Chapter Text
1800
Hob Gadling was a man who thrived on challenge.
His long life had been built on just that – seeking adventure, embracing the world in all its vastness and wonder. Hob Gadling loved life so fiercely that he sometimes forgot its dangers. Love, after all, has a way of blinding us, doesn’t it? And so, blinded by that love, he stepped onto the ship with a light heart, never thinking to question the dark clouds gathering on the horizon.
The day he boarded the ship departing from Greece was a beautiful one – the sun warmed his face, the sea breeze tousled his hair, and gulls screamed overhead. The port of Piraeus was in chaos – porters shouting, children darting between the legs of travelers, and the scent of salt mingling with olives, wine, and human sweat. Fishing boats rocked gently with the waves, and in the distance, beyond the low rooftops of Athens, the shadow of the Acropolis loomed – as if time itself had paused, unsure which way to move. Greece – ancient, fractured, but undefeated. Though under the yoke of the Ottomans, it carried within it more than just ruin. It was alive. It breathed myth. Its shores pulsed with stories, and the silence between the hills seemed to hide more than just wind and crickets.
But Hob was no Greek. He was an Englishman. Or rather something far more complicated.
***
They sat beneath the open sail, far from the shadows and the shouts on deck. The sea around them was calm, azure, glowing in the afternoon sun. There was a trace of wine and salt in the air.
“So, you’re returning to London?” asked one of the passengers, a gaunt-eyed older Italian in a scarf far too warm for the weather. He had introduced himself as Signore Mariani. He spoke with the manner of someone who had once been important, but had since grown used to no one remembering his name.
“I am,” Hob replied, glancing over his shoulder at the shrinking coastline. “Again. I’m looking for something. Maybe a new business. Maybe a new adventure. Maybe something that’ll surprise me.”
“London surprises,” snorted the second man, a young Greek with sharp eyes, sun-darkened skin, and rope-worn hands. His name was Andreas. He spoke English with a certain pride, like someone who had learned it to escape something larger than his island. “But I’m not sure it surprises for the better.”
“Oh, of that I’m certain,” Hob said with his usual crooked smile. “But London is home. At least… for now.”
Mariani poured a bit of cheap, warm wine from a clay flask for each of them, wincing slightly as he did.
“Home,” he muttered. “Sometimes more of an idea than a place. I had a home in Naples. Then in Livorno. Then… nowhere.”
“And Greece?” Hob asked, reflexively, though he already knew the answer.
“Greece is a dream,” Andreas said, gazing out over the water. “But we dream it with open eyes. Maybe we’ll wake up. Maybe we won’t.”
Their conversation drifted softly, in time with the ship’s gentle sway. They spoke of everything and nothing. Of ruined amphitheaters where, it was said, one could hear the whisper of tragedy at night. Of ghosts of philosophers wandering among olive trees in white robes, bearing oil lamps that never went out.
“My cousin,” Andreas said with a smile, “swears that once, returning from the vineyard on Euboea, he heard singing. Not an instrument, not voices, just singing. A pure tone, rising from somewhere across the valley. Quiet, but so piercing it froze him where he stood.”
“Singing?” Hob repeated, raising an eyebrow.
“That’s what he said. As if someone... not of this world... was telling a story without words. A melody with no language, and yet he understood it deep in his bones. And it wasn’t a woman’s voice,” Andreas added, more softly. “He said it was a man’s. Beautiful. Deep. But… as if it didn’t belong to a body.”
“What happened next?” Hob asked, frowning.
“Nothing. No one was there. The valley was empty, no people, no animals. Not even the wind stirred the leaves. But from that night on, my cousin hasn’t been able to sleep. He says the song sometimes returns. Without source. Without echo.”
“In that case,” said Signore Mariani, taking a sip of wine, “best not return to that place. Not everything that sings wishes to be heard.”
A hush fell between them.
The sea around them began to shift, small waves tapped against the hull with growing insistence. The sky hadn’t darkened yet, but the light had thinned, as though someone had drawn a veil between the sun and the earth.
“Sometimes I think,” Hob said quietly, “that some stories never leave us. Even when we’ve stopped believing them centuries ago.”
Mariani turned to look at him, eyes narrowed.
“Perhaps it’s not about whether we believe in stories,” he said slowly. “Perhaps the stories believe in us.”
At that moment, the air trembled.
Not like a gust of wind – this was something else. Deeper. As if the very fabric of the world had sighed. A low, distant rumble echoed from high above. White crests began to rise on the waves, and the gulls no longer circled in the sky. The sea was no longer swaying. It was striking.
With every blow of the waves, the ship groaned as though it longed to tear itself apart and hurl into the deep. The sails snapped wildly, the wind ripping at them with fury, and the sky had merged with the sea into one heaving, churning mass of darkness. The world vanished behind a curtain of rain, foam, and screaming.
The captain’s voice broke through the howling storm:
“Lines! Hold the line on the mainsail! For God’s sake, don’t let go of the rudder!”
Men ran across the deck, stumbling, slipping on the slick planks. One of them – a young boy, likely on his first voyage – was flung across the deck like a rag doll and disappeared overboard. No one even had the strength to shout.
Hob Gadling, heart still open to every heartbeat of the moment, moved to help. Despite the wind, the waves, the cold – he felt only heat. Not panic. Existence.
Every drop that struck his face reminded him he was alive, that he was here, that he was breathing, feeling the weight of the world and accepting it not as a trial, but as a gift. Because Hob loved life – not as some lofty ideal, but as dirt under fingernails, salt in the lungs, muscle straining, and fear clutched tight in the throat. He loved that man could be powerless before the sea – and still try.
He seized the line, pulling hard, trying to steady the mast that shuddered beneath the wind’s assault. Around him came cries, crashes, the groan of timber. His eyes stung with salt.
Suddenly, the ship lurched. The deck tipped sharpy – everything shifted, barrels, crates, bodies. Hob fell to his knees, hands slipping over the rain-slicked wood.
And then light.
But it wasn’t ordinary lightning. It wasn’t just the wrath of the heavens. For the briefest instant, something revealed itself in the flash – a vast shadow, blurred and formless, as though seen through a veil, through water, through time.
The rope he clung to gave way.
From behind, someone cried his name. Andreas? Mariani? The voice stretched strangely, like it belonged to a dream, not a man.
