"You gave yourself to my song," the siren goes on, drawing step by step closer to them, "and in doing so you each gave up a little piece of yourself. What you gave away isn't coming back; for hundreds of years it will stay right here out in the open wind and call you back and back, always and--"

"Shut up," Mom says, one arm curved protectively around her son, the other already casting an invisible net over the siren that shrinks as she shrieks, smaller and smaller, until there's nothing left but a black-backed gull with a voice like distant whalesong to fly up over the rocks, winging swiftly inland and out of their sight.