On that sunny day, my eyes lingered on the page, trying to unravel the mystery within. More than once, I halted mid-sentence, staring blankly while my lips whispered the title - Dayan.... Dayan - as if its mere repetition might have helped me understand what was hidden between the lines. Then, I read on: “I was only aware of the ultimate equation. I did not know the solution that could have protected me from the consequences of discovering it. God gifted me with mathematical genius, but not with true creative vision - not with poetic genius…Had I possessed poetic genius, perhaps I would have uncovered the solution myself.”
se
Despite my fascination with Mircea Eliade’s fantasy fiction, on that afternoon, I struggled to stay engrossed in the story. My spirit no longer wanted to remain inside the book. The life beyond the window murmured with a force that the printed page, for all its magic, could not match. I closed the book, giving in to the temptation of a stroll through the sun-drenched streets, eager to listen to the world more closely.
Once I reached the street, I slipped into the Thessaloniki’s rhythm and colour. Peace, warmth, and sun - a Greek city in its typical mood. The sun cast its light over the city with youthful vigour. Here and there, a few wispy, ghost-like clouds drifted across the sky, adding a faint touch of melancholy to the scene.
Roaming the city, a little shop appeared before me - though I’m not sure it even deserved such a name - tucked into a corner, closed, with only a handful of unpriced goods inside.
Three Egyptian cross pendants glowed subtly in the window, against the dusty background, appearing to bear the imprint of another place, another time. Something about them felt half-remembered, but I couldn’t grasp what it was. I perceived only the silent torment of my soul wanting to find out.
I’d promised myself I’d come back the next day to buy one of them. Yet when I returned, the little shop was still closed, and it stayed that way far longer than I’d expected. Day after day, week after week, I returned, drawn to that pane of glass where I would peer in as if waiting long enough might somehow change something inside. Still, the pendants remained undisturbed.
Time passed in its usual rhythm, marking the approaching end of the academic year and my time studying abroad. As my return home drew closer, I felt a growing anxiety about leaving without the much-coveted Egyptian cross.
Then, one day, the door, which had been stubbornly shut for so long, finally swung open. I stepped in.
“Excuse me,” I asked a young brunette with long, curly hair, “how much are the pendants in the window?”
Behind the counter, she stared absentmindedly past me, leaving my question unanswered.
A young man’s voice broke the silence. “No idea. I’m not the owner. I don’t even work here.”
I hadn’t heard him approach; he might as well have stepped out of the air like a phantom.
“Why are you here, then?” I asked, puzzled.
He shrugged.
The air hung with the lingering scent of old wood and dust. My gaze drifted from the aged wooden floor to a faded oriental dancer’s dress draped above a peeling showcase, then to a hookah resting on a timeworn desk.
A deep feeling of detachment unexpectedly came over me, as if an invisible membrane had wrapped itself around my body, setting me apart from everything else. The young man spoke to the woman, and she replied, their lips moving in a silent exchange that didn’t reach my ears. No sound seemed to penetrate that membrane. It was like watching a silent movie.
“I’ll call the owner to find out the price,” the young man’s voice suddenly broke through, crisp and real, as if it had pierced the membrane from the outside.
I remained rooted to the spot in the room, gripped by the sensation that time had also come to a standstill.
I hadn’t even realised the young man had left until he reappeared, stepping back into the room as though emerging from another dimension, and announced, “Fifty is the price.”
“Which one is fifty?” I inquired. “They are different sizes.”
He paused, seeming to look back into his memory for the answer, then replied: “They all cost the same.”
“In that case,” I decided, “I’ll take the largest cross; the one with the scarab in the ankh’s circle.”
I left the shop feeling the joy bubbling inside me so intense I feared it might crack my skin and spill out. This elation soon faded as a few fuzzy details began nagging me: Were those young people Arabs or Greeks? What language had they spoken to each other? Had they actually spoken to each other?
Alone in my room, I reflected upon the day’s events, which reminded me, for reasons unclear, of a passage from Eliade’s novella 19 Roses: “We all had one of those incomprehensible experiences where it felt as if we were in a strange space, living in an abolished time.”
Soon, I drifted off to sleep and had a strange dream where…
A city lay in ruins, silent and deserted for ages. The moonlight, like powdered silver, fell onto colossal stones, scattered as though a divine being had hurled them in a fit of rage.
A lone stone block stood in the heart of the city’s central square. The moonlight bathed one of its sides with a snow-like luminescence, contrasting with the coal-dark shadows on the other. Upon the moonlit surface, peculiar carvings emerged, depicting figures with oversized heads, converging from a boundless horizon. Rugged mountains encircled a city, a mirror image of this one, now destroyed. Egyptian-like figures knelt, hands outstretched in supplication. As the moon slid across the sky, it illuminated a new facet of the stone, revealing the oddly shaped-headed strangers’ departure. They appeared to ascend to the heavens, issuing orders to the Egyptians below.
As if on cue, a star gracefully glided along a ray of light. Its gentle, bluish gleam cast a theatrical atmosphere, much like a spotlight on a stage, heralding the start of an uncanny performance.
The image rippled for a moment, like water disturbed by a stone. Then I saw a woman facing judgement. Her dark hair held a sheen, like water in a stone fountain, reflecting the sky in its depths. Her eyes flickered like the tremor of a full moon on a lake at the edge of a dark forest. A scarab-decorated ankh shone around her neck.
There was a mysterious tension floating around, the source of which I couldn’t identify. Unexpectedly, a thought raced through my mind, providing a response to an unspoken query: This goddess has to face the consequences of her wrongdoing.
Under the cover of night, the judge’s presence was barely discernible, but his words boomed powerfully through the air. “What crime has she committed?”
