Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter
Twenty-Four
Dani
Dani watched as all the color drained from Theo’s face.
“Juicy, no.”
“Wait, hear me out,” she said, putting her hands on his shoulders.
“Whatever it is you’re going to say isn’t going to change things,” he said, putting his hand up to stop her from proceeding. “I convinced you to check out Poseidon’s temple, but then we made a deal. And now I want to go home. Badly. Preferably alive.”
“But I think I may be onto something!”
“No, I don’t want to hear it,” he said, rolling her off his hips, standing up, and waving his hands. “We already tried. It’s time to pack up and go. Cut our losses.”
“It’s at the Parthenon!” she blurted out and then quickly covered her mouth.
Her proclamation stopped Theo in his tracks.
Yes! When she’d been reading various books in the library and come up with her most recent theory as he’d slept beside her, she’d almost woken him up.
Yet the very idea of sticking around Greece after everything he’d already gone through was absolutely ludicrous—but…
then hearing him talk about proving himself to his parents gave her other ideas.
And based on his apparent interest in hearing her out, maybe he was having second thoughts, as well.
Slowly, he turned around. “Okay, I’m not saying I’m changing my mind,” he said, “but I want to know what led you to that conclusion.”
She knew he wouldn’t be able to ignore the intrigue.
“Remember what Papantonis said about the sun? ‘There, below where Helios rises in the east, I will put the eye to rest…Despite his quarrels, Poseidon himself could not have picked a better place for this beast to spend eternity’?” she recited.
“Yeah? The sun rises in the east.”
“Right, but where does Helios rise in the east?” She waited a beat before following up, “The east pediment of the Parthenon. Look,” she said, grabbing a large book from the coffee table in front of the couch.
Theo walked back to the sofa and sat beside her.
She opened the book and flipped to a diagram of the Parthenon, showing two sets of statues on either side of the marble structure, each side containing twenty or so individual pieces.
The pediments had been damaged over the years through a combination of skirmishes, fires, natural disasters, and weather.
But through reconstructions and artist renderings, various experts had come up with an idea of what the original pediments once looked like.
The east pediment depicted the birth of Athena with other gods watching nearby: Zeus, Demeter, Dionysus, Artemis, Hephaestus, Hera.
And Helios rising with his chariot from the far end.
Theo studied the page as Dani chewed on her thumbnail, watching him impatiently.
She hadn’t necessarily been trying to continue looking for the Minotaur.
But when she was flipping through books as Theo slept, the mention of Helios caught her attention.
Her research then led her to the Parthenon. But it wasn’t only that.
“I don’t know. This could simply be happenstance,” he said.
She knew he’d say that.
“Okay, but now what about this?” she said, turning to the page covering the west pediment.
And standing in the center fighting over the region with Athena was Poseidon. Despite his quarrels.
Theo pulled the book into his lap, flipping back and forth between the pages.
Studying the diagrams. Reading the descriptive text.
Finally, he set the book on the coffee table and leaned back on the couch, running his fingers through his hair before resting his hands behind his head.
He blew out a long breath and then looked over at Dani.
“Well, if that’s not a clue, then that’s one hell of a coincidence,” he said. “But there’s no way it can be at the Parthenon. Someone would have found it already.”
“That’s what I was thinking, too. But then I remembered this clay pot I saw at the museum in Heraklion.
A man wearing the eye medallion, holding the Minotaur’s head.
He was emerging from a cave with some sort of temple atop a land mass.
I’ve been searching through these books to see if I could find a picture, but what if that’s it?
What if it’s not at the Parthenon itself, but instead in a cave below it at the Acropolis?
On the east side where Helios rises? And look—”
She grabbed another book that, from what she could tell, talked about excavations at the Acropolis. And there was a photo of red soil.
“ ‘It is here that the eye will sleep and blend into the dirt itself,’ ” she recited.
“Wait,” Theo said, putting his hand on her forearm and pausing to think. “Come with me!”
He quickly gathered up his clothes, and then they bolted out of the room, running through the halls of the house and up the stairs back to their bedroom.
He dove for his bag and pulled out that leather notebook, flipped to the page in the center where a piece of paper was neatly folded.
He then brought the paper to the bed and unfolded it atop the bedspread.
It was a page from a book with a picture of the clay vessel Dani had seen at the museum.
“This is it! The clay pot I saw at the museum. Where did you get this?” she asked.
“From Andreas’s stuff. I tore it out of a book.”
“Why?”
“It seemed important at the time.”
They both stared at the painting on the vessel. Nothing about it gave any actual indication that it was of the Acropolis and the Parthenon, but in light of Dani’s discovery, it seemed that maybe, just maybe, the thing they were searching for was somewhere on the east side of the Acropolis.
“So, let me ask again. How badly do you want to go home?” she asked.
“Ask me after we go to the Acropolis.”
* * *
Lysander had kept his promise. When they woke in the morning, they’d learned that he’d already arranged for flights to take them back home late that evening. He’d also seemingly pulled some strings and was able to get copies of their passports expedited from the embassy.
Now all they had to do was wait until midnight. Or, as Dani put it: they had until midnight to find the eye of the Minotaur.
Lysander had offered to arrange transportation for them to the airport, but Theo and Dani declined.
They didn’t need the Minotaur’s Children to know what they were up to.
So instead, they simply asked for a ride back to Athens so they could “sight-see” before their flight home.
Now, without Maurice and Louis looking over their shoulders and watching their every move, they were free to travel as they pleased.
If anyone recognized him at this point, it wouldn’t matter.
Because soon, they’d be on a plane back to the United States.
So after saying their goodbyes to Andreas and Christos, and vowing to keep in touch, Dani and Theo made their way into Athens.
