Not mine to cast the lot or spin your life.
Not mine to set the count or sew the shape.
Not mine to say how you may fill it out.
But mine to watch, and cut the final thread.

1. NO GOOD FRIDAY

(Raymond)

The dust, the crowd, the heat, the hill, the cross;
the trees, the waiting knife, the nymphs' lament;
the empty tomb; the petals white, still white—
The death of gods is not a trivial thing.

The cross looks authentically heavy. The man carrying it has the beard, the tattered loincloth, the crown of thorns. Scourge marks are visible from time to time when His short cloak pulls away. Even His expression is convincing, exhausted, strained, suffering. His soulful brown eyes are familiar from centuries of religious paintings. This might have been Rembrandt's model. He looks exactly like the pictures on the walls of my grandmother's house, in school, in the illustrated children's Bible I won for good attendance in Sunday School. He isn't terrified like the others. Nobody is making him do this. It isn't hard at all to believe in Him.

Only the crowd spoils the illusion, too few dressed in the fashions of Palestine two thousand years ago, too many in the fashions of today, jeans, sweatshirts, baseball caps. They wear their technology dangling visibly about them, black plastic curves of cameras, telephones, walkmans. Sweat trickles down my back. I try to concentrate on the man, the man who is taking upon himself a martyrdom more truly than he can imagine. He is a Christian, chosen from the most devout in the region. Or so it says in the book about the re-enactment I bought back home in Lyons and read on the train south. It gave his name too, but I ignored that. I want to think of Him as the Son of Man.

The incidents along the way are re-enacted faithfully. Veronica wipes His face with her handkerchief, and holds it up to the crowd, showing the photographic likeness. A clever touch, it is a photograph. I cannot feel impressed, cannot see it as a miracle, though a fat woman is weeping over it. She wears a black dress, splitting slightly under the arms, and has a faint moustache. Her tears are genuine. For her it is real, but to me it is only a trick; photographs are too familiar. For a moment the gimmick jars me from the state I have worked so hard to capture and this hot and dusty town is Siena, not Jerusalem. Everything has too much focus. Lest I should look at Him and ruin everything, finding Him only a man, I glance away, into the crowd. My gaze catches on the bare neck and covered breasts of a suntanned woman in a white dress. She is close, almost touching me. A small gold cross dangles around her neck and rests on her skin just above her neckline. Her brown hair has fallen forward and I cannot see her face. I concentrate, to get back into the right state of mind.

Around me tourists are taking photographs. The locals do not. I do not touch the camera that hangs around my own neck. It is not yet time. We process up the street, following in His wake. The Wandering Jew refuses to carry the cross. He is a stereotyped Shylock, with a long nose and a rueful expression. I wonder if he is really a Jew, or a Christian in disguise, or a rationalist for that matter, and what he thinks of this anyway. He slinks away. Most of these people have been involved in the re-enactment since last Sunday, from the triumphal entry under the palms of Siena. They repeat this re-enactment every three years, the book said, since Medieval times. It says the faithful come from all over the world. The streets are crowded, but there are not so many faithful as all that these days. Every three years for more than half a thousand years. There is a power in that, and this will be the last time.

Joseph of Arimathea staggers up the hill under the cross. The thieves are strung up waiting. I suppose it would have spoiled the drama if they had walked up the hill beside Him. The Romans are ready. He takes His last steps towards them. They take His cloak, leaving him standing in a loin cloth. It all happens very quickly. He lies down on the wood, and they bind Him as expertly as I might, knock in the sign "INRI" and stand the cross upright. They clearly have experience at this sort of thing. It really isn't as easy as they make it look. The press and Italian television focus on the cross as it is raised. It is silhouetted on the top of the hill, the thieves' crosses a little below, one on either side. It looks perfect.

My only regret is that they did not use real nails. I remember holding the nail still above his palm that first time, while Miriam pounded it through. I remember how I was afraid she'd miss the nail and hit my finger, and how the nail shook in my hand to the hammer blows. The nails went right through his palms, that time, between the bones. I remember the agony on his face as the nail went in. That was wrong, even though we used the exact place shown in all the paintings and in stigmata throughout the centuries. The palms are not strong enough to support a man's weight. They tore. He fell. The next time we knew better, and nailed him through the wrists, being careful not to touch an artery. We lashed him on as well, after that first time, though it took a few more times before we grew as expert at it as these Romans. I sigh, looking at the lashings. Nails are authentic. But they're not enough. It didn't work any of the times we tried it, even though we used Christians. Nails aren't what matters. Nor is the pain and suffering. It has to be a willing sacrifice, and none of ours were. It took us too long to learn that. I could have been here three years ago if we'd only realised.

He hangs from the loops of rope around His hands and feet. The thieves' crosses have little ledges to support their feet, but the central crucifix has none. It must be sufficient agony, even without nails. I fervently hope so. The way a man dies on the cross is by suffocation. With the arms in that position, it isn't possible to draw enough breath into the lungs. The sun beats down. It is noon. Three hours now, the Stations of the Cross. He won't suffocate in three hours. It often took a day and a night. In the mass crucifixions after the Spartacus slave revolt some of the stronger slaves were observed still alive three days later. Crucifixion was a normal way of killing criminals then, it wasn't something peculiar and godly. It took a long time for the cross to become a divine symbol. People would no more have worn a crucifix around their neck than anyone but a mad fool would wear a gallows or a guillotine today. But now it is a potent symbol, perhaps the most potent of all. Now it has the mana of two millennia of worship. I'm secure in the logic of what we have worked out.

People sit down and begin to take out food. Somehow the Italian peasant families with their strong smelling garlic sausage and bread seem less offensive in this than the tourists.

A priest is leading a prayer. I look at His face, the suffering, the willing suffering. "Oh lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world..." intones the priest. The crowd implore God to have mercy upon them, to hear their prayers, to grant them peace. That's not what's coming. I stare into His brown eyes. It's not what we've had, either. Precious little mercy, or peace, or prayers answered in this last age. Now it is over. Time for something new. I am confident. In control. I know I can do it.

I finger my camera, raise it, look at Him hanging there through the view finder. Too soon. We worked it out completely rationally. I lower it again. Claude is always right about this sort of thing. The sayings first, the Stations of the Cross. How many Good Fridays growing up, listening to the same thing over and over? I have to stick to the timing, to the exact plan, if I want it to work. Most of the crowd are kneeling, but some stroll about, some talk, some eat and drink. That is authentic. Not everyone would care. That's something we did wrong, too, everyone was focused, everyone cared. The little knot of women stand at the foot of the cross. They are actors, they don't convince me at all. I try to ignore them. The Romans dice for His robe. One of them has a brutal face, and a spear. He has His exchange with the thieves, and then they are taken down and walk away. That doesn't matter.

I watch Him, silhouetted against the blue sky, and try to concentrate on his suffering. When I fear I may lose focus, I look at the crowd. The locals are still for the most part now, but the tourists still mill about. The crowd is silent for the words and prayers but mutters restlessly the rest of the time.

I notice the woman with the white dress and the gold cross again. She catches my eye because she is still among these other fidgeting people. She has a pleasant face. I don't think she's Italian, her hair is too light a brown and she shows too much skin. I notice only now that she is pregnant. I probably didn't take it in before because half the women I know are pregnant, hoping. I've become accustomed to it. But maybe her baby will be the new All Holy. I'd like that. She has a big mouth and she looks relaxed, as if she laughs a lot. She is sad and serious now, looking towards Him. Somehow I can tell she is a Catholic—maybe it is the style of her cross. I am too far away from her now to see it clearly now, but I remember it, gold against her tanned skin. I can tell she is a true believer. She cares. She will do to stand for the three Marys who should be here, much better than the actors. She has a man with her. He holds the same guidebook I have, in French. Somehow I do not think they are French, though. She might be, but not him. He has dark towsled hair falling into his eyes, and a wide grin. He puts his hand on the woman's arm. Unlike her, he doesn't have the look of a Christian. He might almost be one of us. I look away, back to the cross.

More prayers. Vinegar. More suffering. A convincing plea to have the cup taken from Him. Well might He waver, but I am inexorable. What about the sins of the whole world? I almost laugh, thinking this, for my role here is that of Fate, of God. To think I doubted whether I was worthy, when I was chosen, whether one of the others might be better. This is what I am for, this is the focus not only of these past months of preparation but of my whole life. More prayers. No hesitation. The television cameras are still rolling. I'm sure they've recorded me, sitting here. It doesn't matter. I'm not expecting to survive this, one way or another.

Now. I raise the camera. "Lord, into thy hands, I commend my spirit." I am ready. I focus, my finger on the trigger. This is the time and the place we reasoned it would be best to do it. The Son of Man is in my sights. I can already picture how the bullets will tear into his chest, spraying blood. Everything is balanced on this moment. The new age starts here. I move my finger—but nothing happens. It doesn't respond. What the hell? I try to move, to stand, but I can't! I'm paralysed. Completely paralysed, frozen in place. God? You bastard! Where did You get that power from? You shouldn't be able to do this! It doesn't make sense! It's not fair! You'll pay for it! I hate You! I'm here to kill You and I shall.

"Wait." The voice in my head is male, a gentle baritone, with a soft Irish accent. I don't believe this. I should be panicking, but I can't move.

"Who are you, you bastard, let me go!" I'm only half expecting heavenly trumpets, now.

"My name is my word." I knew it wasn't any god really. Only a man with magic would say that, a god wouldn't mind being bound by their name, their names are part of what they Are. I don't know much about magic. I try to run through everything I've heard about it quickly. The power it must take to hold me like this! He surely can't keep it up for long. But how did he know the need?

"Let me go!"

"I can't. You're going to kill him." He sounds so reasonable. He must be a fanatic.

"You can't keep Christianity alive by stopping me!" He can't hold me for long, not against my will. Or at least, I don't think so. This is the first time I've ever felt real magic in the realised world. It is strange.

"Keeping Christianity alive is the last thing on my mind, believe me." The voice chuckles in my head.

"Then what the hell do you want?" I demand, confused. "It is so nearly dead anyway. And killing it now, like this..."

"Will serve no ends but that of violence. Violence here, and now, like this, would set the pattern for the new age as bad or worse than even this past age has been. You would give us an age of hate. I am taking away your choice, for this moment, in the hope of an age of choice."

"Nothing could be worse!" I insist, though his soft ironic voice sounds in my head so very sure. And then I am free, I can move. My finger tightens, and hesitates again. It is too late, the moment has passed, He has lowered His head, my bullet unfired, killing him now would only be murder, not deicide. Like all the other times. It would achieve nothing. The voice does not reply. I look around frantically. Nobody is looking at me. They are praying to the blood of the sacrificial lamb again. It is over. Too late. I am weeping. That doesn't look strange, plenty of people are weeping. I could still kill him. But I don't. I can't see the wizard, whoever he is. I stand up.

The actors by the cross are wailing. I glance about for the woman with the gold cross, not that it matters any more. I don't see her. People are crying, and praying, and some of the tourists are starting to leave. The priest goes up to the actor on the cross. I've persuaded myself so well that I still more than half think of Him as the Son of Man. His head hangs limp. He's very convincing. Too late. The others will cast me out and curse me. I expect I'll die. Someone can try again in three years. All my focus is gone. I don't know what to do. I stand up and take a few steps away. I never thought I'd leave this place alive, not by my own will.

There is a cry behind me, and I turn. The priest is calling for the doctor. People are fussing over the man on the cross. The body on the cross? They are cutting him down and he is hanging very limp. Nobody could act that well. He must have fainted. I walk back, slowly, through the fine yellow dust that sticks to my shoes. The crowd are confused, I among them. A siren in the distance, drawing closer, an ambulance. "No pulse!" a young woman whispers loudly to a companion, in English. Then the cry goes up: "Mortos!" "E vero! Mortos!" Dead? Dead in truth? But how? I didn't—it doesn't make sense. I walk towards the cross, pushing through the crowd. My head pounds. How can he be dead? Did he die anyway? Did I do it by force of will without knowing? Or was I not needed? Does this count? I want to speak to Claude and see if he can work it out.

