The Dig

by Audrey Hart

  They know good from evil.‖

  ―Maybe in the future,‖ he says. ―Hold on to me. Tight.‖ I wrap myself around him as the gods ride the dolphins like Jet Skis, racing toward us.

  ―Are you good?‖

  ―Yes! Go!‖

  We zoom out of the water and fly up into the air—but the water is coming with us.

  Poseidon is manipulating it, sending it up after us, and it‘s gaining. I‘ve never seen anything so beautiful and ugly all at once, almost an entire lake on edge, like saltwater taffy stretched longer and thinner; the dolphins are nearly perpendicular to earth as they soar up the lake toward us, toward the sky that we can‘t seem to reach, that we won‘t reach because the water is at our feet, then our ankles, then our knees…

  But before the water can take us, the darkness swallows us whole. We are falling. I reach for Zeus and he‘s not there. He‘s gone. Did Hera get him? I don‘t know. I can‘t know. I can‘t see and I can‘t hear and I can‘t think, not with the wind whipping at me and carrying me away.

  Athena. Of course.

  At least their arrogance means that I have one chance after another to survive. Athena is the goddess of wind. When she blew me away from Zeus, she could have just thrown me against a cliff. She could have ended me right there. Just splat into a wall and gone once and for all.

  ―Why didn‘t you just throw me into the wall, Athena?‖

  ―I‘d never,‖ she says. ―I‘d rather kill you myself.‖

  ―Why? So you can feel superior to Hera?‖

  ―Of course.‖

  The top of the cliff is no bigger than a boxing ring and we‘re circling each other like fighters. There is no protective perimeter of rope and to fall would mean to die. I have to keep her talking.

  ―That‘s the problem with you kids and your cliques,‖ I say. ―You don‘t have any real friends. You‘re all just trying to be the boss.‖

  ―The only person here who doesn‘t have any friends is you, Zoe.‖ I stop walking. I‘m not afraid anymore. ―You could have been my friend. You still could. I know you‘re not like her. Not really.‖ And for a moment, Athena is still. The wind stops and the air clears and everything might be okay. Really, it might. I‘m still an optimist at heart, still believing that people can change, that we all have goodness inside us.

  ―Zoe,‖ she says. ―I‘m sorry.‖

  Now the hail comes, blowing just for me, and I‘m running and using the earth to make me run faster but I don‘t seem to be getting anywhere.

  The wind grows stronger and my cheeks burn from the friction and my skin feels like it‘s cracking into pieces and my ribs are pressed into my back and I could do a marathon in three minutes at this pace. The only reason I know that my brain hasn‘t been blown back into my skull is that somehow, someway, even though I‘ve only been moving for minutes, I‘m on Olympus. I‘m catching my breath, looking around, trying to figure out where exactly I am. I can see the river leading up past the garden and toward the small natural pool where I found Hera kissing Zeus. I start to run downhill, but the ground doesn‘t feel right and I still don‘t have my bearings, not completely. I take a step but it‘s too crackly. I look down. I see something golden, something I‘ve held before. It‘s a piece of Zeus‘s wing.

  ―No.‖

  The wing is hot in my hands, which makes no sense because it came from the ground and the ground—

  Is on fire.

  I scream. But the only answer I get is the howl of a wolf, a wolf I can‘t see because I am plunged into pitch-black darkness.

  Hera.

  Chapter 43

  She lifts the darkness but there is no relief in the light. I‘m surrounded.

  We are at the top of Olympus now, in the courtyard with the natural pool, and Hera leans against a skinny marble column, a few feet away from the giant rock, the Petros. She yawns, filing her nails, as if this is just another ordinary day. Athena and Poseidon wait attentively by her side.

  Ares and Artemis stand a few feet behind me, blocking the pathway, and Hades circles the grounds. I‘m trapped in a ring of fire that grows tighter with his every step. They‘re going to burn me alive and it‘s going to be long and slow and painful.

