I didn’t sleep well. Up before daybreak, I sat in a claustrophobic cube of a bedroom, hunched over a table, updating my journal. Through a window above the table, I could see the growing light of morning spread slowly over a gray sea. The open view offered some respite from the closeness of the unadorned stone walls that huddled in shadows at my back.
I wrote nothing of last night, nothing of Niki. Saw no reason for it. Her kiss to my palm had been spontaneous, circumstantially provoked, a man and a woman under the intoxicating influence of a Mediterranean moon sailing over open sea beneath a sky full of winking stars. Add a mix of loneliness, uncertainty, and a yearning for a soft touch, and we had an emotional beverage that had momentarily fuzzed recognized boundaries. That’s all it was, and writing about it wouldn’t make it any different.
I closed the journal and followed the sounds of voices downstairs. Euphemia, Artemas, Niki, and Father Jon had gathered for a patio breakfast of cooked cereal and fresh fruit. I had the cereal with some kind of a soy milk. Bland. I sprinkled in some raisins to get my sugar fix.
The conversation was lively and surprisingly cheerful; it even included the usual banter between Niki and me, as if everything was just as it had always been. Sometime in the night, Kyropos stopped spewing, but there was general concern among the Pialigarians, Artemas in particular, when Niki reaffirmed our intention to sail to the volcano. Tension eased when the old gardener offered a protecting prayer to the Great Mother on our behalf. Everything was again turning in its proper orbit. We had a sunny day, a sea of glass, a dormant volcano, harmony among comrades bound by a high purpose, and the blessing of the Great Mother. Things couldn’t be better.
The only discomfort I felt came from Euphemia. She seemed a little distracted over breakfast, disappointed, I was sure, that I’d decided to ignore her interpretation of my destiny. I could feel her eyes, as though she was attempting to silently will me to change my mind. Without looking at her, I willed her right back—Forget it! I knew she had gotten the message when she insisted on accompanying us on the trek back to our boat.
Our group fell into two distinct divisions. Niki, Artemas, and Father Jon took the lead. Euphemia and I brought up the rear. Euphemia’s slower gait was undoubtedly a tactic designed to get me alone—to cut me from the herd, so to speak. She wanted to know every detail of my vision of Marcus and why I thought the scroll was on the Rock instead of Sarnafi. I could tell by her line of questioning that all my answers were going to confirm everything she already believed. But the way I figured it, this was her special little fantasy, and she was welcome to play it out however she wanted. I felt no moral obligation to play along.
We were halfway down the stairs that led to the pier when Euphemia stopped suddenly. She turned, her eyes flashing with frustration, riveted on mine. “Stuart, I want you to listen to me, and I want you to listen carefully.”
“Here we go,” I said, rolling my eyes in the best politely rude gesture I could come up with.
“You think this is all a silly game, but it is not. You cannot escape your destiny.”
“My destiny? You know my destiny? How is it that you’ve been granted this wonderful privilege, but I don’t have a clue?”
“You do have a clue, but you do not know that you know.”
“I see. That clears it right up.” The woman was relentless. I was still trying to be polite to her, but it was getting more difficult by the moment. “What do you want from me? You need a human sacrifice? Appease the Great Mother? Make the volcano stop? Save your little island? Why don’t you ask your friendly nocturnal freak, Sargos, to do your bidding? He probably knows that labyrinth forward and backward.”
“The Great Mother requires no such sacrifice,” she said sharply. “And Sargos, he is not the Prophet. This involves much more than our little island, as you call it. We are talking about the restoration of the human spirit—a gift that will benefit all humanity.”
“I see. Sacrifice me and restore the spirit of the entire human race. Now that throws a whole different light on things.”
“You mock me.”
Her face was red with anger, but I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was get the hell away from her and her prophet crap. “Look, why can’t you understand—”
“You are the one who must understand. You have no choice. You will walk the labyrinth. You cannot see it now, but you will. You will try to avoid it. You will fight it. You will struggle to convince yourself of another way. There is no other way. A great thing is waiting to happen through you. You think too small, but that must change. You will become restless, filled with anxiety and self-doubt. You have heard the whisper of Pialigos, and now you cannot flee, even though you try. You cannot know completeness until you fulfill this thing that you are destined to do. I am telling you this now as one trained to see and understand such things. But I cannot be your eyes. You have your own eyes. They will open. You will see as you have never seen before. Your eyes, they will be opened!”
