The Gate of Days - Book of Time 2

by Guillaume Prevost

  4 The Delphi Shepherd

  Hunched over the short grass, Sam had the painful feeling that he’d been turned into a human torch, then shot through space at the speed of light. Yet his fingers, hands, and shirtsleeves showed no burn marks. “You will know the immortal heat,” the Bruges alchemists old book of spells had said. It might have added: “And your guts will be turned inside out.” Sam could feel his breakfast cereal fighting his stomach, determined to escape. By taking a few deep breaths, he was just able to repress his nausea.

  “Aha! You’re back!”

  The voice came from behind him, and Sam turned around as quickly as his uncomfortable position allowed.

  “Aw, I guess it isn’t you!” said the voice with a touch of disappointment.

  Ten yards away, a young man of about twenty was watching him curiously. He had dark, curly hair, and was wearing a patched old tunic tied with a string around his waist. He held a knobbed staff in his right hand, and apparently went around barefoot.

  “Are you his son?” the young man asked, squinting as if he were straining to remember something.

  Sam didn’t react immediately. His first instinct was to look around for the stone statue. It stood nearby, fortunately, with the museum coin glinting brightly in its cavity. Sam took the coin and slowly stood up, feeling dizzy. He had landed in a dry, mountainous place, with thickets and scrawny trees growing between the rocks. The sea lay below in the distance. But which sea?

  “Hey, won’t you talk to me?”

  The young man sounded annoyed, but Sam needed a few more seconds to gather his wits. He could hear bleating very close at hand, just on the other side of the hill. Was this guy a shepherd?

  “I’m sorry, I…” Sam began. He paused before continuing, surprised by the unusually warm, melodious os and oi sounds of the words that sprang naturally from his mouth. Instant language ability was another inexplicable facet of the powerful magic worked by the stone statue. “I… I’m a bit lost.”

  The shepherd shot him a suspicious glance. “Your father told you to come, didn’t he?”

  My father; Sam repeated to himself. Could this be Vlad Tepes’s era? Despite his slight remaining dizziness, he took a few steps toward the young man.

  “My father? Do you — do you know my father?”

  “You bet I know him! He did the same thing you did the other day.”

  The shepherd was pointing at the stone statue, which was half covered with weeds.

  “You can tell me where he is, then?”

  “If he told you to come, you must know that, don’t you?” “Er, yeah, of course,” Sam agreed cautiously. “That is, more or less … What I don’t know is exactly where he is.”

  The young man folded his arms on his chest and looked stubborn. “If you don’t know that, it means he didn’t tell you. If he didn’t tell you, then you’re not his son. If you’re not his son …” He hesitated a moment before continuing: “Give me two ram’s heads and I’ll talk with you.”

  “Two ram’s heads?” said Sam in astonishment. “I don’t have two ram’s heads!”

  “He gave me two ram’s heads, he did! If you don’t give them to me, it’s because you’re nasty. If you’re nasty, it’s because you’re not nice. If you’re not nice, I won’t talk with you.”

  Sam realized that the young man, despite being older than he was, still thought and spoke like a young child. The shepherd suddenly turned and ran off, singing as he went. “Yes, yes, he came! He sure did come! He had something to do, oh yes, something to do! He gave me two ram’s heads!”

  In spite of his stiff legs, Sam was forced to run after him. “Hey, wait! I have to find my father! It’s really important!”

  But the shepherd raced nimbly among the stones, and Sam, who wasn’t used to walking barefoot, watched as he quickly disappeared into the bushes. When Sam reached the top of the hill, he saw a steep valley where some thirty goats were grazing. They looked up as they saw their shepherd racing toward them, still repeating his singsong: “I made pretty earrings from the pretty ram’s heads. He’s the one who gave them to me because he had something he had to do!”

  Sam slowed to a walk and shouted: “Hey! I have to talk to you!”

  The dog guarding the herd spotted Sam and rushed toward him, barking. A big ferocious animal with tawny fur, it stopped dead a yard from Sam and growled while its master cheered him on: “Aha! Argos will take care of the nasty man who doesn’t want to give his ram’s heads! Good dog, Argos, good dog!”

