By Nataliya Dovhopol
Translated from Ukrainian by Vee Voytovych

Dedicated to the defenders of Snake Island, who became a symbol of heroism and fortitude in the face of Russian aggression when they refused to surrender to the invaders
on February 24, 2022.

The taste of seawater clung to my tongue, stiffened from the salt, but at least my lungs no longer burned as the water violently spewed from my nose and mouth. I lay on the ground, my right cheek pressed against a rock. I shifted, the slight movement taking an incredible amount of effort. My clothes were still somewhat in one piece, but covered in streaks of blood, already stiffened in the blazing sun. My cheek turned out to be completely scraped up, there was a gaping wound at the nape of my neck, and my right elbow was completely stiff. Somehow, I managed to get up despite the burning ache in my lower back. Thirst tormented me no less than the pain.
I gazed around, the bright sun making it hard to see. Around me, kingfishers were calling loudly and flying so low overhead that they almost touched me with their wings. I could vaguely recall a shipwreck.
‘You need help?’
Her voice was angelic. She was small and bright-faced like a Cherub from an icon. Her golden hair fell in curls over her shoulders, and her big blue eyes appeared to gaze right through me. I thought I had seen her before somewhere, but my head spun, and my thoughts were scattered. The girl stood on a cliff, facing the sun, and waited. I took a few steps towards her, but the hill was too steep, and I stumbled, barely keeping my balance. I expected her to give me a hand, but she didn’t move.
‘You said you wanted to help.’
‘You still haven’t asked.’
I snorted at the remark. As if it wasn’t evident from my pitiful appearance how desperately I needed the help. With effort, I raised my head and gave a slight nod.
‘Okay then, help.’
She started towards me, walking barefoot across the dark stones covered here and there in prickly pale green grass. Allowing me to lean on her shoulder, she dragged me up the hill.
What a shock I received when I reached the bare, treeless plateau from where the entire island was visible. It was small, like the little farm I grew up on, and barren, like my aunt’s cow, which never gave any milk. I felt a twist in my gut, not from hunger, but from the uncanny feeling that I was alone with just this girl, almost a child, on a small piece of land in the midst of the endless sea.

