On the Island of Fire - Four Tales of Santorini Read online

Pegasus challenges the Chimaera

  Bellerophon looses a shower of arrows, then thrusts his spear into the monster’s mouth. A lump of lead which Bellerophon had put on the end, melts in the leaping flames and runs red hot, into the Chimaera’s stomach. Her lion’s head lolls, the red eyes wide in alarm, then the heavy lids close. The goat’s head tries to butt Alizides but then droops, while the thrashing viper’s tail falls with a thud to the ground.

  With a howl, the Chimaera crumples on the ledge. Bellerophon pushes her over the edge with his spear and she falls with a SPLASH into the black sea below.

  Magically, the night has flown. Bellerophon urges Alizides into the dawn, reaching rosy fingers over the sighing sea towards the misty peaks.

  “I’m a God!” shouts Bellerophon, bouncing proudly on the donkey’s back. But Alizides is exhausted. He flaps his white wings slowly and thinks of deep straw in his cool shed on Therasia.

  But they are flying towards Mount Olympus, the home of the Gods. Flapping wearily over the summit, Alizides sees dimly in the swirling mist, a huge figure with a curly black beard, full of birds’ nests, frowning up at them. Zeus, the greatest of the Gods. He shakes a hairy fist at Bellerophon, who dares to think himself a God. And Alizides flies on, terrified and dazzled by the morning sun.

  Suddenly, a gadfly sent by Zeus, nips him sharply under the tail. He soars so sharply, Bellerophon tumbles off and falls like a stone through the blue air into the silver sea.

  Alizides turns, as though urged by some invisible hand, and flaps back to Mount Olympus. Again, he sees the huge head of Zeus, his eyes black as coals, watching him through the clouds. Shadows of the distant land move over the great furrows of his forehead.

  “You will stay with me Pegasus!” he booms in a voice that sends a shower of rocks rolling down Mount Olympus. “I shall use you to carry my thunderbolts around the world.”

  Alizides opens his eyes as something bumps onto his back. He is standing at the top of the steep path near Manolas. Pedros has mounted him for the journey to the port. There is no sign of his wonderful white wings. He clops back down the path, looking wistfully now and then at the wheeling seabirds.

  Suddenly a fly nips Alizides under the tail. He shies, and Pedros, half asleep, tumbles from his back. Remembering Bellerophon, Alizides plants himself between Pedros and the edge of the cliff, so he cannot roll over. Stunned, Pedros stumbles to his feet and onto Alizides’s back. But as they clop slowly to the port, a goat leaps from a rock above and stands obdurately in their path.

  “Out of the way!” shouts Pedros and brandishes his stick. Alizides shivers and, for a moment, sees the monstrous Chimaera and instead of Pedros’s short stick, Bellerophon’s gleaming spear. The goat bounds up the rugged rock and vanishes.

  But as they plod on down the path, a distant roll of thunder, like the warning voice of an ancient God, echoes over the Caldera.

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