Lily and the Lost Boy (5 page)

FOUR

A faint, low wind—it seemed to strike her legs just below her knees—was the only sound Lily heard until her feet dislodged some pebbles near Dionysus' shrine. The wind dropped then, and the silence heaved up. Soon she turned east and in a few minutes had left the houses behind her. The dark was like a cat's thick fur pressing against her face.

As long as there had been houses, she held back the fear that had first come to her the time she and Paul and their parents had walked through a grove of the oldest olive trees in Limena.

Mr. Kalligas had taken them there to show them the remains of a Hellenistic cemetery. Gleaming white edges of marble tombs showed through the earth among clumps of lavender where bees hummed and fed. She and Paul had run ahead, bored with the way Mr. Kalligas would halt and, his hand pointing to a tomb, speak of a dozen things—his life in the British navy, the odd ways of tourists, his son and daughter far away, working at jobs in Germany.

Paul had suddenly shouted something—it must have been her name, he was looking at her so intently, gesturing at a huge olive tree that was so twisted it seemed it would uncoil like an overtightened spring at any moment. As Lily stared at it, she saw emerge from its hollow trunk two enormous vipers writhing in the air.

Her ankles went numb, then her legs.

“I can't move,” she muttered to Paul. He gripped her arms and rocked her back and forth as though she were a doll. “They've gone! They dropped back inside the tree. It's okay, Lily. Lily!” After that she never looked at an olive tree without remembering what she had seen that day.

Her eyes grew accustomed to the dark. Her hearing sharpened. She heard a multitude of sounds: cicadas like small knives being sharpened rapidly on steel, the movements of animals across brush and over stones, vagrant breezes rising among the pines and chestnuts on the hill. The air was pungent with the smells of resin and wild herbs and flowers. As she turned toward the beach at the crossroads, she could see ahead the hunched, shoulder-like arch of Herakles. She wished there were a replica she could always carry with her of the immense eyes, supposed to ward off evil, that were carved on a slab of stone near the Parmenon gate.

The swish of her feet on the sand-dusted road made a comforting sound. But she wouldn't have minded hearing a rooster crow or a donkey filling up the night with its rusty bray. She recited aloud the names of the ancient gates of Limena, startled at first by the sound of her own small voice. “Silenus, Herakles, Dionysus,” she said. “Zeus and Hera, Hermes and the Graces, Parmenon …”

When she stepped onto the beach, she could see better. There were no trees and hills to obscure the starlight. The moon had set long ago. The lapping of water against the shore was peaceful, a dreamy sound. She went swiftly to the shack and began to right tables and chairs. They felt nearly weightless. Why had the boys' actions seemed to her so dreadful at the time?

There had been no real harm done. Yet she had been frightened, as though harm had been what they wanted to do. She thought back to the moment when Jack had said, “We have to do something so she'll know we've been here.”

He hadn't meant leaving a bunch of flowers. He had determined to leave a sign that someone
wanted
the old woman who owned the shack to be distressed, alarmed. Why? She knew Paul hadn't much wanted to do it, yet he'd gone along with Jack.

She stood back. Everything was in its place. She had erased the sign Jack had left. She was no longer afraid; she felt calm at the prospect of the long walk home. The worst was over.

Then she froze. She had heard a sound very like a snore.

It came again, louder. Ghosts can't snore. And gods wouldn't, would they? It was coming from inside the shack. She made herself move to the entrance into the kitchen. Her hand reached out. She felt the rough surface of the black pot. Near it on the earthen floor she saw the shape of the boy—Jack—asleep, his head resting on a bundle of cloth. Lily squatted down and stared at him.

He hadn't gone to Panagia. Why, she wondered, had he pretended he was going? She and Paul had seen him start up the mountain road with his pirate's swagger. But he had waited, hidden behind a tree probably, until they had left the crossroads, then returned. He said he'd taken cheese and bread to the acropolis, but that had been many hours ago. He wouldn't have eaten since then. Had he hoped there would be something to eat in the shack that he and Paul hadn't discovered? Was that the real reason he'd wanted to come in the first place?

