There’s nothing quite like Memorial Day weekend and the opening of pools across the US that makes a girl want to talk about mermaids. But before we dive in to the first chapter of Call of the Siren, I would like to formally announce that the first clue of the shawl pattern has been released on Ravelry. You can purchase it now by clicking the “buy it now” button below. If you already purchased a Call of the Siren Kit, you do NOT need to purchase the pattern. It was included in your kit and should be arriving in your inboxes as I write this.

It’s up to you to solve the mystery of the disappearance of Dr. Persephone Kore, but even if you have trouble finding the head of the Aquatic Division of Lattes & Llamas Society for Knitterly Cryptid Studies, we don’t want you to go away empty handed. We had fun raffling off one skein of our favorite Blueface Leicester sock yarn, Adventure, to one lucky member of the Nessie Expedition, so we’re planning to do it again for those joining us on our five week odyssey!

To be entered in the raffle, all you’ll need to do is post a photo of your shawl completed through at least the second clue in the official Call of the Siren Ravelry thread by end of day July 5th, 2018. That’s a week and a half after the last clue releases.

And now, I invite you to read Chapter One of the Call of the Siren by Megan-Anne and Jac.

The Feather

I wiggled my toes in the hot sand. No, hot wasn’t the right word. Searing, maybe. I dug my feet in deeper, letting the beach give me the poor-woman’s pedicure, until I found the cool layer hiding underneath.

The Jersey Shore only has two speeds: searing and frozen. In late May, you get a little of each. The temperature shoots up into the 80s and 90s, setting the sand on fire. The water, on the other hand, won’t start to warm for at least another month. It’s so cold you’ll go numb once you step into the surf. The shore gets a bad reputation, but don’t believe everything you see on TV. If you can get past the ice cube toes and sunburnt shoulders, it’s quite nice.

I’m not sure I would have tapped it as an ideal location to meet my mysterious boss in person for the first time though. Frowning, I glanced over at my sister and wondered how she managed to stay so calm, stretched out on her beach towel, sunning herself as she watched the little white and brown birds chase the waves in search of food. Looking at her, you’d never know that she was a fierce, dedicated cryptozoologist, documenting the untold mysteries of nature. I mean, she and I were basically the James Bonds’ of the Cryptic based knitting-and-research world! Of course, I wouldn’t say that to her. She was too cool for public declarations of our coolness. Still, I had been a wreck all week, obsessing over making the perfect first impression and I couldn’t take her indifference anymore.

“Ugh, how can you just sit there?” I didn’t shout. Honest. My voice was just naturally like that. I liked to think of myself as spastic-chic.

Jac peered at me over her sunglasses and then casually flipped her mass of curly hair over her shoulder. “Yeah, you’re right.” She stood and brushed the sand off her bare legs. “This is ridiculous.” She started to pack up her things, carefully tucking the knitting she’d been to serene to bother working on into her tote bag. “Persephone clearly doesn’t respect our time. We have things to do.”

I stared at her, trying to form words, but the connection between my brain and my mouth seemed to have shorted out.

Jac shook the sand off her towel, carefully folded it up, and stowed it in her bag. “Are you coming?” She had that look she used to get when we were kids that meant I was missing something obvious. The slight head tilt to the left. The quirk at the corner of her mouth.

I swallowed hard. “We’re supposed to meet Persephone here. I know it’s the right beach. I checked.” I shielded my eyes against the sun and searched the shoreline, hoping desperately to see Persephone headed our way.

“Yeah, I remember. You checked before we left Philly, again in the car on the way here, and twice at the hotel – that I know of. Plus, you asked three random strangers if this was definitely Waverly Beach even though I had literally already point out the sign.”

I pushed myself up to my feet and nervously brushed the sand off my sundress. I knew she wanted me to say we should leave, but I couldn’t. “Just ten more minutes.”

Jac sighed. “Megan-Anne, she was supposed to meet us here 45 minutes ago. I’m not going to sit around all day waiting.” She pulled her cell phone out of her bag and scrolled through it as she spoke, “If Persephone was going to be late, she should have called or at least shot us an email, and there’s nothing.” She dropped the phone back into her tote. “I’m sunburnt and hungry. I’m going to the boardwalk to get something to eat. If you want to stay here and hope she’ll show up, go ahead.”

“Wait, let me look.” I grabbed my cell phone and frantically started cycling through my email accounts.

“You’ve barely put down your phone long enough to knit your shawl. I think you would’ve noticed an email notification.”

The push notifications for my personal email account was turned off! Why hadn’t I thought to check it? I had accidentally sent Persephone an update from it a few months ago during our expedition on Loch Ness. Maybe she had clicked on the first thread that caught her eye with my name on it and replied to that. Her explanation was probably sitting between the many social media email notifications I kept meaning to disable.

“I’ll bring you back a hot dog or something,” Jac said. She turned and started walking away.

I thumbed through miles and miles of advertisements I would never open and coupons that would expire before I got around to using them. My shoulders slumped. It was filled with nothing by Memorial Day Sale spam.

I gathered up my things as quickly as I could and managed to dump sand off my towel and into my bag as I did it. That was just perfect. Sand in my knitting bag was pretty much the perfect metaphor for my day. I ran after Jac and congratulated myself on not tripping over anything as something small slammed into me and knocked me over. I crashed sideways onto the beach, my shoulder connecting with a particularly pointy shell while the sand made it feel as if I’d been road-rashed.

Jac whirled around and threw her tote bag to the side. Her face twisted with rage. She leapt at something, but I couldn’t quite make out what it was. The edges of my vision had darkened and I wondered if it had always been this hard to breathe. You don’t really think about breathing until you can’t catch your breath.

And then it didn’t matter.

White hot pain shot through my leg and the darkness closed in on me. Stay conscious, I told myself. Stay conscious. I stared blearily down at my leg and glimpsed a long turquoise feather sticking out of my thigh. “That can’t be right,” I said. My words sounded slow and strange to my ears. “Who gets stabbed with a feather?” The pain coalesced into a deep throb and I felt light, as if I were floating on water.

A child wailed hysterically in the distance. Or maybe it was beside me? There was no way to tell in the water as I slipped into unconsciousness and three words echoed in my head, “You killed her!”

Thanks for reading! ~Megan-Anne & Jac