Free Black Butterflies by Sara Alexi

fifteen and she loved to play hopscotch, tag, and a game called poison, using a length of rope. Her friends ranged from four-year-olds to sixteen-year-old girls, the boys away on the farms by that age.
    The baby came very soon after they had been married. It had made hopscotch difficult near the end of her time. The baby was just beautiful. A boy. She called him Dimitri, but Manolis said he should be named after his grandfather, Socrates. But no baby has an official name until it is baptised in the Greek Orthodox church. So it was just ‘baby’ at first.
    Marina’s mother helped with the baby right from the start, and as the days passed she helped more and more, until she took over altogether. Her mum understood Marina’s need to be with her peers. The baby cried a lot and would never settle down. Marina would play outside as much as she could, avoiding her domestic responsibilities. She loved her baby, but once she was outside she would forget she even had a son. It’s hard when you are fifteen, your mind’s not ready. She thought about today’s fifteen-year-olds. Girls that age don’t play hopscotch these days, they play video games and dress like pop stars. But that was then. She was young for her age and there were no video games or pop stars.
    Her mother would call her in when he needed feeding and Marina would coo and cluck like any other mother. She would spend time playing with him and making him laugh, but after a while she felt cooped up and wanted to be out playing again, and besides, he looked like Manolis, which didn ’t help.
    But if she had known, she would have loved him more. Her mother said she had expected it, he had been a weak thing from the start. Marina felt it was her fault. If she had loved him more, if she had fed him more … Her mother tried to calm her, and insisted there was nothing she could have done, sometimes that’s just how life is.
    Manolis was quiet when he was in the house for a while after that, and he didn ’t come near Marina, which suited her very well. She moved into the second bedroom and stayed there. Six years later Eleni was born, the product of a drunken night for Manolis. Artemis, five years after Eleni, was the result of a drunken night for Marina who desperately wanted another child.
    With all her thoughts crowding in on her Marina suddenly realises she has reached the top and the pine forest is petering out. An unexpected sign tells her that the monastery is to her right, and the ridge at the top of the island to her left.

Chapter 7

    Marina sits on the flat-top rock she has claimed as her picnic chair and brushes the cheese pie crumbs from her blouse. She holds her arms out to the side to allow her underarms to dry in the breeze. She feels somewhat revived by the food but really needs a good meal. That will have to wait. She adjusts her feet and stands. She is tired, but at least going back will be all downhill. But there is no point in being up here at all unless she talks to Yanni, or his parents, and besides, she really needs a drink of water.
    She pushes past the last of the trees and the ridge opens out before her. A couple of cypress trees stretch to the blue sky a short distance away, with bushes at their feet, indicating the presence of people. It is unlikely that they would have self-seeded and stayed alive up here without some nurturing in their early years. Through the bushes there is a hint of orange. Marina wonders if it is a tiled roof. As she gets closer she can see it is a single-storey shepherd’s cottage. Marina runs her hand across the whitewashed stone, large boulders at the base supporting smaller and smaller stones towards the roof. Layers of thick whitewash defuse the contours, softening the whole into an organic mound.
    Goat bells can be heard behind the building and Marina rounds the windowless dwelling, past the bushes, to see two donkeys munching placidly from their nosebags. A little distance away a woman sits on a barrel, and in the