The ambulance arrives, screeching to a halt with a disdain for road safety I've already picked up in two days as typically Italian. People leap out of the way. The crowd are weeping and wailing on a much more authentic note now. The medics push through with a stretcher, and pick up the body. An arm hangs limp over the side as they carry it back. Again I am reminded of religious pictures, pietas. The bright afternoon sunlight is too much for oils, but just right for the illustrations to children's stories. The men close the doors and drive away, leaving a stink of exhaust cutting across the smells of dust and sweat. Modern medicine will not close him in the tomb if he is not dead, nor leave him with a stone that may be turned if he is. I can hardly take it in. Across the crowd I see the woman with the cross enfolded weeping against the chest of the man with the guidebook. He looks at me over her head, and grins. Grins? Is he the Irish wizard? I need to talk to him. I try to move towards him, but the crowd is in the way. Soon I stop, surrounded by people. I can't move or see him any more. Was that magic? I shake my head and scuff my feet in the yellow dust. I'm still confused. I don't know what to trust, I'm not even sure what's real.

One of the ubiquitous old women in black is standing near me, tears streaming down her face. "He will rise again!" she is repeating over and over to a bawling child. I don't think so, madam. I really don't think so. Not this time.

But I don't feel safe until I get the news on Monday morning that he is still dead.

2. LORD OF THE VINE

A world is more than days and place and folk
a world is dreams and vision, thought and word
a living thing that breathes, and grows and dies
and once the thread is cut will wake no more.

Yanni was not the best shoemaker on the island of Ithyka, but he was the one who made sandals for the gods.

Ithyka was an island famed throughout all of Greece for its shoes and shoemakers. There the old craft of shoemaking was kept alive, and the old families of shoemakers handed down the trade secrets to each new generation. Some said that the sandals made on Ithyka were the same as those worn by Homer himself. It was true enough that their like could be seen on many an old vase and bowl. The same was true of sandals made up and down the Aegean, but somehow the reputation of the shoemakers of this little green westerly island stood above the rest.

As everyone acknowledged that Ithyka was the best island for shoemaking, so everyone acknowledged that the very best shoemaker on Ithyka was Yanni's uncle Spiro. Spiro could make shoes that would almost walk on their own, as the saying was, with stitches so tiny they could hardly be seen. Spiro was so exclusive he made shoes only for shoemakers. Yanni was not the most expensive shoemaker either. That was his cousin Kosta, with his airy wood-panelled shop and his long waiting list of rich Athenians longing to wear his handcrafted sandals. Nor was he the cheapest, the cheap cobblers all worked down at the far end of the harbour near the stinking tannery, in the part of the whitewashed maze of streets known as the streets of the leatherworkers. All the good leatherworkers had long since moved from those little cramped workshops and found little cramped workshops scattered around the town in more salubriously scented areas. Yanni's workshop was only two streets back from the harbour, on a corner opposite the whitewashed dome of Ag. Nikolaos's chapel and the priest's house. The little shop smelled of new leather and leathergoods, and of the jasmine which grew wild up the side of the iron staircase at the back of the building.

All the people who came into Yanni's shop paused, blinked and sniffed. Outside the sunlight was like a solid wall of heat and brightness. The contrast of stepping through the hanging bags and sandals into the shadowed interior was too much for human eyes. At the same moment the newcomer would pause, inhale the characteristic fresh leather and jasmine smell of the shop and sniff to catch it again. Yanni sat in the back of the shop, at a little table with his set of lasts, working with leather. Whenever anyone walked in he would glance up and watch them blink and sniff. Mostly it was someone he knew, a regular wanting another pair of sandals or a leather bag. Often enough it was a tourist, who would gush enchantedly over everything from the donkeys tied up outside to the quality of workmanship. Whoever it was, Yanni would sum them up in one rapid glance. It was his only hesitation in his work, and it was very brief. Even before his youngest sister Taxeia bustled up to the customer and tried to sell them something, Yanni would drop his eyes to the grey iron of his last, the pale gold leather and the tools in his hands.

Just occasionally someone would come to the door and step inside without pause, blink or sniff. That was Yanni's signal to put down his work, dismiss Taxeia with a smile, and step forward, attentive to his holy patron. What happened after Taxeia scampered up the iron ladder to the upstairs room, what size and style sandals the gods wore, and what coin they used, were things he never told anyone. Indeed, he was a very close-mouthed man, even for a shoemaker.

When people asked him questions about Them he just smiled, or agreed that he was indeed a fortunate man and tried to turn the conversation aside. When Yanni had inherited the mantle of holy shoemaker at his grandfather's death there was some surprise and muttering among the other shoemakers. Spiro in particular was jealous, and quarrelled bitterly with his sister, Yanni's mother Dafni. Though as time went on Yanni's status and his discretion became known and accepted things. Everyone became used to the state of affairs which was after all in no way remarkable.

When his neighbour, Pappa Andros, the local priest, asked him about his visitors he was careful to refer to them always as "Agios"—"the holy", a word in common use for saints and gods alike. Pappa Andros did not press him. He was a local man, and the gods had always had their sandals from Ithyka, for longer than anyone could count. There was a tale that it was here that Ag. Hermes had run down Ag. Hephaestos' runaway cow, and Hephaestos, coming up behind, had taken the hide from the creature, dead of exhaustion. After pondering for a moment he invented both leather-working and tanning, and taught the crafts to the ancestors of the islanders, who were crowding round, interested in this new thing. Whether one called them gods or saints it was much the same.

The priest had grown up, as all the islanders did, hearing the stories of how Ag. Pavlos went around Greece converting the gods. Some would bow a knee to Christ and some would not. Those who would not Ag. Pavlos cast out to exile, and those who would became saints. Pappa Andros knew that such stories were frowned on in the seminary in Athens, and by those bishops who complained that their church had never had a reformation and was still riddled with pagan superstitions. He had been too slow and too shy to speak up then and ask whether something was a superstition if it was true. That slowness and shyness was probably why he was back in his home town dealing with its problems as well as he could, and not in Athens or Thessaloniki at the heart of church politics and the affairs of the world.

He was well content with his life. He had joined the church to devote himself to Christ and to Ag. Nikolaos. He knew Ag. Nikolaos had been Poseidon. When the people said that he would one day be Poseidon again when the world was reborn he reproached them, but not with any sense that they were really wrong. He could not take birch twigs dipped in holy water and cast out the spirits of sloth, idleness and malice from the houses of his people if he did not believe as they did. So they trusted him and came to him with their problems and not to Pappa Thomas in the big church of Ag. Paraskevi. This sometimes caused bad feeling with Pappa Thomas, who was young and well educated and a great believer in logic and progress.

"Don't encourage them," Pappa Thomas would say. "It's the twenty-first century, not the fourth! We're in the European Community. This is the modern age. We have electricity. Computers. Everything is changing and going to be different. Just because we are out of the way we must not get left behind." He would frown sternly at Pappa Andros whose little house had neither electricity nor computers, and who did not find this century all that different from those which had preceded it, in the important ways.

Pappa Andros was getting old and his belly under his big priest's beard was getting big and loose, and he liked to laugh. He still loved Christ and his saint, and he loved his people. He could cope with their oddities. Choosing not to dispute with Yanni the reality of the gods or saints he shod was just one among many things that made perfect sense in his daily life. It only seemed strange when he found he could not talk about these things to Pappa Thomas or to the bishop, when he made one of his rare visits to the island. He got on well with his flock, including the taciturn Yanni. He appreciated the discount Yanni gave him when he or his wife needed a new pair of sandals. He didn't think the matter of making sandals for the gods was worth mentioning to his superiors.

So it was that when Yanni invited him to dinner at Stellio's taverna he made nothing of it and agreed cheerfully, taking it for a bit of neighbourly kindness. He enjoyed his food, and he enjoyed eating and drinking with his friends. He didn't suspect anything strange until he arrived and found every important person and every single shoemaker from the island of Ithyka waiting for him.

Stellio's taverna occupied the ground floor of a large cream-painted rectangular house near the centre of the town. Upstairs, where Stellio and his large family lived, there were many balconies jutting under a red tiled roof. Downstairs was one single large room, the taverna. One end was the kitchen, with the big open fire, little stoves, and methane-powered refrigerator. Spread throughout the rest of the room were the tables, arranged to seat as many people as possible. The kitchen was open to the guests, who would wander in and select what they wanted, often trying a mouthful from the pans first. The food in Stellio's was good. He often spit roasted a whole lamb in the large fireplace, or occasionally a pig, and on any day two or three chickens would be turning and sizzling over the fire.

On the day of Yanni's meal, half a pig was crackling over the fire and all the tables were arranged in a semi-circle. Every place was filled but one. There was an air of hushed expectation. Pappa Andros slid into the empty place, looking about him to see who was there. Before he could begin to talk to his neighbours, Yanni stood up and began to fill glasses from a wineskin. The wine was dark red, not the usual thin yellow pine-flavoured retsina Stellio served. Yanni filled each glass almost full, and gave them to Stellio's daughter Katerina who carried them round to the guests.

When he started there was the usual cheerful hum and chatter of a roomful of people, but as he continued the taverna grew quieter and quieter until before half the people were served the room was so quiet that Pappa Andros could hear each footfall on the wooden boards as the girl crossed to the tables. It wasn't until Yanni filled the last glass with the last drops from the now empty skin and sat down again that Pappa Andros realised what it was that was strange. He had seen the shoemaker fill glasses for more than sixty people from a wineskin that should hold no more than half a bottle of wine. A whole bottle would fill only five or six of the fluted but chunky glasses Stellio favoured for their solidity. Pappa Andros glanced at his neighbour, Yanni's cousin the shoemaker Kosta. He was about to open his mouth to say something when Yanni again stood up. He drew breath as if to make a speech, looking awkward and uncomfortable.

"Colleagues, friends and neighbours," he began, in a rehearsed, formal and stilted tone. "I have invited you here tonight to explain something that someone told me and to ask for your help." He shuffled from one foot to the other and cleared his throat. "As you all know, since the death of my grandfather, Elias, I have had the privilege and responsibility of making sandals for the holy ones." Yanni hesitated, looking round, and catching Pappa Andros' eye. The priest smiled encouragingly. Yanni had said no more than everybody already knew, but it was more than he had ever said before. The priest leaned forward, consumed with curiosity as to what the shoemaker would say next.

"Last week I had a visitor. It was—it was Ag. Dionysos." Yanni looked acutely uncomfortable, and twisted his glass in his fingers. "He wanted sandals. But that wasn't why he'd come. He stood in my shop, leaning on the bags, by the door, his face half in sunlight and half in shadow, smiling, like he does. I couldn't help noticing he's as golden as the cured leather I use for bags. He told me that we were going to need a lot more shoes. As many shoes as it would take me a year to make, doing nothing else. More shoes than I can make. Children's shoes, too, especially. Shoes all sizes. And other things too, food, clothes. He said we'd need them whatever happened and we should start now to have a store of them when they were needed. I said I couldn't do all that, and he told me to ask you all to help. If we all gave one day a week to making things for when they're needed, there'd be enough. He said there'll be a lot of children coming to the island. A lot of them, and a lot of people coming. Because—because Great Pan's going to be reborn." Yanni's eyes returned guiltily to the priest.

Pappa Andros felt a weight of gazes on him. He sat still for a moment, wishing clever Pappa Thomas were here to set these people right. But Pappa Thomas wouldn't believe Yanni, wouldn't even believe the evidence of the wineskin. Pappa Thomas thought that there was a new world coming. What if he was right, but not in the way he expected? The silence lengthened as Pappa Andros thought his slow way through it. There was a clatter and a hiss from behind him as Stellio began carving the pig. Yanni bit his lip.

"Go on, Yanni," Pappa Andros said, at last.

"That's all, really, Pappa," Yanni smiled a little. "Great Pan's to be reborn, and we're to get shoes ready."

"How many shoes?" asked Spiro, his gold tooth catching the light as he spoke.

"A lot. All sizes." said Yanni. "He said we should all start work on them straight away so we'd be ready."

"Why shoes? Doesn't Pan have goat's hooves?" asked Lambros the baker. There was a gust of nervous laughter at this. Pappa Andros looked down into his dark wine, and saw the reflection of his own face, his dark eyes, his greying beard. He did not hear what reply Yanni made. He alone among them knew Pan was more than that, more than another holy one with goat's hooves and an urge for lechery who'd long ago died on a hillside on this island. As a growing boy he had walked often up to the pine grove scented with sage that still bore the name Pan's Grave. Then he had grown and gone on. He remembered them talking about the death of Pan at the seminary. They said his name meant the World, and Everything, Holiness, and What is Essential. If Pan was to be reborn then it meant the world being made anew, and really it should be his duty to tell his superiors and do what he could to stop it. Pappa Andros gazed unhappily round at the assembled men and women. More than a few of them were looking at him expectantly. What could he do? Maybe a great deal, or maybe nothing. He didn't know enough. He understood the day to day problems of the island and that was enough. The bishop was in Nafplia, he should make this decision, or the archbishop at Athens or even the Patriarch at Constantinople. But none of them were here.