The sermon reminded me of a childhood incident, a tent revival meeting I was forced to attend. The speaker raved on about the fires of hell, his voice screeching, his face growing redder, the veins in his neck bulging like a couple of bicycle inner tubes. The guy was a preacher, but I had the feeling he could just as easily have been a chainsaw murderer.
Euphemia was different. She was no raving psychopath. The penetrating fire in her eyes, the flare of her nostrils, and the intensity in her voice were all disturbingly genuine, not an easy thing to put out of my mind.
The first several hours I spent alone in my spot at the bow, thinking, Marion, scroll, money, Niki, destiny. That crazy destiny thing. If people really did have destinies, why did mine have to include walking a maze of narrow paths surrounded by deadly pools of boiling water? I was having a hard time believing that the Great Mother, even on her worst day, could cook up a requirement like that.
It was a relief from this line of brain chatter when Father Jon signaled for me to join him and Niki at the table. I was even happier to see the bottle of beer that Threader handed me when I passed him at the helm.
“This man that you saw in your vision,” Father Jon began, “what makes you say his name was Marcus?”
I downed a swallow of beer and recalled the experience. “The name just came to me. I don’t know how, exactly.”
“Did he speak?” Father Jon asked, taking quick, unconscious puffs off a very short cigar.
“No. I just saw his face.”
“I have been thinking,” Niki said. “I could perform a regression. Perhaps you would remember more of the details.”
“Regression?” I asked. “You mean like hypnosis?”
I’d once read a book about people who were trying to recall events from past lives through hypnosis. It was striking, in a humorous kind of way, that in so many of the cases cited the people claimed that in their previous lives they had been famous characters or people of great importance, while their current lives were anything but eventful, let alone influential. Escapism, I remember thinking, came in all forms.
“Yes. Hypnosis,” Niki said.
“Come on, Doctor. That’s pushing it just a little beyond the realm of your beloved scientific process, isn’t it?” I liked her frowning, scientist self. It was a lot safer.
“No one is pushing anything,” Niki said, her professional sensibilities bristling like a perturbed porcupine. “I happen to be a certified hypnotist. In the right hands, it is a recognized and respected tool.”
“Yeah? I can see it now. You’d have me barking like a dog. Probably put it on video and show all your friends.”
“Ha! You already bark like a dog. You need no help from me. Perhaps I would make you chase cars.” A maniacal gale of laughter burst from her mouth. “My friends”—more laughter—“they would be quite amused, watching you … on the video … chasing cars.” When the cackling finally died out, she added, “Perhaps you are having more doubts about this … this vision of yours? Is this what you are trying to say, now that we are out on the boat, far away from the hard work that you so despise?”
She was cute when she taunted. “You think I said that just so I could get out of carrying your silly rocks?”
She hit me with a level glare. “They are not my rocks. And you yourself said”—she inflected the tone of a whining oaf—“‘Niki, there is something out there. Something we have got to see.’ Do you not remember? What makes you so sure? You cannot say. Perhaps there are details we can—”
“I didn’t have that dorky tone in my voice when I said it. I’m telling you everything I remember. It was clear. I was standing on a beach. I saw Kyropos, just like the picture in the newspaper. There was a guy with a beard standing next to me. His name was Marcus. That’s it. And if I was under your hypnotic spell, which is not gonna happen, I’d tell you the same thing.”
“Niki said that Euphemia believes you are the Prophet,” Father Jon said, trying to ease some of the tension. “This is … this is quite remarkable that she would say such a thing. A priestess of her stature, she would not make this statement lightly.”
It was obvious that Niki had recruited the father to her corner. “Oh, come on, Father. You’re not going to tell me that you buy that story, are you? Is there anything in your Bible that says a guy’s got to walk through a maze of boiling water to reach salvation?”
Father Jon thought for a moment. “Yes, actually there is. The Master himself said that the gate to salvation is narrow, that the gate to destruction is wide, easily entered. The path to enlightenment, it is indeed narrow, rife with uncertainties and trials of all descriptions. Is this not the symbolism of the labyrinth?”
