Shuttered Sky

Ninety nautical miles due north of Crete, the island of Santorini fought a losing battle to return to its traditional name of Thira. The crescent form of the island and its huge circular bay came by no ordinary means. Had the Minoans survived to tell it, there might be more records of the rumored isle where wondrous things oc­curred —where the god Zeus and his compatriots spent their summer through the harvest, because its beauty rivaled Mount Olympus. Had the Minoans survived they might have told of the day the earth ripped open and tore the heart of Thira from the world along with the gods themselves. They might have told, but so great was the cataclysm on Thira, that a wall of water a thousand feet high washed halfway across Crete, killing every last Minoan and leaving little more than broken pots, tumbled walls and the legend that was stretched and chewed like a piece of gum until truth, rumor, and miscommunication molded it into a legend now called “Atlantis.”

Of course modern science knows that the volcanic mountain that once stood where Thira’s bay is blew stratosphere-high in an explosive eruption; a somewhat rare thing, but not so rare when you take into account the grand sweep of time. One might think the evidence of this explosion would litter the floor of the Aegean Sea; massive chunks of volcanic rock blown from Thira. But no such mountain fragments exist. Perhaps because the center of Thira didn’t blow up. It was sur­gically removed from the world. It had plunged through a tear in the foundation of the universe, and now had the distinction of being the only mountain on the endless red plain of that lonely place that existed between the walls of worlds.

There was a palace on that displaced mountain, and in that palace were the dusty remains of twelve Star Shards born to the Greek isles three thousand years ago, who had grown too arrogant to be allowed to live. And also in that castle rested another Star Shard, her remains not quite as well seasoned, but her untimely death just as unpleasant. Her name was Deanna Chang, and her death, by the unwitting hand of her love, was a valiant one. For in her final days, the fear that had enveloped so much of her life had given way to a faith so over­powering, it had to be taken with her when she died. A faith that all things would run their proper course, and that time would balance the tide of unhappy circumstance to her brief life, and to the world.

* * *

Okoya had not devoured a single human soul, as he had promised.

He had instead suffered through hideous airplane food in a ridic­ulously cramped seat between fat businessmen, whose throats he would have slit on a better day. It disgusted him how in this absurd world of matter, the small-minded inhabitants were forced to burn the distilled remains of previous inhabitants just to power unshapely, cumbersome objects that carried them uncomfortably from point A to point B. Ridiculous. Had his own survival not been in question he would have thought nothing of someone obliterating this world with a well-placed comet.

His first flight ended in Amsterdam—as far as the money Drew gave him could get. He found however, that a hermaphrodite could earn money in various ways in the back streets of the debauched city. By the end of the second night he had earned enough for first-class travel to Athens and then on to Thira. He found himself both satisfied and yet disappointed that he got there using human guile alone, and didn’t have to kill anyone to do it.

Once there, he knew he need not do anything but wait. He was in the epicenter now; the focal point of all things to come. So he took himself a hotel room overlooking the stark white hillside buildings and sat out on a terrace, looking out over the near-bottomless bay, and waited for the Vectors and the Shards to converge.

* * *

On December fifth, while Dillon and Winston faced Birkenau, a wave of influence swept slowly across the Greek Island of Crete. It began on the northwest shore, then penetrated deep into the hills and mountains, saturating the cities, towns and farms. It was a call to action that refused to be ignored, and took all prisoners.

Believing in the autonomy of their own free will, people stepped from their homes and workplaces, all the while believing that it was their choice to do so. Cars, bicycles, and buses made their way north. Boats sped around the coast. Those who could not squeeze into a vehicle walked, greeting friends on the way, as if this dawn were any other moment in time. What a nice day for a walk; a run; a drive, they would say. Doors were left open and livestock left unattended as the population of Crete impelled toward the northern shore.

By the time rural dwellers reached the north shore town of Hania, they knew that their hearts and minds had been seized by something they could neither explain nor fight. Here, so close to the source, the force of this gravity that pulled them from their lives was so strong, they could feel it like a tone in their ears—a frequency oscillating just above their hearing, creating unbearable pressure deep in their limbic systems; a place that knew only instinct and impulse. On the rare occasion that a man, woman, or child was willful enough to buck the spirit that controlled them, they found that their arms and legs still obeyed the marching orders, their bodies following the silent tune of this pied piper that sucked them all from home and hearth.

Why are we here? they asked. Where are we going? And they laughed at the incomprehensibility of their own answers as they grabbed their loved ones so they were not lost in the raging mob moving toward the shore.

We’re here for the ferry! Which ferry? Any ferry—and in Crete there were many to choose from. Come, all! Today all ferries are free, and when the ferries are packed to an inch of sinking, there are fishing boats and sailboats and barges. Today everyone is welcome.

They could not know that their bodies and their wills were under siege by one girl who had forced a powerful syntaxis upon her two comrades in chains. It was this link between the three of them that allowed her to create this moving wall of leverage, every bit as dev­astating as the tidal wave that had wiped out the Minoans. Although the skies above churned with resistance, it made no difference. Not even the heavens could escape.

When every last ferry, boat and barge had set sail, leaving thousands still on the shore, those thousands now pushed eastward along the shoreline like a swarm of locusts, plundering every town in their path for anything that would float so they could join the growing fleet that swept east across the coastline.

By the time the call came to the city of Rethimno that evening, Hania was empty save for the stray dogs wandering in and out of abandoned restaurants. By midnight, when the call reached further east, to Heraklion, Rethimno was burning, with no one left to put out the fire. And by the next morning, when the odd armada was complete, and sailed due north across the Aegean from Heraklion, it contained more than half the population of Crete. Nearly three hun­dred thousand were jammed into every floating vessel the island had.

Bit by bit as the fleet sailed north, the impulse lifted from the land, leaving thousands left behind to mourn —not for the loss of so many sons and daughters of Crete, but for themselves, and the fact that they had been too crippled, too infirm or just too slow to be a part of this great rapture that was surely headed for some kind of glory somewhere across the Aegean, at a place just off the edge of the horizon.

* * *

Winston wondered why his life suddenly seemed to revolve around airports—and each time he found himself in one, he couldn’t help but notice how much worse things were. These terminals had become a yardstick for him to measure the state of the world.

Athens-Ben Epps Airport was in a state of complete disarray.

“Things will fall apart,” Dillon had promised. Here, as in the airports in the United States, squatters had taken up residence in the hallways. The stench of urine permeated every corner of every gate. Travelers who still had enough sanity and sense of direction only kept it by turn­ing a blind eye to the chaos around them, pretending that it was nor­mal, or that it didn’t exist. That it was somebody else’s problem.

When they had landed, Winston had caught sight of a burned out wreck of a plane abandoned on a taxiway. No one had bothered to remove it. The edge of the tarmac was crowded with derelict planes— so many it was almost impossible to maneuver. Airlines that had shut down; jets without enough fuel to go anywhere else. This great Eu­ropean hub had become an airplane graveyard. A flood of arrivals, but fewer and fewer departures. “The planes just keep coming in, but there’s not enough jet fuel left to get them out,” Dillon explained. “Airports in this part of the world are seeing more arrivals than they ever did, because of what’s going to happen here.”

“Because of what’s going to happen here?” Winston asked. “How the hell does anyone know what’s going to happen here?”

“Foreshocks,” said Dillon. “Intuition. People feel their attention drawn to a place and they don’t know why. Pretty soon people start to feel the need to come. To see the ruins, they think. To walk on the Acropolis, but that’s