Elemental Magic: All-New Tales of the Elemental Masters Read Online Free

comfort, she would not pry. And if he did not want to make love to her, she would not beg.
    She lay silent, using the branches of the pines to track the passage of the stars, her cheeks wet with tears. Eventually her eyes closed.
    When she opened them to the new day, he was gone.
    *   *   *
    “Why didn’t you wake me?!”
    The sylphs were absent, but the sea-sprites had come flying in a glistening mob at Kyria’s anguished cry.
    “You ordered us to leave you alone!” The nymph said sulkily.
    Kyria rubbed her eyes and sighed. It was true that when she and Meto lay down the night before she had told the sprites to go away, not wanting to make love in front of an audience. But her anger was all that was holding off despair now.
    “Where—” she began, but she did not really need to ask.
Meto has gone to do something noble,
she thought bitterly, but at least he had taken the wax plugs they had made from the stopper of a broken amphora that had washed ashore. There might still be some fragment of his soul he could call his own.
    She felt marginally more hopeful when she had bathed her gummy eyes and eaten the last of the seaweed collected the day before. But her heart raced as she picked her way along the island’s eastern shore.
    The nymphs had taken to the sea again, leaping like dolphins through the waves. But soon enough she ceased to need their guidance. From somewhere ahead she could hear the Sirens’ triumphant song.
    “Daughters of Earth and the flowing river, ancient and fair are we—” trilled the first voice, fresh as the first breeze of spring.
    A second voice, golden as summer, continued, “From Earth’s womb drawn to dance on the air, and prey upon the sea.”
    Hardly daring to breathe, Kyria crept forward.
    “Leucosia the first, Ligeia the next, and ripe Parthenope!” The third voice was rich and full.
    Kyria pulled down a branch of scrub oak so she could see. Before her, a thin layer of soil covered a broad slab of rock, bearing grasses that were turning now from the green of spring to summer gold, edged with yellow broom and scattered with crimson poppies and rockrose. Of the singers, all she could see at first was wings.
    They were sitting on an outcrop of dark stone. Leucosia was pale, white-winged, with silvery hair that floated on the breeze. Ligeia must be the one who was all amber and gold, and Parthenope darker, with hair and feathers shading from copper to bronze. About halfway between the Sirens and the edge of the rocks stood Meto, swaying a little to the music, head bowed. His own sylphs hovered in an anxious cloud behind him, too fearful to help, but too devoted to leave.
    With his ragged tunic and tangled hair, he should have looked pitiable, but there was something in his stance that reminded her of a patient god. Were they playing with him, or was he resisting their allure? Whatever Meto had intended, it did not seem to be working. But he would be safe if she could get him into the sea.
    As she began to ease back, the bronze Siren, Parthenope, rose. Kyria stifled a gasp. The Siren’s upper body was as beautiful as her voice, with generous breasts and smoothly rounded arms. Below, she had the feathered thighs and clawed feet of a bird.
    “Though shy you are, my fledgling boy, you never will be free!” the Siren sang.
    Kyria slid back through the trees and scuttled across the rocks, scarcely pausing when she bruised her feet and scraped her knee. At the edge of the water, the nymphs rose to greet her in a shimmer of glistening wings. She slid gratefully into the waves. The sting of salt-water on her wounds became a tingle and the entire sea began to glow, but she had no time to wonder at it now.
    By the time she reached the rocks below the meadow, all three of the Sirens were stalking forward. A sylph darted past Meto’s ear, whispering. He cast a quick glance behind him, saw Kyria, then tipped back his head and sang.
    “Too fair by far for mortal love, Sirens, let me be!”