Beneath the Cypress Shadows

I arrived in Dubrovnik at the end of September, when the air had that peculiar mix of summer's fading warmth and autumn's crisp promise. The tourists had thinned; the Stradun was quieter. The locals, freed from the constant rush of summer, moved more slowly, chatting in doorways, their voices mingling with the scent of coffee drifting from the cafés.

I had come here not as a tourist but as a translator on a short freelance contract. A week of work, maybe two, helping a small museum near Cavtat prepare an exhibition for English-speaking visitors. It was the kind of job that paid just enough to cover my flights and food, with a bit of left over for the inevitable "just one more coffee" in a seaside bar.

But if I'm honest, the real reason I came was more complicated to explain. There had been a dullness in my life for months—no, years. I woke each day already tired, my mind stuffed with half-finished thoughts and the dust of unmade decisions. Croatia wasn't a solution; it was an escape.

The museum occupied a quiet stone building overlooking the bay. The work was simple—translating display panels about old fishing tools, ship models, and sepia photographs of women gutting sardines by hand. I kept to myself, mainly speaking to Marija, the curator, who had a habit of waving her hands like an orchestra conductor when she was excited about a detail.

On my third afternoon, the sky began to darken earlier than expected. I decided to take the coastal path back to my rented room, hoping to beat the rain. The path wound between olive trees and cypresses, the sea murmuring to my left.

That's when I saw her.

At first, I thought she was a tourist resting on one of the weathered benches under the trees. She wore a long beige coat, though the day was still mild, and a wide-brimmed straw hat. Her posture was rigid, her hands clenched in her lap. But as I drew closer, I realized she wasn't looking at the sea, as one might expect—she was staring into the shadow between two cypress trunks, her face pale.

I slowed down, my footsteps crunching over the gravel. She didn't move.

"Are you alright?" I asked, switching instinctively to Croatian.

No answer. Just the faintest tightening of her jaw.

I was about to walk on, feeling awkward, when I noticed her breathing—shallow, irregular, as though she'd been running. And then, almost too quietly to catch, she said:

"They're here again."

I followed her gaze into the shadows. Nothing. Just the dark, vertical lines of the cypress bark and a scatter of dry needles on the ground.

"There's no one there," I said gently.

Her head jerked toward me, and for the first time, I saw her eyes—deep brown, but sharp with something between fear and defiance. "You don't see them," she said. "You're lucky."

Before I could reply, she rose abruptly and walked away, her coat flaring slightly with each step. She didn't look back.

---

The encounter stayed with me that night. Something about her presence, the tension in her voice, felt… unfinished, like a chord that had been struck but not resolved.

Over the next few days, I looked for her. The coastal path was my new route home. Sometimes I'd linger by the benches, pretending to admire the sea, but she never appeared.

Until one evening, just after sunset. The air was heavy with the smell of rain on stone. The sea was restless, small waves slapping the rocks. I heard footsteps behind me and turned. There she was—same coat, same hat. But this time she was strolling, her head bowed.

I hesitated, then stepped toward her.

"Hello," I said, my voice careful. "We met a few days ago."

She glanced up, recognition flickering in her eyes. "Yes," she said softly, and for a moment I thought that was all she'd say. But then: "You're not from here."

"No. Poland."

"Ah." She said it like it explained everything.

We fell into step together, though she kept a slight distance.

"My name's Luka," I offered.

"Elena," she replied, almost reluctantly.

There was something about the way she said it—as if she hadn't spoken her own name aloud in a long time—that made me want to keep talking. But she seemed fragile, like a seashell that might crack if handled too roughly.

As we walked, she asked no questions, but she did glance at me occasionally, as though checking I was still there. When we reached the part of the path where the cypresses grew thickest, she slowed.

"They follow me here," she murmured.

I looked into the shadows. Again, nothing. "Who?"

Her eyes didn't leave the darkness. "The ones the rest of you have forgotten."

I didn't press her. Something told me that if I did, she'd vanish again. Instead, I walked with her until we reached the outskirts of Cavtat, where the houses began. She stopped there.

"Goodnight, Luka," she said, and without waiting for my reply, turned onto one of the side streets.

---

I began seeing her more often after that. Sometimes on the path, sometimes in the small square by the harbour, always alone. Our conversations were never long, but each one revealed something small—her love of old chansons, her dislike of storms, her habit of drinking strong coffee at night.

Still, the shadows remained between us, both literal and metaphorical. Whenever the cypresses loomed overhead, she'd grow quiet, her eyes fixed on something only she could see.

One day, the weather changed abruptly. The wind came in from the open sea, scattering gulls and making the boats strain at their moorings. I was heading to the museum when I saw her again—this time without her coat, wearing a simple black dress. She was standing at the edge of the breakwater, her hair whipped by the wind.

"Elena!" I called, my voice snatched by the gusts.

