and seeds. When I was young, I used to imagine nightingales as having purple heads and green breasts and yellow bands and flowing long tails and the most beautiful eyes. Not like a parrot, they’re too thick and showy. But a bird out of your dreams, like a fairy in a nightgown that’s also a bird, with flowing dangling feathers that went for miles. Have you ever seen one? No? Well, if you’re like me then you’re in for a shock if and when you do—they look like any old warbler or finch or thrush! Just a boring brown bird like you’d see anyplace. Light brown like a mouse, sometimes with creamy feathers under their chin. Beak, not so long. Just really unremarkable. I don’t say it to be mean. I don’t know how people can tell them all apart, all the different small brownish birds. They’re known for their song, a quick pep of notes high and low, wheet wheet wheet wheet wheet, tnk tnk tnk, whirripwhirrup. Oh yes, I’ve been practicing my mimics. Nightingales sing at night. The males are the only ones that sing. The females are mute.

  So we’re going to dip to the east here and swoop in toward where I used to live. Hold a little tighter as we’ll be riding at some angles here. Yes, you can grip the feathers with your hands, no, don’t worry, they’re hard to pull out. And you can also grip with your thighs. As though you were riding on the back of a motorcycle. Right. Use your legs! All right, so below to your right you’ll see the place I lived with Tereus. I came from Athens; he was from Thrace. Athens was at war and Tereus, well, the phrase is came to the rescue. He had money and he had power and he brought in his troops and won against the invaders. We were all grateful and impressed. And in thanks, Dad offered me up as a bride. It was exciting. It was a moment when the whole city let their shoulders loosen, let the tension of being under attack dissolve, and Tereus was a powerful figure, broad and dark-haired and commanding. It’s amazing how different a person can end up being, isn’t it? When they let you see the darker part of themselves? At this point I believe everyone’s got that shadow in them, and that it either eats you alive or you learn to acknowledge its presence and try to stay on civil terms with it. That’s a little beside the point though. As we dip to the right, you’ll see a balcony there, on the third floor, overlooking the sea. Tereus would stand there for hours looking out. I used to ask him, “Hon, what are you thinking out there, you seem a million miles away.” “I could try to explain but I don’t think you’d understand it, so why should I waste my breath,” he’d say. “Try me,” I’d say, newlywed, trying to be sweet and kind and game. “You want to know? I’m thinking about the shit I took on the face of the man I killed in battle two weeks ago. I’m thinking about how frightened he looked right before I killed him, how he looked left and right to see what could save him. I got an erection from seeing that fear. My dick got hard. I was thinking about that erection. And I shit on his face because of that fear. If he’d been less afraid, I wouldn’t have had to do it. It was amazing, his fear, and it was disgusting. I was thinking about that. Squatting over his face. Letting my balls dangle above his throat. He was dead already, but I liked the thought of him suffocating in my shit. That’s what I was thinking about, standing out there. Are you glad you asked? Sometimes I think about business and what to say to who to make them do what I want. Sometimes I think about bending you over the worktable in the kitchen and pulling your hair back and grabbing your throat as hard as I can so I can feel all the tendons tight, and then surprising you by ramming my dick into your asshole.”

  Oh, oh, I’m sorry, you’re right, I get carried away sometimes. That was more than you needed to know! Here, we’re going to dip close and look in my old bedroom window. Hang on as we descend a little here. The new owners kept the bed. I used to be embarrassed but what can I do, yes, those are chains on the bedposts. That’s how Tereus liked it. “My dirty prisoner,” he used to say to me. I admit, it could be exciting, sometimes. And he could occasionally be quite gentle. Oh, but I should tell you, at our wedding, Juno, wedding patron, was absent. She had other places to be maybe. Hymen didn’t show, neither did the Graces to give their blessing. You know who was there though? The Furies. Three of them, black-winged like bats, that strange stretchy wing material, not like feathers at all, and red-eyed—we’ll be flying over the courtyard where the ceremony was held, see down below, and the forsythias all in bloom all around it!—with their gnarled hands and stinking breath and dog teeth in their faces. I didn’t know it then, but it’s right that they were there, d
eities of vengeance, holding torches they’d brought from a funeral. They stood at that corner, on the stairs leading into the house. That night, a screech owl sat on the roof above the bedroom, that tawny bird whose screech broadcasts calamity. These were the beginnings of the marriage. That night I conceived. Yes, bad news is one way to put it.

  We’re going to make a sharp turn around the back of the place. And I’ll point out to you little Itys’s room. That window there, with the bars on it, that overlooks the crags and the woods, that was the nursery. I’d sit in the rocking chair with him at my breast night after night. Tiny helpless little Itys. And oh my, look over your shoulder to the west at a particularly lovely bank of clouds. You’re warm enough? Comfortable? Good.

  Ooooooh, we’re dipping down along the first floor. I’d like to show you the kitchen. I can’t make promises, but occasionally the door is left open and we can get a look around inside. Oh, yes, good luck! Okay, please do hold on as we’re going to have to be quick, I don’t want anyone smashed with a broom by an angry cook. There, that oak worktable filling the center that Tereus talked about. And there’s the set of cook’s knives. I know, you wouldn’t think you’d need as many! And the hearth with the spit there, oh, I can remember the crackle of fat as it dripped into the flame and hissed. And the massive stove. And from the ceiling, oops, close call! From the ceiling you see the pots and pans, notice that large one, big enough to bathe a baby! They’ve cleaned it up nice. New floors, got rid of the stains. Painted the walls, got rid of the stains. All right, out we go before we get caught.

