“Nai.”

  “Then I can, too.”

  He kept looking at me.

  Then I stood.

  I’d walked to him, then leaned down and whispered a single word into his ear.

  “Ela,” I’d said. Come on.

  I took off the loose-fitting shirt I was wearing so I was just in my bathing suit, walked down to the water, then into the waves. I began to swim. He watched for a moment, then stood and took his shirt off, too, so he was also in his bathing suit and ran to the beach and began to swim quickly after me. He started to swim faster. So did I. He tried to catch me, but I pushed and kicked even more and didn’t let him. I eventually came to the rocky island and where it jutted up from the water, pulled myself up and onto it, as a few body lengths behind he then reached the same place, and did the same thing.

  Eleven years have passed since that afternoon.

  It’s been eleven years, but we now make the exact journey again, together, but eleven years older, and in a boat.

  We reach the island.

  It’s small, can be walked across in less than ten minutes, but near where we arrive, there’s another cave. It’s not nearly as tall or wide as the cave where Demetrios lives in the mountains; this is instead just more of an opening with a piece of rock hanging over to shield from the weather, and enough room for two of us to either sit or lay, but no more than that.

  It’s alright.

  We don’t need more.

  We drop our anchor then climb from the boat to go sit there, just the same as we did when we were young, both that first time and so many other times after. I see he’s already been out here because there are blankets and a jug of wine, and things to make a fire that are waiting. He crouches and sparks wood far enough inside and behind the rock it won’t be seen on the mainland, then once it’s lit and going, we warm ourselves next to it. Eleven years ago, this is where he’d kissed me for the first time, after we’d swum here. The bright and hot summer sun was setting in the distance, over our shoulders, and as we’d sat together in our bathing suits on the rocks, he’d leaned over and kissed me.

  I’d kissed him back, my very first kiss.

  Now we kiss again.

  This time, we do more, though.

  We take our clothes off because the fire is hot, it’s very hot, and warms our skin that’s filled with fire again now, and when we’re done, we lay there next to the flames.

  We lay there, and he holds me.

  We don’t move.

  We stay, together, just like that.

  It seems perfect except, of course, it isn’t, and not only because this cave and this island are no longer our cave or our island, along with so much else.

  There’s another reason, too.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

  Anyone else would ask why, or what I’m sorry about, but since his soul is my soul, he doesn’t need to. It’s why we’re here. We’d wanted to have a family, as everyone does, and from the moment we were married, we tried. We were very young and some told us to wait, but we couldn’t think of a single reason to listen to them, and could think of a million reasons not to, so after the celebration in our village—after the dancing, music, food, and wine—we began to try, but even all these years later, there was still no child. It was easy to not think of it, when he was gone, and we weren’t trying anymore because we couldn’t. But he’s back now, so we are, and while Ikaros and Kyriaki’s news brings such joy, it also brings something else for me.

  And he knows that.

  “You’re perfect,” he says. “Don’t be sorry, about anything, because you’re perfect. You’re absolutely perfect, and so are we.”

  I think of the blankets that are here, the things to make a fire.

  “You already knew,” I say, and it’s not a question.

  “He told me three days ago, in the mountains.”

  “Did you have a celebration?”

  “We got him very drunk.”

  I smile.

  My head’s nestled between his shoulder and jaw, so above me, I can feel him smile, too.

  Then we’re silent again, staring at flames as they leap and crack.

  “Why here?” I finally ask him, breaking the stillness.

  “Do you remember the first time we came?”

  “Of course. We talk about it often.”

  “I never told you how scared I was that day.”

  “You were?” I frown. “Of what?”

  “That you wouldn’t like me. I was scared you wouldn’t care for me and everything would be over, and I wouldn’t ever be able to talk to you again. You might think it a small thing, but you don’t know how much I thought about you, how every waking moment of my life was about you, and if that had been taken from me? I’m not sure I could have gone on. I could have, of course, but not in any way I was interested in. Then when we were swimming, I was scared you weren’t going to make it, and I was going to lose you.”

  “Really?”

  “Nai.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t realize then.”

  “Realize what?”

  “How strong you are.”

  I turn now and look at him. He looks back at me.

  Our faces are inches apart as we lay there together, my head on his chest.

  “What do you mean?” I ask him. “How am I strong? I haven’t fought, I haven’t defended us, I haven’t done anything at all.”

  “Because you haven’t been allowed to. But just wait until you are, because then, that’s when the Germans will really be in trouble,” he smiles. “That’s when the Germans won’t stand a chance, and perhaps soon after that… well, perhaps that’s then when our island will be ours once again.”

  I stay there and look at him.

  What does he know?

  Me. He knows me.

  “And when you kissed me?” I ask him.

  “What about it?”

  “It was right here, in this very spot.”

  “Nai.”

  “You remember?”

  “How could I possibly forget.”

  Silence, for a moment, then—

  “Do you know a Petros Varalakis?” I ask him.

