An account of the sirens episode.

People think they know everything about us. What they don't know,
what they have no idea of, is that these words they use as a weapon
against us - 'temptresses', 'incubi', 'Satan's whores' - these words
were a gift from us to them, exchanged in passageways and cellars, a
private joke that only we laugh to.

We enjoy what we do - of course we bloody do. What woman wouldn't
enjoy the pleasuring - not to mention the pleasure - that our work
entails? Well, perhaps 'lovely Circe', as she is well known, wouldn't
enjoy the sex. Frigid bitch. We all know she's just jealous. Jessica
used to know her quite well, once upon a time. She invited her to join
us, I think - you forget reasons behind rivalries when it's been so
long - and when Circe turned us down, we - well. Let's just say that
her 'pure and faithful love' was as eager as the rest.

Our island is stormy today. I love the storms when they come, and I
lie in the shallows, with frothy white waves sculpting my body. I am
the tide - I move sometimes imperceptibly, but I can still stun you and
lash the feet from under you.

We're all waiting, now - that's the hardest part. In between ships we
can relax, catch fish, play with the palms and dress our hair with
anemones. Yesterday, we played at a marriage between a crab and a dead
blowfish. But the waiting - it really is hard. What to do? Jessica is
burying her feet, lovingly piling grains of sand onto marbled pink
skin. Lani is stroking her hair as if it were a clinging lover. And I,
I lie in the sea.

There's a change in the air. We all sit up at the same time,
attentive, nostrils flaring to catch wind-borne scents, hair whipped
and wild in the wind. And, tingling, we stand slowly, flirting with the
wind, teasing it down, calling it in to the holes in our ears and the
clefts between our breasts. The wind is gradually mastered, in a way
easier than any man (but with far, far less satisfaction!). We see the
ship and gently, almost inaudibly, we just begin to hum in harmony. The
flowers, the sand, the island - none of it is really present to us now
as we bathe under the stars, catching the ship in our web and spinning
it closer, ever closer.

We see it all, although they don't see us yet. It is possible that
they are stubbornly facing away, the song already creeping into their
veins, strengthening their resistance. Telling themselves they are
strong enough. The resistance is part of the fun, my loves.

A handsome, chiselled figure punctuates the deck, his men gathered to
him like anxious kitten offspring. I imagine he is hardening their
resolve. Like talking can help. And there, at last, goes our wind.
Leaving them alone to their fate, a deserter that cannot be punished.
And they are caught. We smell their horror and feed it to our hunger,
exciting it so it presses against us. They run around like helpless
ants, exposed and homeless. Waiting to be crushed from above, and we
will try not to disappoint. They gaze up at the limp sail, swinging
bloodless arms like pendulums, and then all at once, scurry and take up
oars, each man pretending, but inwardly sinking. The silence thrums
inside their ears, waiting to be filled.

The chiselled man is doing something. I wet my bottom lip, slowly
rolling my tongue along. A movement from Lani catches in the corner of
my eye, and I turn to look. She has raised her face to the sky and is
inhaling. Jessica and I realise in the same moment and turn angrily to
the ship. Wax. They have been warned. If they cannot hear us, how can
we reach them? A gull breaks the silence with a hawking cry and, mood
that I am in, I break its neck with a loud sharp trill. It falls to the
water with a splash and floats back up to the surface, swaying on the
sea. We watch ropes encircle the foolish captain, and I am chewing on
the edge of my tongue, hoping the ropes cut in deep and cover his body
in painful purple lines. He must be the only one chancing open ears.
There are still possibilities, then. With a very slight finger movement
I signal to the girls, and we begin immediately, sending the men into a
shock of activity. Maybe they're not so deaf after all? I see them
pressing the seals into their eras desperately as they sit to continue
rowing. And we sing.

We sing of secret times, and dark liquid midnights, untold urges and
bloody needs. All in the song with no words. But we know that they
hear, or at least fancy they hear, our tinkling voices, speaking to
them, imploring them, calling them by their names to come closer.

We see the thrashing head of the tightly bound figure, and hear the
ringing echoes of his pleas to his shipmates?"I order to set me free at
once! I order it, d'you hear?" They turn their heads away so they don't
have to watch.

We tinkle him along the ribcage with our pure notes, and he is sure he
hears that no man has ever passed us before. All men succumb, darling,
all men succumb. His head movements grow more frantic, and my nipples
start to harden at the thought of bringing him ashore.

I want this one, I want him badly. Last year we had a lone sailor,
badly in shock after some accident. Lean muscle, yellow hair and
startling green eyes the colour of nettles. Lani said he was the most
beautiful thing she'd ever seen, and so after we'd all had our fun, we
let her keep him. She dragged him carefully up to the meadow and he
slept in the corner, under a great old willow and fragranced by
poppies, until his skin was patchy with decay. Then he really had to
go, so we gave him a proper sea burial - for Lani's sake. She was
distraught. And this one, I want to keep this one.

We add a slight - barely there - tonally pleading note into the honey
filling the air. Please, please come to us, please, we need you, we're
nothing without you, please, please protect us. We watch the captain
stiffen, shaking, and relax his body in an orgasmic ecstasy, and I know
then that even if we don't get the body of this man, if we are not
allowed the pleasure of laying him down on the sand and licking him
clean, that we have his emotions for the rest of his pitiful life.
He'll never know a woman again truly, because the agony of hearing us
and then losing us will rumble in his belly, will be too much for him.
Breasts will make him weep in the future, and he'll curse us, whilst
wishing he could touch us, just once.

The ship is moving on, past us, away to safety, and still we sing,
urgent now, almost threatening, warning him of the consequences.
Telling him, sounds full of lust, that we love him, how much we want
him. I throw into the air an odd bauble of melody, light, that rises
above the song, a personal message. Come here, and I'll take your body
apart with the pleasure. Your head will roll and as it does you'll
marvel at my butterfly kisses. I can take your dreams and put them in
your hands, my love, my playmate. I see his eyes spin wildly in their
sockets, casting about for a look, just one glimpse, and I pitch my
final note- but it is too late: it misses the ship, and falls, without
a sound, into the sea, where it sinks.

The seagull with the broken neck moves out to sea, pulled by the wake
of the ship, out to nothing, and we stand. Shoulders slumped, mouths
hanging dully open, just watching it.