Some Kind of Wonderful- Part One by: Enemyoffun Charlie Sandsmark and his mother, Helena, travel around the world from one archaeological dig to another, looking for evidence of the ancient Amazonian culture. So far they have found nothing, until Charlie discovers something wonderful about himself on a small island in the Aegean Sea.

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Author's Note: Here's Ch. One of a brand new Retcon. Originally this story wasn't part of my initial plan for my next story. I was going to do a Mattie story followed by my sequel to Green Arrow. But I couldn't write a thing for Mattie and I figured Olivia could wait a bit until I got this one down. So instead I started to develop an interesting concept for what I thought was going to be a Wonder Woman story but as I started looking for ways to make her a believable teenager, I came upon Cassandra Sandsmark. A lightbulb went off in my head. I'd like to thank djkauf for the lightning quick editing and DC Comics for the use of their wonderful characters.

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Chapter One:

“Mom, do we really have to be here?”

My mother ignored me. She always ignores me when she gets involved in something. It was her thing. She has this habit of finding something that really interests her and blocks out the rest of the world. I think it’s one of the reasons my Dad left. He got tired of being ignored, too. At least that’s what I’ve always gathered. My mother tells a different story though. She’s like that, too. She always puts her spin on things which is never a good thing when it comes to her. I wouldn’t call my mother a radical feminist but she definitely wasn’t shy about her beliefs either. I guess that’s what makes her so hard to get along with in the Academic Community. Dr. Helena Sandsmark, the Grab-You-By-Your Balls Feminist Archaeologist.

At least that’s what everyone at the community college calls her. At the museum where she works they actually call her Dr. Amazon. That one made me smirk. I smirk because if you’d actually met her you’d see she was completely different. There are a lot of young Grad students afraid to attend her classes because of her rep. My mother kinda likes to break through barriers and go against the norm. She tells me that being a woman in a male dominated field helps. In order to succeed she needs to make the others fear her and take notice. I laugh at that too. My mother is not an overbearing woman in the least. She’s often described as tall, dark and menacing. In truth, she’s barely five foot six, wears glasses and is the kindest person I know.

Except when it comes to her work.

When it comes to her field, she doesn’t like to believe in what others before her have come to believe. She always tells me to stand up for what I believe in and if I think something is wrong, I should find a way to make it right. That’s what drove the two of us on this particular journey. Mom works at the Field Museum in Chicago, her expertise is in Ancient Greek civilizations and culture. She’s been studying it for the last fifteen years. In fact she liked it so much that in her first year of college---while in Athens on a vacation---she met and fell in love with my father, a local whose name was Zeus. See, I told you she loved the culture. They spent a hot and wild few weeks together, she didn’t even know she was pregnant until she got back to the states. Even then, she didn’t let that stop her. After I was born, my grandmother raised me while my mother pursued her degree.

I’m not saying she was a lousy mother but she can get distracted. I guess it runs in the family. You see her passion and distraction is what drove us to this place. Me, I’m a distracted slacker---my principal’s words, not mine---Mom is a distracted academic. We originally went to Crete; Mom was currently in the midst of writing another boring book on something else equally boring. Don’t ask me to explain the details. We were scraping through the ruins of Knossos---the place where the Minotaur was supposed to be, I think---and Mom found something tucked away in a corner. Ok, so it was this tiny little etching. Most of the scholars before her thought it was some kind of ancient graffiti. But Mom has this theory. It’s one that’s not highly shared by anyone else in her field. You see she might be a scholar of Ancient Greece but my Mom’s real passion lies with the Amazons. And you wonder why people think she’s a feminist. You see the historical place of the Amazons---Themiscyra, I think it’s called---has always been believed to be in modern day Turkey, on the Terme River. Ok, so bear with me a second because this is where things get kinda boring. It’s a little known belief that the Amazons used to live on the coast of the Black Sea in a place once known as Pontus. Many scholars believe that they moved their civilization up the Terme River, which was back then known as the Thermodon River.
Ok, so are you with me so far? Well Mom---and a few others---believe that the Amazons never even lived in Pontus. That their actual home was in the Aegean, somewhere near modern day Crete. In fact, she theorized that somewhere out there there was a small island where the Amazons actually called home. My mother calls this the True Themyscira---notice the different spelling in the name. She believes that the Pontus site was falsified to keep men from discovering the Amazonian secret. Except whenever anyone asked her to clarify what said secret was my mother has never been able to come up with a straight answer.

