Very little grows on the islands of Santorini. The archipelago rises out of the Aegean Sea in a ring of sheer cliffs, topped with whitewashed buildings that perch precariously at the edges, like a flock of gulls about to take wing. In the interior, farms grow wine grapes and cherry tomatoes in the fertile volcano soil, but there are no trees besides a few withered and stunted olives, and almost no fresh water to be had. Rather than agriculture, the island thrives on tourism. It hosts a constant stream of travellers from all over Europa and beyond, who come for the wine, for the sunshine, and for the breathtaking views.
One of these tourists had the potential to be a particular annoyance to three young people who were crouched behind a low stone wall surrounding one of the vineyards.
"Can you see them?" asked Alberto.
"Ssssh!" Giulia hissed at him. "They're gonna hear you!"
"Come on, Luca," Alberto insisted.
Luca had just barely raised the top of his head above the dry stone wall, and from there he could make out the rented car parked under one of the twisted and unhealthy-looking olive trees that grew beside the small farmhouse. A very short, sunburned man, who must have been the owner, was standing in the shade of this, talking to two guests: a man with receding steel-grey hair, and a woman with a bottle-blonde beehive. There was also a younger man who was wandering around bored, kicking at rocks and staying just out of sight on the other side of the car.
"Luca," Alberto said again.
"I can't see them from here," Luca whispered back. He dared to raise his head a little higher, hoping for a better view. "Oh, no, wait… here they come!" The couple were returning to their car to get something. The man shooed his son out of the way so he could open the door, and in the split second before he had to duck down out of sight again, Luca finally got a look at his face.
It wouldn't be accurate to say he was surprised by what he saw, but he was certainly disappointed. He turned around and sat down between his friends.
"That's them, all right," he sighed. "Ercole and his parents."
"Ugh!" groaned Alberto. "What, did they follow us here"
"I doubt it," said Giulia. "They sell wine, remember? They're probably buying some from the farmer here."
That didn't help as far as Luca and Alberto were concerned. The three of them had come all this way, hoping to follow up on what the Librarian of the Deep had told them at Christmas about a sunken sea monster city in the Santorini Caldera. It had taken days to make the trip through the strait of Messina and across the Ioanian to reach the sun-soaked Cicladi, but it had been a great adventure. They'd camped out on the continental shelf with Luca's Uncle Ugo, who was full of wonderful and terrifying stories about places he'd been and things he'd seen in the depths of the ocean. Then at last they'd reached the old harbour at Fira, only to find a very familiar little yacht moored there, with the name Visconti painted across its stern.
Uncle Ugo refused to get out of the water. He said the Aegean sun was far too bright for him and had gone to hide in an underwater cave at the south end of the islands. The kids had climbed up a narrow path used by the donkeys that carried cargo between harbour and town, and gone to investigate on their own.
"Now what?" Luca looked at Giulia.
"It's not the end of the world," she said firmly. "We're gonna be in the water and they're gonna be at the vineyards. We can just avoid them. Come on." She slid back down the short slope to the road, where they'd be out of sight from the farmhouse. "Let's go back to Fira and find Dr. Cozzolino." The archaeologist from the University of Bologna had promised to meet them there.
The boys followed, and they headed back up the unpaved road that twisted and turned over the rocky, uneven ground. With few trees there was very little shade, and all three were sweaty and unhappy. A bus full of tourists went by on its way to the monastery at Profitis Ilias, the highest point on the islands, and the kids moved to the side to let it pass.
"Why does anybody wanna visit this place?" Alberto grouched, flapping at the cloud of dust raised by the bus' tyres. "There's nothing here! It's all rocks." He scowled at the ground.
Giulia shrugged. Santorini looked so nice and pictures, with the little blue and white villages and the churches and windmills. The real thing, however, was decidedly hot and bleak, almost like a planet from a science fiction film, and full of overflowing with rude, jostling foreigners. She couldn't wait to get back in the water.
First, however, they stopped at the Yakinthos Hotel, where Dr. Cozzolino had said he would be staying. The woman behind the desk was in her fifties, with silver-streaked dark hair pulled back into a bun so tight it seemed to stretch the skin on her face, and a hooked nose that resembled a cartoon witch. She looked up as the kids entered the tiny lobby, the tiles echoing the clatter of a large electric fan trying to keep the space cool, and glared at them with fierce black eyes. Luca took an involuntary step back, bumping into Giulia and Alberto.
