On Etruscan Time (12 page)

So instead of going to the dig after breakfast, Hector found himself in Susanna's tiny car zooming first down narrow, winding roads and then on a modern highway. Fields whizzed by the small window, their light brown and green punctuated by flowers as bright red as jelly beans. Beyond the fields the blue mountains kept pace with the car. Hector glanced at the speedometer. The needle was on 110. “Mom, you're speeding!” he said.

She glanced down. “No, we're okay.”

“A hundred and ten?” he asked, disbelieving.

“Kilometers, kiddo,” she said. “That's about sixty-five. Perfectly legal. It just feels fast because the car is so small.”

He settled back in his seat. If Arath had been a dream, as his mother thought, surely they would be too busy today for Hector to imagine seeing him. And Arath seemed to hang around the place where his village used to be. Maybe he couldn't leave it. Besides, Arath didn't know where Hector had gone. So either way, whether Hector was crazy or Arath was real, Hector was free of him for the day.

Somehow, he didn't find that thought comforting. He shifted in his seat and looked out the window, trying to get interested in the landmarks his mother was pointing out, but all he could think about was how real it had all felt.

No, he decided. He wasn't crazy. He just knew it. He knew he'd gone back in time and that Arath was a real boy—a real Etruscan boy. Hector squirmed. Well, it was out of his hands for today. He had to just push it out of his mind.

He hadn't thought he'd have a good time, but the trip turned out to be more fun than he had imagined. Florence was tan and brown and yellow, with lots of people speaking different languages. He and his mother went to a huge museum with painting after painting of beautiful blond women holding ugly babies, and then they sat at a metal table in a square filled with white statues streaked gray with pigeon droppings. His mother drank a coffee, and he had another orange soda. They bought a soft leather purse for Ariadne and a wild silk tie for his father, and for Hector a T-shirt with a picture of the head of the statue of David.

As they tried to find all the places his mother wanted to visit, they talked about Florence and the mobs of tourists, about how rotten jet lag felt, and about what everyone at home must be doing. About everything, that is, except Etruscans in general and time travel in particular.

So many people packed one narrow bridge lined with jewelry stores that Hector and his mother got stuck behind two women who had to be American, both of them clutching stuffed shopping bags. They looked exhausted as they teetered on their high heels on the uneven pavement. As Hector worked his way around one side of them and his mother around the other, the one near him said to the other, “Well, it was combat shopping, but it was worth it.” He heard his mother snort with amusement.

There was one more museum to see, his mother had said. He protested until she told him that it had some Etruscan artifacts.

“All right,” he said. “But can this be the last one?”

“Tired of combat museum-ing?” she said, and laughed as he groaned.

But this museum turned out to be worth it. Glass cases lined the walls, full of black pottery with fine lines making designs on the sides. They were such nice fat little things—cups and pitchers and plates—that he itched to pick them up, and he saw from the fingerprints on the glass that he wasn't the only one who had been tempted.
Bucchero,
his mother called it, and he silently mouthed the word after her. BOO-keh-roh. Poor man's bronze, she said it was.

But the jewelry was the most amazing thing. The brooches and bracelets were covered with tiny balls of gold, some making designs along lions' backs, others delineating facial features. A magnifying glass was tethered to one of the cases with fishing line and through it Hector could see that each ball was an almost-perfect sphere, just a little flattened where it joined the main piece.

His mother came up behind him. “Unbelievable, isn't it?” she said. He nodded, moving the magnifying glass slowly down the back of one of the lions.

“How could they do it so perfectly?” he asked.

“Come over here,” she said.

He joined her at the next case. Hoping for more gold, he was disappointed to see two yellowish, curved objects with no decoration. One had a crack running down the middle of it. His mother said, “Look, that's how they did it.”

“How?” he asked.

“See that long, curved piece?” He nodded. “It's made out of bone. They would put a tiny drop of gold at the top of the crack and let it run down, aiming it straight at the spot where they wanted the ball to land. As it rolled, it would cool off enough to stay round but would still be liquid, so it would attach itself to the jewelry.”