So what does this have to do with an ancient doodle on a wall, well I’m getting to that. According to Mom, the wall “doodle” was actually a piece of Amazonian text, lost to the ages. She’s found similar writings all over Greece and she believes that they are actually map markers, supposedly leading to her True Themyscira. So after finding this latest little squiggle, the two of us jumped on a plane, hauled it back to the mainland and she did her research. I love going on her little trips, I love getting all the time off from school but sometimes they were so damn boring. As cool as you think it would be---maybe Indiana Jones or even Lara Croft like---we spend most of our time in libraries or museum basements looking at old books covered with ancient dust.

We only had a six-month sabbatical this time and we were on our last week of that. When I was little, I used to enjoy these little adventures, scouring the globe with her. I mean how many kids do you know who can speak ten different languages by the age of thirteen and six different ones that no one wants to know by the age of sixteen. In case you’re wondering, I’ll be turning seventeen in two months. So most of her sabbatical---my extended “vacation”---has been spent in libraries. But this time, according to her, she was on to something. This time she was right, this time we were on the trail of something to redefine history.

And that leads us to here. On a small island in the middle of nowhere. I mean nowhere, too. We spent three hours on a small fishing boat to be carted out to this tiny little speck that doesn’t even appear on maps. The fisherman who brought us out here said that they mostly avoid it because there’s some kind of disturbance that messes with their equipment. He said that his grandfather’s grandfather used to tell stories of men stepping onto the island and never being heard from again. Well you can imagine how excited Mom got when she heard that. After that she was convinced we were in the right place. So she paid the man, told him to come back in a couple of hours to collect us and maybe he too could be a part of history.

“Charlie, would you put that damn thing away, you know I hate it.”

That damn thing was my PSP. It’s the only thing that’s been keeping me sane on this trip. Like I said before, I used to love bouncing around the world with her. Back when I was ten. But I’m an American teenager; I need television, and video games and shopping malls not moldy tombs, dusty libraries and hours riding in leaky boats and rickety old pickups. Where’s the fun and adventure in that? My mother doesn’t see it that way. She doesn’t like modern living much. She much prefers living out of a knapsack, sleeping in tents, washing her clothes in the river. The PSP was a gift from my grandmother. At least she knew what it was like to be me. My grandfather---her husband---was like my mother, always out looking for something. Except he was a treasure hunter, convinced that there was something always buried just below the surface.

“C’mon Mom” I whined, not bothering to look up from the screen. “You dragged me out here in the middle of God knows where, in the sweltering sun and you expect me to give up the only piece of modern convenience I own.”

Sixty-five percent of the year, we live with my grandmother in the suburbs. It’s this nice three bedroom Victorian. Its kinda cool because my room was once the attic. When I was born, my grandfather converted it into a bedroom for me. First, it was a nursery then it slowly evolved with me. He was Greek, too; I think that’s where some of my mother’s passion for Greek men came from. Some people say that a little girl often falls in love with a man who reminds them of their father. My grandfather was David Kapatelis. He once told me he wanted to be an archaeologist when he was younger but then jokingly said in “another life”. My grandmother, Julia, was married. The way she tells it, she and my grandfather had a whirlwind romance.

My mother uses my grandmother’s maiden name Sandsmark. It’s not that she doesn’t love her father’s name, it’s that feminist thing again. She’s under the impression that just because a woman is married she shouldn’t have to take her husband’s name. So when she got old enough, she chose to take my grandmother’s last name instead. Of course, she followed tradition, making sure I took her last name too. But I think that was because she never knew my father’s last name. Funnily enough on the birth certificate in his place, it says Zeus, I wonder if that makes me a Demi-God.
My mother stopped whatever it was she was doing and walked over to me. We brought a pair of beach chairs with us and I was currently occupying one, trying to stay out of the sun. I burned easily. My mother leaned over my shoulder and huffed.

“Of all the games to chose you had to pick that one” She sighed. “It’s a disgrace.”

The game she was referring too was God of War. It was all about a Greek warrior named Kratos, out to get his revenge against Ares, the God of War, for killing his family. My mother hated it because it was completely inaccurate. I liked it because of all the blood and violence. I also liked the fact that it got under my mother’s skin so much. She was a stickler when it came to things like that. Even though she constantly complained about how Greek Myth was male dominated---don’t even get her started about poor Medusa---she also hated it when Hollywood screwed things up. I used to like the original Clash of the Titans when I was a kid. My grandfather and I used to watch it but we had to do it in secret because if my mother ever caught us watching it she used to lecture us on how wrong it was. Last spring my friends and I went to see the remake and when I got home, she grilled me on it, wanting to know what they screwed up this time. Ok, I admit, they fucked that one pretty bad. It was cool to see Medusa and the Kraken rendered in CGI though.

