Siren Read online

  Siren

  Title Page

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Siren

  COPYRIGHT 2011 by Delle Jacobs at Smashwords

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by Delle Jacobs

  Published in the United States of America

  1SIREN

  A Myth of the Sea Retold

  For thousands of years men have been going to sea, seeking adventure, riches, discovery, wealth, power and many other things. Mankind has always been fascinated by the sea and all it offers, many times likening the sea to a woman: bountiful, beautiful, yet inexplicable, and so often dangerous. Stories of sirens and other sea beings abounded in the lore of the sea, and many a sailor believed to his dying breath the creatures were real.

  These days, nobody believes in Sirens. These days, we have science, logic and knowledge to assure us Sirens are only ancient myths. We know better.

  Or perhaps, we don’t know as much as we think we do.

  * * *

  1851

  Off the Skeleton Coast of Africa

  The Telesto was breathing her last. Her groaning timbers cracked and broke on the uncharted reef that had appeared from nowhere and destroyed Telesto’s rudder. Through storm-soaked hair, John Wall grimaced at the last mast, wondering how long before it, too, crumpled like a broken matchstick. The gale had ripped and shredded the reefed sails. The mighty clipper ship that had been John Wall's pride for the past seven years was about to go down, carrying with it the precious cargo he’d bought in China with his life savings.

  Barefoot, ragged and soaked to the skin, John fought for balance on Telesto's listing deck. He squinted into the ink-black sea and storm as a flash of sheet lightning illuminated his last surviving long boat below, crammed with his remaining crew and bouncing on the rough waves..

  "Come with us, Cap'n," his bos'n, Cotton, pleaded. "We got room for you."

  John shook his head, his hands gripping the broken gunwale to make himself resist the temptation. Even one more man in the boat would be too much against the already overwhelming odds. He was their captain. He owed them their chance to survive.

  Just before the storm had struck at sundown when he had spotted the desolate mountains behind the long sandy, African Coast, he'd known they were in trouble. They should have been far out to sea. But the frigid Benguela Current that ripped along the coast had snagged them. Then the storm had roared up. They’d had no chance to escape.

  John gulped down the depths of his sorrow. His men were doomed, even if they did make it ashore. This was not called the Skeleton Coast for nothing. The treacherous desert coast was the grave of both men and ships for four hundred miles.

  Sheet lightning lit the sky. The long boat swept up the slope of a wave as tall as Telesto's long-gone mizzen mast. His heart went into his throat. Then darkness. Telesto lifted fast in the huge swell, then dropped. John flipped like flotsam into the air and slammed against the deck as the ship crunched against the reef. He grabbed a broken shroud and clung for his life. Lightning flashed again, a thousand ragged stripes zipping from sky to earth. He hauled himself up to the gunwale, clutching the frayed shroud, his eyes scanning the waves, blinded by the darkness, blinded even more by the brilliance. The long boat had vanished. Maybe it had made it beyond the wall of waves. Maybe it was too far into the depth of night to be seen now.

  He could hope. That was all.

  "Come to me, John Wall. . ."

  The Siren's song.

  For a moment, the world, the storm, the ship all seemed suspended and still. He knew her song. He had heard it many times. Its music echoing, endlessly long and clear like the angel brightness of a choir, it rode above the waves and howling winds, and wrapped around him like the waving tendrils of her gleaming copper hair. Spellbound, he clung to the gunwale, and searched the darkness for a glimpse of the mesmerizing creature. There she was, shimmering against the tall, black crests and even blacker, violent skies.

  Siren. His destiny.

  So many times he had seen her, times like this, rising above the sea in a gauze-like gown that shone like moonbeams and billowed in the wind. She called to him, only to him, when the sea reached up as it did tonight to gather unwilling sailors into its bosom.

  But her song was Death. How easy it was to forget.

  "Come to me, John Wall. . . Come to me. . ."

  She was gone, then. . . There! Again he saw her, illuminated in the flashes, dancing, weaving in and out of the waves. Her long hair glowed Titian, its glorious waves stretching down to touch the water, then fanning out, then reaching for him like beckoning fingers. His hands seemed to have minds of their own, reaching out to touch the strands.

  He clenched his fists, forcing himself to remember. "No, Siren, I will not go. I will not die this night."

  As if commanded by the Siren, a giant flash and roar split the air, slamming John against the deck. The lonely main mast crackled and wailed, splintering a fiber at a time, creeping in timeless descent toward the listing deck. John sprinted away, an uphill run, as the mast fell aiming toward the sea. He saw the yardarm coming at his head, too late. Brilliant stars flashed pain. He staggered, fighting for consciousness, grasping air as he slid across the deck and smashed against the starboard gunwale just as Telesto rose up in the swell, listed, then crashed once more onto the reef.

  John hit the freezing water, instantly coming alert. He swam for a dark something that floated and latched his arms around it. The broken mast, with parts of the main topsail still clinging to it, was balanced in the water by the remnants of its yardarms. Salt surf stung his eyes. Cold chills wracked him as he dragged himself onto the mast. He wrapped a part of the torn sail around himself and stretched out on his back, gasping for air, as sheets of green water washed over him.

