Chapter 19 #2
“And it was good that she did, because not a year after she left, word stopped coming from the town. My mother wanted to go see what was wrong, but my father worried. It wasn’t just that no word had come down.
There were no lights, either. Except one.
Every night, a single light, moving from one end of the town to the other, like a funeral procession attended by a solitary mourner.
” Petra looks toward the window in the kitchen.
I follow her line of sight, noting the direction.
This one seems deliberate, not vague like the other villages in their stories.
“Eventually,” Petra continues, “it was decided that one of the men, an older shepherd who was familiar with all the pathways around and through the mountains, would go see what had happened. He came back quickly, as though the devil himself was on his tail. When at last he was able to talk again, he said that he hadn’t gotten close.
But close enough. The entire town was dead. ”
“How?” I ask.
Petra’s eyes disappear beneath her wrinkled brow.
“He didn’t go in. No one did. We’re from the country, but we’re not stupid.
When one person dies, it’s a tragedy. When everyone dies, it’s a warning.
Maybe their well was poisoned. Maybe it was a plague.
Maybe it was an evil spirit. Whatever it was, there was nothing to be done for any of them. The living are always more important.”
I try not to flinch at her words. It’s the same thing Mama has been trying to make me see. But how can I profess to prioritize the living, knowing that Diavola and her accomplice are still out there, killing?
“And that was it?” I ask. “The last time anyone went up there?”
Petra nods. “No one is there. Except for the light.”
“Can you still see it?” I glance toward the window.
“It stopped.”
“Before you were born?”
“No,” Eleni says. “We’ve all seen it.”
“What?” Coming from Eleni, this is the most surprising detail. She seemed so skeptical of everything.
“Every night, more or less,” she says. “Until the earthquake.”
“But the earthquake was only ten years ago.” My mind is spinning. Ten years. Which is only a year or so before Diavola appeared to my father. “So, you think the earthquake somehow—wait, what do you think? Someone was still alive up there, and they died? But they would have been…so old.”
“We don’t know who it was,” Petra says. “But my mother used to watch it and cry.”
“The point is—” Eleni says, but Petra blows a raspberry through her wrinkled lips.
“There isn’t always a point!”
“The point is,” Eleni says, this time with even more force as she stares directly at me, “that ‘vrykolakas’ is just a word people use when they can’t explain things.
Vrykolakas that fix starving children’s shoes are not the same as vrykolakas that try to lure travelers off paths and eat their flesh, or ones that come back from the dead to drag all their family to the grave with them, or ones that have no purpose other than to pester their brother for as long as they can. ”
“That’s the kind Eleni would be,” Thomas says brightly, failing to pick up on his sister’s intensity. Or simply choosing to ignore it.
I nod, trying to look like I don’t really believe any of this, like I’m just collecting stories.
If I’m being honest, I don’t know how much of it I do believe, but that light in the lost town plus the timing of the earthquake and when Diavola appeared in my life can’t be coincidence.
Something happened ten years ago that freed her to spread her death and destruction elsewhere.
Inge looked into the years before Diavola killed my father, but we never found deaths that met the criteria.
“Tomorrow, if you’d like, I can take you to the petrified forest,” Thomas offers.
“That’s very kind. But I’ve gotten the best stories here already, I think.” I smile at Petra. “If there’s a donkey someone can spare, I’ll buy it and head on toward Molyvos, collecting more tales as I go.”
Thomas looks disappointed. I don’t know if it’s because he hoped to spend more time with me—I haven’t gotten a flirtatious sense from him, though both he and Eleni are my type, were I capable of pursuing anyone right now—or because he hoped for an excuse to visit his rocks.
But he quickly moves on. “A neighbor has an old donkey I think he’ll be happy to sell you for a fair price.
Here, I can show you the best route to take to Molyvos.
” He uses the table and builds landmarks, villages, and cities out of various food items, plotting out a path between them.
I’m sure it’s a good map, but I know exactly where I’m going now.
Eleni’s eyes are heavy on me for the rest of the evening until I excuse myself and go to bed. I couldn’t outlast Petra, who left to go drink with her daughter and the other women as soon as I said I was tired.
There are three bedrooms, and they’ve graciously given me one. It’s strange to be in a house that takes up so much land instead of building upward like in Amsterdam. Sleeping on the ground floor always feels wrong to me. I’ve scarcely changed into a nightdress before Eleni appears in the doorway.
“I looked in your bag,” she says. “While you were asleep on the cart.”
I’m not sure how to respond to that, so I keep my gaze level on hers.
“She isn’t what you think.”
A shiver goes down my spine. “Who isn’t what I think?”
Eleni holds out her hand. She’s holding an envelope. A cream-colored envelope that I know the exact weight and feel of. “This is for you,” she says.
“When did you get that?” I whisper.
“I don’t know,” Eleni answers with a shrug, unbothered by the hole in her memory. She enters the room and sets the envelope on top of my bag, then sits on the bed next to me.
“You don’t know what she is,” I say.
Eleni scoffs. “I know better than you. What exactly do you think you can do up there?”
“Find her grave and burn her body. And if her body isn’t there, I’ll consecrate the ground so she can never return for rest.” My father left me all the instructions, whether he meant to or not.
Eleni is insistent. “No one in this village has ever been bothered by anything out of the ordinary. No one has died an unnatural death. No one has murdered or been murdered. No one has disappeared without explanation. The dead sleep peacefully, and we get to live our quiet lives of small joys and beautiful monotonies. Why do you think that is, given how close we are to whatever evil took the lost town? Why do you think all our stories begin with not this village?”
“Because you’re lucky.”
“No,” Eleni snaps. “Because someone has protected us.”
“No one protected the people I loved from her.” I stand and take my bag.
I won’t sleep tonight. There’s too much work to be done, and I don’t trust the people here to stay out of my way.
I’m done letting Diavola whisper in my ear.
The letter falls to the floor and I leave it there as I walk out of the house and into the night.