Yanni raised his glass. "Great Pan!" he said, and drank. Pappa Andros hesitated again, looking round. Then his eyes caught on a pair of figures lounging in the doorway. One was a slim young man. He leaned one hand casually on the doorframe. His beautiful face fell half in the taverna's light and half in the shadow of the night—or, no, Pappa Andros realised with a start that he had a halo. His eyes met Pappa Andros', and slowly and deliberately he smiled. Behind him and entirely in shadow stood another figure, older, bearded, but equally ringed with a faint light of God around the head. He slowly raised a hand in salute to Pappa Andros. Equally slowly, Pappa Andros raised his glass to the holy saints, and sipped.

The red wine was smooth and warming as it went down. As he swallowed all the colours seemed brighter, the scents of the roast pork and the stewed mushrooms reached him clearly and his mouth watered. He stood, and he saw that everyone else was standing too, and raising their glasses. "Great Pan!" they chorused, and all drank together. The holy saint in the doorway drank too, and then stepped back out to join his companion in the shadows. Stellio and his children served the food, and all ate and drank well. Gaiety reigned for the rest of the evening, until all the important people and shoemakers staggered home delightfully drunk, to suffer no hangover. All the conversation was on how best to make the shoes and whatever else might be needed. Dispute grew quite heated about where to store them. Once the glasses were drained, nobody, not even Pappa Andros, questioned the necessity.

3. MARIE, MARIE, HOLD ON TIGHT

(Marie)

Beware the worm, beware the truth it speaks
Beware the craven's lie, the serpent's tooth
and all that makes your heart a frozen stone
you bury far away and can't forget.

Lord, in thy mercy, hear my prayer. Through the grimy window of the tube train as it hurtles along in unaccustomed daylight, I can see endless backs of endless grimy streets and factories, sprawling out in all directions into the distance, ugly as despair. Everything is grey, the sky, the streets, the tube line, and my heart. I cannot pray for her. I swore to you that I would never ask another thing if you would forgive me, and I keep my word. I keep my word. That's the only thing I have left.

That fierceness, that's pride, I will confess that to Father Michael tomorrow. He will give me penance. I almost always have to confess pride, Lord, it is my one remaining besetting sin. But such penance is little enough, compared to the one I will be doing all my life. I stare out of the window at the grey backs of houses, a huge black glass factory making audio tapes and designed to look like a cassette box used to ten years ago. How modern it must have looked when it was new, how ridiculous now. Without meaning to I find I am twisting my cross in my fingers, the little gold cross my godmother gave me, the one I always wear around my neck. I am desolate, utterly desolate, and I cannot even pray for her. Have mercy upon us.

As the brakes on the train squeal, coming into Kilburn I find that once again I am blinking back tears. I will not think of him, or that will be another sin on my soul. Lord God of Hosts, you are very great. I will keep my word. I have renounced my powers utterly, they are beyond reach, I could not use them if I would. But it is very hard to watch her die when once a word would have been enough to cure such a thing. The doctors and nurses talk to me about red blood cells, about T-cells and lymph, and I nod and do not scream at them that cancer of the blood and bone answers well to magic and badly to man's medicine. She is my child, they do their best, and tears slide down my cheeks once again, and the other passengers look away, embarrassed. It's not done, not English, to weep in public. Grief should be hidden. They think me mad. It would not be so in Europe, this fear of caring is a Saxon thing.

I wipe my eyes and blow my nose. I stare out of the window at the desolation that is the back of Neasden. Even the name is ugly, well suited to the rows of chimneys, the gardens where nothing grows but broken bicycles and flapping icy washing. Everything is grey or black. Even the trees are grimy grey-green. The little scattering of snow that is left here and there in shrinking patches is grey. The train passes over a dirty canal. A child wearing a thin grey anorak is kicking stones into the water. So many of these lives are all futility. I should be thankful I have known some joy, thank you God, among the pain. But if she dies, my Eleanor—I always thought I would have the child. I never thought you were so cruel, God, as to play such a trick on me. Father O'Malley said that I shouldn't try and bargain with you. But I did, and you in your infinite mercy saw fit to treat me like this. I never thought you'd hurt her. She's innocent. Even Father O'Malley admitted that, that summer, before she was born, the first time, in Farm Street. Remember, God? I am not reproaching you, Lord, I know better than that, forgive me my sarcasm. But my daughter, my only child, is dying, and you know how it feels to watch your only child die, Lord, how about a little compassion?

I have already offered you everything. Even if you'd accept a bargain—which you won't. The old gods will, although they'll twist it and trick one if they can, but not you, oh no, never. Not in any circumstances, eh Lord? Anyway, Lord, I'm not proposing that this time. I've nothing left to bargain with, I've given you it all already. But don't you hurt her, God, hurt me instead. I don't mind dying, or giving you my life if you prefer. I tried to have her adopted and become a nun, you know that. Father Michael said that in the Middle Ages they'd have had me like a shot but these days they don't look for grief and religious mania in nuns, there is a sanity requirement. How Colin would have laughed. He always laughed to hear that I wanted to be a nun in my childhood. He would stroke my body until I shuddered, and say I wasn't cut out for it. But he was wrong. It was my true destiny, and he stole it from me, which is why I thought to return to it after. Oh, that's not all the truth, Lord, to whom all hearts are open and from whom no secrets are hid. Forgive me for bargaining with you. I thought when I fled that I could make myself the sacrifice for both of them. For Eleanor, who is innocent, and for Colin who does not understand what guilt is. I don't know why he doesn't. It's as if he was made with that left out. Shame, he feels, and pain, and love—oh God forgive me, I've thought of him, that's more to confess tomorrow. I call it improper thoughts, Lord, so I don't have to explain too much.

Father Michael doesn't know everything, Lord. He hears my confession every week, and I confess my sins each time, everything for the week that's gone. But he's just a parish priest, he isn't Father O'Malley, SJ, he didn't accept me back into the Church, in your name. He doesn't know what I was. He is careful of me, he thinks me mad. Maybe I am. Maybe that's why I sit here clutching my old bag so tightly my knuckles are white against the soft brown leather, with tears running down my face so that all these English people are embarrassed.

Wait, that one isn't. That one sitting opposite. He isn't like the others. He's looking right at me, seriously. He's wearing a crumpled sweatshirt with letters on, and jeans, and he has a straggly dark beard and long hair. I look away from him. I'm embarrassed myself now, trying to stop crying—but I didn't know I'd started! The other men are all wearing pin-striped suits in formal colours, grey, like everything, black, navy. Their ties hang straight down on white shirts. Their hair is short. The women all wear blatant make-up in the same style, and their clothes match their shoes and their bags. Their hair is groomed. They all read the same paper "The London Evening Standard" and their faces are all the same. I would know they were English anywhere, by the way they hold their heads. French people would never hold their heads like that.

I glance back to the little man opposite. He's still looking at me, with an expression of concern and caring. He reminds me of someone, or I have seen him before somewhere. I can't tell if he's English or not. The train is coming in to Finchley Road, already. Soon it will plunge down into the darkness. People are shifting about, getting ready to get off, changing for the Metropolitan line. He smiles at me, and stands. He puts out a hand towards me, almost hesitantly, and I see the mark on the palm. Oh Lord Jesus, here? Now? I don't know what to do. Should I kneel? I start to slip forward from the seat, as I would in church. The man next to me pushes past me impatiently, muttering something angry. I almost fall, and He catches me for a moment in His arms, and I feel—I don't know what I feel, it is so strange, so unaccustomed, over too quickly. Bliss. Love. Joy. Then He is gone, whether onto the platform or back to heaven I don't know. I am sitting again, and the train rattles down into the sudden darkness of the underground tunnels.

All the way to Baker Street I think about the strangeness of it. He didn't speak, I'm sure of that, but I know what He meant, in His compassion and His embrace. He meant that I must love Him. He meant that I must do more than fulfil my part of the bargain I made with His father. He meant that it was wrong to bargain, but he forgave me anyway. I must not just obey Him and give myself to Him, I must also love Him. It was easy to love Him while He touched me, and even now, sitting here in the close memory of it, it is easy. But I know this feeling will fade. I change to the Bakerloo Line at Baker Street, walking fast, feet clacking on tiles, past walls lined with hundreds of silhouettes of Holmes with his pipe and deerstalker, changing from grey to brown as I change platforms. Already my worry about Elly is flooding back against the rapture.

I push onto the tube train. I stand, hanging onto the rounded brown plastic bulb at the end of a coiled metal strap. In the Metro in Paris, do they still have leather straps? I'll probably have to stand all the way to Waterloo Station. I usually do, but often I have a pole to hold, which is better. I am pressed around by strangers, I shall not fear. They do not see me. I am anonymous. I clutch my bag tightly under my arm. Jesus loves me. I sound like one of those ridiculous evangelists we saw on television in California. But it is true. He loves me, despite what I am and what I have done. He forgives me. That is different from the hard bargain I made with God and Father O'Malley. Hanging here from the strap, lurching with a practised shuffle every time the train corners, I feel finally forgiven my sins, as I did not at Farm Street.

Father O'Malley was horrified at my confession. He was just one step away from driving the demons out of me, I could tell. "Why would I have come, if not to be shriven and give it up?" I asked. He held out a big silver crucifix and spoke in Latin. It was then he cautioned me against making bargains with God, then he began to set out conditions.

The first was simple, that I should give up worshipping all other gods. All false gods, he said. I agreed, easily. I had come to the Church for protection. If the old gods could have protected me I would not have had to turn away from them. I knew the stories. I knew that for what Colin and I had done there was only condemnation there. They could not protect me from what came to Oedipus, to Jocasta, to their children. Only the encompassing forgiveness of the Church could do that. Next, Father O'Malley refused my plea to accept all the guilt and have Colin forgiven on my behalf. He was implacable. He said he could only forgive him if Colin came and confessed. I knew he would never do that. I begged and pleaded with Father O'Malley, but he would not be moved. He said that the child, only a mound in my belly then, still unborn, still safe, was innocent. But he looked at me as if he thought it would have two heads. I did not say that I knew she was whole and perfect, free from blemish or defect. It did not seem wise to emphasise to Father O'Malley the extent of my powers, even as I swore to renounce them in return for forgiveness.

"There were lots of people like me in the fourth century, Father," I said. "People who believed in other gods or none and came into the church to be good Christians."

"You want the shield of the Church between you and your sin," he said. This was true, so I bowed my head. "It was done in innocence, you say?" he asked. I nodded. I had been through all this with him. "You were adopted, both of you? So how was it discovered?" I told him, and he shuddered, crossing himself. It was then I promised my whole self, my magic, everything I was, and never to ask for another thing in my life, if God would only forgive me. And Father O'Malley forgave me in God's name, and set my penance.

The train jerks to a stop, almost throwing me to the ground, people push of, push on, the doors slide together with a hiss, the train jerks off on it's way again. I am tightly pressed by people all around. So many people, so little air. It's hot. A man behind me rubs against me. I try to move away. This often happens. Once when it was like this, the train stopped in a tunnel, for a long time. It was very quiet. Then after a while a woman started to scream. They took her out at the next stop. I know just how she felt. Today I am brave in Jesus' love. Many days I stand here and tremble. These people would tear me apart if they knew about me what in the human world only Father O'Malley knows, that I was a witch and bore a child to my own brother.

At last, at last, the train draws in to Waterloo. There is marching music in the bright concourse. I march to its rhythm past stalls selling doughnuts and burgers, filled baguettes and racks of brightly coloured ties and socks, out onto the Embankment. Already it is almost dark. There is a man selling papers. "Standard!" he calls, but it sounds like "Stannard!" He sees me then, and his eyes burn as he takes money from the commuters. He does not look at them or at the papers he hands them. He stares at me. Then he calls out again in a loud and passionate tone, spitting the words. Without looking I know what he says has no echo in the headlines of the papers in his pile.

"Children lost in tragedy. The war's on again in the Middle East. There'll be no more holidays in Greece. And one more thing. It's not going to be nice any more." People pause without paying attention, buy his bad news. I do not.

I walk away, fast, trying not to listen. I am cold, the icy wind cuts through my thin coat. I try not to think. I have promised to have no contact with anyone of his kind. I clutch my coat around me and walk through the wind beside the river, through crowds moving the other way, towards the station. I make my way towards the hospital. Soon I will see her, soon. Oh please, sweet merciful Jesus, save her life. I will do more than believe in strict duty, I will love You, and do all I can to keep You alive, as I have these seven years.

