The Witch in the Mountain Pass: Chapter 3
Novel
They say that two black doves flew from Thebes. One went to Libya and the other to Dodona. This latter settled on an oak and spoke with a human voice, saying it was necessary that a prophetic seat be established in that place. The people believed it was the gods who spoke, so they made an oracle accordingly. The priestesses of Dodona told me this and the people of the region, who were busy near the temple, gave accounts agreeing with theirs.
(Herodotus, The Histories II.55)
Chapter 3: Fate and Futurity
It was approaching dawn. The witch in the mountain pass extended her arms and put both hands on the oak. Then she stretched and rotated her shoulders to work out the kinks. Her shoulders cracked and moved in physically impossible ways. The old woman lowered her neck and looked at the clay amphora leaning against the tree. The base of the amphora rested between two bumpy roots.
The bronze fragments dangling overhead tinkled in the morning air and the doves were cooing.
For days now the citizens of Dagitsidos had been debating whether it was the bronze chimes or the doves that were the source of the witch’s power. But the answer was complicated. There was a subtle difference between the two. The chimes revealed the will of the gods. But since the gods were created in man’s image, their wills were vague, fickle, contradictory, and subject to change. The doves, however, revealed the will of the Cosmos, which was governed by Fate: it was fixed, unwavering, immutable. The chimes disclosed what might be; the doves disclosed what would be, what had been, and what was in the process of being or becoming. Verbal tenses are irrelevant in matters numinous and divine. Thus, the doves saw what would happen in “the past” as vividly as they saw what had happened in “the future.”
Both forms of divination were useful, but it was only the voices of the doves that the witch heard with some fear and trepidation, since she was powerless to alter or affect anything the birds might tell her. The witch’s understanding of these highly abstruse and counterintuitive concepts was instinctive. After all, she was the Oracle of Dodona and it was her job to know such things. But she hadn’t the foggiest idea how to explain them clearly to others. “If I don’t know how it works,” she was fond of saying, “then I can’t explain it workings.” She blamed her inability to teach the art of prophecy on her eccentric upbringing and lack of formal education. A she-wolf had suckled her, and she had been reared by the spirits of the forest.
As the witch puttered around the enclosure that morning, she kept mumbling “yes, yes” to whatever the bronze fragments were prattling on about: something to do with the town elders planning to help her build the taverna in order to put Dagitsidos on the map. But she was only half listening to the gods, because she was straining her ears to hear what the black dove, Queen Hecate (sovereign of the birds), was saying to her wiley Minister, Orestes the Unctuous. The two birds were perched on the uppermost ledge of the enclosure.
ORESTES: Does the oracle know why she was sent to this place, my Queen? HECATE: The gods have given her an idea as to why she is here. She knows, for instance, that there is a wrong that must be set right, and that it will take her time to do this—unless time takes her first. ORESTES: Do you think she would have come to Dagitsidos had she known what lay in store for her? HECATE: Yes. She is brave and righteous.
The witch grunted in agreement and said “righteous” with a grin as she cracked her knuckles.
ORESTES: But what will happen to the young couple she has befriended, Manolios the carpenter and his wife Dorcas? HECATE: I’m afraid I can’t tell you that at the moment. She is listening to us. She is brave and righteous; but she is also a pain in the ass.
“Oh!” the witch said irritably and started humming a tune, as if she hadn’t been eavesdropping at all.
She walked to the pergola in the middle of the enclosure and stood with her hands on her hips, admiring it. Under the pergola was a long table with a bench on either side of it. Two days ago Manolios and Dorcas had carried it up the trail with the help of two men, and brought it into the enclosure for her to use. It had belonged to Papa Nikolaos. He had offered it to Dorcas as a wedding gift.
“I no longer need that old table and its benches,” the priest said. “I don’t host guests. I eat my meals at my writing desk. Perhaps you could use it in your new home.”
“Thank you, but Manolios is building me new furniture. My table won’t be warped and knotty like this one is.”
The priest had seemed to anticipate this response and said dismissively, “Well then, if you don’t need it, give it to the hag in the mountain. She’s planning to build a taverna, I hear.”
“That’s an excellent idea! It’ll be perfect!”
“But whatever you do,” he whispered menacingly, “do not tell her that it was a gift from me. I offered it to you, but you chose to give it to her.”
“I would never tell the witch that Papa Nikolaos of Dagitsidos had given her a gift!” Dorcas told the priest. “God forbid!” she added and crossed herself. Then she recounted the whole story to the witch and said, “It was like he didn’t want you to know that it had come from him!”
The morning shadows were thinning. The witch pricked up her ears. She heard the sound of a vehicle entering the canyon. The witch knew that this was Uncle Spiro’s truck because the bronze fragments had told her this.
Hitched to the truck was a wagon filled with burnt bricks, lumber, and tools. All of the young lads and able-bodied men of Dagitsidos who were not otherwise engaged that morning were on their way to help build the taverna.
