Remember Atlantis (teaser)

Chapter 1

 Nobody knows I’m here.

That’s the thought which keeps looping through my brain as the plane starts to descend. It’s the most reassuring thought I’ve had for six months. I didn’t even tell my friends or family that I was going. I just went to the travel agency and asked for a last minute ticket to anywhere, preferably warm, and they whipped out a brochure with white and blue houses and lots of ancient history to feed my soul. “Perfect,” I said and gave them my credit card. Anything to get out of that hellhole.

And now I’m actually here. I haven’t dared believe it until now, but as I gaze out of the window, there is only the sapphire sea all around. The main body of the Mediterranean is behind us, and we have entered the air space above the Aegean. It’s dotted with grey-green islands full of olive groves, vineyards and bougainvillea. The tensions of teaching fall away as I stare at the seascape spreading out beneath me.

This will be pure pleasure. A true holiday. I’m not even going to listen to the news while I’m here. I will do nothing that can remind me of the treadmill of breadwinning, the snide comments about my long hair, the rolling eyes that say my subject isn’t real, isn’t needed. The local politics which have me plying my trade in a cramped and mouldy little room underneath the canteen, because ‘you can fit a few children and some guitars in there, can’t you?’.

I bite down on unspoken retorts and turn the volume up on my mobile. Dio’s voice gains force and pounds into my ears, lends me strength, and my stomach muscles clench with the hope that this trip will be the start of something new. That when I come home again, I will have gained the courage to leave my job, to find out what I want, to do what I believe in.

A strange sound saws at my ears and I jump. I frown at the screen of my phone, which is flickering and greying. Static chops up the beginning guitar solo and the notes sway precariously, as if they were playing on an old tape recorder. I catch a flight attendant making a grim face at me, and I realize that I should switch it off. Perhaps it’s because of the pilots speaking to the control tower that my phone is acting up. Sighing, I oblige. The battery is only at 50% anyway. Might as well preserve some juice for the inevitable bus trip.

“What were you listening to?”

I start and turn to look at the guy sitting next to me. A quick assessment tells me he’s not an obvious weirdo, although he looks somewhat geeky. But I have no need of social contact, so I decide to put him off. “Stargazer,” I say curtly, offering nothing more. I’m not in the mood to explain, to be friendly and forthcoming. I get enough of that in my line of work, and this is supposed to be a holiday. I’m not starting it by making friends with some random fellow tourist who can’t bear to be alone.

To my surprise, he breaks into a grin and nods. “Don’t you just love how the tape echo at the end of the solo sounds like a flock of birds?”

I try to hide my shock, but I’m not doing a very good job of it. He chuckles at me, and I need to say something, to reward him for his good taste or something. “You… you…?” I try for a polite question, but my mind is a blank.

“I do research on ancient music.”

That was not what I was expecting. How did we move from Rainbow to Einstein? “Ancient music?” I repeat. “Like notation and stuff?”

He looks a bit sheepish. Maybe he realizes that he’s being too chatty. “Well… I study how music can be preserved, with a focus on the Minoan period. So there isn’t a lot of sheet music.”

I scowl. I may not be a researcher, but I’m a music teacher, and I know there was no bloody sheet music in the bloody Minoan period. “So it’s shards of pottery and stuff?”

He looks momentarily stunned. “Others have found traces of songs on old pots, yes.” After a moment’s hesitation, he grins. “Isn’t it fascinating? Someone sat there a long time ago, etching a pattern into the clay with a pin, and what they hummed while they worked was eternalized in the finished crockery…”

Eternalized. Jeez. But at least he seems to like his work, right? It’s just… that doesn’t really help. Because men like him intimidate me. Rational, level-headed, single-minded and able to pursue one single goal. He’s even wearing the token black polo-neck, uniform of intellectuals everywhere. Symbol of superiority to a man like me, who will never reach their lofty spheres. I’m much too emotional, too childish and spontaneous, too easily distracted. I’ve heard myself described in whispered conversations as feminine – not in manners, speech or looks, but in the way my brain is wired.

Which is infinitely worse, I guess. Because no one has need for dreamers anymore. They are the stuff of legend, a quaint relic from a more primitive time. Now we’ve done away with ghosts and symbols, we can live life like we’re meant to: in rational reflection, in order and prudence. But I’m a scatter-brained musician with too little talent and a yearning to change the world. Where in evolution does that fit in?

