In a little while they were out far enough so that you could catch a wave and ride it but they were bunched too close together. Danny and Michelle would shoot right over his head.
“We better spread out," he said.
Danny nodded.
Billie squeezed his hand.
“Us too?”
“A little. No farther than this.”
She smiled. “Good. Because I’m really sort of awful at this sort of thing.”
“It’s easy. All you do is float. When the wave comes along you flatten out and try to swim with it, just below the curl, until it catches you. Then you just go with it.”
He looked over his shoulder. Waves back he saw a big one building.
“Go over the next two and wait for the one after.”
On Billie the water was just chest-high. He watched her push off the bottom and bob over the crest.
“Hey Dodgson!”
It was Danny. He'd seen the wave.
“You ready?”
“I’m ready.”
He reached over and squeezed Billie’s hand. He stood at three-quarter profile to the wave and watched it build. It was going to be big and powerful.
The second one passed them.
“Okay. Get ready to hop right into it and start swimming. The same time I do. Swim hard so it doesn’t pass you by.”
She looked doubtful. “You’re sure about this?”.
“You’re going to love it.”
He let go of her hand. He saw Michelle and Danny catch it behind them to the right, pushed off with his feet and swam like hell, then felt the velocity envelop him and shoot him forward so that there was no need to swim anymore, he’d caught it just right-and there was a moment when the ride was smooth and exhilarating and then another when it was rocky, jarring but just as good and then he was in white water and the wave was churning sand all over him. His knees hit bottom. He twisted over on his ass and let it carry him along the sand awhile and then stood up.
Billie was ten feet behind him to the right. She was grinning.
“Again, please?”
“Can do.”
Michelle and Danny were about three feet apart, five feet up the beach. She lay there like some kind of Playboy foldout, smiling, while Danny crawled over on his hands and knees and flung himself on her. She screamed with laughter. Then Danny stopped abruptly, kneeled, looked up at them and spit sand off his tongue.
Dodgson turned to Billie.
“He’ll be fine,” he said.
Some waves were good and some were very good and they kept at it until Billie and Michelle were exhausted. Then there were just the two of them out there and the big waves kept breaking.
There’s maybe three or four left in me, he thought, then it’s quits. He didn’t want to quit. He felt like a kid again.
But Danny looked tired too.
***
They went out farther so they could catch the waves earlier for a longer, smoother ride. If they stood on tiptoe now their chins just cleared the water. It gave them just enough height to push off strong for the big ones, the ones they wanted to ride and bob up easily over the others. The tow was pulling them down the beach some but not much. He could see Michelle on a beach mat and Billie sketching a few yards over to the right.
Danny was just within shouting distance maybe twenty-five feet away.
Dodgson saw a good one building.
He watched it over his shoulder, prepared to make his move. His muscles tensed and he enjoyed the feeling-it had been a while since he’d had a good workout. He watched it rise.
His timing was excellent now. Practice had sharpened him. He waited for the moment. He felt the sucking sensation at his legs and the push at his shoulders and went with it. The biggest one so far.
Everything was right. His balance perfect, his position perfect- and he was flying along just under the curl, a weightless feeling, flying along in a line straight as a bullet yet it hadn’t even begun to break yet, wouldn’t for a while, he was riding this one high.
And then something sucked him under.
He swallowed water. The wave continued barreling along ahead of him while something pulled him into deep water. It had his ankle. He kicked at it, thinking shark. He felt no impact and no pain either but he’d heard about shark attacks and shock could do that to you-there wasn’t pain till later.
Maybe his foot was gone already.
Panic flared through him.
He kicked again. Struck nothing.
The wave he was riding crashed to shore, a muted thunder. Something still pulled him back, pulled hard and to Dodgson it suddenly felt like a…like a goddamn human hand, adjusting its grip, closing tighter, dragging at him.
Faster.
That was impossible.
He struggled to turn and gulped more water. He was losing strength. He opened his eyes to the stinging swirling sea, turned and looked around.
As suddenly as she’d taken him, she let him go.
He saw a woman, naked, turning just as he opened his eyes so that all he saw was her swimming away from him stroking fast toward the surface-and he gave her no time at all, with his strength going and the water inside him he just started climbing hand over hand, kicking, scissoring, looking up at the bowl of sunlight shining through the waves and feeling the pressure in his ears, straining to pull himself up until finally he broke the surface. He gasped and coughed, trying to take in air and coughing it right back out again, his body slack, drained.
And now the undertow had gotten stronger, much stronger, as though she somehow carried the current out along with her as she swam away and drew him out with her, she was after him still and though he knew that was nonsense the thought, the image of her pulling along tides and currents and riptides was there-he couldn’t shake it.
He turned and saw a wave.
It was not a huge wave. But maybe.
He saw another one behind it. It was bigger but much too far away and he’d forgotten how cold the water was, he’d forgotten about hypothermia and he’d been out here a very long time now without a break and what strength she hadn’t drained from him the water was swiftly taking.