  ―Where is he?‖ I shout.

  Hera tilts her head and says, ―Where is who?‖

  ―Zeus.‖

  ―You‘re still asking about him. Oh dear, what will it take for you to understand?‖

  It‘s getting hotter. Sweat is trickling down my neck and I can‘t help but flinch from the crackle of the oncoming flames. I can‘t believe it‘s all going to end this way. I will the earth to put out the fire but every time a layer of dirt rises to quench it, Athena blows it away. I try to will some nearby rocks onto the flames to stamp it out but Ares is quick on his feet, and smashes the rocks away. The power of numbers is not to be underestimated.

  ―It doesn‘t have to be this way,‖ I shout. ―Hera, I know you‘re a good person deep down.‖

  ―What‘s that, Zoe?‖ She‘s mocking me, pushing her ear toward me. ―I can‘t hear you over the sound of your imminent death.‖ In the distance I see the other five gods approaching. They look scared and nervous, unwilling to challenge Hera in her moment of power. Soon all the gods but Zeus are watching me with a mixture of gloating and disquiet.

  ―Hera, you can do the right thing.‖

  ―This is the right thing, dear. For us.‖ With a sneer, she gestures to Hades, and the circle of fire closes in on me. I‘m drenched in sweat, and I can‘t help but wonder what will happen when the flames reach my skin.

  Will I see my own flesh set on fire, or will Hera use her powers to let me burn in darkness?

  That‘s it! Her powers.

  I close my eyes and concentrate, reaching out with my mind, ignoring the snakelike flames nipping at my boots. It‘s a dangerous move. It might not even work. But I have to try. After all, I‘m not one of them. I‘m a human. I‘m used to not having any powers.

  I picture the Petros, the source of all their wrongs and abuses and powers. I can feel it nearby. It‘s just a big rock, like any other piece of earth.

  Why didn‘t I realize it before? It‘s rock. I reach deep into the center of it with my mind, the heavy, luminous strangeness of it.

  Then I blow it up.

  I drop for cover just before tiny shards of the Petros fly outward in a wild explosion, piercing all the gods, knocking them to the ground like bowling pins. But it is Hera, standing only feet away from the Petros, who receives almost the entire brunt. She lets out a horrifying scream as thousands of Petros slices embed themselves in her body.

  She collapses in a heap.

  The fire is out. I know I should run for my life but I can‘t move yet.

  Right now I can only bow my head in silence, mesmerized by the sight of the fallen gods.

  Olympus is different. I can feel it; the explosion has changed the electricity in the air. Without the Petros, things will be forever different.

  All that fighting wasn‘t really about me. They don‘t hate me. Even Hera doesn‘t hate me.

  They‘re all just sadly dependent on their powers and now I‘ve made their worst fears come true.

  I‘ve stripped them of their powers. I run my hand over the piece of Zeus‘s wing. Then I hear a scratching noise and I look at the ground and it‘s his hand; I‘d recognize it anywhere. He‘s covered in rubble and dirt, but when I try to part the ground, nothing happens, so I dig him out the old-fashioned way, by hand.

  He struggles to come up for air, and at last he breaks through the surface and his beautiful face is caked in dirt but I don‘t care and I kiss him.

  ―It‘s fine now,‖ I say. ―We‘re safe. The Petros is gone.‖

  ―No, Zoe,‖ he says. ―It‘s all in Hera.‖

  We‘re running. Fleeing. We don‘t have powers. We don‘t have anything but each other.