The hospital has its familiar smell, antiseptic laid like a film above the smell of unhealthy overcooked food. The walls are painted beige to waist level and pale green above. There are prints pinned up at regular intervals along them, mostly Monet and van Gogh. I have been here so often these last months I do not have to ask, I know the way through the maze of corridors without looking at the blue and yellow signs. I turn at the Sunflowers and come down the short hall into the Critical Children's Ward, past the empty reception desk to the bed where she—isn't.

I blink, and I can feel a scream rising from somewhere deep inside me. Did He come to tell me He had gathered her to Him? That is not the mercy I asked for, Lord! A nurse comes running. Why aren't there any children here? The room is ominously silent, under my rising scream. "Mrs. Deneet!" the nurse says, over and over. Why can't English people ever manage my surname? Denuit isn't hard. I've seen this woman every day for weeks. The room is a blur of tears—where are all the children? It was full of terminal children, too quiet and too pale, heartbreakingly good, with faces lined with pain which would never be lined with age. They can't all have died, not all at once. Loving Jesus, did you come to tell me she is gone? I can't bear it, it is too much. "Eleanor! Eleanor!" I scream. The nurse shakes me, calling her mispronunciation of my name. Then the doctor is there, Dr. Carol. One of them touches my face. I don't feel it. Dr. Carol is talking, but I can't hear her voice clearly or understand what she's trying to tell me. "Terrible thing..." "Breach of security" "Police". "Inform relatives".

"Eleanor!" I call, again and again. Dr. Carol stops trying to shout and speaks quietly and calmly, and I hear her.

"Mrs. Denuit, please! Your daughter's—we don't know what's happened to her, but she isn't dead as far as we know!" I draw breath, and stop screaming. For some reason my legs give way and I slide to the cold floor. The nurse bends over me anxiously.

"Can you understand me, Mrs. Denuit? Marie?" Dr. Carol asks, she is crouching beside me, her white coat and skirt crumpling, her face concerned. I nod, afraid to speak in case I start to scream again. "Somebody—we don't know who or how—broke into the ward earlier this afternoon and kidnapped the patients. Just this ward. All the children were taken. Nobody saw anything. The electricity went down and it must have happened then. The alarms went off, and the nurse on duty vanished too. The children still have their tags—Mrs. Denuit?" I nod again. I have heard things about hospital security. "It's such a terrible thing to do. What sort of people would—We're expecting some kind of ransom demand. The police have been here. They expect to recover all the children safely. We contacted all the relatives straight away, except those we couldn't reach. Do you understand?" I nod again, and try to stand. Dr. Carol helps me up. I sit down on the edge of the bed, both knees together, shaking.

"Kidnapped?" I hear myself saying, sounding echoing and strange and far away. Dear Jesus, who would kidnap sick children? Possibilities instantly flash through my mind. If Colin knew somehow that she was dying he would have come and cured her. He might have taken her. If he had—tears are streaming down my face again, or still, I do not know if they ever stopped or ever will. Jesus Lord, did Colin come for her? She would be well, but I would be failing my promise to bring her up in the church. Jesus, answer me! Is she with her father? Once I always knew where Colin was, now I have closed myself to him and can do nothing. If it was Colin then I must find her and rescue her. If it was not, lunatics maybe, who else would take her, take my dying child?

A face swims before me, the weasel-faced man wearing a mottled grey cardigan in the heat that was Siena at Easter years ago, the camera that is a weapon around his neck. He would take Eleanor if he could, or any child, to try to kill what I most desire to keep alive. Is that memory of his face just memory or a message from God? No way to tell, any more. I am disarmed, helpless, I have surrendered all my weapons. I lie across the bed, weeping, and feel Doctor Carol's arm around me, hear her words of useless comfort. I know nothing, I have no way of knowing, no way of finding out where she is, who has her, whether she yet breathes. Oh Lord God, who gave your only begotten son to die for our sins, I gave everything to you for her sake, and all I can do is remind you of it. Doctor Carol is telling me to wait, sending the nurse for a sedative. This is my punishment for my sin, my unwitting sin, and I knew I should be punished, Lord, but let it all fall on me, only on me. Think of those other children, Lord, and their parents. Let them all be safe, and live. And let my cry come unto thee.

4. LADY OF DESIRE

Half lit by darkness in the flickering cave
your smile looks past desired gold and white
to touch upon the substance, only touch
the searing sunlight shrinks the scope so small.

Katerina crossed the square cautiously. She tried to look as if she were going to the cafe at the centre under the trees, and not to the big church of Ag. Paraskevi which stood at the eastern side of the square. It had a blue-painted dome and the walls were white. The sanctuary itself was big enough to hold twenty people at a time, and the courtyard where the services were held could hold the whole town, and often did at the great Easter service. Then everyone would hold a candle and when light was rekindled in the darkness the light would flow from one candle to another around the courtyard, and the people would walk out from there around the bounds of the town, carrying the little lights.

Katerina loved Easter, she always had since she was a small child. She loved cupping her hand around the flame to guard it from the wind. They said that if your candle went out before you reached home it meant bad luck in the coming year, and if it went out and was not relit you would die. People stayed together with their lights burning as they went home after the walk, to ensure that there would be light there to rekindle the flame if necessary. Fat old Pappa Andros and his wife always brought up the rear of the procession and escorted people who lived a little out of the way, making sure nobody must go alone. They were always the last home. Her candle had never gone out. But once her best friend Taxeia's candle had, and although they lit it again straight away she had had bad luck all that year, her grandfather died, her mother quarrelled with her uncle and the boy who was courting her lost interest. That was six years ago when they had only been eleven, but Taxeia and Katerina understood. Everyone was careful with their Pascal candle in the procession, but nobody more than these two best friends.

Although it lay so near her father's taverna, Katerina rarely visited the church of Ag. Paraskevi, apart from that big Easter service. Usually they walked through the streets to the little church of Ag. Nikolaos. Her father, Stellio, like most of the islanders, preferred Pappa Andros's style to Pappa Thomas's. Ag. Nikolaos' church generally had far more visitors, despite its smaller size and inferior position in a maze of workshops and houses. Today it had to be Ag. Paraskevi's. Katerina had a particular favour to ask of that saint. She smiled at her own daring, feeling with her fingers in the front pocket of her dress. It was still safe, she felt the rounded corners of the copper figure of a woman. These copper plates were generally made in the shape of body parts. People hung them in shrines as an offering to ask for healing, or a special blessing. Hers, in the shape of a whole person, was probably meant for someone ill all over. She'd just chosen it from the selection hanging at the kiosk. It was the closest she could get to what she wanted.

She slipped through the gates of the church, past the free-standing bell tower and into the cobbled courtyard. The walls of the courtyard, priest's house and the sanctuary were all freshly painted white. It was almost dazzling as she walked across the cobbles in the sunlight. It was an hour after mid-day, and the heat was intense as it beat on her bare head. The doors of the sanctuary were closed but opened to her touch. The cool air inside the thick walls was very welcome. Katerina's eyes took a while to adjust to the dim interior. There were only two small windows, with deep recessed sills angled to keep most of the light and heat out. There were candles on the altar, and in front of the various shrines around the room. The church was empty, as she had hoped, at this time of day. Katerina picked up an unlit candle from the waiting pile, and walked across to the shrine of Ag. Paraskevi.

There was a statue of the saint there, a plaster copy of a marble original. Behind it there was an icon. Ag. Paraskevi was very beautiful, whichever one looked at. Behind her head in the icon were doves. She was the patron saint of love and peace. It was love that brought Katerina here now. She lit her candle, and hung up her plaque on it's little piece of ribbon, beside all the others. Then she stood up straight before the shrine to pray, looking the statue in the eye.

"Agia Paraskevi, my name is Katerina, I am the daughter of Stellio, who keeps the taverna in the square. I am seventeen years old, and nobody loves me. I am not ugly, but I am not beautiful either, not like models in magazines and not like you either. I have left school and I am working serving tables in my father's taverna. I have three older sisters, and they are all married and living at home with the family. Ag. Paraskevi, I don't want to grow old working in the taverna all the time, without anything ever happening to me! I don't mind if I get married or not, but I want love, I want excitement, I want someone to care about me. I don't just want to marry somebody my mother picks out and carry on working at home like my sisters." This was what she had prepared, but she added a thought that had just come into her mind. "Ag. Paraskevi? If it is true what Yanni said about Great Pan being reborn, then you will take off your cloak and be Aphrodite again. If that happens, and I pray it does, I want someone beside me when the world changes! Holy saint, hear my prayer" she finished, in a completely different, formal and empty tone.

She left the church walking with a jaunty air. She was surprised to see Pappa Thomas in the courtyard as she came out. He had come in to her school once a week to teach religion to the older children. All he ever talked about was God the Creator and the Passion of Jesus. She almost giggled to think how much he would have disapproved of her prayer. She smiled at him and tried to go past. He raised an arm to halt her.

"Katerina!" he said. "I'd like to speak to you, if you don't mind. Would you like to come into my house?" Katerina had, of course, often been warned about being alone with men. She could not work in the taverna without getting used to seeing lust in men's eyes. It repelled her as much as the consuming love she longed for attracted her. She looked closely at Pappa Thomas, and did not see any lust or danger in him. Her mother always warned her especially about priests, whose lechery was proverbial. Pappa Thomas had no wife. Priests must be married before their ordination, if they are ever to marry. It is forbidden for a priest to marry but not for a married man to become a priest. Pappa Thomas had clearly decided never to marry, although he was a young man still, perhaps ten years older than Katerina. She could tell he still thought her a child. She followed him across the courtyard into his little house. Inside it was cool, almost too cold. He shut the door quickly. "The air conditioning." he explained. Katerina felt goosepimples on her arms. She hadn't been anywhere this cool for months.

He led her into a small book-lined room, gave her lemonade and a dishful of sheep's milk yaourti drenched with honey, cold from the refrigerator. When she had eaten a few mouthfuls of the sticky treat, and answered a few dull questions about her education and employment, Pappa Thomas came to the point.

"You were working last night at Yanni's party?" he asked, as if casually. "Tell me what happened, please. I have heard rumours, but nothing for certain from anyone who was there." Katerina knew that one must never lie to a priest. Yet she wasn't a fool. She knew that it would be a terrible idea to tell Pappa Thomas what had happened. She didn't know what he would do, but she knew there would be trouble. He wasn't stupid, but he had trouble understanding things that everyone else found perfectly obvious. It was probably because he was from the mainland. She tried to find something to say that was not a lie but not too revealing either.

"Why, we roasted half a pig." she said.

This did not seem to satisfy Pappa Thomas. "What I heard," he said, "was that pagan gods were mentioned. Is that true?" Katerina thought fast.

"Pappa Andros was there," she said. "He would surely have said something if anything was said that was inappropriate. You should ask him." Pappa Thomas frowned. Katerina spooned up the yaourti as quickly as she could, hoping he would accept that answer.

"But did you hear pagan gods named?" he asked, looking at her carefully. Katerina thought of that toast to Great Pan. It was surprising that it hadn't echoed out of the taverna and woken the whole town.

"Only one god was named," she said, thankful that it was true. To avoid having to answer any more direct and searching questions she asked one of her own. "Pappa, working in the taverna I hear a lot of things. Is it true, as some men were telling me last week, that Ag. Dionysos found a sprig of vine growing, and put it in a bird's skull to keep it safe, but it grew and grew so he put it in a dog's skull, but it spilled out of that so he put it in a lion's skull and it grew out of that too, so he finally put it in a donkey's skull. And that's why people when they get drunk first sing like birds, and then quarrel like dogs, and then get brave as lions and finally as silly as a donkey?"

"It is the rankest superstition!" Pappa Thomas' frown creased his whole face. "These stories are everywhere in the islands. Sometimes they are pagan traditions which have lasted from Homer's day. That one may well be, it has the ring of it. Sometimes they are harmless folk tales, sometimes they are pernicious. But all of it pollutes the true religion, the worship of the One God and his only son, Jesus Christ."

"Thank you, Pappa," said Katerina. She had finished her yoghurt, she stood in one movement, trying not to look as if she was shivering with the cold. "I understand that now. Thank you very much. I will come and visit you again, but right now I must go because my mother will be expecting me home."

The little priest looked at her suspiciously, but he did not try to stop her leaving. As she ran home she wondered if she should warn Yanni, or Pappa Andros. If everyone was making things, then sooner or later somebody was bound to let something slip to Pappa Thomas. She sighed. If she warned them she'd have to explain what she'd been doing in the church. They could look after themselves.

