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George Schizas Blog

Days in the life of a clone

Kallikantzaroi

For Christmas Eve: an old Greek folk tale:

There is a very old tree, the Tree of Life, that holds all of the earth on its branches and leaves. This tree is very deep down inside the earth, and all around the year, there are some small and evil creatures (kallikantzaroi) that try to cut the tree off, some with saws, some with axes, some with hatchets. They look like small demons (I think the closest thing would be goblins), some tall, some short, but all of them ugly. At December 23rd, when the waters are unbaptized (Christ is born, but is not yet baptized), they come up to the surface to tease people and generally have fun. They come into the houses and spoil what is not in order, they come and scare people that are walking by themselves in the night, and they are a general nuisance. They may not kill humans, but they can steal their voice, if they don’t answer some questions. At Epiphany (January 6), a priest comes and blesses each house with Holy Water. The kallikantzaroi are burned (kind of like vampires) by the Holy Water, and they rush back into the Earth. Meanwhile the Tree of Life has regenerated, so the kallikantzaroi have to spend the entire year cutting and sawing the Tree of Life again!

Creations (in English)

Ok, that was quick 🙂 I translated the original (circa 1991 I think) into English. Somehow I like the English version better. Maybe I’ve matured as a writer the past 15 years? Probably not. It’s probably that I grew up reading books in English or translated from English (and it showed). Somehow though, the original looks like a (bad) translation from the English translation. Maybe I should read more books in my native language?

Creations

I found a story I had written in the far, far away decade of early 1990’s, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and my only computer was a CPC 6128, published in a completely irrelevant site. The “proper” reaction would be to sue the pants off the poster (this is copyrighted content!), but obviously I won’t. This small story used to be published into scifi.gr, but since that site is now a placeholder for an half-installed wiki, I guess I don’t mind seeing it posted somewhere. Of course I did the proper thing now and gave this little story a more permanent home.
It’s in its original Greek right now, but some day (hopefully real soon now) I’ll make a translation. It shouldn’t be too hard, I think I might be more fluent writing in English than in Greek nowadays. I mean I’m sure all that Stephen King novels I’ve read must account for something. If any native English speaker reads this, please don’t laugh too hard 🙂

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