Larry Ivkovich
(Honorable Mention, 2025 BWR Short Story Award)
Paolo Alteri gasped and leaned against the Rialto Bridge’s southern balustrade. He reeled with a sudden dizziness, running a trembling hand through his long brown hair. A sensation of . . . displacement gripped him as if he no longer existed in 1678 Venice but in a different place and time.
Why . . . why would I think that?
His lute slung over his broad back, Paolo still wore the purple waistcoat, breeches, and knee boots he’d donned for his performance at Café Ponte earlier. There, a young boy had given him a note from his lover Miralan asking Paolo to meet her here.
Recovering his balance, Paolo looked about him. The bridge was eerily empty of life even at this midnight hour. The shadowy arcade shops lining the two stairway ramps looked, not simply closed, but abandoned. No sounds reached his ears, no familiar smells permeated the still air.
As always, the Grand Canal snaked languidly before Paolo’s vantage point. But no watercraft plied the Republic of Venice’s prime waterway. The churches, palazzos, and gondola dockson the opposing banks of the San Marco and San Polo districts were shrouded in mist.
Paolo had roamed Venice’s labyrinthine maze of streets, bridges, alleyways, and canals for most of his twenty-eight years, plying his trade as a bard at various inns, squares, taverns, and the occasional private fête. Still, the feel of this place was both familiar and utterly, utterly strange.
Despite the warm summer night, a chill ran up his back.
Miralan’s message read it was important she meet him at the bridge so he rushed here after his performance. Why she didn’t speak to him after his performance struck him as odd. Even for Miralan. Miralan had always been enigmatic, sometimes coy and reticent but now, for some reason, Paolo fearfully imagined this rendezvous as something . . . final.
Soft breath against Paolo’s neck, the touch of a hand against his back. A scent of lavender. “My sweet Paolo.”
Paolo started as Miralan appeared at his side. “Miralan. I . . . I didn’t hear you approach.”
She smiled, her tawny features alight. Long, wavy black hair framed sharp cheekbones and angled amber eyes. She wore a long, wide-sleeved blue dress over her slim form. Silk slippers, silvered rings, and wristlets adorned her, just enough at odds with current Venetian fashion to mark her as someone unique, someone special. Her expression, however, was full of . . . sorrow? Regret?
He reached out to hold her, but she stepped back, shaking her head. “I haven’t much time, Paolo. I’ve asked you here to explain. To tell you . . . my story.”
He frowned. Miralan never talked of her past, how she’d come to Venice. She’d been a mystery Paolo wanted to solve since he’d first met her at his impromptu performance at St. Mark’s Square in early spring. He finally reconciled himself that she’d never open herself up to him completely. In the end it made life easier for him.
Yet here she was.
“In this place?” he asked, puzzled. “Now?”
She moved to the stairway on their right, sat on the topmost step, and beckoned him to join her. After a moment’s hesitation, Paolo unslung his lute and did so.
“We’re in a place Between,” Miralan said, as if reading his thoughts. “Venice is full of such crossroads, entryways from one numinous realm to another, able to be entered with the correct invocation. This provides the privacy I need to talk to you, but only for a short time.”
Paolo shook his head. “I don’t understand. A place between?”
Miralan placed a beringed finger against his lips. “Just listen, yes? You’ve asked me about my life many times, my story. Now you will have it. I owe you an explanation, unbelievable as it may sound to you.”
She smiled. “I’ve rarely gotten close to anyone over the . . . years. You are that rare person, a musician whose art drew me, one whose music reminds me of another time and place. And, despite a rakish reputation, your gentle inner self captured my heart as a result.”
“Gentle inner self?” Completely baffled now, Paolo, poor street musician, sometime thief and womanizer, stared helplessly.
“Yes.” Miralan’s eyes twinkled. “Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.” Her expression sobered. “Now, please, join me on this journey into the past. My past.”
Paolo blinked as Miralan blew her sweet breath against his face. A haze, a hypnotic feeling of otherness, enveloped him. Paolo’s mind, his very essence, took flight and he saw through Miralan’s eyes . . .
#
As Priestess-Singer, enchantress and Intoner of the Sacred Songs, music defined my existence. But when the dreams, the farseeing visions of Akrotiri’s imminent destruction, began, their understanding was beyond my ken. Oh, I could seek out a dream-interpreter or seer to provide an explanation, but I was unwilling to do so until I could make some sense of them myself. Politics and in-fighting among my order had become more and more common. Any perceived weakness or threat could be used against me. I had to be careful what I said and did. The lust for power and position were not above the Order of the Priestess-Singers.
