“Oh, welcome! We’ve been waiting for you,” the wife of the ram family’s head greeted me as she opened the door. “Come in, the two of them are expecting you. I’ll serve the food in just a moment and we’ll all sit together. I’ve prepared my specialty. It’s my Sindy’s favorite dish.”

  She gestured toward the sitting room and announced me to the others. Sindy—the ram himself—sat in his armchair, while Rigas—the green tiger—stood upright, his right shoulder leaning against the wall. They had been talking about something, though it did not seem important. The moment they saw me, both approached and welcomed me.

  “I’m truly glad you made it after all,” Sindy said, offering his hand without a smile, “because I must confess I had my doubts.”

  He gripped my hand firmly and stared straight into my eyes.

  “Nikiforos, wasn’t it?”

  I cast a fleeting glance at Rigas—he knew my real identity—but I could not tell whether he had already revealed the truth or not.

  “Yes, exactly. Nikiforos is my name.”

  Then they turned to Rigas, who placed his hands behind his back and gave a slight bow.

  “I’m very pleased to see you again, Nikiforos. You’ve improved considerably in training lately”, Rigas said.

  “Thank you,” I replied, “but you are an excellent teacher yourself.”

  He was no longer as awkward as when we first met. His confidence had grown, as had his ability to hold a conversation. As a fighter he far outclassed me, yet he still lacked the courage of his own convictions. He was still learning, still undecided which side to follow, as it seems. Petros placed extraordinary trust in him; so, it appeared, did Sindy. The game of politics, it seemed, looked much the same on either face of the coin.

  “Come, let us sit at the table. Eri will serve the meal soon,” Sindy invited.

  We took our places: Sindy at the head, Rigas to his right, and I beside Rigas. Another place setting waited to Sindy’s left—presumably for his wife. The table could easily seat four more people; it was far larger than the one in Petros’s house, and the house itself was grander overall, though built in roughly the same style, with the same materials and wood predominant above all else.

  When Eri brought the dish from the oven, the entire house filled with the scent of chicken and potatoes. She carried it carefully and set it on a woven mat so as not to scorch the table. She began serving me first, then Rigas—whom she regarded almost as her own child, serving him his favourite part, as she mentioned, the legs—then Sindy with tender affection, and finally herself.

  “Now that we all have food on our plates,” Sindy said, “we may begin.”

  On the table stood a salad of lettuce and carrot, sliced bread, lemon and vinegar. A carafe of red wine waited as well, and Sindy immediately offered to pour some into my glass. I did not refuse.

  “So tell us, Nikiforos,” he began, unsmiling yet not openly irritated, “how does life on the island seem to you so far? How different is it from life on the other side?”

  “Very different—immensely different,” I answered. “First of all, I’ve lost all sense of time. I no longer understand what hour it is, or how the days change. Even after all this time, that still feels profoundly strange.”

  “Tell me—I’ve always wondered,” Rigas asked with open wonder, “what is the sun like? You know, we’ve only ever imagined it through stories and descriptions our whole lives. Is it true that it burns as fiercely as they say, that even fire cannot match its heat?”

  I laughed. “Yes, it’s true, but not so simply. The sun has its cycles. Sometimes, no matter how fiercely it burns, the cold is stronger. Other times you wish you could sleep until the heat has passed and you no longer want to tear every stitch of clothing from your body just to cool down.”

  “Ah, how Sym would have loved to see the sun,” Eri suddenly interjected, her gaze drifting unfocused. “How I miss him… how very much…”

  Sindy took her hand and stroked it gently until she quieted. Then he turned back to me.

  “You know, I have a great curiosity—one I suspect I’m not alone in having. How did you reach our island? Who brought you here? If you have no kinship with the ten tribes of this world, it seems impossible that you could set foot here—that is what our history teaches. You should know the only reason the council relented and allowed you to stay was not fear of Petros. The only reason was that the stag showed interest in you. I still do not want you on this island. I still wish you had never come, never set foot here. But you cannot blame me for wondering. You may have heard—my son died recently in the forest, turned into a monster. I never buried him. I never saw his body. I do not know what form he took once he entered the darkness. So I wonder whether there is any way for all those who became monsters to return to the island without resembling beasts, just like you.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I have no answer to what you ask. I did not lie when you asked me the same thing that night at the council.”

  Sindy glanced briefly at Rigas. Rigas paused for only a second before resuming his meal.

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  “Ahem,” Sindy cleared his throat. “In any case, know this: Petros wants you near him so he can use you. His intentions toward you are not good. Ever since his wife left, he has behaved like one enchanted. He wants to leave this island at any cost, to follow her. I don’t know whether you know what his wife is.”

  “I know," I explained. "I see nothing wrong in a man wanting to be with the woman he loves, and I see nothing immoral in what he has done to achieve it. So what exactly is the problem you think he creates? If I benefit from it as well, I fail to see the harm.”

  Rigas and Eri remained silent. Most likely Rigas had still not revealed everything. He was still wavering, undecided whether to help Petros or not—which was why Sindy had invited him to this meal. I had not realized it earlier, but now it dawned on me: perhaps the entire evening was a trap. Not to extract information from me, but to plant and water the seed of doubt in the young man’s mind. Eri, meanwhile, seemed perpetually lost, as though life had struck her a mortal blow. Most likely her mind had vanished along with her son. Yet her food was exquisite. She smiled constantly while Sindy occasionally turned to her and caressed her hand.

