Siren by Delle Jacobs

1 SIREN
    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,