She led me on until we reached the island’s highest point, and suddenly I saw the remains of what could be called civilization. There were columns of what was once a giant temple, covered in vines that were weighed down by large purple grapes. Further on, beneath the crumbling ceiling and between the remaining chunks of wall, paled by time, there stood a cistern filled with water. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
With the first gulp of water, I started to feel better. The girl handed me a juicy, red apple, and I greedily bit into it, forgetting the tale of Adam and Eve.
Apart from the apples and grapes, her garden had low-growing honey acacia and twisted pear trees. It smelled of thyme and oregano. Drying on the rocks were fish, raisins, and figs.
‘Who are you?’ the girl finally asked after making sure I was no longer hungry and that my wounds weren’t too bad.
‘Makaryi,’ I lied. I had once heard that witches could claim power over you through your name, and then you would be lost. However, my rescuer didn’t look like a witch. Clouds drifted softly in her childlike eyes.
‘And who are you?’ I asked.
‘We-we are Levké,’ answered the blonde, tugging at the hem of her loose, plain cotton shirt.
She must be crazy, I mused, though I couldn’t look away from her thin frame and smooth, graceful movements. Besides, she still seemed familiar, even though no proper girl would behave the way she did. She didn’t cover her head or wear an overskirt or a belt. But who would see her on this island anyway?
We stretched out in the shade of the columns, on the lawn which didn’t seem as prickly anymore. I chewed on a piece of straw, and my new companion watched me with interest as I looked her up and down.
‘What is this place? What are you doing here?’
‘This is my island, the island of Levké. Perhaps you know it by the name, Fidonisi.’
‘Snake Island… so that’s where I am.’ I clapped my hands together. ‘And the ruins are of the well-known Temple of Achilles? Well, I’ll be damned! Are you that famous oracle the ancient legends talk about? Hey, Levké, maybe you can tell me my future too!’
‘I will, but not today,’ she promised.
I immediately frowned. It had stopped being a joke.
‘Do ships ever come here? Will I be able to leave?’
‘The ships you seek do not come this way. But the threads of fate keep spinning. You did get here somehow after all.’
‘Our ship was dashed to pieces. There was a hurricane larger than any I had ever seen in my time on the Pontus-Euxinus. I don’t know if anyone else even survived.’
‘Are you a merchant?’
‘Kind of.’
I didn’t really want to admit that a significant part of my wealth came from piracy. Muscular arms and shoulders, scars all over my body, tattoos, and even my wolfish look hinted at a demanding and hardly respected career. But God favours the bold, as my companion Olaf always said.
Suddenly, it dawned on me. I still hadn’t thanked the Lord for saving me. I quickly rose to my feet and started to look around the temple.
‘What are you looking for?’
‘Some kind of cross or icon… I can’t pray to your pagan gods, can I?’
‘Where are you originally from?’
‘Well…I’ve been wandering the seas for so long, I no longer remember where my home is.’
This time I didn’t lie, not wholly.
‘I am without a home. I never knew my father, and barely remember my mother. I used to live with an aunt until some people took me up and taught me to sail.’
I cleared my throat. I wasn’t ready to give any more details, and besides, I didn’t want to scare the girl.
‘And you? How long have you been on this island?’
‘We have been here since the nymph, Thetis, raised this island from the sea floor as she mourned for her son, Achilles. She had asked Poseidon for this piece of land and eternal life.’
‘The Achilles who was struck in the heel?’ I asked, trying with all my might not to laugh.
This girl was definitely crazy, although very pretty.
‘The very same. The one who fell in the battle for Troy,’ she confirmed with affection as she gazed at the remains of the temple.
‘Do you live there?’ I nodded towards the worn-out walls that still gave the appearance of a shelter. ‘We live everywhere,’ she said with a bright smile. That smile made goosebumps rise on my skin.
Morning on the island came with a light breeze. At dawn, the kingfishers swarmed, the smell of thyme was more pungent, and the food tasted twice as good. The warblers filled the air with their song, the loons nested, and migrating herons rustled their wings.

In the afternoon, the birds vanished somewhere. The sun burned like crazy, and the water shone so bright it hurt the eyes. It foamed and whooshed as it hit the cliffs. Closer to evening, the entire shoreline was covered with black snakes washed up by the tide. A storm was brewing at sea, the kind that made you want to hide in the ruins of the temple, devoutly observing the frescoes covered in images showing the feats of Achilles and listening to the soft prayers that Levké was saying to the goddess Thetis, each time kissing the snake ring on her right hand.
‘She turns into a snake,’ Levké explained.
‘Who?’
‘Thetis. When she visits her son.’
‘Hey, didn’t he also have a lover? What was his name?’
‘Petroclus,’ the girl smiled and pointed at one of the peeling frescas. ‘He’s also nearby. Want to see?’
The next morning, we went diving. Deep, deep down, as far as our oxygen supply allowed. On the sea floor lay a ship on which was written in Greek letters: Ο Πάτροκλος.
Together with Levké, we took a large amphora of olive oil out of the hold. Then a second one filled with seed. I ground the stone-hard seeds. We gathered eggs in the grass and baked cakes in an improvised oven. The bread turned out fragrant, smelling of rosemary and love. Everything on this island was filled with love.
Each day, I worried less and less about the strangeness of my accidental neighbor and fell more and more in love with her. I loved watching her dance in the morning dew and laughing with birds, how engaged she was, and how she told me endless legends about gods and heroes, as if she had lived through not just one but a thousand lives. She could be happy, she could be sad, but she was never angry, not even when I accidentally broke the handle off her water carafe or when I spat in the water spring that we used to fill our cistern. I never saw fear in her eyes, not when a storm knocked the acacia directly on top of her, not when a shoal of dogfish passed nearby, not even when I got caught up in my feelings and raised my hand to hit her, though I never had the guts actually to strike her.
Slowly, I became used to her whimsical habits, even the fact that she uses the plural to refer to herself.
Only one thing frightened me: when the wind blew and the sun dove under the horizon, she went to the shore and, for a long time, gazed into the distance, waving her hand in the air as if saying goodbye.
One time, it was raining. Levké was making dolls out of grass, calling them her sisters and whispering already-familiar prayers to Thetis and Achilles, and then threw something into her mouth. It started to smell of laurel.
‘Now we are ready to look into your future,’ she said ceremonially, looking through me.
I really wanted to return to my old life. I would be greeted by new shores, loud taverns, beautiful women, the clatter of beer mugs, and the clash of swords. Everything I loved so much. But at that moment, it seemed to me that I loved Levké more. I loved her with adoration, yet feared to touch her, as if she were so light and fragile that she would break from my lightest touch. I just liked looking at her, breathing her in, loving her. No, damn it, I didn’t want to go anywhere.
Levké chewed for a long time. The scent of laurel spread. Her eyes rolled back, her face pale, and then her head suddenly jerked backward so hard her neck cracked.
‘What do you see?’ I asked when the peaceful look on her face was replaced with a pained grimace.
‘We see asphodels, no, no, they are fields of wheat. We see a crossroads, and Hecate, ready to take your soul, to speak for you before Hades himself. We see Thetis. She is angry. She has a snake stinger. Though maybe it is just fields of wheat, not funeral asphodels.’
She fell, unconscious. I caught her, dripped water on her face, and gave her a drink.
‘What did we say?’
‘Something about wheat, and asphodels, nonsense mostly.’
She shook her head and looked me directly in the eyes. In her big, wet eyes, sparks of worry flickered.