The language was unfamiliar, yet the meaning sank into my mind as if poured directly into my thoughts.
The accuser stepped forward, his voice, like thunder, mirroring his cold, implacable aura.
“This goddess broke a divine law by defying the elders’ decrees. She shared forbidden healing knowledge and even cured individuals condemned to death by the gods, besides teaching mortals about astronomy, moon movements, and celestial navigation.”
His tone hardened. “However, her gravest betrayal was love. She tied herself to a mortal and revealed to him secrets meant only for the gods: the art of bending time and of crossing the thresholds between life and death. She brought mortals closer to the gods, forcing the old gods to erase their civilization.”
The judge’s voice rose again, this time addressing the condemned woman. “Do you have anything to say in your defence?”
The goddess looked skyward and began to speak with a voice that carried a mysterious melody.
“In the ancient texts of our elders, there is an oath that shaped my purpose. ‘We pledge to you, mighty Sun God, our unwavering commitment to bring solace to those afflicted by illness and sorrow, as Horus and Isis once guarded and comforted Osiris. Let us, united, offer the suffering not only our love, but the strength of knowledge, O radiant Sun God.’”
Her gaze swept over the shadows surrounding her: judges, accusers, silent watchers hidden in the dark.
“If healing is forbidden, if teaching is condemned, and if love is the greatest sin,” she uttered with the solemnity of a caged bird of prey, “then let judgment fall upon me. I will bear it all, but I will never repent.”
In the flickering light of the star, a cell emerged from the darkness as though an unseen veil had been drawn aside. A man sat within, his posture weighed down by a pain that seemed too heavy for a mortal to bear. His hands, trembling with a desperate yearning for one last hug, reached through the iron bars towards the woman he loved.
The goddess met his gaze. Her frozen eyes bloomed for a moment. When she spoke, her voice softened into something meant only for him.
“Immortality and true love are said to be inseparable. While I cannot stop death from taking you, I take comfort in knowing our love reaches beyond its power. You’ll live forever within my heart.”
She had barely finished speaking when a focused, unnatural burst of light ripped through the cell with the speed and violence of a lightning bolt. The flash was blinding. When the brilliance faded, the man was gone, leaving only a thin wisp of smoke curling upward where his body had been. Tears wove a delicate, almost invisible spiderweb in the goddess’s eyes. She lifted her chin with dignity and turned toward the judge, listening in silence as he pronounced her sentence.
“For a thousand years, you will wander this deserted city, alone, burdened by the weight of your sins. When that time ends, you will be reborn as a mortal, stripped of your divinity and consumed by sorrow. Across countless lifetimes, shifting between the roles of woman and man, you will repeatedly encounter your soulmate, yet never recognise them. Only when you finally understand the full measure of your wrongdoing will your memories return, and your punishment end.”
When the pale dawn light seeped into the room, I awoke in a haze of confusion, my mind still replaying the night’s images and impressions. I couldn’t shake the thought: Was my subconscious guarding a truth I wasn’t ready to face?
Still mulling over the previous day’s unresolved questions, I half-heartedly worked on my university assignments. When evening fell, I went to the seaside, a place that has always offered me mental clarity, hoping to find the answer to all the questions swirling in my mind.
Near Aristotle Square, the sound of waves mingled with the distant tourist chatter. Adrift in my thoughts, I stared at the distant view, my fingers absently fiddling with the Egyptian cross on my chest, when a voice spoke beside me. “I like the symbol on your necklace.”
I turned to see an old man with a grey, long beard.
“Me too,” I replied. “That’s why I bought this pendant.”
For a beat, he was quiet, his gaze wandering back to the Aegean, tracing the glistening sea. When he spoke again, a shadow of sadness clouded his words.
“I used to make similar pendants back in Crete when I was younger. Life got tough there, so a few years ago, I moved to the mainland. But I’m old now, my hands shake, and it’s hard to keep up with the crafting.”
A sense of familiarity stirred in me, unexplainable. “Have we ever met before?”
As I walked away, his reply drifted after me, threading itself into the sound of the waves. “Who knows? Perhaps we’ve known each other for ages.”
I ended the day by returning to my favourite story, Dayan, reflecting on a few pivotal passages: “If my intuition is correct… I will unravel the enigma… that time can be compressed in both directions. Then anything becomes possible, and man, to his own misfortune, may take on the role of God.”
Soon, my eyelids grew heavy, and…
My first vision was of a room brimming with floor-to-ceiling shelves packed with leather-bound books, many so old and brittle they seemed on the verge of disintegration. A moonlit spiderweb glistened in the corner of the windowpane, adding a gentle peace to the scene.
A man sat hunched over an old wooden table, writing in a notebook. His scribbling betrayed the feverish impatience of a child about to unearth a treasure. He paused for a moment, sharing his metaphysical musings with a small spider spinning its web - his only companion in the silent night. Is the human soul the only realm where time and space exist? Could I plumb the soul’s depths, unlock its secrets, and travel through time, on Earth or among the stars, shaping events to my will? Could I return to the boundless realm of my soul to the moment, the place, and the life where I met her, the goddess from my dreams?
Back at his notebook, his pen scratched furiously across the page, a torrent of symbols and numbers pouring from his mind. Excitement pulsed through his overwrought brain as he filled page after page until exhaustion overwhelmed him. Even then, jaw clenched and eyes bloodshot, he pressed on. Each discovery only deepened his despair, fuelling more frantic scribbling. He kept writing, ignoring the sharp pains in his joints, until the complex equations began to move as images before his eyes, morphing into writhing snakes that gathered further in a circle dance of goddesses.
