She shies away, and her glamour flickers a little. She's skinnier than any other siren. Then the glamour resumes and she appears healthy again.

He raises an eyebrow.


On a raised stone table lay two skeletons, side by side. The room was so small that there was barely enough room to skirt the edges of the table, so the bodies were quite close. The bones were yellowed with age, and nothing clung to them--no skin, hair, or flesh--so they mustve been here awhile.

The skeletons were holding hands, long bony fingers wrapped around each other in a gruesome parody of affection. On one knobby, naked digit, a tarnished ring glinted in the shadows.

,, Could you maybe make it illegal to hunt sirens? ,,

"I could, but why would I?"

,, Because all the people we use to defend everyone would be better used to be finding viable food sources. ,, Noting how skinny everyone is, that makes sense.

She stared at the skeletons, then looked at the ring. Maybe that was what they were here for.

"You do realize that people will still hunt you, right?"




"Who were they?" Puck asked.

"There is a story," he began in a solemn tone, "about a talented saxophone player who went to Mardi Gras one night and caught the eye of a faery queen. And the queen bid him come to her, because he was young and handsome and charming, and his music could set ones soul on fire. But the sax player refused, because he already had a wife, and his love for her was greater than even the beauty of the faery queen. And so, angry that he spurned her, the queen took him anyway, and held him in the Nevernever for many long days, forcing him to entertain her. But no matter what the young man saw in Faery, and no matter how much the queen tried to make him her own, even when he forgot his own name, he could not forget his wife back in the mortal world."

This was a tale hed watched unfold before him. He knew of the Token and where to find it because he remembered the sax player from the queens court; another mortal caught up in the cruelty of the fey.

"Time passed," Ash went on, "and the queen finally released him, because it amused her to do so. And when the young human, his head filled with memories both real and imagined, returned to his beloved wife, he found her aged sixty years, while he had not changed a day since he vanished from the mortal world. She still wore his ring, and had not taken another husband or suitor, for she always believed he would return."

Ash paused.

She nods.

She didn't say anything, letting him continue.

"So remind me of the point of making it a law, again."



"Neighbors found them days later lying in bed, a young man and a shrunken old woman, their fingers intertwined in an unbreakable grip and their faces turned toward one another. The blood from their wrists had already dried on the sheets."