Yes he had! That horrible night in the spring, when the men had made him drunk and he’d thrown up on the Bloodstone—that had been pitch dark until he’d started down through the olives with the baby owl cupped between his hands and her head poking out—then it had become almost as light as this, though there had been no moon. Only everything had still seemed much fuzzier than now . . . Yes, of course, because Scops had only had baby eyes and could tell light from dark but couldn’t yet see things properly . . . And when it had started to rain and he’d tucked her under his smock, then it had gone dark again, because he’d been seeing things through her eyes and she couldn’t see anything in there. He must be doing the same now.
He experimented, and found that he had to be looking in the same direction as Scops for the effect to work. If he turned his head suddenly to his right all he saw was dark until Scops turned her head that way too. The area to his left that was hidden from Scops by his head remained in a triangle of darkness that moved beside him up the track as he climbed.
He didn’t have much time to wonder at the strangeness of this. He was just starting on the steepest part of the track when Scops nibbled , or rather pecked, at his ear. Not an owl kiss but a definite peck. The track ahead went dark. Startled, he turned his head and could just make out that Scops had swivelled hers right round and was watching back the way they had come. He slowed his pace and looked back over his shoulder until he could see by owl light what she was seeing.
A man, about fifty paces behind, coming up the track.
Well, why not? Several other families used the lower reaches of this track, and it was not that late. He passed one turning, and then another. The man took neither of them. Well, there was a way to find out. In the shadow of a tree he stopped for a piss he didn’t need and looked back, turning his head only far enough to be able to see out of the corner of his eyes, in case the pallor of his face betrayed that that was what he was doing. The man came on another dozen paces, stepping sideways out of one patch of moon shadow into another on the far side of the track. His footfall was noiseless, despite the stony ground. Yanni didn’t need the brief interval of moonlight to tell who the burly, pot-bellied figure was.
Stavros. And he had been wearing rope-soled shoes in the tavern. Most of the men wore boots. He was a fisherman, and lived in a shack close to the harbour. There wasn’t even a woman up this way he might be visiting. Without owl sight, could he have seen Scops at that distance, perched on Yanni’s shoulder? Yanni didn’t think so, not even in moonlight. Deliberately he rattled a few pebbles as he moved on. Stavros continued to follow.
For some reason Yanni wasn’t really scared. Tense and wary, but with a belief in himself that he wouldn’t have had a few months ago. It might only have been the wine, he realised, but in his heart he believed it was something to do with Scops, with the fact that through her he could see in the dark, and perhaps there were other powers he didn’t know about yet. And in a way it was a relief to have his doubts about the men in the tavern confirmed, to know that their sudden amazing friendliness wasn’t a change of heart, and to guess now that what Papa Archangelos had said to them had had little to do with being nice to fatherless young men. Both were part of some plan. With the help of Scops he would find out what it was, and perhaps outwit them all.
Before they were home Scops slipped away into the night, and he walked the last stretch in the human dark. When he closed the gate he fixed the chain so that it would rattle at a touch, and as soon as he was in through the door put his finger to his lips. Euphanie stared at him. They waited tense. The chain rattled briefly, and stilled as if someone had clamped a hand over it.
“No, it was all right,” he said, in slightly too loud a voice. “They were much nicer than last time, and I sat with them and watched them play backgammon. In fact I won a mug of wine on a bet, but I put it back in the jug as part of standing my round. I had a good time. What’s for supper? I’m hungry.”
“Well, you’re going to need to set the table before you can eat,” she said, with the same exaggerated audibility. “Anyway, it’ll be twenty minutes till it’s ready.”
“Then I may as well take the trash out.”
He left with the bucket by the back door and carried it along the top terrace. As he slung its contents down the slope a horrible thought came to him. Perhaps he’d understood the whole episode wrong. Perhaps it wasn’t him that Stavros was interested in, but Euphanie—a lone young woman living with her weakling brother far from any other dwelling—a brother who now thought he could trust these friends . . .
He turned to hurry back to the house, but Scops whispered down onto his shoulder. Now, by owl light, he could see Stavros standing in the shadow of the lemon tree, with his ear pressed to the kitchen shutter.
Scops slipped away almost at once. Yanni walked back with the heavy iron bucket hanging loose in his hand ready to be swung as a weapon against an attacker, and passed within six feet of the intruder, who made no move. Once in he bolted both doors, something they never normally troubled with, and he and Euphanie then discussed tomorrow’s tasks in the intervals of eating, until they heard the scratch of Scops’s beak on the shutter by which Stavros had been standing, and the soft prrp, prrp of her call, and knew that the watcher had left. He let the owl in and she sat on his shoulder while in a low voice he told Euphanie everything that had happened.
“This is the priest’s doing,” she said. “Who can we turn to? Mother of God, who can we trust?”
“Nobody. Only ourselves. And Scops.”
“What can we do?”
“Watch, listen. Bolt the doors at night, and when I go to the tavern.”
“You’re going again?”
“It’s the only way we can find anything out. They’ll start asking me to do something soon, to join them in something, I don’t know what. We’ll know a bit more then.”
She nodded, frowning. It was strange that he should be the one taking the lead, and that he should accept it, but that was how it seemed to be at the moment, for both of them.
The moon grew to its full, and waned. Yanni went each Tuesday to the tavern. The men were as friendly as before, and one of them played a board of backgammon with him, giving him odds of two free tiles, and then only one, as he learnt the game. To his surprise he found himself understanding its mathematical subtleties far better than he would have a few months back, when that kind of thing merely had the effect of making his mind go blank. Indeed on the third evening he beat Dmitri fair and square, without needing to use his free tile.
“Pretty good, kid,” said Kosta. “That makes you one of us, now.”
The others laughed, but with a note in their laughter that suggested there was more than one meaning to the joke. Otherwise he learnt no more.
On the first of those evenings nobody followed him. Scops met him just outside the town as before, and sat on his shoulder the whole way home. On the second Tuesday there was no sign of Scops until she drifted out of the dark when he was already well started on the climb, and then nestled close against his head. Just before the track bent sharply back on itself to tackle a steeper stretch she bit his lobe in warning and at once slipped away. Yanni climbed on, suddenly tense. A tall cypress stood in the crook of the corner, with an olive close against its further side. Between the two trees was a pitch-black cavern.