Soon, I found myself in one of the gift shops. It was a sea of blues and whites. Dream catchers hung from the roof. Paintings of the iconic Santorini houses leaned against the floor and littered the walls. There were snow globes with donkeys in them, and little bottles of ouzo. I grimaced, glancing down at the donkey tee and parachute pants Finn had bought me—my only option when I got dressed this morning. I looked the part in this store.
An old woman with gray-streaked hair and deep smile lines around her eyes appeared. “Protection from mati?”
“Excuse me?”
“Mati—the evil eye.” She held up a silver bracelet, its bands threaded with tiny crystal eyes. The irises were blue stones, and the pupils were black.
I spun on the spot, startled to see the same design everywhere. The eyes stared at me from dreamcatchers, glinted in jewelry, shimmered in blown glass, and were painted into canvases.
“To ward off jealousy.” She rattled the bracelet in my face. “I’m sure a pretty girl like you could use it.”
“I don’t know if I have any money.” I unzipped the hideous fanny pack and found it stuffed with cash. Guilt flickered at the edges of my conscience—part of me hated accepting anything from Finn. But another part, colder, whispered that if he had killed my grandmother, then bleeding him dry was the least I could do.
“I’ll take it, and can I grab a few of those sundresses?” I nodded at some pretty bohemian garments hanging from the ceiling.
She eyed me, chewing on her cheek before gathering a few dresses and the bracelet into a crinkling white plastic bag.
As I fastened the protection bracelet around my wrist, my thoughts drifted to the Battle of Ceruleus Templum—a war born of jealousy, a venom that spared no side. Perhaps the Greeks were right: jealousy was a slow poison, deadly to both the giver and the one it touched.
“Thank you.” I smiled at the woman and then wandered out of the store.
“Efcharistó,” she called after me.
Walking down the strip of shops, I toyed with my new bracelet. I passed a travel agency, its window lined with glossy posters—scuba diving, buggy hire, wine tours—until something caught my eye.Akrotiri Tour.The photo showed sun-bleached ruins and towering, dust-caked vases. I ran my fingers over it, and a flash of imagery consumed me.
The ruins vanished. In their place, vibrant terracotta buildings rose around a smiling Minoan sailor, his wife and young son at his side as they strolled through the thriving settlement. My breath hitched, and pain pounded my temples.
I winced, pressing a hand to my head—another vision. My empathic sight was strengthening, but for reasons I couldn’t explain, it only ever showed me him—Manannán.
A bell tinkled as I strode into the store and forked out more of Finn’s money from my atrocious fanny pack for the tour and a bus ticket.
A thirty-minute bus ride later, I stepped into the sheltering structure that now housed the ruins of Akrotiri, rubbing the goose bumps that had formed on my arms.
The entire site was tucked beneath a modern, light-filled roof to protect the ancient remains from the elements. It cast an eerie glow over this citythat was frozen in time. Raised wooden walkways crisscrossed the dig site, allowing me to peer down into the layout of a once-thriving Minoan town.
“Around 1625 BC, the eruption suffocated the whole island in a thick layer of debris, around the same time the Minoans began to disappear from the pages of history...” a tour guide was saying.
As I walked along the tourist platform, a searing pain forked through my temple. I gripped the railing as the ruins disintegrated, and a vision unfolded. Manannán was dining with his human wife and child in a vibrantly painted house. Perhaps he had resided here thousands of years ago.
Another sharp twinge seared my mind, and the scene shifted. Manannán was in the tumultuous ocean as his son was torn from his arms, and then Manannán sank into the depths, his olive eyes burning red as he transformed into the God of the Drowned.
I stiffened, my heart pounding as the images faded, and soon I was back at the ruins of Akrotiri. Below me, crumbled buildings rose from the ash-packed earth. Ceramic jars rested in corners, cracked and half-buried, and the outline of staircases spiraled upward into vanished floors.
I had barely centered myself when, with another jolt of pain, the world swam out of focus, replaced by new visions of Manannán. This time, he sat slumped on an algae-covered throne within a towering stone fortress beneath the sea. His once-kind eyes burned with hatred, narrowed beneath drifting strands of dark hair. The golden hue of his skin had faded to a sickly pallor, and a sea monster twined its tentacles around the base of his throne.
I sucked in a breath as the vision morphed into Manannán on land with a beautiful dark-haired woman, and I knew immediately that it was Siana. Shivers prickled my skin as I watched them embrace on the windswept grass, teetering at the edge of a cliff above a churning sea. Perhaps somewhere in Scotland.
“I wish we could stay like this forever, amor meus.” Manannán gently traced his fingers along the curve of her chin as they lay entwined. His hair was messy, as if her hands had just been tangled in it, and he wore a loose white linen shirt and black pants that clung to him in the sea breeze.
“This time with you is enough,” Siana replied.
“Samhain, the equinoxes, the solstices—none of it will ever be enough. I curse the gods and their celestial games.” Manannán raked a hand through his hair and pulled away from her embrace to settle splay legged in the grass, his eyes narrowing on the restless sea.
“Are you going to ruin what little time we have together as man and woman?” Siana wrapped her hands around his neck, kissing him until he softened and pulled her onto him.
My heart ached as the realization washed over me: Siana and Manannán had only been able to be together as man and woman when the veil between the living and the dead was at its thinnest.
The vision swirled to a glittering turquoise ocean and a dark rocky beach, presumably somewhere in the Mediterranean.
