by Zachary Howe
“Come on, let’s go down here.” Ellie turned down the second flagstone street. “Looks like there’s a café up there.” She pointed to a bunch of tables, two of which were occupied: one by a man with a leg crossed over his knee reading a newspaper, and another by a young couple holding hands and leaning over the table to be as close as possible to one another. Gordie rolled his eyes at this, but he also felt a pang of envy.
The flagstone street was pristine, somehow smoother than the asphalt, and level. They passed a hunched old lady carrying a bag of fresh vegetables, and she smiled at them. They passed a middle aged couple holding hands and prattling on in a language Gordie didn’t understand. Greek, stupid, he thought to himself.
When they reached the café, there was a large window with a counter, which displayed two baristas working feverishly, a young man and woman, both with short dark hair. A door led to the interior of the café where Gordie eyed a few more patrons sipping their pick-me-ups at scattered tables.
“Why don’t you two grab a seat.” Atalo nodded towards the al fresca dining area. “I’ll grab the drinks.”
“Coffee, please. Thanks, Dad.”
“I’m good.” Gordie waved a dismissive hand. Atalo lumbered over to the counter where he towered over an old man ordering his beverage. Gordie and Ellie grabbed an open table and groaned as they sat down.
“Tired already?” Gordie asked his mother with a playful smile.
“Hey, that ride was no picnic.” She shook her head, and blew out an exaggerated breath.
“Yeah, that must have been rough.” Gordie rolled his eyes. “Meanwhile, I was launched through the air for eight miles.”
“Of your own accord.”
“Touché.” He shrugged and smiled.
“Tell me something.” Ellie leaned in and lowered her voice. “Are you really okay? I mean, falling out of the sky doesn’t hurt?”
“Oh no, it hurts,” Gordie’s smile broadened, “but I had to win.”
“Unbelievable.” Ellie leaned back in her chair and shook her head again.
“Why was your ride so rough, anyway? I mean, isn’t it basically like riding a horse?”
“Yeah, with the upper body of a man!” Ellie puffed. Gordie was well aware that Chiron was a centaur, but he remained silent. “I mean, it was . . .” Ellie paused and shifted uncomfortably, “awkward.”
“Huh? Why?”
“Well, I was just, like, grabbing him around the waist! It was weird! I didn’t even want to hang onto him, but he was going so fast and I kept getting smacked in the face with branches! Your grandpa must have really gotten beat up behind me.” She crossed her arms and hugged herself. Gordie finally realized why she was so uncomfortable and changed the subject.
“So, what do you want to do today? Should we go down to Volos?”
“I don’t really know, hon. I’m as familiar with the area as you. Maybe we can find some brochures or something.” She smiled, and Gordie was glad to see she was in better spirits.
“I guess we can hang out here, too.” Gordie looked around at the bustling village with its little shops. “I mean, I was kinda looking forward to going to a big city, but this place is pretty cool. All these hills and alleyways and stuff.” He shrugged. He tried to sound enthusiastic because he thought his mom would enjoy a day in this busy village more than a trip to what he imagined as a booming metropolis. Atalo came over with two coffee mugs grasped by the handle in one hand, and two small plates with towering pastries balancing on his opposite forearm.
“Here you are,” he said, as he set one of the coffees in front of his daughter and one of the plates in front of his grandson. “Baklava!” he said. Gordie looked at the layers of flaky dough and brown sugary filling.
“What’s in it?” Gordie asked.
“Phyllo dough layered with nuts and sugar. Bon appetite!” Atalo smiled and stabbed at his breakfast. Gordie followed suit.
“Hory crap, zas zerizous!” Gordie said through a mouthful of baklava.
“I mow, righ?!” Atalo sprayed the table with crumbs.
“You two are animals.” Ellie sipped her coffee.
After a couple minutes of smacking and grunting, the boys sat back in their chairs and patted their bellies.
“Wow, Gramps, that stuff is awesome!” Gordie licked his lips.