It was Giulia who took the initiative and approached. "Sygnómi," she said, one of the Greek phrases she had learned in preparation for this trip. "Do you speak Italian?"
"Un po," the woman replied, holding her thumb and forefinger about a centimetre apart.
Giulia nodded. "We're looking for Dr. Urbano Cozzolino. Is he here?"
The woman's frown deepened and she pulled out the guest book. After running an arthritic finger down the page, she pointed to an entry and turned the book towards Giulia.
"K-O-Z-O…" Giulia sounded out the semi-alien Greek letters. "Yes, that's him! Is he here yet?"
"Non," the woman said. "Ochi akómi."
"Oh. Okay," said Giulia, disappointed. "We'll try again tomorrow, maybe. Efcharistó!"
"Parakaló," the woman said, and closed the book with a snap.
Giulia went and rejoined the boys, who had sidled over to be right where the fan was blowing. They could already tell what the answer was, and Alberto was groaning again.
"First Ercole shows up, then Dr. Cozzolino doesn't," he complained. "Next thing you know, the whole trip will be ruined."
"Or maybe Dr. Cozzolino is just late, and we won't even see Ercole again," said Giulia, rolling her eyes. "Let's get back in the water. I'm baking."
Reluctantly, they went back outside and wound their way along the cobblestone streets of Fira, which were just as steep and even more circuitous than those in Portorosso, back to the donkey path. It was slow going, with throngs of tourists blocking the streets and vendors hawking everything from fruit to sunhats to handicrafts, to kitschy postcards. Alberto and Luca didn't know what to make of the place. Here they were, off seeing the world the way they'd dreamed of last summer, but they hadn't expected the world to be so crowded. Luca in particular found the many foreigners, with their voices speaking vowel-heavy Greek or harsh English, to be quite intimidating. He kept ducking out of the way to keep from bumping into them, or lowering his head so they couldn't look him in the eye.
"What's the matter?" Giulia asked him.
"Nothing!" Luca replied quickly. "I'm fine!"
"You're not fine," scoffed Alberto. "You're all twitchy like our first day in Portorosso. Just calm down. Nobody here knows we're sea monsters. Most of them don't even speak any Italian. Watch this." He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted at the top of his lungs, "monstri marini!"
A few people looked up, but only to glare at the boy yelling in the street. If anyone understood the words, they probably thought Alberto was just trying to cause a panic, and weren't going to fall for it.
"Don't do that!" Luca protested.
"Look," Alberto gestured around. "Nobody cares!"
Luca took in the many eyes on him, and winced. Suddenly he understood the logic behind the evil eye pendants the souvenir-sellers had for sale. It seemed like any one of these people could put a curse on him with only a nasty look.
"You're not helping," said Giulia. "It's okay, Luca. People here are just like people in Portorosso and Genova, they just talk differently, that's all."
"No, they're different," said Luca. "They think we don't belong here and they want us to go away. I wish I was invisible."
"No, you don't," Alberto patted his back. "You gotta learn how to be loud, Luca."
The sun was shining bright on the path that went down to the harbour, glaring in their eyes both directly and when it dazzled off the water in the caldera. The donkeys had blinders on, but they still had their heads lowered and sweat on their flanks, and their handlers were fanning themselves with pieces of paper. The kids slipped and skidded down the gravel, wanting very much to just throw themselves off the cliff and go straight into the sea, but unable to do so with so many people there watching. Even when they reached the bottom, they had to walk along the harbour to the far southern end of it. There they could get in among the rocks and, at last, slip into the water unseen.
The Aegean sea was fairly warm, too, but it was cool enough to be an enormous relief after the blazing heat and light above. Luca, Alberto, and Giulia took a moment to just swim in circles and enjoy feeling the current through their gills, then headed further south to catch up with Uncle Ugo.
They passed by Kounopetra Beach, where a row of tourists glistening with suntan oil were soaking up the rays like lazy cats, and continued on to a jutting rock formation that sat above the underwater caves. Ugo had retreated back into the very darkest corners of these. The kids had to feel their way along through the darkness until they spotted him, by the light of his lure.
"Oh, good, you are still alive!" he called out as they approached. "I was worried you'd been burned to a crisp!"
