It wasn’t supposed to be quiet. There were supposed to be people here working, preparing for the trip and their next set of wealthy guests. There was supposed to belife. There weren’t even fishermen preparing their gear.
“Hello?” she called out, eyeing the abandoned boat. “Kalimera?”
No one answered her.
“Good morning?” she yelled a little louder this time, her stomach sinking when there was still no reply.
She was far enough down the dock that there were only a few people about, some looked her way as she glanced about. When she caught their eyes in question, they snapped their gazes away from hers.
“Dammit,” she muttered under her breath.
Cyane returned to her backpack and sat down, digging her phone back out. She didn’t have the number forHermes’s Mirth’scaptain, but she had the information he’d given her scribbled out on one of his flyers. She double-checked the name, the yacht with the picture, and glowered, looking around again. The other captains, and crew workers nearby, had gone back to what they were doing.
Signal was shoddy, but she was able to load the booking site of the ship. She tried the number which went straight to voicemail. The nerves in her belly grew with each passing minute.
Of course, this would happen.Cyane tilted her head towards the sky, sighing.
If no one arrived soon to prepare and board the yacht, she didn’t know what she was going to do…let alonehowshe was going to get to Syracuse in time for Thesmophoria.
Cyane’s heart pounded. She didn’t want to miss the festival or the chance to meet her family. The thought alone made her want to scream, as if all of her careful planning, frugal spending, and furious discipline was being stomped into the dirt. It hadn’t been easy saving up the money for this trip—or finding work along the way. And even with what she had saved, she was forced to backpack and stay at the cheapest hostels.
Be prepared, be diligent, keep your expectations high...but not too high.
I have to be there.
She didn’t know why, but her life depended on it.
A thread had woven around her heart, constricting it more every year. The festival honored the Greek goddesses Demeter and Persephone. It made no sense to her why the note wanted her to be at the celebration. But it’d become more than a note, it’d become her compulsion.
Maybe it was because she’d never had a mother growing up, and once she’d discovered her first mythology book, the idea that she might have had a godly matriarch such as Demeter made Cyane’s childlike fancies magical. In her young imagination, she’d had a mother like the great Demeter waiting to meet her, and Cyane was just waiting to be found, embraced in loving arms. A hold that was unending and unbreakable.
Those sad musings returned hot and harrowing, tightening the invisible band around her heart.
Cyane inhaled deeply, calming her nerves. She glanced at the other people nearby and licked her drying lips. Rising to her feet, she approached the person closest to her, a middle-aged man checking a knot.
“Excuse me?Signomi?” she asked as he turned his head. She turned to point to theHermes’s Mirth. “Do you know where I can find its captain? I’m supposed to meet him.”
The man looked at the yacht then back at her, crinkling his eyes. He shook his head, made a dismissive noise with his throat, and went back to his work. Cyane stood there, biting her lower lip, before approaching the next closest person. Another man, younger by a few years, scanned her from head-to-toe, waved his hand once, and shooed her away like an unwanted cat before she could say anything more than a hello.
Dejected, she returned to her backpack and pulled it on. There was no help for her here. The only ounce of happiness on the dock was the blatant name of the yacht she was supposed to board. Mirth was the last emotion she felt. After trepidation, excitement, nervousness…Fuuuck.
Cyane pulled her phone from her pocket again. She was smart, she was capable. It was time to figure out a backup plan. If she only—
“Are you okay, miss?”
She peeked up to see a fit, elderly man walking towards her from the end of the dock. The golden-dawn glow haloed his already sun-bleached clothing. Even so, his jacket was black, albeit faded, and his skin was olive-toned, lined, and taut.
She lowered her phone. “Not quite. I was supposed to meet with the captain ofHermes’s Mirthfor a job.”
He stopped a short distance from her. “A job? OnHermes’s Mirth? That would be something.”
She cocked a brow. “Oh? Why?”
“Haven’t seen new flesh on the ship in ages, not unless it was a booking. Hermes’s boat is a family business,” he said.
Cyane’s stomach twisted.But I’d talked to the captain himself...
“Oh, don’t look so put-out,” the man said. “Perhaps I can help you.”