  So odd, that he felt safe just knowing the mast would float, perhaps for days. His battered head, throbbing with an ache that pounded like a hammer inside his head, made him want to sleep. Just close his eyes. . .

  Don't sleep. You'll drown.

  John forced his eyes open. There was no way to sit to stay awake. His head began to wobble. Don't sleep.

  "Come to me, John Wall," sang the Siren. Unbelievable beauty in the midst of the storm's dire chaos.

  Beauty. Peace. Safety, warmth. . . It was a promise of paradise. . .

  "Come to me. . ."

  Always so beautiful. . . A song for no other man but him. The most beautiful song a man had ever heard, lilting up and down like the rhythm of waves. He could almost imagine it following the wind and weaving in and out like the scarf of a dancer. His body began to ache with desire despite the frigid water. His heart was wrapped up in wanting, yearning.

  For the mysterious creature who lured men to their deaths.

  "Not tonight, Siren," he said aloud, but hearing the exhaustion in his own voice. He even gave a bitter chuckle into the wild wind, for he no longer feared some mortal man would hear him and think him crazy.

  The storm began to sing with the Siren. The sea began to
dance. It was a strange dance, of parti-colored light and water, swirling and dipping, all around him as if the wind had taken on colors. It sang to him, not an ominous call of Death, but a hymn to beauty, light, softness. He was losing his mind. Such things. . . Could not be. . .

  Dying. . . He was dying. . .

  And the Siren came to him. Her dress of moonbeams glowed, floating about her nude body like a sash. Her golden-coppery hair streamed over her shoulders, tossing in the wind as she walked upon the waves that now undulated softly. No, she swam in the water, or did she. . .

  Aye. He was dying–or dead.

  The Siren lay in the water beside him where he rested atop the bobbing mast. Silence filled the sea. Or had he gone deaf, and it rocked him on his makeshift raft? Like a baby's cradle, not the fierce, monument-sized walls of water that ripped ships asunder and whisked men to their helpless deaths.

  "Come to me, John Wall," the Siren said. She spoke. It was not a song that rang in his head, but words that sweetly spoke his name.

  "Am I dead?" he asked.

  "Come to me, John Wall. Come. I am for you."

  Aye, he was dead. When even the frigid sea felt warm, it must be so. And it did not seem like such a bad way to go.

  John Wall leaned down to the water to the beckoning Siren, who raised her mouth to him. His hand slid behind her neck and drew her to him. Their lips sealed in a kiss, John Wall slid beneath the waves.

  He must be dead. He had no need to breathe. The strange warmth of water that should be growing colder flowed over him as they sank toward the depths.

  And he had a hard on.

  Chapter 2

  Cold wind and rain, no matter. All that was gone. He was so hard, he thought he would scream from the exquisite pain. He was not so old he had forgotten sometimes a man needed no excuse to have an erection. Now he had excuses aplenty, in the form of the Siren.

  The sea was no longer the bitter cold he had so long endured. That could not be, but he did not care. It should be dark, growing ever darker as they descended, yet the water dappled in glorious color, azure as a beautiful summer sky, aqua as a tropical lagoon, and white and coral from its reef, and gold from a setting sun, a swirl of color, of flowing beauty, wrapping about him as the siren's lips held his.

  The water was like the Siren's caress, making of his flesh a fiery torrent of desire. Her radiant hair wrapped around his body, a touch like silk as it sleeked over his skin.

  He was bare. Nude. For the flash of a second, he wondered where the last of his garments had gone, yet he could not make himself care. He was in a sea such as no man had ever known, or had lived to describe. In some stray thought, he supposed he ought to be terrified, for nothing was the way it ought to be. The sea's frigid waters should have killed him already, yet now all he felt was a soothing warmth, and where he should see only darkness and feel the ripping power of the wind, warm and gentle colors of light comforted him. The only wind was the echoing beauty of the Siren's clarion song.

  "Come," she sang sweetly, and her warm, long fingers caressed his shaggily bearded cheeks.

  So, yes, he was dead. An odd sort of peace settled over him. And this must be some sort of heaven. Whatever it was, it was a good way to go.

  The Siren raked her kisses over his body, as burning as fingernails bringing blood. He drew the Siren into a fierce embrace as he hungrily kissed the flesh of her bared throat and allowed his hands full rein to claim every part of her lusciously curved body.

  The Siren wrapped her long legs about his body. He gave himself up to passion as ruthlessly eager as a sailor too long at sea. They spun through the caressing water as their bodies joined. Entering her was like magic, like no woman he'd ever known. His own passion surged into wildness, and she met it with ferocity of her own, thrust after thrust in exquisite torture as he descended into thick and mindless need. He felt her come, forcing his own release as he roared into the ocean depths, and was spent at last. His useless mind spiraled slowly away from him, and he did not care.

