Isa Bell

By Laura Brigger

There once was a siren whose owner did not love her.

By day she was bolted to brick and steel, red flanks dull with soot, her throat dry as dust. But she loved anyway.

By night she cried—not a scream, but an ache, a longing, a call that climbed the alleys and slipped beneath doors.

The town learned her sorrow by vibration: cups shivering, windows humming, hearts waking with no name for what they felt.

She was mostly fish, and water was her breath.

Sometimes—only sometimes—she was allowed to touch the river. They rolled her down the hill, loosened her chains, and let the water take her voice into its mouth. Each time she went, she made a nest: reeds braided with rust, river-glass cupped like scales, a hollow where sound could rest.

Each time she allowed them to drag her back, because a drop of love is worth seas of water.

Her body was heavy with no return, so she left a little more of herself there and brought a little less back each time.

One night, when the moon thinned to a silver seam, she was brave enough to stay.

They waited for her to return.

They waited for the bell.

She did not come back.

On lonesome nights, the town still hears her—not the wail of warning, but laughter, bright and ringing, and silver bells chiming beneath the current. The mermaids gather where her nest once was, and the river carries a new song:

a voice that learned where it belonged,

because the water was her home all along.