“Quiet,” Peter motions towards him.

  “I don’t want to say she’s right,” Evelyn finally says. “But I can’t say she’s wrong, either.”

  “It’s how we would do it at home,” Tane weighs in.

  “And my home, too,” Abdel nods. “It’s not an eye for an eye, it wouldn’t even be close to that. But it’s at least some form of justice.”

  “I’m not sure we’d do it at home,” Owain says.

  “No, I don’t think we would,” Peter turns to him.

  “But perhaps we should,” Owain adds.

  So now they have that to think about, too.

  “You could shoot every single one of them in the head,” I tell them. “If you did that, it’d still be more merciful than what they’ve done to my family. If you want to see the graves, they’re not far from here. I can show you where I dug them, alone, because everyone else was executed.”

  There’s another moment.

  Then William finally turns to me.

  Everyone pauses, waiting to hear what he’s going to say.

  He opens his mouth, about to say one thing, then seems to change his mind and say something else.

  “Revenge is a very dangerous thing,” are the words that finally come.

  “This isn’t revenge. It isn’t even reciprocity.”

  “Reciprocity?”

  “That’s the word, in English, isn’t it? An equal action? Well, this isn’t equal.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “If you’d seen what I’ve seen, and have happen what I’ve had happen to me, then you’d understand. But perhaps you can close your eyes and still imagine it. You sat at our table. You knew them, my family, my village, you knew all of them.”

  He pauses again.

  Everyone still looks at him.

  “I did.”

  “So then do this with me.”

  “One question first.”

  “What?”

  “If I do, when does it end?”

  “What do you mean?” I frown. “It ends whenever they choose. This is a war that came to our shores, not the other way around. If they stop there will be no more fighting. If we stop, then there will be no more Crete.”

  “So if the war ended tomorrow, and the two men you’re trying to find went back to Germany, you’d have peace?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If the war ended, but they lived, would you have peace?”

  I open my mouth.

  But just like with William, the words don’t come, so I close my mouth and just look back at him.

  The answer is obvious.

  No.

  I still would not have peace if the war ended but the men who took so much from me went free, so is this who I am now? Not long ago I asked to be someone else, and I now am, I very much am, but is it who I want to be? And is it someone who’s good?

  “I say we kill them,” Charles breaks the silence. “I don’t have to imagine anything, I know what they’ve done, not just here, but everywhere.”

  “Was it these men that did that?” William turns to him.

  “Does it matter?”

  “I think it does.”

  “I agree with Charles,” Abdel adds.

  “Me too,” Tane says.

  William then turns to Peter and Evelyn.

  “And what about you?” he asks the pair. “What do you think?”

  “She’s right about one thing,” Peter swallows. “We can’t hold them. We can’t bring them to our camp.”

  “We could for just a few days,” Evelyn answers. “Until we can get them to a submarine, and off the island.”

  “The submarines can’t hold that many with our men in them, too, and when’s the next coming?”

  “I don’t know,” Evelyn shakes his head. “Perhaps they could make more than one trip?”

  “What if one of us died on the way there. Or waiting for the submarine to come back? Could you forgive yourself?”

  “That’s not the question, is it,” Evelyn speaks quietly, but so all can hear. “The question is if we do this, will we be able to forgive ourselves, when this is all over?”

  “No one will know a single German that died here surrendered, and didn’t die fighting.”

  “They won’t,” Evelyn turns and meets Peter’s eyes. “But we will, won’t we?”

  “I’m fine with that,” Charles answers.

  “Me too,” Owain says again.

  “And me,” Tane nods.

  “There is no shame,” Abdel adds his support.

  So all eyes turn back to Peter and Evelyn.

  It will be Peter’s decision, and he finally nods.

  “So be it,” he sighs.

  It’s only Evelyn left.

  He stands there for a moment with eyes turned down, then looks up, and I’m surprised when he looks directly at me. “You asked me once what it was like to be a famous writer.”

  “I did.”

  “The first thing you learn is that we both write, and we also are written.”

  “What does that mean?”

  But he doesn’t answer, he just turns to William.

  “She shouldn’t be here for this,” he says.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Because even if it has to be done, it shouldn’t be enjoyed.”

  I look back at him.

  He’s finished, though, and turns from me as he pulls the pistol at his waist and starts back towards where the Germans wait on the ground.

  “Let’s go,” William says and takes me by the shoulders to turn me away from them.

  Before he does, though, I see the looks on the German faces and think I can feel their thoughts, too; I see the looks on the faces of all those that lie there in the dirt and the surprise and shock at what they know will now happen as all the rest pull their weapons, and I don’t know if they’re the ones that burned my village, and killed my family, but they’ve done awful things. I know they’ve done many awful things and they’ve done such things for so long it’s been as if they were fighting one war, with one set of rules, and we who are their enemies were fighting another.