Several of the menfolk walked in front of the truck to clear obstructions and keep a lookout for holes in the ground that might crack one of the axles or cause a tire to pop.
Uncle Costa was in the passenger seat. He had folded down the hinged window so he could give a thumbs up or wave whenever the vanguard warned of a hazard ahead. Uncle Costa would then share this intelligence with Uncle Spiro who kept shouting “I know! I’m not blind!”
The truck and the wagon lurched whenever Uncle Spiro downshifted. The truck stalled twice during the ascent.
The carpenter Loukos and his son, Manolios, sat in the wagon to keep the bricks from sliding around and crushing the tools. Loukos had compartmentalized the wagon with wooden slats, and this helped somewhat. The mechanic from Glyki had been summoned the previous day. He planned to return either on the morrow or the day after, once the materials had been conveyed into the mountain pass and Uncle Spiro’s truck was safely returned to its covered parking place on the plantation.
The previous Sunday, as the congregation filed out of the Church of the Dormition of the Mother of God, Uncle Spiro had waylaid Papa Nikolaos.
“I’m going to need reimbursement,” he said, “for petrol and the mechanic.”
Papa Nikolaos looked at him uncomprehendingly.
“For the witch project you brought up a couple of weeks ago.”
The priest sighed and drew a key from the folds of his cassock. He unlocked the alms box, which he generally only opened once every three months. The money was not used for charity but for candles and incense. The priest scooped out two handfuls of coins.
“Here,” he said. “This should suffice.”
Uncle Spiro opened his purse to accept the payment. He was the wealthiest man in Dagitsidos and a miser. He had never married because the expense of having a wife and children would have outweighed any benefit he might have accrued from that. “When I’m dead,” he liked to say, “my nephews in Parga will get it all. They can fight over it among themselves. It won’t be my concern then, will it?” He spent his nights sitting alone at his table, drunk on ouzo, weighing his wealth in the palms of his hands. And now he was able reckon the amount of money the priest had given him with some accuracy based on the color of the coins and heft in his purse.
Uncle Spiro was feeling magnanimous. He decided to offer Papa Nikolaos a 25 percent discount. “Thank you for this,” he said, “but I’ll need a few more drachmae. You understand, don’t you? Otherwise I’ll be losing money for something that was never even my idea.”
Papa Nikolaos reached into the alms box and removed two drachmae, which he tossed disdainfully into the purse. Uncle Spiro harrumphed. The interview ended with the miser remarking in a stage whisper as the door shut in his face that men of the cloth were cheap.
As the truck entered the enclosure, Uncle Spiro steered it toward the pergola. He almost ran into it but avoided catastrophe at the last moment by applying the brakes and doing something so innovative and radical with the clutch that the mechanic, who was standing close by, puckered his lips and winced. The truck died and steam rolled out from under the hood.
“I knew you would come!” the witch exclaimed. Then she windmilled her arms, since she was still performing her morning exercises.
The laborers looked at her suspiciously.
“How did you know we would be here?” Loukos asked, as he and Manolios leapt from the wagon.
“It’s a secret,” the witch said. Then she grinned and squinted.
“Unload the wagon!” Uncle Costa said.
The men set to it. Loukos was an efficient builder and directed the crew to arrange the materials in piles. He divided the laborers into teams. As the wagon was being unloaded, Loukos explained to Uncle Spiro that they would need to make about four or five more trips.
“We’re going to build you a brick stove,” Uncle Costa told the witch.
“I can’t cook,” the witch replied.
“Dorcas can!” Manolios shouted from the other side of the truck.
The mechanic from Glyki told Uncle Spiro that it would be best if he drove the truck for the other trips.
“What if you break it?” Uncle Spiro asked.
“I won’t break it!—Besides, I’m the only one in Epirus who can fix it!”
Uncle Spiro nodded vaguely. Something had caught his attention. He walked under the pergola and stood next to the table.
The mechanic got into the driver’s side of the truck and waited for the laborers to finish emptying the wagon. Three men and two boys climbed back into the wagon. Loukos told Manolios to go with the team and help gather the materials.
It took the mechanic a quarter of an hour merely to turn the truck around in the enclosure so that he could drive it back out.
“Did Loukos make this pergola?!” Uncle Costa shouted at the witch.
“No!” Loukos cried out from the other end of the enclosure. “It was Manolios, my son, who made it.”
“With the help of Dorcas!” Manolios shouted from the wagon as it exited the enclosure.
“Your boy is talented,” Uncle Costa told Loukos.
Uncle Spiro was looking pale. “Constantine!” he shouted, beckoning for Uncle Costa to come to him.
When the swineherd was under the pergola Uncle Spiro said, “Look!” He gestured to the horizontal poles lashed overhead, which were pointy at one end. The vertical poles were also pointy and rose 4 feet over the cope of wood slats.
Loukos was marking lines with a piece of chalk on the ground and told the laborers with him that they’d build the taverna adjacent to the pergola.
“Witch!” Uncle Spiro shouted.
The witch stood outside the pergola, entranced by the lines of chalk. She only partially turned her head when Uncle Spiro called out to her.