That day of the Great Ending, long, long ago, I stood at the topmost balcony of the order’s Temple of the Singer, alone, abandoned by my sisters, those I once called friends. Soon I would be brought to judgment for my so-called “crimes.”
The vast sea surrounding the island kingdom of Thera spread brilliantly cerulean before me. The sea that had always been our protector and lifeblood but would soon be, if my dreams were true, part of the doom soon to be visited upon us.
Our great city of Akrotiri sprawled in concentric rings of mercantile and residential districts. Vaulting towers and temples with the sculpted Horns of Consecration of the Sacred Bull crowning their roofs pointed to the sky. All were built of mortarless masonry consisting of red, black, and white stones quarried from the eastern part of the island, edged and gilded with the precious metal orichalcum. These rings flowed outward like enormous ripples to our two ocean harbors on opposite sides of the island, where our fishing, trading, and naval vessels docked.
And there, in the distance, its huge caldera shrouded by clouds, loomed Mount Thera. The long-dormant volcano, the personification of Apollimi, the goddess of life and death, towered ever watchful yet ever foreboding.
Great goddess Apollimi, I thought, sorely distressed. Why have you given me this farseeing gift, this . . . curse? Are these visions true or simply a malady of the mind?
So preoccupied was I, I didn’t hear the guards approaching. “Mistress Miralan,” one of the helmed, armored, and armed men said, his expression grim. “Your presence is required in the council chamber immediately.”
#
“Blasphemy!” The First Singer exclaimed, her lined features twisted into a scowl. “You dare to say you have farsight? That you can predict what our seers cannot! Or is this simply a ploy for power and influence?”
“That is not true!” I retorted, anger and disbelief surging through me. How quickly my order turned on me! I stood in front of the seven members of the Singer Council, their robed and cowled forms sitting at the curved orichalcum judgment table. The domed ceiling of the council chamber soared above, the mosaic floor cool under my feet. A warm breezed wafted in from the open rear casement. “You all know me. I say this as a warning only!”
“Why do these so-called visions come to you and no one else?” The First Singer’s scowl deepened.
I had asked myself that same question and admitted so. “I . . . I don’t know.”
“You broke the Singers’ Covenant, betrayed our order. You must be punished.”
“Betrayed?” I bristled at the lie. “I only want to help our people! All of us must!”
“You have been found guilty of blasphemy, Sister Miralan,” the First Singer decreed. The punishment is permanent exile and dilution of your powers.” The council members bowed their heads and began to sing.
“No. Please. Listen . . .” Their combined power, the magic they could use to save our people, foolishly encompassed me instead. I collapsed to my knees as their punishment, their curse, struck. I gasped, their magical noose tightening as I struggled against it. My powers as a singer began to dissipate.
I looked up as a tremor ran through the floor. “We’re too late!” I cried. “Our destruction has begun!”
A massive explosion sounded in the distance, a roaring of primal forces unleashed.
The council members rose to their feet and turned toward the casement. In the distance, Mount Thera erupted. A huge cloud of smoke and fire vaulted into the sky. Lightning flashed, thunder boomed.
Free of the council’s magic, I rose and hurried to the casement. Behind me the council members and even the guards screamed and fled the chamber. All cowards in the end. Why was I not surprised?
Fire rained down upon the city; the air became thick with ash and smoke; wind shrieked. Coughing, I placed my hands over my nose and mouth. The earth shook. Beyond the southern harbor, the sea rose like a living thing, a leviathan of water impossibly high and wide, an aqueous creature of complete and utter destruction.
“No!” I screamed through my fingers into the wind. “Apollimi protect us!” But those deities we worshipped, the gods and goddesses of our ancient pantheon, refused to listen. If they ever had.
And so I must save myself. I opened my mouth to sing one last time.
The water fell and my world ended.
#
“I awoke later on a distant shore, weak and disoriented, my singing voice gone, but I was safe. The still-remaining power I possessed was able to empower my final song spelling and transport me to a land beyond my own. I staggered to my feet and looked out to sea in the direction Akrotiri once lay. A monstrous cloud of black smoke spread across the horizon. The air smelt of death; ash fell like rain. In their haste to punish and exile me, the Order of Singers had, instead, allowed me to survive.”
Miralan fixed her piercing gaze on Paolo. “That happened centuries ago.”
The hypnotic haze, the otherness, lifted from Paolo’s mind; he breathed deeply and rubbed his eyes. Miralan’s past, her ancient past. Miralan had allowed Paolo to inhabit her fantastic story through her telling, as if he’d been in long-ago Akrotiri himself. He felt, heard, smelled, and tasted that mythic place and time. And its catastrophic demise.
