Once Upon an Island,

By Stephanie Sebastian

Set on the island of Crete this multi-layered novel is of landscapes and lives shaped by an ancient ethos.
When Michael, a Greek-American, visits his father's village, he comes to believe that his grandmother, the proud Efpraxsia,has poisoned a German man to avenge the murder of her father during the war. As Michael struggles to deal with his sense of betrayal, his mind spins within an age-old memory. And Polly, a tourist befriended by the family, is caught in the coils of this haunting past as she weaves a tangled web of her own making and ultimate demise.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781291941685

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Once Upon an Island,

Once Upon an Island

First edition

Copyright © 2012 Stephanie Sebastian

Edited by Lulu.com

All rights reserved

ISBN : 978-1-291-94168-5

This book is under licence Creative Commons - Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) which you can read here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/deed.en

or write to :

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This novel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover image: Nick Sebastian, Worldwide Communication.

In the middle of the sea in the middle of the land

an island reigned supreme.

Mountains majestic of forest primeval,

towering pines and plunging ravines,

chambered caves, fabled beast,

upland plains of olive and sage

and tumbling streams, singing.

The ancients worshipped a wide-hipped goddess,

who dwelled in the mists of the wooded hills,

in the eye of the serpent, the sap of the poppy.

Purling springs were her voice,

haunting winds whispered words.

She was the touch of divinity, the shiver of arousal.

The Lady of the Wild Things.

In the middle of the sea

When the plane from Athens landed, cheers and applause broke out for the pilot, while others silently crossed themselves with a flutter of fingers from forehead to shoulders and an open hand over the heart. A few minutes later the plane rolled to a stop and the chaotic disembarking began, each passenger pausing at the open door, bedazzled, bewitched by the light of Crete.

Waiting in arrivals for his cousin from New York, Babis lit another cigarette, knowing that Michael would be the last off the plane. Polite and reserved he would let the others push ahead of him, although he would have a reasoned excuse for his delay. Babis watched the crowd walking across the tarmac towards the door. A troop of blonde, broad-shouldered youth came striding in. Dutch or Danish he thought, heading for the high southern mountains. Their heavy hiking boots were in sharp contrast to the buckled sandals and socks of the pale English couples, unmistakable in matching summer hats. Families of Greeks, stylishly Athenian and struggling with bags and belongings, were returning to family homes for their summer holidays. They were kissed on each cheek by their village relatives, the children embraced and exclaimed over. A Swiss guide shepherded her lively group of nuns to the baggage carousel, their habits short, their skirts modestly swinging. One bearded young man in bright T-shirt and shorts, cameras slung across his body, stood with a guidebook in hand, looking up at the signs and then down to an open page. His wife, likewise strapped, but cradling an infant, nodded and smiled at his attempted translations. The lounge noisily filled with tourists and Cretans, dreams and homecomings. And finally there was Michael.

He was standing alone on the runway, pivoting slowly round, deeply inhaling the hot dry air scented with sage from the surrounding fields. Turning full circle he spotted Babis watching him. A big grin spread across his face and with a quickened stride he reached his favorite cousin and the welcoming coolness of the airport lounge.

They hugged each other with genuine affection and began their usual teasing banter.

‘It’s time you grew a moustache,’ laughed Babis, ‘and take off that baseball cap.’

‘You mean grow up? Make a commitment?

‘Get married, have children.’

‘That’s what my girlfriend says, except for the moustache. She says they’re revolting.’

‘What?’ scowled Babis fingering his own. ‘Where is she? Didn’t she come with you?’

‘She didn’t want to. Said she needed some time alone to think about her future.’

‘Without you? Well, we’ll find you a nice Cretan wife here. I have a friend whose cousin has a beautiful sister with seven thousand olive trees and a villa outside Hania.’

‘Does she have a satellite dish so I can watch the Yankees play in the World Series?’

‘Mikey, with ten thousand trees you can bring the whole team here for spring training.’

