Earth and Air

Ridiki

For Hazel

He found her between the vine rows on the parched hillside below the farm.

He already knew something must have happened to her. This time of year school started early and finished at midday, and she hadn’t been waiting for him in her usual place under the fig beside the gate, at the end of his long his trudge up the hill. Papa Alexi, sitting under the vine by the door of his cottage, hadn’t seen her, and everyone else was resting out the heat of the day, so there was nobody about to ask. He’d already spent over an hour looking for her, calling softly so as not to disturb the sleepers, so he was more than half prepared. But not for this.

She was lying on her side. Her lips were drawn back, baring her gums in a mad snarl. Her swollen tongue stuck out sideways at the corner of her mouth. The eye that he could see was as dull as a piece of sea-rubbed glass. Her left foreleg—the one Rania had dropped the skillet on—stuck out in front of her chest as straight as it could ever go, while the other three, and her tail, were all curled up under the tense arch of her body.

When he picked her up everything stayed locked in position, rigid as stubs of branches sticking out from a log. Only as he staggered back up the slope with her—his face a stiff mask, his stomach a stone—the feathery black tip of her tail flicked lightly to the jolt of each step.

“Horned viper,” said Papa Alexi, when he showed him. “Got her on the tongue, see? Vicious bite he’s got. Much worse than the common one. Kill a strong man. Bad luck, Steff, very bad luck. Nice dog.”

He carried her on and laid her down beside the fig tree, covering her body with the old sack she used to sleep on in the corner by the mule shed. He tied the fig branches out of his way, fetched a crowbar and spade, and sweated the rest of the afternoon away prodding and scooping and chopping through roots, picking out the larger rocks from the spoil and setting them aside. When the farm woke and people started to come and go, some of them asked what he was up to. He just grunted and worked on.

By sunset the hole was as deep as the reach of his arm. He changed her everyday collar for her smart red Sunday one with the brass studs, wrapped her in the sack and lowered her into the grave. Gently he covered her with the larger rocks he’d kept, fitting them together according to their shapes and then ramming earth between them in a double layer, proof against any possible scavenger.

Finally he filled in the hole and spread what was left of the spoil back under the fig. The stars were bright by the time he fetched a small flask of oil from the barrel in the larder and poured it slowly over her grave.

“Good-bye, Ridiki,” he said. “Good-bye.”

He scattered the remaining handful of earth over the grave, let the fig branches back to hide and shelter it, and turned away.

The evening meal was long over, but he couldn’t have eaten. He sat until almost midnight on the boulder beside the vegetable patch with her old collar spread between his hands and his thumbs endlessly caressing the wrinkled leather. The constellations wheeled westward and the lights of the fishing-boats moved quietly around Thasos. When he was sure that there’d be no one about to speak to him he coiled the collar tightly in on itself, put it in his shirt pocket, went up to his cot in the loft over the storeroom and lay down, knowing he wouldn’t sleep.

But he did, and dreamed. He was following Ridiki along a track at the bottom of an unfamiliar valley, narrow and rocky. She was trotting ahead with the curious prancing gait her bent leg gave her, her whole attitude full of amused interest, ears pricked up and cupped forward, tail waving above her back, as if she expected something new and fascinating to appear round the next corner, some odour she could nose into, some little rustler she could pounce on in a tussock beside the path—pure Ridiki, Ridiki electric with life.

The track turned, climbed steeply. Ridiki danced up it. He scrambled panting after her. The cave seemed to appear out of nowhere. She trotted weightless towards it, while he toiled up, heavier and heavier. At the entrance she paused and looked back at him over her shoulder. He tried to call to her to wait, but no breath would come. She turned away and danced into the dark. When he reached the cave the darkness seemed to begin like a wall at the entrance. He called again and again. Not a whisper of an echo returned. He had to go; he couldn’t remember why.

“I’m coming back,” he told himself. “I’ll make sure I remember the way.”

But as he trudged sick-hearted along the valley everything kept shifting and changing. A twisted tree beside the track was no longer there when he looked back to fix its shape in his mind, and the whole landscape beyond where it should have been was utterly unlike any he had seen before.

At first light the two cocks crowed, as always, in raucous competition. He had grown used to sleeping through the racket almost since he’d first come to live on the farm, but this morning he shot fully awake and lay in the dim light of early dawn knowing he’d never see Ridiki again.

He willed himself not to be seen moping. It was a Saturday, and he had his regular tasks to do. Mucking out the mule shed wasn’t too bad, but there was a haunting absence at his feet as he sat in the doorway cleaning and oiling the harness.

“Sorry about that dog of yours,” said Nikos as he passed. “Nice little beast, spite of that gammy leg, and clever as they come. How old was she, now?”

“Five.”

“Bad luck. Atalanta will be whelping any day now. Have a word with your uncle, shall I?”

I don’t want another dog! I want Ridiki!

He suppressed the scream. It was a kind offer. Nikos was his uncle’s shepherd, and his uncle listened to what he said, which he didn’t with most people.

“They’ll all be spoken for,” he said. “He only let me keep Ridiki because Rania had dropped a skillet on her leg.”

“Born clumsy,” said Nikos. “May be an extra, Steff. Atalanta’s pretty gross. Let’s see.”

“They’ll be spoken for too.”

This was true. The Deniakis dogs were famous far beyond the parish. Steff’s great-grandfather had been in the Free Greek Navy during the war against Hitler, stationed in an English port called Hull, and he’d spent his shore leaves helping on a farm in the hills above the town. There were sheep dogs there who worked to whistled commands, and he’d talked to the shepherd about how they were trained. When the war was over and he’d come to say good-bye the farmer had given him a puppy, which he’d managed to smuggle aboard his ship and home. Once out of the navy he’d successfully trained some of the puppies she’d born to the farm dogs, not to the lip-whistles the Yorkshire shepherds used but to the traditional five-reed pipe of the Greeks.

Now, forty years later, despite the variable shapes and sizes, the colouring had settled down to a yellowish tan with black blotches, and the working instinct stayed strongly in the breed. Steff’s uncle could still sell as many pups as his bitches produced, all named after ancient Greeks, real or imaginary. They were very much working dogs, and Nikos used to train them on to sell ready for their work. But for Rania’s clumsiness Ridiki would have gone that way, as the rest of the litter had.

All day that one moment of the dream—Ridiki vanishing into the dark, as sudden as a lamp going out—stayed like a shadow at the side of his mind. It didn’t change. He had a feeling both of knowing the place and of never having been there before. But if he tried to fix anything outside the single instant, it was like grasping loose sand. The details trickled away before he could look at them.

He fetched his midday meal from the kitchen and ate it in the shade of the fig tree, and then, while the farm settled down to its regular afternoon stillness, went to look for Papa Alexi.