  The foliage is thick and Zeus is explaining that what I‘ve done isn‘t as simple as I‘d hoped. Now there is a grave im
balance. Now Hera is more powerful than ever. With all that Petros in her, she‘ll be unstoppable when she wakes up. ―If you thought she was bad now, just wait.‖

  ―Where are we going?‖

  ―To the temple. Where you first appeared.‖

  ―Wait,‖ I say, putting my hand on his arm. ―When did I tell you about the temple?‖

  ―You didn‘t,‖ he says. ―Hera did. She told me everything you said to her. Why do you I think I had to let her kiss me? Zoe, she didn‘t mean to, but she was telling me how to save your life.‖

  ―Zeus,‖ I say. I know it‘s really not the time for kissing or hugging or anything like that, what with the temporarily unconscious killer ex-girlfriend goddess and the whole I-almost-just-died vibe that won‘t quite go away…but I kiss him anyway. You only live once.

  ―We have to go,‖ he says.

  ―How much time do we have?‖

  ―Not enough,‖ he says.

  The image of a vengeful Hera crackling with power from the freshly blasted Petros is a strong motivator, and I‘m sprinting for the temple.

  We‘re retracing my first steps in ancient Greece and seeing it all again is dizzying—the bustling village, the men and women zipping around in their togas, the togas I thought were costumes once upon a time. I see the boy I met that first day and he looks up from his ball game and I smile at him and open my mouth to say hello but there‘s no time and he waves, and I‘ll remember that confusion on his face forever, the way he doesn‘t even flinch when the ball hits him square in the belly, how stunned he is to see me, the strange girl from the other day, the one who made the earth open up. And as we near the edge of the village, I smile in anticipation of who I‘ll see next, and there she is, the old woman with the crazy teeth and her gaggle of friends, gossiping and whispering the same as ever, but they don‘t notice me this time and they‘ll only hear about this later, in awe that I fled town with Zeus, never to be seen again.

  I realize that I am very afraid right now. It‘s not just the possibility of Hera coming after us.

  It‘s the quiet, simple understanding that I will never see any of these people again, that my life here is quite literally flashing before my eyes as we run toward the pasture, toward the temple.

  And everyone knows what it means when your life flashes before your eyes. It means you might die.

  Zeus trips and falls and in seconds I‘m right there with him.

  ―Are you okay?‖

  ―I‘m okay.‖

  We‘re low to the ground and we see it now, something we haven‘t seen before. It looks like the tip of a paintbrush that spins onward for miles.

  It‘s following us and the townsfolk are parting and bowing. Only it‘s not a paintbrush.

  It‘s Hera‘s mane, slick and sharp, and it‘s on a warpath and it‘s headed our way, slithering like a snake.

  I wish it was a snake. This hair monster is infinitely scarier than any poisonous snake.

  And how appropriate that my ultimate enemy would be the long, thick mane controlled by a mean girl. I live my whole life fussing with my hair, unable to get my cowlick out of the way. Of course my death will come at the hand of a girl with supernatural control over her superior hair. That‘s why I‘m so afraid right now. It feels as though not just my time here but all of my life has led to this one battle.

  But there‘s no more time to think. Hera‘s swath of hair is sharp and vicious and coming for me. On all sides it cuts, like a creature with a hundred mouths—it bites; it chomps. It is the darkness. It is the very essence of Hera‘s power and it razes the earth and casts shadows that stamp out the life. Anything that doesn‘t get out of its way is cut to pieces, and it never stops moving. It won‘t stop swerving and careening and thrashing until it catches the one thing that it really wants: me and my stupid little cowlick.

  And if Zeus stays with me, it‘s going to take him too.

  Chapter 44

  We don‘t seem to be moving fast enough. We can hear the tendrils gaining on us and we‘re struggling but the path is windy and we‘re on the steepest part. The tendrils are thickening and spearing the air to warn us, Here we come. They own the ground and they cut the sky and they‘re gaining on us—they‘re better than us. They don‘t get sidetracked because of cumbersome feet that can‘t make it around sharp turns without slipping. They shine and sharpen and are designed to travel and they don‘t have to grab on to olive branches for balance. Those black tendrils may have gotten a late start but they‘re catching up. There‘s no way around it.

