As soon as the first rays crept through the shutters and across her bed, Calli gave up on sleep, got up and made her way to the beach. She knew that the only course of action to soothe her and put some order in her mind was a dip in the early morning sea and a walk on the shore.
She was grateful for the coolness of the water, which made her body tingle, reviving her senses, bringing them, and her, back to the present, helping her to leave the terrible past behind. She swam a long way out to sea and then round the rocky promontory that divided the main beach from her own little private cove and lay out on the warm sand in precious solitude. She wanted to be alone, to think of nothing. She closed her eyes and for a few minutes surrendered herself to a kind of sleep, blocking any thoughts of murder and violation.
She came round to the sound of birds’ wings fluttering above her. ‘Raphael . . .’ she whispered in her state of semi-wakefulness as, opening her eyes, she saw two swallows flying overhead, darting in and out among the rocks and over the surface of the sea. The soft whirring of their wings carried her back to another shore on another island some weeks before, when the same sound had disturbed and moved her so. She lay motionless, watching their playful flight through half-closed lids, as a faint memory started to take hold, of conversations she had picked up from her grandmother and some of the elders around the village when she was a girl, about subjects she had been unable to understand at her tender age.
‘It’s a blessed house when a swallow chooses to make its nest there,’ Yiayia Calliope used to say. ‘The energy in our village is strong and positive, that’s why they come back every year.’
In her grandmother’s house a family of swallows would appear each spring to make their nest in the beams of the balcony below Calli’s room. She remembered how as a child she would watch with delight the parent birds feeding their young, flying in and out of the nest with morsels of food in their beaks, dropping them into the gaping mouths of their chicks. The spectacle filled the little girl with awe and later, when she was older, she would always try to capture the scene with her camera.
Lying on the hot sand now, her limbs heavy, watching their flight, nimble and black in outline as they wheeled and dived against the blue sky, her mind wandered off again to Ikaria. She thought of the people she had met there and about her own spiritual awakening, prompted by Maya. Before meeting that extraordinary woman, she realized, her mind had been closed, dismissive of so much that she didn’t understand; but the older woman had helped her to open her thoughts to new ways of looking at the world and beyond. Once more she felt grateful for their encounter.
The early morning swimmer who Calli had spotted in the distance with some irritation appeared to be swimming towards her, threatening to ruin her solitary contemplation. She made to get up and leave until she realized with pleasure that the person who had neared the shore and was now waving to her, was none other than Michalis.
‘Apologies if I am disturbing you,’ he said as he emerged from the water and crossed the sandy beach towards her. ‘You did tell me you were an early morning swimmer, but I didn’t believe you’d be this early.’
‘Not normally,’ she replied, shielding her eyes from the sun as she looked up at him. ‘Had a difficult night and here is better than lying in bed trying to sleep.’ She shifted sideways to make room for him.
‘Oh?’ He looked at her quizzically and sat down. ‘What happened?’ he asked with genuine concern.
‘I’ll tell you next time we meet . . .’ she replied, not sure that she would. ‘I’ve been watching a couple of swallows for the past half-hour . . .’ she added, eager to change the subject. ‘Don’t you just love them? My grandmother used to say it’s a blessing if they come back every year!’
‘It’s true,’ Michalis replied, ‘they do say that around here. They say that swallows have a sixth sense and always choose a place with positive energy to stop and rest during their migration. Have you ever noticed how