The Siren's Tale (10 page)

I spoke calmly,
but my self-control was fraying. What he had said about my hot-bloodedness was true. This human male knew me all too well. Inside, I was struggling with myself, my siren brain sending me in one direction and my human instincts in another. I wanted my lover to want me and me alone. My siren's power was enough to pull him in, but it was more than a trick I yearned to accomplish. I wanted him to carry me away from this awful place, proving that he loved me only.

The ember
s of the fire between us flared up once more. Curly lunged toward me and kissed me roughly. I resisted at first, then bit his lip passionately.

In a moment
we were unbuttoning each other's clothes, tearing and ripping at them, regardless of the cold wind whipping around us. In the rising pitch of our mutual frenzy, the heaving and the sighing and the cries of sexual ecstasy mingled with the sounds of the prairie at night. The brambles scratched my bare flesh, but I didn't care, even if I bled; I knew he too would bleed.

However, in the midst of our frantic lovemaking, as his cock thrust into me, I had a sudden vision. I saw myself standing over a dead man. As soon as I saw the image, I
pushed Curly off me. The moment was spoiled and my passion had faded.  

“
What is the matter, lass?”

I detached myself and stood up.

Here human emotions and paranormal life parted company. I could not tell my lover my passion had suddenly cooled because I had seen a vision of death. My breastbone was cold to the touch, a signal our delightful friction was at an end for tonight. On the spot, I made up an ultimatum. It was one I did not expect him to honor, but I knew it would cool his ardor.

I said flatly,
“You may not make love to me again until you have given up Clare forever.”

“
By Mungo, you could not be so cold as to deny me, now that you've got me into this state!”

Curly
gestured piteously toward his red, swollen cock, which waved in the air as if to rebuke me.

“
I do deny you, until you have given Clare up.” My cold speech was underlined with a strong intuition that my lover's welfare demanded the ultimate sacrifice, that I must separate myself from him beyond tonight.

“
To hell with you, vixen! I wish you good-night.”  

He stood and
pulled up his breeches from around his ankles. I could not help but giggle, but I was also flushed with renewed desire at the manly spectacle he made in the moonlight, with his broad, bare shoulders rippling and the fall leaves in his curly hair.

With a surly bow, my lover
was gone, leaving me to scatter the ashes of my signal bonfire in a pensive mood. Much later, lying in my bed as the cocks began to crow, I thrashed restlessly under the cold sheets. I felt a shiver come over me. 

I had another premonition—what for a human would be
a flash of reason and a moment of clarity—warning me that this love affair was destined to end not in an eternal bonfire of bonded flesh, but rather a gravestone, cold and bleak as Hatter's Field.

T
he premonition passed, and I recklessly loved on.

“
Oooo, cookies.”

Chloe
picks up a gooey macadamia nut confection baked in Annie Witherspoon's kiva oven. Earlier, her Native American housekeeper had silently entered the room, laid down a silver tray of baked goods, and quietly padded off in her beaded moccasins.

Munching on the cookie, Chloe sneaks a peek at her cousin's face. Since the tale began,
Marlena has turned several shades of red, green, and white, like revolving lights on a Christmas tree. Now Marlena's face is dead white and she appears so astonished as to be wordless.

The effect of the storytelling on
Marlena is mind-blowing, beginning with the mystifying but acute awareness of two distinct voices, speaking in alternating narratives. One voice is Chloe's and the other is the alien voice that spoke to her Sunday night.

“
Any questions?” Chloe asks demurely.

Marlena
gapes vacantly.
No, cousin, you have not gone mad
. At last, Marlena manages to speak. “Er, does Harry know much about his grandfather?”

“
Oh, I think he has a good idea of the stock he comes from. Why do you ask?”

“
Well, I get the point that being a siren is hereditary. I am wondering if being a dick is hereditary as well.” 

“
Actually, yes. But the grain runs deeper than family history. Of course, I'm speaking now as an evolutionary scientist, not as a feminist.”

