Siren (In a Shell-Wall)
©March 7th, 2019
By Vijaya Sundaram
Once, there was a girl who lived in a shell made of silence.
Once, there was a girl who lived in a shell made of silence, but her head was full of sound, and her heart beat a loud drum in her ear.
Her hair was like seaweed, and her eyes like the ocean deeps that held secrets that even she didn’t know she knew, and her lips were like the petals of an undiscovered sea-flower. She didn’t know this, because she didn’t know what she was.
She only knew this: That, from the day she discovered herself in her shell, she was on her way to death.
And this thought comforted her, though she was alone, and though she was lonely. Her shell was of her making, and it was delicate, yet strong, and it sheltered her, and kept her whole.
Outside the shell, titanic events unfolded. Whole continents toppled into the seas, and the skies burned blue, then red, then yellow, then black.
She placed her fingers against the walls of the shell, and heard the faraway whoosh of waves against the outside, while her shell rolled around, on and on, in the unfathomable ocean.
An occasionally tendril would poke at her from the outside – perhaps a curious octopus, or tentacled monster, but she crouched deeper into the shell, and would not venture forth.
Sometimes, her shell would scrape against the bottom, and tumble into trenches, and float slowly into purpled blackness.
She sang long songs to chase away the dark, and keep her fright at bay.
Sometimes, a radiant light would move slowly past her shell, and where it was thinnest, she’d press her face close, and gaze in wonder as the light moved past. She almost left the shell, then. But the light went away, and the dark pressed up close to the outer walls of her shell.
She sang song after song, and the songs were long and loud, but the silence was loudest and longest of all.
For, how long can you sing?
Her heartbeat thudded away, though, and she tapped on her shell just to do something else.
She tapped and tapped, and aeons passed.
One day, she slid out of the shell, a wisp of self, and drifted down into the midnight deeps, but the shell continued to roll and roll.
The continents rose, and the green of the land resurfaced, and the beaches stretched out before a glorious sky, when, one day, the shell was thrown up out of the sea, and landed, deep-pink and perfect, onto a rock.
A youth who had been collecting stones and seaglass walked up, saw the shell, and laughed in delight. He had never seen a shell like this. He picked it up.
He held it to his ear, and became still.
Then, silent and transformed, he walked into the waves.
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