“This isn’t the paper I e-mailed you!” Portia had waited until after class to clear up the confusion with Mr. Morrison. A “B-” certainly wasn’t going to cut it for her. And his comments:
“A most lackluster effort, Portia. I expect more of you…”
His bold writing and the red ink had infuriated her. She had officially gone crazy trying to compile a reasonable paper about the three sisters. Never mind that Homer never specified who exactly the Sirens in
The Odyssey
were. After the virtual barrage of information that had assaulted her, Portia was convinced that Homer could only have been writing about the sisters Parthenope, Ligeia, and Leto.
But what exactly were her sources? The few times she had tried revisiting the storytelling sites or the iTunes gift from Marsyas, she found herself lost in the virtual beyond. She had even tried inviting Marsyas back in for a video chat, but his name had disappeared from her buddy list. Finally she had decided to invent a few of her own “sources” for footnoting. The least she deserved was an A for effort.
But when she started rereading what she had written, she realized that this was not the paper she had launched into cyberspace to land safely in Mr. Morrison’s inbox. And yes, whosever paper this was, it was lackluster.
Portia had asked Ellen Chadwicke to stay behind to help her converse with the teacher.
“These are not my words. I did not write this paper.” She signed out the words and was impressed when Ms. Chadwicke vocalized them with the same measure of rage that she was feeling. “My paper was about the sisters, you know? Parthenope, Ligeia, Leto…” This stumped the sign language interpreter a bit as she tried to do justice to the strange names Portia was spelling out.
“What sisters?” Mr. Morrison asked. “You see, that’s the problem with you kids today—you probably used some crazy web source or a bog—”
“Blog,” Ms. Chadwicke corrected him.
“Whatever, and read something that you decided had to be true, simply because it was posted on the Internet. It’s lucky that that was not the paper you handed in or else you probably would have gotten an F. Now, I know you’re a solid student, Portia. A ‘B-’ is hard for you to accept. But maybe for your next essay you’ll try a little harder.”
“Yeah, well, maybe for my next essay you won’t be such an asshole.” She signed the words, fueled by the rage that had been coursing through her veins with greater frequency these past days.
Ms. Chadwicke did a double take, but recovered herself quickly. “OK, thanks. I’ll try harder next time,” she offered the teacher, glaring at Portia.
“Whatever,” Portia signed out and stormed away.
She had an inexhaustible headache. What was she supposed to do? Start telling her teacher and the sign language interpreter that someone, something had been virtually messing with her on such a grand scale that the best case scenario would be that it was just some freak cyberbully who was getting his or her jollies by making her squirm. The worst-case scenario, and the more likely, she feared, was that she was completely losing her mind.
And so the charade continued. It was one thing to have to hide her voice from everyone, but keeping her nervous breakdown under wraps was causing her to literally be physically ill. The only relief for her these past couple of days were the moments spent with Max.
When he returned from seeing his father, Max had headed straight for the Griffin house. Portia was relieved that her father was away on business—when it came to boys, Joshua was old-fashioned, to say the least, and had a strict ‘no boys in the bedroom’ policy. But Helena was instantly charmed by Max’s swag and feigned a sudden desperate craving for a sugar-free vanilla latte at Starbucks, despite the late hour.
Portia ushered Max into her father’s library. She had always loved the hunter green walls and overstuffed leather chair and a half. The room was a cozy sanctuary that she hoped read as “let’s snuggle” and not as “let’s get it on.”
Max collapsed into the chair and perched his legs up on the ottoman, stretching his neck from side to side, releasing an audible crack in both directions. He was so tightly wound that Portia was unsure how to approach him. But then he reached for her hand and drew her into his lap, where she instinctively curled up, resting her head on his chest, enjoying the thrumming of his heartbeat.
“It was bad,” he offered.
She looked up at him expectantly, afraid to push.
“It was really bad,” he repeated, “My dad, he just—” He had been stroking her cheek while he tried to get the words out. She placed her fingers over his, stilling them on her skin, tilting her chin up to meet his gaze.
“He, um…you know, I forgot what I was going to say…”
“I’m sorry,” she mouthed.
But he interrupted her with a gentle brush of his lips, first on her forehead, then her eyelids. And finally down to her lips, where he lingered, unhurried, like he had just tasted the most wonderful dessert on earth and wanted to savor it forever.
“Better than I even imagined,” he mumbled when at last he pulled away.
Portia responded with a crush of her lips. She was as shocked as he was by the sudden gesture, but once she had initiated, there was no backing down. He pulled her face into his hands and poured every bit of stress and frustration into that kiss. His hands traveled down her back, drawing her further into him until they were welded together by their own heat.