“Damn straight! Cinnabon of the old country.” Atalo shot Gordie a wink, who smiled back. “So, kiddos, what’s the plan?”
“We’re not entirely sure. Let’s just walk around a bit,” Ellie suggested. Gordie fought to roll his eyes because this was the type of boring activity in which he did not want to participate.
“Oh, wait!” Gordie jumped to his feet. “I gotta charge my phone! Mom do you have the charger?” He held out his hand, making a ‘gimme’ gesture.
“All right, all right, keep your shorts on.”
She rummaged in her purse and pulled out the charger. Gordie snatched it and entered the café. A little bell chimed over his head. He smiled at the familiarity of the sound. The scent of coffee bombarded his nose. The interior of the shop had warm colors: sunshine-yellow walls and dark brown stone flooring, which accented the oak counter. In the back there was a loveseat next to an end table, and Gordie made his way there, expecting to see an outlet. He was not disappointed.
He sat in the cushy grass-colored seat and plugged the charger into the wall, then the phone. He stared at his device with hungry anticipation. The little orange light in the upper corner shined solid, indicating that it had enough juice to be turned on. He squeezed the power button. The screen lit up, and his eyes did as well.
“Come on, come on,” he prompted it, as a number of loading screens greeted him. He was excited because he was hoping against hope that Bridget had texted him. Blood filled his stomach as anxiety grew with that excitement. Finally, the home screen loaded and his inbox showed zero texts. His heart sank. Why didn’t she text me? I really thought she was going to?
He started to spiral into depression when a loud ‘ding dong’ rang in his ear, indicating that he had a text. He started to grin, when another went off, and another, and another. People were starting to look at him, so he turned the volume off as the messages continued to pile up. His phone vibrated incessantly. Ten texts. Twenty texts. Thirty texts.
Bewildered at this point, he opened his inbox wondering why so many people were trying to reach him. His inbox opened slowly as the phone threatened to explode from the sheer amount of data pouring into it. Finally, the vibrating stopped, and Gordie stared at Bridget’s name with a little number ‘1200’ next to it. His resolve wavered. A little needy, isn’t she? a voice whispered in his head. He touched her name and again the phone loaded slowly, over-encumbered as it was. It grew hot in his hand. Then the message log finally opened to display a text that read, “Delphi.”
Gordie stared at the word for a second. He scrolled up to see the previous text, which said the same: “Delphi.” His forehead wrinkled as he continued to scroll up and up. Delphi. Delphi. Delphi. Delphi.
“What the hell?” he whispered to his empty corner of the shop. His sense of foreboding mounted to a panic until it reached its peak when he found the first text, which read, “I have taken her to Delphi.”
Alarm bells exploded in his brain and he looked around the shop, expecting to see a foe lurking somewhere to attack him. All was normal. Three patrons were scattered around the room at various points, the baristas chatted in fast Greek and laughed, the various cappuccino machines gurgled and whirred as they prepared drinks. Gordie looked at all of these with wide-eyes before looking back at his phone. He stared at the message. I have taken her to Delphi.
Who did? Why? He racked his brain and searched for answers. Delphi. Oracle of Delphi. Temple of Delphi where the oracle resides. Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Understanding dawned. He looked up with widest eyes. “I know of the boy and I know his weakness,” Apollo’s threat reverberated in his mind, along with the question his brain repeated frantically: W
hat do I do?
His heart raced and he tried to think through his panic. He opened a browser on his phone and searched ‘Delphi,’ then opened a map. He saw it, but couldn’t figure out where it was in relation to his current location. Clicking on ‘directions,’ he typed ‘Portaria, Greece’ as the starting point. When the page loaded his heart sank: “198 kilometers south-southwest.”
“Crap.” He looked at the blue line that highlighted the route and thought frantically. It was a winding route and he thought a straight line could knock off a fair amount of total distance—maybe 40 kilometers, however far that was. He searched ‘kilometers to miles conversion’ and typed in ‘40.’ “24.8548,” the converter told him. Then he plugged in ‘198 kilometers.’ “123.031 miles.” Subtract 25. He had just under one hundred miles to travel if he could follow a straight line from Portaria to Delphi. Studying the map again, he saw that a straight line would take him through the nearby Pagasetic Gulf, then the Malian Gulf before Delphi.
