Protogenesis: Before the Beginning

by Alysia Helming

  Next to us is Nick’s motorcycle. I run my fingers along the length of the bike in admiration. It looks expensive. He must notice because he says, “It’s the one thing that I wasn’t willing to give up.”

  “Oh,” I say, trying to act casual, “what do you mean?”

  He shrugs, quickly changing the subject when he asks, “Do you know anything about Sounio or the Temple of Poseidon?”

  Since I love mythology and history, of course I know something about them! But mostly, I love the sound of his voice when he goes into tour guide mode, so I pretend that I don’t know very much.

  Just as I’m sure he’s going to tell me something of interest about this place, he surprises me with, “Good. You will be amazed by what I show you. I can guarantee that.”

  12 – Temple of Poseidon

  what could that mean? While I’m sure that the Temple of Poseidon is impressive, I can’t imagine that I will be that amazed.

  “Time to go,” he says as he hands me his helmet.

  “Where’s yours?” I ask, even more curious than before.

  He mounts the motorcycle and replies in a gruff voice, “It’s a long story. Tell you later?”

  He’s already revving up his motorcycle, so we can barely hear each other talk. I sense that there’s a lot involved in that story, so I decide to drop it for now. I shrug and jump on behind him, wrapping my arms around his firm torso. Almost immediately, I’m both terrified and exhilarated by this. I’m riding on a motorcycle! I can only imagine what Mom would say right now.

  Athens is vibrant. The oncoming night is warm and humid as the breeze tickles my skin, making me feel so full of life. My hands hold Nick close around his chest and there, under his thin white flowing shirt, I sense his heart beating strongly, steadily, which fills me with calm. This guy could ruin me if I let him. But that’s not going to happen. I try to tell myself that we’re just two friends going out for some fun.

  We drive down a long stretch of Poseidonos Avenue with the beach and coast on our right. Seagulls fly overhead as if to follow hot on our trail, spying on us from their vantage point high above us. The highway slowly narrows to a meandering road through the Athens Riviera. I see a sign that reads “Vouliagmeni.” When we stop at a light, Nick points over to the grand Mediterranean homes with barrel tile roofs gracing the sides of the parkway, explaining that many Greek celebrities and wealthy vacationers live here.

  I can smell the decadent aroma of slow-roasted fish. We pass through the Greek countryside, a blur of lush green trees and plants interspersed with flowers in red, gold, and bright pink. The turquoise sea strokes the shore with lapping waves in front of umbrellas and beach chairs.

  As Nick takes off from the light, the wind grows stronger, and the road narrows even further. Here, the vegetation grows sparse and rocky, and while the area appears abandoned and desolate, it is also hauntingly beautiful as the sun gradually sinks down into the horizon beyond it. The blue sky above the mountains begins to darken, slowly and surely, and we continue onward, wind licking our faces as the moon starts to show its glorious face. I feel so alive, my arms wrapped around Nick, his warmth a contrast to the strengthening wind.

  Finally, the bike slows to a stop at the top of a hill, and there, slightly lit up but still in the distance in front of us, is the Temple of Poseidon. Nick stows my helmet and grabs my hand firmly, leading me up the path, past the gift shop, bathrooms, and café, which are all closed now, and up to the hill where the ruins lie.

  “Where is everyone?” I ask him.

  “Well, technically, it’s closed for the night,” he says. “Shhh…look.” He motions silently to where a guard is slumped over his chair, snoring in a deep slumber.

  “So, we’re breaking and entering at a historic site?” I ask.

  “Something like that.”

  “But can’t you lose your tourist leader license?”

  “Probably,” he says, “but I come up here at night all the time, and it’s rare that anyone is here during this time of year. Once the summer is here, though, that will be a different story.”

  “You’re such a rebel,” I say, smiling. God, I love this about him.

