| THE LORELEI SIGNAL |
.
| Written by Sandra Tayler / Artwork by Lee Kuruganti |
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| Stories That Bind |
She saw him first through a mist of ocean spray. He stood on the precipice of rock overhanging the crashing waves in
which she dwelt. He stared toward her, dazed by her siren song. She beckoned to him to join her in the waves, which
roared against the rocks, sending spray around and through her. In a moment he would jump. His body would be broken,
battered upon the rocks and she would be alone again.
She was a siren; named and created by hundreds of stories told the world over. The stories were the fabric of her
existence. She could not see them, but felt them constricting her actions. The stories all spoke of sirens who called men to
their deaths. So, when she felt the presence of a man nearby, she had sent her song to wrap about him and draw him to
her.
He was not a handsome man, but he was healthy. Tall, with a straight back and warm eyes. Most men who answered her
call were gnarled and weather-worn by years of harvesting the sea. This man was different. He was dazed, but his lips
moved, speaking words she could not hear. The others had been too entranced to do anything but come to her. Was he
praying? She had heard of prayer. A passing fae had described it once.
The siren did not have to kill him yet. She could move closer, listen to his words. She changed her song, softened it so he
did not jump. She wanted a closer look. Instead of allowing the next wave to pass through her, she rode the crash of
spray high and stepped onto the precipice next to the man.
He started from his half-daze, eyes wide to behold the figure before him. Whatever words he had been speaking
abandoned him now. She stood on dry land, her hair and dress flowing about her as if moved by currents of water. Her
large storm-gray eyes met his warm brown ones. His hand moved forward, as if he were impelled to touch her and see if
she were real, but it only raised half way and hovered as if he did not dare. His hands were soft, smooth. They were not
the hands of a sailor or fisherman.
"Is it you?" He asked.
The siren let her song fade to nothing. If she answered, would he speak again? His words had music to them.
"Yes. You know who I am." Everyone knew who and where she was. She knew this by the bands of story wafting from
far and near. Everyone knew her and they stayed away if they could.
"Yes." The young man nodded. "You are the Siren. I came here because of the stories of you."
"You came to find me?" She stepped closer. Her dress wafted and brushed his hovering hand. His fingers twitched in the
misty fold.
"Yes." His eyes met hers without fear. Other men had looked her in the eyes before they died, but their glazed eyes held
only fear. She looked at these eyes and saw something else. She stepped closer again.
"You are a fool." She studied his face. The spray had formed droplets and they began to run down his nose and cheeks.
His warmth radiated across the distance between them.
He smiled. "I have often been called such."
She reached her hand to touch the side of his face. So warm, so alive. Men never stayed that way near her.
"I am death you know." She whispered.
His arms encircled her and drew her close. "Yes. I know."
Their lips met and she drank of the warmth of him. To touch a living man was wholly new. His heartbeat hammered
against her, driving warmth through her to fill the emptiness at her core. For a moment she dwelt gloriously in that kiss.
The kiss ended and his arms slid from around her. The weight of the stories which defined her, pressed upon her. She
took a step toward the edge. He, lost in her eyes, took one also. One more step and he would fall. Dead, he would no
longer be warm. She must bring him nearer to the water. The stories demanded it. She quivered as his hand left a trail of
heat down the side of her face.
"Why tears?" he asked her.
Her hand flew to her face. Tears flowed upon her cheeks and not spray. "I do not want you to die."
"That is good." He smiled again. "I do not want to die."
She gripped his hands tightly. "Then why did you come?"
"To save you."
"There is nothing here to save." She sighed, then turned to look away. The stories did not demand that she watch his
death. She took a breath to sing.
Her inhalation turned into a gasp as the weave of stories about her and in her, twitched. She whirled around, the motion of
her hair and dress following after the motion of her body.
"What did you do?"
He laughed softly. The sound of it was like a rivulet of water slicing through the air. She had never heard such a sound
before. His hand reached into the air and traced something she could not see. She could not see it, but she felt a vibration
in the stories of her being.
"This one is a very interesting story. You see some sirens who keep their prey awhile before killing them. It is not often
told, but it gives us some time."
As he spoke, the web of stories shifted and there was a space; a small space in which she did not have to kill him yet. She
reached out her hand to where his finger still traced the air. She could not see or touch the band of story he had
strengthened.
"What are you?"
"My name is Daydd and I am a Maker of Stories."
She had heard of such before, but only as whispers on the wind, threads of story, not even strong enough to follow. She
had imagined such a being must stomp through the landscape tangling bands of story and unraveling magical creatures as
he walked. This mild young man could not be such a fearful being. But this man had changed her, had made possible
something that was not before. Only a true Maker of Stories could do that.
Daydd reached for her hand, but she drew back.
"You will unmake me." She whispered
"Never." He whispered back. "It would be a travesty to unmake such beauty."
She turned away, confused. She longed for her waves, but could feel the stories within her and about her. If she moved
any further away from him, she would be compelled to again sing him to his doom. She touched her cheek with the hand
he had held. A faint warmth transferred from hand to cheek.
She felt a gentle pull at the core of her being, one of the strings of her existence being struck. She trembled.
"This is the story that brought me to you." His voice spoke softly, but firmly enough to be heard over the waves. "You are
the siren who weeps for her victims, who suffers in loneliness all the days of her existence. The story is so strong and so
sweet, that I had to follow it. I had to find the being from whom it originates and who is created by it."
She stared toward her rocks and waves. Her hand slid from her cheek to hang at her side. "Weeping does no good when
the deed is already done. I grieve, but I can not save them."
"It is cruel that you must do both."
She half turned to him. "Can you save me from my grief? Kill the story which makes me weep? My sister sirens afar do
not weep."