“Symbolism? I have no problem with the symbolism. Fact is, I kind of like it.” The scene inside Euphemia’s cave—skeletons rippling in dark, sulfuric stench—drifted into my mind. I took another large swallow of beer to douse the memory, to clear out the smell. It didn’t work. “It’s that pair of skeletons that bother me. Far as I’m concerned, they look happy enough just like they are. No sense in me being a third wheel.”
“Skeletons?” Father Jon asked. “What skeletons?”
“Anatolios and Panagiota,” Niki explained. “You know the legend.”
“Oh yes, I know it,” the father said, recalling whatever version of the story he’d been given. “The Prophet and his lover.” He squinted in disbelief. “Euphemia allowed you to see this?”
“Yes,” Niki said. “She showed us that this story is not just a legend; it is actually true. We saw their skeletons, in the Pool of Death.” She wiped a sudden tear from the corner of her eye.
Why was she so emotional about this thing? Stranger still, why had she so readily joined forces with Euphemia to drag me into all this nonsense? What was it that made this hardheaded logician suddenly go illogical? Nothing about it made any sense. I let out a soft chuckle and accompanied it with a very visible headshake intended to make that very point.
“I don’t know about you,” I said to Niki, “but I’m having a hard time believing that I was looking at a pair of skeletons that once belonged to me and an old girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend?” Niki shot to her feet, her eyes flashing with indignation. “She was more than a girlfriend. Panagiota, she sacrificed her own life to be with the man she loved.” Her lips quivered as she glared at me. Then, she stalked off and sat at the bow of the boat, legs drawn into her arms, staring into the horizon, well out of hearing range.
“Now what do you suppose that’s all about?” I asked, all the mysteries of feminine behavior rising into my mind at the same time.
“I do not know,” Father Jon said. “The skeletons? Perhaps such a gruesome scene disturbed her.”
“I doubt that,” I said. “To an archaeologist, a pile of two-thousand-year-old bones is better than sex.” I downed the last of my beer. “What is it about women, Father? Why do they always make things so complicated?”
“My son”—a strange air of authority set in—“no creature is more beautiful, or more mysterious, than a woman. That is how God made it.”
“Yeah? I doubt that even God can understand how a woman thinks.”
“That, only God would know. As for me, I took a vow.”
“Let’s see now—that’s one vow to seek truth and another to avoid women. Maybe that’s not a bad combination.”
The father frowned and drew a couple of contemplative puffs from his cigar.
“As for me, Father, I vowed that someday I was gonna get this whole woman thing figured out. But I can tell you, I might be an old man before I—”
“Hell, Adams,” Threader blurted out from the cockpit, “a guy’d think a fella your age would know something about the fairer sex by now.”
I turned to look at Threader standing at the helm. Nothing about that potbellied beer guzzler struck me as an expert on women, but I played along. “Guess you got it nailed, Threader? I don’t recall seeing anybody hanging off your arm.”
“Nope, you sure ain’t.” He patted Penelope’s wheel. “This here’s the closest you’re gonna see me get to the female kind. I know you wouldn’t understand, but when you’ve had the best, none of the rest of ’em matters—ever. But you can bet your ass that I’ve learned a thing or two about women.”
“Yeah? What have you learned, Threader?” This was going to be amusing.
“Well, let’s see now, Adams. I believe with you I’m gonna have to start with the basics, so listen carefully. The first thing you got to be able to see in a woman is when she’s in love.”
“In love? Right. Why was I expecting something profound, man of the world like you?”
“Like I said, Adams. You got to start with the basics. If you ain’t got them down, then all the rest is just one big fuzzy mystery. That’s your problem. You ain’t got the basics.”
“Your point being …”
“Okay, Adams, I’ll spell it out for you. This is really getting down to it. Pre-basics, more like it. Women 101 minus about fifty-eight. Now listen, and listen good. The girl’s in love—with you.”
Every muscle in my body stiffened, forcing me to sit up straighter in my seat. I glanced toward Niki to see if she’d heard the comment. She was still looking across the horizon, unmoved.
Sure, I knew there were feelings passing between us, but they were too ambiguous to be defined, at least not with a label as powerful as love.
“You’re wrong, Threader, out of your mind. I’ve got a girl back in the States. I already told her that.”
