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talking, Wall. Don't you turn away from me. And I'm saying you're a coward."
    John made a quarter turn to face the rummy belligerent. "You ought to try better manners, Bartholomew. You're too drunk to win a fight."
    Bartholomew pulled back and swung, a punch easily dodged. The drunk swayed, over-compensating for his effort. He folded over John's rapidly advancing fist into his stout gut. John connected his left into the side of Bartholomew's face and the man crumpled to the floor.
    "That was quick," said a grizzle-bearded man who had been standing to Bartholomew's right.
    "I don't like brawling," John said. "Best to get it over with. You'll see him home? I'd hate to see him drown in some ditch."
    The man nodded. John left his half-empty shot glass and walked out into the rain.
    It was a fierce, heavy wind, catching him sideways instead of head-on as it had done that afternoon. So the eye of the storm must have passed. He knew he should go to his hut, but it was just as likely there would be nothing left. He walked instead, seeking the cleansing of the soaking rain and fighting the howling wind to stay erect, as he has so many times on the deck of the Telesto.
    Over the roar of the storm, he heard Siren and knew she rode the huge waves that crashed and tossed the ocean.
    "You are for me, John Wall ." The old hunger roared to life so violently, it made him think his guts would be torn out. He had to go. Had to be with his Siren again.
    And to go to her would be to die.
    Up the road to his hut he wandered, deep mud sucking at his new shoes. If he'd had a coat, he would have clutched it tight, but he didn't, and instead let the deluge whip into the side of his face. As he suspected, there was little left of his lean-to but a few poles of the frame.
    He sat on a rock, his knees up to his chin.
    Oh, Siren, Siren, how I miss you.
    He had never been a man to shed tears. But even if he had been, they would mean nothing against the stinging, pelting rain.

Chapter 7
     
    "Come to me... come to me... come to me..."
    The Siren's song rang in his ears, like bells going on and on. Haunting, never ending in the storm. " Come to me..."
    The gale raged, swirled, battered him, and the song swirled with the wind, tormenting his soul. No, it was not a storm. It was Siren. Siren was the storm. Come for him.
    If he went, he would die. Old Hiapo was right, John knew it in his heart. If he went to the sea, she would take him back, and this time he would die. He did not want to die. Yet his heart did not want to live. Not without her.
    He knew in his heart he belonged to Siren. That he could not change.
    The wind shifted again, from east to southeast, slapping his sodden hair against his face. It would continue to shift as the typhoon passed the island, and would diminish as it moved on. The desperation of his loneliness drove him, and he slogged through the thickening mud of the road, heading toward the sea, following the gnawing hunger in his soul, until he found himself standing on the wet sand of the little bay by Hiapo's village, his eyes fixed on the wild crests of the waves blowing ashore.
    Only a crazy man would be here if he didn't have to be, for any moment a rogue wave could blow ashore and carry him out into the violent surf. He could not deny that might be him.
    Crazy.
    In the violent dance of wind and wave, he saw her standing proudly on the crest, lit by the unearthly glow of the fire of the sea, a dance of swirling colors radiant and intense, outlining her form. Her Titian hair was like brilliant sunshine on new copper. Her dress of moonbeams draped about her, its silken sheen whipping scarf-like in the wind like something in his twisted dreams.
    Siren, he said in his mind, fixed and drawn to the eerie, beautiful, awful figure. His Siren.
    "Come to me, John Wall."
    "No, Siren," he replied, wondering where he found the strength to resist. He didn't know or understand why. He just knew somehow he had to stand for something