#midsummer island adventure | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mermaidsirennikita · 3 months ago

Text

NOVEMBER 2024 LGBT+ ROMANCE RECS

It's always important to support diverse books, y'all. This isn't new.

But on a financial and outspoken level, it's going to be important in the coming days for Americans (and honestly, unfortunately, non-Americans too) to support queer (and BIPOC) books.

So, with no preamble.... And I do want to make clear, I'm a cis white woman (sexuality: God, I don't even know anymore)... Queer books I think you should try—

F/F:

Make the Season Bright by Ashley Herring-Blake. Contemporary. CHRISTMAS. Charlotte heads to her best friend's house for the holidays, only to find that her best friend's sister brought HER best friend... Brighton, Charlotte's childhood sweetheart who left her at the altar years ago. Angst, lots of holiday dating, and hot hot sex ensue.

Seas and Greetings by Sierra Simone and Julie Murphy. Contemporary. Christmas-adjacent. A high-end influencer embarks on a brand cruise with a stern, super hot bodyguard. But someone is threatening to expose her secret... (not her bisexuality).

This Will Be Fun by E.B. Asher. Fantasy. Years after their fearless leader is killed saving the world, a fgroup of heroes must come back together to... save the world again? Sort of? Two core romances, one of which is m/f and one of which is f/f—a nerdy witchy agoraphobic type comes back into play with the assassin she used to hook up with on previous quests.

Set the Record Straight by Hannah Bonam-Young. Contemporary. Christmas! A pair of friends do the classic fake dating thing when one of them needs a girlfriend for a work function and the other needs a girlfriend to show up her ex at a holiday get together. Bi awakening, very sweet, novella.

An Island Princess Starts a Scandal by Adriana Herrera. Historical. Latina and Afro-Latina leads. An heiress strikes a deal with an older businesswoman; she'll give the businesswoman the property she wants in exchange for an introduction and adventure in sapphic Paris before our girl has to marry a man. Truly excellent content.

The Stars Too Fondly by Emily Hamilton. Sci-fi. A scientist ends up accidentally launching herself and her friends into space, and their only help is the hologram of the ship's former captain, who mysteriously went missing with her entire crew years ago. Also, she's a hot ice queen.

A Sweet Sting of Salt by Rose Sutherland. Historical fantasy. A midwife helps a mysterious fisherman's wife give birth, only to find that the woman's origins may be more mystical than they seem. Spoiler alert: lesbian selkies. Also spoiler alert: Comeuppance for a shitty, shitty husband.

A Long Time Dead by Samara Breger. Historical paranormal. A sex worker is transformed into a vampire and enters into a looooong term sapphic love triangle with the villain of the novel and the uptight, persnickety mentor who's taken her in. Kinda like Interview with the Vampire, but hotter and gayer (yes) and way less of a sausage fest.

Mortal Follies by Alexis Hall. Historical fantasy. A young debutante in a "Midsummer Night's Dream x Pride and Prejudice" type world ends up hexed and in a back and forth with a mysterious lady duke rumored to have committed at least two murders.

The Conquering of Tate the Pious by Sierra Simone. Historical. A medieval abbess has to defend her nunnery against the villainous lady conqueror who's come to town. "Defend" can mean many things, FYI.

The Fiancee Farce by Alexandra Bellefleur. Contemporary. A fun little fake dating inheritance game book, in which a cover model/heiress convinces a woman who's already been pretending that she's his girlfriend to quiet questions, to... You know. Fake being her fiancee. In a farce.

M/M

The Will Darling Adventures by KJ Charles. Trilogy, historical. A WWI vet gets entangled with capers and espionage, while falling for a former Bolshevik upper class danger man. SO FUN.

The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting by KJ Charles. Historical. A romcom in which a prickly upper class man strikes a deal... of a carnal nature... after catching a fortune hunter trying to seduce his niece.

The Witch Walker Series by Charissa Weaks. Fantasy. Multiple romances, and the primary is M/F, but there are multiple POVs and a prominent, excellent, villain second chance romance between two men, both of whom have POVs. Additionally, the hero of the M/F romance has recently been revealed to be bi through the offshoot Tales from Tiressia. Yay!

We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian. Historical. 1950s reporters begin as friends, then become roommates, then become... more than roommates.

You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian. Historical. A baseball player on a rough streak and a grieving and snippy reporter following him around on the sports beat get entangled.

The Queer Principles of Kit Webb by Cat Sebastian. Historical. A former highwayman-turned-cafe-owner agrees to mentor a dandy in the art of highwaymanery so that he can steal from his horrible father. Has deminisexual rep, as well as disability rep.

Glitterland by Alexis Hall. Contemporary. A bipolar down on his luck author hooks up with a working class club kid, then accidentally ends up in a relationship.

Saint by Sierra Simone. Contemporary. A monk ends up touring monasteries with his reporter ex-boyfriend. Lots of exploration of mental health here (and it's super hot).

The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by KJ Charles. Historical. A new baronet moves to the marsh to care for his messy family, only to find out that one of the leading members the local organized crime family is that guy he used to anonymously hook up with.

The Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel by KJ Charles. A veteran turned nobleman employs a secretary in order to help him hold on to his title (his family hates him) only to realize... that secretary... is hot.

Snow Place Like L.A. by Sierra Simone and Julie Murphy. Contemporary. Christmas-adjacent. A costume designer runs into the one who got away and is SUPER BITTER. But, you know. It's a time for forgiveness.

Mafia Target by Mila Finelli. Dark/mafia. An assassin after a prominent don's son gets obsessed in a different way, and their game of cat and mouse becomes something more.

Band Sinister by KJ Charles. Historical. A flustered young innocent ends up having to head over to the Dangerous House after his sister has to rest there following an injury. Finds out that the group of scoundrels there are both better and worse than he thought. Sendup to gothics!

Heated Rivalry and The Long Game by Rachel Reid. Hockey contemporary. A pair of connected books about the long-term relationship between two hockey rivals, which begins as a hookup situationship and turns into something more... One of my ultimates!

Something Fabulous by Alexis Hall. Historical. After the woman he proposes to runs away, a stuffy duke enlists her fabulous twin brother to help him catch her... Demi rep.

Trans and NB

The Prospects by KT Hoffman. Baseball contemporary. The first trans man in the league ends up on the same team as the guy who abandoned their friendship years ago—leading to a rivalry... which leads to another thing.

Rules for Ghosting by Shelly Jay Shore. Light paranormal. A ghost-seeing trans guy ends up having to return to helping with his family's funeral home... And falls for a volunteer... only that volunteer's husband is currently haunting him. Jewish rep.

Most Ardently by Gabriel Cole Navoa. Historical. YA. A Pride and Prejudice retelling in which we have Oliver Bennet, a trans boy trying his best, and Darcy, the dude he hates.

A Shore Thing by Joanna Lowell. Historical. A widow ends up on a long distance bicycle race with a rakish former artist turned bicycle fiend, who happens to be trans. As a note, the author is married to a trans man who happens to be a queer historian!

Chef's Choice by TJ Alexander. Contemporary. A down on her luck woman agrees to pretend to date a Frenchman from a billionaire family as he embarks on an ancestral cooking challenge. Both leads are trans.

A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall. Historical. After faking her death at Waterloo in order to transition, a woman ends up tending to her former best friend as he recovers from PTSD and a laudanum addiction. He doesn't recognize her at first. At first... Disability and addiction rep.

For the Love of April French by Penny Aimes. Contemporary. A trans woman hooks up with a stranger, only to discover he's just been hired as a higher-up with her company.

The Pairing by Casey McQuiston. Contemporary. Exes (one of whom has come out as NB since they broke up) end up on the same European food and wine tour years later, and agree to reestablish their friendship (dating back to childhood) in a competition to see who can hook up with the most people.

His Valet by S.M. LaViolette. Historical. An NB valet (uses she/her pronouns in respect to the era) pretends to be a man while infatuated with her boss. In order to have a few nights with him, they take up the identity of a mysterious widow... And it spirals BIG TIME from there.

Unmasked by the Marquess by Cat Sebastian. Historical. A marquess believes his new best friend is a man—they're actually in disguise (uses she/her pronouns in respect to the era). After he discovers their true identity, the friendship yields to more...

Something Spectacular by Alexis Hall. Historical. A genderfluid dandy sets out to grudgingly help her ex seduce a castrato soprano... Only to capture their attention herself.

Queer Non-Monogamy (Everyone Is Together To Be Clear)

Triple Sec by TJ Alexander. Contemporary. Open poly triad romance. A bartender meets a sparkly lawyer, only to find out that the sparkly lawyer has an NB spouse. While our bartender dates the lawyer at first, she soon begins recognizing a tension between herself and her new girlfriend's prickly, aloof wife...

The New Camelot Trilogy by Sierra Simone. Dark contemporary, closed triad. A retelling of King Arthur set within the presidency. Super sexy, super angsty, suuuuper poly.

The Lyonesse Series by Sierra Simone (ongoing). Dark contemporary, closed triad (presumably). A retelling of Tristan and Isolde, in which a bodyguard falls for his boss, then is sent to collect said boss's fiancee... And the shit really hits the fan. Again, super hot, really intense.

The Thornchapel Series by Sierra Simone. Dark light paranormal. Closed(ish) triad with a secondary but prominent monogamous f/f romance. A group of childhood friends get back together just in time for a mysterious magic to begin wreaking havoc on the land... VERY dark academia with some pretty intense taboo (message me if concerned).

Consort of Fire and Queen of Dreams by Kit Rocha. Fantasy, closed triad. A princess sets out to marry a dragon shifter known for killing his previous spouses—except she, with the help of her handmaiden and lover, sets out to kill HIM.

Give Me More by Sara Cate. Contemporary, closed triad. A married couple and their best friend set out on a road trip together, only for things to become... blurred.

#romance novel blogging #books #romance novels #book recs #book reviews #lgbt+ books #lgbt books #book recommendations

38 notes · View notes

jjmaybankswh0re · 3 months ago

Text

𝐁𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐓𝐰𝐨 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝𝐬 ~ 𝐎𝐁𝐗 𝐅𝐀𝐍𝐅𝐈𝐂

Part 2!

Blurb ~ Kalani thought Midsummers was the hardest thing to shake, but the Pogues’ new adventure plunges them into deeper chaos. Sunken boats, cryptic messages, and John B’s quest for gold lead them to the eerie Crain house, a place steeped in dark legends. As tensions rise, especially with John B’s kiss with Kiara, secrets and dangers unravel.

The revelation that Ward Cameron is John B’s guardian shakes the group, but they press on, following a map to the Crain property. Amid creepy tales and an overgrown yard, Kalani takes a fall, and JJ’s unexpected concern sparks a new, unspoken connection between them. As the mystery deepens, so does the strange bond forming between them, unnoticed but undeniable. ~

Read part 1!

Master List

Word count: 10,011

I woke up groaning, my head pounding, the dull red glow of my digital clock screaming 7:34 AM. Way too early for someone who spent the night tangled in chaos. I rolled onto my back, staring at the ceiling, but the memories of last night wouldn’t let me rest. They played over and over, each one a knot in my stomach.

After ditching the suffocating Midsummers party—and good riddance—the Pogues and I headed to Rixon’s Cove. That’s where we belong, not at some Kook circus with crystal champagne glasses and fake smiles. Kie showed up, too, leaving behind her “perfect” world for the one that actually matters. We all just wanted to chill by the bonfire, forget everything for a bit. But, of course, John B had other plans.

He told us he’d made another discovery about his dad. Another one. Ever since Big John disappeared, John B’s been on a mission, collecting clues like his life depends on it. And maybe it does. His dad’s been gone nine months. Nine months of nothing—no calls, no sightings, just silence. Two months ago, the cops decided to close the case. Told him to sign the papers and declare his dad officially dead. He refused, obviously. Said he wasn’t going to let them write the final chapter when he wasn’t even sure the story was over.