  But contrary to what Sam feared, the animal didn’t attack him. Instead, it slowly stretched out its muzzle and sniffed his calf. And when Sam extended his hand in greeting, the dog gave it a little lick.

  At that, the shepherd’s behavior changed completely. “Aha! Good dog, good for you! If Argos and you are friends, it means you aren’t nasty. You may not be your father’s son, but you’re not nasty either. Good dog, Argos!”

  Sam was able to walk calmly down the slope with the dog at his side, wagging its tail. It was all hard to believe. The air was warm and the sky a deep blue. The goats resumed their grazing. It could have been a stroll in the country on any beautiful spring day, except that Sam didn’t know what part of the world he was in, and certainly not what time period.

  When Sam caught up with the herd of goats, the young man spread his arms and then shook Sam’s hand enthusiastically, as if they were meeting after an absence of many years.

  “My name is Metaxos, and I wasn’t sure you were coming as a friend. But Argos knew, didn’t he? Follow me. I’ll give you milk and honey and we’ll share the hut, all right? Maybe you’ve come to look for something, right? And maybe after that…”

  His eyes were shining, and Sam’s heart sank. Metaxos reminded him of a bum he’d run into several times on Barenboim Street. Depending on his mood, he either insulted passersby or tried to kiss them. The town welfare service took him away one day, and he hadn’t been seen since.

  “I’m looking for my father,” said Sam. “Do you know where he is?”

  “Your father?” said the shepherd with a big smile. “What if he wasn’t your father? Because if it was your father, he’d tell you where he was!”

  “Vlad Tepes,” continued Sam. “Does that name mean anything to you?”

  “Vladtepes? That’s a funny name, by the ram’s horn! Not a name from around here, anyway. What’s your name? I gave you my name, you have to give me yours.”

  “Er, Sam.”

  His answer seemed to fill the shepherd with joy. “Aha! Sam! Sam of the stone! Samos, yes, of course, Samos! Are you hungry, Samos? Come to the hut, I tell you. I’ll give you milk and honey!”

  Without giving Sam time to think, he whistled between his fingers to call his goats and began to drive them toward the bottom of the valley, while shouting incomprehensibly: “Oldiloi! Hey, Oldiloi! Oldiloi!”

  Argos followed the herd, barking, and the whole menagerie raced down the hill at breakneck speed. The shepherd, the goats, the dog — they were all crazy!

  Sam was soon left behind and had to hustle not to lose sight of the group, bruising his feet on the rough ground. After twenty minutes of an exhausting cross-country hike, he reached the edge of an olive grove. A rough wooden hut stood nearby. The goats had scattered among the trees and Metaxos was lighting a fire. There was no other house in sight.

  “Where were you, Samos?” shouted Metaxos. “I thought you went back into your stone!”

  “Its just that…” Sam gasped, “you’re a little fast for me.” “Aha, of course! I’m the best shepherd in Delphi. Down there, they say, ‘Metaxos runs like the wind!”’

  Delphi, thought Sam. The name reminded him of something, but what? Tilpay more attention in history class next year, he promised himself.

  The young shepherd wiped his soot-blackened hands and looked his guest over. “By the way, did you bring anything?” “Did I bring anything?”

  Metaxos shook his head, looking disappointed. “You don’t really
know enough to be his son! Why did you come here, if you didn’t bring anything?”

  “To find him! I’m looking for my father, I told you!”

  “But he was dressed like you and at least three times older than you, for sure! I don’t have a father, did you know that?” “I’m really sorry, I —”

  But the shepherd, his face somber, went on with his thought. “I don’t have a mother either. No, no mother.”

  “I — I lost my mother too,” admitted Sam, who was starting to wonder if he would ever get the information he needed.

  “You lost your mother? How?”

  “Well…” It was hard to explain that she’d been in a car crash three years earlier, and had died of her injuries after the car rolled down the embankment a couple of times — especially since Sam suspected he’d landed in a time when the wheel might not have been invented yet! So an automobile …

  “She fell,” he said. “From the top of a hill. A hill like that one.”