A voice screamed in his head, as if unseen, angry eyes were upon him. “Stop! You’ll go crazy!”
Pale and trembling, he yelled back, “I can’t! I’m on the verge of a discovery that will change the world forever.”
A second scream echoed, “The secret of the gods is forbidden to mortals.”
“I’ll discover it! I’ll be like the ancient Egyptian sages!” he shouted.
The man wrote on until a searing pain, like iron claws, tore through his brain, causing him to clasp his temples. “It must be late,” was his last thought before fainting and falling on the floor.
As was often the case, the dream sequences swirled together, chaotic and nonsensical. My perspective shifted. I became a point of light, a disembodied consciousness that was aware it was dreaming.
A huge screen, with countless mathematical formulas and geometrical figures sparkling like gold, hung in the sky. A chilling dread seized me. What do they mean? What if I can’t decipher their meaning? But the fear loosened, and understanding rose within me like an old, lost memory. They described the hidden order of the universe, the primordial forces that shaped the world, writing the times. Then, what had briefly seemed clear to me became muddled and vanished, as if it had never been, like any hidden truth.
My attention returned to the man. He lay in the hospital bed, lips parched, forehead glistening with sweat, his head heavy. Strapped down, he could barely move. His mouth contorted as if he wanted to cry out, “Get me out of here! You’re hurting me!” but his lips remained sealed.
Beside the bed, a man in a white robe watched him with sorrowful eyes. His prominent forehead and dreamy eyes made him seem more like a philosopher than a psychiatrist.
The hospital room door swung open, and he quickly stepped forward to greet the newcomer. “Welcome, Father! I’ve been expecting you.”
The priest stepped forward, a large wooden crucifix resting on his chest, suspended by a thick hemp cord. “May God be with you, son. How can I help you?”
“I called you here to pray for this poor soul. Perhaps your prayers will ease his suffering.”
With an old Bible in hand, the priest approached the patient's bedside. “What happened to him?”
“This brilliant mind has reached the apex of madness, claiming the imminent discovery of a world-altering equation.”
As if facing the devil himself, the priest made a sweeping sign of the cross.
“No wonder he ended up in an asylum,” he muttered. “Playing God only leads to madness.”
The doctor continued as though he hadn’t heard. “He might have found what he sought, but was terrified by what it meant. Or he failed and was left disillusioned. Perhaps pure math alone wasn’t enough.”
He paused, then leaned forward slightly. “What if the fusion of poetry and science unveiled a divine logic? Imagine standing at the threshold of godhood, but still missing the final, essential element: poetic genius. What would that be like?”
The priest shook his head in disbelief. “God has punished the sinner for his arrogance. Let us pray for this lost soul.”
As his voice rose in solemn prayer, the air before the dying man fractured, a crack forming and swiftly widening. A beam of light burst forth, engulfing everything in its radiance. The light shimmered, shifting through every shade of the rainbow before settling into a brilliant white. From its heart, a luminous figure emerged, holding an ankh, the symbol of eternal life, in her hand and beckoning him into the celestial realm. He smiled, holding no fear, only a divine peace.
When I opened my eyes, the sun had already barged into the room through the open window. In the silence that spun its web across the room, my thoughts began searching for meaning. Was everything merely a dream shaped by Eliade’s fiction, or a memory echoing from another time? The truth hasn’t revealed itself.
I wore that ankh as a talisman for long time. Then one morning, glancing in the mirror, I noticed the chain was bare. I don’t know when or where I lost it. I only know that, with its disappearance, the strange visions that had haunted my sleep faded away.
It's been twenty years, and I still ponder if the tiny shop in Thessaloniki, open for just one day, still stands. And I often ponder whether one of the two remaining pendants might still be waiting for me.
sentence, staring blankly while my lips whispered the title - Dayan.... Dayan - as if its mere repetition might have helped me understand what was hidden between the lines. Then, I read on: “I was only aware of the ultimate equation. I did not know the solution that could have protected me from the consequences of discovering it. God gifted me with mathematical genius, but not with true creative vision - not with poetic genius…Had I possessed poetic genius, perhaps I would have uncovered the solution myself.”
Despite my fascination with Mircea Eliade’s fantasy fiction, on that afternoon, I struggled to stay engrossed in the story. My spirit no longer wanted to remain inside the book. The life beyond the window murmured with a force that the printed page, for all its magic, could not match. I closed the book, giving in to the temptation of a stroll through the sun-drenched streets, eager to listen to the world more closely.
Once I reached the street, I slipped into the Thessaloniki’s rhythm and colour. Peace, warmth, and sun - a Greek city in its typical mood. The sun cast its light over the city with youthful vigour. Here and there, a few wispy, ghost-like clouds drifted across the sky, adding a faint touch of melancholy to the scene.
Roaming the city, a little shop appeared before me - though I’m not sure it even deserved such a name - tucked into a corner, closed, with only a handful of unpriced goods inside.
Three Egyptian cross pendants glowed subtly in the window, against the dusty background, appearing to bear the imprint of another place, another time. Something about them felt half-remembered, but I couldn’t grasp what it was. I perceived only the silent torment of my soul wanting to find out.
I’d promised myself I’d come back the next day to buy one of them. Yet when I returned, the little shop was still closed, and it stayed that way far longer than I’d expected. Day after day, week after week, I returned, drawn to that pane of glass where I would peer in as if waiting long enough might somehow change something inside. Still, the pendants remained undisturbed.
Time passed in its usual rhythm, marking the approaching end of the academic year and my time studying abroad. As my return home drew closer, I felt a growing anxiety about leaving without the much-coveted Egyptian cross.
