The Siren's Tale Read Online Free
Author: Anne Carlisle
test them further. For a powerful siren, operating in a middle-class community where she is dependent on relatives' charity is not ideal. Idle gossip would soon become a virulent, persistent buzz. A visit to Grandfather Vye in Wyoming seemed a providential opportunity to start my adult life in a more conducive location. Alta was not far from my birthplace, and even more remote, high in the mountains. I desired to live freely. Hopefully in Wyoming I would find that extra latitude and the passionate life I envisioned for myself.
My aunt warned me to be careful about whom I passed the cloak along to. “One day the next rightful owner will come along,” she said. “You will recognize the proper moment, as I have. Wait until then. Evil forces lurk who wish us harm.”
To appease my aunt, who was worried about my traveling so far unprotected, I put on the cloak. Then and there, I decided I would leave behind, along with my besmirched reputation, my maiden name. If all I had been told was true, then the Zanelli surname might invite the attention of those invisible, unfriendly forces Aunt Chloe feared.
Henceforth, I would be known as Cassandra Vye.
After arriving at Captain Vye's stone home in Alta in the fall of 1899, I kept my distance from the townspeople. I soon made it a point, however, to visit the graves of my mother and grandmother at the Scottish Presbyterian churchyard in Bulette, only a few miles away. Telling grandfather I needed no chaperone, I rode alone. I took my zither, and while standing before the graves, I played a love song for Kate and Mary.
It happened that as my song drew to a close, Augustus “Curly” Drake, the Alta innkeeper, was driving by the churchyard in his gig, drawn by two black horses. He heard the music, stopped, got down, and immediately was at my side.
“ Who are you? Can such beauty exist in this wilderness?”
We stared at each other wordlessly. The current flowing between us was mutually irresistible. I had never before felt such an electric attraction. We made love the next day, and the day after that, I experienced my first human orgasm. I was instantly hooked.
In the case of a siren, love occurs only at first sight. Destiny had ordained I would meet and fall in love with Curly Drake when I was still a reckless young woman, thus setting off a chain of human events leading to the crisis our family now faces, the threat of extinction.
Aunt Chloe had told me that both extinction and evil forces threaten our kind. She herself was not gifted, but she said skipping a generation is not the worst fate that may befall our powers. “Sometimes a siren, male or female, will use them for evil rather than good, as did the mythical sirens portrayed in Greek literature. The result is catastrophic, both for ourselves and the reputation of our lineage.”
There was a day, four decades after the curse originated, when I came close to passing our magic cloak along but stopped short of doing so, because I feared its powers might be used for ill-gotten gain. It was April 20, 1947, shortly after I retired from acting on the stage, when my son appeared at my residence on Nob Hill in San Francisco.
Indeed I was inclined to give Caesar the cloak. But my instincts rebelled against the idea, and I did not make the transfer. In ‘70s parlance, my “love child” was an immediate “turn-off.” I could see my firstborn was a wanderer like my father and, even worse, an alcoholic bum with no sense of responsibility toward either humans or our kind. I warned Caesar about our curse, but sadly, that was the extent of my home schooling of him. I do regret it now, as I foresee trouble ahead in the person of my untutored grandson, Dakota.
I might add it takes a powerful siren to bring forth a male of our species upon this earth. Gifted male progeny of a siren are even rarer. In the males, the paranormal power presents as a demonic tendency at worst or a gentle genius at best. The labels do not do justice to
My aunt warned me to be careful about whom I passed the cloak along to. “One day the next rightful owner will come along,” she said. “You will recognize the proper moment, as I have. Wait until then. Evil forces lurk who wish us harm.”
To appease my aunt, who was worried about my traveling so far unprotected, I put on the cloak. Then and there, I decided I would leave behind, along with my besmirched reputation, my maiden name. If all I had been told was true, then the Zanelli surname might invite the attention of those invisible, unfriendly forces Aunt Chloe feared.
Henceforth, I would be known as Cassandra Vye.
After arriving at Captain Vye's stone home in Alta in the fall of 1899, I kept my distance from the townspeople. I soon made it a point, however, to visit the graves of my mother and grandmother at the Scottish Presbyterian churchyard in Bulette, only a few miles away. Telling grandfather I needed no chaperone, I rode alone. I took my zither, and while standing before the graves, I played a love song for Kate and Mary.
It happened that as my song drew to a close, Augustus “Curly” Drake, the Alta innkeeper, was driving by the churchyard in his gig, drawn by two black horses. He heard the music, stopped, got down, and immediately was at my side.
“ Who are you? Can such beauty exist in this wilderness?”
We stared at each other wordlessly. The current flowing between us was mutually irresistible. I had never before felt such an electric attraction. We made love the next day, and the day after that, I experienced my first human orgasm. I was instantly hooked.
In the case of a siren, love occurs only at first sight. Destiny had ordained I would meet and fall in love with Curly Drake when I was still a reckless young woman, thus setting off a chain of human events leading to the crisis our family now faces, the threat of extinction.
Aunt Chloe had told me that both extinction and evil forces threaten our kind. She herself was not gifted, but she said skipping a generation is not the worst fate that may befall our powers. “Sometimes a siren, male or female, will use them for evil rather than good, as did the mythical sirens portrayed in Greek literature. The result is catastrophic, both for ourselves and the reputation of our lineage.”
There was a day, four decades after the curse originated, when I came close to passing our magic cloak along but stopped short of doing so, because I feared its powers might be used for ill-gotten gain. It was April 20, 1947, shortly after I retired from acting on the stage, when my son appeared at my residence on Nob Hill in San Francisco.
Indeed I was inclined to give Caesar the cloak. But my instincts rebelled against the idea, and I did not make the transfer. In ‘70s parlance, my “love child” was an immediate “turn-off.” I could see my firstborn was a wanderer like my father and, even worse, an alcoholic bum with no sense of responsibility toward either humans or our kind. I warned Caesar about our curse, but sadly, that was the extent of my home schooling of him. I do regret it now, as I foresee trouble ahead in the person of my untutored grandson, Dakota.
I might add it takes a powerful siren to bring forth a male of our species upon this earth. Gifted male progeny of a siren are even rarer. In the males, the paranormal power presents as a demonic tendency at worst or a gentle genius at best. The labels do not do justice to
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