Papa Alexi was Steff’s great-uncle, his grandfather’s brother. Being a younger son he’d had to leave the farm, and look for a life elsewhere. He wasn’t anyone’s father, but people called him Papa because he’d trained as a priest, but he’d stopped doing that to fight in the Resistance, and then in the terrible civil wars that had followed. That was when he’d stopped believing what the priests had been teaching him, so he’d spent all his working life as a schoolmaster in Thessaloniki. He’d never married, but his sister, Aunt Nix, had housekept for him after her own husband had died. When he’d retired they’d both come back to live on the farm, in the old cottage where generations of other returning wanderers had come to end their days in the place where they’d been born.

The farm could afford to house them. There were other farms in the valley, as well as twenty or thirty peasant holdings, but Deniakis was much the largest, with Nikos and three other farmhands, and several women, on the payroll, working a large section of the fertile land along the river, orchards and vineyards, and a great stretch of the rough pasture above them running all the way up to the ridge.

Steff found Papa Alexi as usual under the vine, reading and drowsing and waking to read again. Today Aunt Nix was sitting opposite him with her cat on her lap and her lace-making kit beside her.

“You poor boy,” she said. “I know how it feels. It’s no use anyone saying anything, is it?”

Steff shook his head. He didn’t know how to begin. Papa Alexi marked his page with a vine leaf and closed the book.

“But you wanted something from us all the same?” he said.

“Well . . . are there any caves up in the mountains near here? Big ones, I mean. Not like that one on the way to Crow’s Castle—you can see right to the back of that without going in.”

“Not that I know of,” said Papa Alexi.

“What about Tartaros?” said Aunt Nix. “That’s a really big, deep cave, Steff. It’s on the far side of Sunion.”

“Only it isn’t a cave, it’s an old mine,” said Papa Alexi. “Genuinely old. Alexander the Great paid his phalanxes with good Tartaros silver. There were seams of the pure metal to be mined in those days. You know perfectly well you persuaded me to go and look for silver there once.”

“Only you got cold feet when it came to crossing into Mentathos land. We were actually looking down at the entrance, Steff . . .”

“You wouldn’t have been the one Dad thrashed. Anyway, you knew it was a mine, back then.”

“Of course I did. But that doesn’t mean it can’t have been a perfectly good cave long before it was ever a mine. Nanna Tasoula told me it used to be one of the entrances to the underworld. There was this nymph Zeus had his eye on, only his brother Dis got to her first and made off with her, but before he could get back into the underworld through one of his regular entrances Zeus threw a thunderbolt at him. Only he missed and split the mountain apart and made an opening and Dis escaped down there. That’s why it’s called Tartaros. Nanna Tasoula was full of interesting stories like that, Steff.”

“And you believe in all of them,” said Papa Alexi. “You know quite well it was a mine.”

They wrangled on, deliberately trying to keep Steff amused, he guessed. He tried to pay attention in a dazed kind of way. All he knew was that he had to go and look at the cave, if only to get rid of the dream. It couldn’t be helped that it was on Mentathos land. There’d always been bad blood between Deniakis and Mentathos, and it had been worse since the troubles after the war, when some of the young men had fought on opposite sides, and terrible things had been done. Papa Alexi made the point himself.

“Don’t you go trying it, Steff,” he said. “It’s not only Mentathos being a hard man, which he is, and he’d be pretty rough with you if you were found. He’d make serious trouble with your uncle. His father sold the mineral rights to a mining company. They came, and cleaned out any silver there was to be had. On top of that they’ve still got the rights, fifty-odd years. No wonder he’s touchy about it. Last thing he needs is anyone finding silver again.”

“Steff just wants to look,” said Aunt Nix. “It’s to do with your dream, isn’t it, Steff? Tartaros. I bet you that’s where it came from, your dream. Eurydice, after all. You remember the story, Steff . . .”

He barely listened.

Of course he knew the story, because of the name, though he hadn’t thought about it till now. Ridiki had already been named when he’d got her, so in his mind that’s who she was, and nothing to do with the old Greek nymph she was named from. But that didn’t stop Aunt Nix telling him again what a great musician Orpheus had been in the days when Apollo and Athene and the other gods still walked the earth; and how he’d invented the lyre, and the wild beasts would come out of the woods to listen enchanted to his playing; and how when his wife Eurydice had died of a snakebite he’d made his way to the gates of the underworld and with his music charmed his way past their terrible guardian, the three-head dog Cerberus, and then coaxed Charon, the surly ferryman who takes dead souls across the river Styx into Tartaros, the underworld itself; and how at last he’d stood before the throne of the god Dis, the iron-hearted lord of the dead, the one living man in all that million-peopled realm, and drawn from his lyre sounds full of sunlight, and the sap of plants and trees, and the pulse of animal hearts, and the airs of summer.

“Then Dis’s heart had softened just the weeniest bit,” said Aunt Nix, “and he told Orpheus that he’d got to go back where he belonged, but Eurydice could follow him provided he didn’t look back to make sure she was there until he stood in the sunlight, or she’d have to go back down to the underworld and he’d never see her again. So back Orpheus went, across the Styx, past the three snarling heads of Cerberus, until he saw the daylight clear ahead of him. But then he couldn’t bear it any more, not knowing whether Eurydice was really there behind him, and he looked back over his shoulder to check, and there she was, plain as plain, but he wasn’t yet out in the sunlight, and so as he turned to embrace her she gave a despairing cry and faded away into the darkness and he never saw her again.”

“I really don’t think . . .” said Uncle Alexi.

“Nonsense,” said Aunt Nix. “Steff only wants to look. He can do that from above. Like we did, Lexi. You go up the track toward the monastery and turn right at the old sheepfold, and then . . .”

Steff listened with care to her directions.

“Really, this isn’t a good idea,” said Papa Alexi when she’d finished.

“Please,” said Steff. “It’s not just I want to. I . . . I’ve got to.”

Papa Alexi looked at him and sighed.

“All right,” he said. “Start early. It’s a long way, and it’ll be hot. Take enough water. There’s a stream a little after you turn off at the sheepfold—you can refill your bottle there. You probably won’t be back till after dark. Scratch on my shutter when you’re home.”

He spent the evening writing his Sunday letter to his mother. She lived in Athens, with her new family. He didn’t blame her, or even miss her most of the time. She had a little shop selling smart, expensive clothes to rich women. That was what she’d been doing when she’d met his father, who’d worked for the government in the Foreign Ministry. Athens was where she belonged.

Steff didn’t remember his father. When he was still a baby some terrorists had tried to set off a bomb under the Foreign Minister’s car, but they’d got the wrong car, the one Steff’s father had been in, so he didn’t remember him at all. He’d no idea what he had thought about things. But he’d been a Deniakis, so Steff was pretty sure he’d felt much the same as he himself did, that he belonged on the farm.