For the longest time, I thought it was just his way of coping. Building theories, imagining his dad out there somewhere, alive. We all did. But last week, something happened. Something real.

It started right after Hurricane Agatha. We took the HMS Pogue out, exploring the marsh, and that’s when we saw it—a sunken boat. A Grady White. It was shiny, new, and way too expensive to be floating half-buried in the mud. Seeing it there, abandoned, gave me chills. It felt wrong, like a secret begging to be uncovered.

Curiosity got the better of us. Of course it did. We dove into the murky water, swimming down to see what secrets it held. John B stayed down the longest, and when he came back up, he wasn’t just holding his breath. He was holding a motel key. The kind with a plastic tag and a room number, straight out of some shady movie.

Not just any motel key either. It belonged to the one motel on the island, the kind of place people go when they don’t want to be found.

We thought about calling it in—reporting the boat to the Coast Guard—but when John B tried, they didn’t even let him talk. Told him to get lost. That’s when we decided to handle it ourselves. We went to the motel, figuring out which room the key opened. Me, JJ, and John B snuck in while Pope and Kiara covered for us. Inside was like something out of a crime novel. A safe with stacks of cash, a gun, and an aura that screamed don’t trust this. JJ claimed the gun immediately, of course. It’s JJ.

We didn’t have much time to process what we’d found before the cops showed up. And not just any cops— Shoupe and that other lady he is always with, the ones who seem more interested in us than in actual criminals. We barely made it out, slipping through the shadows and running like hell.

Later, we learned the boat belonged to Scooter Grubbs, a guy who had no business owning something as fancy as a Grady White. A dirtbag who always seemed broke but suddenly had cash to burn. And now, he was dead, found after the hurricane.

After the body of Scooter Grubbs was found floating in the marsh by a fisherman, everything shifted. The cops suddenly perked up, acting like they cared about what was going on out here on the Cut. They were out there now, combing the marsh, looking for the sunken boat we’d already found. But so far? Nothing.

It’s almost laughable, the way they stumble around trying to piece things together. We’d been there, seen it with our own eyes, touched the secrets buried beneath the surface. But we can’t say a word. Not now.

We went back to the marsh to find the sunken Grady White the cops were searching for. JJ convinced John B to steal scuba gear off Ward Cameron’s yacht, The Druthers. Since John B works for Ward, he could sneak it out without raising suspicion. Once we got to the wreck, John B dove down and returned with a duffel bag.

On the way back to the Chateau, we noticed a boat tailing us. At first, we thought it was nothing, but when they started shooting, panic set in. We pushed the HMS Pogue to its limit, speeding through the marsh, but they wouldn’t back off. Kiara saved us by throwing a fishing net into their propeller, giving us just enough time to escape.

Back at the Chateau, we opened the duffel bag, and out fell an old brass compass—John B’s dad’s compass. It felt like a gut punch. Why did Scooter Grubs, a random fisherman, have something so personal to Big John? John B showed us a hidden compartment in the compass with “Redfield” carved into it, written in his dad’s unmistakable handwriting. It wasn’t random. It was a clue.

A few days later, John B and JJ went to see Lana Grubs, Scooter’s widow, hoping for answers. When they arrived, the same men who’d chased us were tearing apart Lana’s house, demanding something Scooter had. After they left, John B and JJ found Lana in bad shape. When John B asked about the compass, her fear was palpable. She told him Scooter didn’t have the compass and warned him not to let anyone know he did.

John B made the connection between the name “Redfield” and his great-great-great-aunt, Olivia Redfield, whose tomb was hidden in an old graveyard on OBX. We followed him there, through a maze of crooked stones, to a weathered grave. John B found a crack in the stone tomb, climbed inside, and emerged with a small parcel addressed to him from his dad.

Inside the parcel was a voice recorder and a map of the coastline. John B clicked play, and his dad's voice crackled through the tiny speaker: "There she is, kid, the Royal Merchant."

The map had a black "X" marked near the lighthouse, a few miles off the coast. The Royal Merchant is one of the most famous shipwrecks in history—sank with $400 million worth of gold. And John B's dad had been part of the search for it. He found it. Not the gold, but the wreck itself.

Then last night, at Rixon's, John B dropped the bomb that he was meeting Sarah to get an old plat map from her. He’d found a letter from Denmark Tanny, and he explained that if we could get an original map of the island, we’d be able to find the location of the gold. But then he blindsided us with news about Sarah, and Kiara lost her cool—honestly, I couldn’t blame her. That whole mess got worse when we went to the Hawks Nest, where John B and Sarah had planned to meet up. He told us to stay back, wanted to do this on his own. Bad move.

Topper—drunk after Midsummers—decided to push John B off the top of the Hawks Nest. I heard Sarah scream for help, and we ran from the Twinkie, straight to her. John B was unconscious, laying on the grass, and out of nowhere, Sarah kissed him. It was like everything stopped for a second, and then we had to rush John B to the hospital.

Now, it’s 7:34 AM on Saturday, and I can’t shake the images of last night from my head. The chaos, the danger, and the way everything’s unravelling. I keep replaying it all, wondering how much longer we can keep this up before everything falls apart.

I could already feel the weight of the inevitable lecture coming my way from my parents after ditching Midsummers last night, so I had to get out of there before they even had a chance to wake up. I rolled out of bed. I grabbed a white halter top with a low V-neck that hugged my chest, then flared out loosely at the waist. It’s the kind of top that’s cute but still feels laid-back enough for my usual chaos. I pulled on a pair of distressed denim shorts in a dark wash, the kind that were perfectly worn-in and a little frayed at the edges. To finish it off, I slipped on my dirty, worn Converse high-tops—comfortable and a little beaten up, just like me.

I kept the jewellery from Midsummers on, each piece a reflection of a world I was born into—polished, perfect, and just a little too much.

I adjusted the gold necklace with the small sun pendant, feeling it rest against my collarbone like a quiet symbol of something I couldn't escape.

I reached for my perfume, Good Girl Blush Elixir by Carolina Herrera. It was my scent, the one that lingered with me long after I’d left a room. I spritzed it on my wrists, neck, and behind my ears, the soft floral notes a small comfort in the chaos of my thoughts.

Slipping my phone into the back pocket of my denim shorts, I glanced around my room one last time. With a sigh, I stepped out into the upstairs hallway, trying to shake off the lingering tension from the night before and whatever was coming next.

I slid into my car, the engine purring to life as I made my way to the chateau. I had no idea if John B was home, but JJ would probably be there. He usually was. His home life was a disaster—his dad Luke, a piece of work, always causing trouble—and so JJ spent most of his nights crashing on the pull-out sofa bed in the chateau's living room. It was his escape.

When I pulled up to the chateau, everything was eerily quiet. No music, no voices, just a hollow stillness hanging in the air. It felt off. John B always left the back porch door unlocked, so I figured I’d let myself in. I walked around the old, creaky shack to the back porch and made my way up the stairs. The door gave a protesting groan as I pushed it open slowly, peering inside.

The familiar sight of the kitchen and living room hit me. A chaotic mess—empty beer cans, fast food wrappers, half-smoked joints scattered about like confetti from some never-ending party. I stepped inside, shutting the door behind me with a soft click.

My eyes drifted to the living room, landing on the pull-out bed where JJ was sprawled out, deep in sleep. Told you. He was shirtless, his chest rising and falling gently as soft snores escaped his parted lips. His body was tangled in the sheets, half in, half out, like he hadn’t even bothered to get under them properly.

I reached over and tapped JJ lightly on the back. "JJ?" I said, my voice soft but insistent.

He groaned in response, shifting on the bed with a disgruntled frown as he rolled over, still half asleep.

"What?" His voice was thick with sleep, a little annoyed but nothing I hadn’t heard before.

I rolled my eyes, sitting down on the edge of the pull-out bed, careful not to get too close. "Where’s John B? Is he still at the hospital?" I asked, glancing at him while he kept his eyes shut, barely acknowledging me.

“Yeah, Sarah’s probably with him,” he muttered, throwing his arm over his eyes like he was trying to block out the world.

I hummed, a small frown on my face as I started absentmindedly fiddling with the rings on my fingers. "Kie was so pissed last night," I said, more to myself than to him.

“Mhm,” JJ mumbled, sounding like he was on the edge of falling back asleep. "John B’s in a lot of trouble."

I couldn’t help but let out a quiet laugh, shaking my head. "Yeah, a lot. You think Topper caught them kissing up there or something?" I asked, half-curious but also just trying to distract myself from the mess of it all.

JJ gave a lazy nod. "Probably. I mean, Sarah is cheating on him," he said, like it was the obvious conclusion.

"Yeah, she is," I replied, my voice quiet as I processed it. I hadn’t even made the connection until now, but it hit me like a ton of bricks. “Well, John B is fucked,” I muttered, feeling the weight of it. He had no idea what kind of mess he was about to be in.

JJ sat up, dragging a hand down his face, his movements slow, almost reluctant. “You know, John B kissed Kiara a few days ago,” he muttered, like it was just another piece of gossip. But the way his gaze darted to the floor right after? That gave him away. He wasn’t supposed to tell me that.

I froze, staring at him as the words sank in. My jaw dropped, and before I could even think, the word was out of my mouth—loud, sharp, and disbelieving. “What?!”

JJ flinched when my voice shot through the air, his hand coming up defensively. “Jesus, Lani,” he muttered, shooting me a half-hearted glare before looking away. “Yeah, they kissed. But Kiara shut it down, told John B she didn’t like him like that.”

My jaw stayed slack as I tried to process it, the room feeling too small all of a sudden. Kiara shut it down. That sounded like her—always knowing exactly what she wanted, or in this case, what she didn’t want. But still... John B had kissed her?

I rolled my eyes, letting out a dry laugh that barely masked my disbelief. “So, in the last week, John B has kissed Kiara and Sarah?” I said, mostly to myself, the words dripping with sarcasm as I pieced it all together. “Lovely.”

“Yeah, but don’t tell anyone I told you that,” JJ said, pointing at me with a sharp look, his face uncharacteristically serious. “Seriously, Lani. If John B finds out I told you, or if Kiara finds out John B told me—” he shook his head for emphasis—“they’ll both kill me. And you too. So shut your mouth, got it?”

"Your secret’s safe with me, JJ," I said, the sarcasm dripping from my voice. But honestly, it was true. I wasn’t about to go telling anyone about this.

JJ nodded, a small, tired smile tugging at his lips, clearly relieved that I wasn’t going to spill the beans about John B and Kiara. He swung his legs off the side of the pull-out, stretching as he let out a loud yawn that echoed through the room. I barely had time to process it before my phone buzzed in my back pocket, the sudden vibration making me jump a little.

I pulled it out and saw the notification: a message from John B.

John B: Meet @ the wreck, now.

Kalani: You're alive? Thank God.

John B: Yeah, yeah. Just get your ass here, it’s important.

Kalani: K, omw.

I slid my phone back into my pocket and looked up at JJ, who was still sitting next to me, his expression expectant.

"John B just messaged," I said, "He wants us to meet him at the wreck."

JJ raised an eyebrow, clearly confused. "What? Why?"

I shrugged and made a half-hearted "I don't know" sound, then got to my feet. "He said it was important, so put a shirt on and let’s get outta here."

He let out a small groan, but stood up anyway, stretching his arms. He grabbed his shirt from the pull-out and pulled it over his head. It was an old, worn blue muscle tee, faded with the logo of the marina, and definitely showing its age. As he adjusted his cap backward, I stood up and walked toward the door.

