Όσα δεν πήρε το Κύμα

"" *᾿Απὸ παιδιόθεν ὁ καπετάνιος μας διετήρει ἔρωτα...τυφλὸ γιὰ μιὰ νησιοποῦλα ἀπὸ τὰ βόρεια τῆς Κεφαλλονιᾶς, κοντὰ στὴν ῎Ασσο. ῾Η νεαρὰ κοπέλα ἦτο ἐκκλησιάζουσα καὶ ἐπεσκέπτει συχνὰ κάθε ἡλιοκαμμένο ξωκκλήσι, κάθε ἔρημο μνῆμα, ὅπως ἄνάψῃ ἕνα καντηλάκι στὴ μνήμη τῶν νεκρῶν, τῶν χαμένων στὴ θάλασσα, τῶν ἀδικημένων. Σὲ μιὰ ἀπὸ τὶς ἐκφορτώσεις τοῦ πλοίου μας, τῆς «῾Ρενάτας», στὴν Κεφαλληνία ὁ Θανάσης ἐγνώρισε τὴν ἐκθαμβωτικὴ νεάνιδα, καὶ ἤρχισε βαθυτάτως ἐρωτικὸ εἰδύλλιο. Πόσα ταξίδια ἐπραγματοποίησε ἡ ῾Ρενάτα μας στὸ πανέμορφο νησὶ τῆς Καλυψοῦς, πόσα ἀνθισμένα μπουκέτα ἐπῆρε στὰ στήθη της ἡ Μάγδα, ἡ ἀγνὴ κοπέλα, μέχρι ποὺ ἡ μοῖρα ἀπεφάνθη πὼς τὸ εἰδύλλιο καλὸ τελειωμὸ δὲ θὰ εἶχε.*  ""

Όσα δεν πήρε το Κύμα is an independent Vuori story written in modern polytonic Greek by Vuorior James Kingston. The story revolves around the accounts of an old sea man who tells his grandson about his search for a holy relic from the years of Jesus' crucifixion. The relic appears to be the Holy Bracelet, which was rumored to have been imbibed with the sweat of Christ.

*Word Count*: 7,090

## Release

The story was in the works since the drafting of an earlier, longer Vuori tale, Αμάρο Μπάρο Γκιβέ, scheduled to include a plethora of religious elements and tales from the vast Christianity lore and mythos. For various reasons however, most of those elements were dropped in the earlier story, and resurfaced in brand new What the Waves Left Behind tale. The story was drafted in mid-July 2020 and was eventually released by the end of summer of the same year, on August 31.

## Plot

   Όσα δεν πήρε το Κύμα begins with a flashback sequence to the times of Jesus' crucifixion, following the story of Nehama, a girl of Jewish descent who appears to be the daughter of a thief named Dysmas. Her father has been imprisoned for his crimes and is awaiting Roman execution in the public prisons of Jerusalem. Nehama explains that her father used to be a 'servant' of the poor, aiming to strip all rich men from their wealth which they built from their blood and give it back to the people. However, his crimes were finally paid when he was finally incarcerated. Nehama makes a bracelet which she aims to give him before the day of his death, and acquires the help of an unnamed old man to ascend a scaffold and reach the cell of her father, who is moved by her gift and tells her to watch out for her aunts and the rest of her family. When Nehama informs him the crowds have chosen a man named Jesus of Nazareth to die on the cross instead of the criminal Barabas, Dysmas appears to be overcome with a wave of mysterious sadness. The guards approach the cells and Nehama is violently drawn back into the crowd.

The following sequences detail the march of Jesus from the gates of Jerusalem to the hill of Golgotha outside the city's walls, and Nehama realizes her father along with another man are already put on the cross on the hill. She cannot bear to see him or Jesus, wrecked and bleeding, and she turns away, but hears the cries of the crowd to cross the Nazarean, as well as the serene voice of Jesus who appeals to the grieving women not to cry for him, but for their families and children. The scene abruptly ends when a woman, presumed to be Veronica, dries Jesus's sweat from his face with her veil, and Nehama faints from the heat, the grief and the exhaustion amidst the crowd.

The story jumps forward to the year 2000, where a young unnamed protagonist, grandson to Stathis Tzanetakos, the man who tells the stoy, listens in awe from their balcony in the city of Aspropyrgos, Athens. They admire the waves above the toxic seas of Skaramagas and the history of the once heavenly edens that were Koumoundourou lakes and Aspropyrgos beach is presented. Stathis' grandson listens in shock as his grandfather reveals that the very bracelet Nehama had gifted Dysmas has been lost somewhere in Vuori. In disbelief, he hears the tale of the bracelet's long march through time.

