Cheftu had fled Dion’s apartment for his own, washing his skin until it was raw. He’d still felt unclean. A mouth is just a mouth, Dion claimed, yet Cheftu balked. Perhaps it was, if physical pleasure were the only end. Sailors used each other from necessity on the sea, yet most would prefer a woman. Dion claimed no woman could love as completely as a man.
Dion had given him the elixir out of love and a desire to be with him.
He was alive. Was it the elixir or just natural healing? Cheftu didn’t know. “I have not changed my mind,” he said.
Dion’s hand clapped Cheftu on the shoulder, and he stood rock still. The man’s voice was low, soft; Chloe was straining to hear what he said. Cheftu felt pity, revulsion, and great sorrow. “I am yours, Cheftu. I would give my life for you. I have given life to you. You learn late that women are for breeding alone. True love, passion, and companionship are found only between warriors and scholars and men who are equal. I will restore you when you realize womankind’s perfidy. I will wait, for I too have taken the elixir. We are destined.”
“Back off, cowboy,” Chloe growled. “He’s mine.”
Cheftu stared at the stones. This was it! This was why they were there! These stones were a direct communication with God, for David, for Solomon. These stones couldn’t be allowed to sink here, to be lost in the hands of this dying race.
“Let me take the stones, Dion,” Cheftu said.
“Why? You are choosing to be with her.”
“Why do you need them, Cheftu?” Chloe asked.
“I need them, Dion,” Cheftu said, ignoring Chloe. “They mean the world to me.”
Dion’s eyes darkened, and he began to smile, “The world, eee?”
Cheftu’s hands hovered over the stones, still lying on the low table.
“If you take these stones, I will never see you again,” Dion said.
“You won’t anyway,” Chloe said.
A low rumble shook the room, throwing them all to their knees. Cheftu’s hand skimmed the table and grabbed the stones.
Dion sat up, saw the stones were gone, and launched himself at Cheftu. He caught the Egyptian around the waist and bore him backward. “Get off him!” Chloe shouted as Cheftu and Dion rolled on the floor, Cheftu taking the blows from Dion, shielding his face with his arm, the stones jerking in his grasp.
“Give me the stones,” Dion said. “If I can’t have you, I want them.”
Cheftu struck out, catching Dion across his jaw and cheek with his closed fist. The chieftain was stunned for a moment, and Cheftu rolled away. “Why do you want them?” Cheftu asked as the two men stared at each other, breathing hard.
With a chill Cheftu realized Dion was aroused. “Return them to me, Cheftu.”
Another tremor. Chloe helped Cheftu up and they began to back away. “Cheftu!” Dion shouted. He crouched low, preparing to attack. Cheftu slipped the stones into his sash, feeling the inscribed sides against his skin.
A scream of tearing rock deafened them momentarily. Dion ran toward them, and Chloe leapt in front of Cheftu, kicking high into Dion’s groin. He collapsed to his knees with a groan. Cheftu looked at him, his friend, the man he’d respected. “The stones were my reason for being here,” he said. You want them only because you think they will bring me to you, offering myself into the bargain, he thought.
“We are not finished, Egyptian,” Dion wheezed out, still doubled over. The floor shook as Cheftu took the stones from his sash, holding them securely in his palms. He couldn’t lose them; the cost had been too great.
“Come on!” Chloe said, pulling him through rooms and down hallways. She dragged him out, into passageways, deeper and deeper into the palace. She halted at an inset altar and turned the ax. “We need all the luck we can get,” she said, and pulled him along, down another hallway. They stopped to look out a window, and Cheftu saw the opposite cliffs were now higher. “You can swim, eee?” she asked.
“Aye, of course.”
They stepped up to a gate. He saw with a shock that it was labeled Hades. “Three rules. Don’t let go of me, don’t breathe, and swim fast!” Chloe kissed his mouth hard, wrapped his arms around her waist, and pulled.
