The small island of Trikinos, just off the coast of Greece, has been inhabited for many thousands of years, but humans have left very little mark on it. The soil is too rocky and sterile to support large-scale agriculture, and separation from the mainland has encouraged the use of the local gray stone for building, so that from a distance the island's single village, Skirna, blends seamlessly into the harsh, unchanging landscape.

The people of Skirna have always made their living from the sea; the men leave early every morning in shallow, wooden boats, and return in the middle of the afternoon with their catch of anchovies and sardines. The old ways have been very slow to die on Trikinos, and at the dawn of the twentieth century, while the rest of Greece was undergoing the sometimes-painful transformation into a modern industrial state, there remained on this isolated island a sense of continuity, a blissful feeling that life was much the same as it always had been and always would be.

It was midsummer, and the intense Mediterranean sun was high overhead as a boy ran through Skirna's empty cobblestone streets, ducking through alleys and cutting through courtyards, two identical square packages tucked carefully under his arm. Fifteen drachmas extra if he made his delivery before the old church struck noon, enough money to buy himself a pastry with real meat in it for his dinner: lamb, or maybe even beef. His stomach growled at the thought.

He came out of a narrow dirt alley onto a wider street and slowed to a rapid walk, looking up at the numbers carved into the stone arches above the gaily-painted wooden doors. Number thirty- seven, there it was. He stepped up to the green door and rapped firmly three times. He heard a scraping sound from inside, and what sounded like the rustling of skirts and whispering female voices, and he shifted his weight from foot to foot impatiently. Finally the door opened, and he saw two beautiful girls - young women, really - looking at him with barely-disguised disappointment.

"I have deliveries for Miss Likatos and for Miss Nash," said the boy politely, in Greek. Then he finally remembered to take off his cap.

The blond girl with the light freckles and wide blue eyes looked helplessly at her dark-haired companion, who was now smiling broadly.

"He's delivering packages for us!" said the brunette, who was even more beautiful than her cousin. "We must have been invited to the Festival after all! These will be our dresses."

The blond girl let out a little shriek of excitement, and then managed to compose herself. "Should we pay him, Tasha?"

The dark-haired girl exchanged a few words in Greek with the delivery boy, looked at the clock over the mantel, and then wrote something on a scrap of paper.

"He says he's already been paid, and that he hopes we enjoy the Festival," she said, as the boy ran off cheerfully down the street. "Come on, let's go upstairs and see what we've got!"

The blonde, whose name was Lizzie and who was an American, from Ohio to be precise, eagerly opened the package with "Miss Elizabeth Nash" handwritten on it. After carefully removing several layers of tissue paper, she held up a diaphanous white dress with gentle pleats.

"It's beautiful," she said, letting the cloth flow through her fingers. "The fabric, it's so smooth."

"Hold it up," said her cousin impatiently. "Oh yes, it's gorgeous. Why, you could wear that anywhere."

"Isn't it awfully short, though? And it leaves one shoulder bare."

"Not at all, especially for a costume," said Natasha. "People wear the most daring things to the Festival. I've seen women going in dresses that make that one look positively dowdy."

"Is that so," said Lizzie, brightening. "In that case I love it."

"There's more," said Natasha, looking into the open box. She reached in and pulled out a pair of elegant leather sandals. "Here's your shoes, and..." Now she pulled out a green headband made of woven vines. Lizzie took it from her and slipped it over her head, where it rested gently on her thick, golden hair.

"You look like a vestal virgin," giggled Natasha.

"Hmph. I guess they have me pegged, then." Lizzie held the dress up again and looked at herself in the large dressing mirror. "Very fetching," she said, adjusting the headband. "Some looks never go out of fashion, eh?" In the mirror, she suddenly noticed a pale woman standing in the doorway behind her, staring at her in an odd, expressionless way, and she felt a chill.

Natasha squeezed her mother's hand and kissed her on the cheek. "Hello, Mama," she said, simply. Lizzie said nothing, feeling somewhat uncomfortable, as she always did in the presence of her aunt. Anastasia had been the victim of some sort of strange illness when Natasha was a baby; although she survived, her mind had never recovered, and she hadn't spoken a word or shown any real awareness of her surroundings ever since, spending most of her time wandering the house or sitting in her room looking out the window. Now she turned and left as quietly as she had appeared.