"We're fine, Uncle Ugo," said Luca, although he was pretty sure he was going to lose some scales to his sunburn over the next few days. "Dr. Cozzolino hasn't arrived yet."
"But Ercole and his parents have," Alberto grumbled.
"So we're going to wait and stay in the water for now," said Giulia firmly, shooting him an evil eye look of her own to let him know she was losing patience with his carping. "We could get a head start on exploring, maybe. I saw a map in Fira that shows where the ruins are above the surface and it's not far from here. Why don't we take a look nearby?" That might cheer Alberto up.
"Then we can try that restaurant Professor Hamid told us about," Luca added "The one she said had the best shrimp."
"Leave me out of that," said Uncle Ugo. "Human food, so tasteless. Give me a delicious cave snail any day." He plucked one off the wall and examined it critically. The animal was about the size of his thumbnail, and its body and shell were both ghostly white. It had no eyes, nor even stalks to put them on. Satisfied, Ugo popped it in his mouth whole. "Delicious! Just the right amount of salt! Try one?"
The boys looked at Giulia. Luca and Alberto usually turned down Uncle Ugo's offers of food, but Giulia had set a precedent on her second day as a sea monster by sampling the bone-eating worms he'd brought with him from the Deep. She hadn't liked them, but the boys had expectations now.
"Do I have to eat the shell?" she asked warily.
"It is good for you," said Ugo, with a snaggletoothed grin the kids didn't know how to interpret. He might be joking; he might not. "Full of calcium. Strengthen your teeth." He pulled a second snail off the cave wall with an audible pop, and held it out to her.
Giulia took it and, with her eyes closed so she wouldn't have to look at the animal, stuck it in her mouth and chewed. The shell crunched between her teeth.
"What's it like?" asked Alberto.
"Like a snail," she replied, making a face. "Imagine mushroom-flavoured chewing gum wrapped in eggshells." She swallowed hard and stuck her tongue out.
"It is an acquired taste," said Uncle Ugo. "Come visit the Librarian and myself in the Deep again, and we will let you sample all its delicacies. Gulper eels are particularly nice. They even come pre-stuffed! Nothing stews up so nicely as in a gulper eel stomach, yes, it is already partly digested for you." He licked his lips.
Luca put a hand over his mouth, looking a little greener than usual. Uncle Ugo chuckled and patted him on the head.
Having let Uncle Ugo know where they would be, the kids left the dark cave behind and headed through the sunny shallows towards the town of Akrotiri, where they expected the ruins to be. The waters were nearly as bright as the land above, but where the islands were bleak and bare, the slopes blow them were thick with corals and algae. Colourful fish flitted between the sponges, and there were more than enough crabs and mussels to satisfied the tourists' hunger for seafood.
"Where are we gonna stay tonight?" Alberto asked. "I don't wanna stay in the cave, but we don't have a hotel."
"It doesn't look like it'll be easy to find one, either," Luca agreed. To judge by the crowd, every hotel on the islands must be full to bursting.
"Maybe we can camp out on the beach," Giulia suggested.
"We don't have a tent," Alberto said. "If you're doing land camping, you need a tent." He'd never done it, but he'd seen in it books and movies.
"What for?" asked Giulia. "It's not cold here, and it isn't gonna rain."
"That's right!" said Luca. "The book I read said it almost never rains on Santorini between Maggio and Settembre."
"Corretto," Giulia nodded. "So we'll just sleep outside and it'll be fine. What do you think?" she asked Alberto with a grin.
"It'll be like sleeping on the tower roof on your Island," Luca said. "Sleeping under the fish, right?"
The corners of Alberto's mouth started to twitch as he came grudgingly out of his sulk. "That does sound kinda cool. We should get some sausages to roast on the campfire, too."
"Tomorrow," said Luca. "Tonight we're gonna try the shrimp restaurant, like Professor Hamid said. If it's good, should we take some back for Uncle Ugo?" He did eat shrimp, although they were the oversized, sulfer-tasting ones that lived down in the dark… and Luca had been taught it was polite to share food.
All three considered the idea.
"Nah," said Alberto.
"I… dunno if he'd appreciate it," Giulia agreed.
"No," Luca admitted. "Probably not."