She wished he would take it further. Her body ached to be touched, to be kissed by those lips that had sung so sweetly to her, about her. The more lost she became in his touch, the more distant were the events of the last few weeks, the feeling that she had been going crazy. She brought him even closer, placing his hands around her waist, willing them to travel north underneath her shirt.
At the touch of her bare skin, he recoiled and reluctantly pried his lips from hers.
“What?” she mouthed, embarrassed. She could feel her face turning red and realized that this was that after-kiss awkwardness she had always dreaded.
“I, um, I won’t be able to stop, Portia. I want you—” he choked out while caressing her hair, inhaling deeply as his mouth skimmed the base of her throat “—so much that I won’t be able to stop.”
They held each other’s eyes, each unsure of where to go with this revelation until Max finally eased her away gently.
“I should go.”
She nodded, confused but relieved. She got up to walk him to the door, but he politely refused.
“I can show myself out. That whole, um, wanting you thing? No need to prolong it, right? Need me some cool-down time, you know what I’m sayin’?”
The urban rhetoric procured a smile from her, and he hurriedly pecked her on the cheek and headed out.
After he left, Portia realized that she needed herself some cool-down time, too. Her body was suddenly speaking a foreign language, exotic and sultry. Her brain needed some time to translate.
When she came down a bit, she realized that she had never found out what was going on with Max’s father. She tried making up for it by asking him about it over the next couple of days. But they had already gotten a taste of each other and were in that place where conversation just seemed an awful waste of time. The air around them was so charged that she wondered if her friends could pick up on it.
Certainly the white bird creature who had become an expected visitor to her sleep had caught wind of it. Her dreams had become a melee of horror and erotica, awakening her in a cold sweat that was not altogether unpleasant.
So why was she still so easily pissed off all the time? Was it the sleep deprivation? The new awkwardness with Felix?
I mean, calling a teacher an asshole?
Portia made a mental note to thank Ellen Chadwicke for saving her as she entered Mr. Rathi’s classroom. Max’s left dimple did the flexing thing when she walked in, and she sat herself down next to him.
Throughout class they coiled and recoiled their pinkies around each other’s, enjoying the feel of each other’s touch, until Rathi caught on and asked Portia to move her seat so that she could, “um, focus.”
Once she was reseated away from Max, her exhaustion caught up with her. As Rathi droned on about Eleanor Rigby, she laid her head down on her desk, praying that if she drifted off to sleep and dreamt of Max, she wouldn’t cry aloud and betray the secret that had been unraveling her, thread by silken thread…
Leucosia felt like she was walking a tightrope.
How could she have been so foolish?
When she met with her father just a few short weeks ago, she was so confident that everything was moving along remarkably well. She had reported to him the many details of her charge’s seamless transition into womanhood and, more importantly, Sirenhood.
Since that first day of school, Portia had not been back to her office with any more coughing fits, leading Leucosia to believe that the young Goddess’s syrinx had finally finished developing.
Leucosia felt blessed knowing that she and her kind possessed both the larynx and the syrinx, the combination of which produced a voice unparalleled by Gods or mortals. The slow development of Portia’s syrinx seemed to have finally capped off. The seasoned Goddess wished that the final stages of Portia’s vocal development had not been so frightening, but that sense of overcrowding in the throat was inevitable with this particular anatomical development. And now that everything appeared to be settled into its place, Leucosia looked forward to hearing Portia’s glorious voice very soon.
She had assumed that all was continuing to progress according to plan, especially when she caught Portia considering the audition for the school musical. And then Mr. Rathi had sent Portia to her office on Monday with a note that he was concerned for the girl. Apparently she had fallen asleep during class, and the teacher wanted to make sure she was all right, considering that she was usually one of his most engaged students.
“I haven’t been getting much sleep,” Portia casually signed out to the concerned nurse. Leucosia’s hair stood on end as Portia’s hands explained the reason for her lack of sleep.
“I’ve been having crazy nightmares. It’s like this giant white bird creature is trying to get me to lower myself into some kind of evil abyss. I mean, most girls my age are dreaming about RPats—” she took in Leucosia’s confused expression. “That’s short for Robert Pattinson.”
Leucosia tried to offer a look of understanding, but at the mention of the white bird, the blood must have drained out of her face.
“Are you OK, Ms. L?”
“Yes, yes. Sorry, dear. Can you tell me more about these dreams you’ve been having?”
“I’m so tired,” signed Portia. “Do you think I could rest first, before we get all Freudian?”
Leucosia forced a smile and said, “Of course, dear. Why don’t you lie down and close your eyes for a bit. I have to organize the results of my lice tests anyway—my least favorite part of the job…”
The nurse shuffled some papers around on her desk, humming distractedly and pretending to look busy while Portia let her muscles relax on the paper that covered the vinyl gurney.
