Isle of Sirens

An excerpt from Isle of Sirens

Maidens, they appeared to be, just sixteen summers or so. Their sweet faces were like no other, their bodies nude and ripe for child-bearing, with soft breasts that hung like fruit and hips that swelled in smooth and comely roundedness. They had fine features, hands, and feet, and lustrous hair that hung down nearly to their waists and which they sat or stood upon the rocks and combed while they sang.

Ahh, their voices....

Their voices were the voices of the maidens of Olympus sent down to entertain mortal men before their doom. And doom it was that awaited us. We saw the broken ships half-sunk among the rocks. We saw the treacherous stony shoreline, scattered with rocks—some half-submerged, some full—so sharp and ragged that a man might shave with one if he could break off a wieldy piece without cutting his hand in the doing.

But many among us failed to notice. They heaved to and made for shore like lost souls, eyes lost upon the sinewy curves of womanly flesh upon the shoreline, mesmerized by the perilous peaks and valleys of the maidens singing on the island and heedless of the peaks and valleys of the rocks they stood upon.

More is the pity.

Our first vessel slid up hard and dry upon a pair of rocks which cradled it as a mother would its babe. And then the sea came tumbling over and turned it half-around, breaking off the stern and crushing the hull against one brutish boulder. The men inside cried out, half to themselves or to their gods and half to the maidens on the shore, as if a different song might calm the sea or right their ship. But all for naught. They tumbled into the waves like stones from a traveler's boot when the next wave crashed upon them.

My ship was next.

Altho I pressed my hands to my ears, cried for pity, shouted for the sailors to bring her about and point her out to sea, all they heard was the high, keening melody of the maidens' voices, and all they saw was the soft, womanly shape of their naked breasts and thighs.

And the sea rose over us and dropped half a load of stones upon the deck along with all the water a man might drink in all his lifetime all at once. Lines were cut, stays were broken, hitches loosened, and blood spilled upon the deck from sailors caught upon the head or shoulder with a stone heaved up from the ocean floor and flung upon us like so much grain.

Before the next wave crashed down on us, I saw a sailor, cut and bleeding, who had crawled out of the sea from the first vessel, mounting a fair-skinned maiden perched upon a rock. She opened her legs to him and took his hand to pull him closer, even as she caught her breath to continue her enchanting song.

Then: darkness, swirls of green and blue, the roar of the surf, and nothing more.