We followed a well-worn trail that led across windswept slopes, punctuated with scrabbly vegetation and weathered boulders and dotted with occasional stone-and-mud huts with thatched roofs. Primitive as they were, each hut was, without exception, clean and well maintained. I sensed that these were people of integrity, and they were resourceful enough to get by with the little they had.
Aside from the occasional burro, the only livestock I saw was a small herd of shaggy goats with twisted horns nibbling at the sparse vegetation. They were tended by two boys of about ten or twelve years old.
The closer we got to the monastery, the more people we saw. They all bore dark, Grecian eyes and had hair colors ranging from pitch-black to sandy blonde—some even red. Most were older—sixties and over, I guessed. As we passed, they’d stop whatever they were doing, wave, and smile warmly, their faces full of guileless trust. The sight of visitors to their island was obviously a rare and welcome experience. It was a little sad to wonder how long this innocence would last beneath the stampeding feet of tourism.
Soon, a curious group of about a half dozen giggling children—boys and girls—had gathered and was following us at a polite distance. Then, one little girl of about three, urged on by her companions, darted from the group, ran up to me, and tugged on the leg of my shorts. I stopped and knelt before her. She had a button for a nose. Her eyes, large and dark, sparkling with absolute purity, connected instantly with mine. She took my hand and dropped something into my palm—a pink stone, quartz, rounded and polished by the sea. The girl said something that I didn’t understand, and then she darted back to hide among her friends. The group scampered off in laughter.
I stood and held the stone in my open palm for Niki to see.
“The pink stone of friendship,” she explained. “The quartz is rare on this island, like a four-leaf clover. For the children, this stone would be a great prize. You should feel quite honored that they have given it to you.”
“They don’t even know me,” I said, turning the silky quartz in my fingers. “What’d she say to me?”
“She said, ‘You are welcome to our home.’”
“She said that?”
Niki nodded. “You will never meet a more hospitable people. They learn when they are quite young.”
I slipped the stone into my pocket and we continued on, but the little girl’s haunting eyes didn’t leave me.
The main complex of the monastery was a series of simple one and two-story stucco buildings separated by narrow cobblestone streets barely wide enough to accommodate the occasional donkey cart. At the center of the complex was a sunken, circular plaza, a maze of flagstone walkways surrounding a ten-foot statue of the Great Mother. The space between the walkways teemed with blooming roses. I knew from the description in Niki’s book that this was the Labyrinth of Roses.
According to Niki, scientists did not know who had carved the robed, serenely smiling deity. They only knew that the white marble had come from the ancient quarry of Naxos. Niki, granted special access to Pialigarian scriptures, pointed out that these writings—some dating back four thousand years—mentioned the statue’s existence, proof, she claimed, that supported one of the main points of her thesis.
“Let’s see,” I said, attempting to paraphrase her argument. “This statue represents irrefutable evidence linking the modern Pialigarian to Minoan rather than Phoenician ancestry.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “You read my book?”
“I couldn’t put it down. I read it that night I told you I was leaving.”
“Yes, I remember. The same night you could not put down the bottle of ouzo.”
Just then, a thin, elderly man wearing a straw hat, sandals, a white shirt, and trousers bearing the soiled knees of a gardener waved from among the roses.
“Artemas,” Niki called out.
“Niki? I knew it was you!” The little man removed his hat as he approached. His head was a sunburned crown of bald surrounded by a band of shortly cropped gray hair. He opened his arms and embraced Niki. “So good to see you, Niki. It has been too long since you have come.”
“Yes, Artemas,” Niki cooed. “Far too long.”
“You have been well?”
“Yes. I have been well.” She pulled back and gave him a good looking over. “And you? You are still as young as the last day I saw you.”
“Ah, but you are kind,” Artemas said, laughing humbly. “Too kind. I am afraid I am not the young man that I once was. My knees, they trouble me.”
“Perhaps. But with age comes wisdom, no? Now you are full with the wisdom of the Great Mother.”
He waved off the compliment. “Give me the strength and the wisdom to tend my roses. This is all that I ask.” He turned to Father Jon. “Father, it is so good to see you again. It has been years.”
“Yes, Artemas, years. I think of your island often. Always it is such a pleasure to come.”
Artemas turned his curious gaze on me. Curling the brim of his hat in his hands, he said, “I see you bring another friend.”
“This is Stuart Adams,” Niki said. “He is from America. I have brought him to meet Euphemia. She is here, is she not?”
“Of course she is here. And she will be delighted that you have .”
