“… and great Atlantis was indeed, mighty with the benevolence of the Gods who walked its lands and bestowed their gifts on the faithful.

Great it was, until the Sea Peoples came from the lands beyond the horizon, with steel and fire and the strength of great numbers. No magic or bronze could stop their slaughtering. No mystical forces, once mourning replaced prayers.  So the Gods wilfully gave their own lives to save those of their people from the invaders. Gone were Diwe the Allfather and Vesia the Kind, who watched over mankind’s homes; gone the stormy Pelasgos, and Eribes, the Son of Chaos. They all died, down to Merodak, the Friend of Humanity, and to Agesander of the Dead. And with their death, they saved Atlantis.

But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea, only to emerge under a virgin sky.”

―  Plato,  Timaeus and Critias , the lost scrolls

1

Cross my heart, I swear I never intended to destroy Atlantis. You know how things go--a bad day, one murder too many, and you end up pushing a whole continent on the brink of collapse.

Again. 

I had no part in the first catastrophe. It happened a long time ago, and the details are lost in myths and legends.

But when Atlantis stood once more on the precipice of disaster, I couldn’t predict how relevant my role would be. As I said, it was entirely accidental.

At least, at the beginning.

And it began like any other tale. With a child in her mother’s arms.

I was that child. Five years old, curled up in a tight embrace that should have kept me safe. It’s one of my first memories, although a fading one, wearing out under the friction of some twenty years of an overly eventful life. My mother’s hair brushing my round cheek, her arms around me, her smell--flowers, dust, iron. Something sweet and putrid I tried hard not to inhale. 

Her eyes were dark and wide open. One, as the other was a reddish pulp. A crow was already feasting on it. Its eyes, too, were dark, but beady and shiny. My mother’s gaze was glazed. Vacant.

She’d been dead for a day at least. Under the unrelenting summer sun, the buzzing of flies drowned out the song of the cicadas.

Blocked under my mother’s corpse, no hero came to save me. Bansabira was the farthest thing from a hero I could think of: a sinewy man with pale eyes and woolly greying hair, so full of acid wine its reek even surpassed that of decay around me. He found me and took me in, like many others like me. We all learned quickly not to be grateful for it.

I clung to his back as we rode the dusty roads to Alasha, but he never once turned to comfort me or even spare me a single glance. He clicked his tongue and whipped his poor mule’s sides, cursing the dead gods and the scrawny little thing I was.

As it turned out, someone like Bansabira couldn’t have lived anywhere but in Alasha, a place that fully represents Atlantis’ decline. The glory of the past was drowned under centuries of resentment and squalor. The remains of the harbour, broken poles and cracked docks, were succumbing under the assault of wilderness--nettles and brambles and gnarly trees. Where once the blue waters of the canals dug to create a safe bay for the ships, now lay a swamp. A great place for rats, bugs, and a wide range of parasites, not so much for those who insisted on living there. Like the rest of Atlantis, the city had lost its glory after the catastrophe of the Sea Peoples. A nosy traveller with good eyes and enough stubbornness could still wander through the forests on the hills and find ruins of the old days: broken columns and shattered mosaics, collapsed temples overgrown with vegetation and oblivion.

Before that first stroke of bad luck, I had never been to Alasha. Why should’ve I? It sucks.

Vague memories of a wattle and daub house, cozy and clean despite its plainness, clashed with the gates opening into the moss-covered city walls. 

The hooves of the mule clicked on the slimy cobblestones. I was exhausted, both from shock and fatigue. I was probably rather intoxicated too, after a full day breathing in Bansabira’s stank. 

My bare feet dangled from the back of our ride, and through my matted hair I spied the city around me. The flat facades of the buildings lining the street seemed to squint at me with their windows, cracked or boarded-up or simply too dirty to reflect much of the gloomy sky. It should’ve been an abandoned place, overgrown with weeds, and clammy with the heavy breath of the swamp.

It wasn’t. The streets were surprisingly crowded, although nobody seemed to be enjoying their stay. They all seemed as mouldy as their city, with flowing robes grey and shawls stained with stale water and grime, with muddy sandals scratching on the ground. At every corner I spotted bundles of rags, holding out their claw-like hands and begging from under frayed hoods for a coin, a piece of bread, anything. So many of them.

The sound of the hooves took on a deeper note as we passed over a narrow wooden bridge. Through the spaces between the boards I saw the canals underneath, lined with merchants selling fish and artisans mending nets, all shouting out their business. 

Stolen story; please report.

Why am I here? I wondered to myself. The honest answer to that equally honest question was that mother was dead and I was alone. The realization rekindled the shock, and I curled up tighter against Bansabira’s back.

“Let go”, he snarled. “Diwe’s cock, how I loathe the clingy ones…”

I swallowed and loosened my grip. My lower lip started to tremble, and the city around me flickered with sparks of rainbow. I sunk my teeth into my lip and choked back tears.

“And stop panting! What are you, a dog?”

“Sorry”, I whimpered. I tried not to sob, which meant holding my breath as much as possible. I blinked, and the sparkles vanished. 

It was late in the afternoon, and the shadows crept through the alleyways. 

I didn’t notice it at once through the thickening darkness. It was barely a movement out of the corner of my eye, a patch of black in the deep grey of the alleyways. I frowned.

A figure in a pristine black cloak, with a hood covering their face, cloved the crowd. Nobody seemed to notice them, even if I was sure they must’ve bumped into more than a single passer-by.

The shadow stopped as Bansabira guided his mule away from the main alley and into a secondary, quieter street. It stopped and no doubt it turned toward us--toward me.