I stepped outside, walking around the chateau and to my car. The morning air was sticky with humidity, but it wasn’t enough to deter me. I leaned against the car, crossing my arms as I checked my phone again. I wasn’t sure what John B had gotten himself into now, but with the way things had been going lately, I knew it couldn’t be good.

A few minutes later, I saw JJ round the corner of the chateau. His shirt was on, cap in place, and he wore those black worker boots of his, the rolled-down black socks barely visible beneath them.

I looked up at JJ, giving him a smile before opening the drivers side door and getting in. I slid into the driver’s seat, feeling the familiar cold leather beneath me as I stared at the dashboard of the Audi Q3. Every time I get in this car, it’s like stepping into another world—a world that isn’t mine. The high-tech touch screen, the sleek leather, the polished chrome details—it all feels so... perfect, like it’s meant for someone else. Someone who’s not me.

I never asked for this car. When my parents first asked me what I wanted for my 16th birthday, I had it all planned out. I told them I’d pay for half of a second-hand car myself. I’ve been working at the boutique in town since I was 14, and I’ve saved up a good chunk of change. Enough to cover at least half of a decent, second-hand ride. I didn’t care about fancy new cars or anything. As long as it had Bluetooth, I’d be fine. But they shot that idea down without even letting me finish. No explanation, just “No.”

So, imagine my surprise when I walked outside on my birthday and saw this Audi Q3 sitting in my driveway like it was a joke. It wasn’t a joke. It was their idea of a gift. A fully decked-out, brand new, high-end car that felt like something straight out of a Kook’s playbook. I stood there in complete shock for a moment, staring at it. What was I supposed to do with this thing?

I was grateful, in a way. I mean, who wouldn’t be grateful for a brand-new Audi, right? But the thing is, it wasn’t what I wanted, and it wasn’t what I needed. It was theirs, not mine. It was a Kook car, and no matter how grateful I tried to be, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I didn’t belong in it.

But what could I do? My parents, with their Kook mentality, had decided this was the car for me, and honestly, I felt like I couldn’t even say no. They’re the ones who pay the bills, and they’ve always overdone everything for me, in ways I didn’t ask for. So, here I am, driving a car that feels like a constant reminder that no matter how hard I try to fit into this world, it’s never really going to be mine.

JJ slid into the passenger seat and tossed his cap onto the dashboard with a loud thud. "Nice car, kook," he said, his grin wide as he slammed the door shut.

I rolled my eyes, shaking my head. "Don’t start," I muttered, hitting the button to start the car—no key, just a button, because of course, that’s how these things work.

JJ chuckled, watching me with an amused glint in his eyes. I unlocked my phone and connected it to the car’s Apple CarPlay system, the sleek head-up display flashing on. I handed the phone to JJ, Apple Music already open. Yeah, I know, Apple Music is kind of lame, but it’s what my parents pay for, so I use it.

“Here, you can pick the music,” I said, leaning back into the seat as I shifted the car into reverse, slowly backing out of the gravel driveway.

He raised an eyebrow as he scrolled through my playlists. "What the—why do you use Apple Music?" JJ asked, swiping through the endless options of songs and playlists.

I shrugged, not caring enough to explain further. “Dude, I don’t know. It’s what my parents pay for.” I turned the wheel, heading down the street toward the main road that would take us to The Wreck.

He laughed, tossing a quick glance at me. “Your parents are rich as fuck. They’d probably pay for Spotify too.”

The first notes of “Sex on Fire” by Kings of Leon started blasting through the speakers.

I shook my head, laughing a little. “Yeah, they probably would,” I said, the irony not lost on me. It’s not like I had a say in any of it, but sometimes, I guess you just roll with the punches.

The rest of the car ride was mostly silent, with JJ selecting a few songs while I hummed along, my mind running through everything that had happened. JJ tossed in a joke here and there, and I half-smiled, half-rolled my eyes at his usual antics. It was easy to get lost in the familiar rhythm of the drive, especially with everything else weighing on my mind.

The Wreck was the only halfway decent restaurant around OBX, though Kiara’s parents owned it, which meant it wasn’t exactly our go-to place. They didn’t love the Pogues, and we definitely didn’t fit into their “upscale” crowd. But it was still a good spot, and the tourists made it a cash cow for them.

I pulled into the parking lot, which was still mostly empty since it was only about 9 AM. The only other cars I could spot were the Twinkie (obviously), Kiara’s car, Pope’s truck (the one he borrows from his dad), and a few other cars that were probably from customers already inside. I parked the Audi, the engine quieting as I cut it off, then turned to look at JJ.

He glanced back at me, that familiar smirk tugging at his lips.

“Ready?” I asked, my voice casual, though I was already feeling the tension start to creep in.

He gave a quick nod, then jumped out of the car without saying anything else. I followed behind him, my footsteps heavier, though I didn’t rush to catch up. JJ never waits for anyone, and today was no exception.

The inside smelled like coffee and fried food, a little bit of the greasy, touristy charm The Wreck had going for it. I spotted John B, Pope, and Kiara sitting at a table by the window, and JJ slid into the seat next to John B without a word. Kiara’s face immediately tightened into a scowl, like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders. I didn’t blame her; I was feeling it too. I took the seat next to her, not saying anything yet, just waiting for John B to drop whatever news he had.

John B cleared his throat and looked around the table, like he was about to give us a serious briefing. He had that look in his eyes, the one that said something was coming, and it was going to change everything.

“Okay, now that everyone’s here, I need to fill you in on something,” John B said, his voice heavy.

The rest of us leaned in, our attention on him, trying to read his face. I caught a glimpse of the cast on his arm, a reminder of how close we had all come to losing him last night.

“So, Ward Cameron has signed papers to become my legal guardian… foster parent thing, I’m living at Tannyhill” John B said, his words cutting through the room like a knife.

For a second, no one said anything. My stomach dropped at the thought.

I glanced at Kiara—she looked like she was about to explode, her jaw clenched so tight I thought it might snap. I couldn’t blame her. We were all trying to process it. Ward Cameron, of all people, now had some kind of power over John B? My heart was pounding in my chest. This was bad, really bad.

Kiara’s voice snapped through the air, dripping with frustration. “I’m sorry. You’re staying where?” she demanded, her eyes wide as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“Tannyhill,” John B replied, like it was the most casual thing in the world.

Kiara shot him a look, her eyebrow raised. “So, you’re living with Sarah Cameron?” she pressed, not letting him wiggle out of the question.

John B raised his hand to his forehead, rubbing it like he was trying to ease the headache coming on. “Okay, look, the only reason I’m staying there is because her dad bailed me out, all right? And it’s better than foster care, which, by the way, I was about to end up in if Ward hadn’t—”

“Wait, wait, hold up,” Pope cut him off, leaning back in his chair with that smirk of his. “So, do you have a membership to the clubs now? You, uh, joining the country club scene or what?”

I had to bite my lip to hold back a laugh. I glanced at JJ, and I could see he was trying to keep a straight face too. Kiara, however, was all business. No smile, no joke—just that hard, focused expression she wore when she was trying not to lose it.

John B’s patience was wearing thin. He shook his head. “I don’t know, Pope,” he muttered, voice laced with annoyance.

JJ jumped in with his usual teasing. “What about those little golf carts they get to drive around? You get one of those?”

I had to look down at my feet to hide the grin forming on my face. JJ’s timing was perfect.

Pope wasn’t done either. “Does it come with a sweater-vest, or do you have to buy one on your own?”

Kiara rolled her eyes, sitting up straighter in her chair, clearly over it. “Look,” she said, her voice level but tight, “you promised.” She shot John B a pointed look. “You said you weren’t with her.”

John B froze. He’d been knocked out cold the night Sarah kissed him, so he had no idea that Kiara had seen it. He was totally oblivious to the tension in the air.

JJ gave him that look of disbelief. “Bro, just own it. She gotchu,” he said, grinning like he knew exactly what was going on.

I couldn’t help but feel the same. “Look, if you want to hang out with her, that’s fine,” I added, my tone casual but carrying that edge of “don’t drag me into this.” I wasn’t about to get caught up in Sarah Cameron’s mess.

Kiara gave me a sharp look of agreement. “Me and Kalani aren’t doing anything with Sarah,” she said firmly, and I nodded, my lips pressed together. There was no way in hell I was involving myself in anything that had to do with Sarah Cameron.

John B, finally starting to get irritated, rolled his eyes. “Do you guys see her here?” he asked, looking around The Wreck. “No, right? Okay, can we focus here for a second?” He motioned to the table in front of Pope, where an old plat map was spread out. “We’ve got the map, right?” It was the one John B must’ve gotten from Sarah, all folded and crinkled at the corners like it’d been carried around for a while.

“It’s all outta whack ‘cause the guy was ganja’d when he drew it,” JJ says, casually tossing out his explanation like it was the most logical thing in the world.

I looked up at him, narrowing my eyes. “It’s ‘cause the coast has changed,” I corrected, the words coming out a little sharper than I intended.

JJ blinked at me, his mouth opening slightly in a surprised “ooh” kind of way. He gave a nod, clearly playing it off like he knew that, like he wasn’t a second away from looking clueless. “Right… duh, I totally knew that” he muttered, as if trying to save face.

Pope, never missing a beat, leaned over the map with a furrowed brow. “So, we just have to look for landmarks that haven’t changed,” he said, analysing the worn-out map with a serious focus.

John B, who had been staring at the map with a look of frustration, suddenly brightened. “What about the old forts?” he asked, pointing to a section of the map where the fort sites were marked.

“Battery Jasper,” Kiara piped up immediately, her finger tracing the spot on the map. She didn’t hesitate for a second.

I leaned forward, glancing at the map to make sure I wasn’t missing anything important. The landmarks around here were all familiar in a way—places we had all been to a million times.

We all crammed into the Twinkie, the familiar creak of its ancient hinges and the hum of the engine filling the air as we drove out toward Battery Jasper’s lookout spot. Everyone seemed lost in their own thoughts as we bounced along the uneven roads toward Battery Jasper. The faint smell of salt air hit us as we got closer to the lookout, mingling with the engine’s faint whine.

When we arrived, it felt like stepping into a different time. Battery Jasper was one of those places you almost forgot existed until you were standing in its shadow, surrounded by overgrown brush and the sound of waves crashing against the shore. Battery Jasper stood as a quiet, forgotten monument to the past. It felt oddly fitting—us digging through old maps and clues, chasing something that probably wasn’t even ours to find.

JJ had already climbed up onto a large rock, perched there like some kind of pirate lookout. He was scanning the horizon with a casual air, but I could tell his mind was working overtime. Kiara, of course, was wandering a few feet away, crouching down every now and then to inspect a plant or two. Classic Kie. And John B? He was just standing there, staring out at the waves, looking like he was waiting for some divine revelation to hit him. He was about as helpful as a flashlight with dead batteries.

Pope spread the map out over a large, flat rock, his movements careful as he tried to smooth out the creases. His face was a mask of concentration, eyes flicking between the map and the landscape in front of us. “If this is Parcel Nine…” he started, his finger circling a faint marking on the map. His brows knit together as he tried to piece together the lines from decades ago with the current view in front of us.

I leaned over his shoulder, squinting at the map as if staring harder would make it any clearer. “So, Parcel Nine has to be northeast of here,” I said, pointing toward a stretch of the coastline that seemed to match the general direction of the map’s markings. My voice sounded sure, but in my head, I wasn’t entirely convinced. Everything looked so different now compared to the map’s decades-old sketch.

“Somewhere over there,” I added, pointing out to where the land curved and the horizon seemed to shift. Gesturing toward a cluster of trees and rocky terrain.

“Right,” Pope agreed, nodding like he was trying to solidify the idea in his mind.

JJ was still up on his rock, squinting into the distance. “Over there? Guys, that’s not Tannyhill—that’s a subdivision,” he said, gesturing vaguely with one hand like the answer was just going to fall out of the sky.

