Morning Flight To Hades

By Errikos Kalyvas

One beautiful morning, Simos accidentally leaves his body. His soul abandons Earth and heads for the Moon where it wanders across vast, bleak landscapes. Is he perhaps dead, condemned to live for ever in the eternal prison of Hades? Simos refuses to accept this, although events and circumstances all point to the contrary. He focuses only on one thing: in returning to Earth as quickly as possible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: epsilon kappa publishing
• Release date: Nov 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9786188034600

Errikos Kalyvas

Errikos' inspiration, as an author of novels in the general field of fantasy and science fiction as well as children stories, springs from man, his problems and passions, from nature and ecology but also from Greece, its history and its myths.Epsilon kappa publishing is the “brand name” used by Errikos to publish his books as an indie author & publisher.

Book preview

Morning Flight to Hades

Written by Errikos Kalyvas

Translated from the Greek by Bruce Walter

Published in electronic format by

Errikos Kalyvas (ek publishing)

Copyright 2012 Errikos Kalyvas

2nd English language e-book edition (10/3/2021)

Cover image by peshan

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I. Morning Flight to Hades

That morning… That beautiful summer’s morning, things might have taken a different course if Simos and Maria hadn't had too much to drink the night before. Not used to hitting the bottle, they had celebrated their second wedding anniversary with a lot of love and more than a little too much wine.

The usual routine would have seen Simos jumping out of bed, brushing his teeth and setting off cheerfully for the office. Instead, he woke with the room still spinning and a pounding headache. Remembering what he had been taught in meditation class, he tried to let the whole of his body go limp and unresisting. He remembered his teacher’s words: Meditation is not confined to Eastern religions; even the ancient Greeks used to meditate. In Levadhia, the faithful would enter the underground oracle of Trophonius in procession, bearing gifts of honey cakes, and then sit motionless for hours in silent thought. Timarchos, the Athenian orator, tells how he spent a day and night down in the sacred cave and had a strange experience. It seemed as if he had been dealt a blow to the head that opened up the seams of his skull, allowing his soul to fly free from his body. Looking upwards, he saw what he called 'spherical islands', by which he probably meant planets, but no sign of the Earth.

Simos was lying in his bed and not in an ancient Greek temple, but that morning he understood all too well what Timarchos had meant. To his utter amazement, his spirit seemed to be streaming through the seams of his skull like underground water finding its way down through crevices in rock. But in his case it was streaming upwards, gently and without the slightest effort, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. In moments, he had drifted through the ceiling and was rising ever higher. He felt no inclination to look back at the world that he had left. Why should he? He was finally free to dance and whirl without getting dizzy, enjoying an endless drunken liberty that would never leave him the way he'd felt when he first woke up that morning. He wanted nothing more than to escape the prison of his earthly body, and that, in fact, was what he had achieved. For Simos was no longer anything but light - pure light streaming through outer space.

But it was strange! Although he was light itself, the course he was following was leading him in the opposite direction. He was now approaching darkness. After the briefest of twilights, deep night fell in the cone of shadow cast by the far side of the Moon, though Simos had yet to learn that this was where his flight was taking him. It had become so dark that he felt completely blind, bringing back the awful memory of how he’d tried one summer to swim to a small island some way off the shore. He'd set off with a powerful, determined stroke, without thinking about the depth of the water. But having passed the half-way point, he’d looked down for some reason. He froze: the sea-bed was no longer visible and all he could see were the sun’s rays diffusing into the deep darkness. Worse still, something was sucking him down! His confident, strong crawl turned into a panic-stricken floundering.

Now he felt even worse. Not only was the darkness absolute; he was being forced to descend into its depths, as if he’d swum to the bottom of the sea that summer's day, rather than towards the island. Even so, he thought he could control his panic - until he felt his body once more taking shape around him and some inner voice revealed what this place must be. The abyss of Hades! he screamed with a shudder of despair. Now he heard other screams echoing in the void - or were they his own, still ringing in his ears? But no, he was not alone, for now he heard another voice cry out, a voice that had abandoned hope. The Styx! it wailed, the Styx! Now there was no doubt: somehow there had been a terrible mistake and Simos was headed for the Underworld, a place the ancient Greeks had described in chilling detail. As he hurtled downwards, amidst a lunacy of sound and shadow, he finally saw a bleak and cratered surface coming up to meet him. It was the Moon and on its further side, in the Fields of Persephone, there stood the ancient palace where she ruled with Pluto.

