An Accidental Odyssey Page 9

  “Is little village called Makri. Your papa decide he want make a stop here since you out cold, eh?”

  For the first time, I notice we have pulled up beside a small, black motorcycle. It’s an old Yamaha, seat worn and wheels dusty, with a black helmet dangling from one of the handlebars.

  Taki reaches into his pocket and jams a fresh cigarette into the corner of his mouth. He gestures with his lighter toward a rough path carved through scrubby brush and dry, sunbaked earth.

  “Is along there, just a few hundred yards. Watch for the wire fence, eh?”

  “Uh, my dad, you mean? My dad’s down there?”

  He lights the cigarette one-handed and squints at me through the smoke. “The dig. Your papa, he visit the site where the team work. Just that way. You can’t miss. I collect you both later, eh?”

  Before I can even open my mouth to reply, he slides back into the car and throws it into gear. I catch a glimpse of Herman clinging onto his perch for dear life, and then the car disappears in a cloud of dust that leaves me coughing.

  As the roar of Taki’s motor recedes into the distance, I turn to look out over the view. Below me, the sea gently undulates a few hundred yards down, reflecting the clean denim blue of the sky. The silence feels profound, but when I stop to really listen, I realize it’s just human-generated noise that’s vanished. A small breeze whispers through the bracken on the hillside below me, and above, a single puff of cotton cloud floats across the sky. A dozen snow white birds soar past, calling to each other in voices that pierce the air like silver.

  As the fresh breeze tugs at my ponytail and lifts the hem of my sundress, I think I hear voices coming from the direction Taki pointed, so I drag my attention away from the bird ballet above my head and step cautiously onto the path. Almost immediately it takes a precipitous angle downward, and my feet slip a little in the dust as I hurry along. The sound of voices fades away under a sudden gust of wind, and on both sides of the path, the grasses flatten as the air swirls around me, suddenly chill, tasting of salt from the water below. I clutch at my hat, catching it before it can blow off to join the birds in their midair dance.

  Suddenly feeling exposed on this rocky cliffside, I pause and glance up to see the fluffy white cloud isn’t so tiny anymore, and a lot greyer than it had looked when it was bobbing in the distance over the ocean. The next swirl of wind pulls the scarf I had knotted around my ponytail right out of my hair, and it flutters high out of reach, a flash of red and yellow against the suddenly tumultuous grey bank of clouds.

  In the distance, the sky is still blue, but I can see flecks of white breaking up the formerly undulating surface of the now wine-dark sea. Above me, the sun vanishes.

  I spin in a circle, torn by whether to go back up to the top or continue down the cliff path. It’s steep enough to make me feel a little teetery. A flash of lightning makes everything oddly pink for a moment, but it’s the almost instant boom of thunder that makes the decision for me. I scuttle, crablike, down the cliff path, which soon weaves through a low collection of thorny bushes, offering a bit of shelter at least. I have no interest in drawing the attention of the next bolt of that lightning.

  Through all of this, not a drop of rain falls, though the air is thick with an odd, muddy combination of humidity and dust. Around me, a tiny maelstrom is swirling, and as I duck into the somewhat questionable shelter of the bushes, the dust coalesces above me into an intense mass of whirling debris. Dead leaves, pine needles, and salty particles form a tightly spinning vortex less than fifteen feet away.

  I’ve seen footage of dust devils on YouTube, careening crazily through the deserts of Arizona and elsewhere, but I can tell you, nothing like this ever shows up on the streets of New York. It looks less like a funnel cloud and instead has an unnervingly human shape—narrow at the bottom and the top, but also in the middle—like the visual you get when watching an ice skater do a tight spin. The dust it throws off is thick enough to make me close my eyes, and I instinctively crouch down and wedge myself between two of the scrubby bushes lining the path. I can’t even take a full breath without my mouth filling with grit.

