Mistress of Siren Cove Ch. 08-10

This is a romance/fantasy about women who have the power of the siren and use it to control and take pleasure from men. It is set in the real world of today. It focuses on one of these women, who seeks to find a man who can see past her siren allure and love the real woman he finds inside. It is an allegory of modern love, which often focuses too much on the superficial. There is sexual activity in this story, but none of it is explicit. The story is being published in chapters as it is being written. Everyone is over 18.

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Chapter 8: Seeing Andrew Again

Elysia's return to the island, after a month in the United States, was emotionally difficult. As time went on, she had gotten used to being back in Chicago, visiting her adoptive parents, showing Antoinette all the places she knew, and eating all kinds of ethnic food. It was like a vacation, except for all the legal hassles.

Returning to the island meant reentering a world where she was a novice. She did not know what was expected of her, and she knew very little about the activities in which either the Mistress or the other island women were engaged. She had only hints of these activities, from Antoinette, about sirens controlling men around the world. The purpose of these activities, according to Annie, was to quell the violent and aggressive tendencies of men, which harmed others as men vied for supremacy.

Still, she wanted to come back. She had spent only a short time with her mother before being packed off to Chicago to settle Andrew's estate and save his fortune for him. She wanted to see her mother again, have long talks with her, let her know what she was like, and tell her all the other things a daughter wants a mother to know.

Perhaps, most of all, she wanted to see Andrew. She missed this handsome husband of hers. She knew he had been regularly sleeping with the siren women on the island, and although she did not like it, she had given him permission to do so. She gave him leave to sleep with them because she knew he did not have the strength to resist their magical charms, and as long as he thought she approved, he would not have to walk around feeling guilty. She accepted that this was the way of the island. The women did what was natural to them. She knew that they were like wild things who instinctively preyed on men who had no natural defenses. The fact that, once seduced, men could experience the most exquisite pleasure imaginable, did not change the huntress/prey relationship.

Elysia was only beginning to know what she was. She had only one experience of taking a man and using her powers to bind him, and her prey in that case was a poor specimen, Andrew's brother. But as she thought of it, the capture and entrapment had been sweet. She had used her power, which she believed was so far mostly untapped, and she wanted more. Antoinette told her of women who controlled powerful men, and after her first experience of bending a man to her will, she had begun imagining how it would feel to control a truly worthy man, a powerful man.

But she did not want to try to control Andrew. On this island, she knew she could not keep him to herself with so many sirens casting their nets for him. At most, she could take him to her bed and enjoy him. If she could enjoy him now and then, maybe that would be enough for her.

She had a lingering question, however. It was one that kept bothering her all the time she was in Chicago. Did he love her? In the past, he had told her that he did, many times, and she believed him. This was before she knew of her gift (or curse?). A man will believe he loves a siren who has entrapped him, but that may be only the working of the power. Andrew might have believed that he loved many of the women of the island that he had lain with. He might truly have felt love for them.

Elysia wanted to know whether Andrew truly loved her, or whether he was only responding to her gift. She made no conscious effort to entrap or bind him as she did with his brother. But given her initial attraction to him on their first meeting, her ability may have spread a net to capture him all by itself.

She was going to try to find out the truth of his feelings for her when they were together again. She guessed what she would learn, though, and this saddened her. Still, she eagerly looked forward to the pleasure he would give her. During her sojourn in Chicago, she could have taken pleasure from many men, who she could easily have attracted with her power, but she did not feel comfortable pursuing men while she was so involved in legal matters. She came back to the island, therefore, hungry for what she had missed.

She arrived on the island with Antoinette by small plane at midnight. The Mistress preferred that flights to and from the island be undertaken in the dark to help maintain a low profile for their land. When she stepped off the plane, Elysia was surprised to be greeted by a sense of relief. The island, with its lush landscapes and the enigmatic presence of her mother, felt like a sanctuary from the complexities of the outside world. It was a sanctuary but also the epicenter of her moral and emotional dilemmas. Her complex feelings towards the Mistress, her mother, underscored the dual nature of her existence on the island: she was safe but also part of the Mistress's plans, which she did not know.

She and Antoinette took a shuttle from the landing strip back to the town, and there she left Antoinette with a kiss and a promise to see her soon. They had now become close, and the anger and recriminations of the past had disappeared.

Elysia was let into the palace and walked up the steps to her own room, where she found Andrew asleep in her bed. She had talked to Andrew earlier by phone from the island where the international flight came in, and he was waiting for her. She took a shower and climbed into bed next to him. She missed the smell of him and the feel of his body. She was too tired to make love, and it was enough that they were together again.

In the morning, their lovemaking, after the long separation, made her weep with ecstasy and joy. They spent the day together, rediscovering each other and finding new ways to please each other. After their lovemaking, they talked.

"I've been with so many women, Elysia. I constantly feel I am betraying you, but I have no power to resist them. Can you forgive me?"

Andrew's face, while saying this, betrayed his distress. The guilt that weighed on him was palpable, and his usual confidence was replaced by remorse.