Hob pitched sideways. The deck vanished beneath his feet. He fell, struck his head – on what, he didn’t know. The mast? A barrel? Something hard. Something cold.
Above, the sky split open. Darkness swallowed all.
And then water. Not death. Not the abyss. Just water.
He fell into it and sank deep. He didn’t struggle. Not because he had surrendered, but because he trusted. He had crossed so many thresholds. He had seen the world from its strangest angles. And life, life had always stayed with him. It never turned away. It never vanished. It merely changed its shape.
Down he went, deeper still, as everything around him began to fade. Color. Sound. Form.
***
From above – from the place where the sea birds circle – the world looks different.
The sun climbs over the horizon, golden and merciful, as if it had forgotten the night storm. In its light, the surface of the Aegean shimmers like the skin of some god stirred by breath – calm, cool, alive.
In the distance, tucked between the larger islands of the archipelago, barely visible to the eye, lies an island you will not find on any map. Not because it is too small. Not because it has been forgotten. The island appears in no registers, no sailor’s tale. No ships dock there, no sails pass overhead. Only now and then, when the night is still and the wind blows from the south, sailors swear they glimpse a sliver of land where there should be only water.
From a bird’s eye view, the place resembles a closed laurel leaf, one slender crescent of beach to the south, and behind it a dense olive grove. The rocks along the shore are blackened with moisture, and the tall grasses that grow along the slopes whisper as they sway. At the very summit, like a crown of stone, glints a pale shard of kolumn, the remnant of a temple older than time itself.
And on the shore, a man lies.
Up close, one can see what the birds cannot, a body washed up by the waves, half-buried in the sand, one arm barely touching the edge of the foam. His clothes cling to him, wet and heavy. His hair is thick with salt and blood. Hob Gadling looks as though he is sleeping. His face is calm – almost serene.
From the heart of the island, through the olive thicket, three men approach. They walk slowly, steadily, barefoot. They tread a path known for generations. They wear rough linen tunics, carry spears tipped with black iron, and belts adorned with olive leaves. They do not look like peasants. Nor like soldiers.
At the front walks the eldest – a man with a silver beard and eyes like coal held in ash. His name is Thales Karydis: guardian, caretaker, witness. It is said on the island that his memory is older than his bones. Behind him follow his sons: Petros and Nikandros. The first is silent as stone. The second carries a restlessness he cannot name. They are younger than their father, but long ago stopped asking questions.
“Is that… a man?” Nikandros asks in a half-whisper.
“How could he have gotten here?” Petros replies, just as quietly, as if afraid to wake the island itself.
Thales says nothing. He steps forward cautiously, as though approaching a statue that might suddenly move. He kneels beside the stranger. His hand hovers above Hob’s chest, not touching yet. At last, he places it there. Gently. Almost reverently.
“He’s breathing,” he says, astonished.
He doesn’t speak like someone who was hoping for a sign, he speaks like someone who can hardly believe one has come.
“This wasn’t meant to happen,” he murmurs, more to himself than to the others. “No one comes here. No one finds us.”
Nikandros hesitates.
“Maybe it’s a mistake. Or a test.”
“Or a punishment,” Petros adds bitterly, not unkindly.
Thales doesn’t answer right away. He studies Hob’s face searching the features for a story, a truth. But there’s none he can read. And yet… there is something. Something both familiar and utterly strange.
“I don’t know who he is,” Thales says at last. “But he’s alive. And he didn’t come here on his own.”
Nikandros lifts his gaze toward the temple, its white columns gleaming beyond the trees.
“Maybe he doesn’t know the path. But the temple does.”
Petros furrows his brow, about to protest. But Thales is already lifting Hob’s body – carefully, as if it were made of clay, fragile and about to break.
“We help him,” he says softly. “Because if we don’t know who he is, we don’t know who he might become.”
In silence, the three guardians set off down the path, heading deeper into the island.
***
What woke him was the scent.
Warm, oily, and bitter as though herbs or resin were being burned. It slipped through his nostrils and into his mind, stirring it faster than any light could.
Then came sound.
The soft crackle of fire. The distant rhythm of waves striking rock. A kind of murmur that wasn’t quite wind.
And pain.
Not sharp. More of a dull ache, suspended somewhere between skin and bone. He felt it in his ribs, his thigh, his shoulder, his neck. His body was like waterlogged wood – heavy, buried under something unseen. He tried to move his fingers. One first. Then another. Slowly, with effort.
At last, he opened his eyes.
The world was a blurred fresco. Everything seemed covered in a veil of translucent smoke violet and amber, as if twilight had fallen in a land where even color faded with dignity.
Above him stretched a ceiling woven from branches and twine, filtering in the cold light of the moon and the rusty glow of fire. Nearby, in a clay bowl, something smoldered hissing softly, releasing smoke like herbs thrown onto coals.
He wanted to speak, but his throat felt packed with ash. He tried to swallow.
Salt. Blood. The memory of the sea.
He tried to sit up.
Pain flared in his chest, a dull, solid stone wedged between his ribs. In his leg, a jolt like something broken struggling to fall back into place. But beneath the pain was something else familiar, deep warmth. A gentle fire glowing just beneath the skin. Yes. His body was returning. It always did.
“You’re awake.”
The voice was young. Not reverent. And there was no trace of relief in it only a cool, clear astonishment.
Hob turned his head a motion that cost him more than he’d expected. In the corner, perched on a low stool of wood and rope, sat a boy. No, a man but barely. Perhaps twenty. Perhaps less. Dark hair tied back with a leather cord, cheeks lightly sun-kissed, eyes wide and disturbingly calm. In his hands, he held something slender and simple, a stick with a sharpened end, tipped with a shard of white stone.
But he didn’t look like a guard. He looked like someone who was waiting.
“The sea…” Hob croaked, his tongue dragging against the roof of his mouth like a splintered piece of driftwood. “There was a storm…”
The boy nodded. Hob let his eyes drift closed for a moment. The memory returned: darkness, the wave, bodies thrown across the deck, the Italian’s scream, the Greek’s last glance skyward. The teeth of lightning ripping through the heavens, and the sudden cold that drove into the bone.
“I had companions,” he said. “We drank together. We laughed.” He fell silent. His voice had grown heavy, too heavy to lift into the air. “I didn’t see them in the water. But… I couldn’t look for them, either.”
His own words hurt more than the broken rib. The silence that followed was tender, but not soft.
