Hail Atlantis

[Today's guest blogger is Theresa Crater. She has published two contemporary fantasies, Beneath the Hallowed Hill & Under the Stone Paw and several short stories, most recently “Bringing the Waters” in The Aether Age:  Helios. She’s also published poetry and a baker’s dozen of literary criticism. Currently, she teaches writing and British lit in Denver. Visit her website at http://theresacrater.com. Thanks for joining us!]

Whether you remember Donovan’s song Atlantis or not, the myth of Atlantis lives in our imaginations. Publishers are a bit wary of the topic, maybe because they think people who are interested in Atlantis are a bit soft in the head. But they sure publish books about vampires, faeries and all kinds of mythical creatures, not to mention space travel and aliens.

One of the timelines in Beneath the Hallowed Hill takes place in ancient Atlantis and Avalon. In that world, the two are in contact. My character travels from Atlantis to Avalon to be trained by the nine priestesses of the sacred springs and the Tor. One of my readers said she was very resistant to Atlantis at first, but once she got into the book, she liked the Atlantis scenes the best.

In my Power Places series, I use the myths and legends about different ancient sites in the world, bringing them to the present day in urban fantasy. Egypt exists, where Under the Stone Paw takes place, and so does Avalon (Glastonbury today) where Beneath the Hallowed Hill is set. But Atlantis? In the writings of Plato, in the visions of Edger Cayce, yes.

In researching Atlantis, I discovered that people have written about it over the years. There’s Donnelly’s Atlantis: The Antediluvian World published in 1882, DeCamp’s Lost Continents published in 1954, and a myriad of books, both fiction and nonfiction, in the last 40 years or so. I just finished a mystery called The Hunt for Atlantis by Andy McDermott published in 2009.

I used Plato’s description of Atlantis for the center of the civilization. I also used Cayce’s claim that Atlantis was powered by crystalline technology and went hog wild with that. My Illuminati magician yearns to discover Atlantean technology so he can gain unlimited worldly power and magical abilities, but when he finally does discover it, the results surprise him:

Cagliostro turned his attention to the master crystal. Its gleaming facets lay submissive before him. Pointing the tip of his sentinel toward the large crystal, he redoubled his chant. Miriam followed suit. Pouring his passion into his voice, crooning to the silicon female before him, he reached deep into the heart of the stone to ignite her flame. He felt a rumble, almost a purr, then light shot up from the base, illuminating the enormous crystal, bouncing off the inner cracks and breaking into colors. He wondered if the crystal had fractured when she had fallen or during the earthquakes, or if the Atlanteans had wanted the rainbow effects.

He gave himself over to the powerful currents of energy running up the body of his crystalline lover, caressing his mind, awakening him deeper. He answered this caress with his voice, asking for more, begging for admittance into her secret places. He lost track of time, pouring his lifetimes of desire for this moment, for access to the power of Atlantis, the secrets of the adepts, into his chant. Finally, the crystal opened to him and he entered her, plunging deep, almost losing himself. With his next thrust, she opened wider and took him fully inside. He exploded in ecstasy.

He floated in a golden sphere, free of thought and time. Then the light cleared and he saw below him a group of people in a circle. No, it was a dodecahedron, a twelve-sided figure. He could see the star shape traced in light in the air around them. Their robes shifted colors from ultraviolet to white, then back again, in a dance with the energies around them. He floated inside the Tuaoi Stone, which now stood upright in the center of a chamber. He watched the group chanting, intensifying the energy. Then something began to form in the stone next to him, a shape like a fetus that grew in the blink of an eye into a humanoid. The being pushed through the crystal to the surface, as if she were gelatinous, then startled and turned, catching Cagliostro out of the corner of her eye. One of the workers ran toward the tall crystal.

No, Cagliostro thought, you can’t stop me. He reached past the being and brushed against the man who’d left the circle.

The entity at the surface of the crystal said in an apologetic tone, You are not a harmonic, then pushed Cagliostro into blackness.