  He scales the fence, then grabs my hand to help me over to the other side. As we reach the crest of the hill, I am absolutely stunned by the sight in front of me. A gigantic harvest moon provides the perfect backlight for the incredible grandeur of the Temple of Poseidon. The weathered white marble pillars appear to shoot out of the ground as if it’s on fire. Off in the distance, the light dances across soft waves, onto the beaches and over jagged rocky islands jutting out of the sea. It’s spectacular.

  Nick shares the history of this place. His eyes light up with excitement as he recounts the tale. “Around the fifteenth century BCE, the people of Athens had to pay a blood tax, which was a sacrifice of fourteen young girls and boys to the dreaded Minotaur. Theseus, the son of King Aegeas, enraged by this atrocity, sailed to Crete to kill the Minotaur and end the sacrifice. When he returned from battle, Theseus told his father that he would display a white sail if he killed the beast or a black sail if he did not. When Theseus returned after slaying the Minotaur, he forgot to change his sail to white. King Aegeas, in his overwhelming anguish, jumped from these cliffs in Cape Sounio, killing himself. This is how the Aegean Sea got its name.”

  I love watching him tell the story. He emanates warmth and kindness. And there’s something so enchanting about how the r’s roll off his tongue when he speaks. I swear that I could listen to him all day and never tire. Of course, all his sweetness is oddly juxtaposed with his wild side. He’s a nice guy in a bad boy body.

  “That’s pretty dramatic,” I say.

  “Yeah, drama is a key component to any great Greek tragedy,” he says. His eyes gloss over. “I come here sometimes when I need to get away and think,” he says softly. “Go ahead and look around,” he says, seeming more than fine to let me venture off on my own while he enjoys a moment of peace to himself. “I can join you in a minute.”

  I maneuver carefully around to the side of the temple that is closest to the edge of the cliff, which juts dramatically down into the sweeping sea below. A bunch of rocks here look like the perfect place to sit.

  Just then, up on the smooth white marble, under the towering pillars highlighted by the giant harvest moon, I see an odd shape in the moonlight: half of a man’s head phasing in and out. His body flickers on and off, glowing against the darkened sky. A chill runs up my arm.

  Even though the whole image of the man is unclear, his face is anxious, as if I’ve caught him by surprise. A minute of silence passes between us. Finally, the image of the man speaks. “Who…are you?”

  And just as quickly as it appeared, the image and sounds vanish, as if they were never there.

  I’m so shocked, I can’t believe my eyes or my ears. I recognize this ghost from the dream that I had about the gods. This man was the spitting image of one of the three purple-eyed men out in the desert…not the leader, but one of the other two.

  Next to me, a lighted sign catches my eye: “Temple of Poseidon.” The two gods next in importance after Zeus were his brothers, Hades and Poseidon. So, this “ghost” must have been Poseidon.

  I pace back and forth. Oddly enough, this ghost wasn’t at all what I would have expected if he in fact was a god from the myths. He wasn’t at all imposing, aggressive, or larger than life, and from the look of the suit he wore, he could have been someone’s dad on his way to the office in this day and age, not five thousand years ago. Whatever the case, I need to ask Nick about this. If it’s true that he comes here a lot, then I’ll bet he’s seen the apparition too.

  I make my way back over to where Nick is perched on a rock, staring off i
nto the distance. The glittering lights of a nearby town dance on the surface of his eyes, bringing them to life. I stop. Holy crap, I’m terrified to ask him about this, but he must know something. “Hey, Nick?”

  “Yeah?” He looks startled for a moment as I interrupt his concentrated reverie. After a short pause, he smiles sweetly at me, patting the spot on the rock next to him. “Come here,” he says. I sit down on the rock, then inch over so we’re touching shoulders. He wraps his arm around my shoulder.

  “We need to talk,” I start, running my hand nervously through my hair. I’m so totally freaked about this, I can’t hold it inside anymore. I feel as if I’ve been holding my breath this whole time. It just flies out of my mouth. “Have you ever noticed anything supernatural up here…like ghosts? Do you believe in that sort of thing?”

