Coming to Aiaía: Part 2
The island protects its own
Previously: After a drunken night, Dan washes up on the coast of a mysterious island in the Aegean. The inhabitants, from all walks of life, insist that it’s impossible to leave…
CONTENT WARNING: Contains references to sexual assault
Over the following weeks, Dan wanders the island and circles its entire coastline on foot. He returns to the camp for meals, then continues with his search for civilisation: a resort, a hotel, even a little village with an overpriced co-op and a pharmacy would do. But all he finds are weirdly tame wild animals and even weirder people. Like Richie.
Richie looks cool. Big Australian guy with tattoo sleeves and a long black beard, going grey. Married to Jax, a skinny cougar with blonde hair. Richie was some bigshot businessman in Melbourne who took early retirement, sold everything and bought a yacht in Spain. He and Jax sailed around Europe and got blown off course in the Med in October 2017. They’ve been on Aiaía ever since. Hell, Richie’s probably been growing that beard ever since.
He tries to take Dan under his wing and show him the ropes. He tells him it’s summer now, but winter’s harder and you’ve got to plan ahead, but Dan’s not interested. He won’t be here come winter. He’s getting out.
At night, Dan sleeps in a hut belonging to a Sudanese guy called Ibrahim, but he mostly eats with Jamal and Aisha. He likes Aisha. She’s got a good sense of humour, excellent English, nice curves. Ibrahim catches Dan staring at her more than once.
“You have big eyes,” he says to Dan, nodding in Aisha’s direction. “This is bad all over the world, but in other places, men take what they want and there is no one to stop them. I know. In my country, and on my journey, I saw these things every day. But on Aiaía you cannot do this, or the island will take you.”
It seems Ibrahim, while seeming like a stand-up guy, is as cracked as everyone else here, speaking of the island as if it were a living thing with a mind of its own.
“Yeah, thanks for the advice, mate,” Dan says. “I’m off.”
“Do you want to start building your own hut? I can show you how.”
“Not today. I’m busy.”
Ibrahim gives him an apprehensive look, but doesn’t pressure him.
Dan heads out of the camp. At the edge, he sees a young woman sitting outside another hut. She’s made herself some kind of baggy-trousers-and-boob-tube outfit from the rough cloth that everyone here wears. Underneath, her body is toned and tanned; pretty face, nice tits. He didn’t have the chance to get laid before he got stranded here, and watching Aisha bending over her herb garden in that loose shift this morning gave him blue balls. He’s not going to pass this up.
The girl is scraping some mixture into a clay pot: conversation starter. He asks her what it is.
“Bait. Going fishing,” she replies. Familiar accent. Welsh. “You’re Dan, aren’t you? Washed up here last week?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m Crystal.”
She has piercings in her lip and nose and all along the outer edges of her ears. She scrapes her wild hair into a clump and ties it with a piece of cloth. She catches Dan looking at it and smiles.
“I used to get it done every fortnight,” she says. “Shaved the sides, dyed the tips, used a ton of gel to style it in spikes. Turned a lot of heads; the olds hated it. That’s part of the reason I did it, I think. But stuff like that doesn’t matter here. Sooner or later, you realise it’s all bullshit.”
“What?”
“The outside. Other people’s opinions. Your own ego. The whole frickin’ system.”
“You like it here? Don’t you have people back home? Your family and friends?”
“Yeah.” She looks sad. “I was well depressed when I first arrived here, but it gets less painful over time. You know, like when you move to another town. You miss your old mates, but you don’t expect to see them. You know they’re back home, getting on with their lives, and you’ve just got to get on with yours. Now, the only thing that really gets me is that I’ll always be an unsolved case; another kid that did something dumb on holiday ‘cause they were pissed or high. My family won’t ever get any closure. I just wish they knew I was happy.”
“Are you? Happy?” Dan doesn’t believe it. A hot girl like her - she must have been popular back home, maybe one of the lads, out every weekend, getting lashed, getting laid. She must be bored out of her mind living like a barbarian on this piece-of-shit island.
