As a writer, you're increasingly told to show don't tell . It's one of those phrases which has infiltrated all lessons from the highest ranked authors to the little primary school child taking their first steps into writing. Ironically, there are now so many clichés in this particular idea that it is now becoming something of a cliché itself! But one particularly significant area of inspiration and writing when this works at its best is when we are dealing with the supernatural. By its very meaning, the supernatural transcends the laws of nature. It's our job as writers of historical fiction not only to convey that but - and this is a real biggie! - to acknowledge and accept that these beliefs were true. Belief in these ideas (which, at best, now get you labelled as quirky) was commonplace in history, and you need not look too far back to find them. According to surveys run ten years ago, 34% of people in the UK said they believed in ghosts, and 42% of people in the USA
For today's #HistFicThursdays blog, I'm delighted to be sharing this flash fiction piece from Judith. Set in the realm of magical realism, this is a story of Ancient Greece...
The Mermaid of the Aegean
Thessalonike’s sigh as she awakens becomes the wind upon the waves, spiralling over the deep. The foam is her hair: the curls she inherited from her father… she still feels the water which washed them, trickling from the flask. She had laughed at how it tickled her scalp and ran into her ears as her brother poured it onto her head, his own curls bent over hers in devoted concentration.
It was that memory which had propelled her from the earth and into the sea when word came of his death, casting herself into the ocean to escape a world without him. Yet she had awoken from sleep not death, her body and soul still united in the deep… and the enduring significance of that flask excruciatingly clear.
Her wrath at him for destroying her death split the sea into grey ribbons, and her screams of fury became a twisted echo of her childhood laughter. She despised him for the love she felt, and the love which led him to waste the water of immortality on her. Men perished in her rage, as they had perished in his, screaming to a saviour whose face and name she couldn’t recognise.
Then, when her anger subsided, she could no longer recall the truth of the news from Babylon, and it remains confused in her mind. She seeks nothing more than the answer from passing sailors, calling to them as they gaze down at her in horror.
“Is King Alexander alive?”
Most often, she cannot remember their response, but awakens from a nightmare to find herself surrounded by detritus and the floating corpses of those she asked.
She and the water are unpredictable.
Yet occasionally, sailors look down with combined fear and pity, and call out an answer which offers the balm she seeks to soothe the Aegean.
“He lives and reigns, and conquers over all.”
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