Someone to my right hiccups then drops their beer onto the sand near my feet, the brown liquid spilling out.
“Every year, boys drown in the harbor,” I add, staring straight ahead into the flames. Even if you don’t believe in the legend of the Swan sisters, you can’t ignore the death that plagues Sparrow for nearly one month every summer. I’ve seen the boys’ bodies being pulled from the harbor. I’ve watched my mom console grieving mothers who’ve come to have their fortunes read, pleading for a way to bring back their sons—my mom patting their hands and offering little more than the promise that their hurt would eventually dull. There is no way to bring back the boys who’ve been taken by the sisters. There is only acceptance.
And it’s not just local boys; tourists are persuaded into the water as well. Some of the boys standing around the bonfire, whose faces are flushed from the heat and the alcohol in their bloodstreams, will be discovered floating facedown, having swallowed too much of the sea. But right now, they aren’t thinking about that. Everyone believes they’re immune. Until they’re not.
It makes me nauseous, knowing some of these boys, who I’ve known most of my life, won’t make it through the summer.
“Someone must see who drowns them,” Bo says, his curiosity evident now. It’s hard not to feel drawn in by a legend that repeats itself without falter or fail each season.
“No one has ever seen the moment when they’re taken into the harbor—their bodies are always discovered after it’s too late.”
“Maybe they drown themselves?”
“That’s what the police think. That it’s some sort of suicide pact devised by high school students. That the boys sacrifice themselves for the sake of the legend—to keep it alive.”
“But you don’t believe that?”
“It’s pretty severe, don’t you think—kill yourself for the sake of a myth?” I feel my heart beat faster remembering summers past: bodies bloated with seawater, eyes and mouths caught open like gutted fish, as they were pulled onto the docks in the marina. A chill sweeps through my veins. “Once a Swan sister has whispered into your ear, promised the touch of her skin, you can’t resist her. She will lure you into the water then pull you under until the life spills out of you.”
Bo shakes his head and then finishes his beer in one gulp. “And people actually come to watch this happen?”
“Morbid tourism, we call it. And it usually turns into a witch hunt, locals and tourists all trying to figure out which three girls in town are inhabited by a Swan sister—trying to determine who is responsible for the killing.”
“Isn’t it dangerous to speculate about something you can’t prove?”
“Exactly,” I agree. “The first few years after the sisters were drowned, many local girls were hanged because they were suspected of being taken over by one of the sisters. But obviously they never hanged the right girls, because year after year the sisters kept returning.”
“But if you were inhabited by one of these sisters, wouldn’t you know it, remember it? Once it was all over?” He rubs his palms together and turns them toward the bonfire—worn hands, rough in places. I blink and look away.
“Some girls claim they have a cloudy recollection of summer, of kissing too many boys and swimming in the harbor, staying out past curfew. But that could be from too much booze and not because a Swan sister was inside them. People think that when a sister takes over a body, she absorbs all the girl’s memories so the girl can resume her normal life, behave naturally, and no one will suspect she’s not herself. And when the sister leaves the body, the sister blots out all the memories she doesn’t want her host to recall. They need to blend in because if they were ever found out, the town might do something awful just to end the curse.”
“Like kill them?” Bo asks.
“It would be the only way to keep them from returning to the sea.” I press all my toes down into the warm sand, burying them. “Kill the girl whose body they inhabit.”
Bo leans forward, staring into the flames like he’s recalling some memory or place that I can’t see. “And yet you celebrate it each year,” he finally says, sitting up straight. “You get drunk and swim in the harbor, even when you know what’s coming? Even though you know people are going to die? You’ve just accepted it?”
I understand why it seems odd to him, an outsider, but this is what we know. It’s how it’s always been. “It’s our town’s penance,” I say. “We drowned three girls in the ocean two centuries ago, and we’ve suffered for it every summer since. We can’t change it.”
“But why don’t people just move away?”
“Some have, but the families who’ve been here the longest choose to stay. Like it’s an obligation they must endure.”
A soft breeze rolls suddenly through the crowd, and the bonfire snaps and flickers, sending sparks up into the sky like angry fireflies.
“It’s starting,” someone calls from the waterline, and those clustered around the fire begin moving down to the beach.
I stand up, still in my bare feet.
“What’s starting?” Bo asks.
“The singing.”
FOUR
The moonlight makes an eerie path down to the water’s edge.
Bo hesitates beside the bonfire, resting his hands on his knees, his mouth an even, unbreakable line. He doesn’t believe any of this. But then he stands up, leaving his empty beer can in the sand, and follows me down to the shore where people are huddled together. Several girls are totally soaked, shivering, hair dripping down their backs.
“Shhh,” a girl whispers, and the group falls totally silent. Totally still.
Several seconds pass, a cool wind slides across the water, and I find myself holding my breath. Each summer it’s the same, yet I listen and wait like I’m about to hear it for the first time. The start of an orchestra, the seconds of anticipation before the curtain lifts.
And then it comes, soft and languid like a summer day, the murmuring of a song whose words are indistinguishable. Some say it’s French, others Portuguese, but no one has ever translated it because it’s not a real language. It’s something else. It curls up off the ocean and slips into our ears. It’s gentle and alluring, like a mother whispering a bedtime riddle to a child. And as if on cue, the two girls standing closest to the waterline take several staggering steps into the sea, unable to resist.
But a group of boys go in after them and drag them back out. The time for dares has passed. There will be no more coaxing girls into the harbor, no more taunts to swim all the way out then back again. The danger is suddenly stark and real.
The lulling melody coils around me, fingers sliding across my skin and down my throat, tugging at me. Begging me to respond. I close my eyes and take a step forward before I even realize what I’ve done. But a hand—solid and warm—grabs ahold of mine. “Where you going?” Bo asks in a hush as he pulls me back to his side.
I shake my head. I don’t know.
He doesn’t release my hand, but squeezes it tighter, like he’s afraid to let me go. “Is it really coming from the water?” he asks, his voice low, still facing the dark, dangerous sea, like he doesn’t believe his own ears.