The Scrolls of Velia

by John McWilliams

  “There’ll be excellent food,” Antonio added, “and you’ll get to see the ruins.”

  I really didn’t want to get deeper into the Apollonian cult; it was bad enough we had to deal with the Ravens. I looked at Adella and tried to convey this with my eyes.

  “Maybe a small break would be nice,” Adella said, conveying with her own eyes that she thought I was being ridiculous. “We’ve been traveling so much. One night of good food and relaxation…” She turned to Isabella. “Vino?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m in,” Adella said.

  “Me too,” Mary agreed.

  “And you, Henry?” Adella asked.

  “Sure… fine,” I said, having weighed my nonexistent alternatives.

  Isabella took Mary and Adella across the street so they could get ready—whatever that entailed—and Gabriel, Antonio, and I sat on the porch, drinking beer and talking about skydiving.

  Somehow, the conversation kept leading back to the Celebration, and how out of place I was going to look next to Mary, who would definitely be borrowing something elegant from Isabella. Eventually, I gave in.

  Antonio, who was about my height, but thinner, had more stylish clothes than anyone I had ever met. I picked out a pair of slacks and a loose-fitting white shirt that both men seemed to admire. Their admiration was expressed in Italian, but I got the gist of it.

  “Molto bello.” Antonio nodded approvingly.

  I imagined Mary all fancied up, and suddenly I hoped I was bello enough.

  • • •

  Antonio parked his vintage Fiat in a large field where two to three hundred Apollonians had set up picnic tables in front of the Temple of Apollo. The picnickers milled about, sampling food, bread, and wine, while a string quartet played something that reminded me of a Grey Poupon commercial. The sun had set, and a crescent moon was low on the horizon. The women had driven over earlier, so it was just Antonio, Gabriel, and I making our way through the crowd.

  We found Isabella, Adella, and Mary standing before the temple’s immense columns. Mary turned as we approached—and took my breath away. She wore a flowing white gown that was almost alive in the breeze as it caressed her perfectly sculptured form. Her eyes met mine, and she brushed back a wisp of golden hair.

  I had to consciously place my feet as I stepped forward. It seemed the part of my brain responsible for walking had left its post—it was probably at the back of my eye sockets staring out at Mary.

  “Well, gentlemen,” Adella said, “don’t hand out the compliments all at once.”

  I drew my eyes away from Mary. Adella and Isabella were also wearing gowns: Isabella’s purple, Adella’s blue.

  “You look stunning,” Gabriel said. “All of you.”

  “Gorgeous,” Antonio agreed.

  The three women looked at me.

  “Not bad,” I said with a smile.

  “Not bad?” Adella exclaimed. “We look hot.”

  “He’s just teasing.” Mary looked me up and down. “Wow—no jeans. And you actually got him to take off those boots.”

  “I thought you liked my boots.”

  “They’re okay—you know, sometimes.”

  “Well, pardon me for not dressing like a Raven.”

  “Henry.” She tilted her head toward the temple.

  “You think the temple takes offense at the mention of Ravens?”

  “No, but it’s kind of rude to—”

  “Mary,” Adella interjected, “why don’t you take Henry around the temple and tell him some of the things Isabella told us about the place? And try not to kill each other.”

  Mary and I walked along the outside of the wooden fence that ran around the temple. Torches, positioned every twenty feet or so, lit the way.

  “Is it me, or are these people a little weird?” Mary glanced over her shoulder at the gathering.

  “You mean the people who worship a god who carries the sun across the sky in a golden chariot?”

  “Isabella was so insistent on me wearing this gown, I thought she was preparing me for human sacrifice.”

  “Yeah, well, Gabriel and Antonio were just as bad. I can’t believe I’m wearing another dude’s clothes. They do look good though, don’t they?”

  “You look great. How do I look?” Mary spun around.

  “Ridiculously beautiful—of course.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Where are we going, by the way?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I guess we’ll just walk around this thing.” She pressed up beside me and leaned in. “We’re being watched.”

  We both glanced back. Faces quickly turned away as if they hadn’t just been spying on us.

  “That’s a little creepy,” I said.

  “And what’s Adella doing?” Mary pointed.

  Standing apart from the others, Adella was staring up at the stars.

  “As long as she’s not communicating with the gods,” I said.

  We resumed our walk.

  “So, what’d Isabella tell you about this place?” I asked.

  “Apparently, some people believe this is Hera’s temple, and some people believe it’s Poseidon’s. But the Apollonians claim there’s something about the altar that proves it’s Apollo’s.” She waved her hand dismissively. “Then she went on about the Doric columns—I didn’t pay much attention to the architectural stuff.” She took my hand and dragged me about twenty yards farther from the temple. “This is interesting, though. You see this?”

  We looked down at the remnants of a foundation. I tapped it lightly with my shoe.

  “This is from a house,” Mary said. “Apparently, Roman neighborhoods sprung up around here. Can you imagine?” She looked toward the temple as the violins reached us across the night air. “The temple would have been only hundreds of years old at that time—ruins, of course, but like ‘old building’ ruins, not the super old ruins we consider them today. But still, kids grew up around this place. Think of how many generations must have grown up playing in and around Apollo’s Temple, hanging out, talking about life, about what they planned to do when they get older…”

  “And making out,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  “A lot of stories are hidden in those columns.”

