The sea calls to me;

In the tow of the tide and the salt in the breeze.

But it calls loudest the moment the storm hits.

Dejean comes in with the dawn. Eyes tired and face slack, he looks like Kian after she’s stayed up two consecutive nights to write notes and yell at her crew. He carries a human stomach and a bag of pungent smelling fish. I huff at him, crossing my arms, and turn my attention away. Outside my little window, the sun rises as a dim haze through approaching clouds.

“I just got here, and already I’ve done something wrong.”

“You existed.” But I don’t mean that. If not for him, I wouldn’t be crossing my arms or complaining about food. His existence benefits me. Though, he could do a lot better; even his freshest meal lacks the excitement of the hunt, and this tub is a tight prison when compared to an equal-sized tide pool.

He sighs and leans against the wall. “What is it now?”

Glancing at him, I grumble under my breath. “Everything.”

“I’ve no idea what you’re trying to say.” With a groan, he moves back toward the door. “If you need something, I’ll be asleep in the cabin.” He shakes my meal at me a couple times, taunting me to take it before he leaves.

Ignoring the foul meat, I point at him and make the crab claws.

“I’m crabby, I know.” His lips quirk in a lopsided grin that makes him look a little less tired. The baggy shadows beneath his eyes darken as his expression drops. “Or do you just want to eat crab? I didn’t think sirens would know that sort of slang . . .”

I motion to the ship around me. “I learned it here.”

Dejean nods, but then his brow creases. “How long have you been here?”

Too long. Months, maybe even a year. But I reply with a shrug, clicking for his attention.

“I want . . .” I say as I point to myself, then cup my hands, palms up, and pull them toward my chest. Next, I form my fingers into a circle, squeezing them twice before pausing, repeating the motion once more. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. “Heart.”

“You want . . . to . . . strangle me?”

“Every other minute.” Bringing the motion to the center of my chest, I repeat it. “Heart.”

“A heart. You want the man’s heart?”

I nod, waving him away again.

“If you say so.” But Dejean chuckles as he leaves, taking the rejected food with him. Barely a minute later, he returns, a heart in hand. Though chilled and long dead, with a slight hint of decay, it bleeds when I slice my nails through it.

I pick it apart. Dejean plops down against the wall as I eat, his gaze fixed on the dark clouds approaching. The ship tips farther than usual, revealing the harsh, dark peaks of wind-whipped waves in the port window.

“What do sirens do during storms?” His voice sounds distant.

Setting the rest of the heart to the side, I form the waves with my hands, and myself beneath them, riding the fresh currents, giddy in the turbulence.

“You want to be out there.” At first I think surprise lifts the pitch of his voice, but his lips turn down and his glare drifts away from me. Guilt.

I nod, wistful sounds building in my throat. “More than anything.”

“Maybe someday you will.” He speaks with a confidence that can’t be sincere. He keeps me locked here, the sea a wall of wood away. He cannot mean to free me . . . can he? Maybe Dejean truly wishes to let me experience the sea once more. Maybe he’s kinder than most humans. Or maybe he simply believes he is.

Finishing the rest of my meal, I wave for his attention. I point to him, then make the gesture I used for heart, adding in a modified want motion and pinching my cheeks in the typical siren emphasis for a question. Together, my body asks you - have - heart - ? though the humans would phrase it in a longer, clunkier way. “Do you have a heart?”

He stares.

I repeat myself, both in my own tongue and with the series of motions. “Do you have a heart?”

Realization creeps over his face. He chuckles. “According to Simone, only for fish in bathtubs.”

I’m not a fish any more than I’m a whale or a human, but I’m not going to bother explaining that to Dejean. I point to him again, then to my head, twirling my finger once before popping it away, cheeks once more pinched. “What do you think?”

“Me? Am I crazy? I’m thinking . . . What do I think?” He makes the think gesture and laughs, a sharp, harsh sound. “I don’t know, Perle. I’m using strange hand motions to talk to my kind’s natural predators, yet this is easier than any conversation I’ve had with another human in a long time,” he says dryly. “I threw Kian’s crew overboard last night, you know—well, all but one. He wishes he were with them.”

That explains the screaming.

“You tell me. Am I heartless?”

All humans are. But he and Simone have been different from Kian and her crew. Even within humans, perhaps some variety exists. Dejean looks at me with such a soft, worried gaze that I almost can’t picture him hiding deadly siren traps in the shallows. Almost.

I make the gesture for heart, but I shrink it as far as I can while still making it beat. “A small heart.”

His smile reappears. “That’s better than nothing, I guess.”

I need to ask something specific, but I don’t know how to show it. After a bit of thought, I motion him over.

He looks surprised, but he kneels beside the tub, so close that I could bite him. I don’t. I still need him.

I point to him and then make the same cupping and drawing motion I used with the heart. Brushing one hand up my throat, I open my mouth as though I’m singing. For the last motion, I clasp my hands over his ears. I try not to touch him as I do it, but my fingers brush his hair by accident. “You want the instruments Kian created to block out siren songs.” And the obvious addition: “Why?”

Dejean pulls back. “I . . . don’t know what that means.”

But he does. He proves it in the darting of his gaze and the drop of his brow. I hiss at him, and he scoots away, averting his eyes.

A purposeful knock comes from Kian’s quarters, and Dejean stands. He ignores my scowl as he closes the door to my little room. After the lock’s click and the swing of the main cabin door, a shuffle of steps echo, too indistinct for me to tell how many have entered. Only one voice follows.

“Here he is, Captain, as promised.” The speaker sounds like the crew person who interrupted Dejean yesterday. Chauncey.

“He certainly looks terrible.” A blunt lack of emotion leaves Dejean’s voice hollow.

The smell that hits me confirms his words, the sharp tang of blood overwhelming. Whatever they inflicted on this human Chauncey brought in didn’t bode well for him. He makes the low, pathetic noises of a wounded creature. Maybe I’ll have another liver soon.

“I’m not a cruel man, Flavien. If you tell me where Kian keeps her siren song blockers, you are free to leave at the next port,” Dejean says, each word precise and monotone.

Flavien; third mate of Kian. He’s the kind of human who grows horns from his head—they have a special term for him, I think, but the two-legged land dwellers are all just humans to me, with their human speech and their relentless human malice. I flinch. If I had held any sympathy for this pitiful, whimpering prisoner, it would have left me in that instant, replaced by the feeling of his fingers digging into my scalp and his fists cracking my ribs.

“Kian told me nothing!”

Dejean’s boots make a distinctive thud as he walks, his pace more erratic and heavy than most humans. “This is your last chance. Choose your words carefully.”

Flavien yelps, his shout turning into a soft, sputtering sound and a blubbery cry. “I don’t know! She never told me where she locked them up.”

“Then you have no use to me.”

Flavien’s screams slice through the cabin, and then return to a faint sobbing.

“Throw him over; dead or alive, I don’t care.” Dejean’s voice catches on the last word, whether from frustration or something more, I can’t tell.

In some ways, he shows all the harsh, insensitive traits of the humans I’ve known, of Kian and Flavien, and even Kian’s second mate, Theirn, when she pressures him. But his actions toward his own crew, though distant, seem far from cruel. He is not kind, yet a part of him is good, somehow.

The shuffling returns as Chauncey and his silent helpers take Flavien away. Not until the lock of the cabin door clicks does Dejean open my little room. He carries a long, flat, pink muscle with him, one end oozing red. A tongue.

My stomach grumbles.