Then, one day, the door, which had been stubbornly shut for so long, finally swung open. I stepped in.
“Excuse me,” I asked a young brunette with long, curly hair, “how much are the pendants in the window?”
Behind the counter, she stared absentmindedly past me, leaving my question unanswered.
A young man’s voice broke the silence. “No idea. I’m not the owner. I don’t even work here.”
I hadn’t heard him approach; he might as well have stepped out of the air like a phantom.
“Why are you here, then?” I asked, puzzled.
He shrugged.
The air hung with the lingering scent of old wood and dust. My gaze drifted from the aged wooden floor to a faded oriental dancer’s dress draped above a peeling showcase, then to a hookah resting on a timeworn desk.
A deep feeling of detachment unexpectedly came over me, as if an invisible membrane had wrapped itself around my body, setting me apart from everything else. The young man spoke to the woman, and she replied, their lips moving in a silent exchange that didn’t reach my ears. No sound seemed to penetrate that membrane. It was like watching a silent movie.
“I’ll call the owner to find out the price,” the young man’s voice suddenly broke through, crisp and real, as if it had pierced the membrane from the outside.
I remained rooted to the spot in the room, gripped by the sensation that time had also come to a standstill.
I hadn’t even realised the young man had left until he reappeared, stepping back into the room as though emerging from another dimension, and announced, “Fifty is the price.”
“Which one is fifty?” I inquired. “They are different sizes.”
He paused, seeming to look back into his memory for the answer, then replied: “They all cost the same.”
“In that case,” I decided, “I’ll take the largest cross; the one with the scarab in the ankh’s circle.”
I left the shop feeling the joy bubbling inside me so intense I feared it might crack my skin and spill out. This elation soon faded as a few fuzzy details began nagging me: Were those young people Arabs or Greeks? What language had they spoken to each other? Had they actually spoken to each other?
Alone in my room, I reflected upon the day’s events, which reminded me, for reasons unclear, of a passage from Eliade’s novella 19 Roses: “We all had one of those incomprehensible experiences where it felt as if we were in a strange space, living in an abolished time.”
Soon, I drifted off to sleep and had a strange dream where…
A city lay in ruins, silent and deserted for ages. The moonlight, like powdered silver, fell onto colossal stones, scattered as though a divine being had hurled them in a fit of rage.
A lone stone block stood in the heart of the city’s central square. The moonlight bathed one of its sides with a snow-like luminescence, contrasting with the coal-dark shadows on the other. Upon the moonlit surface, peculiar carvings emerged, depicting figures with oversized heads, converging from a boundless horizon. Rugged mountains encircled a city, a mirror image of this one, now destroyed. Egyptian-like figures knelt, hands outstretched in supplication. As the moon slid across the sky, it illuminated a new facet of the stone, revealing the oddly shaped-headed strangers’ departure. They appeared to ascend to the heavens, issuing orders to the Egyptians below.
As if on cue, a star gracefully glided along a ray of light. Its gentle, bluish gleam cast a theatrical atmosphere, much like a spotlight on a stage, heralding the start of an uncanny performance.
The image rippled for a moment, like water disturbed by a stone. Then I saw a woman facing judgement. Her dark hair held a sheen, like water in a stone fountain, reflecting the sky in its depths. Her eyes flickered like the tremor of a full moon on a lake at the edge of a dark forest. A scarab-decorated ankh shone around her neck.
There was a mysterious tension floating around, the source of which I couldn’t identify. Unexpectedly, a thought raced through my mind, providing a response to an unspoken query: This goddess has to face the consequences of her wrongdoing.
Under the cover of night, the judge’s presence was barely discernible, but his words boomed powerfully through the air. “What crime has she committed?”
The language was unfamiliar, yet the meaning sank into my mind as if poured directly into my thoughts.
The accuser stepped forward, his voice, like thunder, mirroring his cold, implacable aura.
“This goddess broke a divine law by defying the elders’ decrees. She shared forbidden healing knowledge and even cured individuals condemned to death by the gods, besides teaching mortals about astronomy, moon movements, and celestial navigation.”
His tone hardened. “However, her gravest betrayal was love. She tied herself to a mortal and revealed to him secrets meant only for the gods: the art of bending time and of crossing the thresholds between life and death. She brought mortals closer to the gods, forcing the old gods to erase their civilization.”
The judge’s voice rose again, this time addressing the condemned woman. “Do you have anything to say in your defence?”
The goddess looked skyward and began to speak with a voice that carried a mysterious melody.
“In the ancient texts of our elders, there is an oath that shaped my purpose. ‘We pledge to you, mighty Sun God, our unwavering commitment to bring solace to those afflicted by illness and sorrow, as Horus and Isis once guarded and comforted Osiris. Let us, united, offer the suffering not only our love, but the strength of knowledge, O radiant Sun God.’”
Her gaze swept over the shadows surrounding her: judges, accusers, silent watchers hidden in the dark.
“If healing is forbidden, if teaching is condemned, and if love is the greatest sin,” she uttered with the solemnity of a caged bird of prey, “then let judgment fall upon me. I will bear it all, but I will never repent.”
In the flickering light of the star, a cell emerged from the darkness as though an unseen veil had been drawn aside. A man sat within, his posture weighed down by a pain that seemed too heavy for a mortal to bear. His hands, trembling with a desperate yearning for one last hug, reached through the iron bars towards the woman he loved.
The goddess met his gaze. Her frozen eyes bloomed for a moment. When she spoke, her voice softened into something meant only for him.
“Immortality and true love are said to be inseparable. While I cannot stop death from taking you, I take comfort in knowing our love reaches beyond its power. You’ll live forever within my heart.”