“You’re alive,” the boy said quietly. “That means something wanted you to live.”
There was no trace of religion in his tone. Just a dry logic, like someone who understood the laws of this island as well as the lines on his own palm. Hob let out a bitter huff, not scornful, but tired.
“You know, I’ve heard that before,” he muttered. “It doesn’t make anything easier.”
“Nothing has to be easy,” the boy replied. “Only true.”
The sentence hung between them for a moment, like a star that had forgotten to fall.
“Who are you?” Hob asked, eyes opening wider. “And… where am I?”
This time, the answer came quickly almost by reflex.
“My name is Nikandros Karydis. I’m watching over you until my father decides what happens next.”
“And what exactly is next?”
The boy looked toward the fire.“That’s not for me to say.” The answer was gentle, but firm.
Hob sighed and leaned his head back. The feeling of powerlessness, though familiar, was never welcome. He could tell the boy was watching him. But it wasn’t the wary vigilance of a guard, nor the guarded unease of a host with a stranger. It was something more complicated: curiosity. The kind that belongs only to those who have not yet seen the world but somehow know that beyond olives, salt, and stone, there must be more.
Nikandros sat in silence, but that silence vibrated with questions.
Hob had words in his mouth, questions, answers, half-laughs, but suddenly, they slipped from him like water. The exhaustion returned, heavier than before.
He closed his eyes. His eyelids were like curtains made of iron. The boy’s presence faded.
The fire drifted away. And the distant murmur of the waves, once a memory, now began to sound like a lullaby.
The world receded slowly, with dignity. And Hob allowed himself to drift into silence.
***
This time, it was birds that woke him.
But not the cheerful chirping known from English woods, not the joyful trills of sparrows or tits but wild, shrill calls of sea birds, who sang not for beauty but for survival. Their voices were rough, twisted by wind and salt.
At first, he heard them through his sleep. Then he felt something warm running down his face, a ray of sunlight breaking through the cracks in the roof and hitting him straight between the eyelids.
“Ah, damn. Already day?” he muttered, rubbing his eyes. His skin still stung from bruises and scratches, but inside he felt better. His body slowly gathered itself, silently repairing like a machine that knows its job and needs no attention. He sat up with a slight groan.
Against the wall, leaning on a wooden post, sat a young man – older than the one from the previous evening, though still very young. He had broad shoulders, dark, thick eyebrows, and a face built from angles plain, hard, closed. He wore a simple tunic and linen trousers. In his hands, he held a knife, carving a branch with disturbing precision, as if every sliver of wood mattered.
Hob sat down on the bedding, adjusted his shirt, and sighed heavily.
“Are you watching over me too, or just sitting there carving the future?” The boy said nothing. “Because if it’s the latter, maybe you could let me know how I’ll turn out,” Hob added with a smile. “Maybe you’ll find some tavern in London and a glass of proper gin?” Silence. “Or at least some dry clothes.”
This time the boy lifted his gaze, but his look was hard.
“My father told me to watch over you.”
“Well, you’re doing a fine job, congratulations,” Hob said with a theatrical bow, ending with a hiss of pain as his ribs protested. “But maybe instead of sitting here like a sculpture, you’ll tell me your name?”
The boy was silent for a long moment. “Petros.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Petros. I’m Hob.” No reaction. Hob shrugged. “Okay, fine, you can go back to being mysterious.”
Footsteps echoed from the entrance. A man appeared, the same one who lifted Hob from the beach. The father of Nikandros and Petros. He had a face marked with deep lines, as if wind and sun had sculpted the island’s history there over decades. In his hands, he carried a clay bowl and a piece of bread wrapped in cloth.
“You can go,” he said shortly to his son. The boy rose without a word and vanished into the shadows.
The father sat beside Hob. Without comment, he handed him the food.
“Thanks,” Hob muttered, taking the bread in hand. “By the gods, I taste salt even before I bite.”
The man raised an eyebrow. “Your body heals quickly.”
“That’s just my nature,” Hob replied with a smile. “Sometimes useful. Sometimes troublesome.”
“Have you rested?”
“Enough not to die.”
“What’s your name?”
“Hob Gadling. I came from Greece. I’ve been traveling.”
The man didn’t ask more, so Hob continued.
“This is an interesting place,” he added, looking around. “But I don’t think it’s on any maps?”
Thales nodded.
“No. And it’s meant to stay that way.”
Hob studied him carefully.
“And you... who are you?”
The man hesitated. Then said only:
“My name is Thales Karydis. We watch over this place. For a long time.”
“What is it here that needs guarding?”
Thales looked at him with something like a shadow of a smile.
“When you’re ready, we’ll take you off the island.”
“That’s it?” Hob raised his eyebrows. “No answers, no explanations? This whole thing smells like mystery a mile away.”
Thales stood up.
“Mysteries don’t run away. They can wait.”
Hob watched as the older man left. The silence after him wasn’t heavy. More like a closed book demanding to be opened again. Hob ran his fingers over the wooden wall, then looked toward the exit. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t disappointed.
He was curious. Curiosity was his constant companion, more faithful than death. It was what made him survive every age, try new trades, get into pointless conversations with strangers in taverns, kiss village women and princesses, drink wine with monks and pirates.
Curiosity was his religion. And this island, hidden, strange, silent had just started praying to him.
Hob sat down on the bedding and looked around the interior of the hut more closely. Yes, it was a hut, simple, with stone walls and a roof made of branches through which beams of light filtered. On the packed earth floor, someone had spread straw mats. In the corner were clay jugs and bundles of dried herbs, and on the bench by the door – folded clothes.
Hob approached and lifted a shirt. Thick, bleached linen, slightly rough to the touch. Trousers made of the same material, sandals made from strips of leather, surprisingly well-fitted. Hob dressed slowly, cautiously, as if his body might still rebel. But no, it obeyed him. His body always knew how to survive.
The hut’s door wasn’t locked. He stepped outside. And stopped.
The first thing that struck him was the light. Not only its intensity but its quality was sharp, crystalline, as if someone had cleared the air of all impurities and left only the essence of the day.
The sky was a deep blue, almost violet at the horizon’s edge. The vegetation around him was lush and vibrant, dense bushes, wild grapevines, slender cypresses, and small olive trees with twisted trunks. Among them were scattered flowers – red, white, purple – growing wild, as if no one had ever tried to tidy them up. Scents: herbs, salt, something burning, maybe rosemary, maybe laurel.
