#( she is a siren of death: disturbingly beautiful and heartbreakingly deadly — MAEVE ABOUT. )

[altarsburning]

sirens in greek mythology are made of flesh and feather, much like birds in some form. in other cultures, the words siren and mermaid have become somewhat interchangeable. 

the term "siren song" refers to an appeal that is hard to resist but that, if heeded, will lead to a bad conclusion. later writers have implied that the sirens were cannibals, based on circe's description of them "lolling there in their meadow, round them heaps of corpses rotting away, rags of skin shriveling on their bones." 

they are manic creatures like the sphinx with whom they have much in common, knowing both the past and the future. their song takes effect at midday, in a windless calm. the end of that song is death. that the sailors' flesh is rotting away, suggests it has not been eaten. it has been suggested that, with their feathers stolen, their divine nature kept them alive, but unable to provide food for their visitors, who starved to death by refusing to leave.

in his notebooks, leonardo da vinci wrote, "the siren sings so sweetly that she lulls the mariners to sleep; then she climbs upon the ships and kills the sleeping mariners." 

on this blog, mermaids are exactly what they are: mermaids. some are killers of men, some are not. just like humans, there are variations of who they are and how they behave. some have the ability to enchant humans with their voice, some don’t.

however, on this blog, sirens are creatures rare — they were once human, usually women, who were killed or murdered, and their remains dumped into the ocean as means of concealment of crime. their resurrections into something else entirely is a gift of the ocean — in maeve’s case, she was given the body of a shark and the power of it, as recompense for the manner in which she died. 

maeve was an irish girl who fell in love with a sailor, who smuggled her aboard his ship bound for home. when he realized too late that he could not afford a mistress and a wife, he strangled the girl one night aboard the ship when they were top side and alone. the last thing she saw was his face as his hands were around her neck, and  he dumped her body over the side. there was no one to mourn or miss her, as she sank into the black depths. the sea took pity on her, and brought her back to life as one of it’s own. the sea gave her the tail of a powerful shark, the webbed fingers to ease her through the waters, gills on her neck to breath, and teeth to rend and rip flesh. 

sirens are creatures who seek revenge. they use their songs to make the men on board ships fall asleep, or crash their vessels into rocks. some sirens are cannibalistic and will eat the men, and others just let their bodies rot on the rocks, or use them to feet sharks and fish in the oceans. they want to take out their pain on the men who wronged them. in a way, they are not that much different from the banshees who exist on land. 

maeve is a siren, not a mermaid. she may or may not kill those she comes across. she cannot exist on land, she does not have human legs, nor the abilitiy to produce them, without the help of strong magic. 

[altarsburning]

There's always a siren, singing you to shipwreck. Some of us may be more susceptible than others are, but there's always a siren. It may be with us all our lives, or it may be many years or decades before we find it or it finds us. But when it does find us, if we're lucky we're Odysseus tied up to the ship's mast, hearing the song with perfect clarity, but ferried to safety by a crew whose ears have been plugged with beeswax. If we're not at all lucky, we're another sort of sailor stepping off the deck to drown in the sea.

caitlín r. kiernan, the drowning girl

[altarsburning]

maeve’s siren song sounds like this.