The chill didn’t reach the base of my spine before I felt a subsonic rumble in my gut. I turned just as Kyropos belched a thick cloud of ash. Niki’s hands shot over her mouth, an involuntary gasp spilling through her fingers. Awestruck, the four of us watched the huge cloud lumber off and disperse over the sea.
“Tremor must have set off that wave,” Threader said, stepping in to take over the wheel. “They don’t usually surface like that until they hit a shoreline. No telling what the hell’s gonna happen next.”
“Maybe we ought to get out of here,” I suggested, suddenly feeling vulnerable as a bug bobbing on a cork next to a powder keg with a lit fuse.
“Turn back?” Niki said, her eyes wide with disbelief. “You see a little puff of smoke and you want to turn back?”
“Yeah.” Thinking of that hole blasted out of the heart of Santorini made macho pride pretty much a moot issue.
“Hell,” Threader said, “we couldn’t outrun a tsunami anyway. If we’d been a few miles back, who knows what would’ve happened. There’s a cove this side of the Rock. Our best bet is to anchor there and then wait and see what’s gonna happen. Might give us some protection from a blast.” He started barking orders. “Niki, Father Jon, we’re dropping sails, powering up. Adams, there’s shallow rocks that can give us another kind of grief. Git up to the bow and watch. You see anything, shout it out.” He grinned. “Doing something constructive might just help firm up that jellified spine of yours.”
“Jellified spine my ass,” I muttered all the way to the bow. I was mad enough to call for a potluck picnic on the rim of Kyropos; then we’d see who had the jellified spine.
Threader cut the engine and dropped anchor fifty yards from the Rock. We spent the next several hours milling around on the boat, waiting for Kyropos to do something.
“Guess it was just a damn hiccup,” Threader announced finally. “Why don’t you kids grab your sand shovels and go git your playing over with. Maybe we’ll get lucky and get outta here before that damn thing wakes up again.”
“You are not coming with us?” Niki asked.
“Nope. Digging and hundred-degree heat don’t mix with me. Come to think of it, I may even have myself a swim.”
“Don’t let the sharks get you,” I said. “At least not until we get back.”
“Don’t worry about me, Adams.” He raised the bench seat next to the cockpit and lifted out a lever-action rifle. “Me and Mr. Winchester here, we’d make a pretty unwelcome reception party for a damn shark. Guess that Frenchman wasn’t fond of ’em either.”
Niki and Father Jon dispersed to their cabins. Threader and I dug out a Zodiac stowed in the forward hull. We inflated the boat with Penelope’s compressor, mounted the motor, and slipped it into the water.
Father Jon emerged from below deck wearing a straw hat and carrying a bottle of drinking water in one hand and a canvas bag filled with tools in the other. Niki came up wearing her khaki getup and a baseball hat; a sheathed, foot-long hunting knife was strapped around her waist, and she was toting her own water and bag of hand tools.
“What do you plan on doing with that thing?” I said, nodding to the knife.
“Dig. What do you think?”
I didn’t even notice that I was rubbing my neck until I heard Threader chuckling. I glanced at Threader and quickly dropped my hand. “Essential gear for an archaeologist, I guess.”
“You carry a pen and notebook, do you not?” Niki nodded toward my backpack. “I cannot dig with a pen, so I carry a knife, a tool of my trade. Do you find that strange?”
“No, guess I don’t.”
Once loaded, Niki took the throttle of the Zodiac and motored in toward the shore. “In your vision,” she said to me, “you say you could see Kyropos?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t rocky like this. It was sand. A beach.”
“Then we will circle the Rock and find your beach.”
She opened up the throttle. Laughing wildly, she sent the overpowered Zodiac slapping across the waves. I held on to my hat and pretended to enjoy the ride, robbing her, I hoped, of the perverted rush she seemed to derive from her control of the throttle.
Father Jon had no need to prove anything. The wind pushed the flimsy brim of his straw hat straight to the sky. He had it cinched so tight that it made his ears stick out. His face was frozen into a wince, his eyes a pair of slits, his full set of teeth clenched hard enough to crack them all. I felt as if I were on a suicide mission with a kamikaze and a smiling chimp.
The Rock’s jagged shoreline quickly subsided into sand. Kyropos eased back into view, a dozing giant not to be disturbed.
Then, the hair on the back of my neck went up. Suddenly I was staring at a familiar stretch of beach. I raised my hand. Niki eased off the throttle and drove the Zodiac into the sand.
I walked slowly toward a huge rock outcropping. “There’s a cave. Right there.” I pointed to the sheer face of rock.
Niki came beside me and studied the spot. “There is no cave. Not here.”
Ignoring her, I fell to my knees and began digging with bare hands.
