On Etruscan Time (5 page)

Or was it really an accident? Ettore, an experienced archaeologist, hadn't seen anything unusual about that sherd before Hector had dug it out. Maybe he had been led to it somehow.

He shook his head. That was ridiculous. You can't be led to a broken pot.

The room was half empty by now. Susanna had left before the ice cream arrived. Ettore was stretching and yawning. “See you this afternoon,” he said.

“What time do you start up again?” Hector's mother asked.

“About four o'clock,” he said. “It isn't cool before then.”

“Aren't we going back to the dig?” Hector asked.

“Not now,” Ettore said. “It's too hot out there, especially in the trenches. We all take a nap for a few hours and then go back to work after the hour of Pan.”

At the word
nap
Hector suddenly felt as though someone had glued a weight to his eyelids. How could he be sleepy? It was only about seven o'clock in the morning at home. His body clock must be totally screwed up.

“What do you mean, ‘the hour of Pan'?” his mother asked.

“You don't know?” Ettore asked. Hector and his mother shook their heads. “During the hot part of the day is when the clever little god Pan used to come out and play his pipes and make his strange shout. When the animals heard it, they would run around and be crazy. That's why we call being scared, being in a
panico
—a panic—from the name of Pan.”

“Do you believe that story?” Hector asked.

Ettore looked into his eyes. “I have never seen Pan myself,” he said. “But just because I haven't seen something, this doesn't mean it isn't there, right?”

“Right,” Hector said.

“Sometimes when it's hot in the field, and quiet, it's almost like you can feel something. It's as if all the different times that people have lived here are together at once.” Ettore shook his head and laughed. “I know—I sound crazy, right? But maybe this is why I became an archaeologist. I want to know my ancestors, the people who used to live here.” He yawned again and left.

His yawn made Hector yawn so long and hard that it felt like his jaw was going to pop.

His mother put her hand on his. “I know how you feel,” she said. “I want to crawl into bed and sleep for twenty-four hours. But it's really best if you keep awake. If you fall asleep now you won't wake up for ages and it will just take longer to get on Italian time.”

“So I'll go watch TV,” he said. She shook her head.

“The fastest way to go to sleep is to watch TV in a language you don't know,” she said. “Take it from one who's been there. I'm going to try to figure out the rest of the words on that sherd. Why don't you take a walk or something? Just don't dig without someone there to supervise you.”

Hector didn't need convincing. The last thing he wanted was to sleep—and dream—again. He decided to walk down to the dig.

The whole town seemed to be asleep. On the walk down all he heard was the faint whirr of some engine, and the noise just made him drowsier. He walked around the little hill near the excavation. It had gotten really hot. He wanted to go look at the olive trees but found that they were farther away than they appeared, so he sat down in the shade of a big rock and pulled off his shoes and socks, letting the air dry his sweaty feet. Someone had spray-painted
ANGELA TI ADORO
on the boulder in bright red. A small stream came down from the hill and flowed almost silently next to him, disappearing into the olive grove.

It was so quiet. Everything seemed to be waiting out the hour of Pan. Some insects buzzed, but that and the gurgle of the stream were all he heard. He leaned back against the rock. When he closed his eyes, he whirled with sleepiness, so he sat up straighter and shook his head.

He felt vaguely uneasy. It must be Ettore's silly story about the hour of Pan. But despite his feeling of apprehension, he was having a hard time keeping his eyes open.
Why didn't anyone tell me jet lag felt so bad?
he thought.
It's like you're separated from your body.
His eyelids grew even heavier.
I'll just close them for a minute,
he told himself as once again the image of a spinning globe filled his mind.

*   *   *

He was in a red and brown landscape. The sky was so bright it burned his eyes, and the dry air pierced his nostrils. Gritty dust parched his throat.

“Time doesn't work like that,” someone said behind him, but this time it wasn't his mother. It was a young voice, a boy's voice. Hector twisted his head, but whoever had spoken kept moving out of sight.