“You’re a performer, then?” he asks.

“Yes, professor,” I snap, and immediately regret my harsh tone. He sits back and visibly debates with himself, perhaps deciding to give up his efforts at chitchat. I fumble for something to smooth over my unfriendly reaction. I must be really worn down if I can’t even manage a normal conversation without lashing out. “Um… so… you’re here on holiday too?” I finally ask, hoping that this is a comparatively safe topic.

He smiles, relaxing again. “I actually live here.”

“Oh… Lucky you.”

He bursts into such candid laughter that I’m tempted to join in, but I limit myself to a small smile. I’m not ready to forgive him for being too smart yet.

“Well, there are perks, I guess,” he says. “But many problems, too.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Like?”

“Like there’s no drinking water, so we’re dependent on transports from other islands?” he offers, and I make a sympathetic face. Then he looks past me, and his face softens. “It is beautiful, though…”

Prompted by his dreamy expression, I look out of the window again. I expect to make out tiny flowering gardens down there, but for a moment, all I see is blue. Not an island in sight. It actually looks as if we’re going to land on the water. But then the plane veers right and a startling sight comes into view: a monster of a mountain, towering above a small, dark grey beach.

As the first few houses appear, I feel a welcome pang of happiness. This is something new. Something I’ve never seen before. Just what I need to get me out of the depressive coma I’ve been buried in for half a year. Nothing has been able to touch me – but now the sight of those houses, so different from the timbered cottages at home, gives me hope somehow. Because this was why I went here in the first place.

I’ve been poring over maps for days, planning my visit to the museum, the ruins and the vineyards. I’ve looked at postcards of the fish-carrying man and felt the excitement of the unknown surge inside me. I long to see the ruins of an earlier civilization – it gives me hope that ours will also fade away with time, that all the heart-ache of this godforsaken century will disappear and be forgotten.

I catch my neighbour watching me watch the island, and perhaps some of my appreciation shines through, because he holds out his hand with a warm smile. “Marco.”

I hesitantly take it. I’m poised on the brink of friendship here, and I’m not sure I want friends. I came here to be alone, to sort myself out, to listen to music that I actually like and make a lonely climb up the mountain to see ancient Thira. I was going to lose myself in the planet’s past, in people long dead, in the ruins of Greek history, not to socialize with its living, breathing inhabitants. I was going to shut myself away in headphones and alcohol, but now that future is almost lost.

“Alexander.”

Marco seems to sense my reserve, because he smiles again and says, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to invite you to dinner. I know how you Swedes are.”

I breathe in to object, or to ask how he’s so sure that I’m from Sweden since this flight started in Macedonia, but whatever I planned to say is blown to kingdom come by the violent jolt that tears through the plane.

I clutch the seat and sit up straight. What the hell? For a moment it feels as if I’m floating, that the only thing holding me in place is my seatbelt. But then the plane moves smoothly again, and I almost think that it was all in my imagination.

“Jesus,” I breathe out and turn to Marco to make a joke out of my childish fright, but then another shudder runs through the cabin and we’re in free fall.

I’m dreaming. I must be.

No, I’m not! We’re falling, tumbling through empty space. The body of the plane is squeaking and trembling, and gravity is pulling us down towards the black depths of the Aegean. I’m vaguely aware of screams filling the cabin, but they fade away as my head brims over with my own personal panic, and a strange sound that I have never heard before – some kind of Morse code inside my head, or a voice, I don’t know. It’s not coming over the PA system, it’s inside me, as if my brain is picking up the sound waves directly from the air.

I don’t have time to understand it. I feel my fingers going numb on the seat, and in some sane part of my brain I know that I should be leaning forward in that crash landing position that’s always in the safety instructions, but I can’t seem to move. The universe is spinning and whirling around me, and black spots blur my vision. I try to say something, or to scream like the others, but the speed has stolen my voice. I’m on a rollercoaster, with the wind in my mouth, and I can’t even breathe.