The next morning Katerina woke before the dawn, thinking she heard someone calling her name. She got up, hearing the birds singing. There was one cloud in the eastern sky, a single wing of flame. She dressed quietly and slipped out of the house, down the stairs that led to the street. It was pleasantly cool. Nobody else was about yet, she had the town to herself. She headed down through the crooked streets towards the harbour. The fishermen would be coming home, and the passenger boat from Kerkyra came in at eight. It was always interesting to watch the unloading. She liked to see the shiny silver fish as the men hauled them out into boxes. She liked to see the fishermen's faces, with the different look of men who have not woken to it but come to morning through night. But somehow this morning she found her feet took her away from the harbour towards the shingled strip of beach. To the north of the town were cliffs, falling sheer into the sea, but to the south the land was lower, until it rose again a few miles along where there was another tiny harbour and fishing village.

The shingle crunched under Katerina's feet as she walked past the olive oil factory, still and silent now in June, when all last year's olives were golden oil already and next year's were still ripening on the branches. She walked far out along the beach, not knowing where she was going or why, but feeling a sense of excitement stirring. As she walked South along the shore the sun rose over the sea to her left. At last she was out of sight of the harbour and the town, at an outcropping of rock. The sun was clear of the horizon now, shining on the glittering sea, which was already wine-dark blue.

The day was beginning to be warm, and Katerina had walked fast, she was hot and sticky. The sea looked cool and inviting. She wished she had thought to bring her bathing costume and a towel. Then she looked around her. Nobody could see her. Nobody would ever know. She took her clothes off, rapidly, and put them safe on a rock weighting them with stones against the possibility of wind. Completely naked she made her way carefully to the water's edge. The shingle was unpleasant underfoot. The first touch of the water was icy. She almost changed her mind and went back to her clothes. It was only the memory of how much she loved swimming and how rarely she had the chance these days that made her carry on picking her way across the underwater rocks. She walked out carefully until the sea was around her waist, deep enough to let herself fall forward, plunge in, start to take deliberate strokes and swim. Then the water felt wonderful, cool on her neck and head and breasts, refreshing beyond belief. She swam out along the sun's track, sometimes turning on her back to make sure she had not gone too far.

She had just decided to turn back when she felt something brush against her leg. Looking down she saw a large dark grey shape, nudging her. For a moment she feared sharks, but then as it came out of the water she realised it was a dolphin. Dolphins in the Aegean were always friendly to people. She had seen them occasionally before, but never so close as this. She swam away, it followed. She turned and swam towards it, it bumped her again, and quickly swam away. She started to laugh. They played together in the calm blue sea for some time, heading slowly shorewards. At last the dolphin would come no closer in. Katerina paused, treading water. She raised her arms, drops of water glittering like diamonds in the sunlight. The dolphin swam towards her, and she dived under it. When she came up again it was nowhere to be seen. She shook her head, scattering drops that broke the water. She still could not see it. Then a head broke the surface of the sea nearby, but not a dolphin's head, a man's head, a stranger, full bearded, hair sleek with water. Katerina started to swim away, panicking.

"Katerina!" he called. She hesitated, paused, looked again. His hair and beard were very dark, almost blue black. A stranger. Yet he said her name with love. Then she looked into his eyes, and saw they were the dolphin's eyes. "Don't be afraid." he called, and the words hung on the water. He floated there, not moving, then a wave rose in the water between them, pushing at her gently, playing, as the dolphin had. She had heard stories of this sort of thing all her life. But she'd never really thought that it could happen any more. It was more than she had ever dared dream of. She would have been afraid of any man, however much she prayed for love to sweep her away. But of a god who had come to her as a dolphin in the early morning sunlight she had no fear. She swam towards him into the wave's embrace with no hesitation.

5. THE BROKEN MAN

(Deirdre)

Thou art the best of men if thou canst know
thy part, and seek to fill thy shape entire,
but do not seek to step beyond thy bounds
and only I may see where they are set.

A particularly loud and sustained rumbling crash startles me out of a daydream. Before I have thought I am on my feet, crossing to the kitchen window to watch it. I can't remember when I last saw a storm like this. The lightning tears the sky open, the thunder following close behind with a crash that is a surprise even when I am holding my breath expecting it. Somewhere behind the rent and scudding clouds there is a full moon, and every now and then she sails clear for a moment. The power is down, and the candle is just a flicker behind me. At every flash the huge black silhouettes of the elms and oaks on the ridge, bare branches reaching out, stand stark against the sky. Between the flashes it is very dark. It is magnificent. I feel an urge to sing loudly, to cheer on the passion of the elements, but I keep silent. I do not want to risk waking Emrys. If he can sleep through this I definitely shouldn't disturb him. At last the clouds break and I hear the rain come hissing and pattering towards me. There is some hail in it. It has reached the trees but not the house when there is another flash, and I see a shape on the road, a man's shape trudging along, collar pulled up against the driving rain and the wind.

I know at once it is nobody I have ever met. I cross to the table and pick up the candle, bring it back to the window and set it up on top of the speaker. There, the light will show against the darkness. I have done my share. If the man wants shelter from the storm, or sanctuary he will see it. When the next flash comes he is nowhere to be seen. Nevertheless, two flashes later, there is a knock at the front door. I pick up the candle and walk across the room carefully, trying to avoid stepping on Emrys' toys that have been left around. Despite my care something small and plastic crunches underfoot.

I open the door and hold the candle up, to see his face. He is standing against the light of the moon, which is clear for the moment, and I can see that he is tall, clean-shaven, his hair slicked back under the rain, but that is all. He does not speak.

I draw breath to ask who he is, and find my breath taken by another, who speaks through me in strange old-fashioned words. Every time I think I will get used to this when it happens, when one of the indwellers acts through me. Every time it is a surprise. I could take back control if I would, but when I bade the spirits welcome I knew there would be strangeness. Mostly they just mutter advice in my head, but sometimes they know to speak or to act when I do not. This is an old, old voice, but new to me, old beyond naming, reaching me from times long gone. The words echo from my own mouth.

"Is it sanctuary you're seeking this dark night when the gods are thundering and storming in the sky or only a little bit of a place to lodge you out of the rain and the wind?"

He comes a step closer, peering into my face as another flash of lightning rends the sky. Part of me that is me wants to cover my scarred cheek from that gaze, but neither I nor the indweller who is speaking through my mouth make any move to do so. I see him clearly for the levin's instant of light. His is the saddest face I ever saw. He has dark hair and dark eyes and his face is etched with the lines of deep grief. When he speaks his voice surprises me, and surprises those who watch within me. Somehow I expected this stranger to be a foreigner, but his voice is gentle with the soft accent of the West of Ireland.

"I was only seeking a dry place out of the storm, but if you can offer sanctuary I'd have you know no god would stretch out a hand to save me from a falling bolt or the driving hail." I am minded to let in any man who can answer an indweller so, with matching words. Such are rare in this age and I should greatly like to talk to him, be he a godless man or not. The indweller herself knows better, and does not budge.

"And what should I be calling you? Have you blood on your head, or something worse, that the gods should seek you out and you under my roof?" She's right. If he is blood cursed then I can't risk having him inside in a storm when it would be so easy for a bolt to strike. There is more than myself at risk here.

"You're right, so, though it's looking for peace I am these seven years now. My name is my word, and I'll not speak it aloud here in the wild world where any might hear me. You're right, and I'll be going off now and not pollute your hearth at all." He starts to turn away back off the porch into the driving rain, which is coming with the West wind almost straight against the side of the house. I can't bear it.

"Didn't I say I'd give you sanctuary?" I blurt, although I had not, and the indwellers all reproach me insistently. "Come on in out of the rain and let me close the door." I turn and lead the way inside. I wait at the door to the front room while he takes off his soaked jacket and shoes. I feel awkward, embarrassed. He leaves them dripping on the hall floor. The indwellers have no good advice for what to say to a possibly bloodcursed man who knows the proper words of address and to whom one has just granted sanctuary. Fool of a girl says the one who took my breath, fondly, as she retreats back into the muttering at the back of my head.

When he is done I lead the way into the front room, put the candle on the coffee table and sit down. He waits until I offer. "Sit down." He perches on the arm of one of the suite chairs. I feel compelled to apologise. "I'm sorry it's candles, but the electricity was blown out by the storm about an hour ago."

"Don't worry," he says, in his mellow voice.

I leave the candle with him and go to the kitchen, treading on more toys in the dark. I light another candle by the stove, quickly find what I need and set it on a plate. Then I grab a bottle of wine from the fridge and two thick tumblers that Emrys uses for juice—I can't risk reaching up in the dark to the high shelf where I keep the wine glasses. I put it all on a tray, the candle as well. It isn't long before I am back in the front room. He has moved from the chair and is standing in front of the shrine in the corner, the candle held in his hand. Ah. I hadn't remembered that, when I brought him in here, I was just thinking that it was tidy.

He turns to me, and in the light of two candles I can see his grief-lined face clearly. "Could you tell me, Lady, do you serve the High Gods or the Mother here?" He knows you're not a Christian from the words we welcomed him with, and he recognises holiness, which is a good sign. I smile, and inside me the indwellers chuckle. What could a man tell after all, from some shapes of stones? But another speaks a warning deep inside What manner of man will know your allegiance before he gives his name?. So I simply smile, and set down the tray wordless, sprinkle the salt on the bread, break it, stand again and offer it to him. He accepts it, looking at me.

"It's safe you are under my roof, and none to harm you," I say, old ritual words. "My name is Deirdre MacAran and a hundred thousand welcomes to you at my hearth." I bite the bread. It tastes salty and yeasty, the taste of being a host.

"Thank you for your welcome. I will uphold the peace of your hall whatever comes to me. My name is Colin O'Niall." He bites into his bread, chews, swallows. He has not moved from the shrine.

I pour the wine, fumbling with the bottle and the thick glasses on the tray, making a little time to answer his question. The storm is still loud outside. I am not sure how much I can trust him, though he has sworn to the hall-peace. There is a gap of strangeness inside me. It seems perfectly natural to the indwellers, my ancestors, that a man might come asking sanctuary using these words, and know how to answer me. Yet to me who live yet in the twenty-first century and know that nothing like this happens in the world any more, it seems very strange. It is hard to know on what level to react. It is almost like a dream, with a dream's certainties. Unlike a dream, reality has consequences. I must be careful. I finish pouring the wine, and walk over to stand beside him at the shrine. He has finished his bread, but not moved. He must have been hungry, I'll have to make him a proper meal.

Most people would only see a pile of rocks a voice reminds me. I look at the rocks, the patterns laid out in them calm and strengthen me.

I clear my throat, feeling awkward, hoping some competent voice will speak for me. They laugh together behind my eyes, and hold their peace, leaving it all to me. "My altar is to the High Gods." I say. That would be enough, but I feel compelled to add, "I worship them all there, though chiefly the Lord of Light, the Lord of the Vine, the Lady of Love and the Lady of Silences. I praise also the Maker, the Sky Father, the Lord of the Waves, the Lord Messenger and the Lady of Wisdom. I do not forget the Lord of the Dead and his Bride. I honour the Mother as Life Bringer, and Giver of Plenty, in the proper season. It would not be right to neglect her. But she is not the owner of my heart, nor has she particular cause to love me."

He relaxes suddenly, I can sense it as a tension goes out of him. He bows his head to the shrine then turns, sets the candle down beside the one I brought on the tray and sits full on the chair whose arm he perched on before.

I touch a smooth rounded stone, the sea's gift, nod to it, then sit on the sofa. I take a glass and hand it to him, take the other. When I would sip the indwellers restrain me Wait for his toast. In seven years, so much I still have to learn.

"A safe house!" he toasts, and raises the tumbler. We both drink. Then the Knowledge comes to me, a bright flash, like lightning, as if I were at the loom and looking down on the shape of his life. As swiftly as lightning it is over, and exactly the same it has its illuminating effect. I know who he is and what he has done, and what his purpose is. No wonder it is the Mother he fears. I have no more fear of him, and while the indwellers are all awed by what has come to us I am made fierce by knowledge. I speak calmly, looking him in the eyes.

"A safe house, maybe, for a while." I say. "I've granted you sanctuary, Colin O'Niall, but I'll not let you endanger me, or my son."

"I wasn't thinking you were old enough for children," he says, raising his eyebrows. I smile to myself, and look down, turning my cheek to the light so the god's touch shows clear. I know he knows, or can guess from that. He should learn that flattery won't get him anywhere with me.

"I hear your sister is called Night?" I say, carefully. He freezes, tense again, the glass half way to his lips. Then he relaxes, deliberately, then raises the glass again, and looks at me considering. That is enough.

