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A Siren Stranded in a Sea of Grass

by Courtney Farr

1. Sowing

The Great Plains can be disorientatingly flat, feeling more akin to the distant oceans than to the forests or mountains of neighboring states. In a tiny oasis anchored by a gnarled old bur oak, two friends lay on a plaid blanket, the ripening wheat spreading out from them as far as the eye could see. The tree once identified the border between two fields, before GPS, satellites and computer mapping rendered the old markers unnecessary.

“I thought sirens lived in the sea?” the farm boy asked his companion.

Clouds drifted languidly overhead, occasionally granting relief from the noon sun slicing through leaves and branches. The tree held on with the persistence necessary in a dry land. Its limbs spread out like dozens of frozen lightning bolts leaping from the trunk. They bent, twisted and forked above that tiny patch of grass in the midst of a sea of red winter wheat. Sweat poured off the boy, but the siren remained dry. They didn’t touch, each staying within the unspoken boundaries of their respective halves of the blanket.

“This used to be an ocean,” the siren replied in a wistful voice. It was the closest sound the land-locked boy had ever heard to waves caressing a shore. “Long before man, a massive channel of water ran all the way through the continent. You know that. I know your joy of hunting for shark teeth. You wear one now. The receding waters left behind more than the bones of old fish. Sometimes sirens were left behind by the retreat of the ocean, cut off from our sisters, abandoned by our sea.”

The young man fondled the shark’s tooth pendant around his neck. He’d made it himself years before, from a tooth he’d found just a few miles from here. He ran his thumb down the rough edge, recalling how his father had grumbled when he first started wearing it. Men weren’t supposed to wear jewelry, he said, except for a wedding ring. Was finding a siren under his favorite tree that much stranger than digging up million year old bones?

“So now you lure young farm hands to their deaths instead of sailors?” he teased, trying to lighten the mood. The deep well of loneliness that grew in her eyes made him look away.

“Who said the sailors didn’t come with us willingly?”

He sat up and pulled his knees into his chest, continuing to avoid her gaze. He was in his late teens, but hard labor had already shaped his frame to be much like the hardy tree he was so fond of. His hair and eyes matched the shades of dirt he farmed day after day, while hers spoke of distant waters he had never seen, but somehow remembered.

For years, ocean adventures filled his dreams. He’d imagined slicing through the great empty expanse under unfurled sails. Sitting on the beach and letting the spray of the waves wash over him. Diving deep into it, like something born to the water rather than visiting. He’d never believed he would see it; his family was as deeply rooted to this land as the tree that loomed over them. Then one day he had found a siren washed up next to that tree. She brought the ocean to him.

She hadn’t answered his question. But he needed to get back to work or his old man would lose his shit. Again.

“I’ll be waiting,” the siren lilted gently, as she did each time he left. Even as he walked away from her he felt a pull like a tide beckoning him to return.

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2. Lying Fallow

The farm boy often took his lunches under the tree. He had grown up with it as a companion and protector. When he was little, his father would work the adjacent field and leave him next to the tree to play by himself for hours. It felt as eternal and unchanging as a rock. Long crevices carved their way through its thick bark like ocean trenches. He imagined tiny civilizations living in them, building vertical cities that lined the walls. The rough bark felt good on his hands when he climbed, even as it scraped and bit into his palms. Perched as high as he could reach, he watched his father’s tractor slowly amble back and forth across the field. If he squinted, it looked a little like a fishing boat dragging nets, like he’d seen on television.

Deep in the branches of the tree sat a bird’s nest made from barbed wire. His father had told him the nest had been there since he was a young man, maybe longer. Each season new birds lined it with straw and leaves. Year after year, he watched new families transform this sharp bowl of angry metal into a home from which tiny, fragile babies emerged. Soon their hungry chirps would punctuate the eternal background song of the wind. As a kid, he added the birds to the mythos of his trench people, telling himself stories about how they made pilgrimages up the trunk to visit these giant bird gods.

