On the Island of Fire
Four Fantasies of Santorini
by Linda Talbot
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Illustrations by Linda Talbot
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Copyright Linda Talbot 2015
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Table of Contents
The White Wings
Illustration: Pegasus challenges the Chimaera
The Earthquake
Illustration: Typhon
Falling Stars
Illustration: Atlas
The Harpies Move Home
Illustration: The Harpies
Thank you and Author’s Note
The White Wings
Alizides, the shabby brown donkey, groans as Pedros heaves two big bags of cement onto his back. The sun beats down. The flies nip. Alizides looks wearily at his reflection lapping the jetty. He plods back up the zig zag path to Manolas, on the island of Therasia. Pedros urges at his heels. Clip, clop, his hooves ring in his head. The bags bang his sides.
“If only I could fly,” sighs Alizides. At the top of the path Pedros unloads the cement and leaves Alizides in the shade. He blinks at the buzzing flies and looks at the blue water of the bay below; dancing with droplets of silver in the sun. A seabird wheels above on wide wings.
What wonderful wings! thinks Alizides. His head hangs low. The silver sea blurs. Then Alizides grunts, for from his sides he feels a thrusting, and, glancing backwards, sees emerging from his hot coat, a pair of dusty white wings. They droop at his sides until, with a great effort, he lifts, shakes, and opens them fully in the sun.
They dazzle his tired eyes and start flapping of their own accord. Faster and faster they whoosh, until they lift Alizides off his hooves and into the sky.
“I can fly!” he brays, as he is borne over the laughing silver sea like an awkward bird.
Far below, he sees mules toiling up the rugged path to Thira, the white town perched on the cliffs of the Caldera. He flaps over Nea Kameni, the volcano sprawled like a sulky black beast in the bay, and over the white rock of Aspronisi, until only the silver sea laps below.
The wind cools his hot coat. Bewildered sea birds blink, and, frightened, fly the other way. Soon the great glowing sun slides slowly down the sky. But still the white wings carry Alizides over the darkening sea.
The wings slow as the chill night wind rises, riffling through the waves. Gradually, Alizides descends and lands PLONK on his small hooves on a deserted beach, where only the sea slides on the shore and the wind whispers in the tamarisk trees.
The wings droop wearily and Alizides laps cold water from a silver stream tumbling through the trees to the beach. Then he sees a ghostly woman walking towards him. She wears a warrior’s helmet and carries a golden bridle. Before he can bray, she slips it over his ears. The woman vanishes and Alizides feels something land with a thud on his back.
Cement, he thinks dismally. But it is a man who cries, “Up Pegasus!”
Pegasus? Where has Alizides heard that name? Dimly he remembers. His uncle Theo, a wise old donkey, who knew about the mythical beasts of Greece, had told him of the legendary Pegasus, the winged horse born of Medusa the Gorgon and Poseidon, God of the Sea. He was ridden by Bellerophon, who had angered a king and was sent on Pegasus to fight and probably be killed by the monstrous Chimaera; half lion, half goat and whose tail was a viper.
Alizides shudders. Could this man on his back be Bellerophon? The Goddess Athene had captured Pegasus with a golden bridle. Had she been the woman in the warrior’s helmet?
Alizides shakes his long ears and brays in disbelief. But in a moment, he has soared on his great white wings above the darkening sand into the sunset. Minutes later, on the ledge of a steep cliff, he sees the Chimaera.
Flames leap from its lion’s mouth. Its goat’s head nods and its viper’s tail hisses and writhes. The creature, whose father had been Typhon, the largest monster ever born, crouches on the ledge as though about to leap.
Alizides trembles, as briefly, his fine wings falter. But he hears Bellerophon urging him on in a deep voice, and with a high bray of fright, Alizides lands on his moon-shaped hooves beside the Chimaera. He flinches from the heat of the flames, blazing brightly in the darkness and shrinks from the thrashing tail. He folds his wings and digs his hooves into the ground. The Chimaera snarls.
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