Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

I was stunned. It took me a while to realize that he had been doing a mating display. And by the heat in my face, by the burning between my legs, by that odd sensation in my stomach that was part nausea and part longing, I know I had responded to it as he had meant.

There was a sudden odd clatter above me as the birders descended the iron stairs. I reached out to one of the railings. Cold iron, I thought. Proof against fairies. I tore off my glove, touched the icy metal. But it did nothing to banish the picture in my head of that glorious creature—man, bird, whatever. It did nothing to discourage the flush on my face, the weakness in my groin.

“We’re going for coffee,” Lewis told me, “You can go on to the hospital. Dave will get me home.” And they walked on by me without another word, going down the path, leaving me to follow as best I could with shaky knees and a head full of odd ideas.

I did not go out birding with Lewis the next morning before hospital rounds because I did not dare. And, quite frankly, because I thought it would mean being disloyal to Lewis. I had spent the night dreaming of the bird man, the hawk king. I had even fantasized about him while Lewis and I made love. Normally I just kept my eyes open and watched Lewis who goes through the mechanics of love-making with his eyes closed, without a single change on his beautiful face. This time I closed my eyes—not that Lewis would have noticed the difference—and fancied he had wings and feathers on his chest. It made my breath come quicker, and I climaxed as soon as he entered me, which was unusual enough for him to open his eyes and say, “Something’s different.” Lewis likes things to be the same.

“Pre-menstrual,” I said.

“Oh,” he answered. And that was all.

He went off birding with his friends and I lay in bed thinking about nothing. Or trying to think about nothing. Burying my face in the feather pillow. Trying to remember if any of my close relatives had recently gone mad. Then I got up, took a long, leisurely shower, and dried myself in front of the window. Not that anyone could see me. The bathroom overlooked an old abandoned tobacco field. The house was surrounded by trees.

I saw many specks in the sky, some easy to identify, some too far away for casual naming. But nothing that fell to earth like a feathered star.

So I put on my terry-cloth robe and made myself a cup of coffee, went out onto the deck to drink it, though the morning was even colder than it had been the day before. I was hoping, you see, for something. I was trying to keep alive the belief that I was not crazy. I was afire, giving off signals I suppose. Pheromones, they’re called. I put my head back and tried to imitate the sound the hawk man had made right before diving to earth. “Kreeeeeeee!” I cried. But I was embarrassed to call out very loudly even though the nearest house was about a quarter mile away. “Kreeeeee!”

I turned to go back into the house when I heard something above me, looked up, and saw the speck, my feathered hallucination, falling out of the sky to my feet. I opened my arms to him and, without more foreplay than that, he embraced me with his wings, the shafts scraping my back, and then thrust himself in me. First from the front, a hot searing pinning, leaving me still weak with desire. Then he turned me around, pushed my robe up, and mounted me from behind. The feathers of his breast emblazoned themselves on my back, sticking into the raw scrapings his wings had made. I felt the pain and yet it was sweet, too, as if I were growing wings.

Then he lay me down on the cold boards and did it twice more, front and back, and I was hot and wet with him and cried, a sound more like the call of a loon than a hawk, throaty and low. He gave me love bites on the neck and shoulder and buttocks.

Then he stood, shook himself all over, pumped his wings, which covered me with wind, and fled into the sky with that defiant, triumphant cry.

I lay on my back, my robe half around my waist, till I shivered with the cold. When I got up at last, I found a feather he had dropped on the deck. Whether it was from our love making or after, when he had gave that odd shaking, I didn’t know. I held the feather so tight, the shaft made a mark on my palm.

I went back inside and took another long shower, called in sick to the hospital, and went to bed. I dreamed the hawk man fucked me over and over and over, and as I dreamed, I ran the feather across my breasts and over my stomach and between my legs. The dreams were so real, I had an orgasm each time.

When Lewis came home, he didn’t seem to notice anything, not my flushed face, not the marks on my back and neck and arms. He heard me when I said I thought I was pregnant. He insisted he wanted to marry me. He did not understand when I moved out.