Synkroniciti is pleased to welcome back writer Sam Crain, based in California, with “Eyes Full of Promise,” a captivating short story based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. With masterful characterization, Sam reacquaints us with the ill-fated duo, telling the story of how they met, married, and were separated by death through Orpheus’s eyes. All rings true. The eroticism of their meeting is palpable and the realization that his preoccupation with performing has resulted in her lonely demise is heart-breaking.
“Beneath the carved eaves of our house, I broke my lyre into pieces, blaming its seductiveness for the loss of my wife. The pops of its strings, the crack and snap of its wood were hollow and left me so, too.”
Orpheus narrates his journey to recover his wife–how he had the talent to charm death but not the self-control to wait for his miracle to become reality.
“Not even Queen Persephone was sympathetic then. The Ferryman had strict orders to ignore me, but to rebuff any attempt to climb aboard his craft. Lyre-less, I sang with a voice worn to a wisp of its former self in my long vigil. I ought to have gone mad and starved to death, drinking of the River Styx and taking no food. But I did not. I leave it to you to guess the state of my mind, and the soul that burned beneath my skin like the forge of Hephaestus.
Finally, Persephone relented—or seemed to do so. “I have released Eurydice from the Underworld, but she is transformed. If your love is as strong as you say, you will find her again and earn her forgiveness.””
Deathless, he has roamed for centuries, working in the theater and most recently, as a busker on the streets of present day Athens, looking for a woman with Eurydice’s eyes, waiting for a new miracle.
Read “Eyes Full of Promise” in Synkroniciti’s “Recovery” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Sam Crain lives in Fremont, CA. Now that she’s finished her PhD in English, she’s free to return to her first love, writing stories, which she does whenever she can steal her pens back from her cats. She has published a handful of short stories and flash fictions to date, most recently “Magic Mushroom” in Space & Time Magazine, “Cadre” in Neurodiversiverse, and “Frank the Dragon” in Sheila-na-Gig, as well as “Addie, I’m Cold” in the “Identity” issue of Synkroniciti.