  His gray-green eyes grow serious, then narrow. “Uh…no.” He rolls his eyes as if he's irritated by my ignorance. “Anything that isn’t verifiable by science is a load of crap.”

  “What?” I ask incredulously. His reaction seems so extreme. I didn’t expect such vehement opposition from him and erroneously assumed that he would be more open-minded.

  “You heard me,” he reaffirms, arms crossed stubbornly in front of him.

  I’m not giving up that easily. “Fine, but will you just hear me out on something? Please?” I plead.

  He lifts his eyebrow in that same defiant expression that he gave his mother earlier. This is not going well, but I’m not backing down.

  “I think I just saw a... ghost up inside the temple,” I whisper.

  His body tenses. We stare at each other in silence, and then he begins to smile. He’s laughing at me! “Oh, okay, I get it now. You’re being metaphorical. Many tourists claim to experience the ‘vision’ of Poseidon here. It’s just the lights playing tricks on your mind. Happens all the time.”

  My shoulders tense up. While it’s entirely possible that it was, in fact, just a trick of the lights, I also know that I saw what I saw. On the other hand, I don’t want to ruin this date, or whatever it is, with Nick. Probably best to play it safe, let him feel that he’s right this time. “Uh, yeah, probably so,” I say.

  He must notice my discomfort because he moves in closer to me again. “Don’t worry,” he says, now so close that I feel the heat emanate from his body. He continues, “You’re not crazy. I thought you were going to talk about Ouija boards or something hacked like that.”

  “Good!” I say, clearly relieved, trying to catch my breath. “Although I have to say that you were right when you said I’d be totally amazed tonight.”

  He reaches over to take my hand into his. There, as he shifts his wrist to the side, I can’t help but stare at the double helix tattoo of Sarantos that I’ve grown so accustomed to, but something about this symbol concerns me. “Uh, Nick?”

  “Yeah?” He smiles sweetly at me.

  “You know how you said before that you work for Sarantos Enterprises?” I stammer.

  His eyes grow wary again. “Yes?”

  “I told you that I hadn’t heard of Sarantos before, but the truth is, I know about him now.” I say. “And what I don’t understand is why you would want to work for someone like that.”

  “I’ll tell you why.” His voice is filled with anguish and contempt. “The government marched in with their tax collectors and shut down my dad’s business, claiming he owed back taxes. But my dad, he’s always been honest. He paid all his taxes. But the tax collectors didn’t see it that way. They froze all his assets, destroying his thirty-year-old business. My whole world was turned upside down. We lost everything.”

  “That’s awful!” I say. My heart aches for him.

  “Yeah,” he says with a sigh. “All of the kids in my family had to quit school to go to work because my dad was blacklisted. No one would hire him.”

  I had no idea that when he talked of not giving up his motorcycle earlier that his situation was this extreme, but he still has not exactly answered my question of why he has to work for Sarantos. “But why Sarantos? Isn’t he involved in organized crime?”

  Nick looks up at me, incredulous. “Really, that’s what you think?” He brushes his hair back from his face. “You don’t understand anything! Sarantos runs the black markets. A lot of hardworking people work for cash because they can’t live on their income after paying a huge amount of taxes. And because we can’t take much money out of the bank, we horde whatever cash we get.”

  It’s a relief to hear that Sarantos isn’t completely Satan, especially when I think of Ever. “Yeah, well, I met his wife, who seems really nice. His son, Ever, goes to my school. He seems okay, too…a little full of himself, but I guess Sarantos can’t be all bad with a family like that,” I say.

  At this, Nick drops my hand like a lead weight. “You met Ever?” His gaze grows melancholy. “Of course, you did. Why am I surprised?” He turns to me, voice low and urgent. “You need to know something about Ever. He’s bad news. Believe me. That’s all I’m going to say about it.”

