It was barely noticeable from the glass-walled rooms overlooking the lagoon, but the weather was dreadful at sea. A raging, rain-laden wind swept the terraces and even the sheltered paths set back in the bowers. Rounding a corner in a hallway, I ran into one of Laurencais' young assistants, and asked after the master of the house. She bade me follow her down a narrow spiral staircase of white concrete. I recalled Laurencais' invitation to visit the grotto, which I hadn't given further thought to taking him up on… Come to think of it, hadn't he told me he was hardly ever down there? Why tonight then, while a bevy of celebrities cracked open the champagne without him?
The young woman bowed and stepped gracefully aside to let me pass. I stepped into the green light that bathed the grotto. I found it childlike in spirit and Hollywood in its actuality. Surely the austere Benito Guardicci had never had a hand in this. Still, it was pleasant: the womb we should never have left, the ideal lap to lay our head in and fall asleep on returning from a terrifying adventure in the world.
Laurencais called out to me. I spotted him, haloed at the far end of a golden beach that gently sloped down to the emerald water. He seemed to take a long time reaching me, though the distance between us couldn't have been more than sixty yards or so.
"Hello! Have you made up your mind?"
"I wanted to thank you for The Odyssey. A princely gift! I have a few misgivings-not about accepting it, but owning it. These things are really only safe in museums or major libraries."
"Bah! If your apartment catches fire, that book is probably the first thing you'll try and save. In any case, I'm happy you like it."
I jerked my head, indicating the grotto. "I should've come earlier. It's a stunning place."
"I'm not sure it's in good taste, but I wanted it. You can adjust the lighting to suit your mood, like in a theatre."
"Ligeia's not here?"
"No. I'm worried, I'll admit. As always, at spring tide-she goes out, see? She can't help it, she has to go back…"
"Where? This entire island is yours, and we're-how many miles did you say, the other day? Eleven hundred nautical miles from settled land?"
Laurencais shook his head. "I see I'm either going to have to tell you everyt ing, or keep my mout s ut.
"Is this about-"
"Yes. The story. Let's go back to the past. A short hop: twenty years. Picture me twenty years younger, stronger, more adventurous… but already rich enough to be offered certain experiences exclusive to a handful of individuals for whom money no longer has any reality. This time it's not about sex, but rather sport. I can still picture the man who contacted me. He was a sailor, a Chilean. He died later, of delirium. He was possessed-but that doesn't matter. This man said: `I hear you're a fisherman, Senor Laurencais…' As a matter of fact, I went deep-sea fishing at the time. `I'm offering you a fishing trip the likes of which you've never seen. This is an opportunity not to be missed, senor! It might be the last time…' I shrugged. I'd hunted every creature of the sea, even whales! But the good man smiled in commiseration, his eyes agleam: he had a billionaire on the hook. `Senor, there is a creature you've never caught before-the one I'm bringing you! Of course it'll cost you a great deal, but only if you're satisfied…' I'll spare you the negotiations and the details. Finally the Chilean convinced me."
"What was he talking about?"
"I thought you'd understood. Sirens!" sighed Laurencais, turning his gaze on the unruffled green surface of the waters.
"So Ligeia-"
"I caught her twenty years ago, a few miles from here, on the reef." Laurencais' voice grew soft. "I'd never seen death so close-up before. Siren-fishing is no doubt the most dangerous sport in the world. I know a few others-very few, over the years-did it before me, and maybe even a few after. You're in a tiny boat, deliberately hurling yourself at the shoals. That's where you'll find them by night, at spring tide. It seems a nightmare now, twenty years later. The roar of the waves, the howling wind, the foam on the jagged rocks, those pale bodies glimpsed in the dancing flashlight beams, and in the space between two breakers, when the storm was catching its breath, their song-
"Their song?"
"Of course! Have you forgotten your Homer? My present will refresh your memory. But the aoidos was mistaken, like every poet who's tried to write about mermaids. Their song isn't meant to draw men, but males of their species, undines. They're the wanderers; the sirens never stray from their shoals. How many still exist on our planet today? Our wars have decimated them, our waste poisoned them, and we hadn't even the slightest suspicion. In a house that's been bombed to bits, roaches in the basement, mice in the attic, or even crickets by the hearth aren't counted among the casualties. It seems the nomadic undines were at once less numerous and more exposed than their mates. Their fraught mating habits couldn't have helped the species survive, either. They reproduced at spring tide, between sheets of foam, on half-exposed reefs, in an often fatal love-drunk rapture. When I came from the open sea with the Chilean and his crew, we surged up with our nets in hand right in the midst of this conjugal trance. It all went very fast. A terrified creature rolled into our legs. We threw a net over her blindly. A breaker swept someone away. The Chilean gave the signal to depart. There was no question of turning back. Our only chance at survival consisted of clearing the reef and landing on this island. It would've been as deserted and hostile as on the first day of creation if I hadn't set up a base there in advance. We reached land and made it to camp, by what miracle I'll never know. More dead than alive, we examined the siren by floodlight. She was a young girl, wounded; she'd broken her leg trying to flee. While Chilean and his men patted one another on the back for having made it through alive-and rich, for they'd earned their bonus-our catch seemed so pitiful to me that I was crushed with shame. This was the result of my money and passion: this pain, this terror! Aware at first glance of the gravity of my error, I decided to turn my guilt into responsibility. I'd torn this creature from her world; I had no choice but to help her while waiting for a chance to send her back. So-you see!"
Laurencais spread his arms, as though to take in not only the grotto but, beyond its walls, the entire complex he'd built on the island.
"All for her?"
"How could I take her away from the reef? Confront her with our world, with curiosity of every stripe-government, scientists, the media-how? Never! So I built this refuge for her. But I'm getting ahead of myself. My initial intention had been to heal her, then bring her back to the reef by helicopter in calm weather. The time it took her to heal decreed otherwise. She was too young, too impressionable, too close to us… in a few months she'd grown too human. When I realized it was impossible to throw her back in the sea like a fish, I bought this island and converted it to suit her needs. She can neither live fully there nor here… and it's my fault."
"You said she'd gone human. Are you sure? She feels so distant, aloof…"
Laurencais gazed at me ironically. "What would you have her be, a flirt? For her, humanity consists of me and two or three other people who looked after her the first few years. Her emotional vocabulary stopped developing long ago."
"So…?"
"So she watches out for undines at spring tide. She sings in the whirlpools to call them, like her sisters. And I'm terrified a wave will knock her senseless."