"There is nothing to forgive, Andrew, my love. Like I said before I left, you have my permission. I understand the ways of the sirens because now I am one. These women are attracted to you, and they can't help but want you. You're in your prime, and you're around them all the time, giving lessons. You teach them, play with them, eat with them, and laugh with them. There can be no other result than to have sex with them. All I ask is that you continue to love me."

"I love you, Elysia, you know I do."

They spent the day together and talked about what they had been doing. She told him about her and Antoinette seducing his brother to get him to drop his objections during the probate, and Andrew laughed with delight.

"We turned him into quite a good lover," laughed Elysia, "but, in the end, he was just your sad little brother."

"I'm sorry you had to deal with him. We always disliked each other, and he was always jealous."

Then he talked of the many siren women he knew. She was curious about them all and was eager to know their names and something of their personalities. The lawyer in her suspected she would someday need this information. As he recounted his relations with the other women on the island, his voice carried a note of remorse that was both sincere and troubled.

As they talked, she listened for a hint of real love in him for her. She searched his words and his expressions for any trace of true, deep-seated love but found none. The realization that his attentiveness towards her might be no different from that shown to the other sirens stung her heart. What he loved was the alluring creature into which her power changed her.

This saddened her. She had expected it and prepared herself to discover it, but the reality still made her despair. She knew it had nothing to do with him. Her experiences in America, where she experimented with her siren gift, including her ability to effortlessly make his brother love her and then bend to her will, told her what she was, and what she could expect from men. Adoration and slavish devotion were hers to command. At best, however, these were semblances of love. She feared that the simple love of a man, which saw past the alluring image she was able to project, was not going to be hers.

Still, Andrew was attractive, more attractive than the men she had met in America. Andrew's physical allure remained undeniable, and there was something in his presence, a magnetic pull that nothing could diminish. He remained for her as attractive as when she first met and fell in love with him.

"But did I fall in love with him?" she asked herself. "Or did I really fall in love with being worshipped by him?"

Now that she had some experience being adored by other men, she wondered whether Andrew would become just one of many handsome men who felt this way about her. How could she love him when he became merely another face in the crowd of men that adored her?

Antoinette told her that some sirens despair of finding true love with a man and turned to each other as life companions. Nothing could replace the pure ecstasy of lying with a man, whose only wish was to please you, but being with a woman who truly loved you, and simply lying warm next to her, satisfied a deeper need.

Andrew and Elysia spent two days together, days filled with conversations that danced around the edges of their true feelings, and tender touches that spoke of desire but perhaps not of true love. Then, with a heart heavy with the possibility of not finding its mate, Elysia made the difficult decision to send him away for the time being.

"Go, enjoy yourself, and don't feel guilty," she told him again and again, her voice steady despite the whirlwind of emotions. "I still love you. I'll always love you but, on this island, I can't keep you." Her words were a balm to his guilt, but for her they were a subtle boundary, a safeguard for her own heart.

The night air whispered through the room as Andrew left, carrying with it the memory of their shared moments. In the quiet that followed, Elysia was left to ponder the mystery of love and desire, and the line between genuine affection and the roles they played in each other's lives.

Unknown to Andrew was that, as she lay with him, she was hoping that he would make her pregnant. When they talked that first time, her mother expressed her fear that the line and legacy of the powerful sirens, such as her, and hopefully Elysia, might die out. The Mistress had only one child, Elysia, and complications from the birth took away her ability to have more. When Elysia was taken, and feared dead, she despaired over the lack of an heiress to her powers. Now that Elysia was with them again she hoped that her daughter would give birth to a baby girl and ensure the line's survival.

"Elysia, I know this is a lot for you, but I believe that the only way for the work of the island to continue in this world is for you to have a child. I don't want you to do anything about it now, but when you return from Chicago, I want you to have a child with Andrew. This is one of the other reasons we brought him to the island. We have watched him, and he is a smart and strong man. He will make a good father for your child. When you choose to get pregnant, look for a small bottle of pills in your bathroom. Take one, and it will ensure any child you bear is a female."

Already overloaded with new information, Elysia took this request in, and then forgot about it. She just replied, "Yes, mother."

It was not until she was coming home from Chicago that she remembered. On the plane, she thought about all she had learned, and all she had experienced. She began to understand, even based on the little she knew, that the work of her mother and the island was important. She did not understand why she was special, or why a daughter of hers was so badly needed, but she sensed that what she was told was true.

While she was preparing to lay with Andrew, she found the little bottle of pills and took one. She knew she was in her fertile time of the month, and after she made love with Andrew, the thought that he might have put a girl child into her womb made her happy.

Chapter 9: The Siren's Mission

Elysia had breakfast once again with her mother, the Mistress, and found that she had been missed. Likewise, she discovered that she had missed this mysterious woman as well. The two women hugged each other tightly and held hands as they talked over their meal.

The Mistress was pleased with her report of how well things had gone in Chicago. She had already had, the day before, a report from Antoinette, as well as Antoinette's assessment of her student's progress in learning to use her unusual gifts. She was also pleased to learn that the two had become close friends in Chicago.

