Chapter 16: Wandering

20 September 1974, The Metéora

REBECCA SPENT THE NIGHT leaning against the remaining stone wall of the well. She ate sparingly and slept sitting up. How many times did I pass the path and not realize it? How many times? The silence around her offered no answers.

When the sun finally touched the little circle that had once been dwellings, Rebecca was up and exercising. She was stiff and tired, but enthused. She had found the first marker on the path. If only she persevered, she could find the next. She finished her exercise and drank from her canteen as she ate cheese and bread for breakfast. She could see water in the well and, by leaning over with strap extended, managed to drag her canteen through the water until it was full.

She shouldered her pack and looked around, trying to determine which direction she should head from here. The high-pitched whistle of a bird turned her head in time to see a massive eagle dancing on the limb of a dead tree fifty yards away. Rebecca was certain that if the bird actually settled fully on the limb, it would break beneath its weight. The wings kept the bird’s balance as it raised and lowered its feet. It screeched again and dove from the limb, plummeting toward the earth. It rose again from behind a shrub with a white rabbit in its claws. The eagle circled Rebecca once and flew north.

“Go! Go! You must follow! You are summoned!” Rebecca could still hear the words of Thea, the old woman who had lived here twenty years ago. But then, she had Wesley, Doc, Margaret, and Marcos to travel with her. And a jeep. This time, she had only her legs.

She set off briskly along the path following the direction in which the eagle disappeared. Rebecca continued to get glimpses of the eagle as she hiked, often seeing it just as she approached a fork in the path. She followed in the direction the eagle led. When exhaustion set in, she camped along the path.

21 September 1974, The Metéora

In the morning there was no eagle to guide her. Before her was the rocky slope of a mountain and a compulsion to go higher. She wandered on the slope, climbing higher, not knowing where she was going nor how to get there.

What did I hope to find?

She had been told she would never enter the fabled City of the Gods through those gates again. But what she might find was the place where Wesley had been lost, and perhaps there, she could commune with him again.

Greece was a country in turmoil since World War II with a constitutional monarchy overthrown in a military coup. But the nation was in a standoff with Turkey over ownership and governance of Cyprus. Nonetheless, there was hope among the people and tourists were encouraged to return to the sometimes-turbulent area. As Rebecca hiked, she saw other travelers wandering the mountain and carefully avoided them. They bore the marks of experienced and inexperienced climbers seeking new peaks to conquer. She was seen as one more person out to have a picnic on the slopes. At one point, she saw a chalet on the mountainside with automobiles parked outside. People moved all over the area under the banner of the Alpine Club.

I must be in the wrong place. There cannot be so many people on the slopes of the holy mountain.

A stream ran down off the mountainside, an almost invisible reminder of her thirst in the late-afternoon sun. She sat down and leaned against the charred stump of a tree, apparently the remains of a lightning strike. She did not dare drink from the stream, not knowing if she was high enough to be above the sheep that dotted the slope below. She drank from her canteen and closed her eyes. From somewhere she thought she could hear the music from a shepherd’s pipe. She opened her eyes and looked about her, but with her eyes open, she could not hear the music. All was perfectly calm and still.

She closed her eyes again and drifted in sleep. The music took on a new form in her mind. She imagined her daughter, playing her flute to calm a mother’s anxiety. The flute spoke of a happy and fulfilled life—a time of loving and sharing—a time when Rebecca herself had known the blossom of love opening in her life. How abruptly that bud was severed with the disappearance of her husband. Twenty years of loneliness, wrapped up in the rearing and training of their daughter. These past five years, with the help of the fifth circle and the vagabond priest who had given her comfort and encouraged her. But she was bound to Wesley and could go no longer do without him.

I shall die on these slopes ere I return without my husband!

Rebecca slept lightly against the charred stump, her mind filled with images of past and future lives. A haunting melody that Wesley had written for her long ago arose unbidden to her lips. She had written words, but the words changed with time. The meanings changed. No doubt there was power in them, but she could not force herself to remember. She was too tired. She thought instead of her daughter.