Her complaining about my games annoyed me. But I knew how to push her buttons too.

“Are we done yet?” I whined, putting an extra effort into my whine.

She smirked, pushing her glasses up onto the top of her head. She gave me a look, the look, the one that told me I wasn’t fooling her. She opened her mouth to say something but closed it just as quickly. I smirked; she went back to doing whatever it was she was doing. I paused my game to take a look, sometimes I got curious too. But there was nothing to look at. When we arrived on the island an hour ago, she broke out her gear and set up on the beach. Then she proceeded to comb through the white sand, looking for some evidence. She often told me that some of the best evidence could be found on the beach. So far, she had her little metal bucket filled with evidence: unfortunately, for her it was all modern junk. A lot of it crap washed up onto the shore.

I sighed and picked up my game again. It was a shame that we were still on the beach. The rest of the island looked kinda cool actually. It was mainly this huge jungle looking forest. Do they call them jungles on islands? Anyway, the foliage was so thick it looked like you’d need a machete to cut through it. My grandfather would have loved this place. He used to tell me that some of his best times were spent bushwhacking through places just like this one. He used to have the greatest stories about all the crazy stuff he used to do. Of course, he exaggerated a lot of them but it was still fun to hear them. I knew just looking at that place there’d be no way I could convince he to let me go poking around in there. Besides, she had the only machete and she guarded it like it was made of gold. I think she half expected me to try something stupid like that.

“Mom, this blows,” I complained, setting my PSP aside. “Can I go poking around in the jungle?”

She didn’t even look at me when she answered. “Not on your life.”

I blew air form the corner of my mouth. I groaned. “Can I at least go walking along the beach? Who knows I might find a beached mermaid or something.”

My mother stopped her beachcombing and gave me a funny look.

“Hey, it could happen.”

She smiled slightly. “Are you sure you’re not going to go wandering into the woods.”

I groaned. “I’m not a little kid anymore. You tell me not to do something; I’m going to do it.”

She nodded. “Ok but be back here in an hour. I have to use the radio and call Costas so he can come and take us back to the mainland.”

I smiled real big and gave her a half-handed wave. She didn’t even notice and went right back to her whatever it was she was doing. Me, I unzipped my hoodie and tossed it on the chair. I used to have real long hair, down past my shoulders. It was something cool to do in middle school. But when I became a freshman, I cut it all off. I think my mother was a little perturbed by that. I used to let her braid it and things like that. In my household, I was always taught to be gender tolerant. When I was younger, my mother raised me to believe that there was no real gender, that they were just names that male society used. So she often put me in pink, braided my hair into pigtails and let me play with dolls. I didn’t know anything was wrong until a couple of guys in elementary school kicked my ass for wearing a purple t-shirt to school.

My grandfather changed things after that. He didn’t undermine my mother but he made sure that I dressed more like a boy. He taught me to fight too. He was an amateur boxer in his youth. He had this punching bag and some weights in the garage. Every night for almost three years straight the two of us used to go down there are work out. It angered the hell out of Mom but because she worked all the time, there was no real way to stop it.

My hair was finally getting longish again, which secretly made Mom happy I think. It was down to my shoulders and as black as night. Just like my father’s, according to her. Whereas my mother had a mixed complexion mine was more olive colored, like a Greek. I guess it had something to do with all that Greek blood flowing through my veins. I had striking blue eyes though. My father had blue eyes but not nearly as dashing as mine. When I was little, it used to upset me that my mother didn’t tell me more about him. I thought she was being secretive but in truth she didn’t really know all that much. They only spent a short time together and most of that was wild love making. Don’t worry, I didn’t find that out until much later but it still creeped me out to here.

I got half way down the beach when my mother called out to me. “Charlie, if you find anything interesting don’t pick it up. Shout for me and I’ll come right away.”

I rolled my eyes. “I know the drill, Mom.”

I said it half aloud. Not that she heard me anyway. When she got into her work, she really got into it. One time in Athens---last summer actually---we were on this little farm following another one of her crazy leads, when a bull broke from its pen. It went rampaging around the yard, smashing a few wine barrels, busting up a wheelbarrow. It Came close to hitting my mother about three times. But she never even flinched. It took the farmer and two of his hands nearly twenty minutes to wrangle the bull back into his pen. I found out later that my mother never even knew it happened. She was so engrossed in her work she didn’t notice a thing. Me, I spent the whole time in the tree nearby, clinging onto a branch for dear life.