  “Of course. He’s from Elaionas and served with us in the 5th. I know him well. What does any of this have to do with him, though?”

  “He’s the reason the Germans came to Skiafos.”

  “What?” Demetrios frowns, then turns to me, my head still on his chest.

  “He gives them information in exchange for money.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m more than sure,” I tell him, still staring ahead now, straight at the fire, and the light. “He’s the one who betrayed us, and told them where we would be.”

  12 FEBRUARY 8, 1942

  We rise together the next morning, when we’re woken by light from the sun, and while we don’t want to leave, we know we have to. The fire has burned to embers and ash, which we scatter and remove all other traces from the island that we’d ever been there. Then once it’s back to the way it was, we walk together down to where our boat bobs at the rocky shore. The waves are less this morning, as they so often are at this time, and Demetrios helps me into the boat again then follows after himself. We head back the same way we came. We row towards the familiar beach that’s our beach, and as we go, I notice something I didn’t on the way over: below us, and beneath the clear azure water, there’s the outline of a wrecked German bomber that’s visible.

  “Look,” I say.

  And he does.

  Then he keeps rowing.

  We get closer to the beach.

  Last night, after I’d told him what I’d found, he’d asked how I knew and who told me, so I explained the whole thing. I told him how Cassia slept with British soldiers in exchange for money, and he didn’t react when I’d said that, but when I told him after the British left and the Germans came, she’d begun to sleep with German soldiers, too, I could feel his body tense next to me. So I told him the British still pay her, and there’s one British soldier in particular that’s still on the island working as a spy and he finds her every week and she tells him everything she’s learned from the enemies who come to her bed.

  When I’d gone down, I’d asked if she could find out one thing for me.

  For us, actually, because she’s still part of our village, as she reminded me, and so she did. One of the German officers had told her about Petros Varalakis, and how he’d come to them and informed them of the wedding in exchange for coins, and at first they thought it might be a setup, and Cretan plan for an ambush in some distant village in the mountains. Then they found out more about Petros, and that he’d loved Kyriaki Magarakis his entire life. What I didn’t know is that while he was in the mountains of Albania, he’d written letters to her, and when he’d returned, he thought they would be married. She didn’t share his feelings, though. He thought she had tried to respond to his letters and proposals, but the notes just didn’t make it through the war. The reality was much simpler, though, and it was that she wasn’t interested in him. She wasn’t when they were young, in Elaionas, before he’d left, and she wasn’t later, either. And then Petros found out why, or at least he thought he did.

  There was someone else.

  Ikaros.

  He couldn’t bear to think about them married, much less see them together, and happy, so he’d decided to do something about it if it couldn’t be him with her, after he returned, and saw them, and went straight to the Germans.

  “Are you sure?” Demetrios asks, a second time. “This is a man’s life.”

  “I’m sure,” I nod to him.

  Then we’re back to the beach.

  We leave the boat where we collected it, and the fisherman it belongs to, another of Demetrios’s friends from the war, from Galatas, comes to retrieve it and when he does Demetrios shakes his hand and I do, too. I thank him for letting us use his kaiki, then we leave Chryssi Akti and continue on and take the same path back towards our village. We soon return, and instead of going back to the house, we stop at the farm. As we get closer, I smell cinnamon and almond as the sun continues higher, and know my mother is making her paximathia again. Then when we get to the door and go inside, we see that she is. She hands me one and Demetrios three, and he smiles and says efcharisto. She tries to make us breakfast but he tells her he can’t—that he needs to get back before the sun is fully up—and she asks if he can stay for a short kafe to go with the biscuits she’s given him, but he just kisses her on the cheek, and that’s his answer, I know, and tells her he hopes he’ll be able to stay again one day soon.

  I do, too.

  I hope that, also; it’s all that I hope.

  Well, not all.

  There’s one other thing, one other thing that our time on the island has gotten me thinking about again, and I shake my head to try to push it from my mind because I don’t want to think about it.

  It’s easier when I can ignore it, and have my excuses.

  We leave the house and go to the barn and as we arrive, I see Tasos coming from the path that leads west, not the one that leads east. He doesn’t see us, then does, and looks shocked at first, before embarrassed. I glance at Demetrios next to me and he shakes his head, very small, so only I can see, and I understand. Tasos gets closer and Demetrios smiles at him.

  “Where have you been?” he asks.

  “I had to go to the bathroom. What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Where have you been?”

  “I’m older than you.”

  “So?”

  “That means you don’t get to ask that. Questions flow downward, from oldest to youngest, not the other way around,” Demetrios smiles even wider and messes up Tasos’s hair. Tasos pushes him away as we all turn and go to the barn together. Baba’s already there. He’s getting ready to take the sheep up to graze in the upper fields, and when we see him, I kiss him on the cheeks, Demetrios shakes his hand, and Baba looks over at Tasos.

  “Where have you been?” he asks, too.

  Tasos opens his mouth, but I’m quicker.

  “He’s going to help me with the olives today,” I say, before he has to respond, and lie.