“I know what you’re thinking, but sooner or later you’re going to realise how shallow your old life was. Back there, we’re all just cogs in a machine - we swallow whatever crap they feed us. Here, you think about what goes into your mouth.”
Great. Another bloody hippie.
“I mean, like, literally too,” she continues, smiling at herself. “You have to work for every mouthful, and you know where it came from. You think a whole lot differently when you have to gut a fish yourself, or skin a rabbit.”
“No chance.”
“Yeah, well, you’ll have to get over yourself eventually, princess,” she says, standing and shouldering her fishing rod. “Everyone’s been feeding you and looking after you since you got here ‘cause you’re a newbie. But you’re going to have to start pulling your weight soon. You want to come fishing?”
Dan considers. Crystal’s a solid 8 in looks, even with her kooky hair, but she’s a bit too preachy. He weighs up his chances of getting a shag out of this, and considers that, since she just called him ‘princess’ and clearly thinks he’s a useless slacker, those chances are pretty low right now. Anyway, he has plans for today. Escape plans.
“I’ll pass,” he says.
Crystal shrugs. “Suit yourself. Enjoy being a vegetarian.”
Once her back is turned, he gives her the finger. It makes him feel better.
Dan scrounges some food from Aisha. Fresh water is a problem, as he has nothing to carry it in. He takes a long drink from the bucket at the well and hopes it’ll be enough. Then, he goes down to the beach where he left the lifeboat he arrived in.
He reasons that, since he floated to the island in the small hours, the coast he floated from can’t be far. Of course, he has to strike out in the right direction, but Dan tries not to think about that. Anyway, he read in the in-flight magazine on the way here that Greece has over 2,000 islands. He’s sure to hit something, or get close enough to hail a ferry or a fishing boat. He’ll take his chances. Anything’s better than being trapped here with these nutters.
Dan drags the boat back down the beach and floats it in the shallows. He leaves his socks and shoes on the sand and wades into the water, attempting to board the boat which rocks precariously. It’s not as smooth as in the movies, but eventually he gets into it, positions the oars and begins to pull. The beach recedes and Dan laughs aloud - with relief, he realises. Maybe a part of him had believed those crazy islanders after all. But they were bullshitting him. Here he is, rowing away.
Seconds later, the helm of his boat strikes something and Dan nearly drops the oars. He twists around on his seat. Rocks? A reef? Do they have reefs in Greece? He scrambles to the front of the boat and leans over the side, but he can see no obstacles in the crystal-clear water. He goes back to the seat and pulls on the oars again. Dunk, dunk. The boat knocks repeatedly against the invisible barrier.
In desperation, Dan dives over the side and swims for open water, but he, too, hits an obstacle he can’t see. It feels like swimming into a mattress - it doesn’t hurt, but it’s unyielding. He dives, trying to go under it. He swims up and down, trying to find the end of it. Panic builds in his chest. He clambers back into the boat and rows down the coast. He spends all day rowing and bumping into the invisible barrier. He is parched and sunburnt by the time he beaches his boat on the shore on the other side of the island, and his head throbs as he pulls it up onto the sand.
Jamal is waiting for him. He doesn’t speak, only flings an arm around Dan’s shoulders.
“What is it?” Dan asks, gesturing to the sea, towards the impenetrable fence that surrounds them.
Jamal shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says. “Magic to keep a goddess in her prison. Very old. Very strong.”
“Magic? Are you fucking kidding me?” says Dan. “It’s got to be some kind of technology. Government stuff. There’s probably something on the island - like a secret base. Or - or maybe you guys are some kind of experiment. Like, I don’t know, they’re going to test biochemical weapons on you -”
“Perhaps, my friend,” replies Jamal, with a pitying smile. “Probably same technology that makes mountain lions tame and nice food grow all the months of the year, and makes no one get very bad sickness ever.”
“Yeah, save the sarcasm. You’ll see I’m right. It’s a shame you guys are all so hell-bent on believing in fairy tales that you won’t try to save yourselves.”