Michael, American born and educated, had spent a part of every summer during his childhood at his grandmother’s village house. Days were filled roaming the hills with his cousin looking for ancient gold or fishing and swimming in the warm sea. Meals were eaten under the lemon trees in the yard outside the kitchen door, and shamelessly they teased Babis’ little sister. Michael asked Babis about the family. Was Efi home? Uncle Zaharias well? His parents? Did his mother plant the seeds he had sent her? And their grandmother, was she feeling better? Taking off his cap, Michael ruffled up his black hair, and stuck it back down, front to back. Babis raised his eyebrows in mock exasperation at his cousin’s unconscious American cool, and then grabbed him again in a strong embrace. ‘I won’t be wearing it for long,’ said Michael, his voice smothered against his cousin’s shoulder. ‘It’s for your father. I’m just breaking it in.’

A polyglot of chatter flowed around them, an echo of Homer’s ninety Cretan cities speaking in many tongues. Three thousand and more years before, peoples from the shores of Africa and Anatolian had populated the island, their words for hyacinth and narcissus, labyrinth and phoenix still heard around the world. An ancient sea-empire of master artisans crafting works sublime and entrancing that stunned the world, then and now.

‘Excuse me,’ said a voice behind Michael, who turned to acknowledge the speaker. ‘I noticed, well, to be honest, my wife did, your baseball hat. And so we assumed you speak English, rather American, but perhaps you could help us.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Babis nodded, winking at his cousin. ‘Tell us, what is your problem?’

‘It seems that gentleman over there,’ began the husband, nodding discreetly towards a slim young man wearing a thick gold chain, ‘is intent on hiring for us a taxi. However as we are planning to lease a car, we don’t require his services and did our best to explain so to him. But he continues to say taxi, taxi repeatedly.’

‘A misunderstanding with the language,’ Babis explained. ‘He is simply saying okay in Greek. Come with me. I will help you.’ 

The conveyor belt clicked on and whirred into motion. Luggage was claimed, heavy bags hefted, a baby’s stroller snapped open. Michael swung his own backpack onto his shoulder, and finding Babis, the two threaded their way through the crowd and out of the terminal.

While the tourists were boarding Olympic buses, the Athenians choose the Mercedes taxies. Babis’ truck, used to haul olives to the press and a dozen other farm chores, was one of a multitude of other red trucks in the parking lot. They climbed into the hot cab, Michael automatically reaching for a seatbelt that wasn’t there.

‘We’re off,’ said Babis in English, beaming at Michael. ‘Hold on to your hat.’

The bright sun glanced off all surfaces, shimmering on silver leaves stirred by a hot breeze, blinding off the whitewashed houses, sparking off the sea. The desert-hot heat had burned the fields and summer flowers to withered stalks. Michael looked at the scorched landscape and the high denuded hills, hardly able, as always, to imagine the slopes once covered in cypress reaching down to the sea. So rich and famed for its timber in antiquity that Anthony had given the island to Cleopatra as a wedding gift. Imagine that, he always marveled.

‘Look there,’ exclaimed Michael, pointing to a giant cactus, its single flowering spike standing stark and classical against the sky. Thriving in the parched soil, it was a silent sign of the relentless advance of the Sahara. ‘It must be at least thirty feet high.’

‘And part of the daffodil family, pollinated by bats and the baked heart sold in Mexican markets. And, of course, distilled to make tequila.’

‘You remember all that stuff I told you?’ Michael grinned at him. ‘And like I told you before, it would be a good crop for Crete to invest in.’

Michael had studied botany at school and was the first in his family, on the Greek side, to have graduated from university. His father had been sent to America when he was ten years old, to be cared for by his godfather living in New York. Together they sold potted fruit trees, door-to-door in the city. Money was sent back to Crete and only after many years of constant work was he able to buy his own flower shop and marry. Michael and his family lived in a brownstone in a Greek community and all together they had plotted his career. When he had finished his studies, his father presented him with an old farmhouse on twenty acres of land in upstate New York to set up a greenhouse and nursery.

