A Sirens' Song
Updated: 7 days ago
A historical fiction based on true events that happen November 19th, 1493 retold by Samantha Fantauzzi
The midnight air on the Mariagalante was thick with the pungent stench of moist rotting wood, vinegar and the unwashed bodies of two hundred Spanish sailors. Deep in the damp belly of the flagship, Lihua pressed her forehead against the rough hull. Through the timber, she felt the rhythmic, heavy pulse of the Atlantic Ocean.
It was an unspoken language she had known since before she could walk. To the Spanish, the water was an enemy. It was a terrifying, chaotic void that they trapped themselves in wooden cages to cross. But to Lihua and the seven other Taíno women huddled beside her in the dark, the ocean was their mother. It was the highway that connected their worlds. Beside her, a younger girl named Guara trembled.
They had been taken weeks ago in a brutal raid on Guadalupe. Since then, they had been kept worse than livestock below deck, listening to the heavy boots of Admiral Christopher Columbus’s men trampling overhead. The Admiral’s voice continued “…son de muy hermosos cuerpos y muy buenas caras… la mejor gente del mundo y más mansa… tan llenos de amor y sin codicia. Algunas de ellas tenían las caras tan blancas como en España se pudieran ver. Ellos deben ser buenos servidores.” Suddenly, a shift in the ship’s tilt made Lihua’s eyes snap open. The rolling motion of the deep sea had changed. The waves were shorter, choppier. The wind brought a scent through the tiny, barred air hatch the sharp, sweet fragrance of wet earth, blooming hibiscus, and crushed palm leaves. Borikén. The island of their people. Home. Lihua reached out in the blackness, her fingers finding Guara’s wrist.
She squeezed it once. A silent signal passed through the darkness from woman to woman. The Spanish guards outside the iron grate heard nothing but the creaking of the masts. They stood up, moving with the fluid grace of creatures born to the sea. Lihua led the way up the narrow, splintered ladder toward the deck hatch. She knew the rhythm of the guards. Tonight, the fleet was sailing close to the reefs, navigating by the pale light of a crescent moon. The sailors were distracted, looking toward the dark, jagged silhouette of the island’s mountains on the horizon. Lihua pushed the hatch open. The cool night air stuck to her skin like oil.” ¿Quién va?” a voice barked from the shadows. Lihua didn’t look back.
She sprinted across the moonlit deck, her bare feet gripping the damp canvas and wood.” The Indian women! To arms!” Before the guard could level his crossbow, Lihua reached the wooden railing. The black expanse of the ocean churned forty feet below. For a fraction of a second, the moon illuminated the white foam of the shore waves miles in the distance. A terrifyingly long distance. A distance the Spaniards believed meant certain death.
Lihua vaulted over the side. Behind her, seven more shadows leaped into the night. The fall felt like an eternity, Lihua was able to say her prayers in full and was still falling, the wind rushing past her ears, as she plead with the divine goddess until finally the freezing Atlantic swallowed her whole. The roar of the surface vanished, replaced by the dense, heavy silence of the deep. Lihua did not panic. She kicked her legs, diving deeper into the black water to escape the ship’s deadly undertow.
Her lungs, trained from a lifetime of diving for conch and pearls, held the air effortlessly. Above them on the deck, absolute chaos erupted. Lanterns swung wildly, casting long, monstrous shadows across the rigging. Sailors scrambled to the railings, pointing weapons into the froth. “They are drowning!” a young deckhand cried out, squinting into the ink-black waves. “No mortal can survive that plunge!” But as the fleet’s physician, Dr. Diego Álvarez Chanca, rushed to the side, he saw something that made his blood run cold. Through the shifting moonlight and the white spray of the ship’s wake, the women did not thrash. They did not scream. They glided.” Look there!” a superstitious boatswain yelled, dropping his crossbow in terror and crossing himself. “Those are no women! They are sirenas! Demons of the deep!” To the European minds reared on medieval folklore, what they were witnessing was unnatural.
Human beings fought the water; they gasped and sank. But these creatures moved beneath the surface like shadows, undulating with the current, their long black hair trailing behind them like silk banners. The musketeers fired blindly, but their hands shook. Rumors tore through the deck in whispers: Columbus had steered them into a sea of witches, creatures who had taken the shape of captives only to lure the Spanish ships onto the deadly reefs of Borikén.” They have the tails of fish!” an old sailor screamed into the wind, hallucinating in his panic as he watched a distant crest of water break. “They are swimming straight into the abyss!” Below the surface, Lihua turned her back to the terrified shouts of the men who believed they were fighting monsters. She flattened her body, pressing her arms to her sides, and swam. She did not swim like the Europeans, who fought the water. Lihua moved like a manta ray. She rolled her shoulders, using the swell of the ocean to propel her forward. She stayed as deep as she could under, where the current was steady. Beside her, pale shapes moved through the dark, Guara and the others, entirely unaware that overhead, the men with steel swords were trembling at the thought of mermaids.
