The Prophecies
Sia, 17
Aeaea, 1945
There was a special woman in the village. Sia liked how other women spoke of her, in respectful whispers.
Sia had never actually talked to her directly before. And she was not really her aunt, but they called all the old women in the village Thea. Everyone called her Thea Thea.
She was a widow, forever clothed in black. At a certain time, every young woman in the village was called to her.
Thea Thea knew things. She had acquired a special status as a kafetzoú, a reader of fortunes. As a girl, Thea Thea told her mother what would happen before it did. She knew when the soldiers would come. She knew that she would have a husband from the closest island and they would marry and have one son before her husband would be killed in a terrible accident. It all came true. Everything she said happened, in some shape or form.
And there were countless other instances of foresight over the course of Thea Thea’s life, which elevated her status as an accurate kafetzoú but perhaps something more, like an oracle. She had always seen messages in the bottom of coffee cups. It was the way the shape formed, she said, and then a feeling that came over her. She saw what had already been determined in pictures, images, fragments. Some were clear and others less so. It depended on the person.
Sia didn’t remember much of life before the war. She saw the toll it had taken on the adults’ faces. Sia had been protected from it somewhat. She played with her brothers and sisters in the forest and watched the goats on the mountainside. The Italians came and left. Their island was small and whatever fighting had been happening, had not come to them. She didn’t understand any of it, only that they were always hungry and the work on the land was very difficult. Sia dreamed of her father, in Australia, trying to help them and move them there.
Sia had memorised all her father’s letters. She knew, deep down, that she was his favourite. Now that Eleftheria was married and her father had given Eleftheria’s husband everything they owned for her dowry, Sia would be next in line. She was going to Australia first with their aunt, while her younger sister, Trina, had been given permission to go to Athens to learn dressmaking.
Sia splashed her face with water from the bucket and put on her day clothes. She watched over ten goats on the mountainside. All day, she would observe them chewing and sleeping. She practised her writing on pieces of bark. She dreamed of what was beyond the ocean. Thea Thea was the one with the gift. She would be able to tell her. It was not time yet. She could not be too early.
Sia knocked on her sister’s door. Eleftheria had just had a new baby. Eleftheria and her baby were home for forty days. Sia and her sister Trina were the only visitors allowed.
Their own mother had died very young. Sia only had one memory of her mother. She wore a headscarf and was shaking out a blanket in the sun.
‘Kaliméra,’ Sia said, poking her head through the door.
‘Hi, Sia!’ called out Eleftheria, smiling as she stirred a large pot.
‘Are you alright?’ Sia asked, coming into the house. Her youngest niece lay in a basket near the hearth, wrapped in a blanket.
Sia walked over and stroked the child’s chubby cheeks. She knew better than to say how cute the child was, or lament that the child wasn’t a boy like Eleftheria had hoped.
‘Are you feeling okay?’ Sia asked Eleftheria again.
‘I’ll be okay,’ Eleftheria said, wincing as she sat down. ‘But I’m not doing it again. Everyone says that, don’t they?’
‘I guess so,’ said Sia. ‘We don’t know any families with just one baby or one child.’
‘Eight or zero seems to be the way it’s done,’ Trina said, walking into the room. She had a big smile on her face as she leaned over her niece and stared at her. Sia gave her old doll, her koúkla Koula, to the new baby.
‘She’s beautiful,’ said Trina.
‘Don’t mátiaze the baby,’ Eleftheria said.
‘Ftoú ftoú ftoú,’ said Trina in the direction of her niece. ‘Oh, I can’t believe that we’ll be going at the same time on our adventures. Me to Athens. You to Australia.’
‘You are going to make the most beautiful clothes,’ said Sia to Trina.
‘You have to come back, you know. Don’t stay away too long,’ said Eleftheria. ‘Don’t forget about us.’
‘Oh, Trina, I wish you were coming with us now too,’ Sia said.
‘She will come later. And then I really will be all alone,’ said Eleftheria. ‘Except for all the babies.’
‘And your husband,’ said Trina.
‘Yes, that is true. We will still be here, waiting for news,’ Eleftheria said, sighing. ‘How am I going to feed all these babies? What if the Italians come back to the island? And the Germans? What will we do then?’
‘The war is over now,’ said Trina, sounding like she was convincing herself.
‘It’s not over,’ said Eleftheria, shaking her head. ‘We were lucky this time. But it’s not over.’
