The Last Nymph

A Nymph's Rich Life

The large island to the west of Kalamos was called in ancient times, as it is today, Lefkada. Lefkos, meaning white in Greek, explains the light turquoise waters around the beautiful beaches of this island. It is a phenomenon cherished by people all over the world who see it, as the sugary white bottom rocks and sand reflect up brightly through the clear Ionian waters.

Dating back to the Greek Corinthians, who had colonized the island of Lefkada in the 7th century BCE, both history and myth were often fused. Many stories of the early coastal dwelling people, even before classical times, were told of the worshiped dolphins, magic seabirds, and human-form deities believed to dwell below the surface of the shining water. These legends stayed in the minds and imaginations of the people in this region until today as myths.

It had been the love and industry of Orestes Roussos during his long career as a classical scholar, to dig into these tales, not with the aid of earth-splaying tools, as an archaeologist, but perusing ancient writings in stone—as inscriptions on walls, monuments and gravestones—all which might tell of remarkable events, both real and phantasmagorical.

One such event on Lefkada was the separating of the peninsular land mass at its narrow connection to the mainland by the ancient Corinthians—actually creating the separated island as we know it today. And watching this human diligence take place from the sea itself, were the fifty daughters of Nereus, the Sea God—both interested in human activity, but often interfering with it as the Nereids, mischievously. The mere unpredictability of the world's oceans and seas are what must have given rise to the Nymphs' nature for rascality, and their vexed interventions upon the workings of people near and on the waters.

But it was also in 480 BCE, when the large island near Kalamos sent ninety men and three war ships around to the Attic Peninsula to do battle with the Persian fleet in a narrow strait off Athens. A large contingent of the nymphs followed them there, and it was a heated naval war when the Nereids intervened with history, as legends tell it.

During the famous sea Battle of Salamis, the Persian ships outnumbered the Greek's warcrafts 1200 to 350. And though the Persian navy was outmanoeuvred by the smaller and more manageable Greek triremes, a number of their vessels were rammed, set fire to and broke apart, sending the crews injured or burned into the sea. Miraculously many Greek sailors were carried or pushed mysteriously to land after their victory and lived to tell of the occurrence. It became a legend that the mythical Nereids, born of the sea, came to the Greeks rescue, saving many sailors. One of them that day, standing out from her sisters with her golden hair and large expressive eyes was named Maera.

It was a particularly handsome young sailor of the Greeks, named Hylas who held onto Maera, that day, long after she delivered him to the rocky shore. The young man asked who she was and why she gave him aid. Suspecting that she was something between a real girl and the mirages of them which sailors sometimes would see while venturing lonely on the water, Hylas vowed to not let her go until she told him her name. This she did after looking deeply into his eyes—a human's eyes for the first time. It had the unwanted effect of charming the nymph greatly, and was truly something her wise father, King Nereus—ensconced in his coral-gated kingdom, had told his daughters they should never do.

The story was told famously later, wherever the young man sailed in the Mediterranean, that the love-struck nymph was not far from his ship, as if wanting to see him again and be with him more intimately. Yet this was just one of the legendary tales told of Maera, fair among all the Nereids, who was by our times, sadly to outlive all the others. Now alone, in the time of dying myths, she claimed to Doc to have chosen to make her last domain and place of comfort the waters around the small, quiet island of Kalamos--now his very home.

Maera's life, she said, had always been rich. Opulent in experience and with many diverse adventures. She pushed further than any of her sisters in most matters with humans and was the most courageous when compelled to rescue or intervene for them against wickedness. For she had proven herself worthy of legend many times in her ageless life.

And yet, tragically, in the instance of Hylas, her first love, she never requited her passions for the young sailor as she desired, not due to his reluctance to trust her goodness, but unfortunately because of his own heartrending fate.

The death of Hylas, along with all his brave comrades, was the stuff of legend in its own right. For returning from an armed trading expedition back from Delos, the treasury island in the 5th century BCE, to the high-cliff settlement of Rhamnous,--a walled settlement on the Greek mainland, an act of cruelty by a far-different and wicked female foe occurred.

Treachery against ships by the Sirens—those grotesque hybrids of bird and woman, was always grist for lore. But in this case, the victims were sorely grieved by many for centuries. The hapless sailors on Hylas' ship fell tragically to the Siren's nature of weaving alluring curiosity with attraction and deceit. The cruelty of those demi-spirits on that day fell below even that of mankind in its worst and craven moments.

It happened en route, near the rough currents and swells of the Cavodora—those deep waters off the coast of Evia Island in the Aegean Sea. Here, as today, strong currents, high seas, and rugged cliffs offer peril to any ship that comes close by. And equally treacherous were the Sirens themselves. For these creatures were given the power to produce a "song" electrifying to males. And yet, it was never truly a song at all. Rather it was the loud and persistent moaning by females which males desire to hear. A sound men take credit for with pride upon their own sexual prowess. That talent to bring women, through lovemaking to abandonment and longing to be pleasured ultimately in body and soul.

The Sirens had learned to elicit this alluring wail from the shores with rhythmic breath and beckoning voice as ships approached. It penetrated the eager ears of the young men, who upon hearing only the overtures of it, could not resist sailing closer. Closer still, until their foolish, controlling lust brought them to terms with the sea's worst weapons—voracious waves and jagged rocks. Needless to say, the loss of Maera's first love, Hylas, was the result of her mythological cousins, the Sirens.

This was but one experience in Maera's long life—her earliest lesson about love and of Earthly men. But she would have many such escapades—some more fulfilling, and others again heart-breaking. Many of those of late, were no further out to sea or other lands than in the forests and blue-green coves around her chosen final isle of Kalamos.

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