The air in Lihua’s lungs began to burn, a hot coal in her chest. She surfaced just long enough to tilt her nose into the night air, taking a silent, desperate sip of oxygen before sliding back beneath the waves. Behind her, the torches of the Spanish boats were small, angry sparks, hopelessly searching the wrong stretch of water. They could not comprehend a human moving this fast, this deep, for this long. The muscles in Lihua’s thighs throbbed. The sea grew rougher as they approached the barrier reef. The sharp coral threatened to tear her flesh, but she knew the gaps in the reef by heart. She rode a breaking wave, letting the crest lift her body safely over the jagged rocks. It was a little more than three miles; Her limbs felt like lead. The water grew warm, thick with the sand of the shallows. Suddenly, Lihua’s hands scraped against the rock.
As she pulled herself up, a small voice behind her called out, as she turned to look back a large wave crashed into her, she fell, slamming into the rock face of the shore, her knee twisting and scraping as made impact, when the water rescinded again, She crawled out of the surf, the wet sand clinging to her skin. She gasped, breathing in the rich, heavy air of Borikén. One by one, more shapes emerged from the foam. Guara collapsed beside her, weeping silently. Five others dragged themselves onto the beach. They were bruised, exhausted, and bleeding from the coral, but they were breathing the air of a free country. Lihua stood up, her chest heaving, looking back at the ocean one last time. As she turned to lead her sisters toward the dark, welcoming canopy of the rainforest, a low sound began to hum from her throat. It was a sacred melody of gratitude. Guara caught the tune, and then the others joined.
Together, they raised their voices in a raw, piercing song of praise to Atabey, the Great Mother goddess of the earth and waters, who had sustained their breath beneath the waves. Every note was an agony. Their lungs, stripped raw by the saltwater, burned fiercely. Their throats burned as though they were lined with hot embers, but they sang through the pain, their voices carrying an otherworldly weight across the shore. As they walked, the very beach came alive beneath them. Their bleeding feet pressed into the bioluminescent sands, waking millions of microscopic creatures in the shoreline. With every step the women took, a brilliant, neon-blue under their soles, leaving a trail of glowing, ethereal footprints in the dark. To an outsider, they looked like spirits walking upon stars. Miles away, aboard the Mariagalante, the lookouts lowered their brass spyglasses, their faces ghostly pale under the moonlight.
Through the midnight quiet, the wind carried the faint, haunting melody of the women’s agonizing praise across the water. Through the glass, the sailors watched in absolute horror as the distant, shadowy figures walked upon a beach that glowed with hellish, supernatural blue light. “They are demons,” the helmsman whispered, his teeth chattering as he spun the wheel away from the coast. “They sing in the tongues of devils, and the very earth burns beneath their feet.” The display solidified the terror in the hearts of the Spanish crew. They were convinced, beyond all doubt, that the captives they had lost were not flesh-and-blood women at all, but demons sent to claim the island. Dr. Chanca furiously dipped his quill into ink, his hand trembling as he recorded the night’s events.
The sailors would speak for years of the sirens that escaped them at Borikén, but the doctor knew the terrifying truth. They were not monsters, nor myths. They were women. And they had just outsmarted the Spanish. Lihua stepped into the shadows of the trees, her glowing footprints slowly fading behind her. She turned toward the dark canopy of the El Yunque, leading her sisters home.
Samantha Fantauzzi is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, award-winning entrepreneur, humanitarian, international model, Multi-Indigenous storyteller from Oklahoma, and enrolled tribal member of our Yucayeke. Her humanitarian and war-relief work alongside Misha Collins and G.I.S.H., combined with her innovative solar star-shade design concept, brought her international recognition and Nobel nomination honors in 2020. She is the recipient of the Gold Presidential Accommodation for Volunteer Services (2023) and founder of Rose Essence Creative Studios, an award-winning Native-owned luxury cosmetics company. Known as Bo Karaya (Great Moon) to her Taíno family, Usti Wesa (Kitten) in Cherokee, and He nuĥ nv wè tv nu (Beloved Panther) in Natchez, Samantha also holds pageant titles including Mrs. Oklahoma USA Ambassador (2022)and Mrs. El Paso USA Ambassador (2021). Through storytelling, entrepreneurship, humanitarian service, and advocacy, she works to preserve Indigenous wisdom, honor ancestral traditions, and inspire future generations to carry their stories forward.
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