They fell through air, then down into water, and Cheftu had to fight to stay with her. He held a stone in each clenched fist, following his siren of a wife. She swam without hesitation, turning and twisting until Cheftu’s head began to pound. Around and around they swam, then down, and farther down. His arms wrapped around her waist, his vision was spotted, and they swam yet farther. He was going to die, he needed to breathe!
Water battered them when they broke the surface. Cheftu hauled air into his lungs and looked around, trying to gauge where they were. “Outside Aztlan Island,” Chloe said, still catching her breath. “I don’t know where to go now.”
Cheftu motioned and they started swimming across the channel, where deep water moved fast. He felt every muscle in his body, the jumping stones in his hands dragging at him. Cheftu and Chloe clambered up on the opposite shore. It was coated in ash, little blobs of lava still simmering red and black on the rocks. It was a brief stop; they had to get farther away.
The archway. That island. Cheftu pulled her close, feeling the firm curves of her body, the tremble of her legs and arms from the exertion of the swim. He could feel burns on her back as she curled closer.
“Eee, I want you, too,” she whispered against his skin, kissing his chest, sending blood rushing wildly through his veins.
“Did I say it aloud?”
She smiled up at him, green eyes through seaweed curls of black hair. “Not in so many words.” Her hand closed around him, and Cheftu hissed, then laughed.
“We need a boat,” he said. Do not think about the warmth of her body, the softness of her skin. She murmured agreement as she kissed his hands. Then she froze, sat up, and stared at him.
“Your face!”
His hand went to his damaged eye; nay, it must be the other. He touched both eyebrows. Nay, it was the first? Only a scar left?
Chloe drew back, watching him with wide eyes. “You are healing. Major fast.” Her cadence was very slow. “Even your hair has grown back.” He touched the side of his head that had been a patch of blistered skin. Hadn’t it?
Cheftu pushed Chloe off his side and lifted his kilt.
“What the—?” she shouted in English.
Moving his member aside, he ran his fingers through the wet hair. There was no bubo! He tried the other side. None there! He looked again.
“What in hell are you doing?” Chloe asked.
“Looking,” he muttered. Nothing sensitive or swollen, no marks at all!
“Aye. I see that. What do you hope to find?”
He looked up. She was sitting back on her haunches, arms crossed over her chest, her expression somewhere between outrage and laughter.
Cheftu jerked down his wet kilt. “Nothing.”
The shore shook. For once Cheftu was grateful for an earthquake. “Look for any wood you can find. Rope, too,” he shouted, motioning her one way down the beach while he headed the other.
Ash began to fall; they must have been too close to hear the eruption. Another one. Aztlan Island was literally sinking as they watched. Cheftu turned back to the shore. Wood, mon Dieu, where was wood?
There was no wood, Chloe was convinced. Pretty soon there would be no water, either. Huge rafts of pumice were starting to gather, floating together, clogging up the sea. Exhausted, starving out of her mind, Chloe sat down.
The sapphire waters had turned gray. It looked like some bizarre traffic jam, with these big pieces lining up throughout the lagoon. If we could just walk from slab to slab, she thought, we could get to Prostatevo.
“Cheftu!” she screamed.
He came down the beach, running, limping … and looking even healthier. “What? What?”
“Tom Sawyer. Rafts. Hop on.”
He looked from her, to the sea, back to her, and then Chloe saw the concept, not the reference
, snap into place for him. She wouldn’t tell him how long it had taken her to figure it out. The eruption has melted away my brain cells, she thought.
Grabbing hands, they began crossing the congested waterway.
CHAPTER 22
IT WAS HARD WORK MANEUVERING A PUMICE RAFT with no oars in a rambunctious sea. Chloe’s knees were bleeding, and her palms were a strata of painful sores. All in all she felt as if she were on fire in a gray world.
Ash continued to fall as they paddled and pushed their makeshift vessel. The hazy twilight robbed them of their sense of direction. The wind kept them both permanently chilled. Prostatevo seemed farther away than Chloe remembered.
She was fighting tears when Cheftu called a halt. They were free of the other pieces of pumice, he said. Perhaps they would float for a while, carried by tides. She nodded, then shook her head, then rasped out, “Just so.”