“Where did you find these poles that you used for the pergola?” Uncle Spiro asked.
Without removing her eyes from the lines of chalk, she pointed to the cave.
“I got them from there,” she said. “They were buried in the cave with the skeletons of the thirteen dead Suliotes.”
Uncle Spiro and Uncle Costa walked out of the pergola and down the descent that led to the cave. The witch smiled at the chalk markings, closed her eyes, and turned her face in the direction of the two elders. She whispered an ancient incantation.
The men stopped in front of the cave and crossed themselves. None of the other men who had entered the enclosure that morning had paid any regard to the cave or the oak tree that stood next to it. The bronze chimes overhead were silent, as were the doves on the ledges.
Around the mouth of the cave were the bones of the thirteen Suliotes who had been executed in the time of Ali Pasha of Ioannina. The witch had arranged the bones obscenely against the rocks and boulders scattered about. There were guttering candles in rib cages. Two spines were bound together with twine. The spines supported a single pelvic bone that formed a kind of collar for a grinning skull. Wax melted down the eye sockets of one of the skulls, because a candle had been screwed into a hole at the top of the skull where the tip of the pole had exited when the man was impaled. Another skeleton had been arranged to look like it was reclining on a couch, one hand gripping a femur between its legs like a giant phallus.
The witch’s phantom form stepped from her body as her physical self turned back to contemplate the chalk lines. Because the witch experienced time differently from other people, her phantom form drifted toward the elders, whom she was about to take on a journey into the past.
The men stood paralyzed, recalling that horrific day 40 years ago when the screams of Yiayia Elena had echoed through the morning air. They had been young then. Yiayia Elena had been young, too. Elena, the bronze-skinned seductress, the sloe-eyed dancer of Epirus.
The phantom form of the witch approached the men who stood spellbound. She flicked her wrist three times, and her physical body staring at the chalk did the same. She needed to take them back to that morning three days prior to the tragedy, to the Friday when the handsome ferryman came to Dagitsidos.
The ferryman piloted a crude raft with a squat rail running along the perimeter of it. The raft held bales of products from Ioannina and other towns in the north. There was a stone jetty on the outskirts of town near the water’s edge. He had lashed the raft to an iron loop fixed to the jetty and stepped ashore.
No one in Dagitsidos had ever seen a youth of such beauty. He could not have been more than 20 years of age. Though he was from Epirus, his hair was as light as a Macedonian’s. His eyes were piercing gray. He knew the effect that his comeliness had on people, and it seemed to make him bashful. He strode through the middle of town, averting his eyes from the women.
Elena was nine-months pregnant with her beloved daughter, Philippa of the Holy Vision. When Elena saw the boy pass before her, she whispered to the woman at her right, “He must be a saint.”
Uncle Spiro (called Spyridon in those days) was sitting at an ilex-clad café close to the jetty. He jumped from the table. A plump man in a blue-tasseled fez had been sitting with him. The two had been drinking coffee.
Spyridon welcomed the boy, removing a slip of paper from his woolen vest. It was an inventory. He asked the boy to sit in the chair he had just vacated. Then he gestured to the food and drink on the table.
“Here is a cut mango, and here is bread,” Spyridon said. “In that briki is hot coffee. Once you’ve finished your breakfast, we’ll unload the raft. This is my cousin Yiannis from Parga. I have things I want you to take there. Yiannis will help you load the items onto the raft this afternoon. Then he will depart tonight, so that he can meet you in Parga on Tuesday. You will stay as a guest at my plantation until Monday morning when you leave.”
Spyridon tousled the boy’s hair. The cousin, Yiannis, nodded curtly at the boy. Then he scowled at Elena who was looking in their direction. Yiannis’s nostrils were flaring.
When the ferryman sat down, Elena blushed. Her eyes dilated when she saw the smoothness of his haunches, and for a brief cursed moment, a moment that troubled her all of her life, and to which she would attribute the misfortunes that would ensue, Elena wished that she was not pregnant with Philippa of the Holy Vision; not because she wanted to have intercourse with the ferryman—“Far from it!” (or so she said herself), but rather because she believed that, if this lovely boy, whom she had determined was a saint, had caught a glimpse of her supple thighs and unswollen breasts—in other words, if he had seen her as she had been before the pregnancy, then his limpid blue and beatific eyes would have drunk in the exquisiteness of her body. “And then this saint would have seen me as a holy vision,” she thought, “and I would be regarded thereafter among the citizens of Dagitsidos as a thrice blessed and holy personage, rather than a luckless and wanton witch.”
Elena’s husband, Mihalis (whom she loved) stood close by. He saw how his wife’s cheeks had flushed. He saw her eyes expand. And in that instant, he hated the ferryman.
Constantine the swineherd stood behind the café, peering miserably at Elena to whom he had proposed when they were both 15 and infatuated with each other. But her parents had rejected his suit.
