His nose was large, the shape of it pleasing, a beard beneath it dark as night. Katerina opened her mouth, but any further reprimands were gone, her words lost, taken like dust by the wind. She looked past him then, back down toward the village, part of her expecting the view to be different, altered in some way, as she had been, by his presence.
“What is your name?” he asked.
Katerina felt a trembling in her arms and folded them tightly across her chest.
“Tell me yours first.”
“Stefanos,” he said smoothly. “Stefanos Lazaridis.”
She nodded curtly but said nothing.
“Are you going to tell me your name?” he asked. “Or will I guess it?”
Chrysí let out a shrill bleat, and Stefanos laughed.
“I think she is trying to give me a clue,” he said. “Maybe your name is Katsikáki…”
“I am not a little goat!” Katerina exploded.
“Do not forget that I have seen you climb,” he said, dodging backward as she stomped toward him. “When I came up the hill, I thought for a moment that someone had dressed their animal in human clothing.”
“Maláka,” she hissed, to which he laughed loudly and with great amusement. If only her face would stop burning; if only he would stop staring at her with such glee.
“My name is Katerina,” she muttered.
“Katerina,” he repeated.
Hearing the word come from his lips caused an odd sensation in the deepest part of her.
“You think I am a goat,” she said, but Stefanos shook his head, moving closer, so close that she could feel the warmth of him.
“What I think,” he said slowly as his eyes trailed over her, “is that you, Katerina, are exceptional.”
Four
Skye woke with a start, heart leaping into her throat and arms thrashing.
The air bed had slowly deflated during the night, and she winced as she eased herself up into a sitting position. Beneath her, the floor was hard, the boards uneven and slightly damp to the touch. Blinking, she rose, staggering on still-slumbering feet to the nearest window, which was blocked by a wooden shutter so decrepit it let in more light than it blocked. The sun was yet to rise fully, and clouds lay like smudges against the mountain.
So often in recent months, she’d found herself starkly aware of her breath. The drawing in and letting go of air should have been the most natural thing in the world, and yet it felt finite, as if by acknowledging it, she was daring it to cease. Skye stood for a few minutes, watching the dark wash of distant sea, waiting until the sensation of panic abated. The room she’d slept in was all straight edges and flat walls, though the plaster was flaking away in patches, and there was no shade covering the single bulb.
There had been nowhere to hang any of her clothes theprevious day, and having rooted through her suitcase, Skye extracted a pair of shorts and a simple black tank top. Her crinkled blond hair she tied back off her face without bothering to brush it first, and having eyed her cosmetic bag with disdain, she left it in the bottom of her case untouched. Nobody to dress up for here, nobody expecting her to look a certain way. Sunscreen, however, was a nonnegotiable, and this she slathered on thoroughly, remembering to smear dabs on the tops of her ears and along her hairline.
Downstairs in her barren kitchen, she boiled water for coffee, deciding not to risk the milk but sawing a few slices of bread from the loaf and coating them in soft, tangy goat cheese. These she balanced in one hand while she unlocked the back door with the other, stepping out into her modest garden with its overhanging tree and fragmented stone wall. Steam swirled from her cup, and bringing it up to her lips, she blew gently, taking a tentative sip, followed by a bite of bread, then another, her hunger returning with a rush of ravenous enthusiasm. Skye paid no heed to the crumbs that tumbled down her chin nor to the cheese that oozed between her teeth; she chewed loudly, swallowed noisily, smiled broadly at the simple pleasure of eating unobserved, consuming what she’d prepared so fast that her throat swelled, leaving her with no choice but to belch. The resulting sound was so loud and came from so far down in her gullet that Skye burst out laughing.
What would her mother say if she could see her now?
Back in the kitchen, she put her empty mug in the sink and frowned at the half-melted pat of butter she’d left on the side. Her fridge could not arrive soon enough, ditto the oven, though she had no crockery, save for the two cups donated by Andreas, and nothing in the way of furniture. For a moment, Skye thought longingly of the old wing chair she’d inherited from her father. He had reupholstered it in orange velvet, doing all the work himself, right down to the final stitch. The grooves of his body had stillbeen visible in its cushion when it arrived at her small flat in London, and for weeks she had not been able to bear to sit in it, could not have borne the guilt of having altered any remaining part of him.
In the end, she’d had to leave it behind; she’d had to leave everything behind.
The space she was in felt suddenly stifling, the walls closing in as her hope began to fade. Before the sensation could consume her, Skye fled, pausing only to fetch her purse and mobile phone. She had not seen a single bar of signal since arriving in the village and was glad of it. What better excuse for ignoring the world than being—quite literally—cut off from it? Once outside, the sun raised her spirits somewhat, as did the sight of Tigri, who was back in his spot next to the wall. This time, she bent to scratch him behind the ears, and having responded by squirming against her, the cat let out a contented purr.
“It’s a tough life, isn’t it?” Skye said wryly before turning to look back at her house. Of the six situated up on the hillside, hers was one of only two with a hip roof. The other four were flat-roofed, and only a handful had more than a single story. The largest, which was the closest to her own, had what looked to be a long barn-like building at the rear, and its facade was freshly whitewashed in the traditional Cycladic style, bright as a brand-new veneer. Skye studied the faded frontage of her more modest abode and noticed for the first time that there was a dark stain running up and around one corner, as if someone had sparked a giant match and held the flame to the stone.
She continued to stare, disquieted by the silence, wondering why she had not thought to question more deeply the abandonment of this place and the reasons why nobody local had taken ownership of the houses before now. Folegandros might not be as popular as its Aegean neighbors Santorini, Mykonos, and Naxos,but there were a handful of hotels on the island and rentable apartments dotted around. Why had no property developers homed in on this tiny hamlet? The explanation provided by the municipality in charge of the lottery had been vague—perhaps deliberately so—but Skye could not shake the sense that there was more to the story. She thought again of theKinscribed so carefully in her attic. Someone had loved that house, been proud enough of it to leave their mark. She wanted to know what had happened to them.
The sun continued to crawl steadily upward, a single throb of gold in a gradient sky. Loose earth and pebbles trundled down the path ahead of her, while the far horizon shimmered in a haze. It took less than ten minutes to reach the island’s single stretch of tarmacked road, and Skye followed it down toward the center of the village, admiring the crisscross of veins in stony walls, gnarled olive branches, and occasional splashes of vibrant color from a painted shutter or potted plant. The sea was her constant companion, visible in snatches of blue, and the wind coaxed loose strands of hair across her cheeks.
