Part 12
"Everybody stick together!" Our chaperone, Professor Silver, called out as we made our way out of the customs area of the Thessaloniki International Airport. I caught Tony's eye and he nudged up beside me, while Derrick and Jordyn kept right on chatting with each other. They'd hit it off pretty well on the fifteen-hour flight from O'Hare to Greece. Kayce shuffled along at the back of the group, his blue hair bleached platinum-blonde for the trip.
"Wow!" Derrick gasped, checking his watch as it synced with his phone and adjusted to the time difference. "In just an hour and a half, it will be twenty-four hours since we left Chicago!"
"Is that all?" I grunted, rubbing the sleepiness from my eyes. "I feel like I've been awake about that long!" It was midafternoon in Greece, but the eight-hour time difference and the limited amount of sleep I got on the plane gave me some serious jet lag!
"Americans! Ah! Chicago students!" called a voice, and we saw a wiry, tanned man in a brown linen button-down shirt practically jumping up and down and waving a sign that said Chicago University Student Enrichment Team.
Professor Silver grinned and led us over to the man. "That's us! Ned Silver--I'm the chaperone for these students."
The man's entire torso nodded as he stared at our group with wide, dark eyes. "Ah, yes! I am Alexandros, I will be your guide!" He blinked rapidly as he reached for the nearest hand--Tony's--and shook it up and down enthusiastically. Professor Silver got his hand in there too, and Alexandros took the opportunity to shake all our hands. When he gripped mine, I almost winced at the tight squeeze, but I kept a friendly smile plastered over my face.
Alexandros kept his wild-eyed stare fixed on me as he gestured to beyond the main entrance to the airport. "Welcome to Greece, my friends! May the gods smile upon your discoveries here!"
I hid my frown to not appear rude, but I did find his manner of greeting more than a little odd.
Tony nudged me. He had his phone out and a picture pulled up of an olive-skinned Greek-American actor with a flair for flamboyant, ridiculous comedy. When I looked up at him, Tony winked and nodded toward Alexandros. There was definitely some resemblance between the two, and that went a long way to making him less creepy and more just silly. I bit back a giggle.
We all piled in a minivan taxicab that brought us to the harbor.
"I have been instructed to take you out to the island tomorrow morning, first thing," he explained. "Tonight, we will sleep in a hostel, and tomorrow we will head down to the harbor and meet the boat taking us to the island. The Fortune Research team is awaiting your arrival."
Jordyn swiped through something on her phone. "How long have they been out there digging?" she asked.
In the last two weeks between my parents' sudden disappearance and the date of our departure, she'd kind of taken over Chelsea's role as "team mom." The fact that we all knew the Perrits intentionally forbade her from going on the trip made it that much more awkward to see her on campus and in class. Jordyn had made a point of involving her as if she was still going on the trip, though, including her in discussions and getting pointers and references and background from her.
"The Americans?" Alexandros glanced back at her from the front passenger seat of the taxi-van. "They do not stay for long. They come to Fourtouna, search for a while, and then leave for a very long time. They always come back, though--there is something they search for, and it doesn't appear that they've found it yet, although they have found many other things."
Jordyn put down her phone with a confused squint. "Weird--so this one archaeological organization only ever comes to this one island to dig? You'd think if it was such a small island, they'd have dug through the whole thing by now."
Now it was Alexandros' turn to frown. "It is not small, Despoinida; Fourtouna holds many jungles and even a small mountain that was once a volcano. The island itself is the same size as one of the islands of the place called Hawaii. The explorers do not dig many places, but they try and search the jungle, all the deepest parts."
"Didn't Chelsea try to dig up what exactly they were searching for?" asked Derrick.
The professor, who had been nodding off over the course of this conversation, roused now in the back seat with a loud snort. "Chelsea? What? Who's searching?"
Alexandros twisted in his seat to get a better view of us. "I am sorry--who is Chelsea?" His gaze traveled between me and Jordyn, as if expecting one of us to claim that name.
Derrick rubbed his hands over the knees of his jeans. "She's--"
"Nobody!" Professor Silver interjected abruptly. "She's just... a friend, a fellow student of these young people. She couldn't come with us, though." He gave all of us a concerned glance, before settling in to ignore us once more.
I didn't get it; was he being defensive about her decision to withdraw from the trip?
The taxi pulled to a stop in front of a small building that displayed the name in Greek over the doorway, and underneath, the English translation.
The Fat Goat.