“So how come it didn't splat when it landed?”

“See that other thing?” It looked like a small trumpet. “Another person would sit with that blower in his mouth, and the instant the gold hit the jewelry, he would puff out a little bit of air to cool it while it was still a sphere. Imagine—if he puffed too hard, he would blow it off and they'd have to start over again. And even a little drop of gold was valuable. But if he didn't blow hard enough, or blew too late, it would splat, as you said.”

Unbelievable. His mother moved on as he stared, imagining how long it must have taken to make something with thousands of those little balls on it. He stayed there until the guard, a bored-looking man in a blue uniform, jangled a bunch of keys from the doorway and they had to leave.

It was dark when they got back in the car. Hector was tired from all the walking and stair-climbing. His mother must have been worn out, too, because they hardly talked for the whole long ride.

Hector tensed as they passed under the archway into Sporfieri, expecting to see Arath staring at him. But there was nothing, and nobody, out on the streets. And when he went to bed, his dreams were the normal kind of crazy thing that people usually dream, with no Etruscan boys and no human sacrifices and no temples with boxes of holy grain.

14

Hector lowered himself into the trench, clutching his tools. Ettore grinned up at him from where he was squatting in the dirt.

“Ready to be an archaeologist again?” he asked.

“Ready,” Hector said, and grinned back.

“Did you like Florence?”

“It was cool,” Hector said. “Crowded, though.”

“That's the problem with having beautiful things,” Ettore said. “Everyone wants to see them. But we're used to sharing our city. You should come back in the winter when it's mostly
fiorentini
there.”

“Do you dig in the winter?”

“No,” Ettore said. “But I think we won't dig here in the summer anymore, too.”

“I know,” Hector said. “My mom told me about the dig maybe closing.”

Ettore nodded, a frown-line creasing the space between his eyebrows. “They say that my temple probably isn't a temple, just a house, and the garbage pile isn't interesting, even with the bones. They don't understand that the things we find there are the most useful. They want something exciting, like some jewelry. Even that painted wall wasn't enough for them. A picture of a priest that is so damaged you can't see what he is sacrificing. But so far, nothing. And we're running out of time.” He shrugged, and then his forehead smoothed. “Let's not talk about sad things. Let's enjoy the time we have left. Okay?”

“Okay,” Hector agreed.

They worked in companionable silence, broken only when Hector held something out to Ettore for examination. They found a few tiny pieces of pottery, but nothing out of the ordinary.

During a break, they sat on folding chairs under a tree. Hector pushed his sweaty bangs off his forehead. His skin felt sticky and his back ached. But it was a pleasurable ache, and the cold water tasted wonderful. After a while, Ettore asked Hector if he was still missing his friends back home.

“Some, I guess,” he answered. “But I don't think they're doing anything as cool as archaeology this summer.”

“So are you glad you came to Sporfieri?”

“I guess so,” Hector said, then realized he didn't sound very enthusiastic. “I mean, it's nice here and all. I just wish that someone had listened to me when I said that I would rather stay home.”

“Does it feel like no one listens to you?”

“It doesn't just
feel
like it,” Hector said. “They don't.”

“Just because people don't do what you want doesn't mean that they don't listen.” Ettore tossed his empty water bottle into the recycling bin. “Sometimes they don't believe you or have some other reason not to do what you ask.”

“It's frustrating, though,” Hector said. “It's like being invisible when you try to say something and no one pays attention.”

“I agree,” Ettore said. “It's a big insult. And sometimes you have to
make
people listen, like to tell if someone is hurting you. If one adult won't hear you, you have to find another one who will. But usually, you must decide if what you are saying is really important. If it is, then keep telling people until someone listens to you. If not, let it get lost.”

After lunch, Hector's mother said, “I could get used to this afternoon nap habit,” as they climbed the hill to Susanna's house.

“I'm not sleepy,” he said.

