Part 13
By eight o'clock the next morning, Greece time, we were stumbling through the motions of packing up, struggling to keep our eyes open and fervently wishing that we wouldn't forget anything.
"Ugh!" Jordyn groaned as she gave up trying to brush her bushy, curly hair and just dug in her bag for a hair tie. "I don't know about you, but I feel like I only slept for ten minutes before my body decided Oh, it's morning again! right in the middle of the fricking night!"
I wagged my head and rubbed my arms to wake myself up. I hadn't exactly popped awake in the middle of the night, but I definitely didn't sleep well, with all the nightmares and strange dreams that plagued my sleep. Of course, as soon as I awoke, I couldn't remember anything, but I sure felt the effects of it!
"I think I slept," I commented. "Maybe... I don't know, it just felt like I laid with my eyes closed, but still awake, just about the whole night."
Jordyn sighed as she hefted her backpack onto her shoulder. "Let's hope our internal clocks catch up with us tonight. I don't think I could take an entire trip of this jet lag!"
We met the rest of the group in the front hall of the hostel. The guys didn't look any more awake than we felt--with the exception of Kayce and Tony. The former slouched against the wall with a vacant expression on his face, and Tony just stood calmly, taking everything in with his keen gaze. I caught his eye and offered a smile, and he grinned in response.
"There they are!" Tony said as we approached. "Ready to do some digging, girls?"
Jordyn laughed. "I know I am! But first--coffee!"
"Did someone say kafes?" Asked a jovial, accented voice, and Alexandros entered our group, bearing a full six-cup carrier with a familiar green logo on the side in one hand, and a paper bag that smelled heavenly in the other.
six pairs of eyes lit up at the sight of it, and we all moved outside for places to sit and enjoy our light breakfast.
"Impeccable timing, Alex!" Professor Silver chuckled, selecting a pastry and pulling apart the wafer-thin layers. "For a tour guide, you really treat your guests well!"
We sat at a plastic table just outside the hostel, possibly intended for the establishment next door, with its large grilling pit smelling of charcoal and old grease. A mix of growling cars and bicycles streamed past us down the road, punctuated by the odd horse-drawn cart. A few of them even called out a greeting to Alexandros, without the least bit of surprise to see a group of pale foreigners gathered with him. He must do this tour-guide thing a lot.
The coffee was very different-tasting than what I was used to, even though it ostensibly came from the same chain. The coffee itself was much stronger, and then the amount of cream added to it was not quite proportionate--but it was coffee, and as soon as it cooled to a tolerable temperature, I drank it all.
Alexandros showed up next to me, leaning so close I could see the faint sheen of brown in the blacks of his eyes. "Here," he said, offering me a sticky clump of buns in a napkin, "try some loukoumades."I accepted the napkin, gingerly poking at the round lumps. "What are they?"
"Greek honey donuts," Tony announced, licking the fingers in one hand as he crumpled a napkin in the other. He came to sit next to me, and Alexandros backed away to a more appropriate distance. "They're really good." To prove his point, he reached for more from the pile in the middle of the table.
I plopped a puff into my mouth, and relished the sweet explosion of honey on my tongue. The fluffy pastry seemed to melt away as soon as I bit down, and I swallowed the rest easily.
"Oh wow!" I gasped.
We spent a good hour enjoying the pastries, learning their names, and getting excited for what we might find out on the island.
"I can't wait to see what Fourtouna actually looks like!" Jordyn gushed.
Professor Silver stretched his arms. "How long is the boat ride to get there?" he asked our guide.
Alexandros bobbed his head. "Not long. I have already been down to the marina to charter the boat, and we should have clear weather all the way. It will not be more than one hour, so you will have plenty of time to get acquainted with the site before the sun is too high--and that is when most of the American team breaks for rest and a meal."
Derrick snorted. "Really? So everything just stops in the middle of the day?"
Alexandros gathered the trash into an empty paper bag and dropped it into the nearby trash can. "Not everything. Some teams work in shifts, so that even though it might be too warm to dig, there is still work getting done. You will see when we arrive."
I felt the weight of what we were about to do as I threw away my coffee cup. This was it. Today, perhaps, I would find out what had my mother so worried--and what a certain nefarious demon might be up to, in this particular part of the world that shouldn't exist.
Tony must have seen the concern on my face, because he stuck beside me and gave my hand a squeeze when I turned around.
"Hey," he murmured, "It'll be okay."
I gave myself a shake and sighed all the concern away. Time to put on my happy face. I grinned for Tony's benefit. "You bet it will! I'm excited."
Professor Silver shouldered his backpack and grabbed the handle of his suitcase. "Everybody got all their stuff?" He looked around at each of us. "Let's head down to the marina, then!" He waved his arm and followed Alexandros down the road.
We probably looked far more touristy than the day we arrived, the six of us with all of our luggage rolling along beside us--but to the credit of the locals, we only got a few whistles, some frustrated glares from suited businessmen and middle-aged women in groups who had to go around us on the sidewalk--but at last, we arrived at the water's edge.
