If you’re looking to advert your eyes from any spoilers, because you just ordered your Call of the Siren Kit or downloaded the pattern on Raverly, there is only one image in this post that spoils clue one. So, if you start to see the edges of Megan-Anne’s Instagram pic, scroll super fast! Also, I wanted to let those of you just joining us that we’re raffling off one skein of Adventure Yarn to one lucky Call of the Siren participant. 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, last time on Call of the Siren (read it here)…

Dr. Persephone Kore, the head of the Aquatic Division of Lattes & Llamas Society for Knitterly Cryptid Studies, had summoned us to the beaches of Ocean City for a meeting, but didn’t show up herself. Just as we were about to leave, something attacked Megan-Anne! And now we begin chapter two to discover what has become of our resident doctor of double knitting…

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bje_JNRH6_7/?taken-by=doctor_llama

The Queen

I always figured that when you’re knocked unconscious, you just float silently until your brain can reconnect with your body. That wasn’t the case for me. I dreamed.

Have you ever had a dream where you were sure that some of it was real? The kind of dream were you fall and scrape your knee, and the first thing you do when you wake up is check under the covers, expecting to see a couple droplets of blood. The scrape isn’t there, but you know that it should be.

This was that kind of dream.

I saw it in flashes, just bits and pieces I couldn’t quite process. My eyes wouldn’t focus. No matter how far I opened them, everything had that corner-of-the-eye fuzziness. I saw images of orange-gold sunset and deep wine and turquoise colored scales. And I smelled the ocean. Mostly though, I heard a song. It vibrated through me and pierced through all my other senses. I needed to hear more, but I couldn’t quite get to it. It was as if the words laid just out of my reach, and I strained to hear them, but something blocked out the sound. My name. Someone was calling my name.

“Megan-Anne!” She sounded as if she was oceans away. “Dammit, Megan, come on.”

I felt something cool and smooth under my bare arms and legs, and the pain started leach back into my body. The pain jolted me awake and the voice was right next to me.

“Wake up, Megan-Anne. If you wake up, I’ll buy you a latte.”

I opened my eyes and Jac was crouched next to me. She didn’t look cool and calm anymore. Her eyes were wide and her hair had taken on a life of its own — I’ve long suspected her curls were sentient beings. They were wild now, filled with sand, a few tendrils wet with blood.

“You look terrible,” I mumbled. I manged to sit up with a lot of what I assure you was very lady-like grunting.

We were on a black and white checkered linoleum floor. The room resembled an industrial kitchen. Instead of flour and mixers, the shelves lining the walls were covered with different sized tanks, containing what I guessed were scientific specimens. A lab then. We must have been in a lab. I looked down at my leg, expecting to see a grotesque wound, like something from one of the grittier TV crime dramas, but there was just a small prick. It couldn’t have been made with a needle bigger than one I’d use to knit socks. The longer I stared at where the gash ought to be, the less it hurt. Maybe I hadn’t been stabbed at all?

“About that latte,” I said.

Jac let out a sigh and the tension drained from her shoulders. She laughed. “It’ll have to wait.” She gave me her hand and helped me to my feet. “Can you walk?”

I gingerly put weight on my leg. Maybe I had hit my head harder than I’d thought, because now it looked like I had a bug bite. I added more weight, and it hardly hurt. I nodded.

“Good. Follow me.”

Jac led me through a maze of rooms. As we walked, she filled me in on the hour I had spent unconscious and dreaming of oceans and songs. I had been attacked by Persephone’s son, Zag. Jac thought he was probably 10 or so, but it’s hard to tell with kids that age. Earlier that day Zag had come back from school to find the headquarters empty and no trace of his mother. Her office showed signs of a struggle, the chair was broken and the corner of her desk was chipped and bloody. Whoever had broken in left a single, long feather behind. Apparently, Zag saw our names and the meet-up location in her calendar and thought we had killed his mother. After Jac had pulled Zag off me at the beach, he muttered something under his breath and all of a sudden the three of us were here. She wasn’t sure where exactly here was, but Jac did the only reasonable thing and locked Zag in the first closet she could find. When she was sure I was comfortable, she had gone to look for an exit, but never found one. She found Persephone’s office though and, derived from the letterhead that was now strewn around the room, deduced that we were in the headquarters of the Society for Knitterly Cryptid Studies.

“Anyhow,” She said as we reached Persephone’s office. “I think that we might accidentally be working for evil super-villains.”

“Why’s that?” I asked, but I wasn’t really paying attention. The wall behind Persephone’s desk was made entirely of glass, and was the only thing separating us from the ocean. Sunlight barely managed to find its way down to the glass. I realized with a sense of dread that this building might be on the ocean floor.

“Because I’ve been here for an hour and haven’t found a single coffee pot…” She trailed off and stared out the window with me. Something was moving towards us.

I never really understood the phrase ‘terribly beautiful’ before that moment. What appeared in front of us was, for lack of a better word, a mermaid. This was no Disney Princess though. She must have been 8 feet long. Her coral colored hair floated around her like armor and the crown she wore seemed like it had grown from her head like horns. Her tail lashed back and forth, deep greens and blues, accented with dark, nearly black, purple scales. She held a wickedly sharp trident in one hand and with the other she pointed at us as she opened her mouth and began to sing.

Thanks for reading! ~Megan-Anne & Jac