The ancient city of Akrotiri on Santorini was something like Pompei Scavi near Napoli, in that it was an ancient settlement that had been buried in a volcanic eruption and only recently rediscovered. But where Pompei was full of streets you could walk down and inscriptions that could be read, Akrotiri was not nearly so well-excavated and much, much older. Digging had been going on sporadically for almost a hundred years, but nobody had yet made an organized study of the place, and the ruins were currently closed to the public.
None of that bothered the three sea monster children, of course. They rounded the cape below the lighthouse and followed the coast east again to get to the approximate area, then began poking around the underwater slopes. In places these were almost as steep as the cliffs above them – the islands of Santorini represented the peak of a huge underwater volcano, and under the surface its sides kept dropping all the way to the bottom some three kilometres below. Here, too, they were covered in seaweeds, corals, and anemones – but at first there appeared to be no sign of ruins.
"Maybe everything got buried," said Giulia, sorting through a mussel bed. "I mean, how long ago was that?" Dr. Cozzolino said it had been at least a thousand years before the Roman Empire, which was itself almost longer ago than any of the kids could imagine.
"That would figure," said Alberto, how getting grumpy again. He noticed a little crab scuttling up his leg and kicked it off. The crab did a couple of somersaults in the water before managing to grab a bit of coral, and then it wiggled down into a crack. A puff of silt came out the hole after it vanished.
Luca swam closer, curious to see where it had gone. He put his eye up to the crack, and realized something. "There's a gap down here," he said, reaching inside. "It's almost totally covered by the reef, but… Alberto, back up."
The two boys swam a few metres up towards the surface and looked down at the spot, watching the lacy network of refracted sunlight dance across the reef. Giulia joined them to see what this new perspective would show.
"Look at that," said Luca. "There are corners – there, and there!"
"You're right!" Giulia realized. Once Luca had pointed it out, she could just barely make out a rectangular shape buried under millennia worth of sea life. "How do we get in?"
"We need something to break the coral," said Alberto. He swam down and started going through the piles of volcanic rocks, until he found a nice rounded piece of basalt that fit well in his hand. "Here."
"Don't do too much," Luca warned. "That's the fish's home."
"I'll only take off enough that we can fit inside," Alberto promised. He hammered on the reef around the crack until pieces of coral started to break away. Luca and Giulia helped by removing these and finding other spots to wedge them, so the living polyps could continue to grow.
Alberto stuck his head in the hole he'd made, but his shoulders wouldn't fit. He kept banging on it. "Almost there… here!" A larger piece came away and dropped into the darkness below. That left a hole big enough for the kids to squeeze through.
"We're gonna need a light," said Luca. He grabbed a passing jellyfish and held onto its tentacles as if it were a balloon. When he gave it a shake, its body lit up with a soft pink glow. Luca took it into the hole, and his friends followed him.
Even with the jellyfish, it was very dark in the cavern compared to the sunlight outside, and it took a few seconds for their eyes to adjust. The first thing Luca made out was a glint of metallic reflection. His pupils continued to dilate, and bit by bit, they started to be able to see the details.
"Santo Caciocavallo!" whispered Giulia.
"Mother of Pearl!" gasped Luca.
"Wow," was all Alberto said.
The room was not large, no bigger than Giulia's little bedroom in Portorosso, but it was crammed to the gills with all sorts of things. There were giant pottery jars, big enough that one of the three could have crawled inside of them – some were whole but most were partially broken, and all encrusted with corals and barnacles. The floor was slabs of coloured marble, some of which had sunk a bit or broken at the corners, but the contrast between the dark red and snowy white was still visible. The walls had once been covered with paintings, but only a few smudges of ochre and red were still visible as algae had grown over the rest.
What had been stored in the room, however, was very much intact. The giant jars were all full of gold.
Much of this was in the form of rather crude coins, little more than flattened nuggets with a design stamped into them, but there was also jewellery, cups and plates, small statues, and even masks. Some of it looked Egyptian, and some resembled the Assyrian sculptures in the book Dr Cozzolino had sent Luca, about the legends of the sea-going apkallu that had taught humans how to write. Other objects didn't look like anything any of them had ever seen before.
For a long time, all they could do was stare. All three knew about the idea of buried treasure, but it was the sort of thing that only appeared in stories, like dragons or spaceships from Mars. Finally, it was Luca who broke the silence.
