Mistress of Siren Cove

Chapter 5: The Mistress

Miriam walked a few paces into the room, and Elysia followed her. It was a large room, and at the far end, a table and two chairs were arranged as a dining area. The lighting was dim where she was standing. At the other end, more light was provided by a large fireplace. A tall woman stood at that end, silhouetted by the fire, with her back turned toward Elysia.

"Elysia Palmara, Mistress," Miriam announced in a quiet voice.

Without turning around, the woman said, "Thank you, Miriam. You may go."

Miriam gave Elysia a final warning look and left the room, closing the doors after her.

The woman turned around and said, "Come to me, daughter."

The voice, despite Elysia's fears to the contrary, was warm and welcoming. She walked slowly towards the Mistress, now curious to know this formidable woman, who could seemingly inspire such fear and awe. She had been warned about this moment and told that questions were unwelcome. So, when she reached the Mistress, she inclined her head slightly, as she was taught by Miriam, raised her head again, and stood silently, her gaze locked on those of the woman before her.

The Mistress's black hair was neatly weaved around her head. Her eyes were large and blue and were outlined in blues, blacks, and violets, which enhanced their size. These eyes held Elysia motionless and seemed like they could look right through her. The woman's gaze was kind but had an intensity that suggested she was accustomed to being obeyed. Elysia had never seen a face like this — a face of someone who was truly powerful. She had met senior partners in her firm, and they were indeed powerful and rich, but this was something different. It was a person who's very being spoke of power.

The Mistress wore a draped gown of diaphanous fabric that glistened as she moved. Her large, intricately designed necklace was white gold and sapphires. Sapphire rings also adorned her long fingers. Diamond-encrusted pendants fell from her ears, and diamond bracelets sparkled on her wrists. Elysia could not gauge her age, but it did not appear to be more than forty.

The Mistress spoke only one quiet word to Elysia, "Daughter," and then embraced Elysia. Elysia thought she felt the Mistress sobbing quietly as her embrace of Elysia tightened. Elysia said nothing, but the sound of the weeping woman brought tears to her own eyes.

After a time, the Mistress released her and asked, "Do you know why you are here, Elysia?"

Elysia's response was a whisper, "No, I don't."

A warm smile softened the woman's face, as if she had anticipated this response. "Of course you do not. How could you? You are special, Elysia. The only reason for my people to take your sailboat was to bring you here, to this island, and to me. Did you know that?"

"Yes, Antoinette told me, but I... I'm sorry, I don't understand," Elysia said.

"What do you not understand, child?" the woman probed gently.

"Why I'm special, why you brought me here, and why you called me daughter."

"All in due time, Elysia. You will understand everything soon," the woman assured her with a confidence that was somewhat comforting.

With a gesture, she signaled to a woman who stood in the shadows against the wall. The woman nodded and stepped back, disappearing as quietly as she had stood.

"Let us have breakfast together," the woman said, gesturing for Elysia to sit at the small table.

"Yes, ma'am," said Elysia.

As they sat at the table, the Mistress, with a certain formality, instructed Elysia, "You must address me as Mistress." She wasn't harsh, but her tone was one that did not permit any question.

"Yes, Mistress," said Elysia, feeling uncomfortable with a form of address more suited to another time when the kind of informality of speech used in the United States would have been unheard of.

They sat down to a meal that was simple but delicious and presented as a thing of beauty. The grilled scallops were fresh from the sea, the toast made from freshly baked bread, the poached eggs gathered from the coops that morning, and the coffee brewed from freshly ground beans.

As they ate, the Mistress asked questions in a light conversational way but showed great interest in Elysia's answers. Surprisingly, the Mistress already knew much about her, and the answers Elysia gave often only seemed to confirm what she already knew.

"Tell me, Elysia, what do you know of your birth mother? I understand that you were orphaned at the age of three."

Elysia's response was tinged with a hint of sadness. "I know nothing. My real mom and dad died in a car accident. I was adopted six months later."

"And you remember nothing at all?"

"Really, only some images. I think my mother had blond hair. When I bring her to mind, I get a good feeling about her. I believe that she loved me very much."

Then Elysia spoke of her adopted parents with both love and admiration. "They weren't wealthy or anything, but they made a good home for me. They valued learning, and the kind of education they had never received. They sacrificed a lot to send me to a good college and then law school."

"Did they ever speak of your birth mother?"

"No," Elysia replied. "They never met my parents. After they died, nobody could find any of my relatives, and I was immediately put up for adoption. Luckily, my mom and dad met me in the orphanage, wanted me, and I was placed with them a month or two later. I was one of the lucky ones."