From the scarf she'd wrapped around it, Lily took the bread and honey sandwich and placed it beside him, a few inches from his face. His snoring stopped. She moved quickly out of the shack. The snoring began again more softly. She was sure, suddenly, that his father had gone off somewhere on his motorcycle, leaving Jack to take care of himself. He groaned and muttered something.

She didn't like him, but she felt a pity for him that was nearly like anger—an unwilling pity. She stayed another few minutes, troubled by her contrary feelings about him, worried that her parents might wake and look for her. She imagined Jack waking up, finding the sandwich.

She turned and sped back to the road, hoping Rosa wouldn't bark and wake him. There was a different quality to the dark; it was thinner, softer, fading even as she looked up at the hill. Far above, among the terraced olive trees, she could see clearly a flock of sheep, their dark muzzles pointed toward the sea. She whistled softly. The flock twitched like one large animal. The bellwether ram jerked itself up on its stiff legs, its bell tinkling, and began to move higher up on the hill. The rest of the flock followed him.

At the crossroads Lily looked up toward Panagia. The sun would soon touch the peak of Hypsarion, nearly four thousand feet high, and then the light would flow down the slopes like honey, across meadows and forests and waking flocks of sheep until, finally, it would penetrate the dark interior of the shack where Jack lay sleeping.

In the small courtyard of the farmhouse she caught the movement of a chick, like a streak of butter, as it rushed and veered beneath tables and chairs. Chickens, she thought, always assume human beings are out to get them—and with good reason.

The village felt alive as she entered it and passed the first houses. It was as though the soft, slow movement of people waking to another day was visible through the thick walls of their rooms. Though it was still dark in the west and the north, the mountains of Macedonia held arcs of light like crowns on their peaks. Then she saw the boats of the fishing fleet sailing across the calm water, their high prows bathed in the ever-growing light. The fishermen would soon jump to the wharf and shake out nets full of red and silver fish, and Giorgi and the other taverna owners would choose and buy what they would serve that day to their customers.

Mr. Xenophon must already be behind the closed door of his grocery. She couldn't hear him, but the table where he served his friends brandy was in its place beneath the baobob tree. As she went past the shrine of Dionysus, she heard the thin, penetrating sound of a shepherd's pipe.

Lily walked faster. She turned once and saw that the boats were now clustered just inside the harbor. The sea was olive green. It would soon be the hour when she and Paul were sent to the baker for breakfast bread and to Mrs. Christodoulou, who kept chickens, for eggs.

The piping seemed to come from the path on the hill where the nanny goat was tethered. It was hard to tell. The notes fell from everywhere like drops of rain. Lily saw Stella, yawning, emerge from her yard and look up toward the theater. A few yards beyond her stood two elderly sisters dressed in black. Lily knew that both of their husbands had drowned many years before when the fishing boat they were on capsized during a storm. They too were facing the hill. And other neighbors of the Coreys were gathering silently in front of their houses.

Just where the path narrowed, at the last house on the lane, stood a very tall old man. His clothes were tattered. A frayed rope held up his pants. His shoes appeared to be made out of some faded, feltlike cloth. Perched forward on his massive head and thick gray curls was a stained fedora hat, its brim turned down. He gripped his pipe with reddened fingers. His eyes were closed. The notes softened as though he were whispering his song. As Lily reached her gate, Stella turned, smiled, and silently held out her hand. Lily took it in hers, feeling the warm, calloused palm against her own. She had been very much alone the last two hours. She realized now, comforted by Stella's strong clasp, that she had been lonely too.

She glanced through the gate to her house. They must all be sleeping hard inside, their dreams barely stirred by the sound of the pipe. She probably wouldn't have heard the old piper either if she hadn't been out on the path. They were foreigners, after all. You'd have to live a long time in a place to recognize something out of the ordinary when the ordinary itself was so mysterious.

Stella pulled her gently along the path. The old man raised his head. Lily saw that his eyes were not shut but wide open and they were bluish white, the color of the midday sea. He was blind.

