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stood.
    â€œI know where you live,” Jack said. “I’ve been watching. I’ll leave a note under your gate.” He paused for a moment. “It might be hard to get a boat. So meanwhile we can meet at the bicycle place.”
    Quite suddenly, he turned his back on Paul and Lily and strode up the road toward the mountain and Panagia.
    â€œWhat a pill,” she said.
    â€œHe is not,” Paul whispered fiercely. “You don’t know anything about him!”
    â€œWhat do you know?” she demanded.
    Paul looked up at the farmhouse. “You want to wake up everybody?”
    â€œGoing into the water like that, with all his clothes on. What was he trying to prove?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Paul said uncertainly. “But he’s not a pill.”
    Lily sighed. Her shoes were full of sand.
    â€œCome on, let’s go home,” Paul said.
    â€œCould we go back by the Silenus Gate?” she asked. “Maybe the satyr will wink at us.”
    â€œIt takes too long that way. And it’s superstition anyhow,” Paul said, walking on down the road to the village.
    â€œYou went there with me before,” Lily protested. She had heard from Mr. Kalligas that the satyr would wink if you waited long enough. She and Paul had gone to look at him one lazy afternoon when most of the people in the village were taking their afternoon rest. The satyr looked out of weathered, crumbling stone, grinning as though he was glad he’d ruined himself with pleasures, his fat face half-hidden by tendrils of vine.
    The village was dark now. When they reached the shrine of Dionysus, Lily saw that the donkey and their garbage were gone. She went up the steps and touched a column. It was cool beneath her fingers.
    â€œLily!” Paul said.
    â€œI feel bad,” she said quickly. “I want to go back and put the tables and chairs right.”
    â€œI won’t go,” he said at once.
    â€œI’ll go alone,” she said.
    He started up the sloping path to home. She caught up with him, tried to see his face.
    â€œIt’s not bad—having someone besides just us, to talk English with,” he said.
    â€œI guess so,” she said halfheartedly. She understood there would be no use in arguing with him.
    They tiptoed into the house and went to the kitchen. “I’m going to bed,” Paul said. Lily turned on the light, an uncovered bulb hanging by a cord from the ceiling. It gave a faint ping, dimmed, and brightened again. The village generator wasn’t very dependable.
    â€œI’m going then,” she said.
    He went and peered into the sink, then turned and looked directly at her. “You don’t have the nerve,” he said.
    â€œI’ll go without nerve,” she said.
    He yawned hugely. “I’ll believe that when I see it,” he said. But he didn’t wait to see anything, just walked out of the kitchen without another word.
    Lily cut two pieces of bread and smeared them with honey. She would eat the sandwich when she reached the shack. It wasn’t so far after all, a little over a mile. Nothing would happen to her. That time she’d fallen off a wall into a patch of nettles people had run out of their houses to help her. The farmer in the stone house would hear her cry out if she saw a snake. It will be a brave thing to do, she thought. And Lily wanted to be brave.

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