The picture beside the door was a vivid illustration of a goat that did indeed look very round and contented with itself.
Beside me, Tony snorted. "I guess it gets the message across--even though the cultural differences maybe lose something in translation."
I looked at the head of the goat, with it's short beard and the long horns, and I couldn't help thinking of the demon that I might have released back in Chicago, the one that meant my parents had to disappear indefinitely. Did it follow us here?
We stood in the tiny lobby with all our bags around us. Alexandros held a quick conversation with the host, and then turned to Professor Silver.
"I am sorry," he said, shaking his head. "It appears that the reservations had the wrong number of beds set aside for you. We had two rooms set aside, you see, with an equal number of beds, one for the kyries," he nodded to me and Jordyn, "and one for the kyrioi," he gestured to the guys. Our gracious guide wagged his head. "But the number is different..."
"It's all right," Professor Silver waved his hand. "Can we just move the extra bed from the girls' room into the guys' room?"
Alexandros asked the host, who nodded and gave his reply. The young man translated for us. "He says he can arrange it, but it will be another hour or so."
In the heavy silence of the room, everybody heard the muffled groan.
Kayce rolled his eyes and raised his hand. "Yo, can we, like, get some food while we wait?"
We all murmured at the suggestion. Our last meal had been on the plane, just before the final descent into Thessaloniki, and at the mention of food, we all felt just how famished we really were.
Luckily, Alexandros heartily agreed. "Oh yes! There are many estiatoria along this road--I will show you a good place!"
We arranged for our luggage to be stored in the secure closet behind the front desk, and followed the eager young man out to the street. The sun was a bit lower in the sky, but the air was still thick and warm.
Alexandros led us down the street, past a few pricier-looking places. All the time, I could hear the ocean crashing, just west of us. As we turned down a side street, a small breeze whipped around the corner and pressed up against us, raising the gooseflesh on my shoulder.
As I blinked, my periphery registered the form of a face very nearby, and just beside me, but the moment I tried to focus on it, I saw nothing. Instead, I felt something like a hand on my shoulder, and I wondered if Tony had wrapped an arm around me... but he was still just holding my hand.
"... Whenever you felt a breeze at just the right moment... my sprites checking up on you..." my mom's mention in the letter came back, and I made a point to stop where I was and stare directly at the place I felt the wind coming from.
Come on, I thought. I get it now... I'm not going to freak out at you anymore!
Tony tugged my arm. "What's up?" he asked.
I shook my head. "Nothing, I guess," I murmured to him. "I thought I saw something, is all."
As soon as I said it, a breeze tickled along my scalp. A response, perhaps?
Derrick's head came up and he stood straighter as his steps became quicker. "I smell barbecue, guys!"
Ahead of us, Alexandros laughed and gestured to the building alongside us. "You are right! Welcome to Ta Varelakia, or 'The Barrels', a very popular restaurant that specializes in fried meats, fresh salads, and delicious drinks!"
We all shuffled inside and Alexandros got us a table near the window, where we had a gorgeous view of the bay outside. The menu was all in Greek, but Alexandros told us what each dish was called, described what was in it, and we each picked something, plus a few extra dishes to share.
It was delicious! I ordered a salad with chicken and flatbread and tzatziki, while the guys got different varieties of gyros, and Jordyn went with a plate of kebabs and fries. The flavor was amazing, and the food disappeared rather quickly. We left the place thoroughly sated, and took a walk along the waterfront to kill a bit more time.
After such a delicious meal, a few of us had to use the restroom, so we ended up in different groups. When I came out, Kayce, Derrick and Alexandros were still waiting for the others.
I stopped at the top of a small rise, taking in the beautiful sights around me. Everything was so vibrant and pretty in the fiery light of the setting sun--I just couldn't resist!
When I returned my attention to the group, Alexandros was grinning at me. Had I just been standing there staring with a dumb expression on my face?
"How do you like Greece so far, Despoinida?"
I made a mental note of the word, to look up later. Did it mean "tourist" or something?
"It's definitely a new experience!" I said, unsure of what kind of opinion the hopeful man expected, seeing as we'd only been there for a couple hours!
"I'll say!" Kayce snorted. "It's kind of reminding me of Hawaii, a little, being so close to the water and stuff--but then again, there's so much here that's just centuries older than anything you'd find there... it kind of feels ancient and modern at the same time!"
"Uh-huh," Derrick nodded, swinging his feet under the tall bench he and the other guys were sitting on. "And clean too! The places I've been in Mexico all tended to be pretty far inland, so things were generally dirt-colored and everything got pretty dusty in the dry heat--but this air just..." He broke off and took a deep sniff to demonstrate his point.