Leaving Father Jon and Artemas in the garden discussing roses, Niki and I followed the outer perimeter of the labyrinth. Niki explained how she had often come to Pialigos to walk the labyrinth.
“When I had a problem, I would come here. Walking the labyrinth in silence, you often reach certain points—stations of remembrance—where forgotten memories or the inspiration needed to make an decision suddenly comes. You should try it.”
The flagstone path led to the arched gateway of a high wall. Passing through, we stepped into the courtyard of a sprawling though humble residence, circled the house, and then entered the cool shade of an olive grove. At the far edge of the grove, next to a rock wall that followed the lip of the cliff, I spotted a woman profiled in the dappled shade. She stood alone, still, facing the sea, the plume of Kyropos clearly visible on the horizon. She was a slender woman of around fifty, with shiny black hair fixed in a braid that fell far below her waist. Long open curls dangled over her ears, a complement to her high, naturally rouged cheekbones. Her gown appeared to be made of fine silk, ankle-length, with a sash that looped over the right shoulder and spilled well below her left hip. There was a curious mix of human and animal figures embroidered just above a fringed hem. Thin sandals gave her a barefoot appearance. Draped in flowing white, the woman was a silent, ethereal figure, a master’s portrait of mystical dignity.
Euphemia still had her eyes closed when we approached. Thinking she was in some kind of a trance, I didn’t want to startle her. “Maybe we should come back later,” I whispered. But Niki shook her head, placed a silencing finger to her lips.
We waited until Euphemia’s eyes fluttered open. She turned to us, her face awash in serenity. “I am so glad you came,” she said to Niki in a rich, melodious voice. She took both of Niki’s hands and delivered a light kiss to her forehead. She turned to me, her dark eyes smiling with the warmth of an old friend. Still addressing Niki, she said, “This is our writer from America?”
“This is Stuart Adams,” Niki said. “And yes, he is the writer that I told you about.”
Euphemia stepped in front of me. “The writer who would tell the world of our scroll?”
“That’s the plan, assuming there is a scroll.”
“I once traveled to America,” Euphemia said, “a peace conference held at the United Nations. New York is such a wonderful place.”
“Wonderful?” I said, wondering how the woman radiating such a peace-filled countenance could deem as wonderful a place as hyper as New York.
“This surprises you?”
“Your island is so peaceful,” I said. “I wouldn’t think a place like New York would suit you.”
“Peaceful?” She nodded toward Kyropos. “New York does not have a volcano. Any given place in the world can provide many reasons to be upset, Stuart Adams. Peace, it is a fine blanket spread evenly over all the earth. Some choose to partake of it; some do not.” A slight breeze stirred the trees. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. “This air that I breathe,” she said, reopening her eyes, “would it become less because I hold my breath?”
“No.”
“And so it is with peace. Its presence is not contingent on certain, shall we say, environmental conditions. Peace, like the air, is always present, here for the taking for all who would choose it.”
Suddenly I could imagine a fleet of cruise ships sitting offshore, unloading their cargo like cattle to be herded through a gauntlet of booths stacked with T-shirts, trinkets, and an assortment of Pialigarian memorabilia imported from Taiwan. In a few years, that big-eyed girl who’d given me the pink stone of friendship would be shelling out change for twenties with the ease of a Vegas dealer passing out cards, innocence drained from her eyes.
“And when your island crawls with tourists,” I said, “how are you going to keep them from trampling your peace, your whole lifestyle? You might have to start breathing just a little deeper.”
“The Pialigarians are a resourceful, resilient people. We have survived a volcano. We can survive the tourists. The Prophet will find a way,” she said.
I smiled. “Well, I hope your Prophet has some experience in the tourist trade. He’s going to need it if this whole thing breaks open.”
Euphemia’s gentle expression remained naively unchanged. “I would not expect you to understand or embrace the Pialigarian way.” She studied my face curiously. “And yet, I can see in your eyes that you believe you have been here before. Am I correct?”
I glanced at Niki. I wasn’t sure how, when, or why, but I knew she’d told Euphemia of my belief that I’d been on Pialigos. How else could Euphemia know?
My look drew an indignant frown from Niki. “Why do you look at me that way?” she demanded. “Do you think that I—”
“Niki told me nothing,” Euphemia said. “She does not need to. In your entire countenance, I see it. You, Stuart Adams, you have the soul of a Pialigarian.” The hint of a dare twinkled in her eyes. “Do you wish that I prove this to you?”
“Prove it? How do you intend to do that?”
“Come, I will show you,” she said, and she turned to walk away.
“What’s she up to?” I asked Niki.