Now Constantine’s eyes flashed in fury when he looked upon Mihalis, Elena’s fifth husband, whom she claimed she loved. Constantine and Mihalis had once been close friends, but that was over now.He felt his gorge tighten and his jaws clench as he recalled these things.
The beautiful boy was unaware that his advent had set in motion a chain of events with fatal consequences.
In Dagitsidos, the citizens attended services on the Sabbath as well as on the Lord’s Day. That Saturday, the boy accompanied Spyridon to the Church of the Dormition of the Mother of God. The men and women of the congregation had difficulty paying attention to the sermon of the blind priest, Papa Andreas, because they kept turning their heads and staring at the loveliness of the newcomer.
Papa Nikolaos had only just arrived in Dagitsidos. His black beard was full, and his mien was serious. He’d arrived from Salonica two weeks prior. He had been sent to guide and serve Papa Andreas and to acquaint himself with the citizens of Dagitsidos, whose souls he would be responsible for once Papa Andreas was dead.
After the sermon, the ferryman walked over to Constantine, whose face was ashen, drawn.
“Why are you so sad?” the boy asked.
“What do you mean?” the swineherd asked. “I’m not sad.”
The boy was afraid that he had said something wrong. He was trying to be polite and make conversation. He turned to contemplate a 17th century icon showing Christ calling Peter and Andrew to their mission. The apostles stood in a boat with thin golden halos over their heads.
“I like this icon,” the boy told Constantine, “because Simon Peter and Andrew worked on a boat like me.”
“Are you comparing yourself to a saint?” Mihalis asked and stepped between them.
Elena rolled her eyes. She had overheard.
“No,” the boy said. “I didn’t mean that.”
The congregation was moving toward the exit, but they waited for the boy to go to Papa Andreas.
Spyridon took the boy’s arm and guided him to the blind priest. Papa Nikolaos stood behind the old man’s right shoulder.
“I don’t recognize your voice,” Papa Andreas said.
“I’m not from here,” the ferryman answered. It was strange that he would not say his name, nor did anyone ask.
“You are welcome,” Papa Andreas said. Then he reached up and touched the boy’s cheeks, and ran his fingers along the bridge of his nose. “You are a handsome young fellow. And well mannered. When do you leave?”
“Monday,” the boy said. “I am staying with Mister Spyridon.”
“Stand next to me,” Papa Andreas said. “You are a guest, so we will bid farewell to the congregation together.”
The boy stood to the left of Papa Andreas.
One by one, the congregants approached to say goodbye. The women kissed the tips of their fingers, and brushed the boy’s cheek with them in order to take a blessing from him. Then they touched their foreheads twice. Some of the old men did the same, others simply shook the boy’s hand or patted his shoulder. The children shook the ferryman’s hand or hugged his leg. He smiled down on them.
Elena approached. When she stood before the ferryman, the priest took the boy’s right hand and placed it on her womb. Mihalis hissed when this happened.
“Who is that?” Papa Andreas asked. “Mihalis, is that you?! What is wrong with you? Come here!”
Mihalis went to Papa Andreas, and refused to look at the boy.
“Say goodbye to our guest,” the priest said.
Mihalis shook the boy’s hand. Then he reached up and grabbed the boy’s ear, twisting it with all his strength.
“Ah!” the ferryman cried out and fell to one knee.
Elena screamed.
Mihalis sprang back and held his hands in the air, as if to show that he hadn’t done what everyone had just seen him do.
Papa Andreas could tell by the scuffling that Mihalis had attacked the boy. He did not address Mihalis directly, but raised his voice thunderously and said: “Ye shall not hurt a stranger, nor afflict him! For ye were strangers in the land of Egypt!”
The church fell silent. The congregants who were still inside the church crossed themselves.
The youth rose. Papa Andreas spoke again, but quietly: “Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
The ferryman extended his hand to Mihalis: “Brother?” he asked.
Mihalis’s face went red. Tears sprang to his eyes. He went to the boy and embraced him, sobbing on the boy’s shoulder. Spyridon laughed. Constantine stepped behind Elena.
“Nikolaos!” Papa Andreas spoke to the young priest. “You will prepare a place for our guest. He will stay with us tonight and tomorrow.”
Spyridon said, “But he’s staying with me and he’s taking items for me to Parga on Monday.”
“Are the items loaded onto the boat?”
“Yes, of course! We can’t work today or tomorrow, so we loaded up the raft yesterday afternoon.”
“Very good… Then you don’t need to see the boy off.”
“Wait,” Spyridon said uneasily, “I have other things at the plantation that I want him to pick up and take with him on Monday.”
“No. That’s not what I have planned for you. I have a duty for you, Elena, and Mihalis… The three of you will spend this Sabbath night in the mountain pass. You will pray to God and seek penance for the sins you have all committed of late.”
“The mountain pass is haunted!” Elena said.
Spyridon interjected, “Why do I have to do this?! I didn’t attack the boy!”
“You didn’t attack the boy,” the priest said, “but last week in the town square you cursed Mihalis in the Lord’s name because he said you weren’t a descendant of Odysseus Androutsos.”
