The Siren's Tale (16 page)

“
Yes. However, I do not associate the word 'charm' with Alta. But I have heard there is charm on every street corner of San Francisco. Would you mind telling me about San Francisco one day? I am so interested.”

“
I remember feeling exactly as you do a few years back. But city life turns out to be a great cure for that illness.”

“
Heaven send me such a cure!”

He smiled, but I felt there was sincerity in his desire to take away my pain, so it would naturally follow that, once under my spell, he would take me to San Francisco.

My pulse was racing and my breastbone was burning, but I refrained from enticing him into sex. We said our goodbyes.

In bed that night, my mind was full of many tantalizing thoughts. The past was a blank, and the present was intolerable, but the future now contained a handsome, sophisticated human male who had all but promised to come to my rescue. I had looked into the kind eyes of my next victim and begun my triumphant exit from Alta. Most of all, I wondered if I could get him without tricks.

That night, I dreamed again about the girl of the future who looked so much like me. She was standing by our pond with a rope in her hands, and one was bleeding. I stood beside her in my traveling cloak. She paid me no heed. Finally I reached out my hand, the one badly scraped from my self-inflicted rope burn. 

As our bleeding hands touched, they burst into flames. I awoke screaming at the vision of blood and fire.

As spring wore on,
Nicholas studied all day and took long walks at night. His direction was invariably some point along the mile or so between the Grange and Mill’s Creek, where he would meet up with Cassandra and share his inmost thoughts about his plans for the future.

The
most marvelous of the many talents of Cassandra, so Nicholas thought, was that she remembered everything he told her. If she chose, she could say it back to him, word for word. Only his ideas sounded so much better coming out of her rosy mouth that he was quite enchanted. Sometimes she would carry her zither with her and play for him.

On one particular afternoon
, he returned home with a telltale smudge of red rouge on his cheek.  His mother took one look and her jaws clenched with rage.

“
I hear you have become fascinated by Cassandra Vye. Duped, I should say.” 

He looked puzzled and hurt.
“It is true Cassandra has become my friend. In what way am I duped?”

“
I will not go into particulars. They say she is proud, and also much worse. But supposing her to be a paragon of Christian virtue, which she certainly is not, why tie yourself down with anyone?”

“
Well, there are practical reasons.” Not knowing a better way to proceed, finally he blurted out,  “If I open a school, an educated wife will be a big help to me.”

His mother
turned pale. “What! You don't mean to court Miss Vye?”

“
Courtship would be premature now, but it has crossed my mind, and—”

She
interrupted, “Do not suppose she has a fortune, or even a penny to her name. She does not.”

Nicholas went right on as though
she had not spoken. “—she is well educated and well versed in the classics. She would make an excellent headmistress in my boarding school for the Indian children. By having a wife like her—”

“
A wife! Oh, Nick!”

“
—I shall be better prepared to become the head of the best school in the district.”

She
said hotly, “Is that what she tells you?”

“
I have thought for years about building a school here.” 

“
No. This is all because of that—that hussy!”

Nicholas reddened. Placing a hand on
her shoulder, he said firmly, “Be fair, Mother. I will not hear her slandered, even by you. Not after what she has been put through.”

The Widow parted her lips to launch another missile, but when she looked into his eyes,
she saw they were at an impasse. What more was there to say?

“
There is a full moon tonight. I will go out to see it…yes, with her,” Nicholas said, relieved to be honest with her for once. He got a cold shrug and no supper as a response. 

Why should personal ambition be
the measure by which he was judged? This was his thought on his ride to the Hat. The vistas he looked upon were a landscape of endless possibility, a place to apply his talents and attach his heart. If not here, where?

As usual, he was the first to arrive at their rendezvous location. Over the past weeks he had become fascinated by
Cassandra's skill in setting up complex sets of signal arrangements by which they would secretly meet. She was a natural born plotter and planner. Imagine what she could do with weekly lesson books!