"It is true, so," he says, not asking how I know. "And your son? What is he called? If I might be asking?" There, the pretences are down He deserves the truth, girl, in pity's name.

"I have given him his father's name, I call him Emrys Louis, which is a good name for a boy in these times."

"It is indeed," he says. "A Welsh name, and a French. Unusual." The candles flicker, as a gust of wind creeps in through a crack in the window, casting his face into shadows for a moment, but I think he smiles. "I know his father."

"Likely enough," I say, and again the strangeness of this conversation almost overwhelms me. We understand each other. This living man is one of my own kind, the first such I have ever met. I don't know whether to rush towards him or back away "Are you hungry?" I ask.

"I am, indeed," he says. I take a candle and go into the kitchen. This gives me a little breathing space. With the electricity down I can't give him anything warm, and there isn't much. Some cold potatoes, some cheese, the rest of the loaf, an apple, but it will help. Better than nothing for a man who has been out in a storm I take it back in to him, and after thanking me he eats in silence. I watch him. The storm is still raging and crashing around the house. I consider what I might ask him.

"It's lucky you found this house, out of all the village," I say, as he puts the empty plate down.

"Luck indeed," he says, "Chance, Necessity, or some god. I've no power left as I think you know."

"Why are you here?" I ask.

He sighs. "If I'm here and not somewhere else it's because all places are alike to me now. I've been wandering a long time, ever since I crossed the line fate set about me. My feet fell this way, that's all."

I didn't expect that. That wasn't what I saw. "You've been wandering aimlessly?" I ask.

"In my boat and out of it, seven years now."

"Looking for your sister?" I ask.

"She's praying." I can't help glancing at the shrine. Colin laughs, a short harsh laugh. "There's no solace for her but the Church. She's gone to them wholehearted, and I've not seen her or sought her. She'll have none of me and she's crying to their bloodless god and his dead son for forgiveness of her sins."

"Seven years. Seven years and yet the world has not been reborn. But being the midwife to that rebirth is what I saw as given you to do."

"Don't blame me," He stares into the candle. "I thought I knew everything. I thought I knew how to make a new world, a better world, an age of choice. I was so confident. But now there is nothing. The White Christ is dying, and Reason is dying, but the oracles are still silent and Pan has not been reborn. What can I do now? I am no man at all. My powers were lost when she renounced hers. I am nothing without her. I thought to make the world anew, but instead the world broke me, because she would not trust me." He drains his glass and sets it down beside his plate on the tray.

"Nobody can outstep the bounds of fate, but it is a grief to me." I say, carefully. Just then there is a flash, brighter than all the others. For a moment I think the Sky Father has struck him down where he sits, as the noise follows, louder than any thunder I ever heard. In the darkness and silence that follows, I tremble. Then I walk to the window and draw back the curtain. One of the great elms on the ridge has been struck, riven down the heart. It is burning brightly.

"That's sacred fire," Colin says, quietly. He is standing beside me, very close. I did not feel him move.

"No use to you, or to me either," The storm is moving away now, westwards. We stand there a moment in the light of the burning tree, understanding each other well enough. Then I drop the curtain and take a step away from him. This is all too strange. I need to think and talk with the indwellers, find some balance. In the morning it will be easier.

"I think the storm is moving away," I say. He nods. "It'll be quiet enough to sleep soon, if you want to stretch out on the sofa here, I'll bring some blankets down." He nods again, and sits down. I take the candle and find blankets in the airing cupboard. Emrys wakes to hear me moving around, and I have to go in and hug him, find his bear, settle him down again. When I come back, my arms piled high with blankets and pillows, Colin is standing by the window again, gazing out at the burning tree.

"A hundred years to grow that tall," he says softly, without turning. "Struck down in an instant for growing taller than it should, for something done without knowing, trying its best to be the best it could."

"That's the way the world turns," the old spirit says, using my voice. "But it's no excuse at all for you, or anyone, not to try their best to strive to do their share."

He turns from the window, and I can see the tears plain on his cheeks. I feel an urge to put out a hand to him in comfort, to embrace him, but my arms are piled full of blankets, and the moment passes.

6. LORD MAKER

By regulation of the heart and will
by discipline, obedience and dearth
a hard road lies to what the holy seek
but other paths lie open, straight and true.

"You said you were going to decide!"

"And I will decide. Dafni—"

"It is time now. Gone time. Pappa Andros, there is a great pile of children's shoes toppling over in the back of Yanni's shop. It is the same with every shoemaker on the island. Eleni can hardly move in her spare room for all the clothes piled up there. I said I would look after the food, and I will, but how can I until there is somewhere to keep it?"

Pappa Andros sighed heavily and ran his hands through his hair. Dafni stood firm in front of him, her feet firmly planted well apart and her hands on her hips. Every angle of her body spoke of her determination. Behind her black clad form blocking the doorway he could just see the little pomegranate tree that grew against the white wall that separated his garden from Yanni's.

"Come in and sit down, Dafni," he said, wearily. "This isn't an easy matter." Dafni took a step into the room and pulled out a wooden chair from where it was tucked under the table. The heavy red cloth fell down into the space where the chair had been. She sat, heavily, propping her elbows on the table. Pappa Andros pushed a blue plate of fresh and sticky dates towards her, smiling. Dafni took just one, ate it in three swift bites, and spat the stone through the doorway and into the garden. Then, having fulfilled the basic requirements of hospitality, she raised a quizzical brow. Pappa Andros smiled.

"To you it is all simple, isn't it? There are all these things to store, and nobody can agree about where they should be kept. Spiro is squabbling with Costa over plans and everyone who has a warehouse wants to offer it." Dafni nodded, waiting, not relaxing. She smoothed her black dress over her lap. "Very well. But the other thing to be remembered is Pappa Thomas. He's not going to be happy about this. Not at all." Pappa Andros frowned, sighed unhappily and absent-mindedly ate a date. "He's been asking people what is going on. He's asked me. I just couldn't think what to tell him. Dafni, you're a sensible woman, the mother of grown-up children, a grandmother, you must realize that Pappa Thomas won't understand any of this. He's not one of us. He's from Athens. He's young and clever, but also foolish. He wants everything to be logical and make sense."

"He will have to learn that life isn't like that." Dafni frowned. "But even though I don't like him much either, he is a priest. Are you saying he doesn't believe?"

"I'm saying he's not going to believe this. He's going to call it superstition and blasphemy. Superstition is what he calls everything that is not explained. Fortunate for him that he lives after the days of Ag. Pavlos and those wise fathers of the church Origen and Thomas Aquinas who managed to explain so much so cleverly, or he could not be a priest at all. He won't be able to explain this unless he is cleverer than I think. He is trying to find out what is going on. As soon as he does, or as soon as he has a real suspicion or proof of anything at all he's going to write to the new bishop. He's done that before about various customs of ours, and the old bishop always took the very sensible position that traditions are traditional and ought to be upheld. I don't know what the new bishop will say. He can't say that about this, anyway. Nobody could say that it is traditional to make children's shoes for Great Pan."

Dafni grinned, and took another date. "It may be one day. Like Easter eggs and Christmas stockings." Pappa Andros groaned. "Go on," said Dafni, reaching over and patting his arm.

"Well. In any case, the bishop is in Nafplia, and he's not due to come here for months yet. I don't think he'll take Pappa Thomas seriously, not at first. He won't believe it either, and he'll have a file of letters so he can see that Pappa Thomas complains quite often. But sooner or later he will start to pay attention. Or he'll think that Pappa Thomas has gone mad, or that I have. He'll write to both of us, I expect, and I shall have to think what to say. Whatever I say, he will come then, I think. He is a good man and a wise man, the new bishop—"

Dafni laughed. "I hear he's too fond of figs and spiced meatballs to be a truly holy man."

"The same could be said of me," said Pappa Andros, taking a pale brown date from the plate and turning it in his hand. "I am fond of food and wine, and of my wife. But also I love Christ and Ag. Nikolaos and all the Holy Saints and I do my best not to be a bad priest to all of you on the island."

Dafni nodded. "That is true, Pappa, you're right. You are a good priest, and a good man. It is Pappa Thomas who would set the church apart from the world."

"That is the Roman way but it has never been our way in Greece. I wonder sometimes if Pappa Thomas thinks too much of Rome. But, well, in any case," Pappa Andros ate the date in two swift snaps and tossed the stone through the open door. "The bishop is not a fool, and I am bound to tell him the truth. Anything could happen then. But he is not likely to be happy, I don't think. Change is a frightening thing to a lot of people. A great change like this especially. All the world will be different, and we can't say for sure how. All we can do is our best to make it a good place, as always."

"Yes, Pappa. But what does this have to do with storing the things?"

Pappa Andros smiled. "Nothing diverts you from your purpose, does it Dafni? Well, it's like this. We do not know when Great Pan will be reborn. Your son's visitor neglected to give him this important information. So we do not know how long we have. The longer the better for making shoes and clothes and preparing things. But the shorter the better for Pappa Thomas interfering. While the things are a few in one place and a few in another they are not visible to him as things on their own, only as part of people's lives. He does not pay much attention to details like a pile of clothes, a pile of shoes. But once the things are collected somewhere special however careful we are he will become aware of what is going on. This is probably true however good and hidden a place we find to keep them."

Dafni nodded slowly. The priest stroked his beard. "This is why I have been delaying all this time, hearing the claims of one warehouse and another."

"But sooner or later you will have to decide. If you leave it too late then everything will be scattered when we need it."

"That is another thing that makes it difficult to decide where to keep it. We do not know where we will need it."

"Why—" Dafni leaned back in her chair, rocking the front feet off the red flagged floor. "Surely Great Pan will be reborn where he died, in the grove on the mountain they call Pan's Grave? I have not been up there since I was courting my Elias, but I remember where it is."

"It would seem likely," agreed Pappa Andros. "but it is by no means certain that it is there that the shoes and things will be needed. They could be needed here in the town, or over in Stavros." Pappa Andros wondered why Dafni frowned at the mention of the little fishing village on the other side of the island. "We don't know why they're needed after all. If we knew more, we could make better plans. I think for now it is best to keep them in the town."

"In one place," said Dafni firmly.

"Soon."

"Soon might be too late. They might be needed tomorrow."

"I don't think so." Pappa Andros rubbed his beard thoughtfully and stared at the reddening fruit on the pomegranate tree outside. "There are various times it could be, but I do not think it will be a day of no account. But there are few days of no account, so I don't know. Most likely would be Easter, I think. It was Easter that he died, after all. Easter is a time of Spring, and of rebirth, resurrection. It is a long time before another Easter. Or it might be Panaghias. The Feast of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin. August 15th. That was an old festival to Pan the Most Holy before it became associated with the Holy Mother." he shrugged "Or it might be Christmas, certainly a time of birth—"

Dafni raised a hand. "I have a thought. This is all just speculation. I shall tell Yanni to ask these questions when next he has a visitor. But thinking about Panaghias reminded me. Manoli and Evadni, the boatbuilders, you know them?"

"Of course."

"Well that reminded me of them, the boat they're building for then. Never mind now, the important thing is that they have a warehouse on the beach, down near their workshop. A large one, which they use for storage, mostly for seasoning wood. It was more than half empty last time I was in it. That is a warehouse on the shore which does not stink of fish, which anyone might have a reason to visit, away from prying eyes and yet near to wherever the things might be needed."

"It will still make it easier for Pappa Thomas to work out what is going on, and maybe try to stop it." frowned Pappa Andros. "But you are right, that is a very good suggestion, and one which will go down well among those who are squabbling to have their plan adopted, because it is nobody's plan but yours. Well done. I will go down there now myself and speak to Evadni and Manoli about it." The priest got to his feet decisively.

"Good, very good," said Dafni. "And if we should find out that after all they will be needed away in Stavros, my youngest, Taxeia, seems to be courting a boy from that village, and maybe his mother will know where they can be kept."

"That is good news, my best wishes to them both," said Pappa Andros.

"Oh, I still have hopes she will see sense," said Dafni, grimly, pushing back her grey coils of hair as she followed him out into the sunshine.

The shingle of the shore slipped under Pappa Andros' sandals as he walked out to the boatbuilders' workshop. He did not often have reason to come down on the beach. The sea sparkled, blue and ruffled in the little breeze. There were tourists sunbathing and swimming, and a single red-sailed yacht anchored far out in the bay. Pappa Andros stepped over the wooden runners that led from the workshop to the water's edge. He noticed several fishing boats, keel-up in the stones, waiting for repairs of different sorts. A well-muscled fair haired man he did not recognise was applying a double fold of fibre-glass to one of them. He was stripped to the waist and wearing cut off jeans and leather sandals. He must be someone the boatbuilders had hired to help in their busy time, Pappa Andros thought, approving how neatly he worked.