“He’s not!” Mihalis said. “I’m from the clan of Androutsos and know for a fact that he’s not!”
“God damn you!” Spyridon shouted.
“You are in the house of God!” Papa Andreas roared. Papa Nikolaos crossed himself and whispered a prayer.
Constantine glanced at Spyridon and Mihalis. They ignored him. He touched Elena’s shoulder. She shook off his hand and went to Mihalis whom she loved. Then she asked the priest: “Why am I being punished?”
“Because,” Papa Andreas said, “you have sinned in your heart and I have seen it.”
A tear rolled down Elena’s cheek because she knew he had spoken true.
That night, Spyridon stood at the mouth of the pass with his yataghan clipped to his baldric, a silver-handled pistol at his belt. He had two wool blankets slung over his shoulder. Elena and Mihalis met him at the top of the hill. Mihalis walked with his arm around Elena, who complained bitterly that this was an unjust punishment for a pregnant woman, since she could deliver her baby at any moment. The three of them looked down the hill. They saw three figures climbing the steps that led down to the Church of the Dormition.
Papa Nikolaos guided Papa Andreas by the elbow with one hand and carried a lantern with the other. The ferryman carried an icon that was as tall as he was. It was the oldest icon in the church, dating back to the 15th century. It depicted the Mother of God supine on her deathbed, surrounded by Christ and the Apostles. When Papa Andreas reached the mouth of the canyon, he paused for a moment to catch his breath.
“You must sleep in the enclosure, near the mouth of the cave.”
“Unbelievable!” Spyridon said. He had planned to sleep in the canyon to avoid the fabled horrors of the enclosure.
Papa Andreas pointed his finger in the direction of Spyridon’s voice. “I’m not doing this to harm you… any of you. I’m doing this to help you. You will reconcile your differences tonight, and return down the hill on the Lord’s Day as friends.”
By way of acknowledgement, Elena stepped forward and kissed the image of the Mother of God on the icon. The men each stepped forward and did the same. Then the two priests and the ferryman walked back down toward the church.
Mihalis also had a lantern. He led Spyridon and Elena into the mountain pass. Papa Nikolaos waited in the mouth of the canyon with his own lantern until they rounded the corner and were gone.
The three companions sat down around the mouth of the cave. Mihalis had brought cheroots and offered one to Spyridon who accepted it. Elena did not smoke.
Uncle Spyridon said, “There’s no reason for there to be animosity between us, Mihalis.”
“Hmm,” the man said and smoked his cheroot. Elena rested her head on her husband’s shoulder.
“It’s not so bad here,” Elena said.
“I guess I would say that too,” Spyridon remarked, “if I were a witch.”
“You dare call my wife a witch!” Mihalis shouted and sprang to his feet. Elena made an obscene gesture at Spyridon.
Spyridon ignored the two. He puffed the cheroot and blew out a stream of smoke.
“A very good flavor,” he said, nodding his head as he studied the smouldering orange tip of the cheroot. Then he stood up and rested it on a low boulder close by. After that, he removed his belt and baldric, and put his pistol and yataghan on the same boulder.
Mihalis sat back down next to Elena. He was fuming.
Spyridon unfolded one of his two blankets. He smoothed it out and reclined on it. He reached over to the boulder and picked up the cheroot, took a drag from it, and said, “Don’t you think it’s odd, Mihalis, that every man Elena has ever married—or been with—has been murdered?”
Elena opened both hands wide and cried out “Ahhh!” But she did not stand up. “Your uncle’s death was an accident!”
“You poisoned him.”
“He died after eating pork I hadn’t cooked thoroughly!… I was a girl! No one ever taught me how to cook! That would come later… Besides, your uncle said it was delicious!”
“It’s okay, Elena!” Spyridon said. “Don’t get upset. I hated my uncle. But my cousin Yiannis, who left Dagitsidos this morning, holds a grudge against you.”
Elena gasped and said, “That was the son of your uncle Eleftherios?—I didn’t know he had children!”
“No, no,” Spyridon said. “He’s the son of my aunt. But to him the issue is a matter of honor. You killed a member of our clan.”
“I didn’t kill him!”
“Right, it was an accident. You didn’t do anything wrong…. But what about the other three?”
Elena flicked her wrist.
“You have to admit,” Spyridon continued, “that it’s rather odd that they’re all dead… And that no one knows the details.”
Mihalis bared his teeth. Spyridon looked at him with an appraising eye that implied that he was probably next on Elena’s list.
“Mihalis is the father of my child,” Elena stated unequivocally, sensing what Spyridon was driving at. “I love him. I didn’t love the others… at least… ” Then her voice trailed off. Mihalis did not seem upset by this last remark of hers. Instead, he took Elena’s hand into his own and kissed it.
“Very well,” Spyridon said and turned over onto his side. “I’m going to try to go to sleep.” He drew his second blanket over him.
Mihalis looked into the cave. “We didn’t bring a blanket because we don’t plan to sleep tonight.”