  “By Apollo!” exclaimed the young man in horror. “Hills are for picking flowers and herding animals, not for dying! You must be very sad, Samos. It’s not the same for me. I don’t know who to weep for because I never knew my parents. I was left on the steps of the great temple on the twelfth day of the month of Bysios. The priests took me in.”

  Priests, temple, Apollo … Sam was somewhere in antiquity. He was sorry he’d never learned to tell the Greek gods from the Roman ones.

  “But it seems I’m not to live in the city,” said Metaxos. “The priests made that clear to me. I’m like my animals. All I need is sky and grass, and my dog with me. But I’m a good shepherd, I am! The best in Delphi! And I always save my prettiest goats for the temple!”

  Sam felt a wave of pity rising in him. Metaxos wasn’t crazy; he was just terribly lonely.

  “I have to find my father,” Sam whispered quietly.

  The shepherd suddenly seemed to understand. “Of course you have to find your father, Samos. You already lost your mother, so … Come on, come into the hut.”

  He took a burning stick from the fire and lit a small clay lamp near the door. They entered the modest dwelling, which was built of branches plastered with a rough mix of clay and straw. There were just two rooms. One had a stone fireplace in the center. The shepherd explained that he used the other room to pen animals that were sick or were about to have babies. If Aunt Evelyn had dropped in, she surely would have whipped out her air freshener: The place smelled like the monkey house at the Sainte-Mary Zoo.

  Metaxos shone his light on a pile of things at the very back that at first glance looked like garbage — shells, bits of twisted metal, scraps of cloth — but that he seemed to prize.

  “This is where I store my treasures! Look!” He bent over and pulled out some sharp fragments of a hard green substance. “You see, Samos! Your father left these here! Yes, your father!”

  Sam held them up to the flame. Plastic, apparently. Pieces of green plastic. “Were there many of them?”

  “Oh, more than I have fingers on my hands. It was afterward, when he came back here, that he crushed everything with his foot. And this strange pottery of his, it was everywhere. But I saw him do it, yes I did! I even saw what I wasn’t supposed to see!”

  “What did you see, Metaxos? You can tell me, can’t you?”

  The shepherd’s face darkened. “No, no, I have to keep quiet. I promised. Silent as the grave, or else …” He glanced outside, fearful of being observed. Then he pointed at the pieces of plastic again. “But I can show you that, can’t I, Samos? That’s not the same, is it?”

  “This is the thing my father brought with him in the stone, is that right?”

  “Yes, yes! You must be his son, to know that! He came with that thing, all green!”

  “Was there anything else?”

  Metaxos hesitated. Then, while still watching the olive trees outside, he reached into the pile of bric-a-brac, pulled out a small metal rod, and handed it reverently to Sam.

  “I heard the noise, you know. Oh yes, with my two ears! A noise that could only have come from the gods!”

  Sam rolled the object in his hand. It was a drill bit, probably from a cordless drill, which wouldn’t need to be plugged in once it was charged. What in the world had his father wanted to do with a drill?

  “He gave you two ram’s heads so you wouldn’t say anything, right?”

  Metaxos put his hand on his mouth as if he weren’t allowed to answer.

  Sam continued, “And it was the green thing that he brought that made so much noise? Did you get anything else from my father?”

  The shepherd glanced furtively at the other side of the room. On a battered wooden chest — it looked salvaged from a shipwreck — stood a kind of doll dressed in gray cloth. Sam took the lamp and walked over. It turned out to be a clay statuette about six inches tall, a roughly female shape along the lines of a well-endowed lady wrestler, with a crudely sketched face.

  “I made it myself,” declared Metaxos proudly.

  “It’s very pretty. Is it a woman?”

  “Oh yes, but it’s more than a woman. It’s my own mother!”

  “Your mother? I thought your parents abandoned you.”

  “This is my new mother, the one who protects me. I mean my mother in Delphi. Sometimes I try to go see her, but I’m really not allowed to. Argos looks after the animals when I’m not here.”

