He could still remember the first time he saw it, lying in a litter-heaped trunk up in the attic.
Fascinated, he'd picked it up and run stubby fingers over the stylized Minoan octopus that stood out in bold relief upon its surface, till it seemed he could almost feel the twining tentacles' pressure.
It brought a queer sense of excitement to him ... a sort of paradox of feeling that made him thrill to the bowl's beauty even while he stared at the creature that served as its decoration with a strange, shuddery sensation close akin to horror.
Then his mother saw what he was doing, and took the pottery vessel from him, explaining the while about the footloose, adventuring uncle who'd brought it here all the way from Crete.
A lump formed in Burke's throat as he recalled her patience ... how when she'd found him returning again and again to the attic and the trunk, she'd brought the bowl down and given it a place on the livingroom table, where he could examine it all at will.
Someone even told him about Minos and Theseus and Pasiphae and Ariadne and the Minotaur, and all the rest of the legendry that went with Bronze Age Crete.
Yet the legends were never quite enough. They raised too many questions; left too much unsaid.
The fragments of fact he picked up proved even less satisfactory.
How had a civilization rich and powerful and advanced as that of the Minoans ever risen on a sea-isolated island such as Crete?
Where had the Minoans learned their skills, their arts?