‘I will send you back money,’ Trina said. ‘I promise. I’m going to be an amazing seamstress and make beautiful dresses of golden thread. Then, after Sia is married, I will marry someone too. We will all be in Australia where it is safe and there is work, and then come back home to Greece.’
Eleftheria’s eyes started to water and she hugged Sia. ‘You will probably be able to eat whatever you like all the time. I bet they have nice food over there. Lots of syrupy sweet things.’
The baby started to cry again, and Eleftheria fastened her to her breast and sat staring out the window.
‘Don’t forget to write to me, both of you,’ Eleftheria said. ‘Don’t forget about me.’
‘I won’t forget you,’ Sia said, lowering her voice. ‘And you can write anything you like in your letters to me, because Thea Tasoula can’t read.’
‘But Baba can,’ said Eleftheria. ‘I can’t even remember him now. I know he was here, but it was so long ago.’
Sia nodded. To Sia, her father was words on paper, gifts, enough money so they didn’t starve, the promise of a new life. He was a saviour, a ghostly presence who would materialise once they got to their destination.
‘Thea Tasoula said that it’s your turn to see Thea Thea,’ Trina said.
‘Yes, I’m going today,’ Sia said. ‘She’s usually right about what she sees, isn’t she?’
‘As far as everyone knows,’ said Trina. ‘But sometimes she can’t see things for people. She said mine was too cloudy. She looked scared.’
‘The main thing is that you get a máti. You’ll need it where you’re going. Who knows what evil spirits are there and what the foreign people are like. The Australians.’
‘Yes, the Australians.’
Trina, Sia and Eleftheria laughed at the strange new word they had learned from their father’s letters.
_____
Everything had been different since Sia had become a woman. One day she woke up to blood-stained sheets and her aunt pronounced that she was not a child anymore. This seemed like great news, but it made her older sister a little sad. It had already happened for Trina, who had been sent to Thea Thea earlier than Sia.
There were now rules about talking to men.
‘They can get you into trouble now,’ said Thea Tasoula, shaking her head. And Sia accepted that it was the way things were and the way they had always been.
But Sia was looking forward to the future. She loved it when her favourite teacher at school talked about kairós. Not like the weather, but the moment of time, the moment of opportunity. Going to see Thea Thea would perhaps be one of those moments in time. Those select few that would shape her life, her destiny, her future. She knew it would be this kairós moment. The words of the kafetzoú, whatever they were.
If it was bad news, perhaps Sia wouldn’t be allowed to go to Australia. But then she would be able to stay with Eleftheria. Trina was coming later, with their brother Peter and his wife. Her other brothers and their families were staying here.
Sia took the dusty path to Thea Thea’s house. It was at the edge of the village, past her beloved school and the church, past the market. It was white with a small yard at the front. A chicken poked about in the grass. She smelled the burning of candles.
There was an olive grove at the side of the house, but the trees had been stripped bare.
Sia knocked on the wooden door. Thea Thea opened it. She wore the traditional black of the village widows, her hair in a middle part and a headscarf.
‘There you are,’ Thea Thea said, nodding. ‘I’ve been waiting for you. I thought you had got lost or something.’
‘How could I get lost? I’ve lived here my whole life.’
Thea Thea beckoned her to follow and gestured to a table and two chairs in the main room of the house, near the fireplace.
‘Well, Anastasia,’ she said as she sat down. The woman had small dark eyes and a deeply lined face. Sia felt like she was being watched, observed, assessed.
‘What can I do for you today?’ she asked.
‘It’s my turn for you to tell me about my life, about what I need for the future.’
‘Oh, yes. Let me make you a coffee.’
Sia waited as the lady lit the fire and made the coffee in the briki, humming.
‘It is a good time to be leaving, Sia,’ she said. ‘Your father is very smart. The war is not over. It will not be good here for a long, long time. Many Greeks are moving to other places. Many will go. Some will come back. But it is a difficult thing to leave your home.’
Thea Thea sounded sad, and Sia wished she knew what to say.
She poured the coffee and motioned to Sia to drink it. She watched Sia as she sipped its bitterness. It wasn’t as sweet as Sia liked, but she drank it anyway until there was a dark smudge at the bottom of the off-white cup.
‘Do you need to see it?’ Sia asked Thea Thea.
‘Of course. Please pass it here,’ she said.
Sia handed Thea Thea the cup.