  Mary nudged me. “We have company.”

  Isabella approached. She had a wine bottle and two glasses in her hands.

  “Just in case you get thirsty,” she said, handing each of us a glass and filling it. She handed me the bottle, then smiled and left for her flock at the front of the temple.

  “That was pretty nice of her,” Mary said.

  “It was.”

  “To?” Mary raised her glass.

  “To the people who lived in this house.”

  We saluted the invisible dwelling above the foundation, and drank.

  “To the generations of kids who hung out in Apollo’s temple.” Mary raised her glass to the columned shrine.

  We drank.

  “Hey, we should go inside,” Mary said.

  “Inside the temple? I’m pretty sure that fence is there for a reason.”

  “You want to sneak into the Raven’s Nest, but you won’t cross a wooden fence?”

  Mary started walking toward the back of the temple. I shrugged and followed.

  When we were out of sight of the Celebration, I hopped over the wooden railing, set the wine bottle and glasses on the temple’s steps, then returned to lift Mary and her flowing gown over the fence. Her hair smelled of cherry blossoms.

  “You can probably set me down,” she said, halfway to the temple.

  “Oh, right.”

  “Thank you.” She adjusted her gown.

  We climbed the stairs and stepped into the temple. Torchlight filtered in through the columns.

  “You can really sense the power of this place.” Mary ran her fingers along one of the crumbled walls.

  “Well, it’s seen a lot.” I tried to sound casual, but I was feeling it too. There was
a power to this place. Something ineffable, but familiar.

  “I was going to tell you a secret,” Mary said, leaning against one of the columns. “But now I’m not so sure.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s about that astronaut.”

  “Your long-lost love?”

  “I never said that.” She walked farther into the temple.

  “You sort of implied it.”

  “Well…” She paused. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Just forget it.”

  “Come on. You brought it up.”

  “It’s not really important.”

  “I’m a good listener.” I poured her more wine. “In vino veritas—as they say.”

  “Well, the thing is, I was only really trying to find him so I could clear things up.” She took a sip.

  “Clear what things up?”

  She sighed. “I knew him for like two hours and wrote him a note telling him I wanted to run away with him. I included my email address and slipped it into his pocket before he left. What an idiot.” She shook her head. “So, once reason returned, I knew what I had to do. I had to find him to make sure he didn’t think I was still like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a goofball.”

  “You were what, sixteen? I bet he was just flattered as hell that a pretty young girl had a crush on him. And if he was as awesome as you say he was, he knew that’s all it was.” I looked up at the stars. “My father always says, no one gets through life without making a fool out of themselves at least once a day. But since everyone’s so freaked out about their own screw-ups, they don’t have time to dwell on yours. So get up, brush yourself off, and get on with it. Another embarrassing moment’s right around the corner.”

  “So…” Mary moved into a column of torchlight. “What have you ever done that’s embarrassing?”

  “Plenty.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, I killed that guy.”

  “Henry, that’s not embarrassing.”

  “For me it was. I didn’t mean to kill him. I just wanted to, you know, knock him out.”

  “Well, he deserved what he got.”

  “He deserved something. But not that.” I drank my wine. “Although, that event was eye-opening for me.”

  “In what way?”

  “It’s surprisingly easy to kill someone. As easy as letting go of this glass.”

  “Well, don’t do that.” Mary looked at me for a long moment, then out at the torches along the temple’s perimeter. “Maybe it’s the Italian air,” she said, “but somehow the world seems so much more… alive.”

  “I know exactly what you mean.” I inhaled the scent of the temple’s damp stone, the distant cut grass, and Mary’s delicious perfumes.

  “You know—” Mary spun around and looked up at the stars. “I always thought it was such a mystery that people exist. But after talking with Adella, it seems strange that anything exists. According to her, the universe couldn’t have been an accident, and yet, it couldn’t have been created, either. The Big Bang, or any kind of creation theory, by definition, is something that ‘happens.’ And things that ‘happen’ require time. But time is just an illusion that we see from inside the universe. Outside the universe, again, by definition, there is no time. So we couldn’t have ‘happened.’ Whatever exists, simply exists.”

  She looked at me. “Henry, we exist. We’ve always existed. How crazy is that?”

  “Pretty crazy,” I said.

  “And then there’s this idea that the universe has a built-in, boundless purpose. Look at this place.” She gestured around us. “Twenty-five hundred years ago this building was state-of-the-art technology. Now we have cell phones and cars and planes—”

  “And spaceships,” I said.

  “That’s right. But why? Why shouldn’t piling stones be the limit to technology? Why should technology be boundless?”

  “You sure it is?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Well, I suppose the day we find out it isn’t, things’ll get pretty boring.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “Boring and pointless. So doesn’t it seem a little weird that we exist in a world where, given enough science, anything’s possible?” She walked deeper into the darkened temple. “The whole thing makes me very suspicious.”