Was it the d
rama of clandestine meetings she so enjoyed? Sometimes he teased her with this question, and she would laugh without answering him. What wonderful, free-wheeling walks and talks they had! And how beautiful she was! He would touch her face, and she would smile at him. In his eyes, she was an alabaster goddess.

As for Cassandra, she found their human friendship appealing and exquisitely tantalizing.
Her eyes encouraged him to go beyond touching her face, but so far Nicholas had abstained, though he seemed tempted to do more, from time to time.

Indeed, since returning home, Brighton's
vigilance against women had mysteriously lapsed. One glimpse into the siren's eyes, and he would follow her up hill and down dale. But it was not entirely her powers that were luring him. He was enamored of her intelligent, lively attention. The sound of his own ideas as they were reiterated in her dulcet voice was what kept him spellbound.

As a native, Nicholas
knew fordable mountain streams and nearby caverns where a couple might make themselves cozy in a big pile of Indian blankets, talk endlessly, and make an entire afternoon fly by. Here, where the deer and the antelope played, his gazelle allowed him to endlessly pet her and preach at her while she gazed up into his eyes.

Cassandra was struggling to keep her vow not to use her siren's tricks on Nicholas. She abstained from pressing on her breastbone while staring into his eyes. She was proud of her self-control. The rise in her self-esteem almost made up for the loss of sexual ecstasy in her life. Also, she was learning to savor another, very human emotion—the bittersweet joy of yearning for something that may or may not be there.

“I have saved Curly's life,” she told herself when she lay sleepless and sexually frustrated in the dead of night. “Surely I deserve a reward for defeating  the Widow Brown's curse. My reward will be a triumphant exit from Alta on the arm of their golden boy. And I will have got him without tricks!”

I was late in arriving at our rendezvous one afternoon, but Nicholas (unlike Curly) was always a model of patience. In a moment I was in his arms, the wind blowing about us. The scene was highly charged with romance, yet his cock failed to harden against the burning mound I thrust against it.

Perhaps if I gazed longer into his eyes and pressed on my birthmark? My finger twitched, but my self-control was strong enough to conquer the impulse to proceed unfairly.

“My Cassandra!” Nicholas murmured.

“
Nick, darling! Has it seemed long since you last saw me?”

“
No, not long,” he said frankly. He always spoke honestly, and I truly adored him for that trait. “But very frustrating. Mother and I have had words. She simply doesn't understand me.”  

“
At least you have your books and your ideas to entertain you. I have nothing except waiting for our meetings. I feel as though I am treading in stagnant water.”

“
I would gladly endure boredom rather than my mother’s contempt.” 

“
Of course, dear. I am sorry.” He stroked my hair and put a tendril back inside the hood of my cloak.

I found his
gentle touch so appealing that my juices were overflowing my undergarments, running down my leg and into my high-buttoned shoes. What was I doing wrong? Why did he not respond? 

“
My cross to bear, not yours, my darling. Let’s just enjoy being together.”

I was sensing his growing mood of thoughtfulness.
“Perhaps you have been thinking I am too much trouble.”

“
No, Cassandra. I do love you, in my own way.”

“
Men can quit loving; women cannot.”

“
You are wrong. I love you and always will. I, who have never felt more than a passing fancy for any woman, simply adore you. I declare it. Let me touch my finger to that sweet mouth again—there, there, and there! Your eyes seem heavy, Cassandra. What’s the matter, sweetheart? Surely you are not feeling sorry for yourself?”

“
Only for my nature.”

“
I do not understand.”

“
Of course not. But what if our love evaporates like a puddle in the wind? I fear the future.”

“
No need.”

“
Ah, but you do not know what I mean. It is true you have lived a city life I have only dreamed of. But I am much older at love than you are, Nick. I have loved other men, and now I love you.”

“
For mercy’s sake, do not talk that way, Cassandra!” 