Portia’s lids grew heavy as the sound of Ms. Leucosia’s sweet voice engulfed her, ushering her into the world of dreams.
♪
Once Portia fell asleep, Leucosia shot out a quick text message to the great God Morpheus, ruler of dreams. She’d been smart to gift Morpheus an iPhone for his recent birthday and considered Face Timing him but wasn’t sure if the God had yet mastered this new mode of communication. With all of his omnipotence, Morpheus still fell into the “technologically challenged” category.
“Morpheus,” she wrote, “It is emergent that I gain immediate access into the dream of my young charge, Portia Griffin.”
In a flash his response came back. “Close your eyes, dear Leucosia,” and then a winking emoticon. Wow, he really had come a long way, Leucosia thought. Next stop, Siri—although Leucosia still maintained that Siri was really just a code name for her oldest and wisest friend, Athena.
The Goddess continued to hum, lulling herself into a trancelike state, allowing her spirit to be carried away by Morpheus, who had often visited her own dreams once upon a time.
An invader of Portia’s privacy, she trespassed gently onto the set of Portia’s dream. She was not surprised that the first person she saw was Max Hunter, a guitar slung lazily around his shoulder. The boy really was alarmingly good looking.
He seemed to be lost.
“Portia? Where did you go?” He was standing in an open meadow.
Portia suddenly appeared. Or at least her seductively altered twin appeared.
“What happened to you, Portia?” Max questioned her.
The young girl’s eyes were heavily outlined in black, emblazoning the blue of her irises. And the black shirt she wore ended abruptly, revealing a good two inches of flat, tanned torso above her abbreviated denim shorts.
“Hi, Max.” Her voice was splendid.
He looked at her in shock.
“What—a girl can’t dress up once in a while?”
Max stumbled over his words. “Portia, I thought you couldn’t speak.”
“Oh, that,” she replied as she moved in closer to him. “I forgot to mention to you that I recently picked up a little something I like to call ‘a voice.’ ”
She was standing right in front of him, moving in closer, pressing herself up against him. Max tried pushing her away, and Leucosia admired his resolve.
“Max, there’s no sense in trying to resist me.” She sidled back over to him, trapping him in the force field of her seduction. “You can’t even imagine the powers my voice has.”
“What are you talking about, Portia? What powers?”
“My voice, Max. It came on one day like a volcano that had finally erupted. At first it was like it belonged to somebody else—like a force of nature had taken over my body. But then my brain caught on, you know? It was mine—this voice, this power was actually mine. And, well,” Portia giggled, “the next thing I knew, I was leading Charlotte’s father to his death. That bastard deserves to die. But I spared him. At the last minute, I spared him. But he knows. He will forever know that my voice can destroy him. It can destroy anyone.”
Leucosia was just as shocked at this revelation as Max was.
Portia reached for the guitar, easing it from Max’s shoulder.
“Portia, this doesn’t make any sense.” The boy’s confusion was pitiable.
Portia placed a finger over her painted red lips.
“Shh. You won’t want to miss this,” she assured him.
She started experimenting with the strings of the Gibson, acclimating herself to the feel of the acoustic instrument.
“Have you ever been on a ride, Max? I’m not talking the London Eye. I’m talking like Kingda Ka. The kind of ride that makes you wonder why the hell you ever got on in the first place? The one that when they’re strapping you in, you want to say no, let me off, but then it’s just too late—the car’s already moving…”
She strummed the guitar.
“You can either cry and scream or just sit back, close your eyes, and enjoy it. We’re about to go on a ride, Max, you and me. So buckle up and decide now—are you gonna enjoy it?”
Max was too disconcerted to speak. He stared open-mouthed at this hyperbole of his girlfriend. She strummed the guitar more deliberately now and started to sing in a low throaty voice.
“Most have blood coursing through their veins,
But I’ve got fire and ice.
Hear me now and hear me plain,
You’re gonna need this advice.
I’m the one they warned you about,
The one who spreads like cancer.
Go ahead, baby, scream and shout.
You’ll never find the answer…”
Leucosia was stupefied by Portia’s voice. It was beyond what she ever imagined it could be—melodic, harmonious, dangerous. It was the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Janis Joplin rolled into one. And the lyrics? Where were they coming from?
“Well, I’m three parts devil, one part girl,
And there’s a heat that’s always mixed in.
Call me snake and I will crawl,
But best to call me Vixen…”
Leucosia pitied the young mortal as he became caught in the web of Portia’s song. He moved in closer to her, drawn in by the glorious sound.
“And you can try to run away,
And you can try to fight it.
I’m that dragon you must slay,
Come on, I dare you, try it…”
He leaned into Portia’s face, the venom of her words poisoning his blood. His face held the longing of a man stranded in a desert and suddenly finding himself before an oasis of cool waters.