Below, amid the waving greenery, a fragment of the sea gleamed. Quiet, almost still, infinite. The horizon was empty. No sails, no cliffs. Just blue and space. The beauty of this place was almost inhuman. And because of that – unsettling. Hob smiled to himself, feeling a familiar tingling in his chest.
“Well, well,” he said softly. “Something still manages to surprise me after all.”
From around the bend appeared a figure, Nikandros, the younger son, the one with keen eyes and a slightly tilted head, as if something always caught his interest. He walked quickly, but not nervously. When he saw Hob, he quickened his pace, clearly pleased, though he tried to look serious.
“You’re on your feet,” he said with a shadow of a smile. “Good. Father said you should feel better today.”
“I feel well enough to follow you wherever you plan to take me,” Hob replied, spreading his arms. “Maybe I’ll even climb a hill. Or jump into the sea, if you ask nicely.”
Nikandros smiled wider, more genuinely.
“I can show you the island. Or at least… what I can show you.”
“Mysterious. I love it,” Hob muttered. “Lead on, my guide.”
They walked along a path through tall grass, passing trees, stone walls, and abandoned tools as if someone had once farmed the land but then left it to itself. After a few minutes, Hob noticed a house simple but sturdy, built from thick stones and covered with tiles the color of burnt ochre. It had to be their home – the Karydis family’s.
Nothing suggested the island held anything more than silence and plants.
“So,” Hob began, glancing at Nik, “you’ve lived here… for a long time?”
“My father was born here. My grandfather too. And his father.”
“And you? Have you ever thought about sailing somewhere else?”
Nikandros hesitated.
“I have. Sometimes. But… it’s not that simple.”
“I know something about that,” Hob said. “But sometimes it’s worth trying.”
Hob and Nikandros descended from the hill and reached the beach. A sandy, semi-circular cove, soft and gentle, washed by the gentle lapping of the sea water. The dry, light sand creaked underfoot – as if warning them that they were at the edge of something unexplored. The wave mosaics of the water once slipped from their channels – now they lazily spread over the stones, ending their journey in soft foam. The movement of the wind danced with olive branches, broke through wild thyme bushes, carrying the scent of salty water and sun-warmed herbs.
The island wasn’t large – a few hundred meters from the beach to the hill, maybe two kilometers along the shore. But it was shaped with nature’s grand design: rocky terraces, stone ruins, olive groves, and slender cypresses. Diverse places: secluded groves, stones covered with wild grapevines bearing tiny berries. Hob absorbed every sight, his gaze quickly jumping from detail to detail: sand, a branched flower petal, a flaking scale on a stone, the trace of a shell. Once he touched the water, and the summer coolness awakened him to life even more than the sun’s rays.
They stopped by a rock covered in flowers. Nikandros sat down, and Hob did the same, feeling his body begin to lightly pulse with fatigue again. But it was a good kind of breathlessness. Alive.
“Want to tell me a bit more about Greece?” Nikandros asked shyly after a moment of silence.
Hob looked into his eyes and smiled like someone who just remembered their favorite story.
“Greece...” he began slowly. “It was a country of songs and questions, not answers. I traveled there for months. I stayed in Athens, the wandering agora was alive, old men sold Greek amphorae, and philosophers smoked cigarettes and debated politics. In the Peloponnese mountains, I spent nights in a simple monastery. The monks sang by candlelight, and in their silence I felt the ancient echo of centuries. The night was long, and the singing was so dense I thought it would overflow the walls.”
Nikandros listened silently, his eyes shining, as if absorbing every syllable.
“I was also in small ports watching fishermen repairing nets, talking with their wives about how the sea calls back dead husbands. I felt the weight of history in the ruins, stones you know, can remember more than people. I searched for stories. Old tales. Myths that survive in people, not books. I walked through ruins, listened to elders in villages. One told me he saw a nymph on the shore. Another swore he knew a descendant of Theseus.”
Nikandros laughed briefly but sincerely. “And you... do you believe in such things?” he asked.
Hob looked out ahead, at the endless blue of the sea.“I don’t know if you have to believe. It’s enough... to be curious.”
Nikandros fell silent. He wanted to say more, but then Hob shifted closer, looking intently into his eyes. “And you? What is it that you guard on this island that I’m not allowed to see?”
Nikandros immediately grew serious. He glanced aside, then at the ground. “I’m sorry. I can’t talk about it.” His tone was different, not cold, but closed. Like a wall suddenly raised between them.
Hob didn’t press. He just nodded and looked down at the flowers beneath their feet. “That’s alright.”
But inside his curiosity was already stirring. Quietly. Persistently. As always.
They stood up. A nearby thyme bush dripped with fragrance, and the sand hissed softly underfoot. Not far off, wild rose vines grew, heavy with red fruit. The sea glittered in the sunlight against the horizon, no signs of ships, no traces of civilization.
Nikandros led him further along the rocky shore, where waves washed coral algae but didn’t wash away their beauty. Along the way, they descended to a small cove where the water was so clear the bottom shimmered with green and blue reflections.
Hob paused, began collecting shells, looking around, touching things. Every pebble, every blade of grass was a story to him. All beneath Nikandros’s quiet, attentive gaze now less uncertain. The air trembled with a gentle late-summer warmth. The island’s space seemed enlarged to him, accessible, infinitely safe and… a little ominous. But it did not frighten him, it only fascinated.
***
Several days had passed since he first set foot on the island’s sand. Days of gentle mornings and afternoons soaked with the warmth of the sun, the scent of herbs, and simple everyday life.
Hob was recovering faster than anyone in the guardian family had expected. The immortal body had its secrets, and one of them was this quiet, astonishing resilience: bruises faded, wounds healed beneath the skin almost unnoticed, and deep fatigue – both physical and emotional – dissipated like steam until only a shadow remained.
He began his mornings with walks, sometimes alone, sometimes with Nikandros, who, though quiet, was a grateful companion in silence. Sometimes he helped in father’s garden carrying baskets of vegetables, pruning fig branches, handing tools without being asked, as if he belonged. Other times, he sat on the veranda with the boys’ mother (yes, he had finally met her – a small, quiet woman with eyes like shining olives) shelling peas while listening to her stories of years long past, though she revealed little.
