My five-year-old daughter is lying in the crook of my arm as we relax on a terrace overlooking the Ionian Sea, teased by a light breeze that tempers the heat. It seems apt that I’m reading her the opening of Roger Lancelyn Green’s Tales of the Greek Heroes, stories of immortals who wander amid the towering heights of great mountains, like those that rise behind us. Mid-sentence, Darcy turns to me and asks: “Is Pan the shepherd still there?”, and it really feels as though he might be.
After all, we are on the island of Zakynthos, where the natural landscape—ancient olive groves and saturated skies—seems touched by the otherworldly (in , Homer calls it “wooded Zakynthos”). Today, the south coast is lined with late-night