His stricken look gave me pause. Was it possible
he had never felt sexual jealousy before? How odd. I returned to what was on my mind.

“I fear our love will die, that your mother will find out about us and in the end will turn you against me.”

“
She knows of our meetings.”

“
Be honest. Does she not speak vehemently against me?”

He
failed to look reassuring.

“
It is foolish of us to meet in secret. One kiss more, and then please leave my life forever. Otherwise I shall be the ruin of you.”

“
Don't be so dramatic, Cassandra.”

“
Run. I freely give you your chance.”

“
You are full of fantasies today, darling. You entirely misunderstand me. But I do agree with you on one point. I see now our present mode cannot last forever.”

“
Of course. Your mother will forbid it.”

“
Never mind about her, darling. Believe me when I say I cannot afford to lose you. You must always be with me, for many reasons. There is only one cure for our mutual anxiety, dearest. You must become my wife, and soon.”

I was not
expecting so sudden a declaration. My victory made me feel giddy, but also a bit desperate. Drake had been easier to put off, month after month. How to buy time and dissuade this human, who was so unlike me, from a useless act of marriage?  

“
I will be a lot of trouble. I have few wifely qualities.”

There, I tho
ught; a siren can speak the truth as well for a human. This line of thought will deflect him, and I will have time to decide what my course will be.

He laughed mildly.
“No worries. The qualities I am looking for in a wife are not the conventional ones.”

“
Really? What do you mean?”

I was thinking:
Will you promise me San Francisco? Or Paris? Are there beautiful places on earth where our ideal love can flourish? If so, bring on a human future! 

He surprised me by asking
, “Will you be mine alone?”

I thought h
e must be play-acting, as I would be if I asked such a question.

“
I will be nobody else’s. Will that satisfy you?”

“
For the present.”

“
Now, tell me a story about your life in San Francisco, Nick, as you promised you would. Or else I will not have you. You know that you will go back one day.”

I spoke with a bantering air, but I could not
have been more serious. I needed to hear what our life would be like if I made this risky move. Marriage with this man was not what I had intended; only a temporary relationship, sexual or otherwise, that would fuel an escape from Alta in his company. I had seen enough approaching darkness in my dreams that I dared not attempt it alone.

“
I must find you very attractive,” said Nicholas, “because I loathe talking about San Francisco. Bad enough that I dream of it so often.”

I smiled, for he had proved my point to my own satisfaction.

If he dreamed of San Francisco, then he would surely one day gravitate there again, no matter how often he might deny its pull on him.

Unlike Cassandra's dreams, the images in Nicholas's dreams were not a cipher and a vision of the future. Instead they arose from his recent and troubling past. His dreams all featured a golden-haired young man and a friendship that had started off very warmly, but then came to a deplorable confusion. What had begun as a casual conversation with a comely gold prospector, a man like himself who was more refined than others in the depraved town, had ended in a sordid physical affair, which in his conscious brain he refused to think of. In the end, he ran from his life there, ran home to his stern, devoted mother and the pure mountains he loved more than any single person. 

And so, on the same afternoon when Nicholas would propose marriage to Cassandra, the charming story he contrived for her pleasure about San Francisco contained no mention of a friendship with a golden-haired young man:

“
I remember one morning when I first arrived in San Francisco, and the fleet was in. The city was full to bursting with ships and salty maritime men and their sweethearts. There were sailors on the Embarcadero, sailors on Telegraph Hill, sailors on the streetcars and sailors on the ferries going across the Bay. Each one had a girl on his arm; truthfully, some had girls on both arms.  

“
The fogbank had just rolled in. In the summer, after two days of heat, the marine layer gets pulled in and it turns chilly as a winter day in Wyoming. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, and with the sailors careening about, it was mayhem, but a jolly kind of mayhem.

“
The city fathers had scheduled a parade down Market Street to welcome them. There was an elephant and a band of Chinese mummers that got lost in the fog. It took a day to find them.”