Simos knew nothing of either fields or palace, for they lay on the dark side of the Moon, the side that is never visible from Earth. As he fell, his speed mysteriously diminishing as the ground approached, his eyes began to get used to the gloom. The wild solitude of the lunar landscape was appalling, and the bitter cold was making his new body shiver. The icy light from the stars created terrifying shadows behind rocks and hillocks where he feared that unearthly monsters and pale, headless ghosts were lurking. Even so, the unspeakable terror had that had seized him moments earlier began to subside when he landed gently on his feet. He saw that he was standing on the bank of a wide, fast-flowing river, its black and viscous surface broken by small eddies. Even though he could faintly see the other side, it appeared to dissolve into an eerie mist. He followed the river's course until it opened out into a broad black lake. Skirting its shoreline, he came to a small, steep hill and climbed to its summit, where he sat down on a rock to rest and get his bearings.

What he could see was hardly reassuring. The lake had an oily, almost stagnant look and a sinister mist curled round its shores. Even so, he no longer felt the slightest fear at having left Earth far beneath him, and nor did he wonder what rivers and lakes could be doing on the Moon where, as far as he knew, there had never been any trace of water. Not even the mist and the half-darkness seemed troubling any longer - until he saw something which made his heart jump in his chest. There, on the lake shore, almost straight below him, he saw a shadow moving. No, it was not one shadow, it was two. His first thought was to hide, but too late; before he could begin to move, he heard a voice: Hey! You! What are you doing up there on your own? Come down. Another shudder of fear ran through him. Jumping up, he turned instinctively to the far side of the hill, seeking an escape route. Now his eyes met something stranger still, but this time not so much alarming as absurd: a skinny old man in rags, bald but for a fringe of straggling white hair, was hunched over a huge round boulder that he was trying to roll to the top of the hill. Please, he begged Simos in a shaky voice, help me! Simos felt so sorry for him that almost without thinking he ran down to lend a hand. Together they started rolling the boulder towards the top of the hill. Thank you, the old man murmured gratefully. Hey, you up there! the voice from the shore repeated. Come down I tell you! Don’t you know what you are doing is forbidden?

Simos realized he had no choice but to obey. He let go of the rock, which started rolling down the hill with the old man running after it, then hurried to the shore, where the two shadows waited. Drawing closer, he saw that one was a boy wearing a short tunic and sandals with beautiful winged buckles. He was a handsome, lively youth, almost into manhood, but looking younger from a distance because of his short stature. He smiled and beckoned to Simos.

Next to the youth stood a man with long oiled hair and beard who had an air of serenity about him. He wore a threadbare tunic and old, worn, leather sandals. The man turned his gaze on him without saying a word, but as if commanding Simos to turn from the boy and look at him. He was very thin, not tall, and radiated a strange light, a light that seemed to have no place in this dark lunar landscape. Simos was immediately drawn to the man’s greenish blue eyes. They were so calm and clear they seemed to hold within them centuries of wisdom.

Turning back to the youth, Simos was about to ask, Where am I? when the other looked out over the lake and said, There he is, at last! Come on, ferryman, we’ve been waiting here for an eternity and we’re tired of walking up and down. A little boat made from a hollowed tree trunk pulled into shore and gently grounded. The youth gestured to Simos and the man to climb aboard. They squeezed in side by side on the narrow bench, the ferryman looking crossly first at them and then back at the boy. What about the fare? he asked, but none too hopefully, as if he already knew the answer. The boy shrugged and replied, We’ve been over this before - the world’s not as it used to be.

The ferryman did not bother to reply; he simply pushed off from the shore with his oar and the little boat started to drift across the black water. The night had suddenly become almost beautiful, for the Earth had now risen in the sky and a sweet radiance somewhat softened the harshness of the lunar landscape and the cold light of the stars. If we were on Earth, thought Simos, bathed in the cool, bluish light, we’d call it a full moon. It seems he was not the only one to feel romantic, for the boatman rested his oar and, allowing the current to gently guide the dugout, picked up his mandolin and caressed the magic night with music:

"Love knocked on my door a single time

On a cold and gloomy night,

My boat filled with herbs and grasses

I would take to the king of the shades.

I was ready to leave for the far shore

When a fair, slim maiden appeared

And lay down on the herbs and grasses

I would take to the king of the shades.

The night was illumined by earthshine

And in the blue light of its rays

I embraced her pale form on the grasses

I would take to the king of the shades."

Simos and the man did not speak, held spellbound by the wistfulness in the old boatman's strangely sweet young voice. How much pain a night like this conceals, here on the Moon, thought Simos. I wonder if the couples gazing up at us tonight are aware that right now other, stranger, lovers may be sighing in the light cast by the Earth?

Now land was looming out of the half darkness. The ferryman put down the mandolin, picked up his long oar again and plunged it into the sandy lake bed. The boat came to a sudden halt and turned parallel to the shore, allowing the passengers to disembark. How cold the sand was! Simos watched the boatman leave, making sweeping movements of his long oar, until he faded into the mist; again he heard that melancholy