Extract: Oenone

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 I have always believed water to be the most powerful of elements. It washes away a multitude of sins. The blood of an army thousands strong can be rinsed away, cleansed, leaving pure white sand where once ten long years worth of battles stained the shore red. Water never remains in one place, always, always moving. It brings new treasures, and takes away old ones, never to be seen again. Given time water can etch its way through the hardest of stones, weakening it, devouring even empires. And of course, water quenches fire.

It was water that gave me Alexandros and water that took him away again. Of course he wasn’t Alexandros in the beginning, but so few of us remain the same person all our lives, do we?

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Did you know that before Helen of Troy, Paris loved another? That his own wife, Oenone, daughter of the River God, was left behind when he sailed to Sparta and returned with the most beautiful woman in the world? The face that launched a thousand ships and began the ten year war that destroyed Troy? The extract above from my small side project, a YA historical fantasy, is my project to tell her story.


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