She turned, but there was no smile. "They're louder today," she said.

The waves crashed below us, sending spray into the air.

"Who?" I asked again, more firmly.

Her gaze met mine, and for a heartbeat, I thought she might tell me. But instead, she whispered, "If you really want to know, meet me tonight. After midnight. The cypress grove."

---

It was raining by the time I made my way there. The path was slick, the trees swaying above like dark giants.

I found her by one of the benches, her hat gone, her hair plastered to her face. She didn't seem to care about the rain.

"They're here," she said. "Listen."

At first, all I heard was the wind. Then—faintly—something else. Not words, exactly. More like the suggestion of voices, overlapping, as if heard from far away through water.

"Who are they?" I whispered.

Her eyes didn't leave the shadows. "People who never left. People, the war swallowed whole. They stay where they died, waiting for someone to remember them."

I felt the hair on my neck rise.

"You can hear them?"

"Yes. And lately…" She trailed off, pressing a hand to her temple. "Lately, they've been calling my name."

The wind surged, and with it the murmur of voices swelled—indistinct but urgent. My skin prickled.

"Why me?" she asked suddenly, turning to me. Rain traced lines down her cheeks, mingling with something else—tears, maybe. "Why am I the one who hears them?"

I didn't know. But standing there in the wet darkness, I realized something: she wasn't asking for answers. She was asking not to be alone in this.

So I stayed. We sat on the soaked bench, the rain running down our clothes, the voices ebbing and flowing like the tide.

---

From that night on, everything shifted.

We began meeting regularly, not just in the grove but in cafés, by the harbour, sometimes in the quiet upper streets where the tourists rarely wandered. She spoke more freely, though always with that sense of weighing each word.

She told me she'd grown up here, left in her twenties to sing in Zagreb and Paris, then returned after the war. Her parents were gone, her house half-destroyed, and she lived now in a small stone villa she barely maintained. The locals respected her from a distance but whispered that she'd "never been the same" since coming back.

"I suppose they think I'm crazy," she said once, stirring her coffee.

"Are you?" I asked gently.

She smiled faintly. "Wouldn't you be, if the dead talked to you?"

Sometimes, she'd ask me to walk with her through the grove at night. The voices were not always there, but when they were, they seemed to both frighten and compel her.

One evening, as the sun was setting, she stopped suddenly and pointed to a spot between two trees. "Here," she said. "A man died here in '92. He was trying to reach the boats. They shot him before he got into the water."

Her voice didn't tremble. She spoke as though reciting a fact from a history book. But her eyes… her eyes were elsewhere.

"Do you know his name?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No one remembers. That's why he's still here."

---

The more time I spent with her, the more I noticed slight changes in myself. I'd begun listening differently—not just to her, but to everything. The creak of shutters in the wind, the sigh of waves against stone, the subtle shift in a stranger's expression.

It was as if she'd tuned me to a different frequency.

And then came the night that changed everything.

It was early November. The museum work was done, but I hadn't left yet. I kept telling myself I'd go next week, or the one after.

Elena called me—not common for her—and simply said, "Come. Now."

I found her in the grove, kneeling on the damp earth, her hands pressed flat against the ground. Her face was pale, her lips moving soundlessly.

"What's wrong?" I asked, sitting beside her.

"They're leaving," she said. "The ones I've heard for years—they're finally going. But there's one… one who won't."

She looked up at me, and I saw fear in her eyes. "He says he knows you."

Before I could speak, the air around us seemed to thicken. I swear I felt something—not wind, not rain, but a presence—moving between the trees. And then, as clear as a voice beside my ear, I heard a single word:

"Luka."

I stumbled back, my breath catching. The voice was male, low, tinged with sorrow. I had never heard it before in my life—and yet… something in it was achingly familiar.

"Who is it?" I whispered.

Elena shook her head slowly. "You'll have to ask him."

I didn't. I couldn't. The presence lingered for a moment, then faded, taking the air's heaviness with it.

When I looked back at her, she was crying silently.

---

We never spoke of that night in detail. But something had shifted—not just in her, but in me.

In the weeks that followed, the voices became less frequent. She said the grove felt quieter, as though most of its ghosts had finally found rest. She smiled more and walked with her head higher.

One afternoon in December, as we sat by the harbour drinking coffee, she said, "You should go home soon. Before you start hearing them too."

"Would that be so bad?" I asked.

She studied me for a long moment. "It changes you," she said. "Not always in ways you can live with."

---

I left Croatia two weeks later.

But she was wrong about one thing. You don't need to hear the voices to be changed.

It's enough to have known someone who does—to walk beside them through the shadows and realise that the world is full of echoes, waiting for someone to listen.

And sometimes, if I'm alone at night, I think I hear the faintest murmur, like the sea far away.

I never know whether it's real.

But I always listen.