  First his extreme reaction to my question about ghosts, and now he’s flipping out about Ever. There’s more to Nick than I thought. Although this isn’t the first time that I have been warned about Ever.

  “Okay, fine,” I say, holding my hands up in resignation. We sit quietly on the rocks next to the cliff. The seaside towns stretch out across the peninsula far off into the distance. The strain I felt from Nick a moment ago seems to lift. Sitting so high atop the cliff, we spot a patch of soft, shimmering sand on a small, intimate beach below us. Since it’s late, no one is out.

  “So, you should know that in most parts of Europe, it’s safe to take it all off at the beach.” He says this in his best matter-of-fact tourist guide voice.

  “Really…everything?” I stammer, slightly flushed.

  He smiles warmly, clearly enjoying my reaction. “Well, no, not everything. I mean, you can’t take off the bottoms,” he chuckles. “We are open here about a lot of things, but not that open.”

  I laugh. “Well, thanks for clearing that up for me, but in America, nice girls don’t take off their tops in public.”

  “In case you didn’t notice, you aren’t in America anymore. And since you live here, you should embrace our freedom from those silly puritan restrictions.” He smirks.

  “Oh, really?” The moonlight reflects off his eyes. He doesn’t seem to know that he’s attractive, which is both rare and charming.

  The ride back towards Metaxourgeio is quiet, smooth, and peaceful as I allow my body to melt into the smooth muscles of Nick’s back. When we arrive back at our neighborhood, as if out of nowhere he says, “So I’ve decided to quit smoking.”

  I guess my “stink breath” tirade must have gotten to him. “What? When?”

  Nick turns his head to look at me, a gleam in his eye. “I have my reasons.”

  “Oh?”

  “Well, I don’t want to limit my dating prospects to only girls who smoke…and I definitely don’t want anyone thinking that I have stink breath.”

  “Oh God! I feel like a jerk for making you feel bad about that the other day. I’m not sure what got into me.”

  “It’s fine,” He says in a small voice. We stare in silence across the street at the dilapidated building covered with graffiti and a couple of homeless people arguing in Greek over the contents of a withered paper sack. I like the comfort of not necessarily having to say something to Nick at every moment. It’s rare to find someone with whom silence feels so easy.

  “So, I need some motivation to get through the week without smoking,” he says, looking off in the distance. “What do you think it should be? Is there something you could do or give up for the week with me, lik
e a dare, maybe?”

  I try to think about something that would be terrifying for me to do or to give up, but I feel I’ve been through so much in this past week that there’s nothing left to offer.

  “Like Lent?” I ask, joking a bit. But then something he said a moment ago brings a thought to mind. About my ‘silly puritan restrictions.’ There’s something liberating about being in a foreign country where the rules in the United States don’t apply. Suddenly, I’m dying to try something new…and forbidden. “I’ll go topless at the beach,” I declare.

  Is the rebel in Nick somehow bringing out some sort of inner vixen in me? Or perhaps the fact that my mother is missing and the Syndicate is after me is suddenly making me delirious, contemplating things I would never have dreamt of doing before, not in a million years?

  “What? No…wait…” he shakes his head, but I cut him off.

  “Yeah, if you quit smoking for five days straight, I’ll do it.” I say. I think we’re both a bit startled by my sudden boldness.

  “I don’t know…” he says, running his hand nervously through his hair. “What I said before was…”

  “What? I thought this was ‘normal’ here?” I challenge him.

  “Well that’s not exactly what…” he’s trying to back pedal on what he said before. Where did his confidence go? But then, his eyes light up in defiance. “Okay, fine.”

  “Fine what?” I ask, goading him.

  “Fine, it’s a deal,” he declares, now completely sure of himself.

  He agreed to that way too easily. That’s when it hits me what I just committed to. He’s going to see me half-naked! Of course, this is what he must have wanted all along. No wonder he conceded to the dare so fast.

  “You tricked me into offering this!” I say. “Somehow, you planted the idea in my head, and…”