“Oh my God,” Spyridon said. “I, too, am terrified. Since none of us is going to sleep, let’s huddle together until morning. Then we’ll leave at dawn.”
“Agreed,” Elena and Mihalis spoke simultaneously.
The three rested their backs against the oak tree with Mihalis in the middle. They draped both of Spyridon’s blankets over their legs, and drew them up under their chins. They tried not to think about the cave close by. The reason they had positioned themselves closer to the cave was not because that was what Papa Andreas had ordered them to do, but because it was warmer than the wind-whipped center of the enclosure where the pools and rivulets of water were. Mihalis lit a fat candle and replaced the smaller one in his lantern that was guttering low. He had two more candles with him, so that he could keep the flame in the lantern lit all night long.
It was a quiet, overcast night. The moon could not be seen. Their eyes grew accustomed to the dark. The night passed slowly. And, shortly before dawn, Spyridon broke the silence. “Did either of you sleep?” he asked.
“Not a wink,” Mihalis said.
“I’ve been thinking about things and I have an idea,” Spyridon remarked. “We have been treated unfairly by Papa Andreas.”
“Meh,” Elena said.
“Well, know a way to prevent this from happening again.”
“Go on,” Mihalis said.
“I would bet my fortune, which is not as grand as Croessus’s, but is nevertheless nothing to sniff at,” Spyridon said casually, “that Papa Andreas stationed Papa Nikolaos somewhere just outside the canyon to keep an eye on the mountain pass last night to make sure we didn’t sneak off and return just before dawn.”
“Yeah,” Elena said. “I was thinking the same thing.”
“Well,” Spyridon added, “as we all know, this cave leads down to the Acheron. And at the water’s edge, is the chapel where we wash the dead prior to burial—”
“May God keep them,” Elena said.
“Yes,” Spyridon agreed and crossed himself. “And may their memories be revered.—Anyway, you know how there’s an icon of St. George mounted to the outside of the cave?”
“Yes?” Mihalis said.
“Well, wouldn’t it be funny to retrieve it, put it up in the oak tree here, and then tell Papa Andreas that it was translated miraculously to this tree on the morning of the Lord’s Day, proving that God has forgiven us?”
“Brilliant!” Mihalis said. Elena looked at Mihalis doubtfully.
“The only problem,” Spyridon said, “is that someone has to go into the cave and down the tunnel to fetch it. Because if we go out of the pass through the canyon, Papa Nikolaos will see us.”
“Why don’t you do it?” Elena asked.
“Because I’m not a slender person and rumor has it there is a place in the tunnel that is no wider than my arm is long. I might get stuck or damage the icon.”
“I’ll do it,” Mihalis said.
“I think that would be best,” Spyridon said.
“No!” Elena said. She grabbed Mihalis’s cheeks with both hands.
“I’ll do it,” he repeated and stood up.
“I’ve heard that the way down to the River Acheron is smooth,” Spyridon said with a leer. “So you won’t need the lamp.”
Mihalis squinted at Spyridon, then looked at Elena, and without a word, stepped into the cave. Elena grabbed his arm. He turned and smiled at her. Then he kissed his fingertips and touched her womb, and he was gone.
Spyridon and Elena stood at the edge of the cave, staring into the darkness. They waited for several minutes.
“He’s probably just now made it to the bottom of the tunnel,” Spyridon said.
Elena kept her eyes on the cave.
“Mihalis,” she whispered into the tunnel.
There was no answer.
“He’s probably removing the icon now,” Spyridon said.
Elena walked away from the cave; then went back to it.
They both thought they heard a whisper, but it must have been the wind.
“Why did you put him up to this?” Elena asked.
“He’s probably on his way back as we—”
Then both of them froze. There was a sound coming from the cave, a jubilant sound of a tambourine and drum: tum ta-ta tum-tum, tum ta-ta tum-tum, tum ta-ta tum-tum. This was followed by the sound of a man singing a tune in the Suliote dialect.
“Mihalis!” Elena shrieked.
Spyridon backed away from the cave, his eyes wide with horror.
Elena ran to the low boulder where Spyridon had left his pistol and yataghan. She seized drew the yataghan from its scabbard.
“What are you doing?!” Spyridon asked frantically. “That’s mine!”
Elena plunged into the cave. Then the strange music stopped.
“Elena!” Spyridon cried out. “Elena!”
Within a minute it was dawn and the air was rent by the most horrific scream that Spyridon had ever heard in his life. The scream came, reverberative, out of the tunnel. Spyridon was too terrified to enter the cave. He sprinted as fast as he could out of the mountain pass.
He emerged from the mouth of the canyon and saw people running up the hill toward the steps that led down to the Church of the Dormition of the Mother of God.
Spyridon ran toward them. He met Constantine at the steps. The swineherd wore a leather apron and was covered in blood. “What’s happened?!” he asked.