Alexandros raised his eyebrow at me and gestured to the space next to him. "Would you like to sit down? There is room." He grinned, and I felt the nudge of the breeze (possibly a wind-sprite) on my shoulder again--but there was still just something unsettling about the eager young man. He was definitely older than all of us, probably in his early thirties, not quite as old as Professor Silver. I couldn't shake the idea that he seemed poised, somehow, ready to jump into action the moment something happened--but what?
I shook my head. "Oh no, I'm fine just standing... We were sitting for so long on the plane..."
Alexandros bounded to his feet and gestured to me with one hand and the open space with the other. "Please, I insist!"
"'Sup, dudes?" remarked a voice behind me, as Tony finally stepped into view. I felt a rush of relief, and came alongside him so that we could sit together, Tony on my right and Kayce on my left.
Alexandros played the fact of his standing off with easy grace, and he said. "Shall I tell you more about the island, or about Thessaloniki and the ancient kingdom of Macedon?" He pronounced it with the hard "/k/" sound instead of the soft "/s/" we usually pronounced it with.
I smiled. "I think I'd like to hear about the island more. What can you tell us about Fourtouna?"
Alexandros gestured with the air of a practiced storyteller. "It is an island in the middle of the sea, isolated, yet very connected with the old ways. No one has lived there for the last thousand years, but it was once home to a very devoted community of worshippers."
Derrick raised his hand. "I have a question," he mused. "Where exactly is the island, and how big is it? When we tried to search for it on the map, according to whatever information we could find, the satellite view only showed pixelated blocks of ocean--no island at all."
The map on Mom's office wall returned to my memory. I had brought the paperweights with me, tucked into my suitcase. I had also brought along a few of my mom's books with really boring titles and long passages in Greek, but Zella had assured me that they explained more about the Microtheon. I figured they would be useful to have along on the dig, and besides, it was only a few pounds' worth of extra weight. More than that, I found it comforting to bring a bit of them both along with me, as long as I wasn't sure where they were.
Alexandros seemed a little confused by his question. "It is too far offshore to see it from here," he said. "But I assure you, Fourtouna does exist. Perhaps your map had trouble locating it because there are so many other islands in the area, Fourtouna itself was never an incorporated area. Once the worshippers left, no one else dared set foot on the island. You will see it tomorrow."
"Which gods did they worship?" Kayce ran his hand through his long, bleached locks. "And why would they do it out in the middle of the sea?"
The storyteller's glint returned to his eye, and our guide answered, "Legends say that Poseidon's children--gods in their own right, but minor ones--appeared one day to a group of supplicants, and thus the Thyellan Temple was founded on the island where they first manifested, but the records don't seem to refer to these gods by name. We have references to waves and wind, so we can assume, from other sources that list the names of ancient Greek deities, which of the storm gods they might be--but as far as how many there were, in what manner they were worshipped, and any kind of artistic depiction of their manifested forms..." He tossed his hands up in a shrug. "The group you will be joining tomorrow is still in the process of searching for the main temple, buried somewhere deep in the jungle. They have found many outlying camps used by bands of pilgrims coming to worship--but the location of the temple itself still remains a mystery."
"All set?" The loud, American voice coming from the doorway of the restaurant jerked us out of the enchanting allure of Alexandros' voice.
Professor Silver walked out just ahead of Jordyn, waving his hands in the air. "Okay, I'll be good for a while."
Jordyn stopped and looked up to the sky. "Ooh, the stars look so pretty tonight!"
A high-pitched warble prompted Alexandros to reach for his pocket and pull out a small silver flip phone.
"Pes mou kati!" he stated in Greek. After conversing for a bit with the other person, he finished with "Efcharisto," and hung up. He looked toward the professor. "The owner of the Fat Goat says that your rooms are ready."
Tony let out a ferocious yawn as he stretched. "Good!" he said. "I think I'm ready to sleep away the rest of this jet lag!"
The moment he said it, we all looked at each other like we felt the weight of fatigue settling over us, too.
The sun settled at the horizon almost as soon as we started the long walk back to our hostel. With the setting sun came a steady wind, bringing on the cold and blowing in the night as if all the heat had gone out of the air. All of us Americans subconsciously bunched together, sharing our warmth and ensuring none of us got lost in the wandering night crowds.