  “You know, Rigas,” I interjected to change the course of the conversation, “the most wonderful thing on the other side of this world is ice cream. In summer, when the sun burns hotter than anything else and the day stretches from the moment you wake until almost the moment you sleep, we go to bakeries and pastry shops—places that make only sweets—and buy ice cream. Ice cream is a frozen dessert, best enjoyed in summer. If you eat it too quickly, it freezes your head. If you eat it too slowly, it melts in your hand from the heat.”

  His eyes lit up—as any child’s would at his age. Mine would have too, and I was supposed to be the older one.

  “And…” He swallowed hard from sheer excitement and imagination. “And what flavors does this ice cream have?”

  “Any flavor you want. Chocolate, cookie, cream, banana, raspberry, caramel—so many I couldn’t count them all. And so many other things. My favorite is the computer. It’s a box connected to a screen—a window, but black—and you can project all kinds of images on it, even moving ones. Through those screens you can play games that take you to other worlds, tell you strange stories, and… yes, something like what I’m living right now, something like that…”

  For a moment I fell silent. I remembered again the situation I found myself in and how fantastical it all seemed. I remembered my dead family and that I was the one who killed them all. I looked down at the plate I was eating from and remembered my mother’s cooking, the recipes I would never taste again. I turned my gaze to Eri and understood that the same thoughts passed through her mind about her dead son, but in this occasion it wasn't her choise.

  Her eyes stared at nothing because they held the image of Sym forever inside them. She refused to forget him, refused to leave him behind; she wanted only to remember him until her own end—and that memory was destroying her, devouring her from within. And then Sindy—whom I had watched all evening caring for her, who had set his son aside no matter how much it hurt him, so that he could care for his wife. In that moment I understood that the role I had been called to play was far greater than I had imagined—yet I still did not want it, not fully, not for he sake of others at least.

  I came back to senses and continued describing electronic games, arcade machines in shopping malls, new technologies, everyday amusements, university, and my friends to Rigas, while Sindy and Eri listened without speaking. Rigas was enraptured. I, on the other hand, regretted accepting the invitation. I did not know how to leave, so I kept talking, more and more, hoping time would pass and they would be forced to send me away. They did not wish to put me in an awkward position again, as I understood.

  But Sindy had not invited me here to listen.

  “Everything Nikiforos describes sounds wonderful, doesn’t it, Rigas?” he said.

  “Yes, indeed. I would like to try it all,” Rigas answered, eyes shining.

  “And you can,” Sindy told him. “You know, many of those who turn into monsters and flee into the forest—we never learn whether they die or not. The wolf never brings us their names. Generations pass and we still hear nothing of them. They are not immortal—no one is, except the knights. So something else must be happening. There is an old myth that says if someone manages to kill a descendant of the lion, the old man at the bridge will turn them back into a human and let them live on the other side. No one, however, has ever confirmed whether it is true or false—because no one who enters the forest ever tells us.”

  Rigas froze. He did not turn his head to look at me. Now I understood the trap—and that I had walked straight into it. I had to speak. I had to say all those things and more. I had to excite the young man’s imagination, plant the seed of desire, and water it. And Sindy had succeeded. Rigas fixed me with a fierce, aggressive stare.

  “Eri, why don’t you bring us dessert?” Sindy said to his wife.

  “You’re right. And I’ve made Sym’s favorite—apple pie,” she replied.

  But the atmosphere had grown unbearably heavy, and I did not know what to do. If I fled, I would be admitting I was a descendant of the lion. If I stayed, I did not know what might happen to me. Rigas remained motionless in his chair, unsmiling, staring fixedly at his plate. I had to do something, say something.

  “Tell us more about your world, Nikiforos,” Sindy urged. “Tell us—we are thirsty to learn.”

  I swallowed hard, as though swallowing stones. There was no way to hide anything now. I had been slow to realize it, but Eri had never gone toward the kitchen. I rose from the table—almost leapt—and ran toward a window, through which I jumped out of the house. Sindy followed, but he was too slow to catch me. Rigas remained frozen in his seat.

  I ran through the alleys of the island while hearing people chasing me from every direction. Every turn I took, every narrow passage, every plan I made to change direction came to nothing—until I saw the house. The half-collapsed house where the shadow of the child held the corpse by the throat. I ran inside, and all my pursuers passed by outside as though they had vanished into thin air. At first they did not understand what had happened—that they had lost me—so they milled about for a while, searching this way and that, but without success.

  At one point I heard Sindy pass by outside, calling for everyone to search more carefully, insisting it was impossible they had lost me so easily. I stayed hidden, heart pounding without cease. I was on the ground floor. Yet fear that they might find me, that Sindy might search here, drove me to climb the stairs and hide somewhere else.

  The moment I reached the upper floor, I saw the child—covered in blood—holding his dead mother in his arms. Her body lifeless, foam oozing from her mouth, her arms not merely limp and dead but broken and mangled, bones protruding through the skin. A sound of shock and horror escaped my throat—a brief, involuntary groan—and immediately I clamped both hands over my mouth to silence it.

  But that moment was enough.

  The child turned his head toward me without moving his body. He stared at me intently with wide-open eyes and said:

  “Have you come to make me well again?”