“
I'm all ears.”

“
Putting aside what humans call 'morality,' recurring patterns in sexual behavior differ between the sexes. The difference can be explained by evolutionary design. Both sexes are adapted to maximize reproduction. A man can reproduce himself thousands of times in a year, a woman only once. He is wired to spread his seed far and wide.”

T
hat does not mean it is okay for him to do it.

“
Certainly not. On the other side of the coin, because childbearing is so much more trouble for the woman, her selectivity is dictated by the evolutionary scheme of things as well as honored by the culture. Women are drawn to maximize the chances their line will survive. It is no accident when they select a man who is the leader of the pack.”

Choosy mothers choose Jif
.

“
Exactly. That ad relies on a gender-specific, behavioral archetype. No matter what
Cosmo
tells a young woman, unconsciously she buys into the idea of saving her egg for the most vital sperm.”

“
What about ancestral lineage? Can previous family behavior get passed along?”

You bet it does.

“While my belief is controversial, I would argue it does. Carl Jung spoke of the collective unconscious. Some believe that tribal dreams, desires, and behaviors are carried forward on the DNA, just like physical characteristics.”

“
Are there exceptions to normal evolutionary programming?”

Excellent question!

“Yes, there are. For instance, there are men who focus on one woman and demonstrate high MPI—that is, high male parental involvement. And, there are women who engage in sex for the sport of it, as sirens do. In general, these outliers are not highly regarded by the culture. The human archetypes lie in the other direction.”

“
Speaking of archetypes, what is with the rightful bride in your frontier story? I find it difficult to get behind Clare Brighton. Her low self-esteem allows her to be passed back and forth from her fiancé to her aunt. She is a piece of wampum, not a woman.”

My thinking exactly.

“Well, Clare was traditionally raised to believe her worth came from her marriage prospects. Even now, women are encouraged to think of themselves as commodities.”

“
What about these so-called sirens? Can a siren make that same mistake?”

Unfortunately, a siren is not exempt from human failings.

“Tell me, did you by chance experience your first orgasm when you and Harry began making love?”

“
Why, yes.”

“
Then, my dear, I have bad news for you. Original lust triggers love at first sight, which is the chink in our siren armor.”

“
Our? So, you, too, believe you are a siren, that you have paranormal powers?”

“
Yes, dear. I know for a fact that I am a siren. Though I don't choose to act on my powers, I do have them. You and I are sirens in human form. We find our joy in human interaction, but we take our guidance from a mythology of the stars which predates Christ.” 

“
May I have the Cliff Notes on the mythology?”

“
Certainly. Some earth spirits are protective of the mountains and streams; others, of the sea, like the so-called mermaids. The 'seven sisters,' a constellation named the Pleiades, were set in the heavens by Zeus. On earth they were Grecian mountain nymphs, daughters of the Titan Atlas. Foremost was Maia (Maea in Latin), which means in translation 'Good Nursing Mother.' Your middle name derives from hers. Maea mated with Zeus and produced Hermes, the messenger of the gods. Five of the others were also loved by gods, becoming ancestresses of royal families, including those of Troy and Sparta. To protect the nymphs from the lustful giant Orion, so the mythology goes, Zeus placed them among the stars and named them from the Greek word
pleiôn
, meaning 'plenty.'

“
Homer in the
Iliad
refers to a pair of sea nymphs as ‘sirens.’ By their exquisite singing and womanly wiles, the sirens lured the homeward-bound Greek sailors with Ulysses to their destruction on perilous rocks. Hence, one assumes, the modern connection between home-wreckers and the term “siren.” Part woman and part bird, the sirens of ancient Greece were also cousins of the seven nymphs whom Jove placed in the heavens and who are known as the Pleiades. From the beginning, one might speculate, sirens have had a natural tendency to look upward for their course
.

“
Mind you, this is only a mythological explanation of what is unknown. Our human siren line came later.”

Marlena
is silent, mulling it all over. 

