Another month slipped by. My body began to grow accustomed to the rigors of training and its relentless demands, though I still showed no particular aptitude for wielding a sword or mastering the tactics of survival. I stayed awake a little longer each evening, sharing supper with the family. Sometimes I ventured out, meeting other young people—friends of Stas and Kalli.

  At training, onlookers continued to gather and watch me, though less frequently now; they seemed to have grown used to my presence and no longer feared me outright. Still, they kept their distance, displaying no trace of trust. I suspected this would never truly end.

  One day, after returning home from training, I ate my meal, and Stas immediately said to me:

  “Fancy heading down to the center? The others will be waiting for us to join them for a beer or two. Come on—relax a little. If you tire early, just head back. No one will mind.”

  “Yes, I know,” I replied. “They’ve started treating me like a mere burden rather than a curse. Ha ha—what can you do? I suppose that counts as progress compared to the beginning.”

  “Certainly it does,” he said, “but don’t grow complacent. You’re not welcome here, nor will you ever be if the truth comes out. Even we don’t trust you—who knows what you really are. We’re waiting for your betrayal at any moment.”

  I offered no reply, only a faint laugh as I looked down. We left the house and made our way to the tavern. There, Stas’s friends and Kalli’s circle awaited us—though she herself was absent.

  Since the day she recounted the history to me in the cave, she had done nothing but avoid me, refusing even to meet my gaze. At home I never found her when I was there; at training she never appeared. I refrained from asking Petros or Stas about it, unsure whether such questions might strike them as odd or intrusive. I simply waited and observed everything around me. I had no idea what any of it might eventually serve.

  Stas’s friends were four young men, each a likely heir to his family’s seat and potential future member of the council. All four had completed the required training and now awaited their turn—provided, of course, that the current family head chose them rather than pitting the heirs against one another in single combat or selecting someone else entirely.

  They greeted us with embraces and kisses; the girls approached as well.

  “Where’s Kalli?” asked Riali. “She hardly comes out with us anymore. Often she stays only briefly before vanishing again—we can’t tell where she goes.”

  Stas paused for two brief seconds, then smiled and answered:

  “It’s nothing. We quarreled again, and she doesn’t want to talk about it. In a few days everything will be fine, as always. You know we don’t always get along—you should have guessed.”

  “We suspected as much,” said Stheno, “but this time it feels different. She doesn’t seem angry; she’s avoiding something.”

  I kept thinking it was my fault, yet the notion sat ill in my mind. Why avoid me? I had done nothing wrong. Yet no one ever spoke of the grave she tended, filled with the skulls of all who had died—as though they knew nothing of it.

  But that was not the only strangeness I had noticed. Indeed, one recurring oddity played out again and again whenever we gathered as a group—different each time, yet eerily similar.

  When the girls approached, one of Stas’s friends—Philippos, twenty-two years old, of the eagle family, blond with blue eyes, outgoing and ever-smiling, possessed an athletic build—invited Gorgo to sit beside him. The others did the same, whichever managed it first, though they knew full well the feelings their friend and the girl harbored for each other.

  Gorgo, for her part, never refused the invitation. She always sat beside the one who called her and remained with him the entire evening. I could see—as could everyone else—the stolen glances she casted toward Stas. Yet no one reacted or seemed surprised. No one commented, not even the other girls; no one altered their behavior, as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

  I might have accepted it as natural myself—even if it was new to me—had I ever observed such a thing with anyone else, in any other company. Yet I saw many strange occurrences, each different in its way.

  For instance, every night a man from the horse family—around fifty, with a pronounced bald pate and a belly swollen from too much ale—sat alone at the bar, drinking. No one approached or spoke to him. I had never once seen the barkeeper serve him anything. Yet each time he lifted his mug, he drank, drank, and drank again; I was certain of it, for I watched the liquid spill from the corners of his mouth—copiously, carelessly, as though he had been drunk for hours. And every night I was there, his wife would arrive and berate him:

  “Useless, lazy good-for-nothing—I never should have married you, never should have let you convince me you could change. I should have let you go into the forest and vanish for good.”

  Visibly worn and aged before her time by toil, exhaustion, and disappointment, she shouted at him for a while. When she realized he paid her no heed—not even turning his head to look—she seized the clay mug from his hands and smashed it against his skull with force. He collapsed to the floor, blood streaming from cuts on his head, mingling with the ale he had been drinking. His wife then departed without a backward glance. Until we left, no one helped him up. He remained in the same spot, the same posture.

  Others carefully stepped around him—always different people, at different moments. When on other nights I asked who he was, everyone knew him; some spoke well of him, others ill. Yet the next evening he was there again, drinking, unmarked on his head, and once more his wife arrived at the same hour.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Eventually I tried asking Stas why this happened, but he replied that what I described had never occurred. Even inside the tavern, after everyone’s startled reaction to the blow—each time a fleeting moment of attention to the noise—no one afterward acknowledged that anything had happened. And every time the sequence unfolded with such rhythm, as though they were following a choreographed dance.

  Yet another incident caught my attention. Girls—presumably unconnected, for some five thousand souls dwelt upon the island—would vanish and later reappear. In the interim, their families neither searched for them nor worried. Indeed, no one remembered they had ever existed. It had happened with Kalli’s other two friends, Riali and Stheno.

