few steps inside before my mother appears and takes me in her arms, smothering my face with kisses. My father is next, and the two of them hug me so tightly I feel like an olive being pressed for its oil. When they finally let me go, my mother stands and looks me up and down.
“You’ve lost too much weight,” she declares.
“It’s because I didn’t have your moussaka and keftedes to make me fat,” I tell her.
“You’re in luck,” my father says. “She and your theia have made enough of both to feed the entire Greek army.”
I follow my mother into the kitchen, where my aunt is standing by the stove. Like me and Cassandra, my mother and her sister are twins. Astraea opens her arms and I endure the hugging and kissing all over again. As soon as she’s done greeting me, though, my aunt hands me a wooden spoon and says, “Don’t let the meatballs burn.”
It feels good to be tossed right back into normal life. Nobody asks me about Berlin. Nobody talks about Endgame. We cook while my mother and aunt bicker over the best way to season the lamb. We drink glasses of sweet white wine. It all feels familiar and welcome, and it takes me a while to realize that there really is enough food for a large group.
“Who is all this for?” I ask.
As if in answer, there’s a knock on the front door. My father disappears, and when he comes back, he’s accompanied by five people: Effie Kakos, Nemo Stathakis, Ursula Tassi, Xenia Papadaki, and Venedict Economides. Individually, they are my third-year mathematics teacher, a bookseller, one of my trainers, the great-grandmother of my best friend, and the priest at the Agios Minas Cathedral. Collectively, they are the Minoan council.
“Welcome home, Player,” Xenia Papadaki says as she embraces me and kisses me on both cheeks.
The others are more formal, shaking my hand. I notice that they greet Cassandra in a similar manner. Perhaps it is my imagination, but it seems they might be even more enthusiastic in their congratulations to her, as if she is responsible for bringing them the weapon. Or maybe, I think, they’re congratulating her on returning her wayward sister to them.
I try not to think about it too much as my father shepherds us to the table, where we sit. Cassandra and I are seated across from each other, and throughout dinner I occasionally look at her to see if she shows any indication of this being her victory celebration and not mine. Each time, she returns my look and lifts her glass of wine in salute. I have several glasses as well, and this does much to ease my tension.
The food is delicious. The conversation alternates between politics, local gossip, and the coming new year. Again, nobody asks me about my mission. We eat for several hours. Then the table is cleared and plates of bougatsa and loukoumades are brought out along with small cups of dark, rich coffee. Only then does Effie Kakos, who as the senior member of the council is sitting at the head of the table, say, “Now, Ariadne, let us talk about this Samuel Boone.”
Boone
Like Berlin, Budapest is recovering from the war very slowly. Over a period of 50 days at the end of 1944 and the beginning of 1945, the city was virtually destroyed by fighting between the German and Soviet armies. Its buildings still lie in ruins, and its people walk through the city like ghosts haunting what I can tell was once a beautiful place. And, despite the devastation, it’s still beautiful. They’re rebuilding, and one day I want to come back and see it the way it should look, when the scars are healed.
Even now there are signs that the city and its people are coming back to life. The new year is two days away, and that always makes people hopeful. In my family, we each make a list of things we want to happen or to do in the new year. We put the list away, then take it out again on New Year’s Eve and see how much of it has been achieved. My list from last year is tucked away in a drawer of my dresser back home. My list for the current year is sitting in front of me on the table in the café where I’m sitting, waiting for the person I’ve come here to meet.
I look at what I’ve written so far.
Find Ariadne
Get the box
Learn Spanish
Finish reading Moby-Dick
The last item has been on my list every year for the past five years, ever since my father told me I should read it because it’s the greatest American novel ever written. I hate not finishing things, so I keep putting it there hoping it will give me the incentive I need to get through Melville’s doorstop of a book. But in all this time, I’ve only made it through the first 100 pages, so I suspect it will be there again in 1949. I don’t know how the guy found so much to say about whales.
As for the first two things on my list, I don’t know yet how I’m going to get them done, but I’m determined to do it. Only now, looking at my handwriting on the scrap of paper, do I realize that I’ve put finding Ariadne first. Maybe it’s coincidence. Maybe not. The longer I’m apart from her, the more worried I get that I’ll never see her again. I’ve never felt this way about anyone, and it’s making me more than a little anxious that perhaps I’m letting my emotions get in the way of what should be my primary concern—retrieving the weapon and taking it home. In order to get the box, I need to find her, so it’s all tied together. But what if it wasn’t? What if I had to choose one thing over the other? Would I look for her first, or the box?
“It’s a little late for writing your Christmas list for Santa, isn’t it?”
A man pulls out the chair across from me and sits down. I quickly pick up the piece of paper, fold it, and stick it in the pocket of my coat. “Yeah, well, I never get that BB gun I ask for anyway,” I say.
The man is older than I am, probably in his forties. He’s tall and thin, with an angular face, dark eyes, and close-cropped black hair. His name—at least the one I’ve been given—is Charles Kenney.
“Your journey here was uneventful, I assume,” Kenney says.
I know what he’s asking. He wants to know if I think I was followed. “Pretty boring,” I tell him.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get here earlier,” he replies. “I had business to attend to elsewhere.”
It’s been three days since I contacted my line back in America via shortwave radio. Using Morse code, I let them know that I’d located the item I was searching for, but that it had been lost again. I didn’t tell them how. I said I could get it back, though. They responded by telling me to go to Budapest and meet the man who is now looking at me intently from across the table. I assume he’s Cahokian, but I’ve never heard of him, and don’t know who he is or what he does, so I wait for him to tell me.
“We’ve met before,” he says. “Although you wouldn’t remember it. You were only four years old, and it was only for a few minutes. I was one of the people who evaluated your brother to determine his potential as a Player. I left America soon after, and have been living in various places in Europe ever since. I’m sorry about what happened to Jackson.”
I wonder if he’s referring to the story we were all told—that Jackson died in the war—or if he knows about the incident in Berlin. I don’t know what, if anything, I should say about that. Or about so many other things.
