| THE LORELEI SIGNAL |
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| Written by Lauren LeBano / Artwork by Marge Simon |
| The Strawberry Banshee |
There were five minutes until the class bell rang. Zoe hated the waiting. She’d bolted in from the flag-football
game and stripped off her shapeless sweatpants and shirt early, before the other girls strutted into the
locker room.
Now she was stuck here, ready to go, while they changed. Zoe clutched her stack of books to her chest and
perched on the farthest edge of the wooden bench, staring ahead. But that was a bad idea. The other girls
would think she was staring at them, like last week.
So she fished out her history book and flipped through the World War II chapter. There was a thrill in reading
all the terrible things and knowing ahead of time they came to an end.
But Chelsea Allen would have nothing of it. “Look! Zoe’s studying!” She pointed at Zoe, and Zoe slammed the
book cover closed. “No I’m not,” Zoe said. “I just like reading.”
Chelsea rolled her eyes, and by now Pam and Melissa and the whole pack of them were giggling. “I sure hope
books like you too,” Chelsea said, “’cause you don’t, like, even pretend to be a normal person.”
All the possible words in the English language were jammed in Zoe’s throat. She folded her arms around her
books and pushed the locker room door open with her shoulder. Later that day, she would think of a dozen
snappy things she could have said in reply.
~ * ~
Finding the banshee was the only thing that chased the locker room scene from Zoe’s mind. She was walking
home from school, the long, safe way, and she spotted the banshee unconscious in the gutter, drifting
through the rainwater, wet leaves tangled in its hair. The creature was thin and gray, shaped vaguely like a
doll-sized woman with shriveled skin, probably some rich bachelor’s forsaken pet. New wives rarely took
kindly to banshee companions.
Zoe lifted it from the water, gently probed its neck with her fingers and felt, yes, there were the telltale blobs
of scar tissue fused to the vocal chords. “Hello,” Zoe said.
The banshee’s yellow eyes flicked open. “Hello,” Zoe said again, delighted at the response to her voice. The
banshee smiled. Even with voices clipped, pet banshees lived in a world of sound.
At home, Zoe lined a shoebox with old newspapers, poked a few breathing holes in the lid with a pencil, and
placed the banshee inside.
Zoe climbed into bed that night, but she couldn’t sleep. A yellow glow seeped through the cracks of the
banshee’s shoebox. Zoe removed the lid and found the banshee awake, eyes shining, throat twitching.
“Are you—” Zoe asked, and the banshee extended wrinkled hands towards her throat, her voice.
Zoe closed the shoebox lid and edged away, just outside the glow circle. She really didn’t know what to do.
She could sing to the banshee, and she knew even her throaty, off-key mumble would sate the creature’s
hunger and send it drifting to sleep.
That would be against the law, of course.
She knew about the dangers, the sound-proof boxes banshee owners often procured for their pets. But the
poor things had been bred to miniature size, voices clipped from day one, hair coaxed to ridiculous lengths
and colors (the Strawberry Banshee’s mane made it a bestseller for years), to the point where the banshees
barely existed but to be admired for what they once were.
Even the cops rarely bothered to mail a citation to an owner accused of abandonment. Banshees were that
close to shadows.
So Zoe saw no danger in a song, a simple song. She edged nearer to the glowing circle and hummed, and the
banshee closed its eyes and its throat relaxed. With darkness filling the room, Zoe could finally sleep.
~ * ~
The next day’s gym class was the merciful last day of the flag football cycle. Zoe took small in joy in being
picked not last, but second to last, by Richard Holobrook. Zoe secretly loved Richard Holobrook. His hair fell
across his eyebrows like he didn’t quite want to be seen, didn’t quite love all the attention of being star point
guard and the lead in Guys and Dolls. And Zoe had caught him, one time, reading a biography of Franklin D.
Roosevelt.
She made an effort to catch the ball when he quarterbacked it to her. She knew, she always knew, that if
someone just threw the ball to her, she could catch it. She ran and stretched out her arms like a cradle and
received the football in them.
Cheeks flushed, she gripped the ball and dodged one, two, three shocked classmates before crossing the
orange cones marking the end zone. The teacher’s whistle screeched, and Richard was next to her, high-
fiving and clapping a hand on her back. “Nice catch Zoe,” he said.
She stuttered thanks.