  But they’ve come to a different place.

  And perhaps they realize, here and on this island, that we’re all fighting the same war now.

  “Come on,” William says.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Away.”

  “My daggers.”

  “The others will get them.”

  “They’re important.”

  “They know. Trust me, they know.”

  He pushes me in front of him and makes sure I keep walking south, so I don’t see what happens, but after we go a few paces, I hear it. We both do.

  A gunshot.

  Then another.

  There’s another after that, then more, the staccato noise piercing the stillness of the valley and echoing between the mountains on both sides of us.

  Then, nothing.

  Quiet.

  William closes his eyes.

  I do not.

  Then after a moment he opens them, pushes me in front of him once more, on the path that heads south, and we keep walking.

  * * *

  We walk in silence, together, for a long time and I wonder when it will end. It doesn’t seem like he will break it, though, so I decide to.

  “Where are we going?” I ask again.

  “I don’t know.”

  “We’re just walking?”

  “Yes.”

  “It seemed like you had a plan.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then we should go this way,” I say, and point.

  “What?” he asks, as he finally turns and looks at me.

  We’re at a spot where the road forks and changes, from where it winds along the valley and side of the mountains and continues on to the south and west. But there’s a path that goes just south, instead, and through the valley towards a small village that’s there in the distance.

  “Do you know that road?”

  “Of course.”

  “How?”

  “My family used to come here every year.”

  “Here? Where’s here?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Trust me, it’s better if I show you.”

  “Trust you?”

  He looks back at me.

  I don’t answer, I just stare impassively back at him.

  We stay like that for a moment, neither of us flinching, neither blinking, then he finally nods and motions for me to lead the way so we take the road I’ve pointed to that goes towards the village called Elos. We soon get there, and when we do, I go into a familiar shop to buy a dozen kalitsounakia and he follows after me and watches as the old baker wraps them in newspaper with shaking fingers. I’m sad when I see this, then he glances at Demetrios’s clothes and sees the blood on my shirt from the German I stabbed and who told me where to find Friedrich-Wilhelm Muller, and he doesn’t react. He just turns back and hands me the package of kalitsounakia. I try to pay him but he shakes his head and won’t hear of it, so I tell him efcharisto then walk back outside and we continue on. We go over a stone bridge that spans the small river that runs through the village, then come to the Byzantine dome and bell tower of the Agios Ioannis church. We walk in front of it, and when we do, I pause and make the sign of the cross over my body and once I do this, William looks at me then does the same thing, only not in the same way.

  “We do it to the right first,” I tell him.

  “The right?” he frowns. “What do you mean?”

  “How you’re crossing yourself,” I say, then show him.

  I put my thumb, index, and middle fingers together, then to my forehead, my navel, my right shoulder first, then my left.

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “First the wedding rings, now this?”

  I don’t say anything further, though, and we just continue.

  We’re soon past the village, and once we are, the mountains that were on either side of us recede. The climate begins to change, too; it’s more arid, dry, and everything’s brown compared to the lush greenness brought by vegetation in the mountainous middle of the island where it’s more fertile. I put one foot in front of another. So does he. We keep walking, and we go the rest of the way in silence again.

  * * *

  When we finally reach the coast, we stand on rock overlooking the beach, and he takes in all that’s there. Directly below where we stand there are low, dotted shrubberies that give way to scattered palms. Then there’s the sea beyond that, gently lapping against sand, and in the sea, nearly connected to the beach, there’s an island with another beach surrounding it and I breathe sharply when I see it because the lighthouse that used to stand on the island has been destroyed.

  “What is it?” he asks, next to me.

  “Germans,” I tell him, and nod to the remnants.

  “What is this place?”

  “The best beach on Crete. Maybe even the best in the entire world.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “Elafonisi,” I tell him, then start to walk again.

  He looks both ways as we’re about to lose the cover of the hills, then follows me down and towards the beach. We pick our way between shrubberies that drop sharp seeds that litter the path and we crush under our boots. We soon come to the palm trees. We walk between them, then to the sand, and that’s when I point down towards it, to show him, as we get close to the water.

  “Look,” I say.

  “What?”

  He looks at our feet, first, where there’s just normal sand.

  Then his eyes travel farther, towards where I point, and I see them go wide.

  The water is shallow and very clear and at the place where it gently laps against the shore the sand is a bright shade of pink. I haven’t been many places in the world, but this is the only place I know where there’s pink sand like this, and by the look on William’s face, I can tell it’s the only place he knows, too.

  “That’s amazing,” he says. “What causes it?”

  “I have no idea. It’s just always been that way.”