If it wasn’t this wave there wouldn’t be another.
He waited. He wasn’t even sure if he had enough left in him to get the position right or to get to it fast enough. It had to be right. If the position was off the wave would roll over him and he’d be left there. He’d drown there. Go down before the other one even hit him. Don’t panic, he thought. Control.
He watched the wave.
And for a moment wondered where she was.
If she’d even been there at all.
Then the wave was on him.
He flattened, started stroking. His arms felt heavy.
There was a sickening moment of equilibrium when the push of the wave and the pull of the undertow were at nearly equal force, leaving him nowhere and he thought the wave would pass him. His arms pumped desperately. He thought he screamed.
Then it caught him. He was in an even, gentle rolling. But it had to get him a very long way so he kept on swimming as hard as he could, torturing his arms and legs and lungs to do more for him while he fought to get ahead of it once and for all-and then he was ahead, had only to brace and flatten and hold his position yet that took everything he had just to keep going, eyes closed and teeth grinding, until the wave deposited him like a dying swollen thing in the shallow sand a yard or so behind the sandbar.
He saw Danny first.
“What’d you do out there, sport?” he said. “Find a mermaid?”
JORDAN THAYER CHASE
His instincts all told him to leave the island, to run.
He’d run last night.
That was twice in as many days. Once from the man and once from the woman. If she was a woman.
The man was sick, crazy, probably homicidal-and somehow he was connected to her. He was sure of that. But he was nothing next to the woman.
The woman was pur
e fear.
Something had slithered out of the shadows last night that had made him think of demons. Lost, not knowing where he was, he’d run through the streets unerringly like some blind terrified mole instinctively finding his burrow.
He remembered his vision at the tholos tomb in Mykene.
He wondered which had scared him more.
Delos. That was where he’d resolve this.
It was frustrating. There was an urge to get this over with, to see. But now he had another day on his hands.
The Delos run was canceled because of high winds and rough seas. He’d attempted to bribe his way over but none of the fishermen were buying. Their boats were their livelihood. No rich American tourist was going to scuttle one. You couldn’t blame them.
But what was he supposed to do now? Sit here and drink all day? It was tempting but it was a bad idea.
He wasn’t much for the beach.
***
At breakfast he read the paper, in which the only item even vaguely of interest was that a pimp had been murdered at Stonehenge, of all places-the French were still holding their terrorist amid much debate. He talked with the waiter. The waiter said he was in luck because there was a festival at San Stefanos today, just a short ride out of town. A cab could take him there. It sounded as good to Chase as anything else.
The cabbie quoted him a price that was much too high but Chase thought what the hell.
They drove through the back part of town into the hills. The land was greener here and more rugged. He saw patches of farmland, vineyards, the cruel cutback of the vines set in circles on the cleared earth like so many crowns of thorns, barely sprouting. There were a few whitewashed houses. Then long stretches of bare rock open to erosion and the winds.
“Is just up here,” said the cabbie. “You like it, I promise.”
They turned up a narrow dirt road. He could see the church in the distance. It was set on a hill with a long expanse of green grass and shade trees between it and a ruin of some sort. Along the grass people were dancing in small groups of seven or eight, bouzouki music playing on their tape decks. They sat under trees eating bread and cheese and salad and drinking wine. There were donkeys tethered near the ruin and a single horse.
He got out of the cab.
“You will return from here no problem. Someone will give you a ride. Maybe on a donkey, no?”
Chase hoped not.
“What’s the church?”
“Is the Church of the Virgin Mary Evagedistria. Two churches, see? Old one.” He pointed to the ruin. “And new one. Is Easter Week. Is good festival. You have a very good time.”
“Thanks.”
***
Chase tasted dust as he drove away.
Over on the grass a group of teenagers danced around the base of a tree. An old man sat sipping a bottle of wine. The man saw Chase approach and offered him the bottle. It would be rude of him to decline.
Chase smiled and took a sip and thanked him. He made his way over to the new church, crossed himself and stepped inside.
There was nothing impressive here. The usual icons. The heavy smell of incense. It was constructed out of ugly new red brick. He dropped a coin into the poor box and left, walked back across the grass to the old church past where the younger children played and past the donkeys and went inside.
This was better.
What surprised him was that it was still in use.
It had obviously been burned, you could tell by the buckled blackened walls and makeshift roof, just planks of wood badly fitted together. Compared to the new church it was tiny, about twenty square feet. But there was still a worn waterstained red carpet leading to the altar and a few small icons to the Virgin, looking lonely and poor against the faded streaked white walls.
Maybe the old folks prefer it, thought Chase. I do.
He walked around back. There was a cemetery there. Man-size boxes of cement, mortar and wood lying above ground, each with a little window displaying preferred wines, tobaccos and photos of the deceased.