  In contrast to Kalli, about whom everyone wondered, when I asked why the others were not with us, everyone behaved as though they had no idea what I meant. I might have dismissed it as some secret they wished to keep from me, but many different incidents followed the same pattern: the islanders’ reactions were identical. It was as if the island had cursed its inhabitants, or the inhabitants were themselves cursed.

  The night, as ever, was starless and dark, lit only by fireflies and torches. Weary after a time, I bade the others goodnight and set off for home.

  On a low wall along the way lay Eftis, disguised as a beggar, feigning drunken helplessness. No one paid him any mind. I, too, merely cast a quick glance as I passed and then averted my eyes. Yet he watched me.

  Somewhere along the route I would encounter—always in a different spot—an abandoned, half-collapsed house. At first I thought they were simply different houses on different streets, but as time passed and I learned the roads, I discerned the pattern.

  Always ruined on the same side, always the same flickering light within, and the wind shrieking loudly through the house even when not a leaf stirred outside. And always the same shadow of a child—around ten years old, a boy perhaps, for I discerned short hair—his hands around the throat of a woman whose head already rolled lifeless. The woman’s body offered no resistance.

  The first time I saw it, terror gripped me. But like all the other incidents, I alone seemed to notice it, so in time I learned to meet even this with calm.

  I recorded all these events each night in the notebook Stas had given me. The following evening, before writing of the new day, I reread them—to assure myself I had not gone mad, or at least that my madness possessed a certain order.

  On my way home I took a slight detour, choosing the coastal path. I was heading toward the place where the beach ended and the way that led to Kalli’s cave. I harbored hope of seeing her again, that she might explain these strange sights, though in truth she would likely ignore me.

  Many times I had taken this detour, and never once had I encountered her. I did not know when she came or left the house, nor where she went. Perhaps there were other caves like hers; perhaps what she had told me was only the surface of what truly transpired—only what she judged relevant to my mission.

  Lost in these thoughts as I walked, I turned my head toward the end of the beach and saw her. She stood there gazing straight into my eyes, unsmiling, clad in a red dress, barefoot once more, her hair now cropped short in an awkward, boyish fashion. Her look was not hostile but calm, weary, and pained.

  I cannot say how long we stared at one another, but at some point the wolf’s head appeared, called to her, and she stepped onto him; he bore her away toward the cave. I remained standing, still gazing. I wanted to follow, to help her, to ask her so many things. I wanted to tell her I found her beautiful.

  In two months, apart from her father and brother, she was the only being who, from the very first moment, had treated me as human. She helped me choose clothes; we sat and ate at the same table; she revealed the truth of this world’s past and of my mission. And I suspected she alone remained untouched by whatever afflicted the island—she seemed to perceive everything. I had no proof for this theory, only instinct.

  I continued slowly toward home, lost in these reflections, kicking pebbles and stones into the lake as I went, until I reached the house once more. I moved up the stairs to my room, but stole a glance into the sitting room and froze in shock.

  At the hearth, Petros was taking strands from Kalli’s severed hair and feeding them, little by little, into the fire. The flames did not merely consume them; they stretched their tips outward, as though trying to draw the strands deeper in.

  Now that I think of it, no one else on the island—save Kalli and Stas—had red hair.

  But that was not the strangest part. The strangest was that the fire took shape—a human shape. A woman’s face emerged in the light, while the smoke it produced was not the usual dark gray but a deep, venomous green.

  Petros had not noticed me, so he paid me no heed. I took advantage of his inattention to continue observing this uncanny scene. Tears streamed from his eyes, yet he seemed unbothered by the flames that drew near his hands to claim the strands. His hands, however, bore light burns.

  Slowly the fire assumed form—not merely a face, but an entire woman’s body. Rather than raging unchecked, it shaped itself into human likeness. She stepped from the hearth—feet first—then rose and stood before Petros. She reached out and took the few remaining strands from his hand. Then he spoke, more gravely than I had ever heard him:

  “Please, release the inhabitants. Stop destroying them. I love you—you know I love you—but the others are blameless, our children are blameless. Please, it is only my fault, I brought him here.”

  The woman of fire appeared sorrowful, yet she could not speak, though she opened her mouth as if to try. She seemed to wish to comfort him but could not manage it. She seemed to say that she loved him too, that he bore no blame, that something else was at work, that he should trust her, let her handle it.

  “I will do anything to find you—I promised it then, and I promise it again now. I have done everything, and I will do everything. We made a pact with Eftis and brought the descendant of the lion to the island. We have hope now. I will leave this island without becoming a monster and come to you, wherever you are, in whatever form you now possess.”

  The woman looked sorrowful. She glanced down at the burns on Petros’s hands and pressed her own hands to her face in horror.

  “You are not to blame,” he told her. “Do not reproach yourself. It is a small price beside eternity. Do not grieve. What is done is done. We shall resolve the troubles that arose. You know—our daughter takes after you. She has strength within her and managed alone to halt the curses the other beings sent upon the island. You have blessed her with your power and your grace. Once we leave this place, I will take you far away, and then our daughter may assume your burden so that you, at last, may rest.”

  She raised her hand to wipe his tears but never touched him—stopping short lest she burn him. At that moment I stepped into the room and announced my presence. The woman saw me and grew angry; Petros closed his eyes—perhaps in disappointment, more likely too weary for explanations.

  “I will try,” I said. “I will try to bring it to an end—but I want your help. I want you to guide me, to grant me strength—you and any others who wish to see the lion deposed from the throne.”