In the evenings, he sat with the family on a bench by the rough wooden table, eating bread, cheese, roasted fish, and drinking light wine. He laughed sometimes, joked, spoke of cities he had seen, the colors of the sky in Morocco, a woman who painted ships in Lisbon. He saw how the father watched him with a certain attentiveness. As if weighing whether Hob should be here.
But no one told him about the hill.
Behind the house, beyond the garden and the edge of cypresses, rose a gentle slope covered with bushes and darker trees. By day it seemed peaceful, even banal. But at night, when the moon cast its silver shadow on it, it looked like something sacred and unreachable.
Several times he saw Thales and his sons go there. They carried backpacks or bundles, sometimes a lamp’s light. They never invited him inside the circle, which was unmarked but clearly present.
One afternoon, standing by the window of the small room where he slept, he saw them again. Shadows moved among the trees. Nikandros glanced back over his shoulder. Their eyes met. Hob raised an eyebrow questioningly. Nikandros said nothing just nodded and continued down the path.
Hob wanted to follow them. He really did.
But he stayed. Leaning against the doorframe, his hand clenched on the damp windowsill. Curiosity pulsed in him like a heartbeat not impatient, but stubborn, deeply rooted. It was the same force that had guided him through centuries of wars, loves, markets, and kingdoms. He was not happy, for he did not seek happiness. He wanted to know. And to understand. And beyond the hill was something that needed to be discovered.
Meanwhile, the day of his departure approached. Thales had told him the night before that as soon as Hob was ready, a boat would take him to a nearby port, from where he could return to continental Greece.
“And from there to London,” Hob said, smiling quietly, looking out at the sea.
But deep inside, he knew one thing: he did not want to go back. Not yet. Not until he found out what was hidden beyond that hill.
The night on the island was thick like spilled ink, and the silence seemed deeper than usual as if the entire space was holding its breath. Hob slipped into the darkness like a shadow. The door to his room creaked softly, but no one stirred. He passed through the garden where herbs and vines grew by day, now a labyrinth of shadows, wet earth, and blind branches awaited. Rough leaves brushed against his shoulders, grasses rustled.
He had no light. He couldn’t afford it, if anyone looked through the window, all would be lost. So he moved almost blindly, guided only by the moonlight and an instinct that had rarely failed him through the centuries.
The winding path led uphill. The plants were wild, hostile – low bushes and thorny thickets grabbed at his legs like hands jealous of his presence. He felt something tearing his skin, blood oozing from small cuts on his feet and calves. But it didn’t matter. The slight pain was nothing new, just a reminder that he was alive.
When he climbed to the ridge of the hill, the world suddenly opened up.
Below him lay a valley – small, cupped like a hand, filled with silvery moonlight. At its bottom stood a temple. Small, circular, made of white stone that reflected the light as if it shone from within. Its roof was supported by slender columns, and in front of it, in the middle of a low courtyard, gleamed a fountain whose water shone calmly, as if it didn’t move at all.
Hob stopped. His heart beat faster, though not from fatigue.
He felt a strange tension grip him – fear, yes, but also excitement, that familiar feeling before a discovery that could change everything. He had seen much in life, ruins, wonders, the birth and death of kingdoms. But this place… was different.
Everything here was too quiet. Too watchful. As if the island knew he was coming.
He descended slowly, carefully, placing uncertain steps on the faded stone stairs, overgrown with moss and narrow vines. The wind whispered softly through the olive trees, and the distant rumble of waves broke against the rocks. He stopped before the entrance. Heavy curtains of light fabric hung beside the columns embroidered with golden thread, yet simple, as if made by human hands, not gods’.
He reached out. His fingers trembled slightly, not from fear, but from tension like a lyre string ready for its first note. He pulled back the curtain and stepped inside, and the darkness of the temple welcomed him without a word.
And though the air inside was cool, almost sacred, Hob did not feel the chill. He walked past the circle of columns and stopped suddenly.
On a raised platform in the middle of the room, among tangled herbs and wreaths of dried flowers, rested a head.
Not a statue. Not a mask. Not a trick of the light.
The head of a young man. With fair skin and dark, softly waving hair that fell around his face. His eyes were open. Shining. Tender. On the lobe of his right ear was a thin tear as if long ago someone had brutally ripped out an earring without a word. Above the wound gleamed a new, round golden earring. The head moved slightly, as if sensing his presence. The lips parted, and a voice sounded.
“Are you the new arrival?” he asked calmly, with clear curiosity, not suspicion. His voice was soft, calm, almost soothing. “They told me someone had come. But I didn’t think you’d really come here.”
Hob froze. Not for long but long enough to realize his heart was beating faster, and his throat had gone dry. Alright. Fine. A talking head. On the list of things he had seen in life, this was a novelty. But… was it really that impossible? He had met people who rose from ashes. Women who knew the future with a single glance. Men who cast no shadow. His still unidentified Stranger. So a head?
“Sorry,” he said finally, in a surprisingly gentle tone. His voice echoed off the stone walls, as if disturbing the sanctity of the place. “This… isn’t something I see every day. But I didn’t want to be rude.”
The head – the boy? – smiled. With the tired, kind smile of someone who no longer expected much from the world but still couldn’t stop being good.
“It’s okay. Most people who have seen me screamed. Or cried. Or both.”
Hob shook his head and smiled faintly, though he still stood stiff as a string.
“I’m not one to scream. Not anymore.”
Silence fell, but it wasn’t awkward. Rather attentive. Hob took a few steps forward, approaching the platform. The head looked at him with a slightly tilted profile.
“What… what’s your name?” Hob asked gently, though the question seemed almost blasphemous.
“Orpheus,” the head answered. And the smile vanished from his face for a brief moment. “Really. Not as a metaphor. Not as a symbol. Just Orpheus.”
Hob nodded slowly. There was something of childlike wonder in his gaze now.
“I’m not sure if I’m dreaming,” he said. “But if I am, I have to admit this is a really interesting dream. I just hope King George III doesn’t show up naked and start singing psalms.”
Orpheus chuckled briefly. It sounded exactly like a smiling, living person.
“No, none of that. At least, I hope not.”
Hob finally sat down on the cool stone. His legs were still bloody from the night’s journey, but he hardly even noticed anymore. He looked at that head – at Orpheus – and in his eyes was something more than curiosity. There was tenderness. The tenderness of a man who had spent his life believing the world was infinite, and had just discovered it could still surprise him.