“I don’t know!” Spyridon replied. The two ran down the steps. Elena’s screams were heard again. Spyridon and Constantine sprinted across the courtyard of the church and passed through the cemetery gate. Papa Andreas and Papa Nikolaos emerged from the residence by the church. Both wore white night robes. Papa Nikolaos guided the priest to the cemetery steps. There were already a score of people gathering on the terraces of the cemetery.
“My God!” someone cried out from the river.
Spyridon descended the cemetery stairs and stepped onto the sunken walkway. He waded toward the entrance of the cave with Constantine behind him. A circle of people stood near the pool at the cave entrance in shock.
Spyridon broke through the crowd and gasped in horror at what he saw. Floating face up in the water was Mihalis. His throat had been slit. Elena held him in her arms. Behind her at the mouth of the cave was the body of the beautiful ferryman. He too had been murdered. His throat was also cut open.
The people gazing on the scene screamed and crossed themselves incessantly. Some of the women fainted.
Elena looked up and stared in anguish at Spyridon. Then she howled again and released her husband’s corpse. She plunged her arms into the bloody water, bending at the knees. When she drew her arms from the water once more, she held her newborn daughter.
Papa Nikolaos stood rigid with horror at the river’s edge. He did not want to see what was happening. Papa Andreas pulled his arm away from the young priest, and stepped down onto the sunken walkway. He proceeded unassisted in the direction the screams.
Elena had put the yataghan on a boulder beside her. Suddenly, she seized the hilt of the blade and raised it over her head. Everyone gasped in awe as Elena severed the umbilical cord and cast the blade to the side.
Those that were present that day were agreed that at the very moment the umbilical cord was cut, Philippa of the Holy Vision opened her eyes and and became ensouled.
The witch saw these things as her spirit form receded away from Uncle Spiro and Uncle Costa. Her spirit form walked backwards in step to the rhythm of the Suliote song: tum ta-ta tum-tum, tum ta-ta tum-tum, tum ta-ta tum-tum. The two men woke from their trance when Loukos dropped a wooden bucket behind them.
When Uncle Costa and Uncle Spiro looked toward the cave again, they were surprised discover that the obscene display of skeletons that they thought had been there was gone. There were candles resting between the roots of the oak tree or lodged in the clefts of the rocks. But the lengthening of the morning’s shadows had simply played a trick on their minds. Each man was too embarrassed to tell the other what he thought he had seen. When they turned and walked back up the hill to the pergola, the light was still uncertain. They both saw what looked like the witch walking backwards toward her own body. But, again, neither man divulged what he thought he was seeing.
It didn’t take long to build the little taverna next to the pergola. When it was finished a few days later, Manolios and Dorcas helped the witch set up and equip the open-air grill under the pergola, where Dorcas would be cooking.
“I’m an excellent cook!” Dorcas said. “Guests will come simply to sample my food. It may be Dorcas that makes Dagitsidos famous, instead of you!”
“I’m fine if you cook,” the witch said. “But you’ll have to clean up the mess as well.”
Manolios had been inside the taverna arranging the spare furniture that the townsfolk were able to scare up. He emerged from the taverna and went to Dorcas and the witch.
“I moved that amphora of yours inside the taverna.”
“Thank you,” the witch said.
“I’m excited about your taverna opening!” Dorcas remarked. “It’s getting late though. I think Manolios and I are going to head back down the hill.”—As Dorcas said this, the doves took flight and began to circle the enclosure. The witch looked up at them, but she didn’t think much of it.
“Thank you both,” she said. Then she took their hands and the doves grew more agitated.
“What’s wrong?” Dorcas asked.
Suddenly, the witch gasped and her eyes rolled back into her head. Her grip on their hands tightened. She drew in her breath. Queen Hecate appeared with her wings spread on the uppermost ledge of the enclosure.
When the witch spoke it was as if her voice came not from her mouth but from the walls of the enclosure itself:
A child of Austria ascends the throne, And claims all he seizes was always his own. A twisted cross shall infiltrate this land, As Gothic ardour lifts the Aryan hand.
“You’re talking about what’s happening in Germany,” Manolios said.
The witch howled and her body bent backwards until her spine was level with her heels.
“Vretanoí!” the witch shouted.
“The British?” Dorcas asked. “I don’t understand!”
Then the witch opened her eyes and looked in the direction of the narrow footpath leading up into the treacherous interior of the mountain.
“Seven years from hence,” the witch said, “you will collaborate with the British.”
And then, as if she were gazing into an opaque glass, the witch saw Dorcas running up the footpath with a newborn in one arm. It was night. Manolios was with her. They climbed up the path. There were British and ANZAC soldiers with them lining the evacuation route.
“Come on!” Manolios said, lifting his 4-year-old son up and over a steep rise in the path.
“Clio!—Clio!” Mama Irene was standing in the path crying out in the direction of the enclosure.
“What’s wrong?!” Dorcas asked as the other villagers pushed by.
“Clio is still in the enclosure!” Mama Irene shouted, wringing her hands.
“We can’t stay here!” the British lieutenant said. Only Dorcas understood English. “Wait!” she said.