At the side of the workshop, on a kind of wooden scaffold, stood the skeleton of a wooden sailing ship. Evadni was perched up on a cross-beam intently working on it, specialised tools which the priest did not recognise in her hands and hung about her. As he approached, Manoli came out of the workshop, holding up a small can in his hands.

"I've found it!" he called up to his sister. Then he saw Pappa Andros and came forward, smiling a puzzled welcome.

"What brings you here, Pappa?" he asked.

"Excuse me if I don't get down!" called Evadni from her perch. "But I can't until this is done."

"I wanted to ask you both a favour," said Pappa Andros. "But there is no hurry. What are you doing?"

"Ah, I thought you'd come to see the ship that saved Christendom from the Turk," laughed Evadni. "That's what we're doing. We're building one of the galleases for the Lepanto re-enactment this summer. We're to build another when this one is done."

"There were six in the real battle." said Manoli, handing Evadni the little can. "But they're going to manage with two. It will all be done on a smaller scale. And it will be right out there." He gestured. "The Turks will come from there—" he pointed to the bay of Nafpaktos across the water, "And the Crusade will come from there." He pointed South. "Our two ships will be part of the Crusade, of course. The Turkish galleys are being built in Algeria. Boat builders all round the Mediterranean are giving thanks to Ag. Nikolaos for the opportunity."

"I thought I'd seen you in church more often recently," said Pappa Andros, smiling. "Who is paying for all this?"

"Some American millionaire, apparently," said Evadni, "But it is being organised by some Roumanian Church." She laughed, taking the lid off the can and filling the air with a pungent odour. "Mad idea, isn't it? But it wouldn't be a Greek one. Nothing to us, really. Even though the battle was fought right here whenever it was—" she glanced down at Manoli.

"1571." he said, sighing as he picked up a chisel. "Why do you always forget?"

"Well, 1571, by then Greece was pretty thoroughly lost to the Turk already." She spat. "Four hundred years before we were free of them. My grandfather used to tell me about when they pulled down the mosque in the town. He said when he was a boy he used to go outside the mosque when they were praying and jumble up their shoes. Or maybe that was his father did that, when he was a boy. He knew Byron, you know."

"If the Turk had won at Lepanto there would have been no Byron. No help from the rest of Europe in 1832, if it had all been Ottoman." said Manoli, in the tone of one who had said the same thing before.

"We would have won free anyway," his sister said. "That was destiny, that we would lose and then win free again. Battles, dates, details, what is all that to us? The good thing about this battle is that they are playing at doing it again and paying us to build the boats for it. But people will come from all over the world to sail on both sides. A great Christian victory, they are calling it. The Last Crusade. And afterwards the ships will go to California, to San Francisco for another re-enactment there." Pappa Andros looked out at the quiet waters of the gulf in front of them. It was hard to imagine them full of ships fighting each other. He looked back, and saw the hired stranger limping back towards the fishing boat from the warehouse, another fold of fibreglass lying across his arms.

"In any case," said Manoli doggedly, catching Pappa Andros' eye. "It was an important battle. It proved that sailing ships were better than rowed galleys. These—" he slapped one of the timbers of the ship. "won the day for Don John of Austria. After that nobody built any more galleys, and all the slaves that used to toil rowing them were free." He looked up at Evadni. "A change in the style of ships! Is that important enough for you?" Evadni laughed again, leaning forward into the framework.

"It must be nice for you to have a chance to build a wooden ship in the old way," said Pappa Andros diplomatically. This time it was Manoli's turn to grin up at Evadni.

"I have been saying that," he said. "But she doesn't like it so much. Ever since she went to Athens to learn it she has wanted to work in fibreglass all the time."

"It is the way of the future." she said, firmly and decisively, leaning back and handing the can back down to Manoli. "Fibreglass and steel."

"She's just frustrated because she wants to design battleships and she only ever gets the chance to build fishing-boats. It's in the blood. Our father was exactly the same, and so is my younger son, who wants to make a submarine. I am happy to build what it is possible to build on this beach. I tell him if he wants to make submarines he will have to go to Athens."

Evadni snorted. "That's done. Now I shall come down, Pappa, and we shall all have a break and sit down and talk. And you shall meet our new assistant, who is also fond of fibreglass. And I shall find you some refreshment. This, you will notice, my lazy and so practical brother has neglected even though he has had his feet on the ground the whole time we have been talking. We will sit and be civilised and you shall tell us what it is that brings you all this way out here to honour us with a visit."

7. THE BURNING TREE

(Deirdre)

All lit within but never burning up
you know the answer to the sun's embrace
to stand so firm, an equal, unafraid
to keep the hearth alive though ash grow cold.

Emrys wakes me to tell me there is a burning tree. I have slept long and it is late. Rubbing sleep and the latest of my dreams from my eyes, I pad through to look out of the window of his bedroom. He's right. Clear on the slope in the fresh and rain-washed morning, the stricken elm burns with the familiar clear glow of wood that burns and is not consumed. A burning tree, real before my eyes, no dream at all. The sky is palest blue, and the grass has fresh green beginning, thinking of spring. The other trees reach bare towards the sky. Emrys pounds my leg.

"It's magic," I explain, staring at it. "It is a wonder. Sky Father sent the lightning in the night." Everything seems different. It is at once more real and mundane than last night, and also stranger. I swallow, my hand rising to my cheek. My dreams were confused, always on the point of resolving into some point of clarity and focus but never finding it. The burning tree had been in them all. If there was ever any doubt that it was sacred fire, or a divine lightning strike, it is gone. Emrys sits on the windowsill and gazes out, turned serious.

"Will other people see it?" he asks. A good question. A very good question.

"I don't know." I reply, honestly. We watch it for a while, then I remember Emrys doesn't know about Colin. "There is a man downstairs."

"I know." Emrys says, in the familiar tone of a six year old being told the obvious. He twists on the sill, looking away from the tree and up towards me. "The broken man. I saw him in my dream. He has come to take me away."

"That he has not." I am startled, and find I am bending down and holding Emrys tight. He wriggles away, as so often. Don't think of him as half a child and half a god. All child, he is, though godlike. says the old indweller who came to me last night. And the dreams come from our side of the family adds my grandmother, with a touch of pride. If he must go, he must says another voice, wistful. I smooth his blond hair. He's too young to leave me. In a few years, maybe that's what he saw. Colin. The broken man a voice echoes. I shiver.

"Let's go down and see him. And eat breakfast!" suggests Emrys, scrambling down.

"Dress first!" I insist. I hand him his clothes from where they are flung over the back of a chair. I go back to my own room to dress. I pause to try the light. Good, the electricity is working again. Doing these routine things, the things I do every day, washing, dressing, everything seems stranger than ever. My clothes don't feel right. My shirt has the shadows of different shirts and blouses and jerkins and plaids and I fumble with the buttons.

My windows look West and South, I can't see the tree. Why are you worried, girl? You always knew it was real, as if the child wasn't proof enough for you Yes, but even so, if it's all going to come alive again in the waking world? There is excitement in the muttering I can't make out, and the same excitement begins to swell in my heart too.

Emrys is ready first, but he waits for me finish brushing my hair before we go down. I go towards the kitchen, deliberately making a clatter on the stairs. Colin opens the front room door, awake and dressed. Well, he had nothing to change into, dressing can't have taken long. What is he thinking of to walk the roads with nothing? /Grieving, most like/ He thinks too much on his grief /And how long has he been wearing those clothes? Past time he washed./

"Morning," I say, awkwardly. The spirits hide behind my eyes and don't prompt me. He looks up at me, equally awkwardly. Emrys thrusts himself forward.

"Hello!" he says. "I dreamed about you."

"Did you now?" Colin asks, looking at him closely.

"Have you seen the tree?"

"The tree struck by lightning? I saw it in the night." Ah, he has not seen it.

"Come and see!" says Emrys, excitedly. I walk into the front room. He has folded the blankets neatly on one of the chairs. Good. I draw open the mottled brown and gold folds of the curtain. Clear on the slope above us the tree still burns steadily. One thing only have I seen burning like that before, the sun's chariot.

I look away from it after a little while. Emrys has climbed onto the chair so he can see better. The look on Colin's face is beyond understanding. Not quite wonder, nor yet longing, but something powerful is moving him in that direction if I can judge at all. He catches me looking at him. "Fire from heaven. A sign, but who sent it, and with what intention?" he asks.

Does he expect me to be able to answer? What would he know of the Sight?

"It is a wonder." Emrys says, repeating the words I told him.

Colin looks down at him where he stands, the pale winter sunlight reflecting from his golden hair. "A wonder indeed." he says, looking from the child to the tree, and then straight into my face.

For an instant I think the indwellers will speak through me again, but nothing comes, and I just look at him. Now his hair is dry I see how it is coarse and heavy and dark, like mine. The lines on his face show clear in the daylight. He needs a shave. "Come into the kitchen and eat breakfast." I suggest. Yes, feed them, always a good thing to do first.

"Mam!" Emrys says, indignant. "I want to go and see the tree. I want to go and see the tree now." I never give in to that tone of voice, but the way Colin is looking at me tells me he wants to go and see the tree now too, and I laugh. I could not in truth eat just yet, without seeing the tree close up myself.

"Put on your boots and coat, then," I say, smiling, and Emrys hugs me as he runs past.

Colin turns to me. "A good child. I'd like to have the fostering of him." My mouth opens, but no words come out. "What's wrong?" he asks.

"You—I —That's not—" my own voice sounds weak and choked and catches in my throat. "That isn't the sort of thing people say in this day and age."

To my surprise he laughs. It makes his face look quite different. "Neither are the things you were saying to me last night." I can't help smiling back, a little. Upstairs Emrys is singing as he pulls on his boots. "We're neither of us quite of this time, or quite otherwise," he continues. "and how old is little Emrys Louis?"

"Six, two weeks ago," I say.

"Born on Imbolc? And conceived on Beltaine?" I nod. "Beltaine seven years ago?" I nod again, strangely shy. A spark of hope has woken in his eyes. It shines out at me. "Then that is a child growing fast. He is not like a child of six but one of eight or nine. He is a god's child, and you know what that means. He needs teaching. I have no power, but I have knowledge still. I know what he must learn and I can help him towards it. If the gods have sent me into your path here, maybe that is why."

I do not answer his words, but the glow in his eyes. "You think my son is the new Necessity?" Emrys is coming downstairs again, clattering in his boots. Colin does not answer, but looks at the burning tree, and his own face seems to be burning. "There have been others such." I say.

"Others, yes, the Holy Ones have sons and daughters in every age. That is what I thought it. But he is different. How was it? You have made a bargain. Did the Lady of Love lead the Lord of Light here?"

I cannot answer him. He glances over at the shrine. "Would you be content to stay here and teach him?" I ask instead. Emrys is who he is, that will be his choice. But part of me would like Colin to stay here. I do not often acknowledge it, but I am lonely, despite the indwellers. I live between two worlds I only partly understand. Some people say I am a witch, and others call me mad. My own mother walks past me in the street and does not speak. I swore to keep the hearth, and so I will, but it is hard alone. I was so young then, with the voices new woken inside me. I did not fully understand all it meant, to be the bride of the god.

"My head says I would stay," he says, as Emrys comes in, pulling on his yellow raincoat. "But my heart tells me I have far to travel."

"And your soul?" I ask, picking up on my own coat. "Get Colin's jacket from the hall." I tell Emrys. He goes, obediently.

"My soul is broken," he says, taking my coat and holding it for me with rueful courtesy. "Between us we had one and a half souls. We could have done anything. We had more power than ever anyone in this age of the world. Without her—" he hesitates, as Emrys comes back in. I fasten my coat. He pulls on his jacket. From the way he touches it I can tell it is not quite dry yet.

It will be quicker to go through the kitchen and out of the back door. I lead the way. Emrys stops me with a wordless exclamation.

"My Batman! You broke my Batman!" His tone is accusing. He holds up a black plastic figure, cracked and crushed.

I remember it breaking under my foot in the dark. Why did it have to be that one, of all his toys? "I'm sorry. It was dark. You shouldn't have left it on the floor."

His bottom lip sticks out and begins to quiver. "It was my favourite."

"Was it now?" asks Colin, gently, from behind. "And why was that?"

"Because his arms and legs move." Emrys holds up the ruined toy to demonstrate. He still sounds peevish, but I do not think he will cry.