“So you’re here alone?” Hob asked quietly at last.
Orpheus looked somewhere beyond Hob. Into a distance that wasn’t there.
“I don’t often have visitors,” he said softly. “I mean, not ones like you.”
His voice was calm, soft like the touch of fingers on the strings of a lyre he no longer had. But he had words – and silence – and the solitude he carried with the grace of someone accustomed to lasting too long.
“I have priests,” he added after a moment. “I know them. They know me. They tell me about the world, sometimes they read. They bring news. But they are part of this place. Just like the wind and the stones.” He paused as if weighing whether to say more. Hob didn’t interrupt. “My mother visits me,” Orpheus said quietly. “Though less often than before. Sometimes she brings the scent of the world. Rose oil. Sometimes words from other immortals.” He smiled barely noticeably. “There’s also a woman. She recently saved me from the French Revolution. Maybe she’ll come back here.”
Hob tilted his head. He was still surprised, slightly dazed, but no longer paralyzed by disbelief.
“I hope,” he said slowly, “you won’t mind if I stared like an idiot for a while.”
Orpheus laughed – a real, short but ringing laugh.
“And you?” Orpheus asked. “Why are you here? Where did you come from?”
“From the sea, technically speaking,” Hob answered with a slight smile. “And before that, from Greece. And before that, from London. And before that… it’s a long list.”
Orpheus raised his eyebrows.
“You know, I could envy you. So many places. So many lives in one.”
Hob shrugged.
“Maybe. But you have a temple with an ocean view and your own priests. I, at best, have debts to a loan shark and a trunk full of mismatched shoes.”
That made Orpheus chuckle. He didn’t laugh out loud, it was more of a quiet, genuine smile that lit up his face like a ray of sunshine breaking through dense leaves.
“You have a gift,” he said. “To speak lightly about heavy things.”
“That’s called survival,” Hob replied. “Or stupidity. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.”
Orpheus studied him for a moment, as if trying to figure out how his mind worked.
“So what now?” he asked. “Do you know where you are yet?”
Hob sighed, glancing once more around the temple interior, the white stones gleamed in the night light with a bluish shimmer, as if carved from shadow and mist.
“No,” Hob admitted, looking around inside the temple. “But I don’t think I mind. After all, not every day ends with a conversation with a severed head.”
Orpheus snorted quietly but didn’t look away.
“Sometimes I think maybe it’s all a dream,” he said after a moment. “One I’ll never wake up from. You… don’t look like someone from myths. Or from my dreams.”
“That’s probably a good thing,” Hob answered, carefully sitting down by the wall. “I never really knew myths by heart. And as for dreams…” he hesitated. “Sorry for coming so late. I didn’t want to surprise you. And… don’t you need to rest? To sleep?”
Orpheus smiled, but this time the smile didn’t reach his eyes.
“I couldn’t. Dreams have been… dull for centuries. Bland. Short and empty.”
Hob bit his lip. He was a simple man, not a philosopher, but he could recognize loneliness when he saw it. And in this boy who looked barely twenty but had to be older than Hob – he saw it clearly like a broken horizon line. A sadness as deep as the sea whose shore he had just crossed.
Hob watched Orpheus in silence. There was no pity in his eyes not the kind that judges from above, not the kind that gently strokes from a safe distance. It was something deeper, calmer. It was understanding. Recognition. Because Hob knew that shadow in the eyes, the shadow that appears when you carry too many years behind you and no longer see the light ahead. He knew the emptiness of long nights stretching endlessly and that strange feeling of alienation when time flows beside you, and you – though still standing – belong to it less and less.
And Hob felt something tighten in his throat, a kind of soft sorrow. This boy – this mythical son of gods – had been trapped in time differently than Hob. His body taken. Death suspended. Life stretched out like a shadow beneath a low sun. And around him, silence and repetition, not absolute solitude, perhaps, but the worst kind of loneliness: the kind that exists among people who can’t truly touch you. Who worship you but do not know you. Who guard you but do not understand.
Hob felt something stir inside him – an old memory, perhaps, a moment when he looked at a city he’d known and realized it no longer understood him. Or the face of someone he had once loved, someone who had grown old, and Hob hadn’t. Or his son – Robyn – who loved stories and laughed in a way that made the walls of their home seem larger, warmer. Robyn, who had long since gone.
Hob understood and that understanding hurt more than he’d expected. Because here was someone who had lived far longer, and who had lost far more. Not just a body. Not just a beloved. But meaning. And yet he was still here. Quiet. Attentive. Still curious.
He held himself back from asking how he’d ended up here. Bit his tongue, because he felt that question didn’t belong to him yet. Not yet. Maybe never. But there was one thing he could offer something he himself valued most: listening, presence, and a story.
He took a breath and said softly, as if speaking to a fire:
“You know... I’m immortal.”
Orpheus looked up. A spark appeared in his eyes not quite surprise, but the kind of held-back wave: as if something within him shifted gently, as if the stars in his inner sky had rearranged.
“Truly?”
“For centuries,” Hob admitted. “And I know what it’s like. To lose people. To watch everything pass by, to see faces disappear, and you remain. To watch life grow quieter, as the world turns another way.”
Orpheus said nothing. But his gaze deepened. As if Hob had said something Orpheus hadn’t known he needed to hear.
“And you still want to live?” the boy asked, and Hob almost laughed. There was something in Orpheus’s expression so similar to his Stranger, who had asked him the same question every hundred years. Hob smiled gently and leaned back against the white wall of the temple. The stone was cool, but not unpleasant, like the touch of something that had lasted long before you and would remain long after.
“What else am I supposed to do?” Hob settled more comfortably against the cold stone. “Besides... life has something in it that always pulls me along. Even if it’s just a new view or a dumb conversation. Or the chance to tell someone a story.”
“Story?”
“I had a son,” Hob said, almost in a whisper. “Robyn. A long time ago. He loved bedtime stories. And I… over all these years, I’ve gathered a whole library of them.” He fell silent for a moment. Then looked at Orpheus with a faint smile. “Want one? A bedtime story. No dragons unless you insist.”
Orpheus blinked. For the first time since they met, he looked not just surprised, he looked… moved. Intrigued. Something flickered across his face, something that might have been a trace of childlike wonder.
“Yes,” he replied softly. “I think I do.”
