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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.
    â€œI 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