  What he said was becoming more and more jumbled, as if the mention of his “mother in Delphi” upset him.

  “What is she called?”

  “She isn’t called … well, not by her name. She’s … she’s the oracle, you understand?”

  “The oracle?”

  “Don’t you know the oracle, Samos? The Oracle of Delphi? Your father, he knew about her.”

  “Oh yes, of course, the oracle,” Sam recovered, without having the slightest idea what he was talking about. “I’m just a little surprised. The oracle, that’s really somebody.”

  “That’s for sure! But it’s true that she’s very fond of me. And your father made this tunic,” he added, stroking the little statue. “He did a good job, didn’t he?”

  Allan must have done it to make friends with the shepherd — in addition to giving him two ram’s heads that he had found God knows where. Because honestly, who travels through time carrying the heads of sheep?

  “You can hold her if you like,” added Metaxos. “She’ll be good to you too.”

  Sam delicately took the small curvaceous figurine. Her dress was cut from a rough linen much like what he himself was wearing — further proof that his father had been there. As he turned the doll over, he noticed lines and dots on the cloth. “Did my father draw these?”

  “Oh, yes. He’s very good with his hands. Want me to show you?”

  He untied the string that held the tunic on the statue and handed the cloth to Sam. Unfolded, the dress was a rectangle the size of a sheet of paper, with holes for the head and arms. A series of little squares was drawn on it in charcoal, with dots and letters that Sam couldn’t decipher.

  “Do you know what this means?”

  “No. I don’t know how to read. The priests tried to teach me once, but…”

  The squares appeared to be houses lined up one after the other, with arrows and notes in some foreign writing. It must be a map, thought Sam, with street names for landmarks. He was about to ask if a neighborhood like the one pictured existed in Delphi when Argos began to bark loudly. Metaxos rushed to the door. A group of men armed with staffs was climbing the path to the hut.

  “Hey, Metaxos, are you there? Don’t be afraid, my boy. We mean you no harm. We just have some questions to ask you.”

  “It’s the good priest,” whispered the young man. “He’s come looking for me! He thinks that… he thinks that…”

  He wasn’t able to finish, and his whole body was trembling.

  “What does he think?” tried Sam.

  But the shepherd only retreated deeper into his
hut as the group approached.

  “Ho, Metaxos! We know you’re there! Your goats and your dog are here. Don’t be childish!”

  Sam decided he had better intervene. “He’s here. He isn’t hiding!” he called.

  A half-dozen men were crossing the olive grove. They were all bearded and swarthy and wore the same kind of tunic as Metaxos, except that their tunics were clean. The oldest one, whose white hair fell to his shoulders, was probably the “good priest.” He walked up to the door and looked at Sam. “Who are you?”

  “I’m a friend of Metaxos. He’s coming.”

  “I’ve never seen you around here. What is your name?”

  “Its Samos,” said the shepherd, suddenly appearing. “Yes, a friend of one of my friends. Samos of Samos!”

  “Samos of Samos?” repeated the old man. “Your parents didn’t have much imagination! But I want to talk to Metaxos. Come here, my boy.”

  He seemed annoyed by something, whereas the others looked stern. The priest put his hand on the shoulder of the shepherd, who lowered his eyes. “Metaxos, did you go down into the city three days ago?”

  The young man stared at his bare feet, rocking slightly back and forth.

  “Metaxos, its very important for me to know. Did you go to town three days ago?”

  The silence seemed to go on forever. All that could be heard was the buzzing of insects, the goats bleating a little distance away, and the quiet panting of Argos, who was lying under a tree.

  “I think you were right, Lydias,” said the old man with a sigh. “He must have been in Delphi that day.”

  “Of course I was right,” exclaimed a short brown-haired man, waving his staff. “I saw him with my own eyes. He was prowling near the Treasury of the Athenians and —”

  Metaxos suddenly bent down, slipped sideways, and tried to get away. But they all grabbed him at once, and he was soon collared and pinned to the ground.

  “I didn’t do anything, good priest!” he shouted as two men pulled him up, holding him tightly. “I’m a nice shepherd.”