She has begun to see her long affair with Harry in an unappealing new light. For five years she has viewed herself as having a
singular, unconventional romance with a handsome, sexual man who is also rich and powerful. But, clearly, their interaction Sunday night was at times a carbon copy of Cassandra and Curly's conversations in the autumn of 1900.  She is a dead ringer for Cassandra, and Harry is Curly's grandson.

Mere coincidence? A time warp? Or, as Chloe has claimed, are certain desires and behaviors,
even conversations, passed along in the DNA of a siren? Now it seems their passion was set in motion a century ago and informed by a mythology as old as the rocks.

While such synchronicity is hardly commonplace, is there any human glory or romance left in the equation?  And this is not her only troubling insight.

Marlena recalls a period when her infatuating affair came to an abrupt halt, after Lila Drake made a rare appearance in Alta and told Harry she wanted a child. Harry's response was to flee, stranding both wife and mistress while languishing for months in Europe's cafe society, where he sipped absinthe and nursed a grudge against women in general. The only consideration keeping Marlena from flying to her lover was not knowing his exact whereabouts. She must have Harry, she thought, or she would die.

In the end, her husband gave her what she
must have by expediting a deal with Pioneer Architectural Designs' biggest client. Over the phone, Coddie and Harry made a gentlemen's agreement. Half of her PAD time would be contracted to Drake Enterprises in her new role as Consulting Director for Special Events; she would be set up in her own suite at the hotel and resume her shuttle between San Francisco and Alta.

Now she wonders whether her husband was doing her a favor, or whether he was bowing to a siren's invincible will. At the time, she had exulted, believing she had won the contest with Lila Drake. But exactly what does she have to show for her victory?

The lingerie pile in her private closet has grown deeper. But has the human intimacy increased? Now there is a painful question. Also, getting her way has cost Marlena the friendship of her husband, an admired colleague and a man she loves like a brother. Finally, some of the luster on her accomplishments has been tarnished by the affair.

Face it,
Marlena. What do you see?

Marlena
slumps back and takes several deep breaths.

“
Let's see if I have the message correct so far. I am a direct descendant of a woman who tonight speaks to me from beyond the grave, one who in life was a siren in human form. Whether or not I have her powers remains to be seen, but I am destined to repeat her mistakes. Therefore, I am not the person I have imagined myself to be.”

You get an A, for almost right.

“Sing, sirens. I am ready for the lesson to continue. Wild horses could not drag me away.” 

Marlena
nods at the window, where the curtains ripple in a graceful response. Chloe smiles, gratified the young siren has managed to absorb some aspects of her true nature and peculiar situation without insulting the ghost. She once again takes up the thread of her story…

On the Sunday morning after First Fire Night, the three
hamlets of the northeast district were slower to rise than usual. Jolting awake to the crowing of roosters, townspeople rubbed their eyes and pulled their children out of bed. Having been up late the night before, the children objected loudly, were given a cuff on the ears, and then hurried into their Sunday church-going clothes. 

One of Alta
’s idiosyncrasies was that its saloon and its church were located within a stone’s throw of each other. Certainly the native sons and daughters lying in graves near the church did not mind the noise arising from the neighboring inn. Neither were the customers of the Plush Horse particularly concerned by the nearby presence of the dead. Indeed, it was common for one of the wags to raise a toast “to our dearly departed brethren. May they get more in heaven than the poor devils got here.” 

Such badinage did not sit well with
Widow Brown, however, who believed God spoke directly to her. She boycotted the inn and frowned upon its customers.      

Normally Cassandra cho
se not to go to church, partly in loyalty to Curly but also because she found the reading of scriptures boring and unenlightening. On October 28, however, Cassandra decided to go to church with her grandfather. He was surprised, but as usual he did not pry into her motivation.

The
stunning young woman who was the focus of all eyes sat down in the first row of the unadorned church. She bowed her head, clasped her gloved hands, and thought of the one thing she wanted most. Domesticity was not, she was sure, what fate had in store for her, or a safe, solitary life with her grandfather. Cassandra's prayer, if that is what it was, ran something like this: “O Mother Earth, grant me a great love. And by the way, please get me out of this terrible place.”

