The Wildside Book of Fantasy: 20 Great Tales of Fantasy by Fritz Leiber, Gene Wolfe, Robert E. Howard, Paul di Filippo, Lin Carter, Tanith Lee, Clark Ashton Smith, E. Hoffmann Price, Thomas Burnett Swann, Brian Stableford, John Gregory Betancourt, Brian McNaughton, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Lawrence Watt-Evans, Clive Jackson, Darrell Schwetizer, Achmed Abdullah

cornucopias. Hair—or was it seaweed?—entangled their white shoulders, a forest spilling on marble. One of them held Astyanax in her arms and sang as if to her child. But something trembled behind the coaxing tones: the hint of a scream. I thought of the Cretan arena and athletes gored as they spun above the bulls; of women shrieking with terror and ecstasy.
    “Astyanax,” I called. He did not answer. The singers looked at me without expression and then, in a wash of moonlight, I saw their faces. It is true that they were beautiful, with foreheads of perfect alabaster and lips like cinnabar. But their eyes revealed them, a fish’s eyes, cold and lidless. They might have been sharks staring at me through smoky depths; as alien and as evil.
    The one with Astyanax raised an object above his head. At first I took it for ivory; no, it was bone, and sharpened into a blade. I lunged and struck her hand. I caught Astyanax in my arms and hurled him, with rough desperation, out of her reach. Her tail, like a coiling asp, entangled my legs and brought me to the ground. Her shark’s eyes held me motionless; her breath smelled of scales and sea-slime, flesh decayed and corrupted. She was strong but clumsy; the sea, not the shore, was her element. I wrenched myself from her paralyzing eyes. I flailed with my arms, and my fingers fell on an object, hard and cold. I grasped it and beat at her face. She gasped, like a fish sucking air, and released me. The object, a human skull, rolled between us. Her sisters tore at my legs but I kicked them viciously—their scales cut my feet—and reached Astyanax. He crouched full-length on the ground, still dazed by the roughness of my thrust. I caught him in my arms and, stumbling over the rocks, reeled toward the beach.
    Breathless and spent, we fell onto sand which stretched like a cool moist coverlet. They had not followed us. Beside their pool, they laughed and then they sang. Their song was red like blood.
    Astyanax shook in my arms. I held him until he could speak.
    “I went for a swim and heard them singing. One of them called my name. ‘Astyanax, my son,’ she said. I swam ashore and wriggled over the rocks. She took me in her arms. I thought she was my mother.”
    “They are Sirens,” I said. “A different race from yours. Fish with human faces. She didn’t call your name; she bewitched you to think she had.” I rose to my feet. “Now we must swim to the ship.”
    The pygmies leveled their blowguns.
    V: CIRCE
    I awoke to darkness. Pains knifed me like poison darts. I heard, far away—or close but muffled—the howl of animals—the high, feminine wail of a cat, the baying of dogs, the deep-throated roar of a lion. I groped in the dark for Astyanax. The emptiness seemed a palpable enemy.
    “What have you done with my friend?” I shouted. The darkness had no answer. The cold possessed me with damp, enfolding wings…I slept or fainted.

    I opened my eyes in a sun-dappled arbor, where trellises rose into jungles of swelling grapes. The scent of the fruit, wounded by insects and oozing purple juices, cloyed my nostrils. I lay on a mat of rushes, and when I sat, the grapes seemed to fly at my face like swarms of hornets. My head cleared slowly; I did not yet trust my feet. Beyond the arbor a three-story house, with a portico of crimson columns, climbed in lavender walls and oblong windows. Rows of brick-colored moons divided the floors, and a date palm leaned like a lintel across the doorway.
    At last I struggled to my feet and grasped a trellis. Grape juice moistened my fingers and bees assaulted the stains. Gently I flicked them away—they are valiant creatures and bringers of luck—and steadied my swaying body. Last night I had swum ashore nude; this morning, it seemed, I wore a loincloth, with a large metal ring like a belt which squeezed my waist and cramped my lungs.
    Cranes with tufted heads wheeled and slanted above me. Then, with raucous cries, they dropped toward the