"Daughter, I want you to continue developing your friendship with Antoinette. She is a remarkable and talented woman, and as you grow in responsibility on this island you will need someone like her to help you. I believe she can be trusted and can be relied upon. I have not told her about you yet, but I believe that I will soon."

"Now, you will begin new lessons, which I and others will teach you. You need to learn the purpose of this island, and how we use the power we hold here to shape the world. I know this sounds like a grand claim, but it is accurate. Through the many women who have come from this island, we are able to control a considerable amount of what happens around the globe."

"You have already used the power to get a man to do something he did not want to do. Nearly all of the women here, or who come from here, have that ability. Much of the time we use it for mundane purposes. But there are larger ends that we serve, and this is what we will speak of now."

The Mistress went on to explain that two large forces operate in the world, which often oppose each other: the masculine force ("yang"), and the feminine force ("yin"). Men and women both have masculine and feminine qualities, but the masculine force is most concentrated in men, while the feminine force makes up more of a woman's personality. In the masculine personality, we find assertiveness, competitiveness, and self-reliance; while in the feminine we find nurturing, empathy, and cooperation.

The pure masculine force can lead men to build and create, but can also lead to self-interest, violence, and destruction. Civilization can thrive only when the two forces balance each other. For example, assertive action (yang) balanced with empathy and inclusivity (yin) by the leaders of a country can result in ethical and fair government, where decisions are made with both strength and compassion. Also, when there is conflict, strategic and decisive action (yang) combined with diplomacy and understanding (yin) can lead to effective and lasting resolutions.

What we often find in this world is that men, who can be swift and decisive in their actions, are able to obtain wealth and power in the world far more easily than women. However, they often cannot hold onto what they have. Men may take what others have through violence, or they may treat the people who depend on them badly, causing them to revolt.

"Our role, Elysia, in most cases, is to make sure that rich men use their wealth wisely, for the benefit of all; and that powerful men rule with compassion and a sense of nurturing. We use our power to influence the decisions they make."

"So, like, convincing the owner of a building not to evict a family when a parent is temporarily out of work?" Elysia asked.

"Exactly, but on a far larger scale. In fact, the wife of the head of a big real estate company, one of our daughters, has stopped her husband from building hundreds of units of new housing on secretly contaminated land."

"For over a thousand years, women from this island have prevented wars, prevented the slaughter of innocent people, caused the creation of laws to protect and educate children, and many other things that help to make us civilized."

"But, mother, there have been many terrible wars, genocides, and other terrible things."

"We have not always been successful. However, I think we succeed more than we fail, and without us, this world might be a very savage place today."

"How do I fit into all this?" Elysia asked.

"As with all of the women, you will use your power to influence specific men, who could be using their resources to make the world a better place, instead of just enriching themselves, or gathering more power."

"You want me to marry someone?" Elysia asked.

"No, there are many tasks that do not require that. I have great need of you here, to assist me in deciding how we should exercise the power of this island. Your education has given you skills and ways of thinking that are sorely needed here. Also, someday you may be the Mistress, and you need to be here to learn what that means. And, I believe the seed Andrew has placed in your womb has taken root. You are pregnant, my daughter."

"How do you know that? It's only been a day or two since I slept with him."

"There are other gifts that are enjoyed by some sirens. You have this particular gift of knowing things, and I will teach you to use it. I thought I felt your condition when I held you earlier, and I have been looking for the signs. There is no doubt. Knowing things that others do not is valuable if you are to someday rule in my place."

Elysia knew her mother was right. She explored her body with her mind and could sense a slight change at the edge of feeling. It was like the energy around her was different. She experienced a rush of joy and smiled at her mother. The Mistress smiled warmly back at her. She wondered when she would start to have morning sickness and the difficulties associated with childbearing.

"We have something for you to do now, daughter, and it will require you to leave this island again, in two days. It will not take long, perhaps a few months, and you should be able to do this in your condition. I am sending Antoinette with you again. She still has much to teach you, but your skills as a lawyer will also be needed for this task. Right now, there is a man who is on a path that may harm many, and you and Antoinette must stop him."

Chapter 10: Trouble in London

Three days later, Elysia and Antoinette were standing ready to board a plane in Bermuda, which would take them to London. The Palace lawyers had arranged the proper visas, which indicated that the two would be in that city for no more than three months. The Mistress thought it would require only two months to do this assignment. Before they left the island the night before, at 8 pm, they had spent a busy two days being expertly groomed and clothed to play the part of two wealthy women from America.

Both had stood for hours in the wardrobe room of the Palace being fitted for a closet full of designer gowns, expensive shoes, undergarments, and sleepwear. A small fortune in jewelry would accompany them. They would travel first class, with much of their luggage coming on another plane. They had a two-bedroom suite at Claridge's for the duration of their stay.

They touched down at Heathrow, trying to maintain a low profile by shielding their natural allure behind the look of two well-dressed travelers. They hopped into a cab, while eyeing the lowering skies, which promised to ruin their hair and expensive clothes.