The hours and hours spent working alone provided all the time in the world to listen to the tiny intricacies that most people took for granted. He especially liked listening to the wind, all its character and nuance. Aeolian was the word for the sound that wind makes as it passes over objects. He liked the way that word felt on his tongue when he said it. He had learned it in a music history class he took in high school. He’d wanted to take every music class his small school offered, but his dad said a real man didn’t need to know about music, he needed to know how to farm and fix things. He insisted his son take ag and vo-tech classes instead.

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3. Emergence

In the spring, wheat awakens from its winter dormancy, sunlight beginning to power its coming period of rapid growth. The young man had pulled up to the tree for lunch late one morning, and found a beautiful woman lying on a blanket. He’d have been less confused at finding a fish under the tree. He almost turned around and left, not wanting to intrude on anyone, but she had waved and beckoned him to join her.

If the boy looked so much of the earth it was like he had sprung from it fully formed, then everything about her seemed utterly alien and disconnected from this land. She reclined with effortless grace, a poised socialite holding court among her audience of beetles, birds, and field mice. They scurried about her, never daring to fully approach. Propped up on one elbow, her long iridescent skirt flowed out around her legs. He could almost imagine a cushioned couch under her instead of a bed of grass, one of the fancy ones he didn’t know the name of but had seen in the movies. She watched him approach with an amused curiosity, the way he had seen the old farm cat watch her kittens play.

“What’s a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this?” he quipped awkwardly as he walked up.

“Oh, I’m not a girl at all,” she said. “I’m a Siren. A mesmerizer, an enchantress. A destroyer of men and savior of women.”

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4. Fertilizing

He often offered to share his lunch with her, but she always declined. So he would eat while she talked and sang. Usually he had a bologna sandwich and chips, with a can of Coke. A Little Debbie snack for dessert. He liked the oatmeal cream pies the best. Today though, he had a little jar of pomegranate seeds. His mother had bought one at the fancier grocery store in the next town over.

He added a layer of chips on top of the slice of American cheese, and squeezed the bread to crunch them in. It added a nice bit of zest to the otherwise smooth feel of eating his thousandth bologna sandwich.

As he finished eating, he pulled out the small jar of seeds. He’d tried a couple that morning as his mother dug them out, staining one of her dish towels. The siren perked up and leaned towards him as he opened the jar.

“What are those?” she asked.

“Pomegranate seeds,” he said. “Do you want one?”

She plucked the jar from his hands and inhaled deeply over it. She closed her eyes and a gentle shudder passed through her.

“Yes, the smell alone is almost enough,” she said. “But I will take a few. Thank you.”

She pulled three seeds out, gently placing the first into her mouth and savoring it with her eyes closed and a faraway look of peace on her face. The other two she placed into a small bag on her waist.

He plucked a few out of the jar and popped them into his mouth, his fingertips stained in the red juice of the seeds. The siren watched him eat with a strange, wistful smile on her face.

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5. Growth

He took to driving by the tree regularly even if it was out of his way. He didn’t find the siren there every day but if he saw her blanket on the ground, he knew she would be waiting for him when he stopped for lunch.

He explained to her how wheat grew, and pointed out each of the stages as it developed in the field next to where they talked. They planted in the late fall. The wheat would barely break the surface before going dormant from the cold of the winter. Then, with spring and its rains, the wheat would burst into the sky, growing quickly as it flowered and filled its head with the grains they would harvest mid summer.

In turn, she sang stories of the ocean for him, about animals no living person had ever seen and an ancient civilization whose time had come and gone before the first proto-men ever walked the earth. He never knew whether he believed her or not, but he loved listening.

She told him of the Atlanteans, the real ones, how they lived in harmony with the oceans of the planet. Their bodies changed and shifted as needed, growing gills when they dove deep, their tails splitting into legs when they needed to travel the land. They took the forms of need, and of their truths.

He asked for new stories about them each time they visited. She told him that underwater, the Atlantean language sounded like songs. She sang to him, transporting him far into the mists of the past, where he could feel himself floating above their ancient spired cities as her song washed over and through him.