I wandered away from our little camp and off toward something, anything more exciting than playing in the sand.

My grandfather and I used to camp a lot. We used to pack up the truck and drive for a long time to this great camping ground. I’m not sure where it was but it was fantastic. He had this great spot---a secluded place where no one else seemed to show up. In case you haven’t noticed already, my mother and grandfather didn’t exactly see eye to eye. He used to say for the life of him he couldn’t figure out where her feminist attitude was coming from. He wasn’t saying it was bad but at the same time, he wasn’t saying it was healthy either. Every time the two of us would try to do anything together, she would try her hardest to nip it in the bud. I think she thought he was trying to undermine her ability to raise me. The only problem is that he and my grandmother did all the raising actually.

Anyways, we had this sweet spot. It was this great clearing, near a lake. The two of us would fish and tell stories around the campfire. He would share tales of his youthful adventures and make me feel like I was an adult. My grandfather had this thing where he never talked down to you, no matter how young you were. He said a person is a person no matter how young they were. So he treated me like an adult, which I loved. When we weren’t fishing or telling stories, he’d teach me other things. For instance, he taught me how to fire a bow. Yeah, I’m not sure why that had any significance but he seemed to think it did. My grandfather wasn’t a hunter---he abhorred the practice---but he said his family came from a long line of hunters. He also taught me how to throw a javelin and discus. We did all of that in the woods. He was obsessed with things like that.

Once again, he said it had something to do with our ancestors. He talked a lot about our heritage, about what it meant to be Greek.

Right now, walking barefoot through the white sands on the beach, I missed him so much that my chest hurt. If you haven’t figured it out already, my grandfather was gone. He passed away right before I entered high school. I’m not really sure how it happened either. I know you expect me to say he died of old age or cancer but the truth was much more horrifying. He was mugged then stabbed. At least that’s what I was told. He was walking out of the bank and someone grabbed him at his car. He was dragged into an alley where he was robbed and killed. I cried for days afterwards. It was a senseless, heinous crime. My grandfather was an innocent; he couldn’t have hurt a fly. When I asked my mother and grandmother why something like this would happen they were very subdued about it. I think it was hard on them to talk about it.

Thinking about it now sent a tear rolling down my cheek.

The cawing of a bird interrupted my thoughts. I snapped around, looking for it. It was the first animal I’d heard since we got here, before that I was convinced the island was deserted. I scanned the tree line, even going so far as to look up at the canopy. But I couldn’t find the bird. It was a strange sound, one that I’d never heard before. There weren’t many birds back home, well nothing exotic anyway. AS much as I hated going on these little expeditions now, I always liked looking at the birds. In some places we went to, there were some fantastic birds. My favorite time was when we spent two months in Africa. My mother was convinced that some secret of the Amazons was hidden there. So she dragged me through a few countries. It was horrible. But I loved all the animals, especially the birds. It was kinda cool because I’d only seen animals like this in the zoo. But to see them out in the wild, in their own habits, it was exhilarating.

The bird cawed again. Ok, so it wasn’t a caw exactly, it sounded almost like a giant cat meowing. I know it sounds strange but that’s what I heard. I continued to scan the tree line but I still couldn’t see anything. I heard the noise again and bit my lip. I turned around, trying to see if my mother could see me. She was at the other end of the beach now, busy poking in the sand. I looked back at the dense foliage and made a split decision. I had to see if I could find that bird. I took a deep breath and pushed my way through. It was hard going; the underbrush was thick. There were these giant ferns with huge leaves the size of my head. As I was trying to push through, one of the leaves slapped in the face. It kinda stung but I bit my tongue to keep from crying out.

Finally, I pushed inside. I stumbled and ended up on my knees. When I looked up, it was little walking into a whole new world. Only the foliage around the perimeter of the little island jungle was thick and dense. The stuff inside was wild and overgrown but it looked much more manageable. I clamored to my feet, using a nearby tree to help myself up. The one thing I noticed immediately---besides all the green---was how much hotter it was in here. Outside the little jungle, it was hot but inside it was like walking into a sauna. I started to sweat almost immediately. After only a few steps, my shirt was clinging to my body. I actually thought about taking it off but decided against it.