According to Stathis, when Dysmas was about to die, he threw the bracelet towards Jesus, as an act of gratitude for Him accepting him into heaven. We find out Nehama's father was, indeed, the Penitent Thief, and the first denizen of Paradise. When Jesus left his last breath, the bracelet was reportedly dropped to the feet of Virgin Mary, and acquired by Jesus' favorite disciple, John, who kept it in his possession until the end of his years. Stathis explains that the common story was that he returned it to Mary when he heard of her passing 15 years later and disappeared along with the unknown whereabouts of her tomb. However, another version of the tale held that John was actually buried with it in Ephesus, Anatolia, until his tomb was pillaged by the forces of the Seltzuk Turks following the tragedy at Manzikert. A monk from Anatolia called Eutuxios did manage to retrieve the relic and safeguard it at a monastery in Cappadocia, however the oncoming Turkish forces wound up destroying the place and threw the relic into the abyss of obscurity.

According to legend, the bracelet was imbibed with the sweat of Christ and was rumored to grant extraordinary healing abilities to anyone who possessed it, and therefore Byzantine priests were high on its trail. It appears some random Turkman trader found the bracelet and gave it to an unnamed Roman citizen in exchange for petty goods. From there, the bracelet fell to the hands of Byzantine priests who kept it safe in the Library of Constantinople, until the Fall of the city to the Ottomans in 1453. Beyond that year, the only acounts existing, according to Stathis, are oral traditions which claimed that a Romia (Greek) girl saved the relic in time and boarded a Venetian ship in the Golden Horn, while the masses of Turks were destroying the city in the rampage.Lenio, the Greek girl, purportedly reached Venice and married an old Balkan boyar with whom she had a son, to whom the bracelet also fell. Finally, Lenio's son was rumored to have given the bracelet to the monks of the monastery at Visoki Decani, in modern day Kosovo, where it also remained.

Mesmerized by the tale, Stathi's grandson inquired for more details, and sought to find out about the link of the Holy relic to Vuori, as well as the cause of a tragic shipwreck that took place in the coasts of Skaramagas beach years ago, when a sea captain called Thanassis Kokkinopoulos lost control of his vessel, the same one where his grandfather worked. Stathis explains that the entire story is connected, and we gradually learn that he was actually a member of the sunken ship's crew back in the '60s. His captain, Kokkinopoulos, was actually in love with a Greek girl from Kefallonia, Assos. After their short idyll on her island, he learnt that her parents were sick with a rare disease and she had to follow them to Athens for their medical treatment, where he lost all traces of her. Knowing the tales surrounding the Holy relic, Kokkinopoulos made it a personal goal of his own to travel to Kosovo with Stathis and their best sea man, Kostas, to retrieve it, find out whether its healing abilities are real and grant is as a gift to Magda, the girl, to cure her parents.

Upon Returning to the Aspropyrgos coasts where he worked on the shipyards, he boarded a small scoon and took Kostas and Stathis to Paxos island, from where they would reach Cassiopi at Corfu and take a ferry to Albania. In September '63 they reached the country, and from Sarandë they headed to Vlorë, where they took the train to Kostas' native village, Lekovo. Kostas retrieved his old Ford and in it the trio travelled through the Albanian villages to reach Tirana and Elbasan, where they continued upwards to the old picturesque towns of Xhuxhe and Kukë, to enter Kosovo at Prizren. Their two last stops were Gjakova and Junik, before they finally reached the monastery, where they were told that the Christian Slavic Church could not have accepted the relic because no one knew whether its authenticity could be confirmed. Local citizens told the trio that the bracelet was in the possession of Ledjona, an old Albanian woman who had claimed it had healed her family from many ills and given her the courage to raise them and go through a lot of hardships in her life. Despite the lack of belief in her tales by most villagers, Ledjona is pleasantly surprised with the interest of the captain, and when she hears his moving story decides to give him the relic, which she kept in a small trinket above her fireplace, and wished him well in his journeys. Surprisingly enough, and despite the worsening weather, their return to Greece was the smoothest possible, and absolutely no wind prevented their sail.

However, Stathis reveals the tragic end of the story, where, approximately a few months later, and with Magda's whereabouts still uknown, their company's ship crashed onto the aft of Ellinoil's Petroleum tanker, resulting in no spill but the destruction of their own ship Renata, shortly off Aspropyrgos beach. According to the tale, all traces of Captain Thanassis Kokkinopoulos were lost after the ship sank, and the only accounts in existence reveal that a homeless man roaming the dry slopes of nearby Poikilo Oros saw a mysterious figure run into the woods of Vuori near Kaskantami and the Chaidari Antennae, never to be seen again.

