Brian David Bruns - High Seas Drifter (Cruise Confidential 4)

THE HEADLINE WOULD READ "DEATH BY ASS."

The newsprint already blazed across my imagination: text bold, black, and all caps. I would have preferred less brevity and more dash. Maybe "Local Man Succumbs to Killer Foreign Ass." Astonishingly, Mom saw this one coming. She always warned me I would die some horrible, unforeseen death if I dared leave my native Iowa. Or the house. I thought she was just being overprotective, yet here I was, thirty years and six thousand miles away, proving her right.

Twenty minutes ago things were going fine. Romantic, even. Not the good kind of romanceanother item on Mom's list of Dangerous Don'tsbut the kind of romance that only the sea can invoke, a sea plied by ships of tall sails and peopled with men of courage, curiosity, lust for life. I had once counted myself among their number.

Nine hundred feet below, cool mist lazed atop the gently lapping waters of the Aegean, pulsing to the sea's mysterious, ancient rhythm. Between us and hazy, smoking Fire Island lolled a small yacht, sails furled, barely seen but for a mast piercing the shroud. The mist did not blanket so much as bunch at the cliff's base, perhaps afraid to near that rumbling heap of ash and molten rock rising from the center of the sunken caldera. And fear it should. Such were the still restless remains of a destroyer: the very volcano that in one angry outcry slaughtered the entire Minoan civilizationeven as it gave birth to the legend of Atlantis.

Had Poseidon himself been looking from that steaming rock, across his cerulean home and up above the cowering mist, past the satisfying contrast of chestnut brown cliffs, he would have delighted at the shock of whitewashed cottages and sky blue doors. The tiny geometries of man spread liberally atop the brown: thick and wavy like frosting smeared carelessly atop a cupcake, clumps bunching high in some areas, in others threatening to tumble over the steep sides in a sticky white avalanche. Spread, as it were, by the hand of the gods born of this land millennia ago. Long ago the gods destroyed the men living here, even as long ago men destroyed the gods. Man himself was responsible now for the wonder of Santorini.

"And a fine job he has done," my tall companion agreed.

I hadn't meant to speak such wonders of time aloud, being loathe to sound like a poet and stuff. He adjusted his eyeglasses and smiled in his slight, Dutch manner. "The gods were capricious, were they not? But man muddles through and, sometimes, wonders happen."

"Man muddles all right," I agreed, rather petulantly. I had been petulant a lot lately. Ardin lowered his sizable camera to better regard me. Considering what I knew of him, this was a large expression.

"You don't sound very American," he observed.

I dismissed any implied question with a chuckle and said, "I'm just getting a little tired of muddling."

"Aren't we all," Ardin agreed, hefting his camera once more.

He leaned his tall, lanky frame forward, into the wind. After a few crisp clicks, Ardin used the telephoto lens to illustrate the magnitude of the panorama before us: a broken ring of thousand-foot rock rising from a vastness of sea and sky, the point of merging blues indeterminate. "Look at that down there. If you can't appreciate that, you can't appreciate anything."

"I'll appreciate getting down there without dying," I commented drily, clutching tightly to the horn of my saddle. Beneath me, my mount shifted. This nameless beast, who was to be my ride down the nearly vertical cliffs of Santorini, puffed and fussed as much as nearby Fire Island. This was my first mule ride, and I was both surprised and intimidated by the power this humble animal exuded. I felt no safer than had I been straddling the raw power of the volcano. I hoped my beast of burden was not as capricious as the gods.

"If you can drive on American highways," Ardin quipped in his direct, Dutch manner, "surely you can handle a one mulepower vehicle."

My reply was a snort and a smart remark. "Don't you mean one asspower? It's okay. I'm used to flying by the seat of my pants."

"I can't drive!" trilled a voice behind us. "Can we walk?"

I turned in my creaking saddle to view our third companion. A delicate young Asian man clung to his saddle fearfully, skinny knees shifting along the beast's flanks in search of better purchase. With bone-white knuckles gripping the saddle horn, he had difficulty keeping his hair out of his eyes. He shook his head feverishly to keep too-long bangs clear.

"Time to learn," Ardin stated blandly.

That was the umpteenth time Ardin had said such that day, and I noted the rigid Dutchman had not even bothered to turn and look at our fretting companion. Though his posture indicated otherwise, I sensed Ardin sighing and drooping somewhat whenever our charge spoke. Waryo, an Indonesian assigned to replace Ardin as ship's photographer, acted precisely like the large eyed village boy far from home that he was. But his whimpering became simpering sometimes, leaving us to wonder whether he was merely naive or being coy. If the latter, he exhibited it in a most unusual manner.

"If you can't handle your saddle, Yoyo," Ardin continued, still not looking at the Indonesian, "Be reassured by the presence of an actual American cowboy."

Yoyo looked to me longingly for guidance and comfort. I snorted louder than my mule.

When the three of us had departed our ship to enjoy the port of Santorini, we had left the marina via funicular. Ascending to the city so far above was a matter of minutes by mechanical means. But going back we opted for something more... romantic. Despite my recent drop into apathy, I still found the desire to do what the locals had done since antiquity: making the nine-hundred foot traverse on muleback. I would have felt guilty letting the animals labor through the ascentcourtesy of my Catholic upbringing which imbued a sense of guilt over everythingand had therefore suggested we only ride the animals down. Yoyo agreed, if only in order to postpone an action he feared. Ardin, descendent of more practical stock, just shrugged at our foibles.

Dug into the overhanging edge of the cliffs was a corral. It smelled of animals steaming in the late June heat. We had descended an ancient stone ramp and into the striped shade under a roof of unpainted wooden slats. The shadows were not particularly deep, but the outside sunshine was bright enough that our eyes adjusted slowly. We approached several dozen quiet mules, most napping on their feet, a few watching us with large, brown eyes. The flicking of long ears and longer tails was the only movement in this lazy, warm place, barring the occasional snort or shaking head. After a while we found their keeper hidden among them, also mule napping.