"All right, it's my turn," said Natasha, after a short silence. She quickly opened her package and pulled out a blood- red dress.

"What a beautiful color," said Lizzie, a bit jealously. Red was her best color.

"It is, isn't it? But look, it's longer than yours. I won't be able to show off my legs as much."

Natasha held the red dress up to her chest, and the two cousins noticed the plunging vee of the neckline at the same time.

"My goodness!" said Lizzie. "No one will be looking at your legs when you have that sort of neckline! I guess they noticed who had the figure for it."

"What sort of a tramp do they think I am?" protested Natasha, but her heart wasn't in it. She moved in front of the mirror and tried to determine just how much of her chest would be revealed.

"It's going to be daring, but for the Festival I think it will do very well," she decided.

Lizzie was rummaging around in her cousin's box. "Here's your shoes - you've got heels on yours. And there's a headband too - or a tiara, really."

She handed Natasha a pair of red leather shoes and a shiny band of silver metal, inscribed with odd symbols.

"Wait, I'm going to try it on," said Natasha impulsively. She stepped out of her shoes and took off her blouse and her skirt, leaving them in puddles on the floor. Then she shed her thin cotton shirt and stood unselfconsciously topless in front of Lizzie.

"What are *you*staring at?" asked Natasha playfully. She arched her back, causing her full young breasts to thrust out proudly from her chest - two pale globes of flesh tipped with small pink circles.

"You certainly have sprouted," said Lizzie, blushing slightly. She held up the red dress, and Natasha put her arms and head through. "When I was here three years ago we were both as flat as baking stones."

Natasha freed her hair from the neckhole and let the long dress fall down past her waist. "You've sprouted too, Lizzie. No one could mistake either one of us for little girls anymore." She put the metal headband over her head and slipped into the red shoes, which made her almost as tall as her American cousin.

"Everything fits perfectly," she said, doing a little twirl. "Oh, I can't wait! I've been watching everyone else go to the Festival for years...I think we're both going to meet dashing young men tonight - I can feel it. Can't you?"

Lizzie didn't reply. The sight of her cousin in the stunning red dress brought back a flood of unwelcome memories. She was in her room back home, and her mother was helping her put on a red dress (much less daring, but pretty just the same), and they were as happy as could be, chattering away like a couple of songbirds, planning for the future. She and James were practically engaged, and he was coming over to have supper with her and her family, and then they would take one of their long walks around the park, just the two of them...

"Lizzie? Are you all right?" Natasha saw that her cousin's eyes were glistening. "Oh, Lizzie, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said -"

"No!" said Lizzie, blinking rapidly. "Don't be silly, I'm fine." She smiled through her tears. "Don't mind me. I'm looking forward to tonight, and I wouldn't mind meeting a nice young man. I wouldn't mind it a bit."

Natasha reached out and took her cousin's hand. "He didn't deserve you," she said fiercely. "Do you understand that? You're going to do a lot better."

Lizzie nodded silently.

There was a creak on the stair, and an old woman in a traditional black dress appeared at the doorway. Her eyes widened and her brow creased in anger. "What's going on here?"

Natasha turned pale. "Nana! We were just...aren't these dresses pretty?"

"Those are Festival dresses! You're not old enough to go to the Festival, neither of you."

Natasha steeled herself, standing up straight. "But Nana, we've been invited! They sent us our costumes, so of course we can-"

"No! I forbid it, do you hear me?" The old woman's voice was trembling with emotion. "No good can come of it, none at all. The Festival is just an excuse for-"

"For having a good time," finished Natasha, her dark eyes flashing. "For people to enjoy themselves, to dance, to forget their boring, useless lives for one night. Is that what you mean?"

Lizzie looked back and forth helplessly at Natasha and her grandmother, unable to follow the flood of angry Greek.

"You insolent little hussy! Don't you presume to lecture me about -"

"What's going on here? What's all this yelling?" A handsome dark-haired man came up the stairs. When he saw his daughter in her new red dress, his face suddenly seemed older. "Already, it begins?" he asked quietly.