One morning, when Levké decided to soak in the warm waves, I looked around the ruins of the temple. It was then that I found the treasure in one of the tunnels.
How long have I been on this deserted island, and I haven’t seen these hidden paths yet? But really, how long have I been here? Maybe she was like that witch Circe, who used her will to keep Odysseus on her island.
Armed with this thought and a flaming torch, I dove into the narrow, rocky corridor that began behind the altar. Here once stood a statue of Achilles, to whom people brought sacrificial gifts. Now only chunks of marble lay in heaps, some looking like a torso or half a head. Levké didn’t gather them up, didn’t try to reconstruct them. She said that even gods were subject to the flow of time, and that my god would also eventually dissolve in the river of forgetting, but I didn’t want to believe her. There was supposed to be something unchanging in this world. Otherwise, what are we supposed to hold on to in the night, in the darkness of an empty room as our heart thuds and our soul spirals into the abyss of our subconscious?
The corridor was too narrow for my shoulders. But I kept squeezing through until I found myself in a small cavern where I was finally able to stand to my full height. Here I found amphoras full of golden coins bearing images of kings, kings who were once held in awe by the people of the surrounding lands, and who now lay in nameless graves, eaten by worms.
I gathered handfuls of coins, putting them in my pockets, in my hat, wherever I could fit them. Maybe with this money I could buy myself a vast ship, hire a crew, and become a master of the seas, with the sharpest sword and the newest gear. We would rob Trapizond and Athens, and maybe even Constantinople itself.
‘Escape as far away as possible from this witch.’ The words were stuck in my head. ‘Even if I must swim or walk across the ocean.’
I emerged from beneath the earth, gasping for breath and with a burnt-out torch. Levké was already working among the grapevines. She wanted to treat me to some wine, for which I longed so much. Seeing the girl, all sneaky thoughts immediately flew out of my head. Levké was smiling warmly, her fingers were red from the grape juice, the crop she had tended for so long, so carefully, and which she intended to give to me in its entirety.
‘You found the cavern,’ she casually remarked, and only then did I remember that I was covered in the red dust that lay heavy on all the islands’ rocks. ‘Makaryi, will you help me with the grapes?’
She still called me Makaryi. The name stuck with me. It became mine to an extent that no name had ever been before.
Shaking off the dust, I secretly dumped the coins into a hole behind a piece of Achilles’ head, then gladly went off to help Levké.

