Two days later, Hylas stood in the stern of the foreigners’ ship and watched the Island of the Fin People receding slowly behind him.
He’d been scanning the Sea for dolphins till his eyes ached, but so far, nothing. He felt cold and hollow inside. What if Spirit didn’t come?
The ship’s captain came and offered him a handful of dried anchovies. Hylas took them with a nod, but couldn’t bring himself to eat.
Beside him the captain studied the waves with a sailor’s restless eye. He wore a belted kilt like a Keftian, but his skin was darker, and from the holes in his ears hung two tiny flying fish carved from polished bone. Hylas didn’t know where he came from or where his ship was going, except that it was heading north, toward Lykonia; that was good enough for him.
The captain said something in his incomprehensible tongue, and put his bunched fingers to his lips. Eat. Again Hylas simply nodded, so the man shrugged and went away.
A ripple of excitement ran through the crew—and suddenly there they were, their sleek backs arching out of the waves in mysterious unison, their silver bodies arrowing through the green water. Hylas’ eyes stung. The whole pod had come to see him off. Wherever he turned he saw dolphins riding the bow wave, racing the ship and effortlessly winning. Then his heart leaped. There was Spirit.
Ignoring the curious glances of the oarsmen, Hylas bent low over the side, and Spirit swerved toward him, easily keeping pace with the ship. His dark eye met Hylas’, then glanced away. As if, thought Hylas, he was asking, Do you forgive?
Hylas tried to answer in his mind, in the dolphin way. Nothing to forgive. Then out loud he said, “There’s nothing to forgive! I was never angry. It’s just—I can’t live in your world. And you would die in mine. That’s just how it is.” A lump rose in his throat. “That’s just how it is.”
Spirit swam closer, and Hylas heard the soft pfft! of dolphin breath. He reached down as far as he could, and for a heartbeat his fingers skimmed the dolphin’s back and he felt the cool, smooth hide. Will I ever see you again?
Spirit swerved away from him and disappeared into the deep. Then he was leaping high out of the water and twisting in midair, smacking down hard on his side with a thwack that drenched Hylas from top to toe. Shaking the water from his hair, he broke into a grin. He wasn’t certain, but he thought that meant yes.
To show that he understood, he tossed an anchovy over the side, and Spirit caught it and gulped it down.
You’ll always be my friend, Hylas told him in his head.
Again the dark eye met his, and he felt that Spirit understood, and was happy.
But already the pod was turning away.
For a little while Spirit swam alongside the ship, then he too was turning and heading back to his pod. For the last time his glance met Hylas’. Then he arched his back, flicked up his tail—and was gone, vanishing into his deep blue world, where Hylas could never follow.
The green sail bellied, and the creaking ship rode the waves. The tears stiffened on Hylas’ cheeks.
The captain came and handed him an earthenware jar. Hylas nodded his thanks, and drank. It was wine and water, mixed with honey and roast barley meal: thick and heady and strengthening. As Hylas handed back the jar, the captain pointed at the waves, then made an arching motion with his hand, put his fist to his heart, and pointed at Hylas.
“Yes,” Hylas said with a nod. “The dolphin is my friend.”
The captain returned to the steering-paddle, and Hylas thought about what he’d said. Then he ate the rest of the anchovies, threw the last one over the side as an offering, and felt a bit better.
It came to him that maybe Pirra was right, and everything did come back to the Goddess. Many days ago on Mount Lykas, Her words—the Oracle’s—had been the spark that lit the tinder and caused the Crows to attack his camp, and started him on the journey that led him to the island. There he’d found Spirit; and now Spirit was back with his pod, and he and Pirra had helped make that happen. And maybe this meant that someday, he would find Issi.
The island had dwindled to a dark blur on the horizon. Against it, Hylas caught a flash of silver. He knew in his heart that it was Spirit, making one of his great twisting leaps.
Raising his hand, Hylas shouted farewell. Then he laughed—because the Sun on the water was dazzling, and he was alive and free, and anything was possible.
Then the green sails bellied and the ship reared and plunged through the sparkling foam, and he watched the Island of the Fin People sinking slowly beneath the Sea.
Author’s Note
The story of Hylas and Pirra takes place three and a half thousand years ago, in what we now call the Bronze Age. As you may have gathered, it happens in the land we call ancient Greece. However, the Greece of the Bronze Age was very different from the ancient Greece of marble temples and classical sculpture with which you may be familiar. The Bronze Age was long before that. It was even before the Greeks ranged their gods and goddesses into an orderly pantheon of Zeus, Hera, Hades, and all the others.
We don’t know as much about Bronze Age Greece as we do about what came afterward, because its people left so few written records. However, we know something about the astonishing cultures that flourished at that time, and which we call the Mycenaeans and the Minoans. Theirs is the world of Gods and Warriors.
