The Lost Worlds
Six figures and places from the farthest edges of the Greek mythological tradition. Six complete novels. One volume.
Atlantis - The island that sank beneath the sea in a single day and night. Plato preserved the account. The tradition debated whether it was history or allegory. This is the interior account of the civilization that was lost - what Atlantis was before it was gone, and what it understood in the moment it understood what was happening.
Aeros - The spirit of the upper air. The vast blue expanse above the clouds. One of the most primordial of all possible divine beings - the specific and genuine personification of the air itself, the medium through which Icarus flew and through which the birds move and through which the light passes. He was there before the gods organized the sky.
Endymion - He was the most beautiful of all possible mortal men. Selene loved him and asked Zeus to grant him eternal sleep so she could visit him forever. He sleeps on Mount Latmus and Selene visits him every night. He has been sleeping for eternity. The sleeping is both the gift and the price. This is his interior account - what it is to be the beloved who sleeps while the lover watches.
Calypso - She kept Odysseus on her island for seven years. She loved him. She offered him immortality. He chose mortality and Ithaca and Penelope. She let him go because Hermes came with Zeus's command and she had no choice. The tradition gave her almost no attention after he left. She remained on the island. She remained.
Nausicaa - She was the princess of the Phaeacians who found Odysseus washed up on the beach and who brought him to her father's court. She was young and she saw something in the exhausted, salt-crusted stranger that moved her. She helped him go home to another woman. The tradition preserved her as a minor character. She was more than that.
Aeolus - He was the keeper of the winds. He lived on a floating island with his family and he controlled the winds in their bag. He gave Odysseus the bag of winds to help him home. Odysseus's crew opened the bag. The winds escaped. Odysseus was blown back to the start. Aeolus refused to help again. He had given what he had to give. The giving had been the act of genuine generosity and the not-giving-again was also genuine.
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