That morning, I was sound asleep when, seemingly in my dreams, I heard familiar voices. At first, I could not believe my ears, but then I jumped up and ran off excitedly to see the faces of my companions.
They came on a float made of the boards of our drowned ship. They survived by some miracle and lived for a long time on the cliffs near the shipwreck, getting water and food from the boat. When the food in the holds ran out, they built a float and set out for where they thought the mainland was, but instead, they came upon my island.
‘Do you need help?’ asked Levké.
They just laughed, but I elbowed Olaf and said it would be better to answer her questions.
He groaned, bowed down in a funny pose, and said:
‘Oh, please help us, dear lady!’
Levké didn’t catch their sarcasm, at least she gave no sign of it. She nodded and invited us all to the table, or rather, the rug that she had laid out between the pillars.
My companion, Olaf, was tall and thin, like a rod. His face was covered in scars that made it look like he was always laughing, so that not even I could always tell when he was actually joking.
Yanis was a simple guy from a small village with a kindly face. He had only recently joined our group and was better at tending sheep and milking goats than at wielding a sword, though he really wanted to learn. After all, is there anything better than the smell of blood when it’s the blood of your enemy?
Both of my companions were tired, dirty, and shaggy. Their hair was stuck together from the salt, and their lips were cracked.
Levké brought water, picked some ripe figs, and gathered eggs from the nests of black-necked loons and seagulls. When she returned, we were already finishing the wine that she had hidden, which wasn’t fully fermented yet, but reminded us of our old times together.
She didn’t say anything about this either, but I noticed a small shadow of grief pass through her eyes.
‘Did you two already?’ Olaf made an inappropriate gesture, winking towards the girl.
‘No,’ I felt my cheeks burn. ‘She’s different, you understand?’ I lowered my voice.
‘Ho-ho, where is the stallion with whom I shagged half the girls north of Ovid’s lake?!’ A rather drunk Olaf slapped my back. ‘Well then, maybe you can give up your turn. I bet she’s as pure as the earth in springtime.’
I hit him in the face.
‘Hey, what’s the matter?’ my companion called angrily.
‘She’s mine, you hear?!’
‘Alright, alright, you stud, after you then.’ Yanis clapped me on the back.

In the evening, my tired companions went to sleep, tucking themselves into the hay underneath the broken roof that once covered the grandest temple in this part of the world. I went over to Levké as she finished her traditional farewells, tracing an invisible line from south to north.
The sky was painted in violet shades with streaks of gold, pink, and cobalt. I involuntarily remembered a painter whose house we had moved into after one successful raid. The longer I watched him work, the more I wanted to be like him: to mix colors, paint chests, and draw images of saints. He even taught me some of his secret knowledge. It’s a shame that eventually we had to kill him.
I touched Levké’s hand. She jerked back.
‘Levké, would you be able to love me?’
‘Of course,’ she replied without a shade of doubt.
‘Would you want to…’ I was embarrassed, like a teenager.
She was looking at me without blinking. She waited for me to finish the sentence, but under her gaze, her big eyes, childlike and wise at the same time, I felt myself shrinking, growing down into the earth, and losing the ability to speak.
I returned to the cover of the temple, never finishing what I meant to say. Levké didn’t come back until the morning.