“Stuart, think!” Niki’s voice rose in an angry whine. “If Seagull found the scroll in a cave, it would not be filled with sand. How would he find a scroll in such a cave?”
“Perhaps an earthquake pushed a wave over the beach,” Father Jon suggested. Nobody acknowledged him. “Just a thought,” he quickly added.
“Look at this man!” Niki screeched. “He is possessed with a demon!” She threw up her arms and spun toward the Zodiac. “I will get this stubborn madman a shovel before he breaks every one of his fingers. I will get us all a shovel so we can join in his madness.” She kicked through the sand muttering things in Greek.
Over the next several days Niki, Father Jon, and I managed to excavate the entire cave to the level of its original floor. I was disappointed that all we had to show for our effort were four deteriorated planks, a handful of twine fragments, and a small clay lantern. The lantern, Niki surmised, was first, maybe second century, Jewish in origin. The planks had probably been bound together by the twine to form a crude but functional table. To an archaeologist, the items were tantalizing artifacts that fired the imagination. For a novelist looking for a story, they were like wet tinder on a cold night.
With Kyropos belching ash and sending a spate of tremors through the island, we all decided that we’d pushed our luck far enough. It was time to go back to Sarnafi.
The work had been frantic and exhausting, and on the chance that we might have overlooked something, Niki and I made one last run to the cave. Our inspection confirmed what we already knew: there was no plastered hole in the wall.
We stepped into the shade of an overhang in the cliff. I pulled off my backpack and plopped into the sand. Niki sat beside me.
“What now, Stuart Adams?” Niki said, taking a swallow of water. “Any more visions?”
“Fresh out, I guess. But I have been wondering about something.”
“What have you been wondering?”
“This thing about reincarnation. I know I’ve been here before. But I also know that this is the first time that my physical brain has been here.”
“I am glad that you brought it.” Niki burst into giddy laughter, fatigue obviously taking its toll.
“I’m not trying to be funny,” I said. “You’re a scientist. It’s the brain that supposedly carries the memory, right? I mean, if a guy gets brain damage, he can actually lose his memory.”
Another burst of laughter from Niki. “I am sorry,” she said, fanning her face. “Perhaps I have been too serious lately. Do you …” she smirked. “Do you fear that you have …” More laughter. “I am sorry. Do you fear that you have … brain damage?” She buried her face in her hands, shaking hysterically.
I just shook my head. “Thanks for the sensitivity. I hope you set off an earthquake.”
The comment sent her into a fetal position, laughing so hard she couldn’t get her breath. I passed the time sipping water and looking at the empty sky.
Finally, she straightened, sniffed, and patted her chest. “I am so sorry. Do not take offense. I … I do not … do this often.” She forced something resembling a serious look. “Laughing in the face of someone, even you, it is rude. I apologize.” She took a quick breath; her eyes flashed large and wet. “I am fine now. What was it that you were saying? Something about”—another smirk—“something about … brain damage?”
“Something like that.” I could see it was useless. But in spite of my doubts, I continued. “Okay, I was thinking that maybe there is something to this soul memory thing. How else could I remember this place? It can’t be a memory stored in the brain.”
“Yes. Yes, it would have to be something like—” Niki stopped. Frowning, she leaned forward and plucked a bit of debris from the sand; it had probably turned up while she was laughing. “What is this? Carbonized wood? Yes, I think so.”
“Here I’m trying to carry on a deep conversation about soul memories, and all you care about is a piece of charcoal?”
Ignoring me, Niki rolled to her knees and began sifting through the sand. Soon, she had a large blackened area cleared. “You see? A hearth. Perhaps this is where your friend Marcus cooked his meals. Look”—she held up a charred, slender object—“the bone of a fish.”
Suddenly, another picture flashed into my mind. I was sitting before a dozen men dressed in the same type of garment that Marcus had been wearing. Fifty yards behind the men, there was a red cliff wall full of caves—dwellings. I moved out from under the overhang and took a few steps toward Kyropos. Niki followed.
“What is it?” she asked. “Another vision?”
“Kyropos. That’s where they lived.”
“Who? Who lived on Kyropos?”
“The Children of Light.”
“But I told you, that is not possible. The Children of Light were Essenes. The Essenes, they did not live this far west. Do you not remember? They lived near the Dead—”
“How do you explain the clay lamp? You said it was Jewish. The Essenes were Jewish, weren’t they?”
Niki didn’t answer.
“They were there, Niki,” I said, pointing to Kyropos. “I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but they were there.” I turned and took slow steps toward the volcano until I stood knee-deep in the surf.
Niki called from the water’s edge. “Stuart, what are you doing? I worry for you. I—”
“It’s there,” I said in a sudden flood of insight. In that instant, I knew beyond all doubt that we had to go to Kyropos.
J Douglas Bottorff 