Though he’d spent most of his first five years in Athens, his earliest memory was of sitting on a doorstep holding a squirming puppy he’d been given to cuddle and watching chickens scrattling in the sunlit dust. And then of a shattering, uncharacteristic tantrum he’d thrown on being taken out to the car to go back to Athens. He’d had a stepfather by then, Philip, and a stepsister soon after. Everyone had done their best to make him feel part of this new family, but he hadn’t been interested. Time in Athens was just time to be got through somehow. Two or three months there were nothing like as real for him as a few days on the farm, being let help with the animals, harvesting fallen olives, tagging round after his cousins.

By the time he was six his mother was driving him up there at the start of the school holidays, and fetching him when they were over. It had been his idea that he should live there most of the time, going to the little school in the town. She’d come up to see him for a few days at a time, fetch him to Athens for Christmas, take him on the family summer holiday. He got along all right with his steps, and was fond of his mother. She took trouble and was fun to be with. He guessed that she felt much the same as he did, a bit guilty about not minding more.

So he was surprised now to find how much he wanted to tell her about Ridiki. He’d always put something about her in his weekly letters, and she always asked, but this time everything seemed to come pouring out—what had happened, how he’d searched for her, found her, buried her, his misery and despair and utter loneliness. And the dream—Ridiki glancing over her shoulder and vanishing, and him not even being able to say good-bye. He had said good-bye to her once, in the real world, at her graveside. But if he was ever going to let go of her completely he had to do it again in the dream world where she had gone. He mustn’t keep anything. He would take her collar, and the shepherd’s pipes he’d used to train her, and find somewhere inside the cave to hide them, where they’d never be found, and call his good-byes into the darkness, and go. Then it would be over.

All this he wrote down, hardly pausing to think or rest. He fetched his supper up to his room and wrote steadily on. It was as if his mother was the one person in all the world he needed to tell. Nobody else would do. When he’d finished he hid the letter, unsealed, in his clothes-chest, got everything ready that he’d need for the morning, and went to bed, willing himself to wake when the cocks crew.

Of course he woke several times before that, certain he must have missed their calls, but he didn’t when at last they came. He stole down the stairs, put on the clothes that he’d hidden beneath them with his satchel, and left. Hero, the old watchdog, rose growling at his approach, but recognised Steff’s voice when he called her name, and lay back down. It was still more dark than light when he set out towards the monastery, making the best speed he could through the dewy dawn air.

He reached the ridge around noon. The last several miles he had sweated up goat paths under a blazing sun. But so far so good. He had started to explore these hillsides as soon as he’d been old enough to follow his cousins around, so he’d found his way without trouble among the fields and vineyards and olive groves on the lower slopes, the rough pastures above them where he, with Nikos’s help, had taught Ridiki the business of shepherding, and then, above those, up between the dense patches of scrub that was the only stuff that would grow there.

He stopped to eat and rest in the last of their shade, looking west over the heat-hazed distances of the coastal hills. The main mass of Sunion rose on his right. It wasn’t enormous, but it was a true mountain, steep, and for half the year capped with snow that fed the fields and pastures of the valleys below. Even on this southern side the last white streaks had melted from its gullies only a few weeks back. The ridge on which he was sitting climbed towards that peak. Its crest, only fifty paces above him, had been a frontier between the homeland and enemy territory in the long, imaginary history his cousins had constructed for their wars and adventures; and in the real, everyday world that was almost true. The legal ownership of these uncultivatable uplands might be vague, but despite that the ridge was an ancient boundary, well understood by all, between Deniakis and their neighbours and dependants and those of Mentathos. Even in their wildest feats of daring, Paulo, Steff’s elder cousin, had never let any of them set foot beyond it. Now he had no choice.

An unpleasant thought came to him. He should have considered it before he ever set out. If Mentathos didn’t want anyone going into the mine to look for silver, he had probably barricaded the entrance. Well, it was too late now. Having come this far he might as well see the thing through. With a gloomy sigh he rose to his feet and started up the ridge.

He was now on a spur of the main mountain. On its eastern side it fell away even more steeply than on the side he had climbed, flanking a deep and narrow valley with the next spur beyond. At the bottom a river tumbled over a series of rapids with the remains of an old rail track running beside it.

For a while he scrambled up the ridge, mainly on the Deniakis side of the actual crest, and only when the going became too difficult, moving a few paces over onto Mentathos land. Out there he felt exposed and vulnerable, almost on the skyline in this forbidden territory. The bleak, bare valley below seemed full of hidden watchers. He reached his goal with astonishing suddenness.

There was no mistaking it. This was Tartaros. There had to be a story about such a place. It was exactly as Aunt Nix had described it.

He had found his way blocked both sides of the ridge by an immense gash slicing into the spur, clean through the crest and into the southern slope, as if the mountain had been split apart by a single, unimaginably powerful stroke. Craning over the edge he saw that the two opposing cliffs reached almost down to the level of the valley floor. There were places where it seemed obvious that one cliff must once have fitted snugly against the other. And there, at the bottom of the opposite cliff and some way to his right, lay the entrance of Tartaros. It was simply a dark hole in the vertical rock. The rail track he had seen in the valley turned up into the cleft and turned again into the opening. He could see no sign of a barrier. That settled it. He would go on.

Easier said than done. Some of the rocks that composed the plunging slope were as large as a house, and he had to find ways either down or round them. And then, when he had almost reached the bottom, a secondary cliff forced him some way back along the valley before he could at last scramble down to the river.

He started warily up the rail track. The sleepers were mostly rotten and the rails were thick with rust, but in one place a swarm of flies buzzed around a pile of recent mule droppings—yesterday’s, or the day’s before, he thought. Alarming, but only half his mind was on the obvious dangers of what he was doing. The other half was trying to decide if what he was now seeing was at all like any of the shifting landscapes of his dream. Had one of them had a rail track running beside a river? Surely he would have remembered that, but no.

He came to the cleft and turned into it, left. It had been right in the dream, hadn’t it? And of course no rail track. He’d been following Ridiki along a goat track. And those last dreadful moments, when he’d been toiling after her up the slope as she danced ahead . . . Here only a mild gradient led to the dark entrance of Tartaros.

He reached it and his heart sank. What he was looking at was no deeper than the cave on the way to Crow’s Castle. Its back wall was formed by a solid-looking timber barrier. The rail track ran on through it beneath double doors with a heavy padlock hanging across the join.

Well, it would have to do. He would find somewhere to hide or bury the collar and pipes, and then call his second farewell through a crack in the door. Gloomily he entered the cave. It wasn’t very promising. A natural cave might have had projections and fissures, but this had been shaped with stonecutters’ tools to an even surface. A small cairn then, piled into one of the far corners . . .

Without any hope at all he checked the lock, and everything changed. It was locked sure enough, but only into one of the pair of shackles, one in each door, through which it was meant to run. Somebody must have deliberately left it like that, closing the door either from inside or outside in such a way that it looked from any distance as if it were properly fastened. For instance, they might have lost the key inside the mine. Or they might be inside now. Someone had been here not long ago. Those mule droppings . . .

And the lock looked fairly new. Nothing like as old as the rails.