After that day, our cozy life changed. The whole island changed. Olaf raided all the nests, so that soon the birds started to avoid the island like the plague. Yanis started a fire from the dry grass and the driftwood that had washed up on the beach to roast a few toads, but the fire fell over and caught the sun-dried grass, burning up a large portion of the land.
I showed them the sunken ship, and we dove down there until we dragged up absolutely everything that could be useful, including the human bones that Olaf liked to stack up on the cliff sides like pagan temples. He insisted that the best way to enjoy life was to occasionally look into the face of death.
Levké avoided me, maybe because of my unwanted show of interest in her, or perhaps because I spent all my time with my companions. She gave her attention to her imaginary friends, the birds and the gods.
‘You don’t mind that my guys stay here a while?’ I asked Levké, feeling an intense doubt.
‘We’ll build a boat from the remains of Petroclus and set out over there, to the northwest, to Byzantine lands. And we can take you with us. Do you want to see the big land?’
‘Even we can’t untangle all the threads of Moira,’ she replied with a distant voice, avoiding my question.
I still heard the gentleness in that voice, but there were more and more melancholic notes in it. As if she were preparing for something one does not come back from. As if she’s known everything all along.
We were, in fact, building a boat. We put together half-rotten boards from the sunken ship and gathered driftwood that washed up on our shores. At the same time, we piled up the treasure that we intended to take with us. Olaf used beads to decorate his bones and placed tiaras encrusted with rubies and amethysts on the skulls. Yanis dragged everything from the ship that he could get his hands on, even the board with Petroclus’ name, which he liked very much.
‘Why do you need that sign, if you don’t even know how to read?’ I joked.
And to tell the truth, I was afraid. Each time I looked at the defiled ship, I got goosebumps. And even scarier was looking at Levké when Olaf gathered up the gold from the altar of her temple.
That’s when she first spoke out.
‘I promised to help you, but I never gave you permission to ruin my home.’
‘Home?’ Olaf grinned. ‘You call this a home!? What? Did you expect to skulk your entire life on this piece of rock you call an island?’
‘If you want a ship, I will build one for you. If you want riches, I will give you riches, but that’s enough plundering my island.’
Olaf burst out laughing. Yanis joined in after him. I stood nearby behind a leaning column covered in grape vines. I did not find it at all funny. I believed in this crazy girl, like I never believed in myself, but I never gathered the courage to come out from behind that column.

When the boat was ready, we loaded it up with treasure. There were glasses, precious rings, and even a few antique amphoras.
We pushed off from the shore, and the pleasant morning waves lulled us. The guys took up the oars, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the thin form on the sea cliffs.
Her face was cold. Frozen like a funeral mask.
I wanted her to cry. I wanted her to sail away with me, or to ask me to stay. But she remained silent.
A great emptiness settled on me. I loved her. Not because of her pretty face and deep eyes, the color of the sea, not even because of the dances in the dew and the endless magical stories. Before her, no one cared for me like that. No one asked if I had eaten, if I slept well, if the nightingales bothered me, or if the bats who lived under the temple roof hit me with their wings.
Before her, I hadn’t lived.
‘We’re criminals,’ I said suddenly. ‘Murderers, thieves, rapists. No wonder God sent the great lightning storm at our ship. There was a reason he let us get rescued on this island. He wanted us to repent, to start a new, righteous life…’
Olaf called my name, but it sounded foreign to me. More than anything in the world, I wanted to stay. God called to me through the deep gaze of the one I loved.
And I was ready to leap over the side of the boat and swim towards her when Olaf hit me over the ear.
‘Idiot! We’re going down!’
And indeed, our boat, which had already sailed some distance from the land, was tipping and slowly filling up with water.
The fragile vessel, weighed down with treasure, was sinking. One by one, the treasures dipped beneath the water, getting lost in the waves and disappearing forever. Only the smooth board with the name ‘Patroclus’ floated on the sea surface, as if laughing at us, as if some higher power sent it.
‘All our treasures!’ Yanis was in tears as he held onto the thin neck of an amphora.
‘Save yourselves, you idiots,’ hollered Olaf.
I had just enough time to grab the hat that I had stuffed under my feet. Inside it glimmered the coins I found in the tunnels of the temple.
‘And where is this from?’ Yanis squinted, having jumped into the water after me.
‘So we didn’t lose the whole treasure?’
I didn’t respond, silently swimming towards shore. I could feel Levké’s intense gaze on me, and even more intense, the gaze of my companions.
Once on the shore, Olaf grabbed me, and I did the same to him. We rolled along the grass and the coins scattered over the cliffs with a clatter.
‘Stop,’ Levké said quietly, and her voice broke through strong and masterful. ‘Tomorrow, you will get your promised ship, and as for the treasure, you can take these coins that you stole from my temple, but I will not allow a single piece more to be taken.’
She finished speaking and headed to the covered columns. We were left standing there staring after her.