Within seconds, or perhaps eons, there’s a muffled crashing sound, and white spray washes up the window beside me. This isn’t happening, my mind keeps telling me, but it is. There’s a sickeningly buoyant rebound, and the taste of my earlier sip of Cabernet resurfaces at the back of my throat.

I’m going to break. I won’t survive this – my mind won’t survive this face to face confrontation with death. It will shut down and save me from experiencing my own end…

Next thing I know, I’m scrambling with my fellow passengers towards the emergency exit. A woman is yanking at the handle, shouting curses, and my hand is painfully wedged in Marco’s, stretched to breaking point as he pulls at it. A surge of anger helps me make an uncharacteristically agile vault over the seat in front of me, and then a rush of warm air is sucked into the plane as the door finally springs open. Handbags and legs and hands swarm over the edge and land on the blinding white surface of the wing. Marco lets go of my hand to clamber out, and I don’t even think, I follow him, even if my legs almost give way as I land on the hollowly clonking metal beneath my feet.

“We have to swim!” he calls over his shoulder. “It’s not far!”

But I just stand there, swaying on the wing, groggily staring at the beach, so close and yet so far away. The world is slowly bobbing up and down, and at any moment now, I will fall…

He grabs my arm and shouts into my face. “Now!”

“But my phone…” I whisper stupidly, gesturing towards the plane.

“Fuck your phone! Come on.”

But I’ve already turned back, moving against the current, towards the black hole in the wall. I’m stopped by a strong hand yanking at my collar. Such strong hands for a science geek? I think distractedly, and then I’m dragged to the edge of the wing, looking down into the opaque water. From the beach, cries can be heard. People in swimsuits are waving and hollering at us. What do they want?

“Jump!”

The water is surprisingly cold. Isn’t this supposed to be the Mediterranean? I find myself wondering as I flail my arms and struggle to swim despite the weight of my shirt and trousers dragging me down. I draw rasping, desperate breaths between arm-strokes, and my mouth floods with salty water. Perhaps I should be surprised that my shocked system is functioning at all, but my body-memory is kicking in where my mind is failing. That, and something else that I can’t name. There’s that Morse code in my head again, calling to me in the voice of a siren, and I know that I must make it.

My arms burn with the strain. My lungs ache. I’ve lost sight of Marco. The salt gets in my eyes, blinding me. The only thing guiding me across the dark abyss, the miles and miles of black water underneath me, is that ethereal almost-voice. It trembles through me like heat over a summer road, lighting me up. For a moment, I imagine that I see it reflected as a colour at the bottom of the sea: turquoise and impossible, it gleams up at me like a sunken dream, and it makes me so scared that I moan aloud as I struggle the final hundred yards to shore.

Gagging and spluttering, I pull myself onto the pebbly beach. I’m wracked with dry sobs, entirely spent. I want to sleep, to know no more. This is a far cry from the quiet bustle of the local airport that I thought would welcome me to Santorini. Instead of tax free perfume and a jovial customs officer, the painful smoothness of sun-burnt stones sears my cheek. I can’t seem to move anymore, even to alleviate the pain.

Around me, agitated voices are chattering in Greek and Italian and Norwegian, and I feel their hands on me, dragging me out of the water. I roll onto my back and gasp at the sky. I gulp the air as if it’s my first taste of oxygen. Am I saved? Will I ever be safe again?

As I lie there, trying to remember how to breathe, I see a cloud of smoke rise from the mountain – an errant plane part crashing into the ancient city of Thira, destroying the ruins I’d hoped to go see? The people around me erupt in new bursts of unintelligible distress, but none of them are pointing up there. They’re still watching the bedraggled tourists coming in hordes from the ocean.

Only me. I’m the only one who saw.

If indeed it was real. Maybe my eyesight is distorted by the salt. Maybe the shock is making me see things. Maybe…

I sit up and rub my face, and an insistent voice in my ear is telling me in broken English to try to stand up, to come away from the shoreline, to have a drink. I almost decline the offer, but then I think what the hell. This holiday is shot to hell anyway. Whatever notions I had of spending my time as an anonymous alien at a beachside bar, gorging himself on grilled squid in splendid isolation, are blown to smithereens.

So I stand up on shaky legs and flash my best charmer’s smile, suppressing the urge to breathe a deep sigh of regret. “A glass of wine would be lovely, thank you.”

Coming soon