It didn’t make any difference. He was still going to do what he’d come for. With a thumping heart he eased the door open, first just a crack, and then far enough for him to slip through.

Darkness. Silence, apart from the drumming of his own blood. No. From somewhere ahead the rustle of moving water. He waited, listening, before closing the door and taking his hand torch out of his satchel. Shading the light with his left hand, he switched it on. Cautiously he allowed a crack of light to seep between his fingers.

The rails stretched away into the dimness along a tunnel whose walls were partly natural, partly shaped with tools. Only a few paces along, low in the right-hand wall, he made out what he was looking for, a vertical crack in the rock, as wide as his clenched fist at the bottom and tapering to a point at about knee height. Having checked, and found it was deep enough, he laid the collar and pipes ready, collected some fragments of rock to seal them in with, knelt beside the crack, and picked up the collar, and straightened.

No need to shout. If Ridiki could hear him, it would not be with earthly ears, and suppose whoever had left the door unlocked was somewhere ahead down there, he would be nearer the source of the water-noises, which should be enough to mask a quiet call from the distance.

“Good-bye, Eurydice. Good-bye, Ridiki. Be happy where you are.”

He was answered twice, first by the echo and then, drowning that out, by the bark of a dog, a sharp, triple yelp, a pause, and then the same again. And again. The alert call that every Deniakis dog was trained to give to attract its master’s attention to something he might need to be aware of. It could have been Ridiki. (No, for course it couldn’t. She was dead.) Out on the open hillside he would have known her voice from that of any other dog in Greece, but the echoing distances of the place muffled and changed it.

The call died away into uncertainty, as if the dog wasn’t sure it was doing the right thing. Steff found he had sprung to his feet, tense with mixed terror and excitement. The pipes were still on the floor where he had left them. He stuffed the collar in his pocket and picked them up, but continued to stand there, strangely dazed. Whatever the risk, it was impossible to turn away. To do so would haunt him for the rest of his days. He had to be sure. Shielding the torch so that it lit only the patch of floor immediately in front of his feet, he stole on. The daze continued. He felt as if he carried some kind of shadow of himself inside himself, its hand inside the hands that held the pipes and torch, its heart beating to the beat of his heart, its feet walking with shadow feet inside his feet of flesh and bone but making a separate soft footfall.

And everything around him shared the same doubleness. In the world of flesh and bone this was simply an empty, worked-out silver mine that before that had been a deep cave. But, mine or cave, in the shadow world it was and always had been an entrance to the underworld. Along it, and all around him, invisible, imperceptible, flooded the souls of the freshly dead. And ahead of him there was a dog of flesh and bone who was also, somehow, the dog Cerberus, the dreadful three-headed guardian of that realm. And a nameless stream the shadow of whose waters was the River Styx. And, waiting for him on its further shore, Eurydice. Ridiki.

The daze faded abruptly. He was aware of some other change, but couldn’t locate it. He stopped and stood listening. No, not a sound, a light, a faint orange glow from around a so-far unperceived bend in the tunnel. He moved on, step by cautious step. Even more slowly he edged round the bend. The water sounds became noticeably louder, telling him that they were made by something more than a trickle, more than a small stream. The source of light appeared, an ordinary oil lantern standing on a ledge carved into the opposite wall. Just beyond it, the dog.

A dog of the Deniakis breed, all right, though larger than most, almost twice the size of Ridiki, but very much her colouring. Its collar was fastened by a light chain to a shackle in the wall, and it was lying across the near side of the tunnel, with its head turned away from him, ears half pricked, motionless. He knew that pose only too well. It was waiting for the return of its master.

What now? In the world of flesh and bone the only sane thing would be to turn back. It was the pipes that made up his mind. Unconsciously while he hesitated he had been weighing them in his hand, but now he found himself gazing dreamily down at them. His shadow self returned, allowing him to look at them through shadow eyes, to see them for what they were in that dim light. In the world of fresh and blood he had brought them here as a tangible offering to make as part of his farewell to Ridiki, a way of telling himself that now, truly, finally, he was letting her go. But, like one of the echoes in this place of echoes, that purpose now reverberated back to him from the shadow world all changed, telling him that if he used them the pipes were a passport, a charm with which he might persuade the powers of the underworld to let him through.

Suppose it was all nonsense. Suppose the dog’s only response was to set up a clamour of barking and bring its master running. The man must be a little way off, beyond the dog’s awareness, to judge by its anxious, waiting pose. He’d have a good start. Once through the door he could run the collar through the lock-shackles and fasten it tight. It would take the man some while to force his way past that, and by then Steff would be out of the cleft and well up the hillside . . .

Before that half of his mind had finished these flesh-and-blood calculations his shadow self had moved him quietly out to the centre of the tunnel and put the pipes to his lips. He drew a calm breath and blew two sharp notes, well apart on the scale, three times repeated. All Deniakis dogs had been trained to the same signals, and since, once trained, they were going to be sold on, Nikos never allowed them to bond to a single man, but got them accustomed to obeying the commands of strangers. This was the Attention call, a musical version of the dog’s Alert. Instantly the dog heaved itself onto its haunches. Its head swung round, ears pricked. Herd dogs have excellent sight, but Steff was some way from the lantern’s dim light and the dog, he now saw, was old. Its movements had been stiff and there was something awkward about its posture, very like Ridiki’s when she was at attention.

Nevertheless it recognised a stranger, and was about to spring up and rush yelling to the reach of its chain when Steff blew a long, fluttering call—Down. Wait. Be Ready.

The dog paused, uncertain. He blew the call again. The dog subsided, though still with obvious doubt, and lay with its muzzle on its outstretched forelegs. Its hackles continued to stir as he walked confidently forward, the pipes ready at his lips, but its training held. As he neared he saw why it had so reminded him of Ridiki. The left forepaw—what would have been the hand on a human arm—was missing as far as the wrist. Once well past the dog, he turned and played the first few notes of a local lullaby. Relax. It obeyed, obviously relieved, looking in fact rather pleased with itself at having performed a known task well. It was a nice old dog, he thought, not at all dreadful. And only one head.

And the same with everything else. The tunnel he was in was now an old mine shaft and nothing more. The dead no longer flooded invisibly along it—it was empty apart from himself. And what he was doing was once again pure, reasonless, dangerous folly. Only the memory of his earlier resolution carried him on.

Another lantern glowed in the distance. Very likely that was where the dog’s master was doing whatever he was here for, but again the danger had to be faced. Twice now he had come to such a moment with nothing more to rely on than shadow certainties that he no longer felt, and twice they had compelled him to face the test. Why stop trusting them now? Still, spasms of fear shuddered through him as he stole nearer to the light, and he had to stop and wait for them to pass before he could force himself on.

Now he could see the end of the tunnel, a rock surface with a thick rope running across it through a series of old iron rings. The rail track curved round to the left, into the lantern light. The floor of the tunnel ended halfway across to the opposite wall—the gap must be the channel in which the water ran.