“Good time to get started on your summer reading, then.” She laughed when he groaned.

His room was dark and cool. He opened the shutters to let in some light, careful not to leave enough of an opening for the summer sun to heat up the room. He opened his book. After a minute, he turned the page but then realized that he hadn't read a single word. He turned back and tried again.

No use. He couldn't concentrate. All he could think of was Arath and his own promise to help him. He hadn't seen Arath for a day and a half, or dreamed about him, either. What did this mean? He didn't like the only answer that occurred to him, but he forced himself to face it. What if, he asked himself reluctantly, what if Arath had come looking for him the day before and couldn't find him because he was in Florence? What if he couldn't come back now because in the meantime something had happened to him, and he had died before he could time-travel again?

Hector leaned out the window and looked down. Maybe Arath would be waiting below, like that other time. But no. The street was deserted. Hector tried to see over the roofs of the houses between himself and the dig, but all he could make out was the olive grove on the hill beyond it. He turned back to his book but gave up. He tossed it on the bedside table, where it banged into a pile of paper, socks, and something else. Something hard that bounced off the table, hit the stone floor with a
crack!
and then rumbled into a corner.

Hector went over and picked it up. Of course, it was the eye. He could have sworn that it glared at him accusingly. He stared into it.

“What?” he said. “What's the problem, eye?” There was no answer, but then he wasn't expecting one. He stared deeper into the black center, not blinking. The world swirled around him gently, as though he was just beginning to fall asleep. Things turned gray and soft and muted. Still he stared into the eye.

And then he was there. He was standing in a crowd of people, gathered together in a tight but silent group. Once again, the light was clear but strangely pale. A commotion arose from the edge of the square, and he looked over and saw Arath being dragged out of the temple, bedraggled, his lip cut and swelling, red marks starting to turn to bruises on his legs and arms. Blood seeped through his hair above one ear and trickled down his cheek.

Hector watched as Arath fell to his knees in the dirt. Red dust stained the boy's white shirt and his shoulders shook with silent sobs. In front of the watching crowd stood the tall, thin Cai, a sneer on his handsome face. Cai's black hair shone in the sunlight, and a gold bracelet glittered on his upper arm.

Hector's nostrils stung from the hot dust. Dread washed over him. How could he stop what was going to happen? The feeling of horror built up until he felt he would burst.

“No!” he shouted, but the others didn't seem to hear him. He ran into the crowd, tugging at arms, but no one paid any attention. So he gave up and he, too, fell silent and stared in the same direction as the rest of them, at Arath.

Hector could tell from the air of expectancy that everyone knew that something bad was going to happen. Did they feel the same horror that he did? It was impossible to tell from their stony, expressionless faces. A woman fell to her knees, her hands raised to the sky, and she wailed in a thin, hopeless voice. The boy twisted in her direction and called out to her,
“Ati! Ati!”
She screamed,
“Arath!”
The other people drew away, looking at her from the corners of their eyes, if at all.

The temple door opened slowly, and the priest stepped out. He strode toward the boy kneeling in the dust. Arath raised his head, and his large dark eyes, shining with tears, shone in Hector's direction. Arath cried out as though surprised and struggled to raise himself to his feet. He failed. Hector took an involuntary step backward.

Arath's father was wearing a white cloth over his head and shoulders, and an animal skin that reached just below his knees. He was barefoot, and the reddish dust swirled around his feet. As he walked, he pulled a long knife from his belt. He stopped when he reached Arath, who was no longer calling out to Hector but was saying something in a pleading tone. The man paid no attention but instead grabbed the pouch that was hanging from the boy's neck and sliced through its strings. He hurled it hard to one side, and small objects flew out into the dust. They rolled and rolled with the force of the man's throw until they were out of sight.

When the man jerked to throw the pouch, the cloth hanging around his face fell back. Hector saw tears glittering in his dark eyes that were so like Arath's and saw that his mouth was pressed into a grim line. He had never seen an expression so bleak, a face that so clearly spoke of despair and sorrow and loss.