Dazed with happiness, she trailed behind the rest of the class to change. She didn’t realize the other girls
were behind her.
“Nice catch Zoe,” Chelsea said. Her voice sent shivers through Zoe’s body.
The other girls flanked Zoe on both sides now, two in front, blocking her completely from view.
Zoe muttered, “It was nothing.”
“Richard didn’t seem to think so,” Chelsea said, eyes sparkling. “He told me he thinks you’re pretty cute.”
Chelsea was walking only inches from Zoe, matching her stride by stride.
Hope made Zoe smile. “Really?”
Chelsea dug one heel into the dirt in the path of Zoe’s next step, and Zoe tripped. She tumbled on all fours
onto the ground, mud and grass seeping into her sweatpants.
“Um, not really,” Chelsea said. The girls kept walking. The whole bunch of them clumped together and emitted
ear-piercing giggles.
Zoe, rising from the grass, wiped her palms on her thighs. A girl with a full-voiced banshee would never have
to stumble through the mud, wondering what to say, wondering how to banish the memories of those terrible
laughs.
~ * ~
Zoe pulled the banshee’s shoebox from under her bed late that night. The glow bathed her hands and she
smiled, for tonight she had a plan.
She sang a few verses of a lullaby to the banshee, and it scrambled to the edge of the box. Zoe fetched a doll
comb from her old toy box and brushed the tangles and leaves and dirt from the banshee’s wild, waist-length
hair. With the leaves gone, its hair shined pink, a classic Strawberry mix.
Zoe sang all the songs she could remember, mostly corny ones she’d had to memorize in music class, like
“America the Beautiful.” But the banshee lapped up all the words, and soon found the strength to stand for
the first time since Zoe had lifted it from the gutter.
Zoe’s heart walloped at the sight of the creature standing, reaching for her, yellow eyes fixed on her throat.
She knew banshees loved all songs, loved the vibrations running through their bodies, but this banshee
seemed to love her in particular.
Zoe took the banshee from the box and let it place its cool fingers on her neck. She kept singing, and the
banshee kept its fingers pressed to her and drank in the vibrations. With her thumb, Zoe massaged the scar
tissue on the creature’s throat. Soon it would dissolve and the banshee would know its own voice again.
~ * ~
At school, Chelsea and the gang seemed to find new delight in Zoe’s misery. One of them, Pam, had caught
on that Zoe would read the World War II history chapter over and over. There was a day when Zoe went to
the bathroom and left her books on the gym bench, and when she returned the chapter was gone, torn from
her book.
They suggested she check the trashcan, but when Zoe opened the lid and fished around, she found only
wads of gooey tissues and gum.
Zoe rinsed the trash stickiness from her fingers with the pink dispenser soap. Then she went to Chelsea Allen
and said, “Promise not to touch my stuff again.”
Chelsea was applying mascara in the full-length mirror. She blinked twice and ran her forefinger under her
lashes. She acted as if Zoe wasn’t even there.
Zoe walked away.
Later that week, Zoe caught a blessed moment alone with Richard Holobrook, by the water fountain, and she
casually asked him if he’d read any new books on Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
He frowned. “What book?”
Zoe tried to explain she’d seen him reading it a month ago. Didn’t he think it was amazing that the crippled
President led the world to victory?
He looked at her the way she imagined a guy would look at a stalker. “That book? I had to read it for extra
credit in Mrs. Garrison’s class. It sucked pretty bad.” He leaned down to slurp a drink.
Zoe managed to slip away without saying anything more, even though she was still dreadfully thirsty.
~ * ~
It took nearly a month, but the banshee’s voice returned. Zoe coaxed it back, night by night, song by song.
The banshee would croon along with her, its voice sweet and seductive, bred that way by the fine men with
wallets who wanted a pet dangerous enough to box away, and beautiful enough to entertain at parties. The
voice clipping became law only after a few well-publicized cases of deafness.
Zoe’s banshee only screeched once, briefly, when Zoe accidentally kicked the box with her heel. The squeak
was tiny and purely reactionary, but her ears rang for hours and she clapped the lid on the shoebox and
shoved the whole thing under the bed. That night, she slept curled in a fleece blanket on the couch, cotton
stuffed in her ears.