His hands on her shoulders made them both hiss—his blistered palms and her burned shoulders—and she lay down with her head on his leg, staring up. Not that there was anything to see. Chloe shivered, too tired to know or care anymore.
“Do you know what the Aztlan empire was?” he asked. His voice was almost back to normal, strangely enough.
“Santorini.”
He was silent a moment. “I do not know that place.”
“In the Aegean. My mother studied it. Though she thinks the Minoans lived here, but the Minoans never had pyramids. I don’t know who these people were.” She chuckled, half dozing. “However, my mother studies the painting I did.”
Cheftu braced himself on his elbows. “The boys? Are you certain?”
Chloe giggled. “It’s a really big deal because it’s the first recording of anyone using boxing gloves in ancient times.”
He was quiet. “I do not recall anyone using gloves for boxing.”
“Nope. My point.”
“Okh,” he said, laughing.
Chloe looked at her palms. She really should wash them, but salt water was going to hurt. “So if you didn’t know it was Santorini, where was—is—was …” She rubbed her face. “Where were we?”
“Did you read Plato?”
“Plato?”
“Aye, the Greek philosopher?”
Chloe licked her lips. She hated to admit ignorance. “Not exactly. I’ve never been a fan of ancient times. Quite ironic, that.”
“I thought women in your time attended university?”
“We do. We just have a lot of other things to study besides old Greek guys.”
“Eee, for example?”
“Old …” Chloe paused for a moment. “European guys.”
Cheftu chuckled. “Plato tells a legend, a story of a submerged island.”
Adrenaline shot through Chloe’s body. A submerged island … She had always imagined that underwater island kingdom looked like the palace in “The Little Mermaid.” Could it be? “I thought it was in the Atlantic?”
He sat up. “An Egyptian named Solon told Plato the story. Beyond the Pillars of Hercules, Solon said. To the Greeks, this meant beyond Gibraltar, the mountains they called the pillars of Hercules—”
“But to the Egyptians?”
“It meant beyond the islands that began the Greek world. The Egyptians called Crete and the islands beyond her ‘Keftiu.’ The root of that word is ‘pillar.’ We’ve seen the red pillars in their architecture. In Hebrew the word is ‘Caphtor.’”
“Aye, also the Aztlantu.”
“Aye,” Cheftu said, looking startled for a moment. “For the Egyptians, Crete was a far western isle, one of the four pillars holding up the sky.”
“So how do we get Atlantis from that?” Chloe asked.
“The Greeks thought Atlas held up the sky, so a daughter of Atlas—”
“Would be Atlantis?”
“Just so.”
“So the Egyptians were telling a story about a kingdom by a sky pillar? And the Greeks believed that same pillar was in the Atlantic, so the kingdom was somewhere in the Atlantic.” Perspective really was everything, she thought. “Yet Atlantis called itself Aztlan which sounds so Mexican to me. Their clothing and architecture was Minoan. Well, mostly Minoan.” If you ignored the pyramids, she thought. “So what else about them was familiar?”
“I could tick them off on my fingers. Plato extols for pages the red, black, and yellow stones used, the hot and cold springs, the rings of land and water. Also, he describes the social structure. Each king ruling his island, then meeting in a Council; each island providing a certain product to the people at large. The citizens are divided into districts. The craftsmen, the warriors.”
“The Clan of the Muse, the Clan of the Wave.”
“Aye. Also, they have the wealth for leisure, competitions.”
“They chased a bull, with nooses and staves, through the palace,” Chloe said remembering hearing that from her mother. “History morphs into mythology. Wow.”
His fingers played in her hair. “Which ‘old European guy’ taught you about Atlantis?”
“Wait a minute, mythology.” Chloe sat in silence for a moment. “Did you study classical Greek?”
“The language?”
“The culture.”
Cheftu shrugged. “It was not of particular interest, but I did read the classics.”
She turned to him, shaking with excitement. “History morphs into mythology. Zelos was Zeus.”
“Mount Olympus?” Cheftu blurted in French.