  Baba nods.

  Tasos looks grateful as he goes to collect the shears and pruning tools we’ll need, and Demetrios walks to the far side of the barn where we’ve stacked bales of hay. He starts to move them to the side. Behind them, and under a bunch of loose straw that’s been scattered over the top, I see his motorcycle, the one he keeps in the cave above Skiafos.

  He takes it and wheels it out of the barn.

  I go with him, just the two of us, and before he starts it, I reach my hand out and stop him.

  “It was the same with his brother,” I tell him.

  “What was the same?”

  “Leaving at night and sneaking back in the morning. It was the exact same, when he was going to see Kyriaki.”

  “It turned out alright for him, didn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I nod.

  “But?” he can sense my tone.

  “It was a different time.”

  Demetrios looks back at me.

  “It was,” he nods, too. “But whatever time it is, Tasos is that age now, also, and can’t stay a boy forever, as much as either of us or my parents would like him to. Nor should he, or have to. There are no more boys left on this island,” Demetrios tells me as he starts the engine and it roars to life. He swings his leg over the motorcycle, and I go to him. I lean towards his mouth and kiss him and let my lips linger for just a little bit longer than they normally would, because he’s going back to the mountains, and I don’t know when I’ll see him next.

  “S’agapo,” I tell him. “I love you.”

  “S’agapo moro mou,” he answers.

  We kiss again.

  He’s just about to leave, but before he does, there’s one more thing; one last thing I need to tell him.

  I lean close again. I whisper into his ear.

  He pauses, then turns and looks at me, once he hears what I say.

  “Are you sure?” he asks.

  My eyes don’t change, nor does my heart.

  “Yes,” I tell him, and my voice is strong.

  He looks at me for another moment, then finally nods and starts to drive away, into the distance, up towards the great snow-capped mountains, and the story-filled cave that’s in them, where he now makes his home.

  * * *

  Once Demetrios is gone, I help Baba and Tasos load the rest of the pruning equipment into the wagon that the donkey will pull. Then Baba goes north with the sheep, and Tasos and I head south to the olives. When we get to the trees, we begin to silently unload our tools and go about our tasks, and it’s warm. It’s unseasonably warm, actually. Tasos takes his jacket off so he’s just in his white shirt and black trousers, and he usually trims and prunes the branches closer to the ground, leaving the higher ones that need to be reached for me, and his older brother. But Ikaros of course isn’t here anymore, it’s just me, so I’m about to get the ladder to do those branches but Tasos gets to it first and takes the ladder and starts to do it himself.

  I watch him.

  I don’t say anything.

  He’s gotten taller, his body stronger, and I can see the muscles in his arms and chest have grown and expanded from the work like this he’s done both here amongst the trees, and also at home and the farm.

  I look at his face.

  He’ll need to shave soon, I realize.

  How had I missed it before?

  Then, in the distance, we hear a noise.

  It’s the sound of engines, and they’re coming towards us.

  We both turn and look, me from my place on the ground, and Tasos from his new place on the ladder, and higher in the trees.

  A kubelwagen appears around the bend.

  After a moment, another appears, then another, and another still after that.

  There are four German soldiers in each kubelwagen, and when they see us, they begin to slow on the road.

  Then they stop.

  They look at us.

  They’ve seen us working here before so this isn’t strange to them, or a surprise, to see a young woman and younger-than-fighting-age boy continuing to harvest their family’s crop, and I’m glad they’ve seen us before, I realize. I’m glad because perhaps that means they won’t notice the change that’s now come to Tasos either.

  I meet their eyes.

  Tasos doesn’t, and keeps his face obscured in the branches, which is good.

  I’ll have to talk to Demetrios about it.

  I don’t want Tasos to leave, and so many things will be harder once he does, but at some point, he’ll have to join the men in the mountains, right?

  Not yet, but soon.

  That’s what I’m thinking when the Germans arrive.

  They can’t know that, though.

  They keep looking at us, then after a moment, the one who sits in the passenger side of the first kubelwagen, who must be their commander, nods.

  “Gut,” he says. “Good.”

  And they carry on.

  I exhale because we’ve heard stories.

  We’ve heard stories of the cruelty of the Germans, what they’ve done to entire villages they’ve found or suspected, even, to harbor resistance fighters either Cretan, British, or from any other nation. Sometimes they haven’t found anything at all, we’ve heard, they just want to punish us for something, for continuing to fight, for continuing to struggle and persevere and resist their occupation.

  Why did they think they would be different from any other enemies that have come here?

  Who did they think we were?

  Once they’re gone, all that’s left is a cloud of dust, and we turn back to our work.

  Tasos continues to prune, and so do I.

  I think of Demetrios, and the last thing I said to him, and I wonder: is this still me?

  Am I still who I was, before all of this?

  I’m not, I realize.

  I’m not at all.

  I want to be there, I’d whispered to him. When you find him, and when it happens, I want to be there and it was my information, so promise me, Demetrios. Promise me this one thing.