He edged along close to the left-hand wall, checking to the right on what he could see of that side of the chamber ahead, as more and more of it came into view. In fact it ended in a blank stone wall only a couple of paces round the corner. The water flowed out of it under a low arch.

At the tunnel’s end, huddled close against the wall, he stood and listened, but the steady rustle of the water drowned any small sounds the man might be making, if he was there. Cautiously he peeped out, just far enough to see round the corner with one eye. The lantern stood on a flatbed rail trolley, a simple wooden platform on wheels, with a hinged handle either end for pushing or pulling. The rails ended a pace or two beyond it, and the chamber a little beyond that, with a blank wall through which the water flowed out of a tunnel high enough for man to stand in. The rope along the far wall continued through more rings and on into the tunnel.

At first there seemed to be no one about, but then a man’s head and shoulders, facing away from Steff, rose from behind the trolley. For a moment he seemed to be standing in the river, but his body rocked as he lifted something heavy up onto the quayside, showing that he must be standing on some kind of boat or raft. The rope on the wall was for him to pull himself up and down the river.

Still with his back towards Steff he climbed up onto the quay and lifted his load onto the trolley and slid it forward. It was a sturdy wooden box, not large but obviously heavy. He returned to the raft and disappeared, clearly to fetch another one.

Steff had only a moment or two to think, but barely needed it. Everything he’d seen and been told seemed to click into place in his head. Somebody—probably one of the men who’d done the final survey on the mine and said it was worked out, had actually found a vein of fine silver, like what Alexander had used to pay his soldiers. He’d kept quiet about it until he could use it for himself. He’d then done a deal with Mentathos, to share the profits if he’d help. They had to keep dead quiet about it, because the silver really belonged to the mining company, and besides, if nobody knew, then they wouldn’t have to pay taxes. (The papers were always full of this sort of shady dealings, and the men talked about them over their dinners.)

So what Steff was doing was no longer a silly escapade for which he’d be seriously punished if anyone found out. Suddenly it had become extremely dangerous. He’d better get out, and quick, while the man was busy and he still had time to pipe his way past the dog.

But the man was Charon the ferryman, and the river was the Styx, the first of the seven rivers of the underworld, and all around, at this very moment, unseen, unfelt, the dead were crowding the quay, begging for passage, paying him with the two coins that had been put in their mouths before they were buried.

There was some small change left from this week’s pocket money. But how . . .?

Still hesitating, Steff edged an eye round the corner to check what he was doing. As it happened the man was looking straight towards the mouth of the tunnel.

He stared for an instant, and bellowed. Automatically Steff jerked back, caught his foot, and fell. Before he could rise the man was on him. He was grabbed by the shoulders, hauled to his feet, and shaken violently back and forth, while the man continued to bellow.

“Mother of Christ, who the hell are you? And what in God’s name do you think you’re doing here, you nosy little bastard? I’ll show you!”

The man flung him back against the rock wall, grabbed him before he could fall, and began to batter him to and fro again.

“Charon?”

Winded, half-stunned, terrified, Steff wasn’t aware of deciding to say the name. It was a barely audible croak, forced out of him by the violence of his shaking. But the man paused, staring. He wasn’t much taller than Steff, but broad-shouldered, with a weather-beaten, flat, snub-nosed face and dark eyebrows that joined above his nose.

“Mother of Christ!” he said. “The boss sent you? That case, what cause you got to go sneaking around like that?”

“No . . . No . . . He didn’t . . . No one did. I’m looking for Ridiki . . . My dog.”

“So what the hell makes you think your bloody dog might be down here? Hector’s the only dog down here. Come to that, how’d you get past him without him yelling his head off? And how come you know what the boss calls me?”

“She isn’t down here—not like that. She’s dead. A snake bit her. But Ridiki’s short for Eurydice. That’s her real name. The story, you see . . . And this is Tartaros. It’s an entrance to the underworld . . .”

“And so I’m Charon. Look, kid, that was just a lucky guess. Like I said, it’s what the boss calls me, one of his jokes, because of what the mine’s called. Next thing you’ll be telling me Hector’s got three heads, and you charmed your way past him by playing him beautiful music.”

“Well, sort of. I’d brought my pipes, you see, to leave for Ridiki, but when I saw he was one of our dogs, I played him . . .”

“Hold it there. One of your dogs? You’re Deniakis? Don’t tell me you’re one of the old man’s kids? No, they’re older . . .”

“He’s my uncle.”

“Your dad was the one those bastards in Athens got?”

“That’s right.”

The man paused, thinking.

“Right,” he said. “You’re in a mess, kid, a bloody, stupid, dangerous mess you got yourself into. And by sheer fool’s luck you’ve run into the only Mentathos who’s going to get you out of it. Your dad was my wife’s childhood sweetheart. All of ten years old they must have been. Fell for each other, click!, just like that. He smuggled a puppy down to show her, let her cuddle it. And they weren’t supposed even to talk to each other; their dads would’ve flayed them if they’d heard, and they’d both got elder brothers at the school to keep them toeing the line. Year and a half they kept it up, stolen moments, couple of friends they could trust. Then her brother twigged, got up a Mentathos gang to take it out on your dad and his brother, but Deniakis—he’s your uncle now—was waiting for us with his own gang, and between us we pretty well wrecked the school. Upshot was her dad took my wife away but they smuggled letters back and forth for years.

“She told me all this before we married—I didn’t like it, of course—but she got me to understand she wasn’t in love with him, not like that. He was going to come to our wedding in disguise, bringing his wife, but his ministry sent him to America, so when our first kid was on the way she wrote to him and asked him to be a sort of secret godfather. I’d tried to talk her out of it and I tried again when he wrote back and said he’d give us one of the Deniakis dogs. I could see the sort of trouble that would cause, but she was set on the idea so I cleared it with Mentathos. Not that he liked it either, but he owed me one. He’s a hard man—hard as they come, but he pays his debts. Said OK, we could have the dog and told his men to let it alone.

“Someone didn’t listen. You saw Hector’s missing a foot. Fox trap, left deliberate. I caught the fellow that put it there. You’ll know him if you meet him. Two fingers missing on his left hand, and he can count himself lucky I left him the hand . . .”

“Rania dropped a skillet on Ridiki’s left leg—she didn’t mean to, she’s just clumsy, but it could’ve killed her.”

“Right. Anyway, that’s Hector. Best dog I ever owned, three legs or four. Took a bit of time for us to get him—Deniakis keeps count of his dogs. Your dad was dead by the time he came but a fellow called Nikos fixed it . . .”

“He helped me train Ridiki.”

“Another thing we’ve got between us, then. Now, the fellows with the mules will be up here . . . let’s see . . . bit over half an hour. Just time to get you clear.”

“But . . . but I’ve got to see Dis about Ridiki.”

“Listen, kid . . . what’s your name?”

“Steff.”

