Ellen Datlow - Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

Long afterward, Sir Florian thought that his ill-remembered visitor might have come from the direction of the lake, perhaps from behind its rampart of withered sedge. In the beginning, however, all he knew was that she was suddenly there, her silver hair hanging loose about her shoulders. She was clad in white—or so it seemed against the darkness of the night—and he might have taken her for a saint, had it not been for her wild eyes.

Even though the faery was more beautiful by far than any human woman he had ever seen, without the least trace of a pock-mark on either cheek, the innocent but armored Florian would have thought her good had it not been for the wildness in her eyes.

“What dost thou want with me, Lady Fair?” he asked, abridging the final word as half a hundred men had done before, without quite knowing why.

“I’d like a garland for my head,” she told him, as she had told half a hundred before, “and bracelets for my arms. Summer’s all but dead, and I must mourn her passing.”

For a precious moment, Sir Florian hesitated. The lady stood as still as still could be, and his eyes had never beheld anything so marvelous. He felt that if he turned aside from the vision he would never see anything so lovely in all his life—but a man in search of Christendom’s Grail is not in search of loveliness.

“I will not give thee anything,” the knight replied, with a catch in his throat. “I know what thou art by the hectic wildness of thine eyes.” Saying so—and with considerable effort of will—Sir Florian drew his sword and raised it up before him, so that the hilt and handguard were displayed in the sign of the holy cross.

To his consternation, the lady did not disappear. Nor did she move, for she had the art of lying still even when she stood erect. Had she only moved, the spell might have been broken, but she was as still as still could be and her beauty had all the force of sorcery. She waited for a moment before she replied: a moment sufficient to win the damnation of any ordinary man.

“If thou wishest to be rid of me,” she said, in the end, “thou hast only to banish me with a threefold conjuration. Do so, and thou wilt never see me again although thou livest a hundred years and more—but I must warn thee that if uncertainty should cause thee to falter or hesitate in mid-injunction, I shall have the power to trouble thy most secret dreams.”

Had Sir Florian been as true a knight as Parsifal or Galahad he would have called upon the name of God without delay, and pronounced the threefold curse as easily as any other feat of simple arithmetic, but he was what he was and the thought that sprang to the forefront of his mind was a question.

Can a man sin in his dreams?

Had the question been followed by an answer the knight might yet have been saved, but it was not. He did not know the answer. Whether his ignorance was folly or wisdom, he did not know the answer.

“In the name of the Lord,” he cried, “I banish thee! I banish thee! I… banish thee!”

When she vanished on the instant, neither recoiling from his curse nor turning on her heel, nor fading into the mists that dressed the shore of the lake, the knight almost believed that he had won. No sooner had the faery gone, however, than he felt an ache in his heart born of the knowledge that he would never see her like again should he live a hundred years and more—unless she came to him in a troublesome and secret dream.

Again the thought came into his mind: Can a man sin in his dreams?

Now, alas, he knew the answer. He knew it with a certainty that charmed and terrified him, in equal and by no means paradoxical parts.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci could work her wiles in the world of dreams as easily as any other. She preferred the world of mist and stars and mazy roads, but that was merely her whim. There were those among the faery folk even in those days who thought the empire of the earth far overrated, and not worth fighting for, but La Belle Dame Sans Merci was not among them. She loved the air and the dew, the light and the shadow which made her earthly form, despite that they were elements at war which would, in time, tear her raggedly apart.

She went to Sir Florian in his dreams that very night, as he had all-but-invited her to do with a moment’s hesitation in his speech. She bade him come to her, while she lay as still as still could be—stiller by far than any human woman could ever have contrived at any distance from the brink of death. She was as delicately pale as a wisp of frosty mist, but she had the gift of touch unspoiled by the contempt of familiarity. La Belle Dame Sans Merci touched the knight as lightly as the forefinger of fever, and set the fire of Purgatory alight throughout his kindling flesh.

Sir Florian gave her a garland for her head, woven from prettier flowers than ever grew in the earthly spring, perfumed more fragrantly than any musk of nature or artifice. He bound her hands and waist with vines and she thrilled to the binding, knowing that every circle was a fortress wall imprisoning his heart. He set her upon his horse so that they might ride together, both astride, so that the rhythm of the stallion’s gallop might carry them beyond the reach of any roads, to the jeweled infinity east of the sun and west of the moon and the quiet eternity beyond.

And so they rode, imprisoned both by the saddle and harness which contained them, borne by the power of a tireless mount, from the curving roads to the undulant hills and away into the airy wilderness, where the height made them giddy and giddier, until the subtler rhythm of a horse’s sturdy heart displaced the clatter of its hoofbeats and they passed at last into the jeweled infinity east of the sun and west of the moon.

Then La Belle Dame Sans Merci took Sir Florian, in her turn, into the warmer and warmest depths of the motherly earth: to those caverns measureless to man that lie beneath the purgatorial realms of Tartarus. There she sang to him, and sang again, and gazed at him with such apparent adoration that he closed her wild wild eyes with kisses, unable to bear the yearning of her stare.

The knight unwound the binding vines from the faery’s helpless wrists while she trembled sightless in his arms, drawing every vestige of intoxication from the pressure of his body upon hers and the congruent pounding of their hearts. She took them from him, and opened her eyes again, commanding him to tilt his head and bare his throat.

There was no hesitation this time, no faltering in his resolve. It was not that he was not afraid, but only that he was content to savor his fear as he savored every least sensation which still had the power to stir him, all equalized as pleasure.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci wound the vine about Sir Florian’s slender neck, and began to draw it tighter. The pressure she exerted was gentle at first, and it was only by the slowest imaginable degrees that it grew more and more insistent.

Now he closed his own eyes, even though there had not been the least trace of wildness in his sotted gaze.

Still it was not finished, for the sense of touch still remained to Sir Florian’s dizzied mind, and for the first time since consciousness was born in his infant brain the knight felt as a faery might feel, taking nothing of that sensation for granted. He could never have done so had he been awake, but he was not. In dreams, sometimes, even humans are privileged to forget the follies and fervors of flesh. For a moment and more Sir Florian was well-nigh incorporeal, yet gifted still with the sense of touch.

Had the knight been truly incorporeal, of course, the strangling vine could not have harmed him; but even in dreams, the follies and fatalities of flesh may reassert their sullen shift upon the human form.