The other thing I noticed was the bugs. There were a lot of them, most of them flying insects. They zipped in front of my face, buzzed annoyingly in my ears. I swatted loads of them away. The light in the jungle was muted, getting to the floor below by patches in the canopy above. It was barely seeable in here. Luckily, I was prepared. My grandfather taught me. He said that a person should have three things when traveling: a pocketknife, a book of matches and a little flashlight. Though I left my hoodie back at camp, I was carrying my backpack. I slipped it off my shoulder and set it on the ground. I unzipped it and rummaged around inside. It was mostly comics---Warrior Angel and Mega Babe---and a few spare video games. I pushed those aside and found the flashlight.

I pulled it out and clicked it on. The beam cut through the patched light like a light saber. I zipped up my pack and reslung it on my shoulder. I shined the light in front of me, making sure I didn’t bumble into something I shouldn’t. A place like this---where there was so little light---was a good place to do something stupid. I watched this TV show--- Buck McGrady’s Survival Guide---where the host, Buck, always warned of dangerous places like this. He always said it was a good idea to keep your wits about you and make sure you know where you’re stepping before you do so. So that’s what I did. I shined the light on the ground first then all around me. I didn’t want to step in a sink hole or worse, onto some poison reptile.

I continued taking things slowly, using my light as a guide. I was trying to follow the path of the bird; going in what I thought might be the right direction. But after its first initial caws, it had completely disappeared. It was possible, thought I’d never admit it openly, that I’d been hearing things. Maybe I was so bored and so hard up for adventure, that my mind created the stupid bird. After all, I’d never heard anything like it before. Perhaps my brain was sun addled or something. I think that can happen. People sit out in the sun too long and they go a little bonkers. There was this guy I saw when we were in a street market in New Delhi; he acted like he could have been sun addled. He came up to us while Mom was buying something from a vendor---information I think. He was real creepy, got right in my face. He actually touched my hair and said what a pretty golden color it was.

The nut was so addled that he couldn’t tell black from blonde. He kinda freaked me out. The vendor ended up chasing him off. After that, I stuck pretty close to my mother. But the whole time we were in the market, I felt the guy watching me. Even though he was long gone, I had this strange feeling that he was lurking somewhere in the shadows. For the rest of the time in the market---hell while we were in India---I kept looking over my shoulder, making sure he wasn’t there.

I stopped to wipe my sweaty brow. My clothes were now so wet with sweat that it looked like I’d been caught in a rainstorm. My hair was sticking to my head like a helmet and my socks were sloshing around in my boots. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d sweat this much in my entire life. What’s worse was the fact that I was getting nowhere, except farther away from the beach. I turned and looked behind me but saw nothing but dark green. I cursed. I hadn’t realized how far I’d wandered into this mess. My mother was so going to kill me, that is if I ever got out of this place. I bit my lip, shining the light in front of me and then behind, trying to decide what I should do. I could continue forward and hope to stumble onto a bird that I wasn’t sure existed. Or I could wander back and hope to stumble out of this place.

My mind was made up for me when I heard another strange bird call. It was the same as before and it was coming from in front of me.

I snapped the light up, scanning about. At first, there was nothing then something blue glinted back at me. At first I thought I’d come upon some kind of stone or something. Then the blue thing moved. I jumped back, startled. It was about twenty feet in front of me and slowly moved out of some ferns. My mouth dropped open: it was a peacock. I stumbled back as it wandered out in front of me then stopped. At first, it didn’t seem to notice me at all. But as I trailed the light along its larger than normal body, it snapped its head around to face me. I’d seen peacocks before, in the zoo and while on safari in Africa with Mom. But I never in a million years thought I’d see one here, after all, we were in the middle of the Aegean. Peacocks were native to Africa and Southern Asia, not way over here.

The bird stared at me. Our eyes locked for a moment and it was as if it was looking right into my soul. My fingers trembled and I dropped the flashlight. The bird didn’t move. I cursed and bent to pick up. As I did, the bird seemed to follow my movements, bending its head with my body. I watched it mesmerized as I slowly picked up the flashlight.

“What kind of freaky bird are you?” I asked, finding some semblance of courage.

The bird cocked its head. It was creepy because it almost looked like the thing understood me. The bird and I continued to stare at one another. It was kinda creepy because when I moved, it moved. I tested it. I waved my hand and it seemed to move its head, mimicking the movement of my hand. Then I nodded my head and it bobbed its head. I took a step back and it took a step back. I laughed. It didn’t laugh with me of course but it seemed to rear up like it was laughing. Things changed though when I took a step forward. As soon as I did so, it reacted badly. It puffed up real big, opening that huge plumage of tail feathers it was famous for and snapped at me. I stumbled backwards, tripping over a tree root. I cursed, shaking my hand. There was a deep gash where the bird nailed me with its beak.