She had barely finished speaking when a focused, unnatural burst of light ripped through the cell with the speed and violence of a lightning bolt. The flash was blinding. When the brilliance faded, the man was gone, leaving only a thin wisp of smoke curling upward where his body had been. Tears wove a delicate, almost invisible spiderweb in the goddess’s eyes. She lifted her chin with dignity and turned toward the judge, listening in silence as he pronounced her sentence.
“For a thousand years, you will wander this deserted city, alone, burdened by the weight of your sins. When that time ends, you will be reborn as a mortal, stripped of your divinity and consumed by sorrow. Across countless lifetimes, shifting between the roles of woman and man, you will repeatedly encounter your soulmate, yet never recognise them. Only when you finally understand the full measure of your wrongdoing will your memories return, and your punishment end.”
When the pale dawn light seeped into the room, I awoke in a haze of confusion, my mind still replaying the night’s images and impressions. I couldn’t shake the thought: Was my subconscious guarding a truth I wasn’t ready to face?
Still mulling over the previous day’s unresolved questions, I half-heartedly worked on my university assignments. When evening fell, I went to the seaside, a place that has always offered me mental clarity, hoping to find the answer to all the questions swirling in my mind.
Near Aristotle Square, the sound of waves mingled with the distant tourist chatter. Adrift in my thoughts, I stared at the distant view, my fingers absently fiddling with the Egyptian cross on my chest, when a voice spoke beside me. “I like the symbol on your necklace.”
I turned to see an old man with a grey, long beard.
“Me too,” I replied. “That’s why I bought this pendant.”
For a beat, he was quiet, his gaze wandering back to the Aegean, tracing the glistening sea. When he spoke again, a shadow of sadness clouded his words.
“I used to make similar pendants back in Crete when I was younger. Life got tough there, so a few years ago, I moved to the mainland. But I’m old now, my hands shake, and it’s hard to keep up with the crafting.”
A sense of familiarity stirred in me, unexplainable. “Have we ever met before?”
As I walked away, his reply drifted after me, threading itself into the sound of the waves. “Who knows? Perhaps we’ve known each other for ages.”
I ended the day by returning to my favourite story, Dayan, reflecting on a few pivotal passages: “If my intuition is correct… I will unravel the enigma… that time can be compressed in both directions. Then anything becomes possible, and man, to his own misfortune, may take on the role of God.”
Soon, my eyelids grew heavy, and…
My first vision was of a room brimming with floor-to-ceiling shelves packed with leather-bound books, many so old and brittle they seemed on the verge of disintegration. A moonlit spiderweb glistened in the corner of the windowpane, adding a gentle peace to the scene.
A man sat hunched over an old wooden table, writing in a notebook. His scribbling betrayed the feverish impatience of a child about to unearth a treasure. He paused for a moment, sharing his metaphysical musings with a small spider spinning its web - his only companion in the silent night. Is the human soul the only realm where time and space exist? Could I plumb the soul’s depths, unlock its secrets, and travel through time, on Earth or among the stars, shaping events to my will? Could I return to the boundless realm of my soul to the moment, the place, and the life where I met her, the goddess from my dreams?
Back at his notebook, his pen scratched furiously across the page, a torrent of symbols and numbers pouring from his mind. Excitement pulsed through his overwrought brain as he filled page after page until exhaustion overwhelmed him. Even then, jaw clenched and eyes bloodshot, he pressed on. Each discovery only deepened his despair, fuelling more frantic scribbling. He kept writing, ignoring the sharp pains in his joints, until the complex equations began to move as images before his eyes, morphing into writhing snakes that gathered further in a circle dance of goddesses.
A voice screamed in his head, as if unseen, angry eyes were upon him. “Stop! You’ll go crazy!”
Pale and trembling, he yelled back, “I can’t! I’m on the verge of a discovery that will change the world forever.”
A second scream echoed, “The secret of the gods is forbidden to mortals.”
“I’ll discover it! I’ll be like the ancient Egyptian sages!” he shouted.
The man wrote on until a searing pain, like iron claws, tore through his brain, causing him to clasp his temples. “It must be late,” was his last thought before fainting and falling on the floor.
As was often the case, the dream sequences swirled together, chaotic and nonsensical. My perspective shifted. I became a point of light, a disembodied consciousness that was aware it was dreaming.
A huge screen, with countless mathematical formulas and geometrical figures sparkling like gold, hung in the sky. A chilling dread seized me. What do they mean? What if I can’t decipher their meaning? But the fear loosened, and understanding rose within me like an old, lost memory. They described the hidden order of the universe, the primordial forces that shaped the world, writing the times. Then, what had briefly seemed clear to me became muddled and vanished, as if it had never been, like any hidden truth.
My attention returned to the man. He lay in the hospital bed, lips parched, forehead glistening with sweat, his head heavy. Strapped down, he could barely move. His mouth contorted as if he wanted to cry out, “Get me out of here! You’re hurting me!” but his lips remained sealed.
Beside the bed, a man in a white robe watched him with sorrowful eyes. His prominent forehead and dreamy eyes made him seem more like a philosopher than a psychiatrist.
The hospital room door swung open, and he quickly stepped forward to greet the newcomer. “Welcome, Father! I’ve been expecting you.”
The priest stepped forward, a large wooden crucifix resting on his chest, suspended by a thick hemp cord. “May God be with you, son. How can I help you?”
“I called you here to pray for this poor soul. Perhaps your prayers will ease his suffering.”
With an old Bible in hand, the priest approached the patient's bedside. “What happened to him?”
“This brilliant mind has reached the apex of madness, claiming the imminent discovery of a world-altering equation.”