John B, who’d been staring out at the water like he was trying to will the answers to come to him, crossed his arms. “Tannyhill plantation used to be the entire island,” he shot back, his tone sharp.

I crossed my arms, looking up at JJ with the sun glaring behind him, forcing me to squint. “It got sold into smaller pieces over time,” I added, my voice softer but no less firm. It was weird to think about how much the island had changed—how much had been carved away and sold off.

Pope’s finger hovered over a spot on the map, a section marked with a faint stone wall that cut through the property like a scar. “So, we’re just looking for an old stone wall,” he said, his voice steady but edged with the realization of how impossible that task might actually be.

I looked out at the endless stretch of coastline, the sunlight reflecting off the waves like shattered glass. The enormity of it all settled in my chest like a weight I couldn’t shake. It wasn’t just about finding a wall or following a map. It was about finding something that could change everything for all of us.

We piled into the Twinkie again, settling into our usual spots like puzzle pieces fitting into a well-worn frame. Pope took his place up front with the map in hand, acting like our navigator, while John B, ever the captain, was behind the wheel. Kiara and I slid onto the long, beat-up bench seat in the back, the cracked red vinyl underneath us telling its own story—every rip and scratch like a roadmap of adventures past. JJ, naturally, claimed the oddball seat in the corner. It wasn’t even a real seat, more like a half-hearted addition someone thought might be a good idea. It wobbled if you leaned on it too hard, and the vinyl was just as battered as everything else. Still, JJ perched there like he owned the place, his hat pushed low over his face.

As the van rumbled northeast, the road stretched out ahead like a promise we weren’t sure would be kept. Pope leaned forward, pointing out the windshield. “Okay, the road should split up here,” he said, his tone confident but a little tense.

John B nodded, hands steady on the wheel. “Got it.”

Kiara was beside me, staring out the window with a distant look in her eyes. The soft strumming of Mess is Mine by Vance Joy hummed through the van’s speakers, blending with the steady drone of the engine. The atmosphere felt quiet, like we were all lost in our own heads—until JJ decided to stir things up.

He was sitting directly across from me, and we’d somehow fallen into a game of sticks. My fingers were spread out—three on one hand, two on the other—while JJ held four on one hand and two on the other. It was my turn, and I leaned in, tapping his hand with two fingers to knock out his four.

“You’re cheating!” JJ exclaimed, his voice breaking the calm like a rock tossed into still water.

I burst out laughing. “Am not! You’re just a sore loser,” I teased, grinning at him.

JJ rolled his eyes, throwing his hands up like he was ready to declare war. “No, you definitely cheat,” he muttered, but his smirk betrayed him.

“Sounds like someone’s salty!” I shot back, my voice playful.

The bickering escalated from there, a back-and-forth filled with muttered insults, laughter, and a few not-so-gentle kicks under the seat.

“Will you two shut up!” Pope suddenly snapped from the front seat, whipping around to glare at us. His expression was pure exasperation, like a parent trying to keep a car full of rowdy kids in check.

JJ shrugged, turning to face Pope. “It’s her fault,” he said, his voice full of mock innocence.

I rolled my eyes and gave him a light kick in the shin.

“You little shit,” JJ growled, twisting back toward me.

“Oh, please. You started it,” I retorted, sticking my tongue out at him like a five-year-old. JJ reached over and slapped my knee, a little too dramatically.

“Hey! That was uncalled for,” I said, pointing an accusatory finger at him, my face scrunched into an exaggerated scowl.

JJ leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms, and muttering something under his breath, pretending to sulk.

“Shut up,” Pope repeated, his voice sharp and final as he turned back around in his seat, clearly done with our nonsense.

Kiara snorted beside me, trying to hide her amusement.

“All right. You’re gonna take a left,” Pope says, pointing out the next turn. John B jerks the wheel sharply, the Twinkie bouncing down the uneven dirt road and tossing all of us around like ragdolls. I grip the edge of the bench seat, glaring at him. “Smooth driving, Cap,” I mutter under my breath.

We pull up alongside a mossy, crumbling stone wall, its edges barely visible under a blanket of overgrown bushes and weeds. Pope sighs, leaning forward. “This is it,” he says as John B shifts the Twinkie into park.

“That looks like a stone wall to me,” JJ says dryly, peering out the window.

I give him a sideways glance. “No shit,” I reply, turning back to take in the sight.

It’s hard to tell where the wall ends, and the wild growth begins. The vines creep along like they’re trying to swallow the thing whole. Beyond the wall, I can make out the faint silhouette of a house through a gap in the trees. My stomach drops as I realize where we are.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I whisper, stopping dead in my tracks as the others start walking toward the wall.

“Not the Crain house,” John B mutters, the tension in his voice unmistakable.

Of course, it’s here. Of all the places on the island, it had to be here. My feet feel rooted to the ground, dread clawing up my spine. JJ steps up beside me, his jaw tight, his gaze locked on the house ahead.

“Worst-case scenario,” he mutters under his breath. His voice is steady, but his hand flexes at his side like he’s ready to bolt.

“Why’d it have to be here…” Kiara murmurs, barely loud enough for me to hear.

“Of all places?” I add, shaking my head as my pulse quickens.

“I heard Mrs. Crain buried her husband’s head on the property,” JJ says casually, as if he’s commenting on the weather.

I whip my head toward him, my face scrunched in fear. “Don’t remind me.” The island’s been full of creepy stories about this place for as long as I can remember, but that one always stuck with me.

Kiara’s voice cuts through the rising tension. “JJ, shut up,” she snaps, her glare sharp enough to silence him for once.

“Are we going over?” John B asks, gesturing toward the wall like scaling it is no big deal.

I shake my head, but the rest of them nod like it’s just another day in the OBX. Typical. With a sigh that feels like it comes from my soul, I mutter, “Guess so,” under my breath.

We take turns climbing over the wall, the rough stone scraping against our palms. I land awkwardly in the overgrown yard, the dense weeds clawing at my ankles. The house looms ahead of us, shrouded in shadow and silence. Its dilapidated facade seems to watch us, daring us to step closer.

The wind rustles through the trees, and I can’t help but glance at JJ. “If we die, I’m blaming you,” I say, my voice barely steady.

JJ flashes me a grin, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Noted,” he says, stuffing his hands into his pockets as we move toward the ominous silhouette of the Crain house.

Kiara takes the lead, her shoulders squared as she pushes through the tangled mess of overgrown bushes and weeds. I follow close behind, brushing aside stray branches that snag at my shirt. JJ is right on my heels, muttering something about poison ivy, while Pope and John B bring up the rear. The yard is eerily quiet, the only sound the crunch of our footsteps against the dead leaves underfoot.

Me and Kiara keep our eyes locked forward, trying not to dwell too much on the reality of what we’re doing—trespassing into the front yard of Mrs. Crain, the island's unofficial boogeywoman. She’s probably inside right now, totally oblivious to the fact that five teenagers have just vaulted over her stone wall and are trudging through her overgrown front yard, all in the name of hunting for gold.

The place looks untouched, like time forgot about it. Small, moss-covered statues peek out from under the wild greenery, half-hidden like eerie little sentinels. There’s a birdbath that’s cracked down the middle, its basin filled with murky rainwater and a couple of drowned leaves. The once-pristine yard is now a jungle of neglect, but it’s clear this place used to be something else entirely.

I glance around, the ghost of a memory tugging at me. When I was younger, maybe seven or eight, back when I still hung out with the kook kids my parents pushed me towards, we used to sneak into this yard. Back then, it was spotless—perfectly trimmed hedges, vibrant flowers in neat rows, the statues shining bright without a speck of moss or grime. We’d play hide and seek for hours, darting behind trees and crouching behind the garden sculptures. Back then, the Crain house was still mysterious, but it wasn’t this. It wasn’t haunted by the stories of murder or madness.

I slow for a moment, my fingers brushing against the rough bark of a tree as I take it all in. The yard is unrecognizable now, swallowed up by years of neglect. Mr. Crain’s death—or murder, depending on which version of the rumour mill you believe—changed everything. After he was gone, Mrs. Crain stopped caring for the place, or maybe just couldn’t anymore. She’s too old now, and it shows in every vine that’s strangled its way across what used to be a manicured paradise.

It’s sad, really. This yard used to have life, like someone loved it enough to keep it beautiful. Now it’s just... forgotten. I shake off the thought, hurrying to catch up with Kiara as she ducks under a low-hanging branch.

“Look, you guys know whose house this is, right?” I say, looking over my shoulder at the boys behind me still keeping my pace as I walk behind Kie.

“Oh, yeah. No, I do.” JJ says.

“Look- Honestly, I don’t really believe the stories of this place.” John B says, his voice a little too loud.

Pope turns around and shushes him louder than John B was talking.

“What?” John B says a soft whisper that’s barely audible over the soft crunch of leaves and grass beneath our feet.

JJ catches up next to me, walking alongside me rather than behind me I keep my eyes forward as I continue behind Kie. It’s not until JJ starts talking that I look at him.

“Which stories did you hear?” JJ asks me.

We continue to walk through the overgrown front yard, “The one where she killed her husband with an axe.” I say like it’s obvious my voice tight with (add something here) “And that shes been holed up ever since.” I say, looking back at Pope and John B as JJ continues to walk next to me.

“On certain nights, when the moon is full…” I turn to look at JJ, walking backwards, “you can see her in the window!” I drop my voice to a soft whisper lifting my hands up and wriggling my fingers in JJ’s face in a “creepy crawly” kinda way.

“No, Lani, it’s not funny,” JJ says as I turn around making a “Waah!” noise as he continues to talk, “cause its all true.” JJ says from behind me.

“I swear to God, guys, this is all real. I knew Hollis.” JJ continues, looking back at John B and Pope. We walk into a more open area of the yard, it’s a cleared space but still overgrown. There is a statue of a lady and as JJ turns back around, “Jeez!” he says, lifting his arms up, ready to punch.

This causes all of us to jump.

We all stop walking for a second, “Wait, you knew hollis Crain?” Pope asks JJ.

“Yeah, dude.” JJ responds.

Pope puts his hand on JJs shoulder, pushing him back a little, “Dude, how do you know Hollis Crane?”

“She was my babysitter, man.” JJ says, “She told me all about it.” His voice drops to a low whisper, “Told me the truth… about her mother.” JJ says, we all stand around him, looking at him with disbelieving eyes, “About what happened in this house.” JJ says, jerking his head towards the house in front of us.

JJ continued, telling us about what Hollis Crane, JJ’s babysitter and Mrs. Crains daughter, had told him… apparently.

“So as a kid, she heard all the stories that her mother killed her father, and… she was a murderer and all.” JJ says, looking around at us, “Hollis didn’t believe it… until that night.” He says, ominously looking down at the grass.

“What night?” Kie asks, raising an eyebrow.

JJ turns to look at Kie, his eyes boring into hers, “It all came back to her.” He says.

JJ turns to look at the house behind him, “When Hollis was six years old, she heard her parents arguing downstairs.” Sounds familiar, I think to myself.

Kiara is looking around, like as if she is paranoid something or somebody is going to pop out and jump us. My eyes stay locked on the house as JJ recounts his story, my eyes flickering between the various windows to see if I can see Mrs. Crain staring back at me. Nothing yet.

“So, she goes downstairs to see her mom washing her hands in a sink…” JJ takes a step forward to John B, “Full of blood.” He says his voice strong.

John B looks away from JJ, his face is saying everything he is thinking: “Bull shit.”

JJ continues, “Her mother just says that she cut her finger.” Popes eyes are wide like he is believing every word that is leaving JJ’s mouth. “The next morning, she says her father and her split up.”