Threader chuckled as though he were talking to a half-wit. “That’s what you told her? Hell, you’re worse off than I thought. You see, Adams, it don’t matter if you told her you got ten girlfriends waiting back in the States. Love, it don’t know how to count. Ain’t that right, Father?”
Father Jon perked up. “Indeed. Love, it knows no limitations. On this I can speak with utmost authority.” He nodded, as if agreeing with his own statement would lend it more credibility.
“So I’m telling you, Adams,” Threader continued, “she’s in love with you. You get that one through that thick head of yours, and you understand her behavior. Simple really.”
“You best stick to your boats, Threader,” I said, anxious to bury this unnerving public discussion. “They’re a lot easier to read. If she feels anything, she hates my guts.”
“Wrong again,” Threader assured me. “If a Greek woman hates your guts, you might wake up one morning with a knife stuck in your neck. You’re confusing hate with the fact that she thinks you’re a damn jackass. In case you ain’t noticed, beautiful women fall in love with jackasses all the time. No, Adams, she doesn’t hate your guts. Don’t ask me why, but that poor girl’s in love with you.”
Threader’s words banged through my brain like loose shutters in a high wind. I glanced again at Niki, her legs drawn into a ball, staring listlessly over the water.
Maybe this was more serious than I thought.
Later that afternoon, with Threader and Father Jon napping in their cabins, Kyropos now clearly in view, I was taking my turn at the helm, watching a pod of dolphins that had appeared off Penelope’s starboard side. The dolphins had paced us off and on for the better part of the voyage. Captivated by their comical antics, these oversized blue-gray rubber pool toys had splashed and giggled their way straight into everyone’s heart, especially Niki’s.
Niki, wearing her dark glasses, floppy hat, shorts, and a blouse—the tails tied across her waist—sat at the table reading a copy of William Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, sulking, and doing a real good job of ignoring me.
A steady wind and a straight course gave me plenty of time to come up with a good theory on why I’d made her angry. It had to do with the legend of Anatolios and Panagiota. In that story, she must have encountered her ideal for the perfect relationship. I was taken by it too, at least by her account. Who wouldn’t want that kind of love? I had suspicions that she’d done a little doctoring on that obscure bit of history, especially when I remembered that she’d described herself as a hopeless romantic. Embellishments happened. The bond between those two ancient lovers had, in her version, become the stuff of fairy tales and romance novels, of classical heartbreakers like the Shakespearean piece she was now reading—not the kind of love relationships you normally encounter in real life, at least not in my experience. I’d never had a woman that would break a nail for me, let alone die for me.
Niki was young, still waiting for her knight in shining armor to ride up and sweep her off her feet. Now that she was thirtysomething, I figured the age factor was starting to creep in. She was beginning to feel a little insecure, even hypersensitive about whether or not her Mr. Perfect was going to show up.
Her problem aside, I had unintentionally trampled over her romantic fantasy with my off-the-cuff old-girlfriend remark, so it was up to me to warm the chill that frosted that hollow space between us. The dolphins, I figured, were a good excuse to get us talking; they would give me an opening for an apology.
“Niki, look,” I said, pointing to the animals.
Niki, her eyes filled with skepticism, locked on me for an indifferent moment, as if she was weighing whether or not I’d received a sufficient dose of the silent treatment. Apparently I had. She folded her book and stepped toward the helm to join me.
“They are beautiful, so playful. Perhaps they are happy because Kyropos has gone to sleep.”
She took a seat close enough for me to catch a hint of her fragrance. I hadn’t thought about it until that moment, but her scent had always emitted an air of integrity. It was tasteful, never overdone, the aura of a woman who was confident, secure in her femininity, enough to shake some of the validity out of my theory.
“Maybe,” I said, my eyes spending more time on her than on dolphins. “Guess I’m happy about it too. Then in some ways I’m kind of sorry.”
“Sorry?” she asked, turning to me, her face fully amused. “Why would you be sorry?”
“Never seen a live volcano up close. Guess I was hoping I’d get a chance.”
“I thought you did not like danger.”
“I’m not into trying to outrun a pyroclastic flow, if that’s what you mean. I didn’t say I wanted it to be the last thing on earth I’d see.”
Niki turned her gaze on the volcano and spoke as casually as if her next question still had something to do with geological anomalies.
