There is a sound the ocean makes at dusk when the wind falls quiet, a low humming that is not the wind and not the tide. That is La Sirene tuning her voice. She comes up slow from the deep, half woman and half fish, her scales catching the last light like coins spilled across the water. In one hand she holds a mirror, in the other a comb, and she draws it through her long hair while she sings. Those who hear that song feel the pull of it in the marrow. She is the mermaid of Ginen, mistress of the sea’s cold interior, and where she surfaces the water turns the deep green of jade and old bottle glass.
The Wife of Agwe, Mistress of the Deep
La Sirene is wife to Agwe Tawoyo, the admiral of the sea. He commands the surface, the ships, the shells and the cannon-boom of the waves against the hull; she commands what lies beneath — the wealth on the ocean floor, the drowned treasure, the silence where light does not reach. Together they hold the whole of the water between them. Her twin and her double is La Baleine, the great whale, the vast slow body of the sea made flesh; when you call one you feel the other moving in the dark behind her. La Sirene governs riches, for the sea hoards everything that sinks, and she governs music above all, because she is the source of every song. It is said the greatest singers and drummers of Haiti received their gift from her, carried down anba dlo, beneath the waters, and returned to the living remade. To be taken by La Sirene is to vanish for a season into her green kingdom and to come back with a voice that was not there before, with knowledge in the eyes and salt still on the tongue.
A Rada Spirit, Cool as Deep Water
She belongs to the Rada nation, the ancient, sweet-tempered spirits of Ginen, and her temperament is the temperament of that rite — cool, deep, dignified, unhurried. Rada spirits are the family of the source, older than memory, and La Sirene carries that antiquity in her stillness. She is not the fire of the Petwo waters; she does not scald or strike. Her coolness is the coolness of the abyss, a temperature that soothes and enchants rather than burns. Do not mistake her for Erzulie Freda, though both are creatures of beauty and both love the mirror — Freda’s kingdom is the perfumed boudoir, the ache of romance and luxury on dry land, while La Sirene’s beauty lives in the water and her wealth is the wealth of the deep. Freda weeps because the world can never be sweet enough; La Sirene sings, and her song is a summons. One rules longing. The other rules the sea.
How She Is Honored
Her colors are the colors of her element — blue and green for the layered water, silver and white for the foam and the moonlight and the flash of the fish’s scale. Her day is Thursday, and on that day her people turn toward the water for her. Her veve is drawn with the curve of a mermaid’s tail and often the star of the sea above it, for she is honored under the face of Our Lady, Stella Maris, the Star that guides sailors home across the dark. To call her, you set out a mirror so she may see her own beauty, and a comb for her endless hair. You pour champagne, pale and bright with rising bubbles like the sea’s own effervescence. You lay out seashells, her currency and her ornament, gathered from her shore. You offer perfume, sweet and cool, poured on the water or into the wind. And you sing — for nothing pleases La Sirene like a song raised in her honor, the voices rising and falling in the swell of the melody until she answers from beneath, and the water listens, and the drum finds the rhythm of the tide.
Benediction
La Sirene, Star of the Sea, mermaid of the green water, wife of Agwe and sister to the whale — you who comb your hair upon the waves and hold the mirror to the moon. Sing to us the low song at dusk, and if you take us down beneath the water, carry us gently, and give us back with the gift on our lips. Grant us the wealth of the deep and the peace of the cool current. We set the mirror. We pour the champagne. We spread the shells upon your shore. Rise, Lady of the deep, and hear us. Ayibobo.