"Once I could have mended that with a touch," Colin says, stroking it gently. "You could learn to do that, Emrys."

"Mend plastic?" Scornfully.

"Anything that was once alive. And plastic was alive once, it was oil and before that it was fish and swimming things."

"Fish?" The spirits and I are fascinated to see the man begin to teach the boy like this. I open the back door, and we all go out into the watery sunlight. Emrys leads the way. The grass is very wet. The burning tree is directly up the slope that shelters the house to the East.

"You may stay and teach him, if that suits," I say, quietly, as we walk. "But he is too young to leave me yet."

"In the Brehon laws it is written that a child is ready for fostering at seven. Whatever he grows to be he must learn the way of the world. I admit I might hope he will be the one to set the pattern." He looks at me, for the first time slightly uncertain. "I have raised no children, nor fostered any, but I feel I know enough."

He looks like a man who has found purpose after too long without. It will do Emrys much good and no harm to learn from him. No matter how much you love them, every child must be let go when it is time. "He will be seven in a year."

"Does he go to school?"

"To the school in the village. The priest knows about him. People talk, of course, they have nothing better to do. But they can do no more than talk. The house is mine, left to me by my grandmother, with a little money. I make a little more doing embroidery on linen for a firm in—" we are interrupted in these practicalities by Emrys reaching the top of the slope and shouting. I rush forward, Colin beside me. It is strange to walk beside someone whose stride is as long as my own, after so long.

"Come on!" shouts Emrys again.

From nearby the tree is even more impressive. The flames dance on the wood, flickering and changing, red and red-gold and orange and yellow and blue. They give no heat. The whole tree burns, every branch and twig is limned with fire. I extend a hand to the flame's edge. There is still no heat. I raise both arms, palms flat towards the tree, as if warming them before a fire, or as if about to commence an act of invocation. I move closer, and press my palms against the smooth bark of the bole. The flame licks around my hands, without any harm. It flickers round my wrists, but no farther. I never thought to see my hands like that again. Colin reaches out, strangely timid for a man who has done so much, and touches a branch. A touch is enough, he steps back.

Then Emrys comes up beside me. "Mam?" he asks. I look down at him. "Can I?"

He has no fear, but he waits for my decision. I nod. It cannot harm him, child of fire, and he should share in this wonder. He copies what I did, raising his hands and then pressing them forward. As he touches the tree the fire suddenly leaps out and engulfs him, so that for a moment he is truly godlike, like his father, ringed about with flame. He and the tree are one, burning brightly together. Then, abruptly, the fire goes out. The tree is just a stricken elm, blackened by the levin-fire that fell in the night. Emrys slowly steps away. I wonder if he will cry, but he does not. He looks up at me, his blue eyes unfathomable. I take my hands off the tree and bend down, opening my arms to him. Colin touches the branch he touched before, and with a crack I hear clearly it breaks in his hand.

Emrys hugs me, and then sudden as a change in the wind runs off down the slope, yelling "Breakfast!" Colin and I look at each other and shrug, then follow him back down the slope towards the house.

It is more like lunch than breakfast by this time. With all the bread and cheese Colin ate last night there isn't much left. I scour the cupboard. He and Emrys eat cereal and yoghurt while I boil eggs. I take them from the packet and slide them into the pan, the indwellers remembering how they feel warm in the palm and messy from the nesting box. I should start keeping hens myself, there is room. I make a pot of tea, putting on the cosy to let it brew. Emrys finishes his cereal and brings the milk in. He takes his responsibility seriously, and walks slowly with the bottle, reaching up to put it on the table.

"I wonder if the milkman saw the burning tree?" he asks, as he slides into his place.

"I saw it with plain eyes," replies Colin, which is as good an answer as I could give. I set down the eggs in front of them, and pour the tea and Emrys' milk. Hospitality again in this pouring out. Then I sit beside Emrys. Colin takes an egg, I take one. Our fingers do not touch, we have not touched at all. He is smiling sadly at me as he sets the egg in the cup. I do not know what he knows. On the table in front of him lies the broken branch. He didn't have to ask my permission to stay. I have given him sanctuary. He could stay forever if he wanted to. I want to ask him lots of things, but none of them seem right in daylight, with Emrys here. Luckily Emrys chatters, covering my silence.

Colin answers his questions, leading him to knowledge through his own direction, patient and sure. It will be good for them both if he stays. Good for the boy to learn more than I can teach, and good for the man to have rest and a little peace for a while. He looks as if he has been wandering alone seven years, weather-beaten, tired, dirty, his hands and face roughened with sun and wind even now, at the very end of winter. Good for me too, to have company. I leave them talking and go in to the shrine, as I do every morning. Moving the stones restores my peace and brings a balance I have not known since I first saw him on the road. It is given to me to stay in this place, to keep the hearth, to wait. All will be well. As I finish I remember the charred branch Colin brought in. I go back to the kitchen to fetch it.

Colin is standing by the sink, washing up, Emrys is putting dishes away. What sort of man would turn his hand to women's work? Hush, grandma, a good sort.

"Shall I set this branch in the shrine?" I ask, picking it up.

Colin turns, and nods, then dries his hands. "Come and see," he urges Emrys.

They follow me through into the front room. My sewing waits beside the chair near the window. They stand behind me and I set down the piece of wood in its place. I am turning away, about to speak, when vision strikes me, terrible and clear and very far away. This is not like the flashes I am accustomed to. It is searing and terrible. I stand in a place only the Fates can bear. The images pile on too fast, I can not endure it, my mind will break. I think I cry out nonsense as I fall "No more niceness! No more doom! Three dead mice in the womb, tomb, room!" Then He is there, in the mind's sight, standing protectively between the vision and me. Ah my beloved, you have come! He smiles fondly at me, holding back the flow until it is bearable. I know even so I cannot endure it very long.

Although He is all around me, Colin is bending over me. I catch my breath, and try to make sense of what I see. The kaleidoscope images are still whirling. Clearest is the child, thrown over a shoulder.

"They have taken the child!" I say, urgently. Colin glances at Emrys, puzzled. "Not my child. Your child. Your daughter. And other children. Lots of them. Dying children, children of power, and the children of gods. They won't wait. They will kill their own faith too. They will water the tree with the blood of dying children. They will make a compost of corpses." I hug Emrys close in my arms, and for once he does not resist, he lets me. His father is still guarding me. Even so I am weeping and rocking to and fro. The indwellers are frightened of me, of the force of the vision, cowering together at the back of my head. I want to laugh and weep and scream. Without His help I would snap.

Colin kneels beside the sofa where I am, perched on the edge. How did I get here? I was standing by the shrine? "Where should I go?"

"I see you," my voice sounds as if it comes from far away. "I see you gliding in your wooden boat, passing between green islands in dark blue sea, under hot sun. Emrys is with you, and a woman."

"Marie?" he asks.

I cannot help laughing, almost choking on it. "Oh no, not Night, she has given up doing and being both. You will not speak again in this life." I draw breath and try to straighten myself up. "I do not know where they are, Colin O'Niall, you know if I did I would tell you. I know where they will be. They will be in the islands, in Greece, at Lughnasa, and they will try to kill them then, on the stone, a dark stone under the trees. Do you know who they are?"

"I—" he hesitates. "I know who they might be. There are many impatient to see a new world." Emrys pats my face and gently pulls away. His eyes meet his father's for a moment. Then the Lord of Light begins to close the gates of vision. He draws away, and I fall back on the sofa, my eyes closed.

"You have to go," I hear myself saying, in my grandmother's voice. "Look after him!" With a great effort I force my eyes open again.

"I shall." Colin is looking at me straight and serious, then he puts out a hand to touch my scarred cheek. He holds it there a moment, still, his palm and fingers covering the palm and finger prints set on my face. Then I raise my hand to touch his face. I hold it there for an instant, and we look at each other. Then I am falling again, falling deep down into darkness and know no more until I wake again in my own bed, utterly alone in the empty house in the cold dawn light.

8. GIVER OF FRUITS

In purposes you cannot hope to guess
they listen to your words and heed your prayers
and strive to fill their shape and bow to me
yet to the wise they speak with double-tongues.

Spiro liked to close up his shop before sunset and walk down to the harbour. Almost every day he would find his friend Mikalis there, sitting on one of the mooring bollards talking to the fishermen. Then he could persuade Mikalis to come and sit down in one of the many harbour front tavernas. The two men would sit and drink cups of hot thrice-boiled coffee metrio, with glasses of clear water. Mikalis would turn his amber kombouloi, worry beads, over and over in his gnarled old fingers and talk slowly to Spiro. They would take bites of the little dish of meze the waiter brought them without asking, strong feta cheese and salty black olives. Without any hurry at all Mikalis would listen to Spiro talk about his day, and without saying much the old man would somehow smooth out all Spiro's problems and put everything in perspective. After spending sunset with Mikalis, Spiro could cope with going home to his beautiful demanding Athenian wife and their children, could cope with another day's need to prove himself the best shoemaker on the island even if he was not the one chosen by the gods.

On days when he closed up late, Mikalis would be gone before Spiro reached the harbour. He wouldn't go into the taverna alone, and he wouldn't linger longer than the time it naturally took him to chat with his friends. Mikalis had a lot of friends. He was a contemporary of Spiro's dead father, Elias, and many people looked to him for advice. Spiro had never told him how important that hour they spent together was to him. Mikalis naturally thought that on days Spiro didn't appear, Spiro had something better to do than spend time with an old man. He didn't know that on those days Spiro spent a discontented evening, and sometimes beat his children and shouted at his wife. He didn't know that the days after those evenings Spiro's work never went well. Spiro didn't want him to know. Nevertheless, Spiro knew. That was why he was always in a hurry to close up the shutters and lock the doors. It was why he fidgeted when customers came in late. It was why his heart sank into his finely made boots when he saw Pappa Thomas come into his shop just as he was finishing the tiny delicate stitching around the straps of a pair of children's sandals, as the shadows began to lengthen.

"Spiro!" said Pappa Thomas, walking into the middle of the shop.

"Pappa?" Spiro slid a sheet of uncut leather over his work, and stood up.

"How are you doing, Spiro?"

"Fine, Pappa, fine. And you? What brings you here? Surely you're not looking for shoes?" The two men laughed jovial false laughs. The next natural move would have been for Spiro to invite the priest to sit down and take some refreshment. To do anything else would be to deny him hospitality. But it was nearly sunset, and Spiro wanted to be going. "To tell you the truth, Pappa, I was about to shut up the shop." he said. "Did you want something here, or would you care to walk down to the harbour with me and have a coffee there?"

"That would be very pleasant, Spiro," said Pappa Thomas. "It is a very hot day, and there is always a breeze off the water." It seemed no hotter than any other day in Ithyka, to Spiro, but he saw that the little dark-bearded priest was sweating in his robes. Spiro did not clean and put away his tools, as he usually did. He just straightened the sheet of leather on the workbench and started to pull the shutters tight and latch them. The young priest watched him. When the shop was locked up the two men walked together down the narrow street.

The white painted houses were close together here, and there was only just room for the two men to walk together under the shade of the vines. Spiro noticed the priest stealing glances up at him as they walked along in silence in the quiet street. It made him feel uncomfortable. He tried to think of something to say, but could settle on nothing. They came out into a wider street, bustling with donkeys and people. An old woman with a basket of flowers on her head pushed between them to offer a red rose to Stellio's youngest daughter, who was just coming out of the electrical repair shop. As she took the rose, Spiro saw the swell in her belly that meant she was expecting. He turned to Pappa Thomas, smiling, but he saw that the priest had seen and was looking shocked. Come to think of it, he couldn't remember the girl marrying. Oh well, these things happened. Maybe not the thing to talk about to a straight-laced priest from the mainland, but nothing to make a fuss about. He kept quiet, but led the way forward. They turned again, onto another narrow lane that led down to the harbour.

The reflections of the sun on the water were dazzling. The wind blew straight of the bay. The fishing boats bobbed at their moorings, and a little water slopped over here and there onto the cobbled quay. Most of them were still deserted, it was a little earlier than the time Spiro normally came down. There was no sign of Mikalis. The two men seated themselves at an outside table at one of the tavernas. Spiro ordered metrio, and Pappa Thomas ordered an iced coffee.

Until the drinks arrived they talked of the wind, and the conditions for fishing. Pappa Thomas seemed uncomfortable. He kept tracing the edges of the red and white squares that made up the tin table-top. The waiter brought the drinks on a tray held h

THE REBIRTH OF PAN

Jo Walton

Copyright Jo Walton 1997 Creative Commons License

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