“All right, Steff. Looking at it your way, if Hector’s Cerberus and I’m Charon, then Dis is the boss down here. You absolutely do not want to see Dis. River in the underworld—isn’t that right?—fall into it and you forget everything. Same here. Fall into our river and next time anyone sees you you’ve forgotten everything all right, because you’ve been washed up in Siren’s Bay with a hole in your head might have been got by you banging it on a rock. Or maybe being banged with a rock. No, I wouldn’t put it past him. Why d’you think I beat you up the way I did? Sorry about that, but I couldn’t let you go, not after what you’d seen, and I was scared rigid what he’d do when he got his hands on you. You won’t get any sympathy out of him—you’d just as well ask old Hector . . . Wait! That’s it, Steff lad. What call d’you think Dis has to be interested in dogs? Cerberus is the one you’ve got to ask. You can do that as you’re going.”

“But . . .”

“You’ve got two choices, Steff. Either you do what I tell you, ask Hector for what you want, and then make yourself scarce, or I carry you kicking and screaming out onto the hillside and tie you up and come back for you later. Either way I’m taking a hell of a risk, trusting you not letting on to anyone. OK, your uncle would flay you if he found out, same as my wife would flay me if she found out I’d handed you over to the boss. But your uncle’s not the only one. You’re telling nobody. Got it? Nobody. Now, make up your mind.”

Steff shook his head. He couldn’t think. The man was too much for him, not just too big and too strong, but too full of adult energy and command.

“All right,” he muttered.

The man grunted and picked up his lantern.

They walked up the tunnel, side by side. Hector came in sight, lying as Steff had first seen him, but with his ears fully pricked at the sound of his master’s returning footfall. The man checked his watch again.

“Still got time for it. Just like to see Hector doing his tricks after all these years. I’ll have to tell Maria about you, any case, and I’ll lay she’ll be wanting to meet you. Ready? Pipe away, then.”

They halted. Half heartedly Steff put the pipes to his lips. They were Ridiki’s. He’d never expected to use them again. The sharp notes of the alert sounded along the tunnel. Hector rose, puzzled for a moment, but then eagerly, as if glad to perform for his master.

“Well, I’ll be busted!” said the man, laughing aloud as Hector responded to the next two calls. “Ten years and more it’s got to be since he last did that. I’ve never had call to learn the signals. Well done, old boy. Now sit. Steff’s got something to ask you.”

Obediently Hector rose again to his haunches. Steff knelt to bring their two heads level. He took Ridiki’s collar from his pocket and held it forward. Hector gave it an investigating sniff and then smelt it carefully over. To a dog, another dog’s smell is its name. He would know Ridiki if he met her. Only he wouldn’t—she was dead.

When he’d sniffed enough, Steff leaned back to ease his posture. The movement caused the shadows on the wall to shift, as the two shadows of Steff’s head, one thrown by the lantern in the man’s hand and the other by the lantern on the opposite wall, detached themselves from Hector’s shadow, so that it now seemed as if the shadows of three heads rose from the shapeless mass of overlapping shadows cast by the two bodies.

The shadow world had returned in all its strange certainty, and Steff knew that he now spoke through Hector to his shadow self, the monstrous guardian of the underworld.

“Oh, Cerberus, please . . .” he whispered. “Please can you let Ridiki come back home with me? . . . I don’t expect you can, but . . . anyway, please look after her. Thank you.”

He rose, and his two shadows now hid the dog’s and the shape on the wall meant nothing. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve, and when he looked again he saw, towering over his own double shadow, the single shadow of the man, cast by the lamp on the opposite wall. The lamp the man was carrying shone directly on the wall, making his shadow almost too faint to see, but it was there, reaching up to the tunnel roof and arching over them because the man was standing closer to the light source.

“You know you mustn’t look round until you are out?” said the man, amused but sympathetic.

An echo floated back, toneless, a shadow voice, whispering out of the rock of Tartaros.

“. . . until you are out.”

“Yes, I know,” said Steff. “Thank you. I’ll go now. I’ll turn left at the river and try and climb up that way. Then I won’t run into your friends with the mules.”

“Easier that way, any case,” said the man. “There’s a bit of a track. And look. Wednesdays Mentathos runs a truck down to the town, so the women can do their shop. I’ll be waiting for you after school. Don’t let on you know me—neither of us wants anyone asking questions—just follow where I go and I’ll take you to meet Sophie. Better tell someone you’ll be late home. OK?”

“OK. See you,” said Steff, and turned away into the unceasing stream of the invisible dead moving in the other direction. The lantern glow dwindled behind him. Reluctantly he switched on his hand torch. Its sharp, white, modern beam banished the shadow world. The tide of dead ceased to exist, a remembered delusion. None of that had been true. He’d taken a crazy risk for a silly, childish hope, and been extraordinarily lucky. Ridiki was dead, buried under the fig tree.

And yet she was there, trotting silently behind him. He’d always been able to tell, just as he could tell exactly where his hand was if he closed his eyes and moved it around.

Oh, nonsense! Kidding himself again, the way he’d been kidding himself all through the adventure because he so longed for it to be true. All he was doing was making it worse for himself every step he took until he reached the open air and turned round and she wasn’t there. Torturing himself with hope. Grow up, Steff. Get it over.

No, he told himself. This was another test, the hardest of all.

Somehow it was now far further up the dark and empty tunnel than it had been when he’d been stealing so cautiously in, and all that way he fought the compulsion, grimly forcing himself into the gale of the rational world as it blew every shred of its shadow counterpart away. All he had left of it was this one last tatter, that when he at last looked back and saw nothing but the rock-rubble floor of the cleft he would still at least know that he had kept faith with Ridiki.

He reached the wooden barrier, opened the door, closed his eyes and held it for long enough for her to slip through before he shut it. Still with closed eyes he set his shoulders against the barrier to check his direction and purposefully walked the few paces more to bring himself clear of the cave before he opened them.

There was no need to look round. She had slipped past him and was already there, waiting for him in the last of daylight.

Ridiki, eyes bright, ears cocked, tail high, delighted to see him. She was wearing her Sunday collar. He dropped to his knees and held out his arms. She pranced towards him, but stopped just out of reach. He shuffled forward and she drew away. Her ears twitched back a little and hackles stirred—not a threat but a warning. There were no footprints in the patch of dust where she’d been standing

“I mustn’t touch you . . .?” he whispered.

Her ears pricked, her hackles smoothed, and the look of anxiety left her eyes.

“Can you come home with me—part of the way at least? The man—Charon, I call him—says I’ve got to get out before the men come with the mules. I suppose they move the silver after dark.”

He’d always talked to her when they were alone together, telling her his thoughts, explaining what he was up to. He didn’t expect her to understand, but now for answer she turned and trotted off down the cleft. He followed. At the river she turned confidently to the left, but stayed on the track further than he’d have done. But she seemed to know what she was doing. This was a much easier climb than the route he’d taken down would have been, and towards the top they slanted to the left and so reached the crest of the ridge very close to where Steff had started down, but on the other side of the cleft.