“How would I know?” she snapped back. “Am I also a reader of minds?” Still miffed that I’d silently accused her of being a snitch, Niki skittered off to catch up with her friend.
I took a drink of water and caught a pleasant rear view of my departing companion. But that pleasure was cut short by the unexpected twinge of guilt of knowing I might be the one responsible for opening the floodgates of tourism on this pristine island. I found some comfort in the cold facts. If these people didn’t jump into the twenty-first century and develop some major source of income, they’d be going the way of their Minoan ancestors, but with a lot less fanfare. The world had become immune to the sad story of yet another extinction, human or otherwise. Niki was probably the only scientist on the planet prepared to commemorate the Pialigarians’ passage, and her book wasn’t selling, not to the masses. Nobody really cared.
Nor was it my problem. Empires rise and fall with the tides of time. Cultures vanish. I was being paid to do what I could to bring the world to the Pialigarians’ doorstep. It’d be up to them to take it from there.
Another swallow of water. I slipped the bottle back into its holster and started after the two women.
I wished I hadn’t seen that little girl’s eyes.
I followed Euphemia and Niki back into the Labyrinth of Roses.
“You will walk the labyrinth,” Euphemia said. Removing a long silk scarf from beneath her sash, she stepped behind me and tied the scarf into a blindfold. “When you get to the center, place your hands upon the statue of the Great Mother, and then return to me.”
I chuckled beneath the blackness of the blindfold. “You want me to walk the labyrinth … blindfolded. You mind telling me how I’m supposed to do that?”
“You will feel your way. Listen. Let the path speak to you. Clear your mind.”
Feel my way? Right. I humored her by drawing an audibly deep breath. Nothing cleared from my mind. I took a step and then another. I took one more, and I caught my toe on the path’s stone boundary. Next thing I knew I was going down, grabbing for something to break the fall. What I got was the thorn-laden stalk of a rosebush. Both hands. It happened so fast that I was already on the ground before I realized that my palms were shredded. The pain was excruciating. I suppressed a scream and started picking at the blindfold to get it off.
“Do not remove the blindfold,” Euphemia called out. “Ignore the pain. Stand and begin again.”
Ignore the pain? The woman must be out of her mind. With my hands stinging, I staggered to my feet. I could feel the blood oozing from my palms, dripping off the tips of my fingers. I’d failed her stupid test. Why go on? But I forced myself to take another step and tried desperately to get even a glimpse of whatever the hell I was supposed to see.
Then, it happened. The whole labyrinth suddenly appeared in my mind. I took a few tentative steps and then a few more; I began walking, slowly, carefully, ready to stop the second my foot touched a rock. It never happened. I followed long arcs and sharp curves until I knew I was within reach of the Great Mother. I extended my arms and felt the cool of the marble come through my hands. The cool turned to a soothing warmth that flowed into my palms and up through my arms. The pain stopped. Unbelievable. I felt for blood that wasn’t there. I turned and retraced my steps back to the women.
Euphemia lifted the blindfold. When I looked at my hands, there were no thorns, no ripped flesh, not even the slightest hint of a scratch.
“I … I don’t get it,” I said. “My hands should be—”
“Your hands are of no importance,” Euphemia said, her breath shallow, her eyes wide and searching.
“Didn’t you see? I … I grabbed a rosebush. My hands should be shredded. Look!” I thrust out my open palms. Euphemia’s eyes never left mine.
Niki took one of my hands and examined it. “He is right,” she said, her eyes wide with disbelief. “Not even a scratch.” She turned to Euphemia. “But I saw it. With my own eyes I saw him grab the thorns.”
Euphemia ignored her. “You walked the labyrinth. How did you know?”
“I … I don’t know. The whole thing it … it came into my mind … just like you said.”
Euphemia studied me for another moment before her eyes darted to Niki’s. Neither woman said anything, but their exchanged glances told me that something had passed between them.
“You are an American,” Euphemia said finally, “and yet you know the Zadim? How do you explain it? How is it that you know what only a Pialigarian would know?”
“I don’t know anything about the Zadim,” I insisted. “Swear to God. Never even heard the word until Niki told me about it.”
Niki looked at Euphemia. “Do you think? Is this the whisper of Pialigos?”
Euphemia still had her eyes drilled into mine, as if she had bored down deep enough to see a layer of my soul that I didn’t know was there. I felt exposed, naked. I shifted on my feet.
“Stuart Adams,” Euphemia said, her voice hushed, her eyes flashing with sudden urgency, “there is something that I must show you.”
J Douglas Bottorff 