“But then, Hollis noticed something.” JJ says, looking at John B again. “Her mother going into the parlour. Constantly. In and our and in and out with plastic bags.”

“Weeks pass, and Hollis decides to use the outhouse.” JJ continues, my eyes are still locked on the windows of the house… Hold on, I think I see somethin’ lookin’ at me through dat window. Oh, nevermind, its just a curtain. Ha, Ha, Ha.

“And as she’s using it, she looks down,” JJ pauses for a moment looking down, dramatic effect, I guess. His eyes are still glued to John B like he is trying to convince him that all this is real, he has me, Pope and Kie convinced, that’s for sure. So far, anyway. “And there, in the outhouse,” He looks back up at John B, “is her fathers head,” He points his fingers to his eyes, “Looking straight back at her.” JJ says, emphasising his words.

John B throws his head back, looking up at the sky and JJ looks confused as to why John B isn’t quite understanding the importance of what he just told him. “God, you are so full of shit.” John B says, shaking his head.

“Do you guys even know whose house this is?” I ask, glancing over my shoulder at the boys trudging behind me, my pace steady as I follow Kiara, pushing through the mess of overgrown bushes.

“Oh, yeah. No, I do,” JJ says nonchalantly, as if we’re walking up to the Wreck for a basket of fries and not trespassing on the infamous Crain property.

“Honestly, I don’t believe the stories about this place,” John B pipes up, his voice just a little too loud, like he’s trying to convince himself it’s no big deal.

Pope spins around and shushes him sharply - louder than John B was talking. “What?” John B hisses, his whisper barely louder than the crunch of dead leaves and grass beneath our feet.

JJ picks up his pace, falling into step beside me instead of behind. He’s always like this—itching to turn tension into a story or a joke. “So, which stories did you hear?” JJ asks, his voice dipped in curiosity, a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.

I let out a short breath as we push through another tangle of overgrowth, the damp leaves brushing against my legs. “The one where she killed her husband with an axe,” I say flatly, my tone tight with discomfort. “And that she’s been holed up ever since.” I glance back at Pope and John B for a moment before turning my attention back to JJ, who’s nodding like this is all completely normal.

“And on certain nights, when the moon is full…” I turn, walking backward now so I can face him, dropping my voice to a stage whisper, “you can see her in the window!” I wiggle my fingers in front of his face in a mock-spooky gesture, barely holding back a grin.

JJ swats my hands away, rolling his eyes. “No, Lani, it’s not funny,” he says, his voice trying to sound serious but failing because of the grin creeping up. “Because it’s all true.”

I spin back around, throwing my hands up dramatically. “Wooooo, scary!” I say in a teasing voice, earning an exasperated groan from him.

JJ doesn’t let it drop. “I swear to God, guys, this is real. I knew Hollis.”

That pulls my attention back. My brow furrows as I glance at him. “Wait—you knew Hollis Crain?” Pope asks, stopping to turn toward JJ, his expression a mix of disbelief and curiosity.

“Yeah, dude,” JJ says, as if this is just another casual fact.

Pope puts a hand on JJ’s shoulder, giving him a gentle shove back. “How the hell do you know Hollis Crain?”

JJ shrugs like it’s the most casual thing in the world. “She was my babysitter, man.” He pauses for dramatic effect, glancing at each of us like he’s about to deliver a mic drop. “She told me everything.” His voice drops conspiratorially, his tone low and chilling. “Told me the truth… about her mother. About what happened in this house.” He jerks his head toward the looming shadow of the house behind us.

“Everything?” Kiara echoes, her voice tight as she glances nervously toward the looming house ahead.

JJ nods, and we all freeze for a moment, the weight of his words settling over us like a heavy fog.

JJ launches into the story, his voice low and deliberate, drawing us in whether we want to hear it or not. “So, as a kid, she heard all these rumors—that her mom killed her dad, that she was a murderer. But Hollis didn’t believe it… until that night.” JJ’s voice is calm, almost too calm, as he looks down at the ground, like he’s pulling us deeper into the story one word at a time.

“What night?” Kiara asks, her voice tight, her eyes darting nervously toward the house.

JJ meets her gaze, his own eyes dark with the weight of the tale. “It all came back to her. When Hollis was six years old, she heard her parents arguing downstairs.”

The words hit me in the chest, unsettling and weirdly familiar. I glance at the house, my eyes scanning the windows, half-expecting to see a face staring back at me. So far, nothing.

“So, she went to check it out.” His voice drops, and he takes a step closer to Pope. “She finds her mom at the sink. Washing her hands. In blood.”

“Her mom told her she cut her finger,” JJ says with a shrug. “But the next day, her dad was gone. Just… disappeared.”

John B scoffs softly, shaking his head, but JJ keeps going, undeterred.

“And then,” JJ adds, stepping closer to Pope and lowering his voice, “she starts noticing her mom going into the parlour. Constantly. In and out. Always carrying these plastic bags.”

A chill runs down my spine as the story twists darker, the tension in the air thick enough to cut. my eyes are still locked on the windows of the house… Hold on, I think I see somethin’ lookin’ at me through dat window. Oh, nevermind, its just a curtain. Ha, Ha, Ha.

“Weeks later, Hollis goes to use the outhouse,” JJ continues, his voice hushed. He pauses dramatically, glancing at each of us before finishing. “She looks down. And there… was her father’s head. Staring straight back at her.”

The silence that follows is thick, suffocating. For a moment, none of us move, the weight of JJ’s words settling over us like a heavy blanket.

John B groans, throwing his head back. “God, JJ, you are so full of shit.” He looks back down at JJ, his voice tight.

JJ’s face falls, genuinely offended.

“Dude, I swear to God, man.” JJ mutters, breaking eye contact with John B, his gaze flicking to the ground. JJ always had a thing about eye contact, like it made him too vulnerable or something.

Pope steps in closer to him, his voice low and cautious. “Did she call the police?”

“She didn’t have time—” JJ starts, but John B shoves himself between them, cutting him off.

“Wait! Hold on—dude!” JJ snaps, grabbing John B’s arm and spinning him around.

“What!” John B barks, and yeah, he’s pissed now.

JJ hesitates, glancing at me like he’s searching for backup, then back to John B. “Are you sure you wanna do this? She’s an axe murderer. You got a cast on, dude,” JJ says, gesturing to John B’s injured arm.

John B narrows his eyes, his voice a sharp whisper. “I don’t give a shit if she’s an axe murderer, okay? I’ve got nothing to lose, right?”

They stand there, locked in a tense stare-down. Pope shifts awkwardly beside them, his eyes darting between the two like he’s watching a tennis match.

“You comin’, or what?” John B says, before turning and stalking off. Kiara and Pope follow close behind him without hesitation.

JJ stays rooted for a second, scratching at his arm. I walk up next to him, nudging his shoulder. “Come on,” I say softly, jerking my head in the direction of the others.

He looks down at me, his face unreadable, then finally sighs and falls into step behind me.

We creep through the overgrown yard, ducking lower as we approach the house. The shadows feel heavier here, stretching out across the ground like claws. John B stops abruptly, motioning for all of us to gather closer.

“Hey, come on. Come here,” he hisses.

I quicken my pace, closing the gap between us. JJ moves up behind me, his presence a comforting weight, even if he’d never admit he’s as freaked out as the rest of us.

John B leans in, lowering his voice. “So, here’s the plan. We need to look for the wheat near the water, like it said in Denmark’s letter.”

Right. The cryptic message we decoded back at Rixon’s the night before. “Wheat” meant gold. Simple enough.

“Okay, but, like, what kind of water?” Pope whispers, his forehead creased in concentration. “Like pond water?”

JJ snickers, never one to miss an opportunity. “Bong water?” he quips in a lazy, exaggerated stoner voice.

I roll my eyes and glare at him, Kiara and Pope doing the same.

“Seriously?” I mutter under my breath.

John B’s patience is clearly hanging by a thread. He sighs, exasperated. “No. It—it just said ‘look for water,’ okay?”

Kiara crosses her arms, raising a skeptical brow. “That’s the shittiest secret message ever.”

“You wanna complain a little more, Kie?” John B snaps, his tone sharp. “Nobody said it was gonna be easy.”

They peel off from the group, leaving me, Pope, and JJ standing awkwardly in the clearing.

Pope turns to us, his expression all business. “I’ll search the northeast quadrant. You two take the northwest quadrant.”

My eyes widen in protest, but Pope walks off before I can get a word in.

“The decapitation quadrant,” JJ mutters under his breath, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Great,” I grumble, my voice barely audible.

JJ glances at me, his smirk softening just a fraction. “Come on,” he says, grabbing my arm and pulling me along through the tangled mess of greenery.

I don’t resist, but as we move deeper into the yard, the air feels heavier - charged, like we’re trespassing on something more than just property. And for once, JJ’s silence doesn’t feel like a joke waiting to happen. It feels like he knows it, too.

“Were you serious about all that stuff with Hollis?” I ask JJ, my voice low but sharp, as his grip on my arm pulls me through the jungle of weeds and crumbling statues.

He glances over his shoulder briefly, his expression unreadable. “Most of it, yeah,” he replies, shrugging like it’s no big deal, before turning his attention forward again.

“Most of it?” I repeat, my tone incredulous. “So, what parts were you not serious about?”

JJ doesn’t even slow down. “The part about her seeing her dad’s head,” he says flatly. “But that’s it.”

I freeze for a second, staring at his back. “Oh, great. Super comforting, JJ,” I mutter, shaking my head as I quicken my pace to catch up to him.

His lips twitch like he’s fighting a smirk. “Relax, Lani. You’ll live,” he says, tossing a glance at me before stepping over a fallen tree branch.

I didn’t even see the branch—it came out of nowhere, or maybe I was just too lost in my thoughts. My foot caught on it, and before I could steady myself, I was falling. JJ’s grip on my arm tightened, but he didn’t have enough time to pull me back.

I hit the ground hard, knees colliding with jagged dirt and rocks. A sharp sting spread through my leg as I felt the scrape.

“Shit! Lani!” JJ’s voice was urgent, panicked, as he crouched beside me in seconds.

I shifted, moving to sit on my butt, lifting my knee to inspect the damage. Blood was already pooling in the scrape, a nasty mix of dirt and raw skin. I winced, letting out a quiet, “Ow.”

“You okay?” JJ’s hand landed firmly on my shoulder, his blue eyes flickering between my face and my knee.

I nodded quickly, even as my face scrunched up from the sting. “Yeah, yeah, I’m okay. It’s just a scrape,” I said, trying to sound tougher than I felt.

“You sure?” JJ asked, his hand sliding down my arm in a gentle but searching way, like he wasn’t convinced.

“I’m sure,” I said, looking up at him. A small smile crept onto my lips, hoping to reassure him.

For a moment, his eyes locked onto mine—those stormy blue eyes that always seemed to be either full of trouble or, like now, concern. Then he stood, brushing the dirt off his knees, and held out his hand.

“Come on,” he said.

I took it without hesitation, his grip steady and strong as he pulled me to my feet. My knee stung like hell, but I wasn’t about to complain. JJ still held my hand for a moment longer than necessary before letting go.

“Next time, watch where you’re going, klutz,” he teased, but his voice was softer than usual.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, brushing off my shorts and trying to play it cool. My cheeks burned a little, though, and it wasn’t from the fall.

A/N: Thank you so much for reading 𝐁𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐓𝐰𝐨 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝𝐬, and I hope you are enjoying it so far 😏! Please give this post a like so I know you guys are enjoying it, again thank you so much, part 3 will be out soon 💞

Also... I hope you enjoyed the small Lani and JJ moments I have sprinkled in there 😘

22 notes · View notes

blackswaneuroparedux · 2 years ago

Text

‘Pimpernel of the Hellenes’, ‘Major Paddy’, ‘Enchanted maniac’: Will the real Paddy Leigh Fermor please stand up?