At night, his dreams of the sea became even more vivid, as her voice drifted over his idle memories of the day. Where before he had dreamed of work or leisure by the sea, now he felt himself in those oceans, swimming with her limbs, feeling the cool current on her skin, reliving the memories and stories that she told him. He could feel the way her long hair tickled at her own shoulder blades as she tossed her head back laughing amidst the dappled sunlight filtering through the water’s surface. The water feels sweeter and lighter in her lungs than the smell of the first rains of spring.

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6. Flowering

“You never visit me on Sundays,” the siren noted. It wasn’t accusatory, simply curious.

“Well, now I can,” he replied. “I quit going to church, and Dad said if I’m not going to church, I have to go to work. It’s fine, I’d rather be alone in the tractor and have another chance to see you.”

She asked him to explain church. The boy was often caught off guard by the siren’s ignorance of the world. Her wisdom and knowledge often felt limitless, but occasionally he would have to explain the most basic parts of being human to her. Like raising wheat and going to church. The kind of stuff everyone knew.

He told her that recently a TV show had a man marry a trans woman. Then he had to explain television. She understood it as a kind of theater. He had watched it with his parents. His father cursed and left the room to get another beer and didn’t come back. His mother just said she didn’t understand what the big deal was. He knew that he couldn’t talk to either of them about it. He told the siren he almost started crying during it. A pressure built up in his chest, a pain of grief that he didn’t understand, but scared him. He wasn’t angry like his father though. He just hurt.

The episode became a Big Deal. All the news networks covered it. Everyone talked about it. And the preacher at their church latched onto it as proof of the devil’s work in America. For three weeks in a row, the preacher railed about the evils of the gays and…he didn’t want to repeat the other words the preacher used. They were making a perversion of god’s love and will. He graphically described the wedding each time, turning it into a demonic ritual. The boy had wanted to rush out during these sermons, but knew he couldn’t. People would talk, or assume. The tightness in his chest returned every time he entered the sanctuary. A roaring filled his ears. He couldn’t sing during the hymns, just moving his mouth to pretend. At the last service the boy attended, the preacher begged god to send a plague to purify the world of homosexuals.

He finally told his father he wasn’t going to attend church anymore. He had reached a point that he was more afraid of what would happen if he kept going than of his father’s ire.

As he told her the story, tears started to flow from his eyes and he didn’t know why. The siren took him in her arms and stroked his hair and the sobs swelled and broke out of him. She whispered songs of the Atlanteans to him as she rocked him back and forth. That night he dreamt that he was a boat, his hardened tree body shaped into something more slender and streamlined that could bob freely on open waters. When he woke, he stayed in bed until he heard his father leave, trying to remember the feeling of being a boat, then he went down for a bowl of cereal before starting his own work day.

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7. Germination

He asked her for another story from the old days.

“My favorite story is the saga of Shray, Queen of Atlantis,” she said. “I told you how the Atlanteans could remake their bodies as needed.”

She launched into song, and told him the story of the queen, how she had been born a boy to one of the royal houses. Eventually she married a princess from another house, who ascended to the throne. She loved her more than life itself. Dedicated herself to helping her be the greatest queen the kingdom had ever known. But shortly after she took the throne, her wife fell ill. The royal doctors could do nothing for her. After she died, Shray became queen, shifting her body to that of a woman. She wanted Atlantis to remember the legacy of her wife, and dedicated herself to continuing the plans they had made for the kingdom. She ruled for a very long time. When she stepped down from the throne nearly a century later, she released her body to the sea, dispersing herself across the kingdom she had shepherded. Legend says that’s how sirens were born, each a piece of the queen after she gave herself back to the waters of her country.

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8. Ripening

“Are you really from Atlantis?” he asked one day. “It was so long ago, and you’re still here.”

“Would you believe me if I told you sirens go when and where they are needed?” she said with an unreadable smile. “There are many kinds of seas. And time means less to someone who lives as long as I do. Your wheat is maturing; do you not describe it as a sea of grain when it’s nearly ready to be harvested? Are you not like fishers in your giant machines, sailing and harvesting this dry ocean of its bounty? If you are a fisher of land, why could I not be from Atlantis?”

