The Unquiet Mind (The Greek Village Collection Book 8) by Sara Alexi Page A

to never come back? His mama and baba are growing ever older, and things that would have once not affected them now present insurmountable obstacles.
    Thoughts of them ageing brings also the inevitability of their deaths. One day, he will be alone up there, and what woman would ever choose such isolation? They cluster like chickens, needing the social whirl of each other’s company. If he is ever to even consider marriage, he must be ready to live in town. Something he can neither afford in money nor in peace of mind. There is not a woman alive who would choose to be his wife, if only because of his circumstances. After his parents are gone, he will not be choosing to be alone up there. He will be forced to be alone.
    Isolation is different from solitude, and what if something happens to him? When his baba slipped and broke his ankle over at the far grazing area, he crawled the distance home on his knees. It took him four hours and his knees were shredded. If Yanni had not been at home with his phone and his donkeys, it would have been another four hours to crawl into town. Baba would never have made it, and he was a younger man then.
    The monastery door is ajar, a slash of light taming the rough ground outside.
    ‘Well hello.’ Sister Katerina’s voice breaks through his gloomy thoughts as he pushes the door open. ‘Late tonight. Did you get everything?’ she asks with energy in her voice. She scans his face. ‘Yanni?’ she asks more gently.
    ‘I was thinking,’ he answers with no elaboration.
    She takes her favourite seat by the little church from where there is the best view of the garden. There is a jug of water and two cups.
    Yanni uses the moment to take the things he has brought for her from town inside. He puts them on the end of the long table before returning to sit with her.
    ‘Ah …’ A sigh that is almost a yawn is her greeting on his return. The sunlight is now nothing but a soft glow, somewhere between day and night.
    ‘I was thinking of whether I have to go over to the mainland, Sister,’ Yanni says.
    ‘Oh I see, and your dilemma is in wondering if you can put off the inevitable, perhaps?’
    ‘Inevitable?’ Yanni asks.
    ‘Maybe it is time?’ she says with a glance.
    ‘Are we talking in riddles today, Sister?’ Yanni laughs quietly, respectful of the mood in the garden.
    ‘It would not only be a donkey you were buying.’
    Yanni frowns and waits for her to explain.
    ‘Let me ask you a question.’ She straightens her robes over her knees. ‘If there were a good donkey on the island for sale, would you buy it?’
    There is a pause.
    ‘Yes, I would.’
    ‘So it is not from not wanting a donkey that you are not leaving the island, then?’ A quick roll of her eyes acknowledges her tangle of words. When the smile drops from Yanni’s lips, she adds, ‘Fear’s a funny thing.’
    Yanni turns from her to look over the garden. He reaches for his tobacco but, with a sideways glance at the nun, replaces it in his pocket. Instead, he grinds a pebble into the dusty earth with the toe of his cowboy boot.
    ‘We all feel fear when we face something new. There is nothing over there that you need fear. There is not a big demon out there eating islanders for breakfast or anything.’ She laughs at the thought and her mirth judders through her body. ‘Perhaps this is a lesson being offered to you so you can learn to trust yourself. Trust yourself with people perhaps, realise you have as much right to be here as the sun or the …’ She looks around herself to name something else, at which moment Suzi calls out her loneliness: big heaving bellows as if she knows her cries will never reach the ears of her lost long-eared companion. ‘Or the donkeys.’ Sister Katerina acknowledges the sound. ‘Sometimes we name a feeling we do not recognise as fear, but it may in fact be excitement, or anticipation, or expectancy, but we just have not understood it, or ever connected it with that particular event