Antigone

Rhea Karvanis

Description

Antigone is a historical fantasy novel that reimagines the legends of Greek mythology within the fall of one of the world’s greatest and earliest empires. It is a tale of adventure, love and heartbreak, that tells of estranged twins who travel back in time to unearth the dark secrets of their family’s past.

Sujets

• Fantastique
• Fantasy historique
• Médiéval-Fantastique
• Historical
• Fiction
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: Markosia Enterprises Ltd
• Date de parution: 10 avril 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781915860040
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

ANTIGONE

R. X. Karvanis
Antigone TM & © 2023 R. X. Karvanis & Markosia Enterprises, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction of any part of this work by any means without the written permission of the publisher is expressly forbidden. All names, characters and events in this publication are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Published by Markosia Enterprises, PO BOX 3477, Barnet, Hertfordshire, EN5 9HN.
FIRST PRINTING, March 2023.
Harry Markos, Director.
Paperback: ISBN 978-1-915860-03-3
eBook: ISBN 978-1-915860-04-0
Book design by: Ian Sharman
www.markosia.com
First Edition
Book I
Chapter One
In the darkest hour of night, when the first of the spring birds began the first of their pre-dawn harmonies, she was visited by Death. He came into her bedroom in a silence so thick that it woke her from her slumber. He came in, and He looked at her.
He stood before the window nearest to her bed. The streetlamp outside etched out the angles of His form, tall and twisted. Head cocked to the side, bird-like. He was a wraith in the shadows, and the silence stretched out, unbroken.
Until He spoke.
Antigone…
She gasped, her hand flying to her throat.
Antigone…
His voice was soft, smooth, a lover sighing in the dark.
Antigone. Look .
She stood in a clearing within a forest of tall, ancient trees. Dead leaves crunched below her feet, while live ones made a canopy above her through which the moonlight danced.
She heard a noise, a creak of wood. Spinning around, she beheld a single tree in the clearing, a young oak, lithe and supple. She reached to touch it.
Yet at that very moment, the tree began to change. Its leaves began to brown and curl, the branches withered, bark peeling and flaking away like dead skin. Within seconds, that beautiful, lonely tree in the clearing had shrivelled before her eyes, wasting away into a mere shadow of itself, twisted against the darkness of the forest.
Antigone …
Her head snapped round.
There, she saw. A dark shape, in the trees. On that branch. There.
She watched, squinting against the brightness of the moon.
A bird, she thought. Point of a beak, sharp as a knife. Yes, a bird.
Antigone …
A stab of pain – the voice not smooth now but rasping, a claw tearing into her. The bird’s wings stretched out, feathers reaching down. She crashed to her knees, twigs and rocks digging into her skin, and her hand, still clasping her neck, tightened.
Antigone , Death beckoned her. Wake up.
And so she woke.
***
The man next to her shifted in his seat. Ann blinked the sweat from her eyes, and, on instinct, snatched the magazine out of the flap in front of her. Turquoise waters, rocky hills: an article on the Wonders of the Greek Isles. She felt the man’s gaze on her face for a few seconds. Then he smoothed his button-down and edged himself into the aisle.
Ann let the magazine fall to her lap and peered out into the unfiltered dawn.
The light up here was so different. Brighter, harder. Burning in its intensity, even at sunrise. A different world altogether.
It made it impossible not to think of what had brought her here. Or how much everything had changed in a mere twenty-four hours.
She had never been on a road trip before, let alone on a plane, by herself, flying over thousands of kilometres of ocean. She couldn’t shake the fear that she would be caught and sent back. That, at any moment now, one of the flight attendants would come trotting up the aisle and ask her to please accompany them to the front of the plane. Or something. In fact, Ann half wished they would.
But the attendants just kept serving out orange juice.
Ann put the magazine away and rubbed her eyes. She told herself she shouldn’t be so paranoid. She’d done nothing wrong.
That’s right. In fact, she had done everything right. Nice house, big car, handsome husband. And then she’d woken – was it really only one day ago? – with that echo in her ear. The mere hint of a whisper.
She’d tried to ignore it. She’d gone through the motions of her day. Gone for her run, showered, made the bed, vacuumed the already spotless carpet. In the end, it had been a note from her husband that had snapped everything into focus.
Have another meeting tonight.
Won’t be home till late, won’t need dinner.
Don’t wait up.
That was it. A harmless little note scribbled on the edge of an old legal document. Addressed to no one.