She hadn’t actually answered his question, he thought, which was often the case when he asked directly about her and her past.

“So why are you here?” he pressed.

“Do you not seek me out? Do you not ask for my stories?”

“I don’t know. I feel a lot more confused since we started talking. Dad and I have been getting into more fights. What do you really look like? Are you a shapeshifter like Shray?”

The siren hummed while she contemplated the young man.

“Sirens mesmerize because we reflect back your heart’s view of yourself. Not the deepest desire of who you want, but who you want to be. You desire the ocean, to be free of this place, and your role in it. I am not a shapeshifter, but a mirror.”

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9. Dormancy

He avoided the tree for weeks after that last conversation. He tried to convince himself that the siren was just a fantasy he indulged in during the endless boring hours running the tractor alone through empty fields, with only the occasional tumbleweed or coyote to break up the monotony. He could only listen to the wind so much without daydreaming.

He broke down once and drove by on his way to work. He saw her blanket beneath the limbs of the tree. He did not take his lunch there that day.

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10. The threat of hail before harvest

“I’ve missed you,” the siren said as he stepped out of his truck. “I particularly miss our Sunday visits like this.”

The farm boy had a black eye, nearly swollen shut, and a fat lip that had clearly split open. She reached out a cool hand, cradling his battered face.

“My dear, what happened to you?”

His words were slightly garbled from his busted lip. “My old man tried to drag me to church this morning, told me I needed to be straightened up and the preacher was the one to do it.”

He sat down on the blanket and they didn’t talk for a long time. She held his hand and they listened to the music the wind made as it blew over the wheat.

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11. Reaping

“I’m scared,” he said one day. His voice felt smaller.

The siren waited for him to continue.

“He’s just so angry all the time,” the young man said. “I try to spend as little time home as I can. I’m afraid to leave my mother though. She bought another pomegranate. He threw it into the yard and smashed it. He yelled at her. Said it was food for…I can’t even say it.”

His mother wouldn’t leave though, and he knew it. She never even tried to stop the old man from hitting him. He knew it wouldn’t do any good if she did.

“Why does he hate me?”

“Men hate many things for many reasons,” the siren said. “But I suspect it’s because he knows you’re different somehow.”

“Different how?” he asked.

“You dream of being more than you are,” she said. “That’s how I found you.”

They sat quietly under the tree, soaking in the warmth of the June sun, breathing in the dry scent of dust and wheat that dominated the county at this time of year.

“If you’re ready to go, we can leave,” she said. “I’ve just been waiting on you.”

“So this is how sirens kidnap young sailors, they’re all sweet to us until we go with them willingly?” He tried to sound lighthearted but his voice almost choked in his throat. He bit his lip so hard that he tasted copper.

She leaned towards him and took his face in her hands. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Dearest child, we’ve never kidnapped men. We gather women.” Her eyes locked into his. They were a storm of green and blue, stirring up so many songs inside his nervous gut. “We save girls from the world that wants to kill them. But it’s so much harder now. Most can’t even see us anymore.”

The teenager who dreamed of the ocean began crying as well, and they held each other under the shade of the old bur oak.

“Give me your name, and we can leave,” the siren said.

“You never wanted to know my name before.”

“I didn’t need it then. I do now.”

The teenager told the siren their name. She listened carefully, then nodded. She pulled out one of the pomegranate seeds that she had saved, and whispered the name to the seed. She buried it among the roots.

“If you ever need to visit your old self, you know where he is. Buried under this tree that he loved so much. Now we can go find your real name,” she said.

She took their hand and led the teenager who dreamed of the ocean out of the shade of the tree and into the sea of wheat.

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Host Commentary

This is a simply beautiful work of fiction, and every time I read it it never fails to make me cry. We’re releasing it today, on the transgender day of remembrance, in support of all the lives and voices that have been lost and to raise awareness of ongoing discrimination, marginalisation and systemic injustice.

In the show notes, you’ll find links to a number of support organisations such as Stonewall, the Trevor Project, and more.