“Who are you?” Hector asked, still trying to catch a glimpse of the speaker.

There was no answer.

“
What
are you?”

“Rashna,” came the reply.

“Why are you haunting me?” he cried out, and his own voice woke him up.

6

Okay, that was enough. He'd had two nightmares in one day, and it wasn't even night yet. He had to convince his mother to take him home. If she wanted to stay here with her Italian friends, fine. He could fly back by himself. Lots of people his age did it. He pictured the rest of the summer, with friends to hang out with, long lazy days at the lake, no bossy sister to tell him that it was her turn on the computer. He could stay up all night and sleep all day. No jet lag–induced nightmares. It would be great.

He might have to spend a lot of time on his own, though. Max was away at camp and Zach had moved to Pennsylvania as soon as school ended. Joaquin was spending the summer with his father in Costa Rica.

That was okay, though. Compared to having nightmares every time he closed his eyes, it would be better to go bike riding and swimming on his own.

Except his parents' rule was that you needed a buddy when you went swimming. And it looked like a buddy was exactly what he'd be missing. And his dad would say that he was too busy to go to the lake or bike riding with him and that he should have stayed in Italy.

He leaned back against the boulder and tried to ignore the prickling in his eyes that meant that tears were threatening. He rubbed the back of his hand against his eyelids and thought,
Stupid dust.

Voices from the dig caught his attention. Cautiously he rose to his feet and leaned around the boulder to see who it was. It was some of the archaeologists from this morning, and it looked as if they were getting ready to get to work again. He walked the short distance back and looked into the trench where the bones had been found. But a tarp was laid over them and there was nothing to see.

Ettore appeared. “Oh, Hector, there you are,” he said. “Betsy was looking for you.”

“She told me to go for a walk,” Hector said. Why did his mother treat him like a little kid who would get lost?

“I know, but that was more than two hours ago.” Ettore pulled a cell phone from his pocket.

Two hours? Had he really slept for all that time? He shook his head, trying to clear it, as Ettore spoke into the phone.

“Betsy?
È qui. Dormiva.
” He laughed, said,
“Eh già. Ciao,”
and flipped the phone shut.

“She says you're good at sleeping,” he said. “Come on. Let's give a look to the new trench.” Before Hector could protest that there wasn't any point, since he was going to get his mother to send him home soon, Ettore hopped down into an opening in the earth that looked darker and fresher than the other holes. He held up a hand to help Hector in.
Honestly,
thought Hector, ignoring the offer of assistance as he hopped down after the man,
it's not like I'm a baby. I can jump a few feet.

“Sorry,” Ettore said, lowering his arm. “I keep forgetting you're eleven. Your mother sent me lots of pictures when you were a baby and I'm not used to you being big.”

“That's okay,” Hector said. “I'm short for my age, anyway.” Now he couldn't say anything about leaving Italy. Ettore would think he was acting like a little kid with hurt feelings.

“We just opened this trench last week,” Ettore was saying. He poked a finger thoughtfully into the soil and rubbed the dust between his fingers. “There's something that interests me here. The grass above here was growing differently, and it made me think there might be something large under the ground. We have not dug very deeply yet, but I think that we may find a building.”

“What kind of building?” Hector asked.

Ettore shrugged. “That much, I do not know,” he said. “But we are in the center of the city, so it could be something important. Shall we find out?”

“Sure!” Hector said. Talking to his mom about the nightmares could wait. She hadn't yet reappeared at the dig, anyway, and he didn't feel like trekking all the way back up that steep hill to find her. Maybe that evening. If lunch was that good, he couldn't wait to see what they'd serve for dinner.

“Where are your tools?” Ettore asked.

“Eh già,”
Hector said as he hoisted himself out of the trench again, earning a grin from Ettore.

When he returned, clutching his collection of picks and brushes, Ettore was already at work. He moved over to make room for Hector, and for an hour or so they worked in companionable silence. Hector's mother poked her head in and said something about him being a sleepyhead, but Hector just answered her briefly and kept on working. Scrape, poke, brush, shake. It could have gotten monotonous, but since there was always the chance that something might turn up, the time passed quickly.

