Dirty Lying Sirens

Chapter Twenty Seven

Larisa smacked a fist in the open palm of her other hand. "That's it, veiled ball. That's the translation."

I didn't know what a veiled ball was, but it sounded exciting and I loved a good excuse to dance. "What's it like?" I was eager for more. More of Atlantis, more of the sirens.

"Oh Madeline, it's amazing," Jacinta spoke up, more excited than I'd seen her either time I'd been with her. "The dresses are so bold and colorful, and we play music in all the big squares in the city under the stars. And there's dancing, and the sirens all wear veils so no-one knows who we are and the rest of the dancers wear masks. And there's food and xino vasilias everywhere."

"Jacinta!" One of the older sirens was looking aghast at the girl. "What do you know of a veiled ball? You're not old enough for that!"

Jacinta blushed, bur her face took on a stubborn edge. "I'm old enough to watch!"

Larisa laughed, a full-bellied sound. "You most certainly are not. Who let you watch part of a ball? It was Amara, wasn't it?"

Jacinta's blush deepened against her fawn complexion, her eyes shifting away.

"Jacinta," Ashana caught the younger girl's attention and uttered something quickly in Atlantian that had Jacinta nodding and standing from the cushions with a short reply that I recognized as agreement to whatever Ashana had said.

Larisa watched the young girl leave the room before turning to me again. "She had the start of it right, it's the end of the ball that she doesn't know about yet."

The look in her eyes had me catching my lip in my teeth with conspiratorial mischief. "Oh?"

 Larisa nodded. "It's no secret that the sirens are free to be . . . promiscuous? Is that a good word for it? We like sex, and it isn't hard for us to find."

My eyes widened slightly. I certainly wasn't opposed, in fact the idea sounded freeing. But now I really wanted to know what that had to do with these veiled balls.

"We end the night as we wish. Some sirens will go home, yes." Larisa shrugged one shoulder. "But some of us find a partner. It's dark and we're masked and it's so . . ." She shivered.

"Deliciously mysterious," finished the other woman who had brought up the ball in the first place.

Larisa nodded her agreement. "It's a night of more carnal fun, and if a siren is looking to have a baby, that's the night to do it."

That one took me back. "And if you're not trying to get knocked up?"

"Knocked . . . what?"

"Pregnant," I said quickly, wanting to hear more.

"Oh, yes. Like I said, it can just be a night of fun if that's all you want it to be. I suppose that sounds strange to you, doesn't it? Let me try to explain a little better. We're sirens, we only give birth to sirens, and we raise our children as a collective."

I blinked. "Wait. The father's aren't involved?"

Larisa laughed. "No, we do it this way so the father's can't be involved. It was done another way thousands of years ago, but this has worked out better for us."

"So you don't keep partners? Or get married?" I asked. 

"Oh, some of us definitely keep partners," Larisa said. "Have you met Amara's Iris? What a lovely woman. How she puts up with Amara's energy I'll never understand. Several of us have dedicated partners and live with them outside of this main house."

I blinked. So my pursuit of Caspian wasn't completely taboo. Good. "Okay, so when you want a baby you have one, and then it's raised here? With all of you?"

"Exactly!" Larisa agreed. "Now you get it. That's my mother right there." Larisa pointed to the woman who had been speaking Atlantian to Ashana. The woman looked over and gave us a warm smile, not breaking her conversation with the elder siren. 

"Oh," I said weakly. It was so different. So unlike the foster system. My heart tightened. What would it have been like? To be raised here. Caspian said he was going to help me find out what happened to me and how I got to the mainland, but that was more of a hushed operation for now. The question seemed touchy for the most part, so it wasn't brought up with the sirens other than one short acknowledgement from Calliope that it was being investigated. But still, I could have been here the whole time, and it hurt that I wasn't.

Larisa patted my arm, bringing my head back into the present. "So, do you ever want a baby, or are you more of an auntie?"

"Me?" I took a moment to catch back up to the conversation. "I'm an auntie, for sure." After what I'd been through? I had no desire to be someone's mother. I'd be an anxious mess, not knowing what to do. Not having a mother figure to model myself after. But my heart was full with the idea that I could still help with the other kids, be around the children of the other sirens.

"Perfect!" Larisa gave me a mischievous grin. "I'm going to take the fullest possible advantage of the next veiled ball if you know what I mean. You can help watch the baby so I can take a nap sometime."

I grinned, still not quite absorbing the concept but liking it more and more as I was hearing about it. "Deal."

"When is the next veiled ball?" Larisa asked, turning to her mother.

They exchanged a word or two in Atlantian that I didn't understand, then confirmed a two week timeline.

"We can teach you some dances," Larisa ticked off each finger as she listed activities. "Get you a dress, find a veil, show you around the squares where we hold the festivities."

"I can join in?" I asked.

"Of course!" Larisa pulled my hands into hers. "You're a sister, of course you can come."

I beamed at her, the big cousin or young auntie I never knew I needed until now. Then, she shared a conspiratory wink with me. "Normally the rules are to keep your veil hidden before the ball, but if you were to accidentally leave your veil out for someone to see, and if that someone were to be gifted a mask to wear the night of the ball, well . . ." she shrugged. "Sometimes it's okay to help fate along."

"Larisa!" the other woman who was talking with us about the ball smacked Larisa's knee as she cackled.

"What?" Larisa protested through a fit of giggles. "Like you haven't dropped any hints before a ball?"

"Hints about what?" Jacinta asked, coming into the room with a tray of cut fruit that she set in front of Ashana.

A few sirens laughed while Larisa's mother sighed, pulling Jacinta to her side and speaking in hushed Atlantian.

It certainly gave me things to think about. The pressure to have a baby was off, the pressure to get married was off, though I liked the idea of being together with Caspian as long as we both wanted it.

Yes, a picture of life in Atlantis was beginning to take shape the more I learned, and I was quickly finding that I liked it. I liked it very much.