When the services were over, she was surprised to find her way was blocked when she stepped out into the aisle. Standing there with folded arms was
Widow Brown, who looked as if she might spit in her eye. The beauty with the flaming red-gold hair and the rheumy, heavy-set matron locked eyes, with the congregation looking from one to the other.

The Widow
was exhausted, having been up all night. She felt she had a very good reason to object to the scarlet woman being in church. Cassandra's carnal presence was a mark of sheer blasphemy that would bring the wrath of the Lord down on all, including the new baby in the Brown family who was about to be baptized. Widow Brown could not afford any chances of the Lord’s wrath being piqued. She had heard a story last night from an innocent witness of this woman's evil powers. The story was reverberating in her pipes like a gong, and the Widow felt compelled to speak out.

She did so now.

“Last evening, when Curly Drake and Clare Brighton should have been celebrating their nuptials, you were meeting clandestinely with her bridegroom, vixen. Know you all, that this is Satan's work.”

What
WidowBrown knew came from the neighbor lad's midnight story. Horatio had confirmed the Widow's darkest suspicions, which had begun as soon as she laid eyes on Cassandra. A Salem witch was in the Vye lineage; Captain Vye had admitted as much. If the red-haired sorceress could cast a spell so strong as to lure a bridegroom away on his wedding night, there was no telling what other harm she might do.

Obsessed with forestalling
any danger to her family, the Widow had taken precautions. Before dawn broke she put a hex on the siren, using a soap doll, as she had been taught by a Lakota Sioux shaman whom she had consulted soon after Cassandra came to town.

There was no hexing, said the shaman, that was powerful enough to undo a siren's ability to fascinate her prey, nor could any hexing harm the creature herself. But there was a way to scare her off
by afflicting the siren with a curse that would play on her own powers to do evil. The curse would sentence ordinary humans who became obsessed with the siren to untimely deaths, despite any good intention the siren herself might have of sparing them. In this way, over time, the siren line would fail to propagate and would be wiped out.

Now she was doubly glad she had consulted the shaman, for here was the redheaded siren parading herself through the house of the Lord!

“See the brazen whore of Satan, now acting out hypocritical piety in our church! She passed the holy baptismal fount. The water was surely fouled, endangering the soul of my granddaughter. Now, under the eyes of the Lord, I, Widow Brown, will show Him the loyalty of His servant. I publicly expose Cassandra Vye as a force for evil and death.”

She
hissed, spraying spittle from her thick lips. “Hus-s-s-y, I know how to defend the natives against your wickedness. Thou art accursed, Satan's whore. Be gone, witch! I predict four deaths will be on your head, before the second decade of the new century has ended.  All of you beware, lest the count begins here!”

Cassandra wiped her face with h
er gloved hand. Captain Vye, pushing forward, grabbed his granddaughter out of the Widow's reach. Her face was dead white, and her topaz cat’s eyes blazed like coals as she proudly marched down the aisle.

While the churchgoers gathered outside
gawked and whispered, Cassandra stopped at the church door. She flung off her bonnet and let her shimmering mane of fiery-gold curls blow with the wind. Without a word, she passed the townspeople and got into the buggy. Her thoughts were molten.

“
No crazy hag is going to determine my fate. I will have my desires fulfilled! Damn the natives' opinions of me, and damn Widow Brown's curse.”

So there you have it, Marlena, the origin of the family curse: a potent mixture of the place, the time, and the power of ignorant human superstition to tap into unknown forces at the core of the universe
.

At the time, I thought the Widow's hexing
of me merely an inconvenience and an embarrassment. I was very angry, but afterward I reasoned that surely the village would regard her, not me, as the evil witch.

It would take a long series of events
, most of which seemed trivial at the time, to convince me of the power of the curse she had laid on me.