"No. They do not. That is why I came to you and not to one of them." His smile quirked. "But I would have you keep your
grief; it is all that stands between me and those rocks. I intend to live yet awhile." He reached his hand toward her. It lay
open in the air, waiting for her hand to alight on it. "Please come with me. Let me speak with you for a time."
She looked from his open hand to his face. "If I come with you and speak -- what then? I shall only grieve all the more
when I must kill you."
"True, but the grief can never take away the memory of this hour. You will never find another man who can make this
space." He reached out again and strengthened the story in which she could let him live. The bands of her being loosened
yet again. She had not noticed they were tightening. She breathed deep and placed her hand in his.
Neither of them spoke a word as they wended down the rocky trail to the sandy beach below. Daydd stopped and turned
before they reached the waves lapping on the shore. She stepped closer to him, drawn by the smells of earth and plants,
so different from the tang of the sea.
"You will die you know," she whispered. "I can not let you leave."
Daydd's eyes studied her face.
"As a siren, you can not, but I can give you the choice to be different."
She drew back a step. "Choice? Only mortals can choose. Eternal beings must act as their stories dictate."
Daydd stepped closer and pulled her into his arms. He tucked her head onto his shoulder. She did not resist. She craved
the pulse of his heartbeat against her skin.
"I can craft a story that lets you choose to be other than what you are," he murmured.
The siren closed her eyes. "It is not possible."
Daydd lifted her head to gaze into her eyes. Then he kissed her. In that kiss she finally knew what it might be like to
drown; to be submersed in something so foreign it stole your breath. She felt one of his hands leave her back. Her weave
of stories began to tug and pull.
She gasped and dissolved, passing through Daydd's confining arm as she fled for the waves. The swells were passing
through her knees when the tugging stopped. She stopped as well.
She turned back to him, wide eyed. "I have a name!"
"Yes. You are Aurancair."
"Aurancair. I did not have that name before, but now I have always had it." Her hands reached to touch her own cheeks,
uncertain that she was still real. She looked up to meet his concerned gaze. He splashed through the waves to where she
stood.
"Yes. That is how we begin. It is a small change. Other changes must be much larger. I'm afraid they may hurt." His hand
reached out and lay in the air, again waiting for hers to land on it. "Please Auran. Please let us try."
He had shortened her name in the way that friends or lovers do. No one had shortened her name before. A shiver went
through her. It took effort to remember she had never before had a name to shorten. In a few moments the stories would
settle and she would not remember that Daydd had given her this name. When the stories settled, they would be near the
end of their time and she would have to sing. The need to sing pressed upon her already. She held it back.
"Have you done this before?" Auran asked. "Have you saved a creature such as me?"
A smile quirked Daydd's mouth. "No. But I planned for a long time before I came to you. I think I know how it can be
done."
Auran watched as Daydd staggered a little at the pull of an especially large wave. He was wet to the waist now and
beginning to shiver. He had come to her, knowing she would kill him. He had followed her into the water which was
already stealing his warmth, his life. He risked his existence.
Her existence was defined by the songs and the deaths. If Daydd was to survive she must be remade into something else.
A siren could not be remade, but she was now Aurancair. The name was a tether. She would cease to be Aurancair the
siren and begin to be Aurancair the something-else.
"You really believe you can do this."
"Yes."
"Do it quickly." She whispered hoarsely. The song was welling up within her just as the tide was swelling onto the beach.
Daydd reached his hand up and paused looking at her for a long moment. Then he began. This was no tugging and pulling.
Her whole self tore and contorted. She cried out in fear and pain, stumbling in the wave which suddenly smacked against
her legs instead of through them.
"You are Aurancair, daughter of Lord Cathmor. Everyone who loves you calls you Auran."
She fell into the water and surfaced gasping and coughing.
"In your eighteenth year, you ran afoul of a fae goblin, who placed a curse upon you that you must live forever as a siren."
The next wave passed through her as waves had always done before. The third wave struck her again, but this time she
kept her feet.
Daydd's words continued. She heard them, but their meaning was lost to her. Auran staggered and looked at her hands.
One moment they were ethereal, unearthly. The next they were merely wet and cold. She quavered, vibrating between the
two possibilities.
Daydd stood straining. The stories were resisting his rearrangement. His shivers had grown worse. His words were
becoming stammers. The stories threatened to snap back into place.
She was Aurancair the siren. She always had been. She must sing Daydd to his death.
She was Auran, daughter of a lord. She was enchanted to become a siren until a man came that she could love enough not
to kill.
She would grieve for him for eternity. Her only solace would be the waves themselves as they buoyed her and made her
whole.
The waves were her prison. She longed to walk again on the land.
Not the land. Land was terrifying.
Land was home. The waves were terrifying.
She reached to Daydd "Help me!"
Daydd's arms quivered with the effort of holding the stories. "I can't! I can't hold on much longer! You must choose!"
Aurancair the eternal looked at the land and saw death.
Auran the mortal looked to the waves and saw grief and loneliness without end.
The swells were up to her waist now. Time for choosing the land was running out. She looked at Daydd. His face was
pale and he trembled with cold. He struggled to keep speaking. He needed to be out of the icy water.
He was the exotic Maker of Stories who gave her the only warmth she had ever known.
He was the man who loved her and would be her rescuer.
His warmth would end if she did not act.
He would die if she did not choose.
Neither the siren nor the mortal wished him dead. There was only one way to save him.
Auran stepped toward him and put her arm around his waist. His hands released the bands of story. Auran felt them snap
past her, then felt them no more. She was mortal now. Stories no longer defined her. Daydd leaned on her and the two of
them staggered toward the safety of land.
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