Hob accepted that with simple joy. There was something of the storyteller in him, not someone who loved the sound of his voice out of vanity, but from the joy of sharing it.
And so, as the night gently wrapped the island in its hush, Hob began to speak. He told stories of seas and storms, of funny taverns and sorrowful cities, of lovers and thieves, of friends who became family, and people who faded with time like mist. He told, and Orpheus listened.
And in the temple, a kind of peace settled, not the dead kind, not the eternal kind, but a human one. Warm. Alive. The kind that exists only between two beings who, for a little while, stop being afraid that they’re alone.
***
At first, they were opposed.
The family of guardians – those quiet people who lived simple, beautiful lives among the wild greenery,who carried mystery and responsibility in their eyes – didn’t hide their surprise when Hob began spending time near the temple. At first, they looked at him with a mix of confusion and resentment, as if he had betrayed their trust. There was something painful in it, because Hob valued their hospitality, their care, their strange serenity.
But it was Orpheus who broke the tension. One morning, when Hob arrived with a basket of figs and grapes, yes, out of pure gratitude, and maybe out of the need to bring something instead of words. Orpheus turned his head toward the approaching priests and said calmly, almost offhandedly:
“I want him to stay.”
He didn’t explain. He didn’t ask. He didn’t say why. He simply stated it, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. And that was enough. From that moment on, Hob was no longer a guest or a curiosity. He stayed.
***
Hob learned the rhythm of the island: the quiet morning light, the birdsong that sounded different here than anywhere else, the murmur of waves echoing off the white walls of the temple.
Sometimes he would take Orpheus out in a cart, one of the caretakers had brought it once, as if prepared for the possibility. Hob never asked where they had gotten it. He simply packed Orpheus with the care one might give to the most delicate porcelain and wheeled him down the path to the beach.
“Yes, yes, I know, you’re just a head, no need to do the climbing,” he would mutter, panting as he descended with the cart and Orpheus, to his own surprise, found himself laughing more and more often.
They would sit together on the sand, watching the sunset, which, on this island, always seemed to burn a little longer than anywhere else.
“How did you become immortal?” Orpheus asked once, his voice as soft as wind brushing the surface of water.
Hob shrugged.
“By accident.” He sat down next to the cart and stretched his legs out in front of him. “At the end of the 14th century, I was sitting in a tavern with some friends, drinking. I was fooling around and said I didn’t intend to ever die. Then this guy appeared. Dressed all in black, way too much drama. Asked me if I truly wanted to live forever. I said sure, why not. And... well, that was that. I meet up with him once every hundred years. It’s this… weird tradition. Sort of like a wedding anniversary, just without the flowers.” He smiled. “You see, over the centuries, the world changes. Empires crumble, new cities rise from the dust, languages disappear. But him, he always shows up.”
Orpheus was quiet for a moment. His eyes turned opaque, as if a wave of memories had rolled through him, ones he didn’t want to share.
“My mother visits sometimes,” he said. “But I haven’t seen my father in... a long time. We parted ways… not on the best of terms.”
Hob glanced sideways at him.
“Family’s a complicated thing,” he said calmly. “But… sometimes they come back. When you least expect it.”
Orpheus just nodded, saying nothing more.
Day by day, Orpheus became more present. It wasn’t that he changed physically, he couldn’t, after all. But his gaze grew brighter. His smile more frequent. His voice less dry, less suspended in eternity. Sometimes he would bombard Hob with questions. About people, about love, about inventions, about street markets and fashion. About theater, about books. About revolutions – good ones and bad. Hob answered patiently, sometimes with a joke, sometimes seriously.
“But how can you still be so... optimistic?” Orpheus asked one afternoon, as they sat beneath a tree, the leafy branches swaying gently above their heads.
Hob spread his arms.
“Because it’s still happening. Things are still changing.” He looked around the island. “When I was a child, I thought the world ended at the edge of my village. Now I know the world has no end. You can keep going and going, and going… and you’ll always find something new. A new flavor. A new laugh. A new song. A new heart that surprises you. How could you not be amazed by that?”
Orpheus stared at him for a long while. And something shifted in him slowly, barely visibly, but irreversibly. He didn’t say it out loud, but Hob sensed it. This boy, this child of the gods, suspended between life and death, no longer wanted only silence.
***
It was a quiet evening, one of those that follow a long, hot day, the air still warm, but already soaked in stillness. Stars were slowly emerging from hiding, scattered across the sky above the island like spilled grains of salt. They sat together by the fire: Hob leaning against the trunk of a tree, legs stretched out, a cup of warm wine in his hand; and Orpheus, as always, on a raised seat, on a flat stone Hob had brought earlier and covered with cloth.
The flames danced gently. Their glow cast warm light on Orpheus’s pale face, bringing out the softness of his features, the youthfulness that seemed like a lie. Because in his eyes, there was no youth, only a deep, ancient darkness. As if he were looking through time, not through the world.
Hob was telling a story as he often did. He had a gift, though he never thought of it that way, he spoke simply, plainly, but under his tongue, words took on color and weight. He was talking now about something from the time of the plague – about a boy who once tried to cheat him, and who later, against all odds, brought him bread, even though he was starving himself. The boy had just shrugged and said, “Well, you looked hungry too.”
“People can be cruel,” Hob said. “But sometimes… sometimes they do something so good that your heart can’t even hold it. And then you know it was worth staying a little longer.”
“I’d like to feel that.” Orpheus said and his voice was soft, almost not there. Hob slowly turned his head. Orpheus wasn’t looking at him. He was staring into the flames. “I’d like to feel that it’s worth staying. That something could still be good.”
Hob said nothing. He didn’t interrupt. He only leaned toward him, just slightly.
“There was a girl once,” Orpheus began, almost in a whisper. “Eurydice. Her laughter… it was like a song. And she loved me. Me who had always been only a voice. Only music.”
He faltered for a moment. Hob still didn’t say anything.
“When she died, I couldn’t bear it. I followed her. All the way. To the very end. To Hades.” His voice wavered. “He agreed to let her go, you know? He said, ‘you can take her back, if you don’t look behind you.’ So we walked. She behind me. And I… I couldn’t hear her. I couldn’t feel her breath. I started to think she wasn’t there.” He paused. Closed his eyes. “I looked back.” Silence fell. Even the fire seemed to dim. “My father… he left me here. To save me. Or to trap me. I don’t know anymore.”
