“My God!” Jim jumps out of the car. His recurrent dream, walking about in some great ruin of the past—ever since the effort to find El Modena Elementary School, it’s been haunting him. On waking he always scoffed. No site exists without fences, ticket booths, information plaques, guides, visiting hours, lines, roped-off areas, snack bars, hordes of tourists milling around and wondering what the fuss was about; isn’t that right?

But here they are. He pushes through shrubs, climbs a tumble of broken blocks, stands in the shattered entrance of an ancient church. Cruciform floor plan, altar against the back wall, which is dug into the knoll. Columns rolled against the walls.

The others appear. “Look,” Jim says. “The church is probably Byzantine, but when they built it they used the materials at hand. The columns are probably Roman, maybe Greek. The big blocks in the walls that are all spongy, those are probably Minoan. Cut two thousand years before the church was built.”

Sandy nods, grinning. “And look at the stone in the doorway. They had a locking post on the door, and as it swung open it scraped this curve here. Perfect semicircle.” He laughs the Sandy laugh, a stutter of pure delight.

Humphrey and Angela walk to the north side of the knoll, investigating what looks like a small fortress, its walls intact. “Well preserved,” Sandy remarks. “It’s probably Venetian,” Jim says. “A thousand years newer than the church.”

“Man, I can’t really grasp these time scales, Jimbo.”

“Neither can I.”

On the beach below them are a pair of decrepit boats, pulled onto the sand. One appears to have an outboard motor under a tarp. From their vantage on the knoll they can see far out to sea, and back inland. Emptiness everywhere; the land deserted, the Aegean a blank plate.

“Let’s camp here tonight,” Jim suggests. “Two can sleep in the car, and two on our beach towels in the sand. We can eat the rest of the lunch food.”

It’s late and they’ve spent the day traveling; they all like the plan.

The sun nears the hills to the west as they bring the food up to the ruined church. The slightly hazy evening light brings out the orange in the rock, and the entire knoll turns deep apricot. Frilly pink herringbone clouds are pasted to the sky. The fallen blocks on the church entryway make perfect stools, tables, backrests.

They eat. The food and drink have vivid tastes. There’s a group of goats on the hillside to the south of them. Sandy holds his hand up to the light, framing a pair of black rams. “Back in the Bronze Age.”

After dinner they sit back and watch the florid twilight clouds as the light leaks away from the land. An abandoned, still, dusky landscape. “Tell us about this place, Jim,” Angela says.