I expected us to have a hard time keeping up with Alexandros, who knew basically every street and knew exactly how to slip through the spaces between a large rickety truck, a hand-cart, and a crowd of three people deep in conversation; on the contrary, he stuck fairly close to us, checking back over his shoulder to make sure we weren't too far off, and coaching us through the narrower spots whenever we needed it. I caught him looking back at me in particular, staring just until I met his gaze, and then he would turn back to the front. What was his deal? There was this air about him, like he had something to say to me, but my position at pretty much the middle of the group, behind Professor Silver and Jordyn, sandwiched between Derrick and Tony, with Kayce bringing up the rear, kept our guide at bay.
Closer to the hostel, the crowd thinned a little, and we weren't so cramped together. Our group shifted around me, with Professor Silver taking the lead and calling out buildings and landmarks he recognized, and as Tony dropped behind me a step or so, I felt a tap on my arm.
I turned toward it, and saw Alexandros walking right beside me.
"What is it?" I asked.
He blinked and turned his head, as if noticing me for the first time. "What is what?" he responded.
I shrugged. "You tapped my arm."
"I have not touched you, Despoinida."
I glanced over my shoulder. Kayce wasn't even looking in my direction, and he wasn't at the same angle as the touch I felt. Tony had his eyes fixed forward, and an intense expression on his face, but he was watching Alexandros, not me. "It couldn't have been anyone else," I said to the guide. "I literally felt somebody or something tap my shoulder."
Alexandros gave a quick glance from side to side. "There is a legend here, that although Greece abandoned her gods for more enlightened thinking and progressive ideas, the gods have not forgotten her, and the spirits still exist in the very air over the land, touching people and whispering to them, even knocking them over at times--but invisibly," he finished with a crinkle-eyed grin.
"What about spirits and gods?" Tony's face appeared over my shoulder, and I shifted back into his welcome presence, away from creepy Alexandros and his round eyes and cheesy grin. This time, when I felt a hand on my shoulder, I actually saw that it was Tony's arm wrapped around my shoulders in a side-hug as we kept walking. A breeze tickled my ear as we rounded the last corner and saw the awning for the Fat Goat just a few doors down. My head reflexively twitched as my eyes registered a face in the shadows just beyond my periphery--but once again, I looked and there was no one there.
"What is it?" Tony asked, pausing to glance over my head down the same alley I happened to face.
I shook my head. "Nothing, I think I'm just tired, and my eyes keep seeing strange things as I'm adjusting to a new place."
Tony huffed out his nose. "Alexandros isn't trying to scare you or creep you out with the weird stuff he says, is he?"
"No, it's not that," I answered quickly with a bob of my head. "He hasn't been creepy or inappropriate at all--I really think it's just travel fatigue."
We arrived in the doorway of the hostel, and the host was there to greet us and assure us that our accommodations were set up exactly to our liking.
"Well," Tony glanced toward the doorway of the room I would be sharing with Jordyn. "I guess this is where I leave you. Sleep well, Pris."
I smiled and gave him a small squeeze before slipping my arm out from around him. "You too, Tony. For what it's worth, I'm glad you're on the trip with us."
He grinned and lifted his wrist, displaying the leather cuff with the wire-wrapped stone. "I'm glad that coming along meant I'm not dying, too!" he said.
My ears burned, and I immediately glanced around to ensure that no one else heard it--though after a moment, I realized that the others didn't necessarily need to know about the healing stone Tony now wore to understand that for as long as anyone knew him, Tony Rosen was the Boy Waiting To Die... but now he wasn't.
Jordyn and I got ready for bed and laid down in thin, creaky cots with thin sheets and scratchy blankets to pull over ourselves.
"What do you think the island even looks like?" Jordyn asked in the dark stillness.
I rolled on my side and gave the automatic answer. "I really couldn't say. We never saw it on a map--" but then again, I thought, as soon as I said the words, I really have seen Fourtouna on a map! The peculiar shape of the island came back to my memory, with its forests and hill markings, and the overlapping symbols that could have very well given the precise location of the temple these people were looking for... the temple dedicated to worshipping a certain pair of gods, Trikymios the god of sea storms and waves, and Auraea, goddess of breezes.
Or, as I liked to call them, Mom and Dad. No wonder the worship had to cease so abruptly and there weren't the usual litany of artifacts and relics and statues to these two gods--they had set aside their divinity and opted to live as mortals for the last few centuries!
The last thought that passed through my mind as I drifted off to sleep was: I really should have taken a picture of that map before I left.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
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