The promise of a ship again brought about laughter. And after making fun of Levké, my companions turned to me. I had to tell them about the catacombs and the dishes filled with gold.
Sitting on the warm rocks, we dried off and thought about our next moves.
‘We will build a new ship and fill it with new gold,’ outlined Olaf.
‘Those coins that I brought out will be enough for everyone,’ I stated, ‘Levké asked…’
‘You’ve turned so soft, it’s disgusting. Even Yanis is more competent than you are in our trade. He knows that the worst that can happen to us is to become soft.’
‘Each one of us is already threatened with eternal torment and a cozy cauldron in hell. What do we have to lose?’ Yanis hurried to uphold his reputation. ‘Anyways, I’ve been without for so long… and crazy Levké is so pretty…’
He dreamily closed his eyes and touched himself in a particular spot.
‘She’s so full-breasted, so soft, exactly my taste…’
‘Are you crazy? She’s as thin as a board. Looks like my first wife. Just as red-headed and thin-nosed, and just as unapproachable.’ Olaf cut in.
A heat rose from the bottom of my belly, reaching my solar plexus. It strangled me, took away my speech. I slapped myself across the face, forcing myself back to reality.
‘So that’s what it is! Boys, this witch has a thousand guises. I always thought, “Who does she remind me of?” I had a neighbour in my childhood who looked just like her. I was a bit in love with her back then…’
I felt betrayed. The girl I envisioned as a goddess turned out to be a demon with a thousand faces. A monster. The treacherous Circe.

Olaf dragged her out of the temple. Yanis tied her to the pear tree that she had taken care of for so long, protecting it from all winds.
‘Y..you…tricked me. You tricked us all?’ I hissed and slapped her across the face with my palm.
Levké remained quiet. For the first time, I saw disgust in her face.
Let her be angry, let her laugh menacingly, but disgust, I could not bear.
I tightly grabbed her shoulders, covered in a partially see-through blouse. She cried out, and the disgust on her face turned to contempt. It crept under my skin like a brand, burning through me, piercing my heart.
‘Well, don’t delay,’ Yanis egged me on. ‘I’m next.’
Olaf shoved him aside:
‘Know your place, I’m next!’
I grinned.
She was mine and no one else’s. She belonged to me.
‘They’ve called us Levké for a long time…’ the girl suddenly said.
From her voice, the birds in the sky went silent, the waves on the sea died away.
‘I know,’ I retorted, squeezing her tighter. ‘A name that makes no sense, “Whitey” in Greek.’
‘…because we are white and unblemished. We don’t have fear and don’t know hatred.’
I think I squeezed her too hard. I heard a crunch. The girl’s neck bent unnaturally, but she still held her eyes on me. She continued speaking in a voice that caused the hairs on my back to stand straight.
‘We are the souls of the blessed who dwell here between the worlds of the living and the dead. We protect the temple, and its treasures belong to those who need them.’
‘I need them!’ I called out in a voice that wasn’t my own and let go of her. ‘We need them, you crazy bitch!’
‘You needed them once.’
She straightened and lifted her head. Black snakes climbed upward along her arms. Levké stepped away from the pear tree and put her hands out to us, palms up.
‘What in the hell was that?’ stammered Olaf.
‘My rope…I tied her up myself…’
‘Here they are, your ropes,’ Levké reached out her snake-covered hands towards Yanis. ‘Take them!’
He stepped away from her as if from a leper. She smiled. Such as a smile as only the blessed have.
She slowly removed a snake ring from her finger and threw it to the left without looking.
From that side of the island, a ship appeared. Its masts reached to the heavens, and the snow white sails fluttered in the light breeze.
‘We were preparing a ship for you. From strong oak wood, with silken gills and finely hewn oars. It’s a shame that you no longer need it. Today, you will be taken away by a very different vessel.’
Levké raised her hand, and the ship dissolved in the air. The gold in my wallet also dissolved; I could feel its weight growing smaller.
Then the birds started to arrive. White martins flew in from all directions, circling and creating odd shapes in the sky. Lower and lower they came. They yelled, as if they wanted to drown out not just our voices, but also our thoughts, our entire beings.
From the ocean came snakes by the dozen, the hundred, the thousand? The blessed animals of Thetis, as Levké had once told me.
‘Let us go, o great goddess!’ Yanis fell to his knees, folding his arms over his chest.
Olaf followed. It was the first time I had seen him so humbled and so sad. So terrified.
‘Let us go, o Levké!’ he begged.
But I knew that Levké would be unmoved. Around the island, the winds rose, forming a funnel at the center of which, on the ruins of the temple of Achilles and his mother, Thetis, we stood.
My beloved looked at me one last time in the form of a human. In vain I searched for forgiveness in her eyes.
Levké threw open her arms and dissolved into many white martins.