“Much shame, yes,” Jamal says, handing Dan his socks and shoes which he has rescued from the other beach and brought with him. “The biggest shame, Dan my friend, is that you are in paradise and you cannot see it.”
Jamal is right; Dan can’t see much except discomfort and inconvenience on Aiaía. He has to wash his clothes in a bucket and wait for them to dry. There’s no internet, no entertainment, no booze. The only ray of light is Aisha and her easy chatter. She’s so keen to show him how to do things - bake flat bread, forage fruit, tend to the vegetables in the plots around the camp - and Dan is keen to tag along. Because he knows that’s not all he wants from her.
It isn’t like hooking up with girls in clubs like he used to back home, or on holiday. That was fast - first sight to the finish line in one night. He didn’t remember half their names. Sometimes, he was too wasted; sometimes, he just didn’t care. But with Aisha he takes it slow, and it’s kind of nice. He treasures every chance he gets to place a hand surreptitiously on her lower back as he leans over to inspect a plant she’s showing him, or to hold her hand to help her over a rock or stream. Little tasters before the main course. She never pulls away, only smiles at him. She’s into him - she must be. But he can’t wait around forever.
Jamal is often gone with little Samira on walks around the island, and Dan has inserted himself so completely into their lives that it isn’t weird at all for him to drop by one afternoon, right after Jamal leaves, to ask Aisha something.
“Hey, you remember those plants you showed me when I arrived? The ones for headaches?”
“Mmm-hm,” Aisha replies.
“Can you show me how to prepare them?”
“Of course.”
The hut is dim. She opens the cupboard, reaches up to the top shelf, so that the loose shirt she’s wearing rises and exposes the smooth, cinnamon curve of her waist. Dan watched a bit of porn when he was younger: hos with their mouths and legs open. Nothing he saw back then could hold a candle to that sliver of perfect skin. Aisha is the real deal.
When she turns, Dan is standing right behind her. He grabs her shoulders, pushes her against the wall, covers her mouth with his. She drops the clay jar she’s holding and tries to push him away.
He’s stronger than her, easy, but he doesn’t want her to fight him. He wants her to surrender. It’s how he pictured it.
“It’s OK, baby -”
“Stop it, Dan!”
She shoves him, tries to kick him, but he’s too close for that.
“Leave me alone! Get out of my house!”
She’s shouting. That’s not good. He needs to keep her quiet, needs to explain why this is OK, why this is actually what she wants.
She lashes out, scratches his face with her nails, and he jerks back from her with a gasp. Then, she drags in a breath and screams, long and loud.
In the same instant, Dan falls forward onto his hands and knees and finds he can’t get up again. He tries to speak, to placate her, but no words come, only a strange, nasal noise. The door of the hut swings open, and the Aussie cougar Jax bursts in.
“Aisha -”
She takes in the scene: Aisha still flattening herself against the wall, the small hairy creature in the centre of the room. She rushes across to Aisha and flings her arms around her. Tears well in Aisha’s eyes, but she doesn’t let them fall.
Richie and Ibrahim appear in the doorway. They look at the women, and at the animal.
“Dan?” asks Richie. Aisha nods. “Stupid arsehole,” he says.
Ibrahim crouches down, addressing the creature. “Eyes too big,” he says, shaking his head regretfully. He stands. “Get away! Go out!” He shoos the animal out of the hut. “You live outside now.”
Dan heads out the door, knee-high to the other people in the room. What the fuck is going on? He is still crawling on his hands and knees, but it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like walking - no, trotting. He is trotting. He looks down, but he can’t see his hands - or are they feet? He raises one and almost overbalances. He doesn’t have fingers. Trotters - he has fucking trotters.
He starts to run, panicked, helter-skelter through the undergrowth, barrelling down the hillside away from the camp. He missteps, his foreleg buckles and he rolls, coming to rest at the edge of a pool of water. Painfully, he pushes himself upright and limps to the pool. He steels himself to look into the water, at the monster he is sure will be reflected back at him.
But the monster is gone. In its place there is only a small wild pig.
If only men who did that sort of thing actually turned into little piggies. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?