223. Sweet Voice of the Siren

 

223.  Sweet Voice of the Siren

I went to the Jealous Merrow’s Pub. It is always open till well past dawn. One can even have breakfast there. I engaged Lira in small talk. I asked her how her children were doing.

“And where exactly is Marina’s school of sirens?” I asked, as casually as I could. Marina is Finbar and Lira’s eldest daughter. She has just turned twenty and she was born gorgeous. She has hair like the sun and a voice like honey. Faultfinders say her shoulders are too broad, like those of many swimmers, but like I said before, she is generally considered gorgeous.   

The jealous merrow  was more than willing to answer my question. I spoke to her for a while longer, asking after each and every one of her children so what I really wanted to know would not be obvious.

And then I headed for the coast. The school was on a seafront boulevard. It was a small white building that looked like a cupcake. There was a sign on its roof that said the name of the school was Sweet Voice of the Siren.

Marina  was surprised to see me, but she received me kindly.

Again I made small talk until it was safe to ask if any of her pupils used earplugs when they got into the depths of the water. I thought Marina taught fairies who wanted to pretend to be mermaids how to swim in great depths. Not all fairies can easily do this. I am lucky in that I can,  but not everyone is.

“I don’t know why most people think I teach beach bums how to be merfolk. I don’t teach people how to swim. I teach them voice culture.  How to speak. How to sing. Modulate their voices. Employ them as sweetly and alluringly as sirens. ”

“Oh,” I thought with a sinking heart, “what a lot of time I have wasted!”

“But I do sell earplugs in the school shop. Some of my pupils screech so dreadfully, their families can’t bear to hear them when they practice singing at home. So they buy plugs for the sufferers.”

“Oh, Joy be unbound, the treasure is found!” I thought.

Before she could ask me why I had mentioned ear plugs, I asked her what else she sold in her shop. Then I asked to see the shop. And I bought like fifty things I would probably never need in my life, marvelling over each and every one of them, specially the little seaside souvenirs made of heart-shaped shells.  

“We ought to see more of each other,” she said, when I was ready to leave. “My pupils are going to give a recital at the Apple Island Auditorium on Valentine’s Day.”

And I promised to assist. I think she thought I was doing all this because I had a crush on her, and that she was thinking of foisting me onto one of her younger sisters, because she wasn’t interested in me, but maybe one of them might be, and that this sort of thing happens to her often,  but I didn’t want to worry about that just then. Time enough there would be for that when I went to the recital.

When I got home and was about to dump everything I had acquired on my bed, I saw there was already something on it. There were like fifty little boxes of earplugs on it.

So my next worry was who had placed them there. Was grandfather laughing at me? Did Henny know I had tried to steal them?

Fortunately for me, I didn’t have to rack my brain for long, trying to find an answer.  There was knocking on my window and when I turned to see what it was about, there was Vinny. I opened the window and he flew to my bed.

“You were too honest to take them,” he said, “so we´ve stolen them for you. Don’t worry. We don’t think you are chicken, just new at this. And we left the monocle inside the chest, right on top of the boxes, so it will be the first thing Henny sees when he opens the chest. Of course, that might be never. But there it is.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell Vinny that this was the last thing I wanted. I thanked him profusely and he left very pleased with what he and his kin had done for me.

I proceeded to dump the contents of my backpack on my bed and once I had done that, I began to fill the backpack again with all the earplugs I had bought as well as those the Leafies had filched for me. My idea was to give the ones I had bought to Grandpa and then sneak in again that night into the apotheca and return the stuff that belonged there and retrieve the monocle. If Henny wasn’t already wise to what I was up to, of course.

But then there was knocking at my door and I went to open it, and there was Grandma Divina.