A stark realization struck him. “Akrotiri? Thera? You . . . you’re speaking of . . .”
“Atlantis.” Miralan leaned in close. Paolo breathed in the heady scent of her lavender perfume, the sensation of finality he’d felt earlier increasing. “That is what ancient Thera is now called,” Miralan continued. “Enshrined in legend by the philosopher Plato. All that I revealed to you happened centuries ago.”
“By Christ . . .” Paolo felt as if he were falling. “I . . . I grieve for you, Miralan, and your people. But this means you . . . you are . . .” The word caught in his throat. It all seemed impossible, so fantastic! And yet, he knew without a doubt Miralan spoke truly.
“Immortal,” she said. “Yes, I was cursed with immortality, my powers as a priestess-singer blunted, my enchantress magic weakened. I’m doomed to wander through time and space, invisible, though sometimes I can interact with the mortal world.”
“That is unbearably cruel.” Paolo said. “Yet they are all dead. And you are not.”
“Supremely ironic, yes?”
“But how have you . . . how . . .?”
“Dealt with the loneliness? The despair?” She sighed. “It has been . . . difficult but I have managed to keep sane, to bear my solitary plight. My remaining powers as an enchantress have helped. But I’m determined to find a way to break this curse fully. I will not give up. I know I have more to give to the world, to help its peoples in some small way.”
“Then let me help you,” Paolo had been with many women, never wanting to be tied down, his music the most important part of his life. But then he’d met Miralan, unlike any woman he’d ever known. He would do anything, change everything, to be with her.
Miralan smiled sadly. “My sweet Paolo. Thank you, my love. But you will grow old and I will remain the same. It will be too painful for both of us.”
Paolo felt his frustration grow. “Then why have you told me all of this if you plan to just, what? Leave, continue to wander?”
“I’ve stayed here too long, which is unfair to both of us. I must set things aright.” Her lips trembled. “I must give you a gift. Something to . . . to inspire your music and to keep the story of Akrotiri alive.”
He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Listen.” Her eyes softened as she took his hand. “As I’ve said, though my singing and farsight have been expelled, there are some invocations I can still work, like opening the portal to this place Between. Another such spell is to prevent everlasting pain and sorrow.”
She embraced him, her lips pressed against his. He returned the kiss hungrily, desperately, his arms encircling her. A sudden warmth shot through him, a roaring sounded in his ears.
“Miralan,” he gasped and fell forward into empty air. Miralan was gone. Miralan . . . Mira . . .
Paolo blinked, dizzy. What? How . . .?
Startled, Paolo looked up from the step where he slumped. The sun shone brightly in the blue, cloudless Venetian sky, its warmth blanketing him. Passersby who recognized him pointed and laughed, thinking him awakening from a drunken sleep.
He sat on the Rialto Bridge. Gondolas plied the Grand Canal. Gulls flew squawking overhead. The voices of fishmongers and market vendors from the nearby Rialto Market called out the names of their wares. The bells of the Church of San Giacomo di Rialto tolled in the distance.
How did I get here? he thought, rubbing his eyes. How . . .?
A familiar scent touched him, bringing him alert. Cutting through the pungent smell of the canal, a whiff of lavender rose. Fragrant. One he knew.
Something . . . words, struggled to emerge. My sweet Paolo. A gift. Then they were gone. Except . . .
Paolo rose to his feet, picked up his lute and strode off the bridge to the San Polo side. He sat on an unoccupied stone bench and cradled the lute in his lap. A song, he thought, an idea blossoming, inspiration dawning. Not one of his rousing, minstrel songs of adventure and carnality, but a song of a mythical place and time. A song of tragedy, courage, and survival. A song of love and sacrifice.
Closing his eyes, he began to pick out a tune, an étude to enlarge into a fuller piece, one that would tell of the fall of ancient Thera.
The lost island continent of Atlantis.
Larry Ivkovich’s speculative fiction has been published in twenty-five online and print publications. He’s been a finalist in the L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future contest and was the 2010 recipient of the CZP/Rannu Fund award for fiction. His four-part urban fantasy series, The Spirit Winds Quartet, and SF steampunk novella, Hope’s Song, are published by IFWG Publishing, and the first two books in his independently published science fiction series, The Magus Star Trilogy, are available on Amazon. Larry is a member of SFWA and lives in Coraopolis, PA with his beautiful, multi-talented wife, Martha, and wonder cat Milo.