Antigone. The voice in her dream had called her Antigone. No one had called her by that name since – since she was barely old enough to remember. Yet the voice had called to her, and everything had unravelled. Just like that. Just like that the bag had been packed, the ticket purchased, a note left. As if the whole tapestry, so hurriedly woven, was simply waiting for the right thread to catch before it could fall away completely.
“Off to meet a boyfriend, miss?”
Ann started. She hadn’t noticed the man next to her return to his seat. She glanced at him quickly. His smile, through the grey beard, was kind. She shook her head.
“Your family, then?”
She hesitated, then nodded.
“I see, I see… Do they live in Athens?”
“…Yes.”
“Forgive me for saying so, but you do not look Greek.”
“My mother was Swedish.”
“Ah, yes, I can see that.”
He stared at her, waiting for more. Then he laughed.
“Am I disturbing you?”
“Sorry. No. I – I’m going to meet my brother.”
“Ah, your brother. How nice for him to have such a lovely sister to make such a journey. What does he do, your brother?”
“He’s a pilot.”
The man’s eyebrows shot up and he chuckled. “Oh, brave man. I never liked heights, myself. Heights make a man feel small, and no man likes to know his own insignificance.”
Fiddling with a square of paper in her pocket, Ann didn’t reply. The man watched her for a few more moments before sighing and picking up his own magazine.
Slowly, Ann pulled the paper out. She scanned the address scribbled there.
“Look, look at that!”
His voice was still clear in her memory. He had been pointing up at the swallows that swooped past their house at dusk.
“Look at the way they dip and soar together.”
She had leaned her head against his back. They’d been fifteen years old at the time and these moments of peace had been few and far between.
“Think about it, my Anna,” Nik had said. “With wings, we could go anywhere we like.”
“I think we’d probably be too dense,” she’d quipped.
“Huh?”
“Birds have hollow bones, don’t they? So that they’re light enough to stay in the air.”
He’d twisted around to look at her then, instantly serious.
“One day I’ll fly you away from here. I swear it. Even if I have to hollow us out first.”
Ann shoved the square of paper back into her pocket.
She could remember it still, perfectly. The intensity of her brother’s face. That inner burning which always seemed to transform his eyes from a yellow-brown into liquid gold.
Eyes so like her own, she’d been told.
It had been almost four years since Ann had last seen her twin. In fact, she’d had no news of Nik at all until about six months ago, when she’d received a call from an aviation school in Athens, Greece. The man on the phone had told her that as she was listed as “Niko’s” next of kin, they’d be pleased to invite her to his graduation. She’d declined, but before the man had hung up, she’d obtained the address of the flight academy that Nik had been due to begin teaching at in a month’s time.
It made sense that he’d become a pilot, of course.
Ann had always suspected that Nik’s fascination with birds stemmed from the story that their mother told them about how she’d met their father.
It was early springtime, the story began. As a young Lotta Adamsson sat on the grass reading, she heard a shriek above her. Looking up, she beheld a mighty hawk shooting down towards the field. It collided with the ground in an explosion of feathers. When the feathers settled, she saw that the hawk was sitting atop a pigeon, its claws embedded in the smaller bird’s sides.
So mesmerized was she that she failed to notice a young man approaching until a shadow fell over her, blocking out the sun. The man told her bluntly that he admired her strength. Taken aback, Lotta laughed and asked him what he meant. You never turned away, he told her. You do not hide from the brutalities of life.
For many years, it seemed as if Nik was continually begging his mother to repeat this story. Ann later realized that it had been, for him, like a light-house in the night, providing him with a fleeting connection to the figure whose absence had always seemed so significant to him.
“When did you marry him, Mommy?” a six year-old Nik had once asked.
Lotta had replied in her most forbidding tone. “I didn’t.”
Ann had tugged at her brother’s arm, fearing one of their mother’s explosions, but Nik had remained unfazed.
“But how were we born, then?”
“You were born when I was very young – too young,” Lotta had snapped. She had then softened a little. “Look, I’m not saying it was a mistake and I’m not saying it wasn’t, but I barely knew your father. All I really knew about him was that his family was from Greece.”
Nik had taken a moment to process this. “But why didn’t he stay with us?”
“I think he tried his best, for a while. But he was only a boy, really.”
Nik hadn’t understood. “But… didn’t he like us?”
Lotta had looked away again and said quietly, “I don’t know”.
***
“Bread, miss?”
The bearded man next to her held out a bun. “I took it for you. I did not want them to disturb you, you looked so –” he gave a little laugh and shrugged – “far away.”
A