The Acropolis was known for having multiple cave openings dedicated for the cult worship of various gods.
The odds there was an additional undiscovered cave were a bit unlikely, but excavations within the last one hundred years weren’t unheard of.
After everything they’d gone through, what harm was there in at least a peek?
They had to be strategic. Poking around the Acropolis was a quick way to earn a one-way ticket to the slammer. So they decided to wait until the crowds thinned out later in the day, hopefully limiting the number of tattletales who might be watching them.
“You ready?” Theo said as they stood outside the southern entrance.
Dani nodded, and he took her hand.
They didn’t know exactly what they were looking for, given that the painting was the only reference they had to go on.
They circled the lower eastern slopes, holding up the page Theo had torn out of Andreas’s book and searching for a perspective that matched the painting.
Even though they’d gone later in the day, however, there were still a few too many people to get a proper look.
Dani and Theo stepped back as a tour group came up behind them, looking to pass.
“And here,” the tour guide announced, “is the Aglaureion, one of the largest caves at the Acropolis. This cave was to honor Aglauros, the daughter of King Cecrops. It is said she flung herself off the Acropolis to save the city from invasion.”
The group slowly moved past them as the tour guide continued to talk, his voice somewhat familiar, when Dani finally recognized the voice: it was Cosmo.
“Daniela?” another voice asked to her right.
Dani turned, and standing there was Harold, her travel companion from her first few days in Greece.
“Harold!” she said, flinging her arms around the old man.
“Well, well, well, never thought I’d see you again,” Harold said. “I gotta admit—I was a little disappointed when I’d heard that you’d left. All these old fogeys are more ancient than the ruins we’ve been touring. None of them stay up past six p.m.”
“Yeah…the last few days have been…unexpected.”
Harold took one look at Theo standing beside her, and then he said with a smile, “I’d say so.”
“Oh, Harold, this is Theo,” she said.
They shook hands and exchanged pleasantries, when Harold then turned to Dani and said, “As in your Theo?”
Dani blushed and ducked her head a bit.
“Yes, her Theo,” he answered for her, tipping up her chin and gazing at her lovingly.
If Harold wasn’t standing there, she would have kissed him. Her Theo. She liked the sound of that.
“So, you’re not dead,” Harold said. “Or am I starting to see things, too?”
Theo gave a nervous laugh.
“It’s a long story,” Dani offered, “but, no, you’re not seeing things. He’s alive.”
“Oh, good. Because I thought I saw a rock over there that looked like a sideways eye,” he said, tossing a thumb over his shoulder, “and I really thought it was maybe time to get my eyes checked again.”
Dani and Theo snapped their heads toward each other.
“Where exactly did you see that rock?” Dani asked.
“Back thataway, up above the pathway a bit,” he said, turning around and pointing. Then he eyed her, suspiciously. “Why? You’re not up to something no good, are you?”
Dani’s mouth gaped like a fish out of water. Shit.
“Cuz if you need a lookout…” Harold then added.
Now Theo and Dani were the ones eyeing him suspiciously. “What are you getting at, Harold?” Dani asked.
“I’m only sayin’…I’m an old man who needs a little break once in a while.
So, I dunno…I might just sit right here,” he said, grunting as he lowered himself to a boulder, “and, oh, you know, if someone comes walking that way, I might have a bit of a coughing fit from the dust. One loud enough so that anyone on this side of the Acropolis might hear me.”
“You’d do that?” Dani asked.
“I ain’t got nothing better to do,” he said, “but it seems you do.” He gave her a suggestive look.
Did he think they were sneaking off to have sex? Not that she wasn’t very much looking forward to doing it again, but now was not the time or the place.
“Harold, we’re not—”
But he held up his hand to stop her. “Plausible deniability,” he said. “I’m simply an old man catching his breath.”
She smiled, and then leaned down and kissed his cheek. “You were one of the best parts about this trip, so you know.”
He then looked up at Theo and said, “Don’t worry. I already told her, she’s not my type.”
They all laughed, and he shooed them away as he stood watch. Theo and Dani wound their way along the path, focusing their attention on the rocks above them. For a moment, Dani thought maybe Harold’s eyesight had been playing tricks on him. Everything looked the same. Plain. Jagged. Rocks.
But there, beyond the end of the pathway, was something else. High above the path, like Harold had said, was what appeared to be an eye carved into the rock, the carving slightly worn away by weather.
Dani pointed. “There,” she said.
Theo narrowed his gaze, following the line of sight from her finger toward the hillside. Once it seemed he’d connected with the spot, he took out the page with the pot and held it up in the air.
“This looks like it could be the spot. It’s the right angle, but I don’t see a cave,” he said.
Other than the rock, there wasn’t anything unusual about the spot. There was no indication of a cave. No indentation in the stone. Just a pile of rocks.
“Maybe we need a closer look,” she said.
Theo turned around to gauge their surroundings, his hands on his hips. The spot was exposed to the area outside the Acropolis’s fence. There was no way they’d be able to get up there without someone seeing. Even with Harold standing guard, there were far too many people.
“I don’t think we can get up there,” he said.
“What if we wait?” Dani said.
“Wait for what?”
“Until dark.”
Theo frowned. “It won’t be dark until at least eight p.m. Our flight is at midnight. We can’t stay here, Juicy. This is our chance to leave.”
“No, this is our chance. What if this is it? Are you going to be satisfied going home knowing that we didn’t even check? What happened to the Theo who’s always ready for an adventure?”
“You realize that I would do anything that you asked me to, right?”
“Okay, then I’m asking you to do this. Come on, Theo. You said you never feel more alive than when we’re together. So let’s live. One more adventure.”