  Hera isn‘t drunk with power anymore. She‘s sober with it. She‘s smart. And there is nothing more dangerous in this world, in any world, than someone calm, clear and angry.

  We make it to the top of the hill, where I first emerged from the temple and saw the smoke in the distance. Only now we can‘t see the village. The tendrils are eating the sky. They‘ve eviscerated the view and they‘re swirling and tangling their way toward us. The patches of darkness have cut the air itself. There is no sky in some places. There are only voids. But we‘ve made it here and I can‘t help but hope that there is a way. There must be a way.

  ―Maybe we can fight her.‖

  ―We can‘t, Zoe.‖

  ―You don‘t mean that.‖

  The tendrils are almost upon us now, snapping and whipping at the ground. But I feel something much worse than any strangle or chokehold that those tendrils could do to me. I feel Zeus‘s hand on my back and he‘s pushing me into the temple.

  ―I won‘t leave you,‖ I say.

  ―Zoe, go. You can live. You can go home.‖

  ―But what about you?‖

  ―She‘ll lay off once you‘re gone. That‘s all she wants. She wants you to go home.‖

  Don‘t cry, Zoe. You‘ll have a whole long and lonely life to cry. Soon you‘ll be back at the base camp, trying to explain where you‘ve been to Sophia and Alex. Probably they‘ll ship you off to one of those resorty mental institutions for the rest of the summer. And then in the fall you‘ll be back at Greeley hearing all about CeeCee‘s summer of fun on Martha‘s Vineyard. You‘ll check your Facebook—no messages—and when you try to tell people about your boyfriend, Zeus, you‘ll sound like the female version of an outcast geek boy who claims to be dating half the supermodels in Canada. In other words, you‘ll be home soon.

  ―Zeus, you‘re my home.‖

  ―Zoe…‖

  ―I‘m not going without you. I don‘t care if I die. I‘d rather die next to you.‖I don‘t know what he‘s going to say. The tendrils are snarling and rising and tangling and they hover over us blocking the sun. At any moment they could come down and wipe us both away.

  He takes my hand and says, ―Then I‘m going with you.‖

  ―What?‖

  ―We‘ll go together.‖

  ―You can‘t!‖ I exclaim, genuinely surprised. I had never even imagined this as a possibility. Zeus coming with me? ―This is where you live. You‘re…

  you‘re Zeus.‖

  ―I‘m Zoe‘s boyfriend. That‘s who I am.‖

  I see it before he does, the tendrils rising and coiling into one monstrous thick braid. Before it can lash out at us, I grab him and pull him through the door of the temple. The braid is too thick to make it through the entryway and I swear I can hear Hera shrieking in the distance as she tries to untangle her black braid.

  As we rush through the unfinished temple, I try to remember where the room I found the obolus is, but so much has happened since then that it‘s almost impossible to backtrack and—

  Wait a minute. Does he really mean he‘s coming with me?

  ―Zeus, it‘s okay. You don‘t have to come along.‖

  ―I‘m not staying here without you.‖

  ―But I‘m just a student. I mean, I‘ll have to go back to school and you don‘t go there and you don‘t know how to live in the future.‖

  ―So you‘ll show me.‖

  I try to picture holding his hand and strolling to the cafeteria. Would
he be wearing pants?

  Would he not have his wings? How long would it take for some pretty sophomore to bat her eyelashes at him?

  Ah, but all these thoughts and worries are irrelevant. I don‘t have those insecurities anymore, not really.

  ―Zeus, are you sure?‖

  ―I‘m sure.‖

  I stop short. I see it, the landmark. ―Scaffolding!‖ He follows me to the door and we hear a crash behind us. The tendrils have broken through the entryway and are winnowing down the corridors toward us. They‘ll be here soon. I pull him left and then right, and when I duck into a high-ceilinged room, I see it in the corner, the giant iPhone.

  And I understand now why it wasn‘t here when I first arrived.