“Crap,” he repeated. He was fast, but he doubted he could run on water. The cogs turned in his head again. “Run along the coast?” he asked aloud. “I could do the tree thing,” he offered to no one, but then thought that might be too conspicuous, and Chiron had told him to hide his powers. But wasn’t this an emergency? He stared at his phone, willing it to give him answers.
“You ready to go?”
“WHAT THE!—” He jumped out of his seat and stared at his mom with bulging eyes as his heart pounded almost audibly in his chest. He placed his hand over it as if to calm it by touch.
“Jeez, relax.” Ellie raised her arms in a ‘don’t shoot’ gesture.
“Sorry, you just startled me,” he stammered.
“I see that. You hear from anybody?” She nodded towards the phone in his hand.
“No! Who would I hear from? Jeez!”
“All right, I was just curious.” She smiled knowingly without realizing that her son’s defensiveness had nothing to do with embarrassment over young love. “We were thinking about taking a little walk. See what there is to see.”
“My phone’s not charged,” Gordie said, as if that put leaving out of the question.
“Who cares? You can charge it later. You don’t really need it do you?”
“What? Of course I do.” He looked at her, trying to hide the alarm in his eyes. “It’s my phone,” he said, ending the debate.
“We can charge it again when we stop for lunch. Come on, your grandpa and I are tired of sitting.” She made a beckoning gesture. An idea started to form.
“You guys go!” he blurted out. “I’ll stay here and charge my phone and then I’ll catch up with you.” She looked at him with concern etched all over her face.
“I don’t know . . .” She scanned the room as if there were potential dangers around every corner. “How would you find us?”
Crap. He thought quickly. “I’ll just wait here! You guys come get me in a bit,” he offered. She looked down at his phone, and her expression softened.
“Okay, fine,” she breathed, then smiled. “But you stay here, understood?” Her smile disappeared, and she stared at him, waiting for assent.
“Got it.” He stared back into her eyes and tried to ignore the guilt eating at him—he had no intention of staying where he was. She smiled again.
“All right. Have fun with your phone.” She winked at him and turned back to the door. He watched her go and stared at the door for a full minute after it had closed behind her.
Now what? He looked around the room again to ensure he wasn’t being watched. He could feel eyes crawling all over him, even if he couldn’t see them. Sitting back down, he closed his eyes. He took a deep breath. He took another. His heart began to slow and clarity returned to his thoughts.
Ninety-eight miles, that’s really not that far. Not for me, at least. He smiled and opened his eyes. He looked back at the map and saw that Volos lay directly in the path to Delphi from here. He considered taking a bus from there, but figured that would take at least two hours, and he had no idea what was happening to Bridget. As her name echoed in his mind, he resolved to make the trek on foot.
Tugging the charger out of the wall, he wound the cord around his hand before stuffing it in his pocket. He walked out the door as the chimes tinkled overhead. He looked at the map on his phone again and stuffed that in the pocket of his blue cargo shorts, as well. He looked right, down the street in the direction he assumed his mom and grandpa went. The flagstone path curved away and descended past his line of vision. His family was out of sight. He looked left towards the main road and saw a couple little cars pass each other. He walked briskly towards the road.
13
The Temple of Apollo at Delphi
Gordie started uphill back the way they had come into town, walking on the side of the street as cars occasionally passed. He passed the town’s welcome sign and checked both directions before crossing the road to the guard rail. Looking over the edge, he saw the distant tide flowing in and out a number of miles away at the bottom of the steady slope. There was a large cluster of buildings on the coast line, which he figured to be Volos.
