Maria Listens to an Elder

   One Friday after a few weeks of eating strange crops, being burnt by the sun and sleeping hours infrequent, a nap seemed to be the best cure to being too curious. But when Maria finally shut her eyes after a day of class, traveling to Asia and finding her way to another hidden language school, her phone rang from the futon.
   'Blast it,' she muttered. 'The kids have finally shut up-'
   She felt her way out of bed and answered the call at her desk, hoping to sound more awake upright.
   'Hello?'
   'Hallo? Maria, are you there? How is everything? Are you well?'
   'Hi, Theia. Ah, I'm fine.' Maria yawned.
   'What are you doing tomorrow?'
   'I was planning on taking a ferry up the Bosporus.'
   'Alone?'
   'Well, yeah -'
   'Don't go.'
   'Mm?'
   'Listen. They're opening up St. Demetrios on Pringipos.'
   'Oh.'
   'It's tomorrow. Catch the 8 am ferry to get to the service. Okay, dear?'
   'Yeah. I will. Thanks for telling me. I appreciate it.'
   When the phone disconnected, she said to herself, 'Guess that scratches out the Bosporus again,' and she finally fell asleep for the afternoon.



   The following morning brought itself with Maria still sleepy and scrambling much too late to get the funicular to the ferry station. With her speed and Birkenstocks, she caught the ferry just as it was to leave. Making her way up the second stairwell, she could see the boat was filled with more island-goers than she had seen in prior weekends. The ferry cut into the sea, bringing a breeze she did not have in her second floor flat. She inhaled the air, watching the other islands pass before the ferry finally landed at her father's childhood island, where she alighted for the second time in her life.

The streets were crowded.

Buggies waited at the phaeton station to take holiday-makers round the island

as baskets sat to be brought to the island's ends

and to the nineteenth century sites of the car-less streets.

The path was familiar as Maria had trod it before. The crowds and shops were the same. Yet in her last turn to the church

she knew she had not passed it before.
'Now here,' she thought, 'is a sight

of such people

watching the Patriarch re-consecrate the old structure.

Why, I even see a face familiar to home.'

She left the service pleased with all she had seen, content to be where she was. But on spying a sailboat in the sky hued sea, she once more felt the twitch of travel calling her to find another adventure across the water.