Chapter Twelve
Twelve
They went by boat to the cave, Stefanos pulling the oars while Katerina took charge of the rudder, steering their course around the northeastern coast of the island.
At one time, it had been possible to reach Chrysospilia by land, though the carved footholds had long since been eroded by the elements, and Katerina did not want Stefanos to be at risk.
She was nimble across the rocky terrain, he less so.
Unlike her, he had not grown up on Folegandros, had not spent his childhood scouring every inch of the land in search of adventure.
In truth, Katerina would be placing both of them in danger with this excursion, but she wanted Stefanos to see the places that meant something to her.
To know them would help him to know her a little better.
“We can climb up from there,” she said, pointing to a spot below the mouth of the cave, which was situated sixty feet or so above them. Stefanos’s gaze trailed up, then he turned to look at her, a question in his dark eyes.
“Paichnidáki,” she teased. Child’s play.
While Stefanos unfurled a rope and fastened the boat to an outcrop of rock, Katerina tucked up her long skirt and strapped the small pack she’d brought across her body, feeling the cool surface of the pot inside as it pressed against her cotton shirt.
Atlas—her favorite of the two exiled brothers—had shown her how to blend the mixture using charcoal, reddened dirt, and animal fats.
“It has to last forever,” she’d told him, and her friend had smiled in a way that told her he understood.
“Do not worry, flogerós.” Fiery one. “It will.”
Atlas and his brother, Zephyr, were two of only three souls on the island who knew about her relationship with Stefanos.
Leni was the third, though Katerina had only confessed the truth to her sister the previous day, making her promise not to breathe a word to anyone else, not Michalis and definitely not their parents.
Baba and Mama had yet to return from Thira, and miss them though she did, Katerina had benefited from their absence.
Without anyone there to take note of her comings and goings, she had been free to spend as much time as she pleased with the man who had stolen her heart.
“Be careful, agápi mou,” Leni had warned. “He has a target painted on him for trouble, that one.”
Of course her sister would say such a thing.
Her own love affair had been predictable, the man she married ordinary, and the life they lived together dull.
Leni must be burning with envy that Katerina had found a man such as Stefanos to love.
He was everything that the uptight and worrisome Michalis was not—and thank the gods for it.
“I will go ahead,” she said now, stepping over the side of the boat and springing up onto the steep rock beyond. “Watch where I put my feet and use the same places.”
“You have never looked more like a little goat,” he called after her as she began to climb. Katerina laughed.
“You are the one who enjoys kissing a goat,” she threw back, and heard him bleat loudly in reply.
Their shared laughter was snatched away by concentration as they each focused on the task at hand.
The rock face was sharp and slick, the sea below hurling up great shoals of salty spray that soaked Katerina’s clothes and left her hair dripping.
Motivated by a desire to escape it, she began to move more quickly, Chrysospilia growing larger with every second that passed.
When she finally reached the cavernous entrance, she allowed herself to rest, shuffling around into a sitting position as she waited for Stefanos to join her.
“My God,” he said through breaths that were coming fast and ragged. “Paichnidáki? I do not think so, katsikáki. Are you trying to kill me, is that it?”
Katerina bent and kissed the top of his head.
“If that is what I wanted to do,” she said, “then I would have done it a long time ago, perhaps while you were sleeping.”
Stefanos pushed himself up from where he’d collapsed, panting, against the stone floor.
“You would steal into my bedroom in the dead of night?” he said. “I think I would enjoy that.”
His eyes lingered on hers, and she held his gaze for a moment, toying with him before getting to her feet.
“éla,” she said, reaching a hand down to him. “Enough teasing. Come and see inside.”
They began by circuiting the first chamber, Katerina talking as they went, explaining about the artifacts that had been discovered inside: the Roman cistern, broken shards of pottery, piles of shells, and skeletal remains that were thought to have belonged to Greeks who had entered the cave to hide from pirates only to become stranded.
The second chamber was at the end of a narrow corridor, and she took Stefanos’s hand as they entered it, felt the tightening of his fingers around hers as he stared at the stalactites.
“This is what I believe the moon to look like,” he said. “These formations, they do not seem as if they are part of our world.”
The leather pouch he kept in his pocket had somehow remained dry on the climb up from the boat, and taking out a match, Stefanos struck it. The stalactites shone gold and red. Katerina knew from Baba’s teachings that it was the iron oxide that gave each its color.
“Here,” she said, taking his arm, “bring the flame to the wall.”