The snakes crawled under our shirts, into our ears, and onto our private parts. We crushed them, shook them off, but there were so many of them that there was no hope of getting rid of this invasion. I tore one off from around my neck and yelled out at the top of my lungs:
‘Levké! Why are you like this with me, crazy Levké?’
She didn’t respond. The hoard of martins deafened me with their calls. They tore into my liver, plucked out my eyes, and tore out from my chest my still-warm heart.

Epilogue
Here I am, once again on a ship. Utterly packed, it moves slowly, as if battling a storm. The wind fills the coal black sails. There is no navigator or captain at the helm. Our path lies to the north, where the sky is yellowed with the last rays of light that spears through from behind storm clouds.
Unknown women, men, children – all of them are coming out on deck and looking at the sky for the final time. Some bite their lips until they are bloody to feel alive just once more. Some lament their own deaths. Some silently come to terms with their dreary fate. The wind blows through hair, tears clothes, drowns out voices, and dries tears that didn’t even have time to fall.
Next to me stand my companions, Olaf and Yanis.
‘Not even the devil will take me,’ Olaf hisses through his teeth and throws himself over the side into the foaming waves.
In a second, he is once again standing next to me, but now wet as a dog, before the cutting wind. Yanis whines quietly. He says he’s lived so little and never got to tell his mother how much he loves her.
Olaf elbows me in the ribs. It’s so unexpected that I want to hit him back right there, but his pale face is frozen in wonder.
‘So I finally look death in the eyes…’
I turn my head to the left and see a familiar island. The skulls of long-dead people watch our ship. Levké also watches us. She lifts her right hand and waves goodbye to us. The way she waved hundreds, thousands of times before.
‘You said that there are fields of wheat waiting for me. That Hecate will take my soul and forgive me,’ I cry in despair, falling against the railing.
‘Hecate hears our prayers. She stood up to you before the gods, but you yourself changed your thread of fate. Today, you chose oblivion.’
The sea foams, breaking into whitecaps. The storm grows stronger and stronger, straining our sails, chasing us far from the accursed island. The blessed island.

Then I cross the river. I thought I would forget, but instead I am forgotten.
I will forever wander the Asphodelian Meadows and remember. I will forever love my Levké.
From the writings brought forth from the Kingdom of Hades by the poet Orpheus.

About the author:
Natalyia Dovhopol is a Ukrainian writer, civic activist, and culture expert. Born in 1987, raised in Kyiv, where she obtained her major in Tourism and a postgraduate degree in Theory and History of Art. Since 2018 lives with her family in Athens, Greece, dedicating herself to writing, prompting Ukrainian culture and civic activism in the diaspora.
The author has a number of short stories and creative writing essays published in different collective works. Moreover, Levke was featured in French at the Rainbow Bridge story collection (2024), and the first Polish translation is due to come. Nataliya has also participated in the Athens World Poetry Festival and has her poems in Greek and English featured in the collections of 2022, 2023 and 2024.

About the illustrator:
Hedwig Damen (1982) lives and works in the Netherlands. She has always been fascinated by fairy tales, myths, sagas, and legends that were read to her in her younger years and stimulated her imagination. Walking in the dunes and woods also contributed to this. Her bookshelf is overflowing with collections of fairy tales and myths from all over the world, as well as fantasy and science fiction books.
After a career in the government, Hedwig felt it was time to change course and quit her job. Now she focuses entirely on illustrating, designing, and upcycling. A website is coming soon. Currently, she can be found on social media. Check out illustrations and patterns on Instagram under @damen_art_and_design, and for upcycling under @u.p.upcycledproducts.