As if facing the devil himself, the priest made a sweeping sign of the cross.
“No wonder he ended up in an asylum,” he muttered. “Playing God only leads to madness.”
The doctor continued as though he hadn’t heard. “He might have found what he sought, but was terrified by what it meant. Or he failed and was left disillusioned. Perhaps pure math alone wasn’t enough.”
He paused, then leaned forward slightly. “What if the fusion of poetry and science unveiled a divine logic? Imagine standing at the threshold of godhood, but still missing the final, essential element: poetic genius. What would that be like?”
The priest shook his head in disbelief. “God has punished the sinner for his arrogance. Let us pray for this lost soul.”
As his voice rose in solemn prayer, the air before the dying man fractured, a crack forming and swiftly widening. A beam of light burst forth, engulfing everything in its radiance. The light shimmered, shifting through every shade of the rainbow before settling into a brilliant white. From its heart, a luminous figure emerged, holding an ankh, the symbol of eternal life, in her hand and beckoning him into the celestial realm. He smiled, holding no fear, only a divine peace.
When I opened my eyes, the sun had already barged into the room through the open window. In the silence that spun its web across the room, my thoughts began searching for meaning. Was everything merely a dream shaped by Eliade’s fiction, or a memory echoing from another time? The truth hasn’t revealed itself.
I wore that ankh as a talisman for long time. Then one morning, glancing in the mirror, I noticed the chain was bare. I don’t know when or where I lost it. I only know that, with its disappearance, the strange visions that had haunted my sleep faded away.
It's been twenty years, and I still ponder if the tiny shop in Thessaloniki, open for just one day, still stands. And I often ponder whether one of the two remaining pendants might still be waiting for me.
sentence, staring blankly while my lips whispered the title - Dayan.... Dayan - as if its mere repetition might have helped me understand what was hidden between the lines. Then, I read on: “I was only aware of the ultimate equation. I did not know the solution that could have protected me from the consequences of discovering it. God gifted me with mathematical genius, but not with true creative vision - not with poetic genius…Had I possessed poetic genius, perhaps I would have uncovered the solution myself.”
Despite my fascination with Mircea Eliade’s fantasy fiction, on that afternoon, I struggled to stay engrossed in the story. My spirit no longer wanted to remain inside the book. The life beyond the window murmured with a force that the printed page, for all its magic, could not match. I closed the book, giving in to the temptation of a stroll through the sun-drenched streets, eager to listen to the world more closely.
Once I reached the street, I slipped into the Thessaloniki’s rhythm and colour. Peace, warmth, and sun - a Greek city in its typical mood. The sun cast its light over the city with youthful vigour. Here and there, a few wispy, ghost-like clouds drifted across the sky, adding a faint touch of melancholy to the scene.
Roaming the city, a little shop appeared before me - though I’m not sure it even deserved such a name - tucked into a corner, closed, with only a handful of unpriced goods inside.
Three Egyptian cross pendants glowed subtly in the window, against the dusty background, appearing to bear the imprint of another place, another time. Something about them felt half-remembered, but I couldn’t grasp what it was. I perceived only the silent torment of my soul wanting to find out.
I’d promised myself I’d come back the next day to buy one of them. Yet when I returned, the little shop was still closed, and it stayed that way far longer than I’d expected. Day after day, week after week, I returned, drawn to that pane of glass where I would peer in as if waiting long enough might somehow change something inside. Still, the pendants remained undisturbed.
Time passed in its usual rhythm, marking the approaching end of the academic year and my time studying abroad. As my return home drew closer, I felt a growing anxiety about leaving without the much-coveted Egyptian cross.
Then, one day, the door, which had been stubbornly shut for so long, finally swung open. I stepped in.
“Excuse me,” I asked a young brunette with long, curly hair, “how much are the pendants in the window?”
Behind the counter, she stared absentmindedly past me, leaving my question unanswered.
A young man’s voice broke the silence. “No idea. I’m not the owner. I don’t even work here.”
I hadn’t heard him approach; he might as well have stepped out of the air like a phantom.
“Why are you here, then?” I asked, puzzled.
He shrugged.
The air hung with the lingering scent of old wood and dust. My gaze drifted from the aged wooden floor to a faded oriental dancer’s dress draped above a peeling showcase, then to a hookah resting on a timeworn desk.
A deep feeling of detachment unexpectedly came over me, as if an invisible membrane had wrapped itself around my body, setting me apart from everything else. The young man spoke to the woman, and she replied, their lips moving in a silent exchange that didn’t reach my ears. No sound seemed to penetrate that membrane. It was like watching a silent movie.
“I’ll call the owner to find out the price,” the young man’s voice suddenly broke through, crisp and real, as if it had pierced the membrane from the outside.
I remained rooted to the spot in the room, gripped by the sensation that time had also come to a standstill.
I hadn’t even realised the young man had left until he reappeared, stepping back into the room as though emerging from another dimension, and announced, “Fifty is the price.”
“Which one is fifty?” I inquired. “They are different sizes.”
He paused, seeming to look back into his memory for the answer, then replied: “They all cost the same.”
“In that case,” I decided, “I’ll take the largest cross; the one with the scarab in the ankh’s circle.”
I left the shop feeling the joy bubbling inside me so intense I feared it might crack my skin and spill out. This elation soon faded as a few fuzzy details began nagging me: Were those young people Arabs or Greeks? What language had they spoken to each other? Had they actually spoken to each other?
Alone in my room, I reflected upon the day’s events, which reminded me, for reasons unclear, of a passage from Eliade’s novella 19 Roses: “We all had one of those incomprehensible experiences where it felt as if we were in a strange space, living in an abolished time.”