I pulled a bandana out of my pocket and wrapped my hand.

The bird stood before me, its tail still spread out, trying to look as threatening as possible. It was working too, because there was no way I was going to try that again. It took a step toward me, challenging me to do it. I shook my head, holding up to show my hand. It backed off after that, getting the message I think. There was no way I was going to mess with terror bird again. The bird didn’t lower its tail until a few minutes later though. Me, I couldn’t just lie there like an idiot. I was scared to move for fear that it might come at me again. Finally, it seemed to calm down and wandered further away. I took that as the opportunity to finally push myself to my feet. When my bandanna wrapped hand touched the ground I winced.

The bird cocked its head. Maybe it knew that it wounded me.

I leaned against the tree. “What the hell are you doing here anyway?” It cocked its head again. “Don’t you know that you’re not supposed to be on this island?”

I’m not sure if it understood me or not but the bird ruffled its feathers. Then it turned and as quick as a whip, disappeared back into the jungle. I was stunned for a few seconds, not sure, what I just witnessed. Did it understand me and flee when I called it out? I shook my head, that was ridiculous. It probably got bored with me and decided to go back to wherever it came from. But it was still kinda screwy to see a peacock in the Aegean? I shook my head and looked down at my hand. I had more pressing matters to worry about though. I could feel the blood seeping through the bandanna. I cursed. The son of a bitch got me real deep.

I clutched the flashlight in my good hand and turned back the way I came. I pushed my way back through the foliage, only getting slapped in the face a few times by fern leaves. It took me a lot quicker than I thought to get back where I started. I thought I’d wandered real deep into the jungle but it was only about a twenty minute walk back to where I started. When I finally pushed my way out onto the white sand, the light was so bright it was blinding. I stumbled and fell out, face first. I got a mouth full of sand, cursing my stupidity. I pushed up, spitting sand from my mouth.

“Charlie!” I heard my mother’s voice call out to me. “Where are you?”

Great now I’m in real deep.

I pushed myself up with my good hand. I brushed the sand off my body and made sure I had no telltale signs of wandering off where I shouldn’t. I was clean but they still didn’t save me from explaining my hand to her. She was going to freak. So I took a deep breath and started walking back toward her, ready to face the music. When she saw me, she looked relieved. All our stuff was packed up and in a pile behind her. My mother was walking toward me, her face an expressionless mask. When she saw me with a wrapped hand, cradling it like I’d had it chopped off, she shook her head.

“I’m sorry Mom, it was this…” I started but she cut me off.

“You went wandering off into the jungle didn’t you?”

I tried again. “It wasn’t my fault. There was this bird…I followed it.”

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “It’s always something with you, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t do it on purpose. It was this fricken bird…a peacock. If you can believe that.”

“A peacock?”

For a second there was this spark in her eyes. But was gone just as quickly. Instead, she grabbed my hand and unwrapped the bandanna. When she saw my cut, with all the swelling blood, she went livid. “Jesus, Charlie. I tell you not to do one thing and you go off and do it anyway. This is bad, really bad. You’ve ruined the rest of the day now.”

My eyes swelled with tears a bit. I know I’m practically an adult but that kinda stung. She never listened to me. She always assumed that when something bad happened to me it was my fault. I hated her for that. My grandfather would have listened. In fact, he would have stalked right off into the jungle looking for the damn bird who did this to me. In fact, he’d probably wrestle the bird to the ground and drag it back out here so I could bite it, an eye for an eye.

My mother stalked off back toward our stuff but stopped when she realized I wasn’t following. She snapped around. “Are you coming? I have a first aid kit over here but we’re probably going to have to call Costas and leave early.”

I sighed and reluctantly followed.

She didn’t say another thing to me after that. She led me over to our stuff, got her first aid kit and did what she could for my hand. She cleaned it and then wrapped it, making sure that it was tight enough to keep the blood from flowing. After that, she took out her sat phone and called Costas. As punishment for not listening to her, she took my PSP, not that I could play it with one hand anyway. Instead, I sat in one of the chairs and stared out at the water, waiting for Costas to come back. About an hour later, the little fishing boat finally arrived. I helped what I could loading our stuff inside then got in myself.

Costas and my mother traded words in Greek, making arrangements to come back here tomorrow. Me I continued to stare at the island. For a second I thought I saw a glint of blue but it disappeared just as quickly.