Row upon row of bobbing docks spread out in front of us. We made our way down the metal gangplank and onto the main dock.
"Keep a good hold on your handles, folks!" Jordyn joked, as her rickety suitcase nearly twisted out of her grasp on the uneven surface.
Instinctively, I gripped my own handle a little tighter, opting to just lift my bag ever so slightly if it met resistance at all. As I turned back to check on it, I noticed Kayce, head bent and hair hanging down over his face. He wasn't wearing his signature hoodie, but he still looked like he wanted to curl up and disappear all the same. I dropped back a little to talk to him.
"You doing all right?" I asked.
It took him a moment to respond, like he expected someone else to answer the question. When no one spoke, he finally lifted his head.
"Huh?" Kayce muttered. "Oh, yeah... I'm fine." He squinted at the boats as we passed them, headed for Slip 24.
I tried not to mind that he wasn't looking at me--even though it did grate on me, considering all the times my Mom drilled me in conversational etiquette. "I noticed you haven't said much all morning," I pointed out. "What are you most looking forward to on Fourtouna?"
The sunlight glinted off his platinum-blond hair as Kayce shrugged. "Dunno... I did find out more about the worshippers who built the temple, back when the island was part of Macedonia." His face relaxed a little and he actually smiled a bit. "Turns out there is this whole branch of ancient Greek theology that hardly anybody knows about, and they worshipped something called the 'Microtheon', which is exclusively focused on minor gods, not the major ones."
I thought about the books currently bundled in the top pocket of my suitcase. "Oh really? So they weren't like the normal gods we usually think about when we think of Greek mythology?"
Kayce shook his head, his shoulders squaring up just a bit more. "Nope--not Zeus, Poseidon, Hades and all the rest--only minor gods, who had very specific names and assignments to various details of human life and the natural world--like instead of Athena for wisdom and battle strategy, they'd follow Dianoia, goddess of intellect, or Machios, god of combat." He paused to sidestep a pile of bird droppings. "When you consider the hundreds of thousands of minor gods recognized and recorded, it's almost like these 'microtheists' were the hipsters of the Greek theological scene, rejecting the 'mainstream' gods in favor of a handful of obscure ones to suit their needs."
It was the most I'd ever heard him speak since the day we met. Of course the Anthropology major would be interested in the religious aspect of the place we were going, and the people who once lived there! Why didn't we ask him about the research he did sooner? I just knew, out of everybody else in the group (except maybe Tony), he would be pretty excited to see the books I brought from Mom's office--maybe he could actually read some of the Greek passages!
I self-consciously tucked a lock of hair behind my ear as I asked, "Do you think that maybe the gods they worshipped on Fourtouna might also be part of this Microtheon?"
Kayce bobbed his head, running his fingers through his pale hair. "I mean, it makes sense, given the nature of the area and the theological sentiments of the group living there at the time."
Alexandros finally stopped and waved at us. The boat he stood next to was mostly white, with a bare-wood trim. The man standing at the tiller squinted at us over a wispy pale beard, his face shiny and red like a weather-beaten old apple as he reached out to shake our guide's hand. Alexandros had a quick conversation with the man who nodded several times. Finally, he turned back to us.
"This is it, friends! This is the Synnefo Kataigidas--the Storm Cloud! She will take us to Fourtouna. He says you can stow all your bags below, to keep them safe from being tossed overboard. We will be underway in only a few more minutes!"
"Wonderful!" Professor Silver gushed. "Everybody climb aboard. Fourtouna awaits!"
The captain of the boat nodded and beckoned to us, gesturing to an opening at the rear of the boat--the stern--that had been cut out to allow for ease of entry. Kayce climbed on as easily as stepping onto a porch, and when Tony tried to do the same, I felt the dock we stood on shift and waver a little bit, sending the boat a little higher and widening the difference between the two surfaces. He scrambled for the railing with both hands to keep himself upright.
"Sorry," he coughed, as Professor Silver got up behind him. "Guess I still have lingering effects from the hospital recovery."
My cheeks burned. Hospital recovery; only the two of us knew what that really meant. To anyone else, it just looked like a really effective medical treatment, but he still carried the disease. They couldn't know that he was totally not even sick anymore.
The dock still felt a little unstable, so I let Jordyn get up next. That left Derrick standing behind me, and I almost wanted to let him go, too, but he kept waiting for me.
"Are you going to go," he asked, "or what?"
"Yeah, come on, Pris." Now Tony was standing beside the small opening, holding his hand out toward me. "It's easy. I'll help you."
I mustered my courage, gripped Tony's hand, and trusted all my weight on the foot that rested on the weathered wood of the boat. My other foot left the dock, and I was aboard the "Stormcloud." The captain enlisted Alexandros' help to release the ropes that tethered us in the sloop, and we pulled out of the marina, our course set for Fourtouna!
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