“And death?” Hob asked quietly.
Orpheus gave a bitter smile, barely there. “I begged for it. Many times. In many ways. But nothing kills me. Nothing ends me.”
Hob leaned closer. He felt something twist deep in his gut. Not pity. Compassion, but not pity.
“I know what it is to live too long,” he said. “I saw my wife die. My son. I watched the world break apart, change, rise again, and then fall once more. I’ve seen good that didn’t survive. I’ve seen evil that lasted too long.” He scratched the back of his neck, searching for words. “But even after all that… after all these years… something in me hasn’t gone out. A stubborn little flame. Because, you see, sometimes one sentence is enough. One moment. One person who smiles at you without needing to. And then you remember that life isn’t a punishment. Maybe it’s not a reward, either. But it is… a possibility.”
Orpheus looked at him slowly. His eyes were wet, but he wasn’t crying.
Orpheus was like a flame that couldn’t burn out. There was fire in him dimmed, quieted, but present. And Hob saw it. In the questions he asked with genuine curiosity. In the spark in his eyes when he spoke of his mother. In the quiet laugh when Hob joked about French noblewomen and their madness for powdered wigs. All of it said: “I haven’t gone out yet. There’s still something trembling in me.”
And Hob felt something he hadn’t expected to feel, not pity, not sorrow. Something deeper. Perhaps a kind of obligation. Or responsibility. Maybe simply friendship. But also something more. A need. A need to give him what Hob himself had once longed for – meaning. A reason to get up in the morning. A reason not to stare at the waves, hoping they’d finally reach out and take everything away.
Because if Hob’s life had taught him anything, it was this: even after the greatest pain, something always came that began to heal. Not completely, not forever. But just enough to get through one more day.
And then another.
And another.
So Hob looked at Orpheus the way one looks at a wounded animal, not wanting to startle, not wanting to press too hard. But with tenderness. With cautious hope.
“I’ll show you,” Hob thought. “I’ll teach you how to live again. Maybe slowly. Maybe with no promises. But I’ll do it. Even if it takes centuries. Because if I could survive and not turn bitter... then you can too.”
Because life – despite death, despite loss – held something inexplicably beautiful. It smelled like bread in the morning. It laughed with the voices of children in the garden. It gleamed in the eyes of passing strangers.
And Hob knew that was enough to hold on to. He wanted Orpheus to see that. To feel it. Even just for a moment. Because maybe then that boy, that head burdened with a thousand years of sorrow, maybe then he’d believe that he could still mean something. That he could still laugh. That it wasn’t too late yet. And so Hob, as he told yet another story by the fire, wasn’t speaking just to him. He was speaking to that flame inside Orpheus. To that spark. To what remained. He spoke not like a master. Not like a bard. But like a friend. Like someone who believes that stories can save a soul.
***
A month passed.
A whole month that Hob spent on the island, unhurriedly, attentively, as if every hour was worth remembering. And indeed it was. Every day with Orpheus had a different flavor: some bitter like memories, others soft like warm bread. Together they wandered around the island, listening to the birdsong and the sound of their own footsteps. They sat by the sea shore, watching the waves lick the edges of the world. Sometimes they were silent. Sometimes Orpheus spoke at length and slowly, with pauses, as if he had to pull every word from the depths of time. Hob listened. Patiently. And he told stories about cities and sinful ports, about drunken poets, about women and men he loved, about wars and mistakes, about street musicians.
Orpheus listened attentively. Sometimes he laughed. Sometimes he asked questions. Sometimes he closed his eyes and let Hob’s words weave around him like a warm shawl. In such moments Hob knew that something was changing. Maybe not immediately, not radically but some crack in Orpheus’s melancholy was beginning to give way. And that was all he wished for.
But time, even on the island, does not stand still. The day came when Hob had to leave. The ship was to sail from the Greek port in three days, and then London, life, the world. They sat together on a low wall near the temple, where they usually started and ended their day. The air was thick with the scent of flowers. On the horizon, the sun was slowly and solemnly fading, as if it wanted to make space for their farewell.
Hob stood up first. He was dressed again in travel clothes: a linen shirt, a vest, shoes now a bit dusty from walks on the island. Orpheus lifted his head and looked at him. His face held the same calm expression as usual, but something in his eyes was softer. Maybe gratitude. Maybe fear. Maybe both.
“You’re going” he said quietly. He didn’t ask, didn’t accuse. He just stated the fact.
Hob nodded. “For now. Life’s waiting. Letters to write, people to annoy, debts to forget.”
For a moment Orphaues said nothing. He lifted his head higher, as if wanting to look better at Hob’s face, to remember it, this version, with the setting sun reflected in his eyes, with that strange tenderness Orpheus recognized and valued, though he couldn’t quite name it yet.
“I’ll still be here” he finally said calmly. “That hasn’t changed.”
Hob looked at him carefully, then crouched beside him and leaned in slightly.
“Then let me tell you something,” he said softly, almost in a whisper. “I’ll be back. In five years”.
Orpheus raised his eyebrows slightly. Not in surprise. With something more tender. Hope?
“Five?”
“Yeah. Five years. I’ll bring new stories. New places. New people. Maybe even a new joke or two. Unless they outlaw humour by then.”
Orpheus smiled more fully. This time it wasn’t just a trace of a smile, but something warm and genuine, like the first light of day. Silence fell, but it wasn’t heavy. It was like a soft fabric shared with someone dear. They heard the sound of the sea and the evening chirping of birds.
Finally, Hob stood up and slung his bag over his shoulder. He looked one last time at the temple, at Orpheus, at this patch of the world that for a moment was more than just a hiding place for a forgotten head. It was home. He stopped halfway down the path.
“See you in five?” He said it lightly, with a smile, as if it was about meeting for tea, not returning after half a decade. But in those words was everything: a promise, tenderness, and that special kind of bond that doesn’t ask about time or distance.
Orpheus looked at him with his usual calm, inscrutable face. But something soft flashed in his eyes. Something that looked like acceptance. And gratitude.
“In five.”
Hob smiled once more, turned, and walked down the path toward the shore, toward the boat. And Orpheus watched him for a long time, until he disappeared from sight and maybe even a little longer. There was a shadow of a smile on his lips. And finally – for a very, very long time – he didn’t feel alone.