Thea Thea turned it around and gazed at it, squinting. ‘Well, look at that,’ she said, sighing.
‘What?’
‘You will go to a new country. The journey will be long, but you will be reunited with your father.’
Sia exhaled in relief.
‘Thank you.’
‘But – oh, oh,’ she paused and her eyes flicked to Sia and then back to the cup. She swallowed.
‘What is it? What?’
Thea Thea’s forehead creased and she shook her head.
‘Sia, I have four prophecies for you.’
‘Four?’
‘The first is that you will betray your father.’
‘What?’ Sia gasped. ‘I would never do that.’
‘That is what I see.’
Sia clutched her hands together.
‘But how?’
Thea Thea shook her head. ‘I can’t say.’
‘Will I be married? Will I have children? Boys? What about boys? Will I have any sons?’
‘I don’t – oh.’
‘What?’
‘You get married, but the second prophecy is that you will be a mother to a girl. But you do not give birth to her.’
‘I don’t?’
‘You do everything possible to keep her safe. You – you kill for her.’
‘I - what?’
‘This baby lives for more than a hundred years,’ she said. ‘It is very important you look after her. She must marry a nice man. Evangelos. Even if she is not his first choice. They have a very good, long marriage, they have sons and a daughter. You ask her to send money to our village to help us. She does this for as far as I can see into the future. She has a tough shell on the outside, but inside her heart is good. She helps our people and our village with her kindness. Asks for nothing in return. They have sons and one daughter. This daughter – she travels far from home.’
Sia didn’t know what to say. Thea Thea was staring deep into the cup. Her voice was low. Time seemed to stand still.
‘The third prophecy is that there is another young woman. She is not related to you in any way. You see yourself in her and you try to help her. You try to save her. You put your own life at risk to do so. She is pregnant with a child, whose fate I cannot see.’
The old lady exhaled and put her head on the wooden table, then lifted it up.
‘I’m very tired now. Your journey is an interesting one, Sia. I will give you four mátia. You must wear one and give the others to your girls.’ As she spoke, she dropped the tiny mátia onto a black scarf on the table in front of Sia. ‘This is for your daughter. This is for your granddaughter.’
And another one.
‘This is for your great-granddaughter.’
‘You said that there was a fourth prophecy?’
‘The fourth prophecy. One day all these mátia will come back. I saw them here. They will come back to our island, together.’
‘When?’
‘With your great-granddaughter. Her name is Clara. She is the daughter of your granddaughter. It is a long time in the future. The seas are very high. There is no longer a path to our island. I see a beautiful tree and an artist painting,’ she said, and then exhaled. ‘Oh, I need to have a rest now, my dear. Fasting makes me very tired. Nothing to eat – well, little to eat anyway. I hope that you have a good journey. What is the xenitiá called again?’
‘Australia.’
‘Australia,’ Thea Thea repeated.
‘Thank you for seeing me,’ Sia said.
‘You’re welcome. Kaló taxídi, Sia,’ she said, taking both Sia’s hands. ‘Be careful. You are very powerful, you know. The road will not be easy, but it will be yours. I saw very clearly for you. I wish you well. One more thing.’
Thea Thea let go of her hands. Sia looked down and in her palm was a seed.
‘Where should I plant this?’ Sia asked.
‘In your favourite place,’ Thea Thea said.
Sia shuffled out the door, carrying the mátia in one hand, the seed in the other. She could feel them rolling around like tiny pebbles. She would keep them safe. One was for her, and others for the three new girls who would be part of her journey. Disobeying her father? How would she have a girl that was not hers? And killing someone for her? And she wasn’t going to have any boys? That was not good news. Boys were always a cause for celebration. She wouldn’t tell her father or her aunt.
Sia walked along the dusty road and started up the mountain. She hummed as she climbed towards her goats. Her favourite view was coming up. This was the best vantage point of the whole island, where she could see the sky and the ocean through the cliff.
Sia dug a little hole with her hands and planted the seed in the soil.
Inside her cloth bag was a biscuit tin that her father had sent her, along with her school fountain pen. Sia wrote a letter to Clara and shared a fragment of her favourite poem, folding it into a neat square, along with a photograph of her and her sisters. She pushed down the lid on her tin, sealing it shut and hid it deep underneath the rocks.
Sia stood up and looked out at the ocean and the sky. She breathed it all in, holding the four mátia, ready for her next chapter.