The moon was rising, near to the full. He was interested to see that Ridiki cast a shadow, dark and definite enough, though somehow less so than the hard-edged black shadows of the rocks around. The shadow of a shadow, so to speak, for she herself was a shadow, a shadow somehow made solid. For him at least. He wondered whether anyone else would be able to see her.

As soon as they started down the moon was hidden by the mass of the ridge behind them, but Ridiki still seemed able to find the way. He could just pick out her yellow rump as she led him down twisting animal tracks till they came out on one of the many shepherds’ trails that crisscrossed the mountainside. From here on he knew the way, and without being told she dropped back to her usual place close behind him with her muzzle level with his left knee.

His heart lightened. So she hadn’t just been making sure he reached a point from which he could get safely home. She was coming with him.

Tired though his body was he strode home so happy that he barely noticed the journey. Even then it was well after midnight when he scratched on Papa Alexi’s shutter. The old man must have been sitting up waiting for him. He opened the door almost at once, a pale, stooped figure in his long nightshirt.

“Not bad,” he said. “I thought you’d be later. Get done what you wanted?”

“Yes. I was very lucky. It was all right. You didn’t tell anyone?”

“Waiting till morning. Good night, then.”

“Good night. And thank you very much.”

Over the next weeks he slowly became used to Ridiki’s strange existence, learning to think of her as his dog, there, real, as she always had been, though no one else on the farm could see her. Nor could any of the other dogs, though old Hera, stone deaf and almost blind, sniffed interestedly at her when she greeted her and thumped her scabby tail on the ground. She knew. Ridiki seemed to mind about the dogs not seeing her far more than she did about the people, and made a point of visiting her every day.

Invisibility had its advantages. She could now come indoors, and slept weightless at the foot of Steff’s bed. She trotted down to school with him and curled up under his bench or found safe corners to lie in so that she could still be nearby while he was doing stuff with his friends. At first he’d been worried about what might happen if someone happened to walk into her or trod on her, but she was careful not let it happen. As the days went by he came to realise that all the time she was with him she was performing an extremely difficult feat, a balancing act on a precarious rope bridge between the world of shadows and the world of flesh and blood. Any sudden jolt might toss her down into the nowhere between those worlds, any extra strain might unravel the fastening at one end or the other. A touch from his hand would do it.

So mostly she behaved as any other dog would have done. He had trained her not to eat anything except from his hand or from her bowl, but he had no shadow food to give her so she fended for herself, stalking shadow mice around the farm, or pouncing on small shadow creatures among the tussocks beside a path, or finding shadow scraps behind the kitchen door. Once, down on the shore, she dragged out something heavy from between two rocks and lay in a patch of shade holding one end of the invisible object between her forepaws and growling contentedly as she gnawed at the other end. She drank from a shadow stream that seemed to run down the far side of orchard. Steff asked Papa Alexi whether there’d ever been a stream there, and he said yes, but it had been diverted fifty years ago to water the fruit terraces. She peed and shat like a normal dog. Her faeces glistened a little while in the sun, but before they’d begun to dry and darken they faded into the ground.

She came with Steff when the man he thought of as Charon took him to meet his wife, Sophie, in a dark little bar in a backstreet, where none of the Deniakis or Mentathos people were likely to see them together. Charon fetched food and drink, but just had a glass of beer and left.

“Isn’t this wonderful!” said Sophie as soon as he’d gone. “Secret meetings again! And you look just like him, that age! My heart stopped when I saw you.”

They talked about Steff’s father—she told him a lot he didn’t know—and then about Steff himself, and his mother and his other family—she seemed to want to know everything—until it was time for her to catch the Mentathos truck home.

“Same again next week?” she said as she rose.

“Oh . . . Yes, please. If you like.”

It became a pattern for the next few weeks. She was like the cheerful and understanding aunt he’d never had. He didn’t know what she got out of it, but she obviously enjoyed their meetings. He told Papa Alexi and Aunt Nix about them, knowing they wouldn’t pass it on, but he didn’t expect anyone else at the farm to notice that he was getting back late on Wednesdays. He was wrong.

It wasn’t even a Wednesday. He got home at his usual time, just as the informal mid-day meal on the vine-shaded terrace was breaking up for everyone to go and have their afternoon rest. He was greeted by a shout from Mitsos.

“Hey, Steff. Where’d you get to yesterday? Not the first time, neither. Meeting some girl, I bet, down in the town. Tell us about her. Plump little piece, just coming ripe? You lucky little sod!”

Being Mitsos, he was aiming for maximum embarrassment, and a couple of months back he’d have got it. But thanks to Tartaros, and Ridiki’s return, and most of all to his meetings with Sophie, something had changed inside Steff. A joke Sophie had made to Charon a couple of weeks back even told him how to answer.

He picked up a chunk of bread, bit off a corner, chewed, and tucked it into his cheek.

“Dead wrong, Mitsos,” he said. “She’s a married woman.”

He chewed a bit more and added, “. . . and her husband isn’t jealous.”

Everyone laughed, partly at the joke, partly at Mitsos, but mainly with surprise at quiet, withdrawn, anxious Steff coming up with something like that. His uncle caught his eye and gave a nodded of approval—he thought boys should be able to stand up for themselves. Even so, it was a surprise when he returned after everyone else was gone, and Steff was finishing his meal, with Ridiki curled on the paving beside him. Steff rose. His uncle gestured to him to sit, did so himself, and picked up an olive.

“Got over losing that dog of yours?” he asked.

Out of the corner of his eye Steff saw Ridiki look up, amused.

“Just about,” he said. “I missed her a lot at first.”

“Hurts a bit every time, and the first one’s worst. Ready for another one, d’you think? Atalanta’s litter’s ready to look at. Got a chap coming tomorrow to choose one, but you get first pick.”

“Oh, but . . . I thought they’d all be spoken for.”

“You’re family. I’d give you one myself, but your mother’s sent the money. She wants it from her.”

Steff bent as if to scratch his ankle while he thought, letting him look directly at Ridiki for help. Her ears were pricked with interest and her eyes amused.

He straightened.

“Thank you very much,” he said. “I’ll go and look at them when Nikos’s finished his rest.”

As he watched his uncle walk away it struck him that he hadn’t seen Ridiki looking that lively for quite some time. Over the last few weeks she’d been spending more and more of her time asleep, and when she was awake her interest in everything around her was somehow less intense than it used to be. He’d started to wonder whether she was tired because it was becoming more of an effort for to maintain the between-two-worlds balance she needed for these spells of wakefulness.

Did she think another dog would be company for her, liven her up? Or for him, and allow her to go back into the shadows where she belonged?

Though she knew Steff well, Atalanta was a jealous mother, and Nikos had to hold her while Steff picked the pups out of the box one by one, turned them over to check their sex, and set them on the floor of the kennel-shed as if to see how they reacted while Ridiki looked and sniffed them over. Their eyes were open but still blurred, and the black markings they would have as adults only just visible as darker patches fawn birth-fur. The first three were bitches. They looked lost and miserable and headed straight back to the box with the rubber-legged waddle of small pups.

