Changing History

Prologue

Strongili Island, Aegean Sea
About 1600 B.C.

The earth started shaking, at the beginning slightly, almost imperceptibly. The animals were the first to feel the anomaly in the air. Dogs barked for no apparent reason, sheep bleated nervously in their pens. The seagulls, who usually circled noisily over the island, were nowhere to be found.

Soon humans too perceived the tremors. The first cracks threateningly appeared on the outer walls of the three- and four-story buildings, the tallest ones in town. A dull and alarming rumble, rising from the bowels of the earth, could be heard throughout the entire island.

At sunset many of the over 30,000 inhabitants of Strongili left the comfortable warmth of their homes and gathered by the sea, in the southern part of the island. They spent the night outdoors, carrying with them blankets of raw wool and some food. Although everyone hoped to revert to normality shortly, the most pragmatic of them brought jewelry and other precious possessions and prepared the boats for departure.

Strongili, located just north of the 36th parallel in the northern hemisphere, was not subject to frigid temperatures, and that autumn night, with its 16 degrees centigrade, was no exception. The mild temperature favored pastoral and agricultural activities, especially viticulture. However, it was on the sea that Strongili had no rivals. Their strong and fast sailing ships allowed prosperous trade with the surrounding islands and guaranteed them undisputed military supremacy on the Aegean Sea.

In the afternoon, a few hours before dusk, the first collapses occurred. A couple of houses in the island's main town suddenly gave away and crashed to the ground in an explosion of stone debris and clouds of dust, causing panic among the few people still in town. A few minutes later, the aqueduct, the source of drinking water for many of Strongili's houses, was torn apart by a brutal shake that dug a deep hole in the barren, dusty ground.

The seismic movement became more intense and frequent, with increasing devastation. A dozen buildings fell into pieces with a thunderous noise, crumbling on themselves and leaving piles of stones and dust where only moments before solid walls stood up frescoed with elegant colors. One wing of the royal palace disintegrated without any warning and buried under tons of rubble an object purposely hidden in its cellars.

While the people of Strongili fled terrified to the harbor, a few hundred meters away from the main town, the king couldn't wait any longer and ordered the immediate evacuation of the island. Dozens of boats, the entire fleet of Strongili, gathered a few meters from the shore in the southern part of the island. In only a couple of hours, all the inhabitants boarded the ships. Miraculously, no casualties were recorded.

The fleet set sail and headed south to the great island of Kaptara, as ordered by the king. He deemed Kaptara far enough away from Strongili to be a safe haven for his people until things returned to normal.

The king couldn't know that what happened on that day was just the beginning. The worst was yet to come.

***

Seven months elapsed since the day when Strongili's fleet lifted the anchors and left the earthquake-shaken island.

From the top of the hill, the commander of the Royal Guards, Áreos, watched the full moon spreading a halo of silvery light in the black sky. A gentle breeze was blowing southwards, causing the branches of the olive trees on the hill to sway gently, and carrying the ashes ejected from the volcanic cone which had emerged in the central-northern part of the caldera.

The rhythmic sound of the waves breaking on the southern coast of the island brought his memory back to the moment when, seven months earlier, he had watched the first ships loosen their sails in the wind and fly away from the island, his only daughter Eilínas on one of them. He had wondered then whether the girl was frightened or excited at the idea of crossing the sea in the middle of the night. He could picture her in his mind: her hands clutching the railing of the ship, her long brown hair slightly waving with the breeze, her intense hazel eyes fixed on the black sea in search of the torches of nearby ships.