Only four words, but so heavy and full of meaning; it was impossible to miss the unspoken part. This man like many others admired and adored his mother. Vasilis looked into the man’s eyes that held the world in their grasp.
‘Tell me, apart from you, the woman Ordania and the other older man I met earlier, is there anyone else living here? I have not seen anyone wandering around and it made me wonder.’
‘No, it is just us three.’
‘But how did you choose to be here and why? And how long have you been here?’
‘Long enough. We cannot die, never had and never can have children, and cannot live a normal life as you know it. We are the guardians of this sacred place. I can see you are wondering what this place is.’ Vasilis was surprised that this man could read his thoughts and cautioned himself to control them. ‘Maybe you will find out the next time you visit us. I cannot tell you when that will be. It is for fate to decide when you need us again in the future. A call for help will not go unanswered. Now is not the time for this place to divulge its secrets and its purpose.’
He turned to a small tray next to him that Ordania had placed there earlier. He lifted the cover and offered the tray to Vasilis. On the tray was the Emperor’s heart.
‘I cannot let you leave without a gift. Our guests, however short their stay with us, never forget our renowned hospitality nor do they leave without a small memento depending on the task they have embarked on when they visit us.’ As the man said that he was gone, and so was everything else around them.
Giorgos and John found themselves in the tunnel and the chest they first saw in Persepolis was sitting open next to them, having disgorged its contents; the Emperor’s private parts lay at their feet.
Giorgos and John expected Vasilis to be with them. They wondered whether he had arrived before them and wandered off. They immediately dismissed the thought as highly unlikely. But Vasilis was nowhere to be seen.
Back at the Megaron Mousikis in Athens, Elli was, with Katerina’s help, in a desperate search of her own for Vasilis, Giorgos and John. She found Aristo.
He could tell from her manner and the lines that appeared on her face that she was very worried. Something serious had happened. Only someone who knew her as well as he did would have even noticed her concern.
‘Aristo, have you seen Vasilis and the others? I think there has been trouble.’
‘Do we know where they were seen last?’
‘I’ve been told they were on their way backstage. I’ll go and see if I can find anything.’
Without another word, Aristo turned and, at a brisk pace, headed backstage. He found the room that paid host to the three missing men a few minutes earlier, and like them before him, stood there at a loss.
He was about to accept that they had been given a wrong tip on the whereabouts of the three missing men when, unbeknownst to him, the same man that welcomed Vasilis, Giorgos and John was now standing before him, smiling and bowing respectfully.
The man kept his eyes firmly on Aristo’s and was urgently indicating the floor. Aristo assumed that the man expected him to see or open something there. But, however hard he looked, from where he stood he could see nothing of interest nor could he detect an opening there.
He was mystified. The strangeness of the situation gave him the suspicion that he was on the right track in establishing the fate of the three missing men. He could not shake a feeling of uneasiness.
Something happened here, Aristo thought. His certainty that the man before him was connected, was indeed the key, to what befell the three missing men was growing.
Whatever reservations he might have had, he suspected that this man was his only chance of finding the three missing men and decided to go closer. But, as he did so, the man disappeared through the floor. Aristo followed him.
Reaching the temple, he saw the three men being surrounded by a suffocating mist. His eyes fell on the chest at the same time as the three men and the chest vanished into the ether.
The mist dispelled, but he could no longer see them or the man that had brought him there. Before he could decide what to do, Aristo felt a punch in his stomach rendering him unable to make any attempt to retaliate or react in any way.
He felt himself falling into a dark abyss. Within seconds he had blacked out.
When Vasilis came round, he was lying on the Olympian beach, somewhere between the Limassol Zoo and the Anamerila Hotel near the old part of Limassol, his head hurting as if fresh from a hangover.
His body was, though, unharmed, but slightly prickly from too much sun exposure. His skin felt scorched and his palms were red and burning like hell. He tried to get up, but failed at the first hurdle.
But that hazy feeling quickly passed, and he got up with ease, and with a, strangely, complete lack of the pain that bedevilled him only a moment earlier. Relief washed over him. He did not miss that pain. It was as if suddenly he had at once become cured and immune to pain and the elements. He could not explain it.
Then he saw people walking by, looking at him and smiling, some clearly mocking him, others turning red-faced and increasing their pace, some even winking lustily, conspiratorially. He looked down. He was naked and defenceless. He tried to hide his modesty, but then changed his mind.
He reasserted himself and walked defiant with nothing to hide. To hell with it. He quickened his pace, as much as the sand allowed. He had to find out whether he was actually in Limassol of the present day.
He saw a small shop selling beachwear and went in. He decided to buy himself a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and went to pay with the euros he did not have, hoping to prey on the shopkeeper’s generosity and hoping he could accept his promise to come back the next day to settle his bill.
The shopkeeper just smiled, did not ask for payment and waived him away, but not before Vasilis had checked the newspaper stand and was relieved to see that it was indeed the present day. How could that be, he wondered. What on earth was going on with those openings in the tunnels?
On his way out of the shop the security guy at the entrance was about to waive him through without a word, but decided to have some fun. He pretended to ask Vasilis to submit to a body search, but then he seemed to have changed his mind when he saw the look on Vasilis’ face whose eyes were spitting daggers from embarrassment at his situation.
Thankfully, the security guy decided not to challenge and antagonise Vasilis and cause a disturbance on such a lazy day. And there was the small matter of not risking his job over something as trivial as this without any valid suspicion.
He had been watching all the time after all and it was a small shop with nowhere to hide, no blind spots to give the opportunity for theft. He could tell this gentleman was, no doubt, not the thieving kind. He just smiled and winked at Vasilis.
Just before he left the shop, Vasilis passed a fulllength mirror and practically jumped at the person looking back at him. He blinked twice at the frightful sight. He looked ridiculous. He winked at himself. He was relieved to see that he had not lost his sense of humour.
A voice inside his head was mocking him too: “You stick out like a sore thumb. You will definitely have no trouble blending in”. He was ready to smash the mirror in annoyance. But then he controlled himself. He had little choice until something better came along.
It would have to do for now. What was he doing here anyway?
He was moving as if led by an invisible force that took hold of him, pulling him to a destination and a destiny he could not know. Suddenly he saw it clearly and was surprised at his earlier confusion.
What he saw that cleared his mind was a play of the light, but one that was intended for him as a message.
As the sun was setting on a magical landscape, he thought his eyes were deceiving him. He thought it was a trick of the light. But of course it couldn’t be.