When they put down their tools and hoisted themselves out of the trench, a breeze had sprung up and the air was cooler. Ettore glanced at the sky.

“Perhaps it will rain,” he said. Hector nodded cautiously, his neck too stiff from bending close to the trench wall to allow him to look up. He wiped his tools with the cloth that Ettore passed him and slid them back in their pouch.

As Ettore stopped to talk with the freckled-faced archaeologist, Hector joined the stream of people heading up the slope to the opening in the city wall.

“What do you think they'll have for dinner?” he asked his mother as she fell into step next to him.

“Oh, some kind of pasta first,” she answered. “And then, who knows? Why, are you hungry?”

“Starving,” he said, and she laughed.

“As usual. Watch out, or we'll have to pay for two seats for you when we go back in August.”

“Speaking about going back—” he started, but she just went on as though he hadn't said anything.

“And anyway, first a shower, then dinner,” she said. “You're filthy, and dinner isn't for another half hour.” She yawned. “What a long afternoon.”

“It went fast for me,” he said.

“Well, time's relative,” she observed. “It's not fair that it should go slower when you're bored, but that's the way it is. Why was it such a good afternoon, anyway? Did you find something else?”

“No.”

“Yes, we did.” Ettore had caught up with them. “We found discolorations in the soil that I think will show that the earth has been moved. Perhaps this is because something large was built there.”

“Like a temple,” Hector said, passing through the arch. He kept his eyes on the ground, not knowing why the thought of seeing that boy again made him so uneasy.

“I hope,” Ettore said. “A temple would be magnificent.”

“I didn't see any discolorations,” Hector said.

“You need some experience, and you need to know how to see it,” Ettore said. “I will show you tomorrow.”

Dinner started with pasta, as his mother had predicted. Long strands of something like spaghetti, but flat, were served in a creamy cheese sauce, followed by pork chops and salad. There was more of that tasteless bread, and apples for dessert. They were small and dull-colored but so sweet and juicy that Hector ate three of them.

That must be why he was having so much trouble falling asleep, he thought an hour later as he flopped over on his narrow bed. He was wide awake and uncomfortably full. And the longer he lay there, the more alert he felt. He turned over again.

Well, no wonder he couldn't sleep, with that bright light shining from his bedside table. Funny he hadn't noticed it before. But where was it coming from? It wasn't his clock; the red numbers that showed 11:46 and then 11:47 were dim and familiar. Had someone left a flashlight in a drawer and he had somehow turned it on by accident? He groped to find it and switch it off. Maybe then he could get some sleep.

But there was no drawer in the table. He picked up his summer reading book, which he'd halfheartedly started at bedtime, and the light that shot out at him from under it made him drop the book and cover his eyes.

After a moment, when his heart had stopped thumping and when he thought his eyes must have adjusted to the glare, he squinted out from behind his fingers.

It was coming from that Greek good-luck piece, or whatever it was. Maybe it was one of those glow-in-the-dark things.

But no. He had seen glow-in-the-dark toys before and their light was nothing like this. It was always pale green and very dim. This was pure white and so bright that he still couldn't look directly at it. With his head half turned away, he wrapped his hand around the stone, hoping to muffle its glare with his fingers. As he did so, his stomach lurched with a feeling of panic.

What is
with
this crazy thing?
he thought. Maybe it was radioactive. He made up his mind to show it to his mother. Surely she would have some logical explanation. He rose to his feet, the light streaming from between his fingers, and made his way out the bedroom door, then toward his mother's room.

Instantly, the light went out. Hector's eyes had been so dazzled that now he felt blind in the dark hallway, and he put his hand on the rail to steady himself. Now what? He couldn't go to his mother with this cold, dark stone and tell her that it had been glowing. She'd say he'd been dreaming and send him back to bed. Then she'd tell everybody about it in the morning and they'd all have a good laugh at him. No thanks.