  He breathed—or thought he did, for his chest heaved. The rainbow-colored water softened its hues, and they drifted through a watery nothingness, still locked in a quiet embrace. The Siren's long, long tresses wrapped round them, moving like gentle, caressing hands, and her beautiful green eyes slowly, lazily began to open.

  Slender, graceful fingers trailed over the crumple of his dark beard.

  "Many years I have called for you, John Wall. But you did not come."

  "I am a man. A man does not so easily give up his life."

  The Siren raked a slow gaze over him regarding him inscrutably, with her head cocked to one side. Her hair gleamed like strands coppery bronze in bright sun, floating and dancing about her as she spiraled like a lazy otter away from him into free water. John followed, mildly amused that he moved so smoothly through the water as if he had been born to live beneath the waves.

  "Am I dead?" he asked her again.

  "You are not the same, John Wall."

  "But not dead, then? But what?"

  "Not dead. Not the same."

  "So I can see." He glanced over his nude body, noting again how fast and easily he propelled himself, and he thought of the strange feeling of water moving in and out through his lungs. "A man does not breathe water. How is it I can do that?"

  The Siren canted her head as she regarded him with a puzzled frown. "You cannot breathe air beneath the sea."

  He slowed, his jaw gaping, but the Siren kept swimming as if she had not said anything odd at all. He began to suspect he was only beginning to discover the oddities of his strange new situation. And it was true, there was no air to breathe here.

  "Wait," he called, and she looked back at him, her reddish eyebrows arching. "Do you have a name, Siren?"

  "Siren."

  Did her furrowed brow mean she was losing patience with him? He pursued his questions anyway. "I know you are a Siren. I have figured that out, but what is it you are called?"

  "Siren."

  "Then are you the only Siren?"

  "There are many."

  "Then, what are the others called?"

  "Siren." Again she turned back to her swimming, her slender legs propelling her so that he had to work to keep up.

  "Not to be obtuse or anything, but do you not have a name that is yours alone?"

  "Do you, John Wall?"

  He supposed that probably he didn't. He might argue that not all men were called Man, but it seemed pointless.

  As the Siren increased her speed again, he thought it wise to do the same rather than risk losing her. So with a shrug and a rather lopsided smile he kept going through the water.

  In the far distance, the water seemed dark and forbidding. Fear invaded for a moment, remembering a distant memory of falling overboard as a very young man, snagged in lines that carried him deep, ever darker, pressure pounding in his ears and against his head in excruciating pain, until he freed himself and swam for the surface.

  He snuffed the fear. Here, the water world was not the same. No fierce pressure threatening to burst his skull like an overripe melon, no smothering darkness. He could look up and see the whitish light penetrating above him, but there was no sense that he must force his way through the water, any more than he did air. Yet he could remain suspended, or rise or dive, with the careless grace of a dolphin.

  He wondered what it was like above. He had left his world in the deepest darkness of a storm at night. Not too far away, the Coast of Africa loomed in all its threatening glory, and for a brief moment, regret seized him as he wondered if his sailors lived or died.

  But he was dead now, living a glorious death. He could not reach back into their world—of that, at least, he understood.

  Once more John Wall resigned himself to accepting the surroundings, which he was fairly sure he didn't want to change. He mused briefly at the sudden and strange attachment he felt for this woman—if she was indeed a human—a feeling of intense longing and desire to be only with her. He ha
d never been one for such attachments, holding only his beloved clipper ship, Telesto, as his mistress.

  From the time he had first comprehended who he was, he had wanted more. It had all been so clear, once. He'd struggled, saved, risked his life, all to own his own ship, to grow wealthy, and in the end, die in a fine house of his own. All that was gone, in one whirling storm.

  He smiled and sighed. With no more than a swish of his legs and a twist of his body, he flowed through the water after the Siren, chasing her like an eager puppy after its owner.

  She called it her Summer Sea. He became Siren's constant companion as they floated and swam in it. She took him to her garden on the steep underwater slope of an ancient volcano that reminded him of Mount Etna, seen from the sea, but belched no fire, and its top had long since eroded away beneath the water.

  Here, corals seemed like brilliant flowers blooming in pinks and blues, here, branching like shrubs in winter, there, leafing like cabbage. Sea anemones swayed like distorted ostrich plumes in a chaotic breeze. Striped and spotted fish with feathery fins swam through the reef, and rays with Eagle-sized wingspans glided along the bottom.

  She showed him the thick-stemmed kelp she called her food. He wrinkled his nose, tasting it with reluctance, and discovered he craved its sweet-salt flavor. They ate nothing else, yet each time it tasted like something different he had never eaten before.

  Siren had made a bed of sponges in the ancient volcanic crater. Once, in a fit of mischief, he came behind her and pushed her onto it. She laughed as she bounced. He had seen her smile, but never heard her laugh. His heart twisted in a way that told him he could never be apart from her again, and he bounced down on the bed beside her. In a furious passion, they made love, again and again. Then, energy spent, they lay quietly in each other's arms, carelessly caressing.