Manolios seemed to understand what the lieutenant had said. “Tell him I’m going to get Clio!”
Dorcas nodded and translated what he had said to the lieutenant.
“No, Papa!” Manolios’s firstborn son, 7-year-old Tobias, shouted.
“You stay with your mom!—You stay with the British!” Manolios said. Then he turned and ran away. Within a minute, he was in the enclosure. The rumble of the armored vehicles could be heard entering the wide gorge at the top of the hill. There was a hail of machine gun fire. Manolios ran to the corner of the enclosure where it linked up with the gorge.
Clio was on the other side of the gorge, hiding behind a slight depression in the rock wall. The teenage girl wore a tan uniform with a beret. She held a stockless rifle in her trembling hands. She couldn’t peer around the cover without exposing herself to the gunfire.
“Clio!” Manolios yelled.
The girl looked at him.
“I have an idea!” he shouted in rapid Greek.
Manolios picked up a rock by his feet.
“I’m going to create a diversion! When I do, run!”
The girl nodded.
Then, in the midst of the gunfire, Manolios stepped into the gorge and made a motion with his other hand, as if the rock were a grenade and he was pulling the pin from it.
When the attackers saw his silhouette moving in this way, frantic orders were shouted in German. The machine gun fire stopped with only a couple of intermittent pops. The men took cover behind the Kübelwagen, which was no more than 30 feet away. Manolios threw the rock; and it hit the tire that mounted to the hood of the vehicle. When the gunfire stopped, Clio sprinted as fast as she could into the enclosure.
The lights of a much larger vehicle was entering the gorge in the distance.
“Keep running!” Manolios said.
He turned to follow her. It was then that he realized that he’d been shot in the stomach. He limped and collapsed in the middle of the enclosure.
When Clio came up the footpath and around the bend, Dorcas shouted to her “Where’s Manolios?!”
“He was behind me!” the girl said and handed her rifle to the lieutenant. The lieutenant handed the stockless rifle to a subordinate.
“I have to go back and—”
“No!” Dorcas roared. The baby in her arms started to cry. Dorcas moved her head in the direction of Mama Irene to signal the girl to go to her. Then Dorcas turned to the lieutenant and repeated in English “Wait!” Dorcas focused her attention in the direction Clio had come from.
A German officer stood over Manolios and pointed the barrel of his Luger pistol at him. Manolios was doubled over in pain. The German spoke in broken Greek: “If you move, I am shooting you.”
The Kübelwagen entered the enclosure and positioned itself where the pergola had once stood. A platoon entered the enclosure behind it. The armored vehicle continued rumbling down the gorge toward the enclosure.
The German officer shouted orders to the men. One squad moved about the perimeter of the enclosure to clear it, as a second squad of six men entered the cave with a flamethrower. The armored vehicle rumbled into the enclosure. It was double the size of the Kübelwagen. It had two guns protruding from a turret at the back of it. It stopped next to the Kübelwagen and cut its engine.
Manolios crossed himself. He looked at the German officer and smiled. The officer smiled back, cruelly. Then Manolios whistled the tune of a nightingale.
Dorcas and Tobias heard the whistling high up on the footpath.
Then Dorcas looked at the lieutenant and nodded. The lieutenant turned to a subordinate and gave the order. Dorcas covered the baby’s ears. An ANZAC soldier pressed down on a plunger. An explosion rocked the mountain pass. The walls of the enclosure crumbled. The cave collapsed. All of the German soldiers that had entered the enclosure were killed.
“Papa!” Tobias cried out and held his hands to his head.
“Go!” Dorcas said to her son, dry-eyed and resolute.
When the witch woke, she realized that Manolios and Dorcas had rolled her over onto her side. Manolios fetched water. The doves were resettling on the ledges of the enclosure.
“Are you okay?” Dorcas asked.
The witch nodded.
The doves had spoken. Whatever they said was fixed, immutable.
Manolios returned and raised the cup of water to her lips. She drank from it. Then she touched his cleft lip and repeated the words that Yiayia Elena had told him long ago when he was a little boy: “You will do something remarkable someday, something for which your children will honor you, even to the tenth generation.” Manolios smiled.
When Manolios and Dorcas were satisfied that they had nursed the witch back to health, they said their goodbyes and departed.
“We’ll be back tomorrow!” Dorcas said.
The witch didn’t respond. When they were gone she walked to the oak tree and stood beside it, staring bitterly at the uppermost ledge. Queen Hecate flew down, landed on the witch’s shoulder, and nuzzled against the old woman’s ear.
Continue to Chapter 4
The first time thru this one, I missed the timeline transitions - misjudged my fatigue I guess, and boy was I confused Daniel. Daylight worked much better! I am really enjoying the glimpses of humanity and sympathy coming from the witch / oracle. And for some reason the situation as fate decrees it reminds me of a quote from The Milagro Beanfield War by Coyote Angel "You're gonna need a big sacrifice here". Odd reference I know and a little flip perhaps, but no disrespect to the seriousness of the story is meant. I march on to your beat!