Paradox reconciles all contradictions. - Patrick Leigh Fermor

So one evening I was baby sitting my nephews and nieces here in our family chalet in Verbier, high up in the Swiss Alps. It was my turn to baby sit as the rest of my family enjoyed the fantastic classical music concerts and events showcased at the two week long Verbier 30th Festival. The little scamps had gone to bed and my father and I watched an old British war movie on DVD, ‘Ill Met By Moonlight’ (1957). It was filmed by the legendary team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger based on the 1950 book ‘Ill Met by Moonlight: The Abduction of General Kreipe’ by W. Stanley Moss.

I’ve seen the film a couple of times before, but until now never really paid attention to where the title came from. My father said it was from Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream’ And so it was. In the play, Oberon, the king of the fairies and the Queen are having a fairly bitter drawn-out fight over custody of a changeling Indian child, and this is how the pissed off king greets the queen when they run into each other, “Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania”. Oberon is basically saying "Oh Lord, it's you..." and Titania's response is basically a flippant middle finger. One of the best modern reasons to read Shakespeare: to throw playful erudite shade at others.

Anyway, the historical background of the film is the German invasion of Crete in May 1941. After an intense ten-day battle, Allied troops were driven back across the island, and many were evacuated from beaches along the southern coast. Some Cretans and British officers took to the mountains to organise resistance against the occupying forces. The German occupation that followed was especially brutal. Dreadful reprisals followed every act of resistance. The German commander, General Müller, insisted on taking 50 Cretan lives for every German soldier killed; he became known as ‘The Butcher of Crete’.

As a Classicist side note, there had been a close association between Britain and Crete since the early 20th century, when archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans had uncovered the sensational remains of a Minoan palace at Knossos. The headquarters of the British archaeological school in Crete was a large villa alongside the site, known as Villa Ariadne. Several archaeologists, who knew the island and its people well, went underground after the German occupation to aid the Cretan resistance. Continuing in this tradition, scholar and travel-writer Patrick Leigh Fermor, who had got to know Greece in the 1930s, joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE).

During the German occupation, Major Paddy Leigh Fermor travelled to Crete three times to help organise local resistance against the hated German occupation. On the third occasion, in February 1944, he was parachuted in with a specific mission to kidnap German commander General Müller, to boost morale on Crete along with his erstwhile SOE comrade Capt. W. Stanley Moss MC (aka Billy Moss) of the Coldstream Guards. However, just after they parachute in, General Müller was replaced by General Heinrich Kreipe, who transferred from the Russian Front. Thinking that capturing one general was as good as another, Fermor merrily go ahead with the daring kidnap operation.

It’s at this point that the narrative of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s ‘Ill Met by Moonlight’ (1957) picks up. Dirk Bogarde plays Paddy Leigh Fermor, David Oxley plays Moss, and Marius Goring plays the taciturn German paratroop general. Blink and you’ll miss the late great Christopher Lee making a cameo appearance as a German officer in the dentist’s room scene.

The film naturally takes some liberty with the facts but it’s a cracking yarn of high adventure and drama. Xan Fielding, a close friend of Leigh Fermor from the SOE in Cairo, was taken on as technical adviser. The fact the film was shot in in the Alpes-Maritimes in France and Italy, and on the Côte d'Azur in France, far away from the craggy valleys and mountains of Crete itself. The director Michael Powell spent some time walking in Crete to get to know the island, but decided that, with the confused and volatile state of Greek politics, it was not suitable to film there.

Looking back years after he had directed it Powell didn’t think much of his own film. By contrast, Paddy Leigh Fermor, who was on set throughout the film shoot, was very happy with Bogarde’s portrayal of him with Byronic glamour. Watching the movie again ‘Ill Met by Moonlight’ remains a classic and stands out from many British war films of the 1950s because of its realism. The British SOE men and the Cretan guerrillas look absolutely right for their parts. It is dramatic and full of suspense while filled with much boyish humour.

I was disappointed with one notable omission in the film that did happen in real life. According to Patrick Leigh Fermor, at dawn one day during the journey across the mountains, General Kreipe was looking at the mist rising from Mount Ida and began to recite, in Latin, the opening lines of Horace’s ninth ode:

Vides ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte nec iam sustineant onus silvae laborantes geluque flumina constiterint acuto?

Behold yon Mountains hoary height, Made higher with new Mounts of Snow; Again behold the Winters weight Oppress the lab’ring Woods below: And Streams, with Icy fetters bound, Benum’d and crampt to solid Ground

(John Dryden 1685)

Leigh Fermor picked up on the General, and recited the remaining stanzas of the Ode. ‘Ach so, Herr Major,’ said Kreipe when Leigh Fermor had finished. Both men were amazed to realise they shared a classical education and a love of ancient Latin poetry.

Leigh Fermor later wrote that it was as though the war had ceased to exist for a moment, as ‘We had both drunk from the same fountains before.’ It brought captor and captive together with a strange bond. The scene was not reproduced in the film, as Powell and Pressburger probably thought it would make the men sound too academic for a popular cinema audience.

Leigh Fermor and Kreipe met again in the early 1970s, on a Greek television show, and got on famously together. The General said Leigh Fermor had treated him chivalrously as a captive. They remained friends until Kreipe’s death.

After sharing a late night drink with my father after the film, I began to muse on the figure of Paddy Leigh Fermor, a family friend and someone I met along with his wife, Joan, as a little girl. My grandparents, and especially my grandmother, knew Paddy briefly from their days during and after the Second World War.

My father shared a few stories about him when he and my mother visited his beautiful home in Greece, where even at his advanced age he remained the most generous of hosts and the most outrageous flirt.

One of my memories was getting into his battered old Peugeot in the drive way and trying to drive it when my feet could barely touch the pedals. It wouldn’t have mattered in any case as the brakes didn’t work as he cheerfully said later as we careened around a dirt road to go around the mountains for a drive.

Many years later in April 2022, I tried to visit the home of the late Patrick and Joan Leigh Fermor - a sort of pristine shrine to their memory that one can also stay in any of the rooms as a vacation rental - in the coastal fishing village of Kadarmyli in the Peloponnese, as part of a hiking and mountaineering sojourn around Greece with ex-Army friends. We couldn’t stay there as it was already rented out to other guests, and so we stayed higher up the mountain in a villa, but we swam in front of the Fermor’s home which was on the water’s edge.

You could never put your finger on Paddy Leigh Fermor. He hid behind his gift for telling yarns, and pulling Ancient Greek verses out of the thin air, as well as boisterously singing local Greek songs with a drink in his hand.

Even after his death in 2011, the question keeps nagging as to who was Paddy Leigh Fermor?

The Dirk Bogarde film too seems to ask, who exactly is the ‘real’ Patrick Leigh Fermor - or the real anyone? Taking its title from a Shakespearian play concerned with dreams and disguises, magic and power, ‘Ill Met By Moonlight’ is all about questions of identity.

Under the film credits, we see Dirk Bogarde in uniform; then, unexpectedly, we see him in the flamboyant outfit of a Cretan hill-bandit. A title informs us that Major Leigh Fermor was also known by the Greek code-name “Philidem.” In other words, there are two of him (at least), and on one level the adventure the film is about to unfold reflects a conflict in his personality. It’s a conflict shared, unknowingly, by his Nazi opposite number, the fierce, arrogant General Kreipe (an unlikely “proud Titania,” but it’s true that he “with a monster is in love” – the monster of Nazism). Kreipe’s human side is so rigorously repressed by the demands of war and “glory” that he is genuinely unaware of it; ironically, this humanness, which constitutes the true manhood of this Teuton warrior, is revealed by a boy (equivalent to Shakespeare’s Indian Prince?) - who, in turn, is the most grown up person in the movie.

If “Philidem” appears under the credits, caped and open-shirted, a romantic dream-figure out of an operetta or a storybook, he is first seen in the film proper as a coarser, more down-to-earth version of the same thing – an ordinary Cretan peasant in a shabby suit, waiting for a bus. When he makes contact with the Resistance, his personality fragments further.

To some, he is the mystical Philidem, Pimpernel of the Hellenes and righter of wrongs. To others he is “Major Paddy,” the happy-go-lucky Englishman of popular movie myth conducting war as if it were a branch of amateur theatricals, a gentleman adventurer relying on breeding to get him through and making fun of the whole business. To Bill Moss (David Oxley), the newly arrived junior officer sent to assist him, he is the cool, fast-thinking professional soldier. And to himself? In his quietly passionate defence of Cretan life and culture, he seems someone else again: a scholar and aesthete outraged by the barbarism and folly of war, and by the moronic arrogance shown by his captive toward the Cretan people.

Whatever his persona, Leigh Fermor is a chameleon who never seems to change very radically in himself. Perhaps because he has this quality of seeming all things to all men – and being those things - he remains unfazed by the monolithic might of the German military machine. Fluent in Greek, he can also speak German like a German and is easily able to assume another disguise, that of a faceless Nazi officer. Although he and Moss make fun of themselves - “If only I had a monocle!” muses Moss when Leigh Fermor tells him he “looks like an Englishman dressed like a German, leaning against the Ritz bar” - they are able to effect the kidnapping with an ease that seems appropriately Puckish. General Kreipe is ignominiously thrust onto the floor of his own limousine, gagged, and sat upon by a couple of the peasants he so despises. Kreipe’s rage is compounded by his firm conviction that he has been snatched by “amateurs” - a belief Leigh Fermor and Moss slyly make no objection to, knowing how it will gnaw at his already shaky Master Race self-confidence.

Patrick Leigh Fermor, aka Major Paddy, aka Philidem, in the film’s closing moments, is far from being self-assured intellectual or dashing amateur adventurer or legendary outlaw of the hills. He’s just a tired man who wants to go home and rest up. “How do you feel?” asks Moss. “Flat” is the reply. “You look flat!” says Moss. “I know how I’d like to look …” murmurs Leigh-Fermor wistfully. Moss knows what he’s going to say, and joins in the litany: “Like an Englishman dressed like an Englishman – and leaning against the Ritz bar!” It’s easy to imagine them ordering drinks at that renowned watering-hole with all the suavity required by this little fantasy.

Still, the film’s last images of Crete receding in the distance, until all we can see is the sea, suggests that maybe Major Paddy’s heart is really back in those hills in the “fair and fertile” land that has become as much a Powellian landscape of the mind for us as the studio-built Himalayan convent of ‘Black Narcissus’ or the monochrome Heaven of ‘A Matter of Life and Death’. And, as the film POV closing shots departs both Crete and this film, I began to think that being “dressed like an Englishman and leaning against the Ritz bar” would, for Patrick Leigh Fermor constitute yet another disguise. After all, he said he was of Irish aristocratic stock.

Traveller and writer Paddy Leigh Fermor is best known for two events. He’s known for leading the commando group in occupied Crete to kidnap General Kreipe. But he is also known for the boy who, at a mere 18 years old, set off with little money and a lot of nerve in 1933 to walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople.

Patrick Leigh Fermor was, in the words of one of his obituaries, a cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond and Graham Greene. Self-reliance and derring-do were lessons learnt from the cradle. When Fermor’s geologist father was posted to India, he and his wife left the infant with family in Northamptonshire and did not return until his fourth birthday. In retrospect, he took great delight in being sent to a school for difficult children and getting himself expelled from the King’s School, Canterbury, when he was caught holding hands with a greengrocer’s daughter eight years his senior. His school report infamously judged him ‘a dangerous mix of sophistication and recklessness’.

Sharing a flat in Shepherd’s Market, one of Mayfair’s seedier corners, Leigh Fermor schooled himself in literature, history, Latin and Greek.

