The Siren's Tale Read Online Free Page A

the complexity of the character involved. Most commonly, the male will appear as a twin brother to a red-haired female and will have few, if any, special powers.
    I have never regretted denying Caesar our powerful cloak. That day, after he left, I checked to make sure that the cloak was safe in its hiding place, that an evil force pursuing him had not managed to spirit it away. I myself no longer used the invisibility cloak, and my daughter Chloe had refused to take it off my hands. My life, by that time, was exactly as I wanted it. I didn't desire to mesmerize or lure men into actions they would otherwise not take, or to pursue a sexual instinct that might lead to a man's untimely death. Indeed, by the time Caesar showed up, I was living an exemplary life that not even Widow Brown could have found fault with. I was using my powers solely for altruistic purposes. The most basic and harmless of a siren's powers, our eidetic memory, was the one I used most often. Perfect recall makes learning lines a swift operation. I can learn in a glance what it takes others days or weeks to memorize.
    Chloe has this same ability. She is a brilliant woman; I say so with total objectivity. My daughter is an erudite pioneer in Jungian scholarship and has published ten books that are translated into five languages. She travels and speaks world-wide on the arcane subjects of the collective unconscious and evolutionary psychology.
    Among the Zanelli sirens, however, I alone possess the rarest gift: second sight, as my name implies. Which is not to say I understand the pictures of the future that I see. LOL.
    Now, where did those cryptic letters come from? I have seen them in my dreams.
    LOL is code of some sort.
    Aha, a picture is forming; the date is December 21, 2012, thirty-six years from today. The Mayans have predicted the world will end on that date. But I know better. On that day, I see a red-haired young woman recording the three letters on a magical tablet. She will write them with a twiddle of her thumbs, if you can believe it.
    I was speaking at the outset of unintended consequences. Sirens are strong women with extraordinary skills. Many humans have paranormal gifts, if they only knew how to tap into them. There are often unintended consequences in the lives of strong women, human or siren, as they forge ahead rather than take the traditional passive role. Therefore, they make mistakes. Should they automatically be demonized and persecuted? I think not!
    Our siren brains are much li ke the tablet on which the siren of the future writes code. We receive more than we understand. For instance, the young woman's tablet appears to me to have magical powers. But in my dream, when I point that out to her, she laughs and says, “Oh, you're so funny, Cassandra. That's only my iPad.”
    Funny? Our family history might be construed as a comic tale, but by necessity it is also a dire one. Behind our history of accomplishment lurks the shadow of a punishing ancestral curse.
    Fortunately, Marlena is already half-convinced she is my reincarnation, as Faith’s daughter and I look so much alike, and therefore she might be ready at some point for a proper home schooling. A local nutcase in Alta, Wyoming, has put the reincarnation idea into her head. The idea is also firmly lodged in the noggins of Alta's religious half-wits. I foresee that these human grotesques may play into our hands one day when we need to stage a spectacle. Metaphysically speaking, I am dead but not gone, and with no help from the reincarnation camp. 
    Anyway, if I were to c ome back on earth as someone else, it would not be Mrs. Codwell Dimmer, whom I predict will separate from her husband in January and return to her maiden name of Marlena Mae Bellum. Granted, Marlena is witty and pretty and achieves much beyond human women of her age, already basking in the national limelight as a prominent architect and a promotional genius. But she is far from wise. And Marlena disappoints