"We gotta show this to Dr. Cozzolino," he said.
"Yeah," Giulia agreed. She took out the underwater camera the archaeologist had sent them as a Christmas present and raised it to her eye, then paused, frowning at it. "It's too dark in here. The picture won't show anything." The camera was intended for use in sunshine, and didn't have a flash.
"Maybe we can bring Uncle Ugo to light it up," said Luca, but he was doubtful. "Or maybe Dr. Cozzolino will have an idea."
"Is he even gonna believe us?" asked Alberto. "I mean, if we tell him we found a room full of gold?"
"We should take something to show him," said Giulia. She put the camera away and looked around the room again. "Not some of the treasure, somebody might try to steal it from us, and it'll be heavy. Maybe some of the pottery?"
There was plenty to choose from. The big jars of coins were far too large to move, and many had so many shellfish stuck to them that they were quite literally glued to the floor. There were plenty of smaller objects present, though, including delicately decorated flask and pitchers that might have once held incense or perfume. A few of them looked very much like the bottles the Librarian of the Deep had been keeping, which had turned out to contain imprisoned genies, but none had stoppers in them.
"How about this one?" Luca held up a white pitcher with a painting of a winged woman on the side. "You can still see most of the picture."
"Oh, that is nice," said Giulia. She turned it over and found the other side entirely encrusted with barnacles, but the visible bit was very pretty.
"No, no, it needs to be this," said Alberto, and proudly held up his own find.
This was a wide, shallow bowl on a short stem, with a handle on each side. The outside was black with a design of two staring eyes painted on each side, which was rather unnerving, but the inside was orange with black silhouettes of a parade of animals – lions, dogs, horses, bulls, birds, and even an elephant – circling the central figure of a woman holding a staff. There were some Greek letters written around her, too, but none of them could read those. The really remarkable thing was that although one of the handles had snapped off, there was no other damage, and not a single barnacle on the entire cup.
"Oh, yes, definitely that one!" said Luca, delighted. "Look at them!"
"There's a cat!" Giulia pointed to the little animal beneath the elephant.
"And a fox!" Alberto said, indicating the figure perched on the back of a donkey.
"I wonder if there's a story to go with it," Luca said, and turned to Giulia. "Remember the big Greek vase they had in that museum we went to for school? They said it was the Calydonian Boar Hunt. There's gotta be something like that for this one, too."
They took the dish back outside for a better look, where all three had to sit and blink for a few minutes as the sunlight assaulted their eyes. Once they could see again, they studied the ring of animals, looking for any clue what narrative the picture might suggest.
"There's a lion and a ram," said Luca. "But it's not the zodiac, because there's no scales or any of the people."
"Maybe it's not just one story," said Giulia. "There's a famous poem by a man named Ovidio, called Le Metamorfosi, which is all about people getting turned into animals by gods or by magic. It's got hundreds of little stories in it. Maybe this dish is about that, rather than any one thing."
"Dr. Cozzolino will know," Luca decided. "He'll be able to read the Greek, too." He ran a finger along the line of letters. There were a few he knew, such as K's and Y's and I's, but many of the others were strange.
"Definitely," said Giulia.
The sun was getting slow by the time the kids climbed out of the water in an isolated spot among black rocks and scrubby little bushes, but it was still stiflingly hot. That didn't seem to matter as much, though, because all three were now in a substantially better mood. Their earlier disappointments didn't seem to matter anymore – if they'd managed to find an ancient treasure house on their first day of exploring, there was no telling what else might be down there.
"Maybe there's an entire palace!" said Luca, as they stashed their backpacks and sleeping bags among the rocks to return to after supper. "There might be libraries and theatres and houses like at Pompei Scavi!"
"There might be more treasure," Alberto suggested. "There's already enough to fill a whole museum with. I bet they'd name it after you," he told Luca. "You found the place."
"Yeah, the Luca Paguro Museum of Atlantide!" said Giulia happily. She brushed water off herself to Change back to human form. There'd been a time when she'd thought this would never stop feeling weird, but she barely noticed it anymore as her scales dissolved and her flippers separated into fingers and toes.
"We don't know it's from Atlantide," said Luca. "There were humans who lived here."
"Then that's cool, too," Alberto assured him. He found history boring, himself, but he knew it interested Luca.