He honed his character with the company of extraordinary people and the words of great writers - he had a prodigious memory for prose as well as poetry. He befriended literary lions such as Sacheverell Sitwell, Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford. His travels began aged ‘eighteen-and-three-quarters’ when he rejected Sandhurst Royal Military College in order to walk the length of Europe from Hook of Holland to Constantinople. He took with him Horace’s Odes and the Oxford Book of Verse though Leigh Fermor could recite Shakespeare soliloquies, Marlowe speeches, Keats’s Odes and as he modestly put it ‘the usual pieces of Tennyson, Browning and Coleridge’ from memory.

Leigh Fermor was then a self-made man in the most literal sense.

Setting off from England in 1933, Fermor resolved to traverse Europe living like a hermit; sleeping in bars and begging for food. But his manly charms and boyish good looks found him being passed like a favourite godson from Schloss to palace by European nobility and he developed a lifelong penchant for aristocratic company. I his own words, ‘In Hungary, I borrowed a horse, then plunged into Transylvania; from Romania on into Bulgaria’. Having reached Constantinople in January 1935, Fermor continued to explore Greece where he fought on the royalist side in Macedonia quelling a republican revolution. In Athens Leigh Fermor met Balasha Cantacuzene, a Romanian countess with whom he fell in love. They were living together in a Moldovan castle when World War Two was declared.

Fluent in Greek, Leigh Fermor was posted as a liaison officer in Albania. Recruited as a Special Operations Executive (SOE), he was shipped from Cairo to German-occupied Crete where he lived disguised as a shepherd in the mountains for two years. On his third expedition to Crete in 1944, Leigh Fermor was parachuted alone onto the island and made connections in the Cretan resistance movement. While waiting for his compatriot Captain Bill Stanley Moss to land by water from Cairo, Leigh Fermor hatched a plot to kidnap German Commander General Heinrich Krieple. He liaised comfortably with Cretan partisans and bandits to pull off one of the war’s greatest coups de théâtre.

Disguised as German soldiers, Leigh Fermor and Moss stopped Krieple’s car at an improvised check point en route back to Nazi HQ in Knossos. Abandoning the General’s car after a two-hour drive, Leigh Fermor left a note indicating that the kidnappers were British so that there wouldn’t be reprisals against Cretan nationals. When the abduction of the unpopular commander was discovered, a German officer in Heraklion allegedly said ‘well, gentlemen, I think this calls for champagne’. It turns out that General Kreipe was despised by his own soldiers because, amongst other things, he objected to the stopping of his own vehicle for checking in compliance with his commands concerning approved travel orders. It’s why for instance the German troops, both in the film and in real life, dare not stop the General’s car as it drove through the check points at Heraklion.

Krieple was evacuated and taken to Cairo and Leigh Fermor entered the annals of World War Two’s most devil-may-care heroes. With characteristic panache, when he was demobbed Leigh Fermor moved into an attic room at the Ritz paying half a guinea a night. But his first travel book, ‘The Traveller’s Tree’, was not about the European odyssey or the Cretan escapades and centred on Leigh Fermor’s adventures in the Carribbean. Published in 1950, ‘The Traveller’s Tree’ was an inspiration for Ian Fleming’s second James Bond novel ‘Live and Let Die’ (1954).

As a host and house guest, Paddy Leigh Fermor was much sought-after. At one of his parties in Cairo, he counted nine crowned heads. He was a confirmed two-gin-and-tonics before lunch man and smoked eighty to 100 cigarettes a day. His party pieces included singing ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ in Hindustani and reciting ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ backwards. In Cyprus while staying with Laurence Durrell, Leigh Fermor apparently stunned crowds in Bella Pais into silence by singing folk songs in perfect Cretan dialect. As Durrell wrote in ‘Bitter Lemons’ (1957), ‘it is as if they want to embrace Paddy wherever he goes’.

He struck up a partiuclar friendship with the famous Mitford sisters, especially Deborah Mitford, later ‘Debo’, the Duchess of Devonshire. It was at the Devonshires’ Irish estate Lismore Castle that ‘Darling Debo’ and ‘Darling Pad’ met and began to correspond. A characteristic letter from the Duchess in 1962 reads ‘The dear old President (JFK) phoned the other day. First question was ‘Who’ve you got with you, Paddy?” He’s got you on the brain’ to which Fermor replies of a broken wrist ‘Balinese dancing’s out, for a start; so, should I ever succeed to a throne, is holding an orb. The other drawbacks will surface with time’.

After the war he travelled widely but was always drawn back to Greece. He built a house on the Mani peninsula - which had been, significantly, the only part of Magna Graecia to resist Ottoman colonisation since the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Before his death in 2011 at the age of 96, he wrote some of the most acclaimed travel books of the 20th century.

His books contain some of the finest prose writing of the past century and disprove Wilde's maxim that "it is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating".

Charm, self-taught knowledge and enthusiasm made up for the lack of a university degree or a private income. His teenage walk across Europe and subsequent romantic sojourn in Baleni, Romania, with Princess Balasha Cantacuzene are proof enough of that. But the difficulty of capturing such an unconventional and glamorous life is made harder by the certainty that Fermor was an unreliable narrator.

He was also an infuriatingly slow writer. Driven by a life-long passion for words yet hampered by anxiety about his abilities, Leigh Fermor published eight books over 41 years.

‘The Traveller's Tree’ describes his postwar journey through the Caribbean; ‘Mani‘ and ‘Roumeli’ (1958 and 1966) draw on his experiences in Greece, where he would live for much of the latter part of his life. But it is the books that came out of his trans-Europe walk that reveal both the brilliance and the flaws. ‘A Time of Gifts’ was published in 1977, 44 years after he set out on the journey. ‘Between the Woods and the Water’ appeared nine years later. Both describe a world of privilege and poverty, communism and the rising tide of Nazism, and end with the unequivocal words, "To be continued". Yet the third volume hung like an albatross around the author's neck. As the years passed, Fermor found it impossible to shape the last part of his story in the way he wanted.

Leigh Fermor was that rarest of men: a man determined to live on his own terms, if not his own means, and who mostly - and mostly magnificently - succeeded. Always popping off on a journey when he should have been writing about the last one, always ready to party, he was forever chasing beautiful, fascinating or powerful women, even when with his wife, Joan Raynor. She was the great facilitator who funded his passion for travel and writing, as well as women, from her trust fund. His love affairs were discreet but legendary.

Leigh Fermor was happiest among the rogues. Over a lifetime on the road, he sought them, and in turn they responded to his charm, nose for adventure, and his famous wit. He was a keenly-anticipated dinner guest - once outshining Richard Burton at a London society soirée, who he cut-off midway through a recital of ‘Hamlet’. As Richard Burton stormed out, the pleading society hostess said, “But Paddy’s a war hero!” to which Burton grouchily replied, “I don’t give a damn who he is!”

His partnership with and then marriage to Joan Raynor was an open relationship, at least on Leigh Fermor’s side. Paddy saw in Joan his kindred spirit. Like him, she spent much of her youth travelling to where she pleased; largely in France, where the photographer and literary critic Cyril Connolly became besotted by her. Joan was the daughter of Sir Bolton and Lady Eyres Monsell of Dumbleton Hall, Worcestershire. She was not only stunningly pretty but also 'a beautiful ideal, with the perfect bathing dress, the most lovely face, the most elaborate evening dress', as the Eton educated Connolly described her. Joan also stood out from the upper-class beauties of her day in that she supplemented her mean rich father's allowance by earning her living as a decent photographer.

In 1946, she met Leigh Fermor in Athens, while he was deputy director of the British Institute. Joan met him at a time when he was then in a relationship with a French woman called Denise, who was pregnant with his child, which she aborted. The pair would travel to the Caribbean together under the invitation of Greek photographer Costas, falling madly in love.

She was the only woman that - after decades of sexual scandals - matched his own erratic behaviour. Stories of how they dined fully-clothed in the Mediterranean, dragging a table into the sea, as well as their myriad cats and olive groves, paint a restless couple, who, when not out articulating the peoples of their adopted homeland, kept themselves very busy.

The attraction between Paddy and Joan was instant. So many love affairs that Paddy indulged in seemed about as brief as the flame from a burning envelope and you expected this one with Joan to be too. But somehow, miraculously, it lasts.

The two were apart a great deal, but in their case, absence did make the heart grow fonder. While Paddy was staying in a monastery in Normandy, supposed to be thinking monk-like thoughts that he would eventually put into his masterpiece A Time To Keep Silence, he was also writing sexy letters to Joan: 'At this distance you seem about as nearly perfect a human being as can be, my darling little wretch, so it's about time I was brought to my senses.' And: 'Don't run away with anyone or I'll come and cut your bloody throat.'

She tantalised him with descriptions of Cyril Connolly making passes at her; but she, like Denise, sounded a rather desperate note when she wrote: 'I got the curse so late this month I began to hope I was having a baby and that you would have to make it a legitimate little Fermor. All hopes ruined this morning.'

Fiercely independent - a trait that must have enamoured Paddy - they were best imagined as two pillars of a Greek temple, beside one-another but capable of holding up the roof of the world that they had built for themselves through the lens of ancient history and Hellenic culture. Indeed, it was said that they had a special ‘pact of liberty’. It is this unconquerable aura that led poet laureate John Betjeman to declare his love for her (he called her ‘Dotty’ and remarked that her eyes were as large as tennis balls). For Cyril Connolly, the photographer she shadowed, and with whom she had a scandalised affair during her first marriage, she was a “lovely boy-girl” and Laurence Durrell named her the ‘Corn Goddess’ because of her slender figure and short hair. But of all of these worthy candidates, it was the warrior-poet Patrick Leigh Fermor who finally won her heart.

To Joan, who described herself as a ‘lifelong loner’ in her diaries, her companionship with the uncomplicated Paddy was a relief. They had no children, nor did they want any - or so Paddy claimed. But those who knew Joan suspected she did want children but it never came to pass; and so she became a devoted aunt or dotted on other friends’ children. For both of them their dozens of cats gave them the next best thing to paternal satisfaction. Still, her morbid fascination with photographing cemeteries painted a much darker side.

Joan Raynor’s inheritance subsidised his peripatetic life at least until the enormous success of ‘A Time of Gifts’ in the late 1970s, which in turn created a new market for his previous volumes about Greece, ‘Mani’ and ‘Roumeli’.

With Joan’s tacit consent, Paddy enjoyed amorous flings, discrete sexual affairs with high society women and sampled the low delights of the brothel. This activity rarely made it into his private letters, but the exceptions could be piquant. Writing in 1958 from Cameroon, where he was on the set of a John Huston movie, he told a (male) friend: “ Errol Flynn and I . . . sally forth into dark lanes of the town together on guilty excursions that remind me rather of old Greek days with you.” In a 1961 letter to the film director John Huston’s wife, Ricki, with whom Leigh Fermor had been having sex with (and would die in a car crash in 1969). “I say,” the passage begins, “what gloomy tidings about the CRABS! Could it be me?” Riffing on pubic lice and their crafty ways, he conjectures that, during a recent romp with an “old pal” in Paris, a force “must have landed” on him “and then lain up, seeing me merely as a stepping stone or a springboard to better things” - to Mrs. Huston, that is. As comic apologies for venereal infection go, the passage is surely a classic.

Like most high flying lives, it was far from blameless. Wounded women were littered in his wake. Some British visitors to Athens were less than impressed by this Englishman who posed as “more Greek than the Greeks”.

Some Greeks shared their disdain. Revisionist historians criticised his role in wartime Crete, and warned their fellow Hellenes that for all his fluency and charm, Leigh Fermor was no latter day Byron. His unoccupied car was blown up outside his Mani house, probably by members of the Greek Communist Party which he had vocally opposed. The accidental fatal shooting of a partisan in Crete led to a long blood feud which made it difficult for Leigh Fermor to re-enter the island until the 1970s, and possibly explains why he chose to settle in the Peloponnese rather than among the hills and harbours of his dreams.