  Clutching the brim of my hat in one hand and a thorny branch in the other, I make myself as small as possible and wait for the wind to pluck me from my inadequate hiding place and hurl me off the edge of the cliff.

  chapter eleven

  TUESDAY AFTERNOON

  Horiatiki

  Gia Kostas, would-be correspondent to NOSH, outside Makri, Greece

  This, the most famous of Greek exports, is a salad best constructed from freshly sown summer ripe tomatoes, coarsely chopped cucumber, and tangy red . . .

  Instead?

  Nothing happens.

  By nothing, I mean literally a single moment passes—not even long enough for me to risk taking another breath of the gritty debris passing itself off as air—and the storm is gone.

  I stand up again and take a cautious step away from the shelter of the shrubbery in time to spot the surface of the sea directly below me rise up in a tiny whorl, looking kind of like the reverse of the water going down the sink. For an instant, it holds the same vaguely human form as the dust had taken as it spun beside me, then shatters with a near audible poof! and settles like mist into the waves. The surface of the ocean calms almost immediately, the waves tucking their white caps away and returning to a deceptively gentle swell.

  I’m still staring openmouthed when below me I hear a shout. Farther down the path, my father’s face suddenly appears, shortly followed by the rest of him.

  “Koritsi!” He waves enthusiastically and hurries up the hillside toward me. “I was just coming up to get you. I’m glad you came down—there’s so much to see!”

  My dad’s hair always looks like a curly grey mop, so it’s hard to tell at this distance if he was caught up in the wind or not, but his expression doesn’t look at all worried.

  “Holy mackerel, Pops.” I try to take a step toward him and realize my legs are trembling. “That was the weirdest thing ever.”

  Strangely enough, his grin broadens. “Did you get caught in that little squall? I thought I heard a clap of thunder! The weather—it wants to stay warm now that spring is here. These little storms, they pass through so quickly, yes?”

  As he nears, I see that his face has begun to tan a little, the unhealthy pallor of his skin tone in the hospital already reduced to little more than a bad memory.

  I clutch his arm, grateful to have something—someone—to hold on to, and he folds me into a welcome hug.

  “What is this?” he asks into my ear. “You are shaking, Gianitsa. Are you cold?”

  “No,” I say, my voice muffled by his sleeve.

  I have a sudden memory from when I was small, my head buried in his shoulder, my legs clinging on to him for dear life after I’d fallen off my bike. I push the memory away and step back, suddenly feeling ridiculous.

  “I’m—I’m fine.” My voice sounds stiff even in my own ears. “It was nothing, really. Just a weird little storm, but the wind swirled up so suddenly, I was worried I’d get blown off the cliff.”

  “Tsk, we can’t have that.” My father playfully tucks his arm through mine. “I’ve only just got you here, and you haven’t seen the dig yet. This way, this way!”

  I allow myself to be led back onto the path, which crests a little rise, then begins to wind downward through the low, thorny bushes. As we walk, I can see that if I’d been on this part of the path well below the cliff-top, I would have missed the little maelstrom entirely, which has clearly been my dad’s experience.

  “That’s what I get for cowering up there like a big chicken,” I mutter.

  “What’s that?” he asks but then interrupts me before I can reply. “Watch your step here, eh? This gravel is tricky.”

  I skitter downward, bone-dry pebbles rolling under my feet like marbles. This makes me gra
teful I donned my Converse today instead of the strappy sandals I usually wear with this dress.

  The path takes a sharp hairpin turn and then levels out. My dad releases my arm and strides confidently downward. I hurry along behind him, keeping one eye on the footing of the rocky path. Below us, the water is now once again glinting a benign, impossible blue. There are a couple of long docks, or perhaps just breakwaters, jutting out into the surf, but beyond them, nothing but calm, serene sea all the way to the horizon. In the distance, my little black cloud has wafted toward what might be an island. Above us, the sun shines down, suddenly hot.

  If someone told me there had been a flash storm here, I wouldn’t have believed them either.

  My dad turns and beams at me, interrupting my thoughts. “This Neolithic site has been known for more than a century.” He pauses beside a sagging barbed-wire fence, unlatches a rickety wooden gate, and holds it open so I can step through. “It’s a rich site, and even today, they are finding new evidence of settlement.”

