Free Photographic by K. D. Lovgren

devastated. 
    “In any case, ever since, even though we don’t see each other, or speak that much, we both know there’s a bond there between us. After he broke in front of me, after he mended it with me, it made something else of our connection on stage. No one could touch us. It was safe.” She smiled. “Funny.”
    “And you two were the ones who broke out.”
    “Huh. Yeah.”
    “I didn’t know about this. Sometimes the person you’re supposed to be closest to is such a cipher.”
    “It’s one of the things that makes me keep doing this job. You can do it forever, learn so much about people, and there’s always something more. There's always another mystery.”

 
     
     
     
    CHAPTER ELEVEN
     
    A S THE SHIP pulled closer to the sirens’ rock, Odysseus heard for the first time the intricacies of their song. The melody wended its way into his ears, distantly at first, the first whiff of a tantalizing yet unidentifiable scent, then more fully: before he could take breath he was drunk with it, his mind insensible, as if he’d downed five goatskins of the headiest wine. A thought coalesced, rising up from his solar plexus through his heart to his head, until his muscles strained and his veins pulsed in his forehead. He needed to leave the ship and get to her side. One voice, separate from the others, one who keened to him with a longing and promise he’d never experienced but now knew was his birthright. It was fate he should pass these rocks, that he should be the one so clear of mind and eye to know his right, of the unstoppered ears, to comprehend the meaning of the song for which so many had died in vain.
    The sirens told him of his past battles; their knowledge of the pain and joy of war. They told him of Troy, of the blood-washed plain where he suffered, where he triumphed. They knew what no one could know back at home. He would be alone in his memory of the best and worst of his life, if he continued his journey. Here they understood. Here was the glory of memory, of the fields where violence had taken so much away and yet given him his name.
    Those who had sacrificed themselves here made his conquest all the more magnificent; his love offer the more valuable. A man who could withstand the exquisite pike of harmonic torment thrust through the heart, approach the blue-tressed race without crushing himself or his craft in the out-spray at the foot of the waterfall where the siren lingered; that man would be lauded by the gods. Surely his reward would be of a nature equal to the danger of the quest. 
    Now, from his position lashed to the mast, he was close enough to not only hear but see his quarry: the men, ears plugged with wool, rowed on so as not to be dashed with their captain’s vessel against the rocks. 
    He reached out, muscles straining against thick rope, longing for the comfort and wildness of his lover's embrace. At last to be understood for what he was, a man who could never be captured but by desire: to be pressed by the angry passion of their sharp teeth, to be wrapped in their whip-like hair, consumed by the fire that burned within him, the consummation of his torture. His only release was in that other world, the borderland between earth and sea, the salty wet tangle, to love and be held until his fatal satisfaction. What if that last release were death? In their arms, he could perceive no room for final regret. He yearned purely. 
    To the sirens, he was a magnificent prize. One looked to the sea, for a ship that would never come. She did not cling to her rock, but rode it like a horse, as the waves washed her thighs. Her clutch of rocks were well out in the water, though they remained in the shallows at this ebb of tide. Half-blinded by the film over her eyes, she fixed her gaze on the point where he would come. Stretching out her arms she reached for him, opening her mouth in a fearful cry. It was a call no man had failed to heed. 
    The camera, twenty feet distant on its fixed ocean