At that moment he ceased playing. He put out his hands, seemed to feel the air, nodded to himself, then spread his fingers as though blessing the people now gathered close to him. He began to speak in a deep, husky voice, and as he went on, words following each other as surely and as rapidly as had the notes of his pipe, he sounded to Lily like someone who tells a story learned by heart and recited over and over again. No one interrupted him or said anything at all, but now and then Lily saw someone smile or nod as though in agreement. After he had spoken for five minutes or so, he stopped abruptly and began to move down the path. His feet seemed to know every stone of it as well as his voice had known his story. People made way for him, staring at him pensively as though thinking over what he had told them. A few minutes later Lily heard the pipe again coming from near the shrine of Dionysus.

He was summoning another group of people, whose houses were near the shrine, Stella told Lily.

“Did you understand what he said?” she asked Lily. The others had returned to their houses, and she and Stella were standing by the gate. “A few words,” Lily said. “That he slept on the ground and the night was black.”

“Yes,” Stella said, “but there was more.” And she told Lily that the piper had had too much retsina wine the night before in Panagia where he lived. When he got home, his old wife had flown into a rage. She'd pummeled him and kicked him and finally driven him out into the black night and barred the door against him. He had had to sleep on the ground. His bones would ache for a week. He had come down the mountain to tell everyone what a misery his wife was. Young men contemplating marriage, he had warned, must consider a young woman's character. Was she merciful? Was she stronger than he was? Would she forgive him when he was old and weak?

“She has to forgive him often,” Stella said, grinning. “We have all heard his story before. By the time he has told it to all of Limena and walked back to Panagia, she will have a pot of soup waiting for him.”

“Doesn't she mind his telling everyone about her?”

“We all like to hear the story,” Stella said. “He always makes it different. No, she doesn't mind. She knows that after each journey down the mountain, he will be sober for a good long time.”

Lily pulled down the cord and released the latch on the gate. The front door was ajar. She tiptoed into the hall and went to Paul's doorway. He was entirely covered by his blanket. By the small alarm clock on the floor next to his bed, she saw it was nearly six o'clock. She thought of all that had happened to her since she had left the kitchen in the dark of night. If you could stay awake twenty-four hours, you wouldn't miss a thing except your dreams.

Her parents' room was dark, the tall wood shutters closing out the light. She always loved to push them open. They swung out like sails, and the day poured in.

Light was what furnished their house, flooded the rooms that were empty except for a chair or two, their beds, and the baskets Mrs. Corey had bought in the village, in which they kept their clothes and bed linen and towels.

Although she was so tired she was stumbling, Lily went into the kitchen to get a piece of bread and cheese. She was even hungrier than sleepy.

Would Jack think a god had left him the bread and honey? What
would
he think? She suspected he would laugh at the old stories. A god hadn't left him food. She had. But then, maybe she had been
led
to leave him food by a god. She had cut herself a slice of bread and was about to take a piece of cheese from underneath the wire net where it was kept, when she heard a scrabbling noise from beneath the table. Nervously, she stooped down to look.

“A tortoise!” she whispered aloud. She picked it up. It tucked in its head and legs, and it just fit her palm.

“Where'd you get that?” Paul whispered from behind her. He was standing in the doorway in his pajamas, yawning. “It's the same color as the honey,” she said. “It was under the table.”

Paul walked over to the sink and turned on the faucet, filling his hand with water and gulping it down.

“It's just a snake with a shell instead of scales,” he said.

“It is not!” she said. Some mornings started this way with both of them ready to be bad-tempered. She never understood why.

“You don't know everything,” he said. “And you sure don't know about reptiles.”

“I'm petting it,” she said calmly. “I'm going to call it Glaucus. That's the name of a general whose cenotaph is in the agora.” She paused and looked at her brother. “In case you don't know what cenotaph means, it means a tomb without a body.”

“In case you don't know, there's a slug in the sink,” he said.

Lily knew there were never slugs in the sink in the morning.