We located a pay phone, and I tried calling the number we’d been given.
Petrina Vasiliou answered. I told her we were from an international historical society, here researching Greek monasteries. She replied to say that it wasn’t her area and tried to shuffle me off with a couple of numbers of other professors of history. In desperation, I almost mentioned Rosemary’s name. First, I tried telling her about the symbol we’d come across, describing it in detail and saying that we were interested in sourcing its origin.
Her interest seemed immediately piqued, though she also sounded hesitant. She invited us to come over after her husband, Rico, arrived home from work.
Holding back a sigh of relief, I looked across at Gray and nodded.
THE SIXTH CHALLENGE
53. Evie
I WOKE WITH SKIN LIKE A fish, cold and wet. I’d been sweating, dreaming that everyone here was somehow gone and I was the last person. The monastery had sealed itself, and there was no way out, as if the windows and doors were its eyes and mouths and it had shut them all tight. I was trapped inside an insane mind.
Breathing steadily, I reoriented myself.
I had to calm myself. Exist in the moment and close everything else out. Focus on the prize.
If learning the ability to focus under intense pressure was what the mentors had intended, then it was working. There had never been a time in my life when my surrounds had seemed so alien, my dreams so harsh, and days when I’d had to fight so hard not to pack it all in and run.
Yolanda, Louelle and Mei slept in their beds near me in the dormitory. Outside the high window, rain still surged through the inky night.
Evie, you’re okay. No matter which way it goes, it’s okay.
Still, panic shot into my chest and throat, making my breaths shallow.
Why did I feel so much like a prisoner going to the gallows? Maybe it was because each challenge just felt so enormous to me that I might as well be facing hurdles a hundred feet tall. If I was meant to be feeling like a winner by now, then the program had failed. Maybe in retrospect, when we were sailing away from here, I’d finally feel healed. Things always looked different in retrospect, as though you’d suddenly been given a new set of lenses to view them through.
I thought of Gray and the girls and knew that I already saw my life with them differently.
When the bells rang, the tiny screen on my wristband remained dark. The other women left the room one by one as their wristbands flashed, the rest of us chiming good luck. Until there was only me left in the room.
Almost a complete hour ticked past in the empty room.
Finally, my wristband flashed number four. I was in the last of the four teams.
Richard stood outside, his pucker of forehead muscles belying the wink in his eye. “Ah, so my final partner in crime is Evie. Makes sense it would be you.”
“Let’s smash this.” My voice echoed hollowly down the hall.
We ran, for what would be the last time, out to the garden to meet the mentors.
“You’ve made it this far. You hardly need any words of encouragement,” Brother Sage told us. “Just do what makes sense to you, as you have in every other challenge.”
The mentors guided us to the sixth challenge room.
We stepped into almost total darkness, the blinking red bulb below the challenge clock the only point of light in the room.
The door closed behind us.
Nothing. No sounds, no smell, nothing being shown to us.
“Ah, guys . . . mentors . . . I don’t think your lights are working,” Richard joked.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” I breathed. “Show us what you’ve got.”
“Not funny.” Richard walked a short distance, exhaling loudly.
I turned. A light had sprung to life, but only the light of a candle.
The man who held the candle began walking in a small circle around a hexagonal box in the centre of the room. He wore the loose garb of the monks, and his feet were bare.
Okay, there’s the box. Same as always.
What else was in this room? My memory of the fourth challenge sharpened. I wanted to step across the room, but I hesitated.
Richard strode forward and made it to the middle of the room unscathed. Emboldened, I followed him.
The box seemed solid, with no markings or symbols. We carried out our usual tests on it—knocking, listening, trying to twist it or move it somehow.
The monk continued to walk in a circle, on the outside of us.
“Hey you.” Richard stepped in front of him. “What are we supposed to do here?”
The monk stopped, but that was all. He gazed at Richard with vacant eyes. When Richard moved, the monk resumed his circular walk.