The fourth was a dog. He stood his ground, peering around with an absurd expression of eager bewilderment. Steff held out a hand. The pup sniffed at it, gave it an experimental lick, and sucked hopefully at a fingertip. When the hand was withdrawn he continued sniffing, to Nikos’s eyes at empty air, and then attempted to lick something, reaching so far that he almost tumbled on his face as Ridiki withdrew her invisible nose.

But not invisible to the puppy.

“Seen a ghost,” said Nikos, laughing. “You get that with some dogs. Hera, now, and she’s his—let’s see—great-grandmother.”

“Can I have him?” said Steff. “I don’t want another bitch, not so soon after Ridiki.”

“Good choice. You’ve the makings of a sound dog there. Mind you, he’ll look a bit like something out of a circus, those markings. There’s some wouldn’t want that.”

Steff hadn’t paid much attention to the markings, merely registering that the dog would be mainly the Deniakis golden-yellow, with a few black bits. Now he saw that these patches, still no more than a light golden-orange, were going to darken into five almost perfect circles, three on the left flank and two on the right, like a clown’s horse in a picture book. He was a comical little scrap.

“What can I call him?” he asked. “Did the old Greeks have clowns?”

“Yes, you’ve got a problem there—not a lot of fun, that lot. Hold it. There was that fellow wrote a play about frogs. Aristo something. Aristotle?”

“I’ll ask Papa Alexi. I could call him Risto.”

Three months later came the start of the grape harvest. School was over for the next few weeks, so Steff helped all morning in the vineyard—a cheerful time, with a lot of laughter and chat between the regular farmhands and the casual pickers from the town. But it was clearly going to be a hot and tiring afternoon, and he’d not been looking forward to it when, just as everyone was rousing themselves from the midday break, Nikos said “They’ve more than enough hands here, Steff. They won’t miss two of us. Like to show me how that dog of yours is getting on?”

This was part of the deal. Not wanting to see a good dog spoiled, Nikos had been a bit reluctant to let Steff train Risto on his own, but he’d agreed to let him do the first stages, learning the simple pipe calls and so on, and see then to see how it had gone. Risto was still more puppy than dog, and still a bit of a clown, but he was a quick and eager learner, and had Ridiki to show him what was expected of him.

He was also a show-off—part of his clownishness—and in the dogs’ eyes Nikos was the leader of the human pack, and so he really laid it on for him, quivering with excitement as he sat waiting for the last note of each call and then darting into action. He finished with a theatrically stealthy stalk of a rock with a sheepskin draped across it, moving left and right, crouching and moving on, exactly on each call.

Nikos laughed aloud.

“Pretty good,” he said. “He’s got the instinct in him, and then some. Never seen a pup that far on. Like to try him on a few live ones?”

He whistled for his own dog, Ajax, and led the way up to the rough pastures above the vineyards. Risto watched, thrilled and eager, while Ajax cut out three staid old ewes who knew what was expected of them almost as well as he did. Then, at first with Ridiki to guide him but soon on his own, he raced off to team up with Ajax and move the patient sheep across the slope, between two large boulders, round and back before releasing them. He returned panting, delighted with his own achievement, lapping up all the praise Steff could give him.

“Don’t overdo that,” said Nikos. “He’s big-headed enough for three dogs already. Pretty good, mind you—good as I’ve seen. I’ll tell your uncle you’re doing fine. That’s enough for now. He’s only a pup still, and he’s all in. Not worth going back to the vineyard. Give yourselves a break.”

So Steff went back to the farm house and settled on a rock in the shade below the terrace to begin his weekly letter to his mother, with Ridiki and Risto curled up either side of him. The evenings were earlier now and the sky was just starting to redden as he gazed out over immense distances of the coastline beneath the sinking sun. Above him on the terrace some of the women were getting things ready for the party Deniakis held every year to celebrate the start of the grape picking. A happy and peaceful evening, but at the same time full of the feel of coming change, of the world readying itself for winter. The bustle on the terrace increased. The first of the workers began to arrive. Risto woke.

Puppy fashion, he’d forgotten his weariness, couldn’t imagine such a state was possible for him. He looked up at Steff. Not a hope. But there was Ridiki beyond him, still asleep. He pranced round, springy with pent energy, crouched an inch from her nose and snorted. She opened an eye, raised her head and yawned. He rose onto his hind legs and pawed the air. Ridiki looked at Steff—if she’d have been human she’d have shrugged resignedly, Kids!—and she was off, streaking away down the slope into the orchard, jinking in and out between the trees, with Risto after her, sometimes on her tail, sometimes careering on after one of her sudden full-speed turns, braking so frenziedly that at one point he went tumbling head over heels, and then racing to make up the lost ground.

At that speed they couldn’t keep it up for more than a few minutes and then came back side to side to Steff and sat panting, tongues lolling out, but still bright-eyed with the fun of what they’d been doing. Somebody coughed overhead and he looked up.

It was his uncle’s new wife, Maria, holding her baby perched on the terrace wall to watch Risto racing around the orchard. There were people who said her mother was a witch and had put a spell on Deniakis to make him fall for someone who wasn’t that young or that pretty, or rich enough to bring him that much of a dowry. But Aunt Nix had told Steff this was nonsense, and they’d been lovers for several years.

At Steff’s movement she looked down.

“Playing hunt-puppy all on his own,” she said. “Times I’d almost have sworn I could see the other dog.”

His hair prickled on his nape.

“Oh . . . Well, he’s Hera’s great-grandson,” he managed. “Nikos says she used to see ghosts sometimes.”

Automatically Maria flicked her fingers to keep the ghost clear of her baby. Steff looked down anxiously at Ridiki. Her whole attitude had changed, become quietly solemn. Faintly through her body he could see the shapes of the grass-stems she was lying on.

Steff nodded and rose. He was ready. Everything seemed to have been telling him that this was the moment. With Risto at his heels he followed her along below the terrace wall, up round the main farmhouse and between the sheds and barns to the fig tree beside the gate. The lower branches had drooped down to fill the gap he’d made when he’d dug her grave, but she snaked in beneath them and curled herself up in the place her flesh-and-bone remains lay arm’s-length down. He knelt and reached in towards her, but from habit withheld his hand just before he reached her. She raised her head and looked him in the eyes.

“Good-bye, Ridiki,” he said for the third time. “Good-bye, Eurydice.”

For a moment he thought he felt the feathery touch of her tongue on the back of his fingers, but then Risto, nosing in beside him, licked her firmly on the muzzle and she melted into the ground.

For a little longer Steff stayed where he was, kneeling by Ridiki’s grave, quietly letting her go. Then he rose and walked slowly back towards the sounds of the party, knowing that he would remember her all his life, but no longer, now, with grief.