programming?”
Excellent question!
“Yes, there are. For instance, there are men who focus on one woman and demonstrate high MPI—that is, high male parental involvement. And, there are women who engage in sex for the sport of it, as sirens do. In general, these outliers are not highly regarded by the culture. The human archetypes lie in the other direction.”
“ Speaking of archetypes, what is with the rightful bride in your frontier story? I find it difficult to get behind Clare Brighton. Her low self-esteem allows her to be passed back and forth from her fiancé to her aunt. She is a piece of wampum, not a woman.”
My thinking exactly.
“Well, Clare was traditionally raised to believe her worth came from her marriage prospects. Even now, women are encouraged to think of themselves as commodities.”
“ What about these so-called sirens? Can a siren make that same mistake?”
Unfortunately, a siren is not exempt from human failings.
“Tell me, did you by chance experience your first orgasm when you and Harry began making love?”
“ Why, yes.”
“ Then, my dear, I have bad news for you. Original lust triggers love at first sight, which is the chink in our siren armor.”
“ Our? So, you, too, believe you are a siren, that you have paranormal powers?”
“ Yes, dear. I know for a fact that I am a siren. Though I don't choose to act on my powers, I do have them. You and I are sirens in human form. We find our joy in human interaction, but we take our guidance from a mythology of the stars which predates Christ.”
“ May I have the Cliff Notes on the mythology?”
“ Certainly. Some earth spirits are protective of the mountains and streams; others, of the sea, like the so-called mermaids. The 'seven sisters,' a constellation named the Pleiades, were set in the heavens by Zeus. On earth they were Grecian mountain nymphs, daughters of the Titan Atlas. Foremost was Maia (Maea in Latin), which means in translation 'Good Nursing Mother.' Your middle name derives from hers. Maea mated with Zeus and produced Hermes, the messenger of the gods. Five of the others were also loved by gods, becoming ancestresses of royal families, including those of Troy and Sparta. To protect the nymphs from the lustful giant Orion, so the mythology goes, Zeus placed them among the stars and named them from the Greek word pleiôn , meaning 'plenty.'
“ Homer in the Iliad refers to a pair of sea nymphs as ‘sirens.’ By their exquisite singing and womanly wiles, the sirens lured the homeward-bound Greek sailors with Ulysses to their destruction on perilous rocks. Hence, one assumes, the modern connection between home-wreckers and the term “siren.” Part woman and part bird, the sirens of ancient Greece were also cousins of the seven nymphs whom Jove placed in the heavens and who are known as the Pleiades. From the beginning, one might speculate, sirens have had a natural tendency to look upward for their course .
“ Mind you, this is only a mythological explanation of what is unknown. Our human siren line came later.”
Marlena is silent, mulling it all over.
She has begun to see her long affair with Harry in an unappealing new light. For five years she has viewed herself as having a singular, unconventional romance with a handsome, sexual man who is also rich and powerful. But, clearly, their interaction Sunday night was at times a carbon copy of Cassandra and Curly's conversations in the autumn of 1900. She is a dead ringer for Cassandra, and Harry is Curly's grandson.
Mere coincidence? A time warp? Or, as Chloe has claimed, are certain desires and behaviors, even conversations, passed along in the DNA of a siren? Now it seems their passion was set in motion a century ago and informed by a mythology as old as the rocks.
While such synchronicity is hardly commonplace, is there any human glory or romance left in the equation? And this is not her only troubling insight.
Marlena recalls a period when her
Excellent question!
“Yes, there are. For instance, there are men who focus on one woman and demonstrate high MPI—that is, high male parental involvement. And, there are women who engage in sex for the sport of it, as sirens do. In general, these outliers are not highly regarded by the culture. The human archetypes lie in the other direction.”
“ Speaking of archetypes, what is with the rightful bride in your frontier story? I find it difficult to get behind Clare Brighton. Her low self-esteem allows her to be passed back and forth from her fiancé to her aunt. She is a piece of wampum, not a woman.”
My thinking exactly.
“Well, Clare was traditionally raised to believe her worth came from her marriage prospects. Even now, women are encouraged to think of themselves as commodities.”
“ What about these so-called sirens? Can a siren make that same mistake?”
Unfortunately, a siren is not exempt from human failings.
“Tell me, did you by chance experience your first orgasm when you and Harry began making love?”
“ Why, yes.”
“ Then, my dear, I have bad news for you. Original lust triggers love at first sight, which is the chink in our siren armor.”
“ Our? So, you, too, believe you are a siren, that you have paranormal powers?”
“ Yes, dear. I know for a fact that I am a siren. Though I don't choose to act on my powers, I do have them. You and I are sirens in human form. We find our joy in human interaction, but we take our guidance from a mythology of the stars which predates Christ.”
“ May I have the Cliff Notes on the mythology?”
“ Certainly. Some earth spirits are protective of the mountains and streams; others, of the sea, like the so-called mermaids. The 'seven sisters,' a constellation named the Pleiades, were set in the heavens by Zeus. On earth they were Grecian mountain nymphs, daughters of the Titan Atlas. Foremost was Maia (Maea in Latin), which means in translation 'Good Nursing Mother.' Your middle name derives from hers. Maea mated with Zeus and produced Hermes, the messenger of the gods. Five of the others were also loved by gods, becoming ancestresses of royal families, including those of Troy and Sparta. To protect the nymphs from the lustful giant Orion, so the mythology goes, Zeus placed them among the stars and named them from the Greek word pleiôn , meaning 'plenty.'
“ Homer in the Iliad refers to a pair of sea nymphs as ‘sirens.’ By their exquisite singing and womanly wiles, the sirens lured the homeward-bound Greek sailors with Ulysses to their destruction on perilous rocks. Hence, one assumes, the modern connection between home-wreckers and the term “siren.” Part woman and part bird, the sirens of ancient Greece were also cousins of the seven nymphs whom Jove placed in the heavens and who are known as the Pleiades. From the beginning, one might speculate, sirens have had a natural tendency to look upward for their course .
“ Mind you, this is only a mythological explanation of what is unknown. Our human siren line came later.”
Marlena is silent, mulling it all over.
She has begun to see her long affair with Harry in an unappealing new light. For five years she has viewed herself as having a singular, unconventional romance with a handsome, sexual man who is also rich and powerful. But, clearly, their interaction Sunday night was at times a carbon copy of Cassandra and Curly's conversations in the autumn of 1900. She is a dead ringer for Cassandra, and Harry is Curly's grandson.
Mere coincidence? A time warp? Or, as Chloe has claimed, are certain desires and behaviors, even conversations, passed along in the DNA of a siren? Now it seems their passion was set in motion a century ago and informed by a mythology as old as the rocks.
While such synchronicity is hardly commonplace, is there any human glory or romance left in the equation? And this is not her only troubling insight.
Marlena recalls a period when her
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