  He looks at me for a moment as I uncinch my belt and hang it over my shoulder along with the bag I’ve been carrying with the kalitsounakia, then he does the same, uncinching the belt that holds his pistol and hanging it from his shoulder.

  I bend down and pull my boots off.

  He does, too.

  We leave our boots there, side by side in the sand, and he follows as I walk out and into the sea.

  The water’s not very deep.

  It stays shallow between the beach and island, and while at lowest tide the water would be at our ankles, it only comes to our waists now as we walk, which is why I’ve taken off my belt because the only things I don’t want to get wet are our firearms; my rifles crisscrossed on my back, and the pistol now hanging from my shoulder. I’m not worried about my clothes. This close to summer, they’ll dry in less than five minutes in the sun. The water gets a little deeper, then shallower, then we’re there. We walk up onto the sand and rocks, then farther, though not much, as the entire island is very small and can be covered in the single throw of a stone and I show him where the lighthouse used to be. It’s just ruins now, though, a pile of broken and scattered rocks, which is sort of like us, too, right? I reach down and touch one, letting my skin feel the heat that comes from it, the sun and light that’s been absorbed.

  We keep walking.

  As we do, I tell him the history of this beach, and island.

  I tell him about the shipwrecks that have happened here, off the coast of Elafonisi, but most of all I tell him how during our war against the Turks, there was a large group of Greek refugees—mostly women, children, and the elderly—and they were with a small group of soldiers fleeing the Ottomans, and they hid on this island, in the exact spot we’re now standing. The Turks pursued them but lost sight and made camp on the beach we’ve just come from, giving up the chase. Then just as they were about to leave, one of their horses wandered across the shallows and the Turk who owned the horse came to the island to retrieve it, and that’s when and how the Greeks were discovered, and after they were, most of them were massacred.

  “Most?” he asks.

  “Just the soldiers and elderly.”

  “What happened to the women and children?”

  I turn and point across the sea in front of us, to the south and in the opposite direction we just came. “If you sail that way, it won’t be long until you’re to Africa,” I tell him. “The same way your people went when they left, heading back to Libya, and Egypt, and that’s where they took the women and children and sold them into slavery. I’m sure they raped them first, of course, and did many other awful things to them, just the same as the Germans are doing again.”

  He’s silent for a moment.

  “I had no idea,” he finally says, still looking south, beyond the waves.

  “All this might be new for you, William, but it’s not for us. I know you fight one way, and believe in a specific version of the world, but that’s your version, and based on your history. Your family, your country, and your memories. But these are ours. Are you beginning to understand?”

  He still stares out at the horizon.

  Then he turns and looks at me, his eyes meeting my eyes.

  “I think I might be starting to.”

  “This isn’t the first time our villages have been burned. This isn’t the first time those who said they would help protect us have broken their promise and sailed away. Yet still we endure. This is how we endure. It’s the only way we have, and the only way we can.”

  “You know this beach and its history well.”

  “My father took us here every summer when we were growing up. We used to stop in Elos, where Baba said they had the best kalitsounakia in all of Crete, and he would buy a bunch and bring them for a picnic.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Try one,” I tell him as I reach into the bag and hand him a pie.

  He looks at the pastry, then bites into it.

  “What do you think?” I ask as he chews.

  “It’s good.”

  “Just good?”

  “It’s really good,” he says, though half-heartedly and I realize perhaps it’s the memories that go along with the kalitsounakia that make it taste a certain way as I take one and bite into it myself.

  Does he have such memories, too?

  Does he have tastes and smells that remind him of times like the ones I had with my family on this beach?

  I don’t know.

  He finishes eating, and so do I, then we sit in silence for a moment longer, the sun beginning its descent now to our left and orange light spilling across sea and soft waves.

  “Are we going to go back now?” I ask him.

  “No,” he shakes his head.

  “Why?”

  “Because you need to make a decision. That’s why we came here.”

  “What decision?”

  “You can still survive this, Maria,” he says, and his voice is different now, strained, almost pleading.

  “So can you.”

  “Not in the way I’m talking about.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you want to kill these men, these two very specific men, then I’ll help you and convince the others to help, also.”

  “But?”

  “Know that it will change you.”

  “What do you mean? Change me how?”

  “It will keep you here, in this time, and in this place, forever.”

  Water gently laps against sand, in front of us, and the sun sinks further.

  I keep looking at him, next to me, and see the orange splashed across his face and features and for the first time I notice the pain that’s there: the extraordinary emotion, and burden.

  And what of me?

  Am I marked in the same way, or will I be, as he says, if I continue?

  “That used to be something I wrestled with and thought about all the time,” I finally tell him.

  “What?”

  “The type of person I wanted to be.”

  “And now?”

  “I realize it’s a choice that was taken from me.”