“Phoebus Apollo. Phoebus was Apollo. His sister Irmentis, the huntress. She could be Artemis.”
“You claim we have been on Mount Olympus?” Cheftu asked, appalled. “Let me see your head, you are wounded.”
Chloe pushed away his reaching hands. “Listen to me. I’m not saying these people were gods. I’m saying they were the inspiration for the gods. They were borrowed and shaped, sometimes even keeping the name.”
“Dion was?”
“Dionysus,” they said in unison.
After a moment Chloe whispered, “Athena taught me how to run. This is unbelievable, but don’t you think it fits?”
“The original Mount Olympus was Atlantis, peopled with the Greek gods?”
“It sounds outrageous like that, but essentially, yep.”
They sat in silence, and Cheftu reached out to her, caressing the side of her face.
Chloe turned her head and kissed his hand—then pushed it away. She scurried to the farthest corner of the raft. Cheftu fought for balance, before sliding off into the water. He came up sputtering and glared at her.
“What possessed you to do that!”
“Your hand is … healed,” Chloe stammered. She felt her heart thudding, her own scabbed palms braced on the pumice. She held on as Cheftu hauled himself, dripping and shivering, onto the raft. She blinked in the twilight, looking at him. “What are you?”
“Cease being ridiculous, Chloe! I am Cheftu, your husband, non?”
“Your face. It’s healed. Completely.”
He touched his brow, closed one eye, then the other, touched his scalp.
“What happened, Cheftu?”
Slowly he turned his hands over. The skin was flawless. She saw the cuts were healed, the nicks and forming blisters were gone. He licked his lips slowly. “I was dying, Chloe. I had the plague.”
“The shuddering-and-staggering-and-drooling plague?”
“Aye. The same. I had buboes.”
“Buboes?”
“Raised sores, in my groin. They were blackening.”
“My God.” That was why he’d ripped off his clothes and searched through his pubic hair—he was looking for the sores. “Do you still have them?”
She met his gaze, both eyes perfectly whole. “Nay.” He looked away. “That is why I stopped, umm, being with you. Coupling. I was afraid you would become infected.”
“That explains your reluctance in the paint.”
Cheftu smiled. “Aye. If I’d not feared it would kill you, I would have made love with
you. Mon Dieu, you have no idea how tried I was in those moments!” He touched his brow again in wonder. “If I have my way, you will always wear turquoise.”
She wasn’t sure what to say. Atlantis and Greek god prototypes were one thing, but this? She’d seen his eye heal, in two days. How could it be? Water ran over the edge of the raft, throwing her closer to the center. Closer to Cheftu, which was still a little eerie. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
His gaze was direct. “I don’t know. For fear you would do this, move away from me. Stop loving me. Leave me.”
She reached out hesitantly, laying her hand on his knee.
“Please do not leave me, Chloe. I’ve endured your death once, I cannot abide it again. Promise me.” His hand covered hers, holding her tight to him.
“When I thought you were wounded, that you maybe loved Dion—”
“Loved Dion?”
“Aye, well, I did see you kiss him.”
“Did you see me blacken his eye also, ma chérie? ” he asked testily.
“I ran away, and when I came back, I heard, well, unmistakable sounds.”
“It was not me.”
Her mind flashed the picture into her head again, and she saw details that had registered in the area of her heart, her intuitive understanding of Cheftu, but had been missed completely by her tired, freaked-out consciousness. He’d not been responding, he’d maybe even been asleep. Did she really think Cheftu would be unfaithful?
Yes, he had slept with Sibylla, but it had been her body in Sibylla’s skin, her face, her eyes. He’d known her instinctively, even if not rationally. “I know it wasn’t you, Cheftu. I know.” She smiled.
He still wore a pained expression.
Inching closer, she touched his face, where only the tiniest ridge of scar tissue could be felt. It gave her the creeps. His gaze searched hers, moving back and forth on her face. When you thought he was wounded, you wanted him. It didn’t matter, she reasoned with herself. Now that he’s whole, you don’t?
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