​The Cursed Anchor

A siren's curse is an awful thing to a sailor.  When a siren sings it is normally to lure unwary sailors to the hidden rocks to scuttle the ship and drown the poor sailors.  But every once in a while, the beautiful songs of a siren are also to attract a sailor as a mate.  Rejecting a siren in these instances comes with a heavy price!

It had been on some unnamed coastline in a small hidden cove where Captain Jack Dafty had anchored The Bonny Lass and was busy raiding his personal rum storage cache. Pillaging had been slow and the crew had begun to grumble about the lack of drink.  "It's best to keep the crew  happy," said Jack as he looked at the emptybottle of rum in his hand.​

 Jack had made all of the others of the crew stay on the ship as only he and the First Mate Bohoj knew where all of the hidden caches were located and Jack intended to leave it that way.  Of course it was Bohoj who manned the oars and loaded the heavy casks onto the little skiff they had taken to the cove because as the captain, these were not his duties.  "It's good to be Captain," Jack thought as he watched Bohoj rowing towards the beach. 

It was as they were pulling the skiff onto the sand that the siren's head appeared in the water.  "I have been watching you," she told Jack.  Now the Captain was a very quick and shrewd man and he took his time answering the beautiful face for he knew that below the waterline could be any sort of monstrous creature.  "I am nothing special," he answered.  "Why have you been watching me?"

The siren chuckled as she watched Bohoj silently slip away and leave the Captain alone on the beach with his admirer.  As Bohoj started into the jungle, without turning around Jack hollered to his First Mate, "and don't forget my personal cask of rum when you get the stuff for the crew".  When Bohoj was gone, the siren continued her conversation with Jack.  "I have searched for a mate and I have decide to chose you."

This was the last thing Jack expected!  The thrill of being with a siren would be different he figured but then he also figured that it would end badly for him once he wanted to leave.  Captain Jack Dafty was a wandering soul at heart and his first love was the sea and his ship.  "How to tell her no and not make her mad," he mused to himself as he continued talking to her as if he was interested in her proposal.  Meanwhile Bohoj returned with the casks, loaded the skiff, and was preparing to paddle back to The Bonny Lass when Jack had decided on his plan.  "I need to take this back to my crew," he told the siren.  "After I help them weigh anchor, I will return to you."  This answer pleased the siren and she allowed them to go back to his ship.  Shortly the skiff was stowed away as well as the rum.  Captain Jack then ordered the anchor to be raised.  It was then that the siren realized that Jack was not coming back.  "Why would he stow the skiff if he was not returning to me?" she growled as she started to swim to the ship.  She realized the Captain's lie too late as the ship was already sailing from the cove faster than she would catch it.

As she floated in the water, her anger boiled.  "How dare he refuse me," she grumbled.  "I will show him!"  Murmuring in her own tongue a song filled with rage, the siren casted a curse towards Jack's ship.  "Weigh anchor will he.  The next time he drops that anchor will be his last.  When it touches the ground, it will never move again and his ship will be stuck there until I find him." 

Now, this would have been the end of Captain Jack Dafty's exploits on the high seas if it had not been for the First Mate.  Bohoj had been watching the siren through the looking glass and had seen the casting of the curse to the anchor as it glowed when the siren sang her song. ​

Not knowing for sure what the curse was, he was still quick enough to know that whatever curse she laid would not be good for the Captain or crew of The Bonny Lass.  That evening, under cover of darkness while he took his watch, Bohoj switched the anchor with one in a storage locker and put the cursed one in a chest in the hold.  The next day when doing his walk around the ship to make sure everyone was doing what they were supposed to do, he opened the trunk and saw that the anchor had shrunk but still had a slight glow to it.  It was now the size of a pocket watch and he quickly slipped it into his pocket.  Later, after telling the Captain about what he had saw, he stored it in a chest in his cabin so others would not stumble across it.

It would not be until the First Mate is magically transported to the World of Whispers by a Wish Dragon's mis-enchantment that Bohoj found out the full meaning of the siren's curse upon the anchor.