Babis respected his older cousin’s education, but he was satisfied for himself to be no more than a simple baker, industrious and inquisitive. Despite the distance and time apart, they had a strong bond and regard for each other, Michael admiring his cousin’s ease and frank approval of himself. No doubts or debate about decisions, unlike his own dithering quandaries which provided his cousin with quizzical amusement.

Babis maneuvered through the traffic-filled, dust-choked city of Hania, made worse by half the main thoroughfare taken up by road works, the laying of new pipes now at a halt because of an archaeological inspection. Roman ruins had been found under the street. Huge half-buried amphorae, massive in size, unearthed after two thousand years.

‘Remember when you found that big piece of broken pottery with the handle still attached to the rim?’ Babis reminisced. ‘In Balos. In the lagoon. And you and Nikos were convinced that the rest of pot, with all its gold treasure, was buried in the sand under the water?’

‘We never gave up. We spent days diving and searching, burning our backs black that summer. And speaking of Nikos, how’s my goddaughter?’ asked Michael.

‘Learning Homer,’ Babis chortled. ‘Lambros has her reading and memorizing lines while she and her mother are up in the village for the summer. Nikos sent them to stay with his wife’s family until things settle down.’

‘Why? What’s happened?’ asked Michael anxiously. Nikos was an old boyhood friend, distant cousin, in fact. A black-bearded giant of a shepherd. Michael had baptized his first child, Niki.

‘A man died,’ said Babis. ‘And the gossip is that Nikos killed him.’

‘What?’ Michael yelped, completely taken aback.

‘The autopsy showed death by poisoning, but whether accidental or not, it isn’t known. No one’s under any suspicion, but you know how people talk around here.’

‘Tell me what happened.’

‘The man was German and he was looking for land to buy with the idea of building a beach resort. Paragliding. Big plans. He and his partner found a site, a whole mountainside, and were trying to negotiate a deal with the owners, who happened to be Nikos and his sister, Theodora. She, or rather her husband Spiros wanted to sell it. The Germans were offering a lot of money, but it wasn’t even a consideration for Nikos. He just lifted his eyebrows in that silent way of his whenever anyone asked him about it.’

Babis indicated for the exit onto the new highway, finally finished after years of dispute, but then changed his mind and stayed on the old road that followed the coast. For its charm, he had quipped to Michael, and to keep an eye open for new business.

‘Anyway, the Germans set up another meeting at Spiros’ cafeteria, but Nikos never turned up. The two Germans got into an argument, one left and the other, Otto, that was his name, said he was going to find Nikos and have another talk with him. That’s the last anyone said they saw him alive.’

‘So how did the rumor about Nikos start?’

‘That evening,’ Babis continued, ‘Spiros’ mother-in-law, who lives with them, went to light a candle at the church and never returned to the house. They searched through the night for her, but it was impossible to see through all the thick brambles or scramble down the ravine. They feared the worst because all their shouting brought no answering call. Then Spiros stumbled over the German, who was dead just off the path. He was more distraught over the German’s death than his missing mother-in-law, hoping to become very wealthy, with plans for this and that, and he immediately accused Nikos of foiling his dreams. But the police didn’t find any foul play, the body was flown home for burial, and we are left with the mystery of what exactly happened. The police did find all sorts of berries and flowers and leaves in his backpack. He might have picked something and eaten it. Accidental poisoning.’

‘And the mother-in-law?’

‘They found her eventually. She had tripped on the path and tumbled through the thorn bushes, which cushioned her fall, but the pain, she said, must have made her faint.’

‘So why are they saying that Nikos is to blame?’

‘Spiros started the rumor and it got passed around in the cafes and then the men brought it home to their families. And everyone takes gossip as truth. And,’ Babis reflected, ‘you know Nikos is wild enough for people to believe it. But it probably was accidental. The German might have tasted something, except that this Otto seemed to be such a methodical and careful man.’

‘Did you know him?’

‘He came to the house once with some stones he had found. He had heard that Uncle Zaharias has some knowledge about rocks and was curious if maybe he knew what kind he had found. He had a little notebook and wrote everything down, all neatly catalogued, birds, plants, the place and day he saw them, even the time. Called himself an amateur naturalist, talked