7. Athenians

Georgiou looked up the slope. The temple was still there. An improbable ruin. Older than the war. Older than the time before the New Caliphate. The temple's colonnaded walls stood roofless. Imaginative boys believed they held up the sky, at least until they grew up, as Georgiou had. The temple may have had a name once. It overlooked the remains of the ancient city. Georgiou and his brothers lived in the old port, 3 hours hard walking away from the place of the old ones. In the bars down by the docks people spoke of giant machines - far to the east - which could travel twice as fast as a man could walk. Georgiou, as all sensible people did, dismissed these as sailors' tall tales. Nothing could travel as fast as a ship in full sail on the water, never mind on land. So, every solstice and feast day, the faithful would trudge up the hillside to look at the ruin atop it. Of course, nowadays, there were few who believed. Just those who had been born before the last battle, like himself. The temple was a wonder though. It was hard to credit that it had ever been built at all, much less that it had been on the hillside for millennia. Who had built it? Giants? That was foolishness: there were none outside of children's tales. Perhaps the ancients had had machines. Georgiou drank with a stonemason who swore such things could not (should not?) be done. Someone had built the temple. He wondered what had happened to the people who could.

A boreas blew across the hillside, ruffling the tufts of hair over Georgiou's ears. The four winds had names, he wondered why. What was wrong with άνεμος ? Wind was a perfectly good word, was it not? He shivered, and strode on, a man in the prime of his life; still able to haul the nets of gleaming fish aboard the boat. A moment to catch the breath and he could keep up with Ari and Stylianos although they were 25 years younger. The twins would sman at the Georgiou sometimes, if he tripped on the ropes. They weren't yet 16 years old, what did they know? Georgiou would bet tomorrow's catch that neither had so much as kissed a dockside girl.

The flat-topped rock came just at the right time. Georgiou sat and looked down the way he had come. The ruined city looked grey, like a cake in the rain. As if a cake would ever be rained on! It was just something people said. Something from the time before, probably. Like most inexplicable things. Like the green bottle in Georgiou's pocket. He stood up. Tomorrow was the winter solstice. He'd come early, would spend the night within the colonnade. Besides, it might take him a little longer this year, he might be slowing down a little. He laughed, a bitter sound on the empty hillside.
His father had said the same, before he'd died. At 42.

Georgiou picked his way carefully through the rubble. It was dark , but the moon was near full. Grass and weeds grew through cracks in the marbled floor of the abandoned temple. Up close the columns were pocked with holes and scarred by graffiti. 'πατσαβούρα αραβικα' caught Georgiou's eye. A fine sentiment. The treaty had lasted forty years, but there were tales of slavers and many fishing boats did not return if they ventured too far from the coast. They weren't words that Georgiou would use himself, not outside of the tabernas near the harbour, anyway. His cloak almost covered the raised slab in the middle of the temple. He yawned and lay on the heavy cloth. The granite was broken in places and it was impossible to settle. The stars were dull in the sky, even the black seemed lacklustre for all the size of the moon.

Georgiou took the bottle from his pocket. The green glass was thick. He lifted the bottle high over his head. The thick base meant the bottle was heavier than it looked. Its weight surprised him. Every time. He remembered the last time the bottle had been opened. When he was five, the year the moon went out. His mother had opened the bottle and the dark had covered the moon. He had seen the scraps of paper, just before the darkness fell. The arcane and illicit Roman letters. Landisfar. Something like that. He wasn't going to open it tomorrow night. Just in case.

Αραβικα Αραβικα Αραβικα Αραβικα Αραβικα

We went up, Elena and I, because it was a holiday; because we were bored; because it was one day we did not have to hang around the tavernas beside the docks. We went up to see what the old people did, when they came up to the ruins. We came early, well before nightfall. Elena's mother had fussed and packed a rolled cloth with pita, feta and olives. The body on the altar looked peaceful. An old man, well past 40. I took the bottle from his hand. The green colour of the glass was pretty, so I took it. He didn't need it, did he?