She went back to the banshee the next night, when she saw the yellow glow emanating beneath her bed
and realized the creature hadn’t slept a wink. She pulled out the box and found the banshee lying on the
newspaper lining, fixing her with hungry, sorrowful eyes.
Unprompted, it reached gray hands to her and hummed the first lines of “America the Beautiful.” The beauty
of its voice brought tears to her eyes, and it leaned against her hand and seemed to say I’m sorry with its
touch. Zoe’s tears came faster and faster, then turned to sobs, and then she grabbed the pillow from her bed
and lay on the floor and bawled a damp spot onto it.
“You won’t hurt me again?” Zoe asked the banshee, when she’d finished.
The banshee nodded. The song it sang to Zoe, in apology, was a thing of beauty. But beneath the carefully
bred notes, Zoe sensed the seeds of a tiny scream.
~ * ~
Zoe wore a curious looking pouch to school the next day. It hung on a leather string around her neck and
made an odd bulge beneath her sweater.
She could feel Chelsea’s eyes on her, all through homeroom. In the crowded hallway of accidental elbows and
shoves, Chelsea asked, “So what’s with the fashion statement Zoey?”
“Nothing that concerns you,” Zoe said, and kept walking. Today, the chorus of giggles from Pam and Melissa
brought a smile to Zoe’s face.
Of course Zoe would have to take off the pouch for gym class. Chelsea and Melissa and Pam all knew this.
Zoe knew too.
Zoe stripped carefully, jeans into sweatpants, sweater into shapeless T-shirt. She took the pouch off last, and
placed it gently atop her pile of books.
She went to the bathroom. She closed the door to the stall, but she didn’t pee. She just stood there,
wondering if Chelsea and her friends would really do it. They would be perfectly safe if they did what was
right, if they kept their hands off her stuff. She’d even warned them.
Zoe plugged her ears with cotton and waited. It was their choice.
The banshee scream was small, barely noticeable through the cotton. Zoe, in the bathroom stall, pressed the
cotton balls harder into her ears with her thumbs and smiled, thinking of the girls with ringing ears for the
rest of the week.
But then the banshee’s true screech ripped through the air and rattled the stall dividers, the little metal latch.
Even the toilet paper shook on its spindle.
When Zoe ran from the bathroom, she saw a dreadful sight.
Chelsea Allen’s unconscious body was splayed across a gym bench. Blood dripped from her ears and puddled
on the cement floor.
Pam huddled in a corner, shaking, her earlobes and neck stained red.
Melissa lay on her back, her hands clenched; her chest moving up and down with sobs. Blood flowed from her
ears and congealed in her hair.
In the corner of the room, the banshee stood silently, its yellow eyes glowing, its strawberry hair cloaking its
body.
“Oh God,” Zoe said.
She ran to Chelsea, grabbed blobs of toilet paper, and blotted the blood from her ears. “I’m so sorry,” Zoe
said.
She went to Pam, to put a hand on her shoulder and lead her from the corner, but Pam flinched and
whispered, “Stay away from me.”
“I’m so sorry,” Zoe said. “I’m so sorry.” She said it over and over again, until Melissa, still wrenched by sobs
on the floor, screamed, “Then do something!”
Zoe didn’t know what to do. She knew this moment would stay with her forever, would cripple her with fear in
the night worse than any of their words. This was not done to her. This was something she had done.
The banshee didn’t flinch when Zoe reached for its throat, dug the flat of her forefinger in the soft spot, and
twisted. Its yellow eyes widened in something like how-could-you and it choked a bit, soundlessly opening
and closing its mouth. The scar tissue ball would solidify in a few days.
Zoe brushed a tear from her eyes, opened the gym door, and set the banshee on the green grass of the
soccer field. She waited, for a moment. All at once, the creature sprung into the air and spread its arms. The
wind, maybe the magical wind, carried it skyward, until its flapping hair was a tiny pink glimmer beneath the
sun. Zoe walked back in to the locker room, satisfied that even a crippled thing could find a way to live in the
world. Then she went through the door and out into the school and yelled “Help” as loud as her voice could
bear, until someone heard her and came.
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Lauren LeBano lives in New Jersey with her husband, some hardy plants, and way too many fish.
She enjoys reading and writing speculative fiction and has previously been published in Strange
Horizons.
She enjoys reading and writing speculative fiction and has previously been published in Strange
Horizons.