Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

He could have called me so many evil names, and chose Calypso. Calypso, the sea nymph, the lover. Calypso, who let Odysseus go his way at last. I bowed my head against my hand, leaning on the dressing table, and could not answer him. He stood gazing at me, unmoving, his sound right hand gripping the back of a chair, because he was still unsteady on his feet.

The silence was complete. One of the tapers guttered on the iron tine that held it, and I put it out by crushing its flame beneath two outstretched fingers. I held my hand still like that for a few moments, fingertips resting in hot wax, but did not flinch; as if somehow Medraut’s words were burning into me as well, through the quenched flame.

I folded my hands in my lap and raised my head.

“Well, I think we should bid one another goodnight, then.”

I stood up and began putting out the candles one by one, dousing all their flames between my fingers or beneath the palm of my hand, and then began killing the lights in the oil lamps with the same self-destructive vehemence.

Medraut said gently, “Godmother, you will hurt your hands,” and took them in his own, the hands I had crippled. “Now stop,” he said. “Just stop.”

I turned my face to his, and he let go of my hands.

“You truly mean to go.”

“I must,” he said.

I raised my hand, and he flinched. Still he flinched.

But all I did was to kiss the tips of my sootblackened fingertips and touch his lips with them.

“All right. Good night.”

“Goodbye.”

“Good night now, and goodbye in the morning.”

I do not understand why I should feel so betrayed and abandoned now that he has gone. Have I not sent him off to do my bidding, trained him in poison, tutored him in the art of fear? Have I have not twisted and torqued his stubborn loyalty to his father with a tormented loyalty to me: his father’s sister, his mother, his lover? I still dream of his hands.

Attachments Pat Murphy

MY BROTHER’S WIFE ADELAIDE pours me a glass of cider and smiles at me sadly. I love my brother’s wife, and that’s the problem.

The year is 1874 and I am sixty-three years old. I am playing chess with the learned Dr. Ruschenberger while my brother, at my side as always, tells dirty jokes to the doctor’s assistant. My brother’s laughter—braying, foolish laughter—rumbles against my side as I contemplate my next move. He calls to his beautiful wife for another glass of whiskey.

The doctor glances up from the chessboard and looks past me, frowning. “Your brother is drinking rather much,” he says very softly. My brother, who is laughing at another of his jokes, does not hear.

I continue studying the chessboard. “This is his house,” I say. “And he does as he chooses. He is certainly not willing to listen to advice from me.”

This is my brother’s house. His wife is pouring his whiskey. Two of his daughters are in the kitchen, washing the dinner dishes. His youngest sons are sitting on the porch, whittling and smoking. Just a few miles away, my wife Sarah Ann and my youngest children are in my house. In two days, my brother and I will go there and I will be master for a time. But now I am in my brother’s house and my brother is drinking more than he should.

Dr. Ruschenberger shakes his head. Many, many years ago, my brother and I visited the doctors at the Philadelphia College of Physicians, hoping that with their advanced surgical techniques they might sever the flesh that binds my brother and me together. We are linked at the chest by a band of flesh as thick and strong as a man’s arm. It is a living connection, warm and pulsing with blood. Cutting that link might have killed us—or might have left one dead and the other alive and separate. In the end, we did not try the experiment.

At the time, Dr. Ruschenberger was a young man, just learning his trade. He’s older now, as are we all. Every now and then, while traveling on business, he comes to visit us.

“Your brother is growing drunk, but you still seem quite sober,” Dr. Ruschenberger observed.

I nod. “His drinking does not affect me.”

“Strange.” He is gazing at my brother, who is telling another joke. “I’ve warned your brother that excess drink is harmful to him,” he says in a low voice. “That paralysis of his right side—the drinking aggravates that, does it not?”

I move a bishop. “Indeed it does. But telling him not to drink is like telling a fish not to swim.” I look up from the board and meet the doctor’s concerned eyes. “There is little point in trying.”

Perhaps, I think, my brother will drink himself into a stupor. That would be for the best. But I don’t tell the doctor my thoughts.

I look up from the chessboard to see Adelaide, sitting by the fire and working on her needlepoint. The firelight shines on her face and I remember the first time I saw her, many years ago.

“Which one do you want?” my brother asked me in Thai, jerking his head toward a pair of women who stood near the fiddle player. “The tall one or the short one?”