  I jam my hat more firmly on my head and try to put the storm out of my mind. “Okay, but the Neolithic? Isn’t that a little before when Odysseus set off on his adventures?”

  He laughs and latches the gate behind us. “No question. Some of the artifacts they’ve uncovered here have been dated to three thousand years BCE. The fact that people have been here so long—that plays into the stories they tell, yes? Into the histories. But darling,” he says, pausing to reach back and clutch my arm, “what I came to see is not what I found. What I found is so much better! You must come meet him.”

  He winds his way around a large pile of stones, and I hurry along behind only to careen into his back when he stops suddenly.

  In front of us, two men, both stripped to the waist and speckled in dust, grapple with an enormous boulder.

  “Need a hand there, boys?” cries my dad, and before I can react, he hops into the hole beside the men.

  “Pops,” I begin, but as I do, he throws his shoulder against the rock and heaves. There is a moment of doubt, and then the boulder shudders slightly. “That’s got it, boys,” my dad yells encouragingly.

  Sure enough, the huge stone rolls off to one side. As it settles, the men straighten up, cheering. The larger of the two men steps out from behind the boulder with one hand in the air, and my dad gleefully slaps it. The man is so tall, my dad literally has to hop to reach his hand. The skin of his bare chest is the color of an old saddle, deeply tanned. His trousers are covered in dust, and he’s wearing a seventies-style headband over his long grey hair, which is pulled back into a ponytail with a leather lace. He is the most enormous human being I have ever seen.

  “Look at that, koritsi,” my dad crows from below my feet. “Your papa still has some life in him yet!”

  The huge man steps away from the boulder, and I see that what I thought was a headband is, in reality, an eye patch. It’s a wide strip of black leather angled across his face so as to cover the place his left eye should be. Beneath it, a white scar snakes, livid across his brown face, from under the leather all the way down to the corner of his mouth. In one hand, he’s clutching an enormous, rusty iron rod. The rod, which he’s been using as a crowbar, is itself at least a foot longer than my dad is tall—and tops out just under the man’s shoulder.

  “Holy mackerel,” I blurt, “that’s huge! The—that rock, I mean.”

  Either my dad doesn’t notice my near gaffe or chooses to ignore it.

  “Not so huge when you have enough manpower, eh, Paulo?” he says, beaming up at the man. “Let me introduce you to my daughter, Gianna. Gia, Paulo is the man I wanted you to meet. He grew up here, so he knows everything about this region. And he is also the one responsible for feeding everyone on-site.”

  “Feeding and moving boulders, hey?” Paulo replies and flexes a bicep the size of a bowling ball. He swivels his gaze up to me. “Nice to meet you, Gianna.”

  I manage a nod and smile.

  “Nothing moved until I got here,” counters my dad, his grin broadening.

  “Which is a hundred percent what you are not supposed to be doing,” I remind him. “The doctor said you’re not to exert . . .”

  At this moment, the second man strides out from behind the boulder.

  “Nonsense,” my dad interrupts, cutting me off. “Just lending a hand to my young friend here. Gia, this is my colleague, Dr. Rajnish Malik. Rajnish? My daughter, Gia.”

  Anything I was about to say dries up on my tongue.

  It’s Hot Nightclub Guy.

  Frozen to the spot, I catch a glimpse of a brown, muscled chest before he bends to collect a very dusty t-shirt from where it’s been lying on the ground. Yanking it over his head, the fabric falls over his long, chiseled torso, catching a little on the small of his back. As he reaches around to free it, I stare helplessly down at his khakis, which are buckled so low on his hips that I get a clear look at the dusky yet slightly sun-reddened skin above the green-and-pink floral waistband of his boxers.

  I’ve seen that skin before. I’ve touched it.

  I’ve tasted it.

  “Nice to meet you,” he says, squinting up into the sunshine and smiling.

  On his neck, just below the line of his jaw, is a small, almost perfectly round bruise.

  At the sight of that bruise, a wave of sensation jolts me with an intensity that is equal parts desire and mortification. In an instant, I’m swept back to the moment when it happened. To the moment when I bit his neck to keep from screaming. To the moment when I may have screamed—just a little, anyway. And how we both laughed afterward, the way two young, single people who have just really enjoyed something spontaneous and unexpected—and perfect—together laugh.