"Yeah. Either way, I bet Dr. Cozzolino's going to be thrilled," Giulia agreed.
Luca decided not to leave the bowl at their campsite, as he was afraid it would fall and get broken on the rocks, so he carried it along as they climbed over the rocks to the path that led to the modern town of Akrotiri, from which the ruins took their name. There, close to the beach, was the Skýlla kai Cháryvdi seafood restaurant, which Professor Hamid from Napoli had recommended as the best shrimp on the islands. Trying different types of food had been part of Alberto and Luca's plans for seeing the world ever since they'd first tasted trenette al pesto – and although they didn't want to say so, they and Giulia were getting tired of Uncle Ugo's cooking.
"Have you got the money?" Luca asked Giulia.
"Yes, don't worry," she promised.
The restaurant had a painted sign with a mermaid and a serpent on it, each holding out a seafood dish. The windows were lit and the sounds of music and happy conversation came from inside. Even the entrance foyer was full of people, standing around talking and laughing. The three young people squirmed through this crowd to the podium where the usher was, and Giulia stood up straight to talk to the man.
"Kalispéra," she said, proud to show off her Greek again. "My friends and I are here for your famous shrimp. Garída saganáki."
The usher, a fat man with a bald head, peered over the tops of his eyeglasses at her. "Reservation?" he asked, one eyebrow raised.
"Uh… no," said Giulia. "We're just here because a friend told us about it."
"Mamá or Bampás?" he tried.
"No," Giulia repeated. "Just us." Behind her, the boys smiled and waved awkwardly.
The usher sniffed. "No room," he said. "Wait." He pointed to the tourists in the foyer, who the kids realized belatedly must be waiting their turn to be seated.
"Oh. Okay. Efcharistó," said Giulia.
They passed through the crowd again to the back of the line. The foyer had a couple of benches where people could sit, but these were taken, so the three had to stand just inside the door. Giulia tapped her foot on the floor. She was not a patient person by nature. Luca could be when he had a reason, but Alberto was absolutely not, and he was the first one to start getting twitchy.
"This is dumb," he proclaimed. "We should find somewhere else."
"Everybody else is probably just as busy," said Luca. The restaurants would have the same problem as the hotels – all of them full, on the entire island. "And I don't want to have snails for dinner with Uncle Ugo."
"Buonasera!" a man called out from the entrance. "We have a reservation!"
Luca, Alberto, and Giulia all knew that voice, and it was not one they'd wanted to hear. All three froze, watching, as Aristide Visconti marched into the foyer, followed by his wife and son, walking like they expected everyone to make way for them. Mostly everybody did, and the kids backed up against the wall, hoping that if they kept still, the family wouldn't notice them.
"Name?" the usher asked them.
"Visconti. We're expected," Aristide replied, as Faustina and Ercole joined him. Ercole looked back to snicker at the peasants who had to wait… and then his eyebrows rose as he noticed who was among them.
"Porca paletta!" he burst out. "What are you three doing here?"
Multiple heads turned. Luca, realizing he was being stared at by strangers again, hunched his shoulders and tried to sink into the ground. It didn't work.
"Oh!" Faustina said. "It's the Underdogs."
"Buonasera, Signora Visconti," said Giulia, to be polite.
"Are you following us?" Ercole demanded.
"Of course not," Giulia told him. "We've got better things to do."
"We're here to meet Dr. Cozzolino the archaeologist," Luca added. "We're going to be looking for ruins with him."
"What an adventure!" said Faustina. "Aristide, did you hear that?"
"I'm talking to the waiter, cuore mio," said Aristide, and pointed to the man's list. "There we are. Visconti, table for three."
"Make it six," said Faustina.
"Six?" asked Ercole. His eyes went from his mother to the kids and back again, widening in horror. "You can't mean…"
"They're people we know from home," said Faustina. "It's nice to see familiar faces. They can tell us all about what they'll be doing, and we can tell them about our plans – it'll make for much better conversation than just the three of us. Six," she told the usher.
"Fysiká, Kyría," the man said. "This way please."
People who'd been ahead of the three in line glared daggers at them as they went to join the Viscontis. Luca clutched the ancient cup tight and kept his head down. If their genie had chosen that moment to return, he would have wished to be back home in Portorosso at once.