Soon, I drifted off to sleep and had a strange dream where…
A city lay in ruins, silent and deserted for ages. The moonlight, like powdered silver, fell onto colossal stones, scattered as though a divine being had hurled them in a fit of rage.
A lone stone block stood in the heart of the city’s central square. The moonlight bathed one of its sides with a snow-like luminescence, contrasting with the coal-dark shadows on the other. Upon the moonlit surface, peculiar carvings emerged, depicting figures with oversized heads, converging from a boundless horizon. Rugged mountains encircled a city, a mirror image of this one, now destroyed. Egyptian-like figures knelt, hands outstretched in supplication. As the moon slid across the sky, it illuminated a new facet of the stone, revealing the oddly shaped-headed strangers’ departure. They appeared to ascend to the heavens, issuing orders to the Egyptians below.
As if on cue, a star gracefully glided along a ray of light. Its gentle, bluish gleam cast a theatrical atmosphere, much like a spotlight on a stage, heralding the start of an uncanny performance.
The image rippled for a moment, like water disturbed by a stone. Then I saw a woman facing judgement. Her dark hair held a sheen, like water in a stone fountain, reflecting the sky in its depths. Her eyes flickered like the tremor of a full moon on a lake at the edge of a dark forest. A scarab-decorated ankh shone around her neck.
There was a mysterious tension floating around, the source of which I couldn’t identify. Unexpectedly, a thought raced through my mind, providing a response to an unspoken query: This goddess has to face the consequences of her wrongdoing.
Under the cover of night, the judge’s presence was barely discernible, but his words boomed powerfully through the air. “What crime has she committed?”
The language was unfamiliar, yet the meaning sank into my mind as if poured directly into my thoughts.
The accuser stepped forward, his voice, like thunder, mirroring his cold, implacable aura.
“This goddess broke a divine law by defying the elders’ decrees. She shared forbidden healing knowledge and even cured individuals condemned to death by the gods, besides teaching mortals about astronomy, moon movements, and celestial navigation.”
His tone hardened. “However, her gravest betrayal was love. She tied herself to a mortal and revealed to him secrets meant only for the gods: the art of bending time and of crossing the thresholds between life and death. She brought mortals closer to the gods, forcing the old gods to erase their civilization.”
The judge’s voice rose again, this time addressing the condemned woman. “Do you have anything to say in your defence?”
The goddess looked skyward and began to speak with a voice that carried a mysterious melody.
“In the ancient texts of our elders, there is an oath that shaped my purpose. ‘We pledge to you, mighty Sun God, our unwavering commitment to bring solace to those afflicted by illness and sorrow, as Horus and Isis once guarded and comforted Osiris. Let us, united, offer the suffering not only our love, but the strength of knowledge, O radiant Sun God.’”
Her gaze swept over the shadows surrounding her: judges, accusers, silent watchers hidden in the dark.
“If healing is forbidden, if teaching is condemned, and if love is the greatest sin,” she uttered with the solemnity of a caged bird of prey, “then let judgment fall upon me. I will bear it all, but I will never repent.”
In the flickering light of the star, a cell emerged from the darkness as though an unseen veil had been drawn aside. A man sat within, his posture weighed down by a pain that seemed too heavy for a mortal to bear. His hands, trembling with a desperate yearning for one last hug, reached through the iron bars towards the woman he loved.
The goddess met his gaze. Her frozen eyes bloomed for a moment. When she spoke, her voice softened into something meant only for him.
“Immortality and true love are said to be inseparable. While I cannot stop death from taking you, I take comfort in knowing our love reaches beyond its power. You’ll live forever within my heart.”
She had barely finished speaking when a focused, unnatural burst of light ripped through the cell with the speed and violence of a lightning bolt. The flash was blinding. When the brilliance faded, the man was gone, leaving only a thin wisp of smoke curling upward where his body had been. Tears wove a delicate, almost invisible spiderweb in the goddess’s eyes. She lifted her chin with dignity and turned toward the judge, listening in silence as he pronounced her sentence.
“For a thousand years, you will wander this deserted city, alone, burdened by the weight of your sins. When that time ends, you will be reborn as a mortal, stripped of your divinity and consumed by sorrow. Across countless lifetimes, shifting between the roles of woman and man, you will repeatedly encounter your soulmate, yet never recognise them. Only when you finally understand the full measure of your wrongdoing will your memories return, and your punishment end.”
When the pale dawn light seeped into the room, I awoke in a haze of confusion, my mind still replaying the night’s images and impressions. I couldn’t shake the thought: Was my subconscious guarding a truth I wasn’t ready to face?
Still mulling over the previous day’s unresolved questions, I half-heartedly worked on my university assignments. When evening fell, I went to the seaside, a place that has always offered me mental clarity, hoping to find the answer to all the questions swirling in my mind.
Near Aristotle Square, the sound of waves mingled with the distant tourist chatter. Adrift in my thoughts, I stared at the distant view, my fingers absently fiddling with the Egyptian cross on my chest, when a voice spoke beside me. “I like the symbol on your necklace.”
I turned to see an old man with a grey, long beard.
“Me too,” I replied. “That’s why I bought this pendant.”
For a beat, he was quiet, his gaze wandering back to the Aegean, tracing the glistening sea. When he spoke again, a shadow of sadness clouded his words.
“I used to make similar pendants back in Crete when I was younger. Life got tough there, so a few years ago, I moved to the mainland. But I’m old now, my hands shake, and it’s hard to keep up with the crafting.”
A sense of familiarity stirred in me, unexplainable. “Have we ever met before?”
As I walked away, his reply drifted after me, threading itself into the sound of the waves. “Who knows? Perhaps we’ve known each other for ages.”