“What you can’t know, will never see,
Is that there is no choice.
First blood’s been drawn, there’s only me,
And the blade that is my voice…”
His breathing grew heavier, and his hands migrated around to Portia’s front, caressing her every curve.
“PARTHENOPE! LIGEIA! MAKE YOURSELVES KNOWN UNTO ME NOW!” Leucosia screamed.
“I’m three parts devil, one part girl,
And there’s a heat that’s always mixed in.
Call me snake and I will crawl,
But best to call me Vixen…”
Max was on his knees, running his hands up and down the length of Portia’s legs. He placed his head on her concave belly as she abandoned the guitar and wove her fingertips through the gloss of his hair.
Leucosia could hear familiar laughter in the background.
“In the name of the Almighty Zeus, I beseech you, my sisters, to show your face unto me!” Though she wanted desperately to wake Portia from the dream, she felt compelled to confront the spirits of her sisters, who were surely guiding the innocent ingénue down this dangerous path.
“Ahh, sweetest Leucosia,” a familiar voice suddenly said, “it has been many years since upon your lovely face we have laid our weary eyes.”
Parthenope then appeared to Leucosia, resplendent as ever, her face unchanged from the days of her youth. She was flying above Portia and Max, who were lost in the throes of their sexual frenzy.
“You think you’ve lived? Have drawn true breath?
Have tasted all the flavors?
Well, I’m dessert. I’m crystal meth.
The one to grant you favors…”
With each word the girl sang, Parthenope laughed even louder.
“Ligeia,” Parthenope called out to her younger sister, “come show your face to us, for Leucosia beckons us now into the dream of her blessed descendant, Portia.”
Suddenly Ligeia appeared as well. Leucosia was not surprised to see that her other sister had also not aged, her beauty as ethereal as ever.
“And you can try to get clean,
To rehabilitate,
But off of me you’ll never wean.
You’re a junkie, it’s too late…”
Max’s moves grew frenzied and fevered. His grip on Portia’s hips was firmer as he pulled her closer to him.
Leucosia produced her wings and swooped down, flying abruptly past Portia. She produced a swoosh of air that sent Portia reeling slightly. When she recovered herself, Leucosia could detect a sudden shift in Portia’s confidence as Max continued to lose control.
“Parthenope, Ligeia, I beseech you. Do not lead Portia down the destructive road upon which you have both traveled! Why must you persist in your evil ways?”
Ligeia addressed her sister’s question.
“Leucosia, do you dare to deny that you stole the love of our very mother for your own? You must have known that the day would come when you would pay for your crime.”
“I stole nothing, Ligeia. But even if as such you did believe, is it not enough that you killed Nereus before my very eyes?”
Ligeia and Parthenope laughed and joined hands, floating above the lurid scene intensifying between Portia and Max.
“Dear sisters,” continued Leucosia, “Portia Griffin is an innocent among the immortals, knowing not even the powers that are hers. I beg you, spare her from your evil clutches and allow her to use her powers for the pure and good purposes for which they were intended.”
“Cuz I’m three parts devil, one part girl,
And there’s a heat that’s always mixed in…”
Portia’s voice grew lovelier as tears of silver began to stream down the valleys of her face. She was trying to pry Max’s hands off of her, to stop him from pawing and disrespecting her, but she was powerless to stop singing, and he continued to grope her lustily.
Parthenope and Ligeia were circling above the youngsters, enjoying the tawdry spectacle. As they spun around and around, Leucosia maintained control, determined to remain civilized.
“Call me snake and I will crawl,
But best to call me Vixen…”
Portia became hysterical as Max tried to fumble with the belt that was holding up her skimpy shorts. She kept singing through her tears, the sultry words gushing forth from her mouth like waters from a broken dam. Max continued his advances, goaded on by her voice.
“Yes, you will call me Vixen…”
“SISTERS, I BEG YOU! SHE IS BUT A CHILD!”
Parthenope spoke then, relishing her own words.
“Dearest Leucosia, why should you fear so? We are but mere spirits in a dream. Surely we cannot do any real harm—though it is curious that even your beloved Morpheus cannot keep us out of Portia’s reveries, don’t you think?” The sisters snickered menacingly and dropped each other’s hands. “But no matter—did not even the great Penelope, wife to Odysseus say, ‘dreams are very curious and unaccountable things, and they do not by any means invariably come true’?”
Leucosia’s mistrust of the sisters grew even greater at their mention of Odysseus, the very mortal who sealed their fate. She opened her mouth to question them, but their flight grew even faster and in a flash they vanished.
As soon as they were gone, Portia stopped singing.
Max immediately fell back, a look of deep confusion running across face. He noticed Portia crying and moved toward her, gently extending his hand to brush her tears away.
“Don’t even think about touching her again.”