Here I need to say a quick word about the place names in the story. What Hylas calls Akea (or Achaea, as it’s usually spelled) is the ancient name for mainland Greece; and Lykonia is my name for present-day Lakonia, in southwest Greece; but I’ve kept the name Mycenae unaltered, as it’s so well known. Concerning Pirra’s people, I’ve adopted the name “Keftian” for the great Cretan civilization we call Minoan. However, it’s one of the mysteries of the ancient world that we don’t actually know what the people of that civilization called themselves; depending on which book you read, they may have called themselves Keftians, or that may just have been a name given to them by the ancient Egyptians. As for the Egyptians themselves, although the name “Egyptian” comes from the name given to them by the Greeks, I’ve used it in the story because, like Mycenae, it felt too awkward and artificial to change it.
In creating the world of Hylas and Pirra, I’ve studied the archaeology of the Aegean Bronze Age, particularly its tombs and strongholds, artifacts and weapons. But to get an idea of how people thought and what they believed, I’ve also drawn on the beliefs of more recent peoples who still live in traditional ways, just as I did when I wrote about the Stone Age in Chronicles of Ancient Darkness. And even though people in Hylas’ time lived mostly by farming or fishing, rather than by hunting and gathering, as they did in the Stone Age, I’ve no doubt that many of the skills and beliefs of those earlier hunter-gatherers would have lingered on into the Bronze Age, particularly among the poorer and more isolated people, such as Hylas himself.
Concerning the geographical setting for the story, many people believe that Bronze Age Greece was a land of scattered chieftaincies separated by great mountain ranges and forests. It’s also thought to have been wetter and greener than it is today, with far more wild animals both on land and in the Sea. In creating the Island of the Goddess, I didn’t have a specific Greek island in mind, but based it on my sojourns over the decades on the islands of Ithaka, Kephalonia, and Alonissos. More recently, and to gain inspiration for Lykonia, I visited Lakonia, including the Acropolis at Sparta, the Eurotas River, and the deserted and immensely evocative ruins of the nearby Menelaion. To get a feel for Hylas’ mountain home, I explored the Langada Gorge that winds through the Taÿgetos Mountains, and stayed for several days at the top of the Langada Pass. Wild boar still haunt the forests there; one morning, I had a slightly unnerving encounter with five piglets and their watchful mother.
To experience the caves in which Hylas and Pirra hide out, I explored the extensive, watery cave system of Vlychada, on the Bay of Diros in southwest Lakonia, as well as its small but highly informative local museum. There I learned of the dreadful
fate of some of the cave’s earlier inhabitants, one of whose calcified remains sparked the idea for Pirra’s encounter with the Vanished Ones. To get a feel for Keftiu, I visited Crete, where the ruins at Knossos and Phaestos, as well as the museums of Iraklion and Archanes, provided much inspiration for Pirra’s homeland.
Spirit is, of course, one of the most important characters in the story, and to get to know him better I swam with socialized dolphins in Florida, where one of them kindly gave me a fin-ride, as Spirit does for Hylas and Pirra. I then traveled to the mid-Atlantic islands of the Azores, where I spent days observing wild dolphins of different species: Striped, Atlantic Spotted, Common, Risso’s, and Spirit’s own kind, the Bottlenose. It was only when I saw wild dolphins in their natural habitat that I truly appreciated the mysterious synchronicity of their swimming. Snorkeling with them gave me a powerful sense of their otherworldliness, which made it easy to imagine how Hylas feels when he sees the dolphins swimming in the phosphorescence he calls “the blue fire.” Above all, watching those wild dolphins gave me an imaginative insight into how Spirit experiences life in his deep blue world.
I want to thank the people—too numerous to name—who gave me invaluable guidance and assistance while I was exploring Lakonia and Crete, as well as the marine biologists in Ponta Delgada in the Azores who helped me get as close to wild dolphins as was possible without disturbing them, and generously shared their insights on dolphin biology and behavior. I’m also extremely grateful to Todd Whitelaw, Professor of Aegean Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, for giving so generously of his time in answering some questions on the prehistoric Aegean. As always, I want to thank my wonderful and indefatigable agent, Peter Cox, for his commitment and support; and my two hugely talented editors at Puffin Books, Elv Moody and Sarah Hughes, for their boundless enthusiasm and their vivid and imaginative responses to the story of Hylas and Pirra.
Michelle Paver, 2012
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING AUTHOR
MICHELLE PAVER
is an avid researcher who tirelessly investigates the worlds she creates—traveling extensively in the wild, encountering bears, boars, and wolves, and swimming with dolphins and killer whales. Her bestselling novels bring the past vividly and excitingly to life, including the critically acclaimed Wolf Brother, the first book in her award-winning Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series.
www.michellepaver.com
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