The conversation turned to Andrew and his place in Elysia's life. Elysia explained how he was a client of the law firm where she had her first job. He had told Elysia that he had fallen in love with her at first sight. For Elysia, it took longer, but it was hard to resist such a handsome man who clearly adored her.

The Mistress listened to this carefully, and then nodded to herself with a smile of satisfaction.

"Tell me, Elysia, what happened when you turned sixteen?"

Confused, Elysia asked, "Sixteen?"

"Yes, how did your life change when you turned sixteen? In fact, on your sixteenth birthday."

Elysia thought for a while. This woman already knew so much about her. So, something must have happened on that day. But what?

Then Elysia said with excitement, "That's the day I became pretty!"

"Explain, daughter."

Before answering, Elysia thought, "There it is again, 'daughter'."

"Well, up until I was sixteen, I was always tall and kind of awkward, and boys never asked me on dates. As soon as I turned sixteen, I mean the very day I turned sixteen, a cute boy from school, who had never even spoken to me before, saw me at the mall. He said, 'Hey, you're Elysia, right? Gee, you're so pretty, do you want to hang out with me and my friends?'"

"And then, lots of boys wanted to go out with me. Some boys even told me they loved me. It was amazing. I never understood it. I didn't wear different clothes or a different hairdo, nothing. It was like the story. One day I was an ugly duckling and the next a swan."

Now the Mistress was smiling and clearly pleased with this story. Elysia was more confused than ever. What did this all mean? What did her answers mean?

It was then that the Mistress revealed what would change Elysia's life. "You want to know why you were brought here, and you want to know why I have been asking you these questions. I am sorry to be mysterious, but I had to know for certain who you were and what you were."

"Elysia, the woman you believed to be your birth mother was not your mother," she said in a voice that was steady and carried the weight of truth. "She stole you from this island a few weeks after you were born, and with the help of her husband, took you to the United States, where she managed to falsify your birth records."

"Elysia, you are my daughter, whom I have been seeking for twenty years. You are also the rightful heir to this island and all the power that comes with it. The woman who stole you from this island was my sister."

Elysia looked at the Mistress, thinking that what she said could not be true. Yet the Mistress said it with complete sincerity, in a tone that left no room for doubt.

"As my daughter, you are also endowed with certain powers, a legacy that has been passed down through the women in our family. Not every daughter in our family acquires these powers, but most do. I suspected that you had the power but did not know until you told me about what happened to you at age 16. It is exactly on a girl's sixteenth birthday that the power reveals itself."

"What power?" asked Elysia, who was overwhelmed with shock and disbelief, and trying to understand what this woman was telling her.

"The power to attract and command men," replied the Mistress. "It is the power of the siren. It is this power that drew those boys to you when you turned sixteen, and I am certain you used it, unwittingly, to attract Andrew to you."

What the Mistress was saying was too much for Elysia, and she said, "Stop! Please, I don't understand this. How do you know I'm your daughter?"

"We thought you and my sister were dead. However, we did a private DNA search a few years ago and found you. You apparently ordered a DNA test several years ago. We had been looking for you for years, and I had given up, but one of my people suggested looking for a match to my DNA, without making my DNA public. It cost money, but we did it. You came up in the match as my daughter."

"We located you just as you were entering law school, and we have watched you since then. I liked the idea of you getting legal training, so we did not make contact until you finished school and had worked for a while. As we watched, we saw how you could easily attract men. We even put a man in your path who was familiar with our kind. You took him to bed, and he reported back on your lovemaking. From what he said, I was pretty sure you had inherited the power."

"I was not completely sure you had the power, however, until you told me about your sixteenth birthday experience. Your description of the blossoming of the power of the siren on that day confirms my belief."

"You watched me? Why? If you knew I was your daughter, why not bring me immediately?"

"As I said, not all of our daughters have the power. Perhaps one in ten do not. We watched you to make sure you had it. If it became clear that you did not have the power, I would not have contacted you. On this island, you would be unhappy as a powerless woman. We treat those girls without the power well, but inevitably they see themselves as lesser, and unfortunately, some sirens can be cruel to them. My sister did not have the power, and I believe it motivated her to steal you from your crib and leave us. Perhaps she thought, when you came of age, she could use your power for herself. I do not know. Miriam, who you met, also does not have the power, but she is highly respected for her other gifts, and has made a good life for herself."

"But why bring Andrew?"

"Ours is a secret island, a secret place. We did not want to bring you back and have Andrew use his resources to search for you. Also, we will want to send you back into the world at times, and Andrew could compromise you by trying to meet with you."

"I was surprised when you got married. It presented a complication in getting you back to our island - in bringing you home. We might have prevented it and brought you back by yourself, but it happened so fast that by the time we could arrange something it was already done. So, when we brought you back, we had to bring your husband as well."

