Kingfishers

Kingfishers are the birds at the heart of the book’s explanation for the halcyon days: in the myth Leonidas recounts, a bereaved couple becomes kingfishers, and the winter calm is granted to protect their nest. The image joins grief, shelter, and a temporary peace that the narrator herself feels during January in Preveza.

Myth and the Halcyon Days

According to the account attributed to Ovid, Alcyone, daughter of Aeolus, throws herself into the sea after her husband drowns. The couple are transformed into kingfishers. When Alcyone nests on the beach, her father calms the sea to protect the eggs. The quiet days of winter are then said to belong to the nesting birds; the story makes seasonal stillness an act of care, shaped by loss.

Place in the Narrative

Leonidas’s explanation gives the narrator a way to understand the warm, early days of January around her. She admits that their serenity brings her peace, and stays in Preveza to enjoy them, sharing evening meals with Leonidas and Dora. The kingfishers thus connect the natural world’s brief respite with the narrator’s own gradual thaw after heartbreak: the calm is temporary, but it makes renewal imaginable.