His own books had already eclipsed those incidents, not only among readers of English but also in Greece, where in 2007 the government of his adopted land made him a Commander of the Order of the Phoenix for services to literature.

Travel writers such as the great Jan Morris have described Leigh Fermor as the master of their trade and its greatest exponent in the 20th century.

When ‘A Time of Gifts’ was published in 1977, Frederick Raphael wrote: “One feels he could not cross Oxford Street in less than two volumes; but then what volumes they would be!”

They are not for everyone. Leigh Fermor wrote that written English is a language whose Latinates need pegging down with simple Anglo-Saxonisms, and some feel that he personally could have made more and better use of the mallet. His exuberance is either captivating or florid. It is certainly unique among English prose styles.

Artemis Cooper, his patient and careful biographer wrote that “Paddy had found a way of writing that could deploy a lifetime’s reading and experience, while never losing sight of his ebullient, well-meaning and occasionally clumsy 18-year-old self … this was a wonderful way of disarming his readers, who would then be willing to follow him into the wildest fantasies and digressions”.

Those fantasies and digressions took decades to express. ‘A Time of Gifts’ had arguably been 40 years in the making when it was published in 1977. Its sequel, ‘Between the Woods and the Water’, did not appear until 1986. The third and final volume has been awaited ever since. Following Leigh Fermor’s death, a foot-high manuscript was apparently found on his desk.

Once he knuckled down to it, Leigh Fermor loved playing around with words. He was one of our greatest stylists and he was devoted to producing un-improvable books. But writing did not come easily to him, at least partly because it was something of a distraction from the main event, which was living an un-improvable life of unrepentant gaiety and fun.

For forty odd years, a legion of friends and admirers would beat a path to Paddy and Joan’s door. Artists, poets, royalty and writers came, all taking inspiration from their erudite hosts. A visit was an act of communion, a sharing of ideas and stories.

Leigh Fermor influenced a generation of British travel writers, including Bruce Chatwin, Colin Thubron, Philip Marsden, Nicholas Crane, Rory Stewart, and William Dalrymple. Indeed when Bruce Chatwin died, it was Paddy who scattered Chatwin’s ashes near a church in the mountains in Kardamyli.

When I was there in April 2022, I went to that same church to pay my respects.

But some of Paddy’s life energy was sucked out of him when Joan died in Kardamyli in June 2003, aged 91. It was related that Joan said to her friend Olivia Stewart, who was visiting: 'I really would like to die but who'd look after Paddy?' Olivia said that she would. A few minutes later, Joan fell, hit her head - and died instantly of a brain haemorrhage. Joan had often quoted Rilke: 'The good marriage is one in which each appoints the other as guardian of his solitude.' Now Paddy Leigh Fermor was all alone.

Leigh Fermor was knighted in 2004, the day of his birthday which he delighted in like a giggling schoolboy. But he missed Joan terribly.

For the last few months of his life Leigh Fermor suffered from a cancerous tumour, and in early June 2011 he underwent a tracheotomy in Greece. As death was close, according to local Greek friends, he expressed a wish to visit England to bid goodbye to his friends, and then return to die in Kardamyli, though it is also stated that he actually wished to die in England and be buried next to his wife, Joan, in Dumbleton, Gloucestershire. He stayed on at Kardamyli until the 9th June 2011, when he left Greece for the last time. He died in England the following day, 10th June 2011, aged 96. It was reported that he had dined in full black tie on the evening of his death. Paddy had style even unto the end.

A Guard of Honour was formed by the Intelligence Corps and a bugler from his former regiment, the Irish Guards, delivered the ‘Last Post’ at Paddy’s funeral. As had been his wish, he was buried beside Joan. On his gravestone in Dumbleton cemetery is an inscription in Greek, a quote from Constantine Cavafy: “In addition, he was that best of all things, Hellenic.”

Although Joan had passed away at the age of ninety-one, after suffering a fall in the Mani. Her body was repatriated to Dumbleton, the place of her birth - ironic that her dream was to be as far as she could possibly go from the rolling humdrum Worcestershire hills. But perhaps she intended to return all along. When Paddy was buried beside her it seemed that the ‘pact of liberty’ that these two lonely souls had forged themselves could be tested in the great elsewhere. Joan was more than his muse (as many of her obituaries were at pains to declare) but his greatest adventure.

To come around full circle from the movie ‘Ill Met By Moonlight’ (1957) that I saw that night in Verbier, my father told me that rather poignantly, General Kreipe, the German commander Leigh Fermor had captured - once an enemy, and later a friend - left behind notes and photographs from across his life. On one of those notes, it was discovered, the following was scribbled from a brief visit to Greece: “Somewhere, amidst all the disarray, was the story of Joan and Paddy, and” it concluded, “…of their lives together.”

His life with Joan and all that she meant to him was one part of the mosaic of who Paddy Leigh Fermor was. But it’s incomplete.

Paddy didn’t like the idea of a biography, and neither did Joan when she was alive. But friends had persuaded them that unless Paddy appointed someone to write his life, he might find himself the subject of a book whether he liked it or not. In Artemis Cooper they couldn’t have chosen a better writer to chronicle Paddy’s life as a man of action and letters. Cooper, was the daughter of another accomplished diplomat and historian, John Julius Norwich, and grand-daughter of Duff and Diana Cooper. As the wife of the historian Antony Beevor, she became a trusted friend of the Leigh Fermors. Cooper was too good of a historian to let her friendship lead her astray from being a faithful but serious biographer. Knowing this, she was told she could go ahead, but she had to promise not to publish anything until after they were both dead.

Paddy did not like being interviewed, and would keep her questions at bay with a torrent of dazzling conversation. He was the master at deflecting discussions away from himself.

He was also very unwilling to let Cooper see many of his papers, though the refusal always couched in excuses. ‘Oh dear, the Diary…’ It was the only surviving one from his great walk across Europe, and I was aching to read it. ‘Well it’s in constant use, you see, as I plug away at Vol III,’ he would say. Or, ‘My mother’s letters? Ah yes, why not. But it’s too awful, I simply cannot remember where they’ve got to…’ It was quite obvious that he and Joan, while being unfailingly generous, welcoming and hospitable, were determined to reveal as little as possible of their private lives.

While they were more than happy to talk about books, travels, friends, Crete, Greece, the war, anything - they would not tell her any more than they would have told the average journalist. But she persisted and got closer than most. He showed particularly gallantry in not talking about his romantic entanglements. But she soon twigged that anytime he described a woman as ‘an old pal’ it was a sure bet that he had an affair with her.

Intriguingly, Paddy liked to claim he was descended from Counts of the Holy Roman Empire, who came to Austria from Sligo. Paddy could recite ‘The Dead at Clomacnoise’ (in translation) and perhaps did so during a handful of flying visits to Ireland in the 1950s and 1960s, partying hard at Luggala House or Lismore Castle, or making friends with Patrick Kavanagh and Sean O’Faolain in Dublin pubs. He once provoked a massive brawl at the Kildare Hunt Ball, and was rescued from a true pounding by Ricki Huston, a beautiful Italian-American dancer, John Huston’s fourth wife and Paddy’s lover not long afterwards.

And yet, a note of caution about Paddy’s Irish roots is sounded by his biographer, Artemis Cooper, who also co-edited ‘The Broken Road’, the final, posthumously published instalment of the trilogy. “I’m not a great believer in his Irish roots,” she said of Leigh Fermor in an interview, “His mother, who was a compulsive fantasist, liked to think that her family was related to the Viscount Taaffes, of Ballymote. Her father was apparently born in County Cork. But she was never what you might call a reliable witness. She was an extraordinary person, though. Imaginative, impulsive, impossible - just the way the Irish are supposed to be, come to think of it. She was also one of those sad women, who grew up at the turn of the last century, who never found an outlet for their talents and energies, nor the right man, come to that. All she had was Paddy, and she didn’t get much of him.”

And I think that’s the point, no one really got much of Paddy Leigh Fermor even as he only gave a crumb of himself to others but still most felt grateful that it was enough to fill one’s belly and still feel overfed by him.

Paddy never tried to get to the bottom of his Irish ancestry, afraid, no doubt, of disturbing the bloom that had grown on history and his past, a recurring trait. “His memory was extraordinary,” Artemis Cooper noted, “but it lay dangerously close to his imagination and it was a very porous border.”

Within the Greek imagination many Greeks saw in Paddy Leigh Fermor as the second coming of Lord Byron. It’s not a bad comparison.

Lord Byron claimed that swimming the Hellespont was his greatest achievement. 174 years or so later, another English writer, Patrick Leigh Fermor - also, like Byron, revered by many Greeks for his part in a war of liberation - repeated the feat. Leigh Fermor, however, was 69 when he did it and continued to do it into his 80s. Byron was a mere 22 years old lad. The Hellespont swim, with its mix of literature, adventure, travel, bravery, eccentricity and romance, is an apt metaphor for Leigh Fermor’s life. Paddy Leigh Fermor was the Byron of his time. Both men had an idealised vision of Greece, were scholars and men of action, could endure harsh conditions, fought for Greek freedom, were recklessly courageous, liked to dress up and displayed a panache that impressed their Greek comrades. Like a good magician it was also a way to misdirect and conceal one’s true self.

What or who was the true Paddy Leigh Fermor?

Like Byron, Leigh Fermor appeared as a charismatic and assured figure. He was a sightseer, consuming travel, culture, and history for pleasure. He was an aristocrat moving in the social circles of his time. He was a gifted amateur scholar, speculating on literary and historical sources. Leigh Fermor, Byron’s own identity, is subject to textual distortion; it emerges from a piece of occasional prose in his books and is shaped by the claims of correspondence on a peculiarly fluid consciousness.

There is no hard and fast distinction to be drawn here between real and imagined, only a continuity of relative fictions that lie between memory and imagination as his biographer asserted. If there is a will to assert identity here, to disentangle fact and fiction, to give things as they really are and nail down the real Leigh Fermor then it is somewhere between the two. This is where we will find Paddy.

For many his death marked the passing of an extraordinary man: soldier, writer, adventurer, a charmer, a gallant romantic. As a writer he discovered a knack for drawing people out and for stringing history, language, and observation into narrative, and his timing was perfect. Paddy often indulged in florid displays of classical erudition. His learned digressions and serpentine style, his mannered mandarin gestures, even baroque prose, which Lawrence Durrell called truffled and dense with plumage, were influenced by the work of Charles Doughty and T.E. Lawrence. But one can’t compare him. I agree with the acclaimed writer Colin Thurbon who said, “There is, in the end, nobody like him. A famous raconteur and polymath. Generous, life-loving and good-hearted to a fault. Enormously good company, but touched by well-camouflaged insecurities. I would rank him very highly. ‘The finest travel writer of his generation’ is a fair assessment.”

As a child I didn’t really know who Paddy Leigh Fermor was other than this very cheerful and charismatic old man was kind, attentive, and took a boyish delight in everything you were doing. Only later on in adulthood was it clear to that Paddy was not only among the outstanding writers of his time but one of its most remarkable characters, a perfect hybrid of the man of action and the man of letters. Equally comfortable with princes and peasants, in caves or châteaux, he had amassed an enviable rich experience of places and people. “Quite the most enchanting maniac I’ve ever met,” pronounced Lawrence Durrell, and nearly everyone who’d crossed paths with him had, it seemed, come away similarly dazzled.

I am equally dazzled - more smitten in retrospect - for alas they don’t make men like Paddy any more. But every time I dip back into his books I think I discover a little bit more of who Paddy Leigh Fermor was because I find him some where between my memory and my imagination.

139 notes · View notes