  I followed her. “Of course, it could also be that you’re a little drunk.”

  Mary pointed skyward. “That’s Ursa Major, and that’s Ursa Minor.” She handed me her wine glass and started to spin, letting her arms lift from her sides.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Adella said my arms will lift only when the stars are spinning.”

  “Mach’s principle,” I said. “The idea is that because of the total motion of all the mass out there in the universe, we have centrifugal force here, locally.”

  “I’ve always felt connected to the Earth and the sun.” Mary stopped. “That connection seems obvious, since we have to breathe and eat and drink, and we need the sunlight for energy to grow. But now I know that the whole thing is connected.” She spun around once again. “Look, I’m connected to the universe.”

  I put our glasses and the bottle down and took her hand. She spun into my arms, and we danced to the waltz played by the string quartet. We drew closer to the music, gliding through the temple under the stars, the torchlight sparkling in Mary’s eyes.

  I kissed her deeply.

  After a moment, it occurred to me that the music had stopped. The chatter of the Apollonians had stopped. Even the clanking of plates and glasses had stopped.

  Mary and I looked at each other quizzically. Slowly, we turned and looked out from the columns at the front of the temple.

  The entire Apollonian congregation was bowed before us.

  Chapter 12

  Mary and I slowly turned and walked back to the center of the temple.

  “Did that just happen?” she whispered as we slipped into the darkness.

  “Is there any way we can pretend it didn’t?” I found the bottle of wine on one of the temple’s crumbling walls. I didn’t bother with the glasses. I took a drink and handed the bottle to Mary.

  She drank, and we waited.

  After what seemed like an eternity, the music started up again.

  We finished the wine, stalled for a good half hour, then casually strolled outside the fence line to the front of the temple. We approached Adella and Isabella. They smiled pleasantly, said hello. We said hello.

  Apparently, we were going to pretend nothing had happened.

  Eventually, as the conversation continued and we were joined by others, I began to wonder if it even had. Maybe Mary and I had just coincidentally danced our way into a moment of respect for the temple. Maybe they hadn’t even seen us. This seemed pretty unlikely, but I was happy to grab at any alternative.

  It was sometime after midnight when we finally left the Celebration. Mary and Adella went to Isabella’s house, and I went to Antonio and Gabriel’s. I shared a cup of coffee with the two—and still, neither of them said a word about the “incident.” Then, feeling tired—and a little weirded out—I retired to one of the spare bedrooms.

  As I fell asleep, I dreamt of Apollo’s temple.

  And Mary.

  • • •

  I awoke to gunfire.

  Did I just dream that? I sat up.

  I heard voices in the living room and quickly got dressed. When I got down to the living room, an out-of-breath kid of maybe eighteen was talking to Antonio and Gabriel. “The Ravens shot Gino,” he said. “He and Paul were at the north end of the street. Paul’s okay, but they shot Gino in the chest.”

  “Where’s Gino now?” Antonio asked.

  “They’re taking him to Casa Di Cura Malzoni,” the kid said.

  “What about Isabella, Adella, and Mary?” I asked

  Before anyone could answer, a car screeched to a halt outside. Gabriel and I rushed to the door and looked over the edge of the porch. From our posit
ion, all we could see was the back end of a black Audi.

  “We have any weapons in here?” I asked.

  They just stared back at me.

  Apparently not.

  “We had security at both ends of the street,” Gabriel said. “We didn’t think we needed any. Where are you going?”

  “Across the street, naturally.”

  As stealthily as I could, I made my way down the wooden steps and under the porch, past a display of garden tools in front of Antonio’s hardware store. Adjusting the handle of a pickaxe so it wouldn’t fall over, I proceeded toward the black-suited man standing beside the Audi. He was staring at Isabella’s house.

  At the last second, he turned—and I punched him on the chin. He collapsed onto the pavement.

  Antonio and Gabriel crept up behind me. “Get his gun,” I said, keeping my focus on Isabella’s house.

  Gabriel retrieved the gun and handed it to me. “Fifteen-round clip, one in the chamber,” he said.

  “Thanks. You two stay here. And stay low.”

  I ran across Isabella’s yard and through the side gate. But just as I started up the rear steps, gunfire erupted from out in the street. I quickly doubled back.

  By the time I made it to the driveway, the black Audi was racing away. Antonio and Gabriel, unarmed, must have fled.

  Since sneaking around the back to get the jump on the Ravens was now pointless, I ran straight up Isabella’s front steps. “It’s me—Henry!” I called out as I opened the screen door.

  “Henry?” Isabella replied.

  A bullet hit the porch light, and I dove inside.

  Isabella was behind an overturned table, a blood-soaked towel wrapped around her arm. I raced over to her and took a look at the wound.

  “It’s not that bad,” I said, applying pressure. “Where’s—”

  A shot blasted through a windowpane, spraying shards of glass everywhere.

  “Where’s Mary and Adella?” I asked.

  Isabella’s hands were shaking, but her voice was surprisingly calm. “The Ravens abducted them from the beach. They shot two Apollonian guards and then broke in here. They told me to tell you that they had Mary and Adella and that they’re willing to talk.”