The slope before him had some vegetation. As his eye followed the decline he saw a few spots with heavy greenery, but it was mostly brown, indicating dry, dirty earth, like the stuff stretching away from the highway towards the trees behind him. Roads cut through the hillside below him, winding toward sea level. Large villas speckled the hillside, their red roofs catching his eye like those of the town. He looked down the highway and saw no cars coming in either direction. After a deep breath he exhaled sharply before he grabbed the rail and hurdled it.
He fell ten feet before his feet met earth and immediately started running involuntarily because of the slope’s grade. His arms windmilled as he tried to stay on his feet instead of tumbling down the mountainside. When he entered a patch of trees he didn’t dare close his eyes despite branches whipping him in the face. He spat out a couple leaves as he shot out the other side of the copse, where he ran on dirt again before reaching another patch of forest.
A large pine tree stood in his path. As he neared it he planted his foot and launched off it, springing aside before resuming his sprint. He approached another highway after a couple minutes of frantically maintaining his footing. A handful of cars rolled past and he hoped no one noticed the quickly approaching adolescent for fear that they would be alarmed and try to help. Fortunately, the road had become momentarily abandoned as he neared. The terrain leveled a few feet before the asphalt and he hit the flat earth hard, digging his heels in to slow his momentum before the next slope. He skidded to a halt and grabbed the guard rail.
Gordie’s heavy breathing was more from the adrenaline rush than exhaustion. He turned and looked up the hill to see his starting point. He was alarmed by the grade of the slope he had navigated and could barely see the rail that marked the starting line. Looking back down towards the gulf, he smiled. Volos appeared to be twice the size from his new vantage point. He checked both ways again and prepared for the next stage of his descent. It did not go as smoothly.
The second his feet hit the next slope, he stumbled and began to roll. Up was down and down was up as his baklava threatened to make a forceful escape from his stomach. He screamed as he tumbled, only stopping when he was dazed by hitting his head on a rock, or to spit out dirt. The world was a blur of brown, blue, and green, and the green was growing, which told him he was approaching another thicket. Rolling through a bush a few seconds later, he snatched at its branches. He wasn’t able to stop his momentum, but he did slow his pace. An ashy birch lay directly in front of him, and he planted his feet after his next revolution to spring towards the tree. The slender trunk met him immediately and he wrapped his arms around it as tightly as he could. The tree lurched, but remained rooted.
Gordie panted as the world around him spun. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on slowing his breaths. After a minute he was successful. Reopening his eyes, he
watched the world revolve again, but slowly, until it finally came to a stop. He waited for the nausea to fade. When it did he looked down and saw that the earth was ten feet below him, and that the tree he clung to jutted away from the mountain at a forty-five-degree angle.
He shimmied down the trunk; some of the papery bark peeled away from the tree. He dropped to the ground and fell backward on his butt after twisting in midair. His fingers dug into the dirt at his sides as he stared down the mountain. Not far below, another patch of asphalt awaited him, and he was grateful that he was able to stop before reaching the road. He sat there looking down for a while, a little apprehensive about resuming his descent.
Gordie rose to his feet. He started to slide and stuck his arms out to the side for balance as he leaned back. He froze in that position. He took a step downward. Then another. After a few more his speed increased until he was once again running against his will and releasing a constant stream of curses.
His feet slammed onto asphalt and he pressed his heels into the road to stop. When he reached the next railing he spat over the side and watched the saliva fall down until it hit the dirt of the next slope. He decided he was more than halfway to the water, a slight comfort in the face of the anxiety over his next descent.
“Here goes . . .” Taking another deep breath, he leapt over the rail.
A short while later Gordie reached the last railing and looked down at the waves; he could now hear them crashing. The slope below him ran until it met the beach: rocky dirt with patches of tufty grass disappearing into billions of white grains. This time when he leapt the rail he slid on his butt for a while, not caring about his already stained clothes. Rocks bruised his cheeks as he went.
Eventually he tried to come out of his slide and regain his footing . . . and he started tumbling again. The colors of the world swirled together into a vibrant canvas as he bounced and rolled down the mountain.