"What will happen to Andrew here?"

"He will be quite happy, I assure you, as are all the men on this island. Men are eager to please women with the power. You have nothing to compare it to, because the men you have been with have always been eager to please you, but haven't you talked to other women? Haven't you heard from them that the boys and men they join with rush through the act of lovemaking, seeking their own pleasure first, and often leaving their women unsatisfied?"

Elysia blushed and nodded in agreement.

"Has that ever been your experience with men?"

Blushing again, Elysia said, "No, my lovers have always been very attentive and seem to spend most of the time making sure I get what I need. I thought I was just lucky in my men."

"No, my daughter. You were using your power. As you make love, a man will pick up on even your unspoken thoughts of what you want from them, and they will be eager to please you. Some of us will take pleasure from a man for hours and not permit the man to have his own release. This is cruel, and our daughters are taught not to do it. Even so, such a man will be eager to come to the woman's bed again."

"So, Andrew will stay here, pleasing women?"

"Of course, daughter. And he will be very happy. But the men work here as well, as we all do. Andrew will stay with us and will teach tennis. I have had a report of his night, and I am told he is quite happy. He was with Antoinette again all night, but perhaps tonight he will be with someone else. He misses you, and you will see each other again, but for now, he is a happy man."

"Antoinette used the power to seduce him on the sailboat, then. When I found out they had been with each other, I wanted to kill her, and I wanted to kill Andrew."

"Be at peace, daughter. It was neither of their faults. I ordered Antoinette to lure Andrew into lovemaking, and he had no choice but to obey her. I hoped that by gaining Andrew's complete trust, that you would be less afraid. And, through Antoinette, I sought to bind Andrew to this island, so that he would make no attempt to escape. I cannot permit Andrew to return to his home."

Elysia thought about what she had learned this morning and found that it saddened her. "So, Andrew never loved me?" Andrew was handsome and rich, but what Elysia prized about him most of all was his attentiveness to her, and she believed that this was because he loved her.

The Mistress looked at her with sad sympathy. "For those with our power, it is very difficult to know. In your world, you know that very rich men or women often wonder, even agonize, over whether a person loves them for themselves or their money. It is the same with us. He does love you, child, but on this island, he will also love the other women because of the power they possess. That is what our power does; it makes them see us as more beautiful than we are, kinder than we are, more loving than we are. It makes them think that we are all they want and need in a woman. With that power, we bind them to us. You might say we enthrall them."

"But why take our sailboat? Why take Andrew at all?"

"And would you have come? Would you have left him, based on the word of an unknown woman coming to your door and telling you the story I did?"

"No, I guess not."

"It was necessary to bring you here, with your husband, knowing that he could not return. We had to find a plausible reason for his disappearance. As far as the outside world is concerned, the sailboat disappeared one night and is presumed sunk. The sailboat has already been destroyed by our people, and we have a plan for you to be the only survivor. I want you to return to the United States to tell the story."

"That is enough for this morning.

"One more thing," said Elysia. "Should I call you mother or Mistress?"

"In private, like this, it would please me if you call me mother. In the presence of others, it will always be Mistress. Also, only a few people know that I am your mother, and for now, I want it kept secret. Miriam knows."

"Now, I want you to prepare to return to the United States and tell them how Andrew died. Can you do that? And will you promise to return?"

Elysia thought about this. She thought about her newfound mother, a powerful woman who she believed she could learn to love someday. She thought of her newly discovered powers, and how little she knew of them, and how much she might learn here. She thought of herself as the heir to this island and the power it contained that her mother had hinted at.

"Yes, mother, I will return. I want to know who I am and what I can do. And, I want to know you, my beautiful mother."

The Mistress hugged her and smiled. "Go, my daughter, and return to me quickly. Oh, and Antoinette will be helping to arrange your return and will instruct you further. You must make peace with her. She is very smart, and you will need her help. Remember, everything she did was based on my instructions. If you must be mad at someone, be mad at me. I am used to people on this island being angry with me."

The Mistress rang a bell to summon Miriam, and while they were waiting, she hugged her daughter, and said, "You were my only child, Elysia. I did not even give you your name. When she took you, it left a hole in my spirit that nothing could fill."

Elysia looked at her and saw the tears in her eyes. "I'm here now, mother, and I hope we can make up for all of those lost years."

TheMistress did not speak again, but just nodded to Elysia, while blinking awaythe tears. To her daughter, it appeared that many veils had fallen from her,and she saw the woman, not the ruler. Miriam came in, and with a final look ather mother, Elysia left the room.