Stathis's grandson decides to take part in the long winded story and asks his grandpa where he thinks the bracelet could have ended up, to which he replies in a strangely confused account that if anywhere up there, it would be somewehre across the Riverbed at Liopyri, above The Monastery and before Kato Melies, at the Second Antenna area. The duo sets out the very next morning to find the relic.

Via car, they enter the Mountain at Apolikseis, from the Petroupoli side, where they make their way through the lush bush vegetation to the woods of inner Liopyri, to no avail however. Rain soon picks up and a quick storm ensues, with a dismayed Stathis suggesting they get back home. However, his grandson has pieced together his immesne love for the lost girl Magda, and realizes that his own grandfather, Stathis, was indeed the legendary lost captain. Stathis reluctantly reveals the final part of the long story.

He was the captain of Renata, and in fact the man in love with Magda, named Thanassis Efstathios(Stathis) Kokkinopoulos Tzanetakos. However, upon his return to the Aspropyrgos coasts, his friend Kostas who had finally managed to trace Magda's sister in Athens, informed him that both her parents and Magda herself had passed away from the disease. In his distress, Thanassis lost control of the ship and crashed onto the oil tanker, losing the bracelet which he had taken from the Nautical Club at Aspropyrgos where he was previously storing it.

In the shipwreck that ensued and before the rescue teams arrived on the scene, Thanassis was thrown into the depths of the toxic waters, looking for the Holy Bracelet, and finally ended up washed ashore on the hot asphalt, where he spewed water. In his dizziness, he thought he noticed a small fox grabbing the bracelet which had dropped a few feet to this left and scurry into the woods of Kaskantami. From that moment on, Thanassis could not stand the shame for what he had done and disappeared, after looking for the bracelet for a short period of time. It is later revealed he actually found it by miracle, and created a small shrine to honor Magda's memory, somewere above Piso Melies, but lower than Zacharitsa. The descriptions regarding the shrine remained obscure throughout the story, however, and it remains unknown where exactly on the Melies limit this shrine would be found. Some theories speculate it could refer to Ano Balkoni, on the Zacharitsa and Final Antennae slope.

However, in a case where irony isn't absent, the flood of 1993 in Athens destroyed the shrine and Stathis/Thanassis believed the bracelet, which he had placed on the shrine, to be gone once more. In the meantime he had fled to Canada where he began a new life dropping the name Thanassis Kokkinopoulos. He returned to Athens years after to open a small shop with his new family, and inhabited Aspropyrgos permanently, with close to no one remembering who he ever was, except for Miss Foteini, the kind neighbor that treated Stathis and his grandson litttle desserts and honey buns all along the tale.

When the Rain finally receded however, the currents from the Riverbed pulled back and revealed, in a poetic way, the old, dusted bracelet amongst a field of dried flowers. Stathis was immensely moved by the sign, and together with his grandson they ascended the Second Antenna hill up towards Ano Melies Road. Reaching the old location of the shrine, they placed the bracelet back on the small cross to dwell there in Magdas's memory forever.

## Style

The story is amongst the first in the Vuori mythos to include a much smaller amount of descriptions, and is filled with 3rd and 1st person narratives, following the rather lengthy tale of the protagonist's Grandpa. The outline of What the Waves Left Behind was scheduled to allude to more historical elements and therefore justifies the lack of descriptions.

However, towards the final parts of the story, the old Vuori descriptions of the floral edens in the Mountain return, and the narrative is linked back to the original locations, including many fan favorites from previous tales in and out of canon, ie Liopyri, The Monastery , the Narrow Road and plenty others.

## Allusions to the Eli Mythos

The Eli Mythos appears to permeate a plethora of Vuori tales even after the death of the character in the 2019 story Moonlight on Vuori. With the brave fox dead and gone, including the Human and the Partridge who followed him into their demise shortly or much later, mentions of all 3 characters' remains continue throughout the mythos. In the previous May 2020 story, Ψυχές Αλήτισσες, it was presumed that, due to an unknown reason, the bones of the fox, the partridge and the Human were actually buried at a small shrine near the Far Korydallos Antennae, albeit no further details were elaborated upon. In Όσα δεν πήρε το Κύμα, we learn that the existence of the Holy Bracelet somewhere in the woodlands of Zacharitsa actually allowed the fox lineage to give birth to 'brave, fearless' foxes, healthy and resilient. Whether this was simply an allusion to the mystical powers of the Holy Relic or it referred specifically to the same den out of which Eli and the rest of the animals from the stories we know came remains unsolved.

There is, however, an issue with the timeline and the continuity if we take into account such claims, since the story of Stathis Tzanetakos is told in late 2000, and if the above reference included Eli, that would place the entire events of Vuori: Amidst the Groves in Liopyri, The Secret in the Cypress Trees and Moonlight on Vuori in the time frame of the '90s. No further allusions regarding the matter were present in this story.