“What are you trying to outrun, Stuart Adams?”
I heard the question, but it caught me off guard. I glanced at her, repositioned my hands to the wheel’s spokes, and shifted on my feet. I was supposed to be the one controlling the direction of this conversation.
“I make you nervous.” She turned toward me, pushing windblown strands of hair behind her ear. She’d spoken in a relaxed, analytical tone, like a psychiatrist to her patient. “Why, do you think?”
I swallowed. “Nervous? What makes you think …” No. I stopped myself. Here was the opportunity I needed to put this thing on the table, to get it out in plain sight so there’d be no more questions about the way things were. “Okay,” I admitted, “you make me nervous.”
“Why?” She lowered her sunglasses and looked at me as if she already knew what I was going to say. “What do you think I am going to do?”
I was getting that uncomfortable feeling of being transparent—again. I started to look away, to pretend that some detail in the rigging was about to need my attention, but I was too mired in her quicksand eyes.
“You want to know what I think you’ll do?”
Answering a question with a question was a way of buying time to find words to match the sudden burble of emotions I didn’t know how to define. How could I say, You’ll make me fall in love with you and complicate the hell out of my life, without actually saying it?
She didn’t wait for me to take a stab at a legitimate response.
“You are afraid that I am going to upset your life.”
Her accuracy made me laugh—nervously. “Something like that.”
“You worry about your Marion, no?”
Worry? Lately, I’d been thinking a lot about Marion, our relationship, weighing that old “Is it love, or am I filling the void?” question. I’d decided it was neither love nor the fear of being alone that kept me hanging on, even when I knew there were some emotionally important factors missing in the relationship. Responsibility, I’d decided. That was the key word that kept bouncing around in my consciousness. I felt responsible for the feelings Marion had invested in me.
I was never one to trick a woman into making her believe I cared for the single purpose of getting her in bed. Sure, I was as taken by a pretty face and a perfect body as the next guy, but I also knew there was a real person behind the physical manifestation, a living soul with needs and feelings that, handled carelessly, could be damaged, even scarred for life. I didn’t take that responsibility lightly. It sometimes blinded my better judgment and kept me hanging on long after everything in me was screaming to bail—Alyssa, for example.
Niki, according to my theory, was on a quest for the ideal relationship, and that made her vulnerable. She was testing me, and I didn’t want to give her any hint that I was ready to open the door. I was in no position to take on that responsibility.
“I worry about my Marion, yes. Before I left, I asked her to marry me, okay?” I saw no need to fill her in with Marion’s chilled response. That would only weaken my case.
“Oh? It is strange that this fiancée of yours has not returned even one of your telephone calls.”
Strange indeed, I agreed, though I hoped to hide that fact beneath a scowl. The hyper sound of Marion’s answering service rolled through my head. You’ve reached the voice mail of Marion Chandler, of Chandler & Associates. Your call is important to me. Please leave your name, your number, and a message. I promise I’ll get back with you ASAP. Bye-bye.
Isn’t my call important to you? I’d thought every time I heard the thing.
I’d seen the way she treated callers she didn’t want to talk to—usually those nervous, pain-in-the-ass clients obsessing over some insignificant detail. She’d fish that chirping cell phone from inside her purse and flip it open to check the caller ID. When she saw it was me, she’d slap it shut—as if I could feel the snap. Captured in that palm-sized, plastic clam, she’d shove me into the dark abyss of her purse, drawing some sense of satisfaction out of sticking me beneath clattering bottles of makeup, nail polish, hand cream, hairbrush, and the seventeen million other objects she’d never leave home without.
“What’s she supposed to do,” I said curtly, keeping my defenses high, “send a carrier pigeon? In case you haven’t noticed, there’s no telephone within fifty thousand miles of here.”
“She could have called before we left on this trip. There was plenty of time.”
Yeah, there had been plenty of time, and if there hadn’t, Marion was the kind that would have made time.
“She probably tried to call while Dora was out,” I ventured, pumping all the plausibility into my voice that I could.
“I am sure of it.”
“I’m sure of it too,” I snapped.
“You are sure, or you are just being naïve?”
“Naïve?” I rolled my eyes hard enough for her to see them through my sunglasses. “I really don’t see any reason to discuss this with you.”
“Why not?”