"Papa, we've been invited to the Festival," said Natasha. "Nana says we can't go, but I know you'll let us, won't you? Oh Papa, please..."

"It's out of the question," said her grandmother. "You're not old enough, not for a few more years." But there was already a note of defeat in her voice.

The man put a comforting hand on the old woman's shoulder. "I know how you feel, Madrone, but one must not refuse an invitation to the Festival, it would be very...rude."

"Oh, thank you, Papa!" Natasha threw her arms around her father and gave him a kiss.

Dinner was a very quiet affair that evening. Madrone served the food with a stern look on her face, her disapproval evident in her eyes and in her posture. Andres sat at the head of the table with downcast eyes and toyed with his food, lost in his own thoughts. And Anastasia, wife of Andres, daughter of Madrone, mother and namesake of Natasha, was, as always, a silent presence at the foot of the table, like a ghost.

The two girls, although excited by the upcoming evening, were chastened by the grim atmosphere at the table, and they ate quietly and with perfect manners. Lizzie in particular was nervous, not knowing what to expect. She wished she could be as carefree and bold as her younger cousin, as comfortable talking to young men, as experienced in the ways of the world.

She recalled with a twinge of guilty pleasure the long, intimate discussions she and her cousin had been having about men and sex. More like lectures than discussions, really - Lizzie had known shamefully little about sex for someone who had been hoping to get married at the end of the summer.

She recalled one lazy afternoon a few weeks ago, the two of them sunbathing on a little wooden dock with the desolate, rocky coast on one side and the quiet, blue Mediterranean on the other, and not another living soul in sight. She was listening, fascinated, as Natasha told her how men craved sex, how they thought about it all the time, how you could hold a man's prick in your hand and stroke it until it exploded all over...

"Really, Tasha, I think you're exaggerating," she had said, not knowing what else to say. "I'm sure nice young men don't want to -

"There's no such thing as a nice young man!" laughed Natasha. "Not the way you think, anyway. Even the polite ones with good manners want to touch you all over, and have you touch them. And most of all, they want to stick it inside you."

"I know all about how babies are made," said Lizzie, not wanting to seem completely naive. "My mother told me last year."

"I bet she didn't tell you how much fun it was," said Natasha with a wicked grin.

"No...no, she didn't." Lizzie felt a peculiar sort of warmth inside her, that had nothing to do with the sun. "One thing I don't understand..."

"Just one thing?" teased Natasha.

"How does it fit? If a man's...if it's as big as you say, there isn't enough room." She blushed, knowing that she was admitting to exploring how much room there was.

"I wondered about that too. You have to break something inside, and then there's plenty of room."

"Break something?"

"I'll show you," said Natasha. She was also feeling the peculiar warmth inside her, but she knew exactly what it was. She sat up, turning to face her cousin, and pulled aside the crotch of her loose cotton bathing costume.

"Tasha!" Lizzie stared at her with horrified fascination. Her cousin's sex was covered by a thatch of shiny blue-black hair, in contrast to her own light brown, but she could see the dark pink lips underneath. "What on earth are you doing?"

"Do you want me to show you, or not?"

Lizzie swallowed, and said. "All right."

Natasha lifted her knees up and leaned back a little, moistened her fingers in her mouth, and put her hand between her legs. One finger parted her secret folds and slipped an inch or so into her hole. Then she took it out and pushed in two fingers, side by side. They disappeared slowly, like they were sinking into quicksand, until they were completely inside, and her private area was spread open in a way that Lizzie found both exciting and slightly repulsive.

"I...guess you're right," said Lizzie. "Doesn't it hurt?"

Her cousin looked at her dreamily through half-open lids and shook her head. "It feels wonderful. When a man is inside you, everything gets all slippery and smooth, and there's this wonderful feeling of being filled up...it feels so good you can't help moaning."

"Oh, it all seems so strange," said Lizzie. She ran her tongue over her dry lips and shifted on her towel. The odd feeling of urgency and longing inside her, which came over her more and more often these days, had never been so strong. Then she thought about what Tasha had just said. "You mean you've actually done it?"