I ended the day by returning to my favourite story, Dayan, reflecting on a few pivotal passages: “If my intuition is correct… I will unravel the enigma… that time can be compressed in both directions. Then anything becomes possible, and man, to his own misfortune, may take on the role of God.”
Soon, my eyelids grew heavy, and…
My first vision was of a room brimming with floor-to-ceiling shelves packed with leather-bound books, many so old and brittle they seemed on the verge of disintegration. A moonlit spiderweb glistened in the corner of the windowpane, adding a gentle peace to the scene.
A man sat hunched over an old wooden table, writing in a notebook. His scribbling betrayed the feverish impatience of a child about to unearth a treasure. He paused for a moment, sharing his metaphysical musings with a small spider spinning its web - his only companion in the silent night. Is the human soul the only realm where time and space exist? Could I plumb the soul’s depths, unlock its secrets, and travel through time, on Earth or among the stars, shaping events to my will? Could I return to the boundless realm of my soul to the moment, the place, and the life where I met her, the goddess from my dreams?
Back at his notebook, his pen scratched furiously across the page, a torrent of symbols and numbers pouring from his mind. Excitement pulsed through his overwrought brain as he filled page after page until exhaustion overwhelmed him. Even then, jaw clenched and eyes bloodshot, he pressed on. Each discovery only deepened his despair, fuelling more frantic scribbling. He kept writing, ignoring the sharp pains in his joints, until the complex equations began to move as images before his eyes, morphing into writhing snakes that gathered further in a circle dance of goddesses.
A voice screamed in his head, as if unseen, angry eyes were upon him. “Stop! You’ll go crazy!”
Pale and trembling, he yelled back, “I can’t! I’m on the verge of a discovery that will change the world forever.”
A second scream echoed, “The secret of the gods is forbidden to mortals.”
“I’ll discover it! I’ll be like the ancient Egyptian sages!” he shouted.
The man wrote on until a searing pain, like iron claws, tore through his brain, causing him to clasp his temples. “It must be late,” was his last thought before fainting and falling on the floor.
As was often the case, the dream sequences swirled together, chaotic and nonsensical. My perspective shifted. I became a point of light, a disembodied consciousness that was aware it was dreaming.
A huge screen, with countless mathematical formulas and geometrical figures sparkling like gold, hung in the sky. A chilling dread seized me. What do they mean? What if I can’t decipher their meaning? But the fear loosened, and understanding rose within me like an old, lost memory. They described the hidden order of the universe, the primordial forces that shaped the world, writing the times. Then, what had briefly seemed clear to me became muddled and vanished, as if it had never been, like any hidden truth.
My attention returned to the man. He lay in the hospital bed, lips parched, forehead glistening with sweat, his head heavy. Strapped down, he could barely move. His mouth contorted as if he wanted to cry out, “Get me out of here! You’re hurting me!” but his lips remained sealed.
Beside the bed, a man in a white robe watched him with sorrowful eyes. His prominent forehead and dreamy eyes made him seem more like a philosopher than a psychiatrist.
The hospital room door swung open, and he quickly stepped forward to greet the newcomer. “Welcome, Father! I’ve been expecting you.”
The priest stepped forward, a large wooden crucifix resting on his chest, suspended by a thick hemp cord. “May God be with you, son. How can I help you?”
“I called you here to pray for this poor soul. Perhaps your prayers will ease his suffering.”
With an old Bible in hand, the priest approached the patient's bedside. “What happened to him?”
“This brilliant mind has reached the apex of madness, claiming the imminent discovery of a world-altering equation.”
As if facing the devil himself, the priest made a sweeping sign of the cross.
“No wonder he ended up in an asylum,” he muttered. “Playing God only leads to madness.”
The doctor continued as though he hadn’t heard. “He might have found what he sought, but was terrified by what it meant. Or he failed and was left disillusioned. Perhaps pure math alone wasn’t enough.”
He paused, then leaned forward slightly. “What if the fusion of poetry and science unveiled a divine logic? Imagine standing at the threshold of godhood, but still missing the final, essential element: poetic genius. What would that be like?”
The priest shook his head in disbelief. “God has punished the sinner for his arrogance. Let us pray for this lost soul.”
As his voice rose in solemn prayer, the air before the dying man fractured, a crack forming and swiftly widening. A beam of light burst forth, engulfing everything in its radiance. The light shimmered, shifting through every shade of the rainbow before settling into a brilliant white. From its heart, a luminous figure emerged, holding an ankh, the symbol of eternal life, in her hand and beckoning him into the celestial realm. He smiled, holding no fear, only a divine peace.
When I opened my eyes, the sun had already barged into the room through the open window. In the silence that spun its web across the room, my thoughts began searching for meaning. Was everything merely a dream shaped by Eliade’s fiction, or a memory echoing from another time? The truth hasn’t revealed itself.
I wore that ankh as a talisman for long time. Then one morning, glancing in the mirror, I noticed the chain was bare. I don’t know when or where I lost it. I only know that, with its disappearance, the strange visions that had haunted my sleep faded away.
It's been twenty years, and I still ponder if the tiny shop in Thessaloniki, open for just one day, still stands. And I often ponder whether one of the two remaining pendants might still be waiting for me.
ABout the author
lorentina Caliman is an engineer who has always been enchanted by fairy tales, ancient history, and mythology. Now, she channels that passion into creative writing, transitioning from scientific writing to storytelling. Did you enjoy the story? Would you like to shout us a coffee?. Half of what you pay goes to the author the oher half goes to expense se.g. Maintaining hthe web site and setting up The Best of Café Lit book each year.