  Single people.

  The skin of my face and neck is suddenly on fire. Panic lurches through me like a punch to the stomach. I consider turning to flee, but there is nowhere to run. Taki has driven away, so I can’t even go hide in the car.

  Hysteria bubbles in my throat, and I only just manage to cover it with a cough. “Nice to meet you too,” I choke out, at last.

  “Very dry out here.” A look of concern crosses his face at the sound of my croaky voice. He points a trowel across the dusty ground toward a portable table piled with gear. “Help yourself to some of our water. There are a few bottles in the cooler, just over there.”

  “I’m okay. I mean—that is—I’ve got some already.” I hold up the bottle Taki gave me.

  “Excellent.” His smile gleams up at me for a moment until my dad suddenly grips him by the arm.

  “Look at this layer, Rajnish!” My dad’s voice is quivering with excitement. As he squats in the trench, I can hear his knees crackle from where I’m standing.

  After shooting me a last apologetic grin, Hot Nightclub Guy drops to one knee beside my dad.

  With everyone safely peering at whatever they’ve found in the wall of the trench, I edge slowly away and struggle to get a grip on myself. Too much is happening at once, and I don’t know where to start. Making sense of the weird little windstorm earlier or the fact that my dad is working with a one-eyed giant pales in comparison with this current problem.

  Even under the cover of my enormous hat, the afternoon sun beating down on this bare section of the hillside is making it hard for me to think clearly. The only shelter on the site is a battered blue tarp that has been strung between the branches of a pair of gnarled bushes. Under its dust-crusted surface rests a collection of assorted excavation gear—shovels and sieves and a single old work boot. I make a beeline away from the animated discussion still going on in the trench, position myself in the tiny square of shade thrown down by the tarp, and try to collect my thoughts.

  Front and center, of course, is Hot Nightclub Guy. Rajnish Malik. Now no longer a delicious nameless memory, but a colleague of my father.

  Also? Possibly the best kisser I’ve ever me
t.

  To push this thought away, I take a glug from the tepid water in my bottle, and then splash the last of it on my wrists for good measure. But instead of clarity, this only brings mud—dampening the dust on my hands and arms just enough to glue it in a thick, grey layer to my skin. Lovely.

  Giving up, I jam the bottle into my bag and try to look for positives.

  Could it be possible he hasn’t recognized me? It could be. I mean, I’m wearing my big hat. And my sunglasses. Our meeting just now was little more than a brief encounter—a polite hello between two people who, if I have anything to say about it, will never meet again.

  I risk a quick glance over at where the three men are still on their knees, talking in the trench. Just Paulo is fully visible, with his head and shoulders above the ground. The hot archeologist has his back to me, and I can only see my dad from the nose up. Behind the tarp, the dusty hillside rises above us. Nothing is stopping me from bolting back up the cliff path and waiting for Taki’s return on the hilltop, right?

  Just as I decide to make a run for it, Paulo straightens up. “Now your daughter is here, Aristotle, I go see to the food, eh?”

  My dad creaks back to his feet and glances up at me. “Paulo has a treat in store for us, koritsi—just you wait!”

  So much for my escape plan.

  As Paulo raises one leg to step out of the trench as easily as I would step over—I don’t know, a Manhattan curb?—my dad puts his hand on the shoulder of the man beside him.

  “Dr. Malik here specializes in repatriation of archeological finds, koritsi. His expertise to my project is invaluable.”

  The hot archeologist gives a little shrug. “It’s always exciting to find something new, but there’s nothing like the satisfaction of returning lost objects to their original owners.”

  My dad nods sagely. “And you never know what you’ll find either. Not just pottery.”

  Rajnish Malik grins, his teeth a flash of white in the dusty landscape. “It’s amazing what turns up, really. I’ve found tools, jewelry, shoes . . .” His voice trailing off on this final word, he looks straight up at me and lifts his eyebrows, just once.