“Because, that’s why.”
“Because is not a reason. You said so yourself.”
“I don’t have to give you a reason. I told you, this is a personal matter. Maybe you Greeks don’t understand the meaning of personal. It’s like, between two people, not three. This is between Marion and me.”
“Do not patronize me. I know the meaning of personal. I also know that your Marion, she has left you.”
“What?” I turned sharply toward her, my lips quivering with words I couldn’t find. What do you say when the enemy hits a raw nerve?
I was afraid of losing Marion. Why? The silence of an empty house. Black hole. Not like she was gone on business. That was fasting, choice, agreed-upon deprivation for the larger goal of a greater good. Losing her, on the other hand, would be starvation, stark and merciless terror leading to emotional death. I despised the part of me that needed her. In my strongest moments, I didn’t need anybody, but I knew those moments would pass, and all my weaknesses would roll in like clouds driven by arctic winds, full of bone-chilling rain, waves of gray loneliness that’d send me to the telephone punching in her number with urgent force, ready to beseech, to promise the moon and a planet or two.
Who was I kidding? It wasn’t all about that noble ideal of responsibility. Fear of the void—that one played a big role.
For a long time, I studied the fiery eyes of my relentless interrogator. I couldn’t think of one honest word to refute her. I had but one weapon left—humor.
“You know what you ought to do?”
“No. What is it that I ought to do?” She looked as if she intended to disagree with whatever I suggested.
“You ought to start yourself a psychic hot line. Woman with your talent could get rich in no time.”
“Perhaps I should.” She crossed her arms defiantly and locked her eyes squarely on mine. “Tell me I am wrong.”
I almost wished Kyropos would erupt, just so we could change the subject.
“Look, let’s just drop it. Okay? I was showing you the dolphins. Can’t we watch dolphins without fighting?”
She did one of those contemplative teeters with her head, a signal to inform me she could go either way. “Okay. We will watch the dolphins.” She turned in her seat, both legs folded beneath her, resting her chin on finger-laced hands.
Could there be a more beautiful creature on this planet? I wondered, trying to relax the white-knuckle grip I had on the wheel. This woman was making me crazy.
Then, without warning, the dolphins splashed, as if in a panic, and vanished beneath the waves.
“Did you see that?” I said.
“They have seen a shark.”
“How do you know?”
“Who would not know? These waters, they are full of sharks. Reefs, blues, blacktips, even the whites.”
“Great whites?”
“Yes.” Niki turned toward me and made a ridiculously toothy, biting gesture, clicking her teeth and wrinkling her nose, cute and bratty as she could be.
“You’d make a good one all right,” I agreed.
“I would,” she said, continuing the shark look, “and I would find you and chomp you right in half.”
“That’d be a mistake. You’d have to put up with two of me instead of one.”
Her face went flat considering the impossibility of the problem. She turned back to where the dolphins were. “I remember once when I was a little girl, I …” She stopped suddenly, studying the water.
When I noticed her frown, I scanned the surface half expecting to see the dorsal fin of a great white. The thought of a twenty-foot man-eater swimming beneath the boat induced an entirely new kind of internal shudder and sparked a whole new definition of the creeps.
“This is a very strange thing,” Niki said. “The water … it … it ripples.”
I looked across the rough surface, and I was about to say something when I felt the sea begin to rise, as if a huge arm had passed beneath the boat. The roughness disappeared, as Penelope lifted and then fell with the otherwise untroubled water.
“That was no shark,” I said, my heart suddenly racing in my chest. Whale maybe? Submarine? A friend had described a similar rising and falling of the sea when a sub passed beneath his Hobie Cat off the San Diego coast.
In the next instant, Threader was on the deck like a captain ready to order his crew to battle stations. Father Jon stumbled out behind him, eyes wide, clueless.
“What the devil was that, Adams?” Threader scanned sea and sky for the enemy.
“Beats the hell out of me. Dolphins took off. Water started rippling in a weird kind of way. The whole sea swelled like a big—” “My god!” Niki shrieked, pointing to something behind the boat. We all turned to see the back of a giant wave cresting into a thundering wall that continued to move out to sea. “Tsunami,” Niki said in a borderline whisper. “We have witnessed the birth of a tsunami!”
J Douglas Bottorff 