In the Greek Church they buried the dead for only three years, then dug them up and put them in boxes. Tasos had told him once that it was simply a matter of space, that Greece was small and there was just no room to bury the dead forever. You could stack boxes. But Chase thought it probably had something to do with resurrection too, or at least it had in the beginning.
By the side of the building, close to where the children were playing, a repository had crumbled open.
He saw skulls and thighbones, bleached and old and brittle-looking.
It shocked him slightly-that no one had bothered to seal it up again. And that the children were allowed to play there.
Death. It was always very visible in Greece.
He remembered when Tasos’ mother died. The keening wailing women, the slumped silence from the men. For a week the men went unshaven and everywhere they walked they walked slowly as though bearing some heavy weight, as though inconsolable and perhaps they were. But it was also very public. It honored the dead by identifying their mourners. The women wept. The men were stony.
A week later the men shaved again and went about their business and the woman stopped wailing in the night. The ritual was over. Yet even then the women would dress all in black and the men wore their arm bands-you could still tell who the mourners were-and it lasted forty days at least, Tasos said. And if a woman had lost a child or a husband she might wear black forever.
Visible and public. Like the windows in the coffins.
He walked back to the trees. A pretty teenage girl offered him a glass of wine and a slice of feta. He took the feta and politely refused the wine.
He had a sudden image of Elaine dressed all in black, veiled, holding a bouquet of flowers like a bride.
He shook it off.
It was getting warmer now and the wind seemed to be dying down. Tomorrow, maybe, he’d get to Delos. He hoped so. Whatever this was, he needed it to be over with. He was much too interested lately in death and coffins.
He walked out to the road. He stood there staring at the drifting clouds.
In a little while a Jeep came by and they motioned him in back. He climbed in.
There were two empty cases of wine back there with him and as they drove to town he gazed abstractedly at the symbols etched in the wood without realizing at first exactly what he was seeing, only listening to the rattle of the bottles and the roar of the Jeep’s old engine.
A circle, a wolf’s head, and a grinning skull.
The symbols were ancient but here was clear indication that they were still in use. It didn’t surprise him. The symbols of the threefold goddess-Selene/Artemis/Hecate.
The moon, the hunt, and the dead.
Chase smiled.
The wine, of course, was from Delos.
It was her island.
AT NOON
…Daphne Mavrodopolous, two months pregnant, saw the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen pass their taverna holding a naked infant child draped only in the hem of her long white dress.
She did not know whether to be enchanted or concerned-such a very young child should not be exposed to the noonday sun. Yet the woman seemed to know what she was doing. She looked so purposeful, so controlled and aristocratic.
She called inside to Kostas. She wanted him to see this. Kostas had been gloomy lately. She knew he worried about money and the baby. Perhaps it would help him to see this lovely new mother and her child.
He didn’t answer right away so she ran inside to get him. She found him sitting by the bar idly polishing a glass and told him to hurry. Then she dashed outside again.
Just in time to see the woman disappear into the Vassiliades’ wall like smoke through a window screen.
She fainted. Kostas, behind her, was barely able to catch her. He brought her inside, into the shade.
.
AT TWO O’CLOCK
…Orville Dunworth sat on the deck of the Balthazar drinking a vodka martini. Bett
y had been out shopping all day-she still was-and the deck was cluttered with souvenirs, most of them wrapped in brown paper. Hats, tee-shirts, canvas and wicker bags, jewelry. She had a list and ticked off the names with a pencil. Their daughter, her husband, their four grandchildren and six or seven friends. If they stayed much longer she’d break him.
But the goddamn weather wasn’t clearing.
They’d had one calm day since docking when they could have gone on to another island but they’d only just arrived then and who’d have thought the seas would get so high again so quickly? So they’d stayed. Spending money.
Mykonos wasn’t cheap. Not with Betty around.
One good thing. There were an awful lot of amazing-looking women.
Like that one now, holding the baby.
Awfully small baby. The woman was a knockout, though, an absolute stunner. You could bet you wouldn’t catch her out shopping for sailor caps and tee-shirts with windmills on them. Not on your life.
One of these days he’d like to sail over to Paradise or Super Paradise, one of those nude beaches. He wondered what Betty would say about that.
He was surprised when the woman stopped in front of the Balthazar and looked her over, inspected her, like she knew a little something about boats. Surprised and delighted. God! if he were only ten years younger! No, if he were alone and without Betty. You never knew about younger women these days. He knew older scruffier types than him who’d managed it. He might have a shot. The boat impressed her. that was certain.
Well, he’d tip his hat to her anyway. Might as well be friendly.
She looked at him and smiled. And it was funny but the baby seemed to smile too-at exactly the same time she did.
Cute.
He grinned at them. She nodded and moved away.
It was only then that he realized what was really strange. That baby. That tiny little baby.
That baby had a lot more teeth than he did.
AND AT FOUR O’CLOCK…