Siren's Seductive Song Claims Her Devoted Sailor

I was twenty-eight and alone on the night watch when the sea itself began to sing to me.

The Wanderer cut through a calm, moonlit stretch of the Atlantic, her sails barely whispering in the faint breeze. I stood at the starboard rail, forearms resting on the worn wood, eyes half-lidded against the silver shimmer of the water. Every other man aboard was below, deep in rum-soaked sleep. The only sounds were the soft lap of waves against the hull and the creak of rigging. Then the voice rose—low, velvet, impossibly feminine—threading through the salt air like warm honey poured over my spine.

I straightened, heart suddenly hammering. At first I thought I was dreaming. Then I saw her.

She rose from the water no more than ten feet from the hull, braced against the ship’s side as though the ocean were a bed she could simply lounge upon. Her skin gleamed a deep, living blue-green that shifted with every ripple of moonlight, iridescent as abalone. Long, wet strands of midnight hair clung to the generous swell of her breasts, barely contained by a few looping strands of dark seaweed that did more to frame than to conceal. Nipples the color of crushed blackberries pressed against the glossy fronds. Below the elegant flare of her waist, her body became something magnificent and inhuman: a powerful, muscular tail of deep teal and silver scales that flicked lazily, sending up sparkling droplets. The fin at its end was wide and delicate, almost translucent, fanning the water with slow, hypnotic strokes.