Before they could look up at me, I buried my face in Bansabira’s cloak again, and received a slap to my temple.

“Squeeze me once again, and I’m drowning you in the canal”. He half turned to glare at me with bloodshot droopy eyes. A sneer, and his long yellow teeth peeked through his thin lips. “Not that there’d be much for the rats to feast on…”

“Please, don’t. I’ll behave…”

“You’ll better”, he growled. He spat and hurried his mule on.

Hesitantly, torn between the terror of rats biting at my feet and the fear of Bansabira’s anger, I checked behind us.

The figure in black was gone.

Somehow, I was certain they were looking at me. It was not an encouraging thought at all.

We stopped by what looked like an abandoned warehouse. There were no windows, only one large wooden door. A mournful braying came from the porch on the side. The whiff of muck was a pleasant diversion from Bansabira’s body odour and the lingering smell of piss. A woman with thinning black hair and a layer of mud and rotting straw under her soles emerged from the porch.

“Back at last, Bansabira. Got one?” she asked with a grin. She lacked lots of teeth. 

Bansabira spat and dismounted. Without his support, I swayed on the saddle. He caught me before I could fall face first in the dirt, but quickly shoved me back. 

I staggered. Whenever I blinked, my vision took longer to readjust, and the soreness in my back was nothing compared to the piercing ache in my stomach. I leaned against the warehouse and grabbed my growling belly.

“Feed the mule”, Bansabira ordered the woman, throwing her the reins. “This one, take her to the others”.

Without another word, he left. I looked up at the woman, desperate to catch even the slightest glimmer of motherly kindness in her. 

All I got was a bucketful of cold water in the face.

Before I was done sputtering and gasping, she grabbed me by the nape of my tunic and opened the door. A creak, a thud--me, falling on the dirt floor--and another creak as the door slammed shut behind me.

I crawled on all fours and wiped the hair from my face. My panting grew uneven and broke, and heavy sobs escaped my lips. I looked up, but it was dark, too dark to see. 

The scratching of tiny claws along the walls added a dollop of fear to my misery. Something with a long, naked tail darted by my feet, and I hurried to a corner. Here I hugged my knees and buried my face in the enclosed space of my arms. It was dark, but it felt safe. Like an embrace.

Nobody would ever hold me, I thought. Mother was dead and I was alone, and I was hungry and scared, it was dark, there were rats and cruel people and nothing else.

I was alone.

I cried in silence, biting the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood. I didn’t want Bansabira to hear me and drown me in the canal. 

“Mother…” I whispered to myself. She wouldn’t come, though. I knew it.

A rustling sound snatched me from my despair. It was louder than the rat’s scampering, and close enough to make me back away against the wall with my heart racing. I held my breath and scanned the shadows, but saw nothing.

“Who are you?” a young, rough voice asked. 

I shook my head and squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them again, I had adjusted to the darkness enough to see some shapes emerging from the other side of the vast room.

They were not so different from rats, if rats were people. Skin and bones and dirt, with elusive eyes and hunger carved in every young feature. A bunch of boys and girls, all older than I was but none enough to be adults. They stared at me, and some whispered. Some other giggled or sniffed.

“Hey, you heard me? Are you stupid or what?”

“Leave her alone, Yikas. She’s small”, said another voice.

“Yeah, but I asked, and…”

“Shut up, you brat!”

“No, you shut up!”

“Why don’t you both shut up? We shouldn’t even be here, if Bansabira comes back and finds we’re not working…”

“My shift’s over”, the boy who was called Yikas said. “Are you going to snitch on me with the old man?”

This second person was a girl, tall and clearly older than the others. I wished she’d look at me and offer me any form of help, but she merely shrugged.

“Whatever. Two more moons, and I’ll be on my way. I don’t care about the new one, just dispose of the body if she dies. I don’t want her to rot where we sleep”.

The idea of becoming food for crows and rats like my mother made me whine again, and I looked away from the stranger kids.

I wasn’t crying now, but I could barely breathe, and not for the bad air alone.

With some more whispered comments, the kids left. I could still hear them in the corners, chatting under their breaths.

After a while, I realized they hadn’t all left.

“So, you’re not going to die right now, are you?”

Yikas was still there, crouching in front of me. All I could make out of him was a shock of spiky hair and protruding ears.

The door opened again. Something heavy was thrown in, and before the door closed again, in the flash of the torches I could see Yikas. Seven at most, dark and with his two front teeth missing, he turned toward the thud and darted away.

With a loud rustling, all the kids converged over a lumpy shape on the floor. There was some fighting, biting and cursing, as half a dozen skinny children scrambled to grab whatever that stuff was. Someone punched someone else, and they screamed and punched them back, but quickly the chaos relented. The frantic sound of chewing jaws echoed in the room.

Yikas returned, his cheeks stuffed and crumbles on his chest.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

I nodded once, and he threw something in my lap. The bread was hard as stone, except for where it was soggy, and tasted like mould and sawdust. I devoured it, even if it stuck in my throat and made me gag.

“Sometimes Bansabira brings a new one here. And sometimes they even make it through the first week or so”, Yikas said, chewing loudly. “I’ve been here for two years. It’s not that bad once you get used to it”.

“What’s… what’s it?”

Yikas made a vague gesture that included the kids, the warehouse and all of Alasha.

“This. You’ll see soon enough, I suppose. Anyway, who are you?”

I swallowed the remaining bread and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I tasted sweat and mud.

This boy Yikas was kind to me. And I was in desperate need for kindness.

“Ariadnh”, I whispered.