  So, back out into the light. We’d been married a year, and I was deeply homesick and missed my sister Philomela. I was a new mother and a new bride and far away from the world I knew and the people I loved. And so I said to Tereus, “Please, can she come stay with us for a while?” And Tereus agreed and took a ship to get her. He arrived in Athens and bowed at my father Pandion and said, “You know how women are, Procne wants her sister’s company.” And apparently that’s when Philomela entered the room and everything changed.

  We’re heading east now back into the woods. Poplar, ash, oak, pine, beech. I promise we won’t hit any trees. It’ll get a bit dimmer soon—we’re moving toward a particularly dense part of the forest. Look, you can see penny bun mushrooms at the base of some of the trees from this morning’s rain.

  Tereus saw Phila and wanted her, instantly. She’s beautiful! She had long, wavy chestnut hair and big eyes and she was fresh and young. She was also, I want to emphasize, a child. And Tereus immediately changes his tune, going from “Ugh, women! Right?” which never would’ve won my father over anyway, to pleading with Pandion, professing how much he loved me and how there was nothing in the world he wanted more than to make me happy, and the one way he knew he could do it was to bring Philomela back to me for a time. Tereus could be compelling when he wanted to be, and he could make himself cry, so to seem even more sensitive and pitiable and soft, he let the tears come.

  My father bought his pleas, reluctantly. He had never loved Tereus, and had this itching sense that something wasn’t right with him. But Tereus was hugely grateful, and Phila was excited to go for a trip and come see me. The pure excitement of a child.

  Look down on our right as we pass over a sacred spring. Even prettier from up here, don’t you think? The way the light hits it, and the way the branches are reflected?

  The next day, before they set sail back here, my father pulled Tereus aside. And sometimes, well, sometimes this makes me cry so if that happens today, please bear with me. No, no, tears don’t affect safety of flight in any way. Dad sat down with Tereus and put his hand on his shoulder, and you need to know, my dad was a quiet man. He was the kindest man. On our birthdays, he’d sneak into our rooms before we woke up and leave flowers so we’d wake up to blooms. He kept track of how I loved parsley, but Phila hated it, and that she liked to eat shrimp, but I thought the texture was gross. And the morning they left, Phila told me, he looked older, like he’d aged ten years overnight, with a deep sadness in his eyes. He held on to Tereus’s shoulder and said, “I’m calling on your loyalty here. Please, please, guard Philomela lovingly, as a father would. And send her back as soon as you can.” And then he turned to Phila and said, “Please come home as soon as you can. I already miss your sister so much. To have both of you gone—”

  Oh dear. I’m sorry. You’ll just need to give me a—dear dear.

  Thank you. I’m okay, yes.

  It will be cooler for the next little bit as we get deeper into the woods. You’ll see the tree cover is thicker and there’s that foresty smell, that earthy vinegar stink of rotting leaves. I agree with you, it definitely feels gloomier.

  Now that I’ve gathered myself. Goodbyes are said. Phila’s giddy; Tereus is descending further into monsterhood in his mind; and they set sail. Tereus didn’t touch Phila on the boat—close quarters, too much risk of a scream and getting caught. But Phila says there was a moment when she knew things were not right.

  She was leaning against the rail, looking out at the sea, at the point in the voyage where they’d slipped out of sight of the land they’d left, and couldn’t yet see where they were going. Open ocean. Tereus comes up behind her and grabs her waist and does that thing where you pretend you’re tipping someone overboard, when you play at pushing them and then pull them back. Phila squealed, thought he was just being playful. Tereus laughed, too, and said, “It would be so easy to push you in.” Something in the way he said it made Phila’s guts go cold. And from then on, she just wanted to get to shore, knowing she’d be safe once she saw me.

  Notice how there are no real paths below us, how thick the bramble and brush are. There are thorns everywhere. If I let you off here, you’d be sliced to bits by the plants.

  Phila counted the hours until the ship reached land and when it came into sight, she felt a sweeping sort of relief—she’ll make it, she’ll be reunited with me, she was just being silly about Tereus. She didn’t know. When they pulled into the dock, she bounced on her feet, so eager to step foot onto land, to find me! It was late in the afternoon, getting dark, she wondered what we’d have for dinner, whether I’d remember that her favorite dessert was brownies with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. I did remember, and I had made brownies for her that morning. These were her child thoughts.

  “This way,” Tereus told her, and they started in a direction away from the rest of the crew, and away from the lights of the city. He led her deeper and deeper into the forest, along the way that we’ve come. She kept asking, “When will we be there, isn’t the palace the other way, is Procne meeting us somewhere?” Tereus didn’t answer, just kept pulling her along. All Phila could do was hope she was being led to her sister.

  Grip tight now as we’re going to swoop low. Yes, here you’ll see the hut. This is the hut where he brought her. This hut in the depths of the ancient woods. The door is broken off now, and the walls have started crumbling. Yes, we’ll go inside. Hold tight.

  Give your eyes a minute to adjust to the dim. It smells awful, I know. Now here is a moment in the tour where I ask you to hop off for a moment, stretch your legs, as we stand here in this hut.

  Tereus brought her to this place, to this rank room we’re standing in. He brought her to this hut, my young sister with her chestnut hair. She’d begun to cry. And I hate thinking of that because I knew Tereus loved when I cried, he loved when I seemed weak or fragile or broken. And the thought of him looking at her, as tears fall down her smooth cheeks—oh dear.