Stefanos’s mouth fell open as a series of names appeared in the pool of flickering light.
“Who painted these?” he asked, drawing his arm up and around.
More names and places were etched not only on the cave walls but across the ceiling, a beautiful jumble of letters and marks.
Katerina thought of the single K she had carved in the attic and shook her head.
How futile that seemed when compared to this.
“They have always been here,” she told him. “Baba says they are the names of young people who came here to worship Artemis and Apollo, perhaps as long ago as the fourth century before Christ.”
“More than two thousand years ago?” Stefanos’s eyes bulged. “And they are still here, not washed away.”
“Remembered for always,” she said, her throat tight with emotion.
It had always moved her, this place. The whisper of the waves could so easily have been the murmurings of the past, voices of those who had deemed this island special.
Katerina slipped her bag from her shoulders and opened it, taking out the pot and small brush.
There was an empty space on the wall, not far from where they’d come through from the first chamber, and it was here that she began to paint her name.
Only when she finished did she turn to Stefanos.
“Now you,” she said, and he nodded, striking a second match and passing it across to her.
The flame danced, throwing warped shadows, though she held it as still as she could.
He had a steadier hand than she and finished his inscription more quickly.
Afterward they stood, shoulder to shoulder, admiring their work.
“I need to tell you something.”
Katerina stiffened.
“Tell me what?”
Stefanos sighed and, taking her hands, turned her to face him.
“I have to leave.”
Time slowed, paused, stood still.
“Leave?”
“The war is coming closer,” he said. “I hear the thud of the enemy’s boots.”
“It is not our war,” she hissed. “It is their war.”
“óchi, katsikáki, it will become Greece’s war soon enough. The people will resist, and I must be there to fight alongside them.”
“Why?” she insisted. “Why does it have to be you? Why not every other man in Greece before you?”
He attempted to draw her closer, but she pulled away.
“Why?” she said again. Her nose was stinging, eyes burning.
“You would have me be a coward?” he said. “Hide beneath your skirts while the Axis powers trample across my country, kill my people?”
“It is not brave to die for nothing,” she told him, furious now—with him but also with herself for not having prepared a better argument.
“I will not die,” he said, urgent now. “But if I did, it would be for freedom, for the most important thing of all.”
“Then, I will come with you,” she began, but he shook his head. “Why is it acceptable for you to go but not for me? I am strong like you. I am braver than you think, Stefanos. And I love my country. I love Greece.”
“You are strong,” he said, lowering his head to hers. “You are strong and brave and patriotic—it is why I love you.”
Katerina’s head jerked backward.
“You—you love me?”
“éla re.” He slid his hands to her waist. “Of course I love you.”
“Then stay,” she pleaded. “There is nothing more important than love, not even freedom.”
When he said nothing, Katerina felt her body sag with despair. How could she survive without him? What would she do if the worst were to happen?
“When?” she asked, barely daring to hear his answer.
Stefanos drew her close against him.
“Soon,” he said. “I will go with Michalis to Athens, and from there to the north.”
“Michalis?” Katerina’s blood turned to stone. “Your cousin Michalis, my brother-in-law, is going with you?”
“Nai.”
“But he is a— How can he? I don’t understand.”
“He is not so different from me,” Stefanos said. “He wants to play his part in this war, as his father did twenty-five years before him.”
“Leni will be broken by this,” Katerina said. “She will blame you.”
“I know,” he said simply. “And I am sorry for it.”
“I cannot leave her, not when Baba and Mama are away. But after they return, I will come to find you. I will fight alongside you, and—”
Her next words were taken by his kiss, and for a moment, as she melted away on the tide of sensation, Katerina believed that she had won, that he would stay, that they would remain together, here on Folegandros, and be happy.
Stefanos released her, his lips coming to rest against hers.
“I will write to you,” he said. “Tell you what is happening.”
“When will you come back?”
“As soon as I can.”
“I will worry,” she told him. “Even as I sleep.”
He kissed her again, over and over, not only her lips but her cheeks and throat, the soft dip behind each ear, the closed lids of her eyes as she fought to hold back the tears.
“Do not worry,” he said. “Fears are like oil on the water of your dreams, katsikáki—they will always rise to the top if you let them.”
“What should I do to stop them?” she asked, clinging to him.
“Do as the people who came to this cave did when they wrote their names on its walls. Do as we did when we added our own.”
There was no need to ask him what he meant because Katerina already knew the answer.
All she needed to do was believe.