Dark of the Moon (6 page)

My mother looks helplessly at Konnidas, who comes to her rescue. "Your father left something for you."

"For
me?
" I look from one to the other. My mother is uncharacteristically grave, and Konnidas returns my stare with his usual equanimity. "What did he leave me?"

Konnidas looks at my mother. "Will you show him, or shall I?"

She rises to her feet and says, "I will show him.
He
told me to." She strides off in the direction of the sea without looking behind her. As soon as I recover from my astonishment, I trot after her, followed at a distance by my stepfather.

THIS IS it?" I ask. "This is what my father left me?"

My mother has stopped in front of a boulder lying near the sea path. She flutters her hand to draw my attention to it. I have passed this same boulder hundreds of times and have never attached any importance to it. It's just an ordinary stone, squarish, gray and brown, almost as tall as I am.

"Not the
rock,
silly!" She laughs as if I've said something ridiculous. After her earlier reluctance to talk about my father, she now seems eager. She gives the boulder an almost affectionate slap. "He rolled it here himself, a few days before he went back to the sea. He said he left something under it for you, and if the baby was—if you turned out to be a boy, you were to move the rock as soon as you were old enough and strong enough and find it."

For the first time since my mother and Konnidas started talking about my parentage, I feel a glimmer of interest. If her story is true and my father left me a gift, it must be something hard, not to be crushed by the weight of the boulder, and durable, since it had to last for years. It might be gold. It might even be jewels.

I join my mother and lay my hand on the rough surface of the rock. It's mottled with small orange and green speckles of lichen, and warm where the sun has touched it. I push. It doesn't budge, which is no surprise.

"What was it that he left?" I press my shoulder into it and shove. The rock stands as motionless as—well, as a rock.

"Oh, I don't know. Nothing important, just some things he didn't have use for anymore, I suppose."

"And you didn't tell me about it earlier because...?"

"Why are you ruining such a lovely day?" my mother asks. She is already pouting, and unless I do something to appease her, she will become cold and silent. For once, I don't care. I turn my back as Konnidas puts his arm around her waist. I know I should join him, that as the offender I'm the one who has the power to soothe her, but I'm too angry. Even though I know it's useless, I push against the huge stone again. As I expected, nothing happens. As I also expected, I hear my mother and stepfather returning to the house.

I can't budge the boulder by myself. I doubt that I can move it even with aid, and I know well that nobody but Konnidas will help me. I can do nothing until I come up with a plan. I follow my mother and stepfather up the path and then along the dusty trail that leads back to our house, turning over the possibilities in my mind. An ox—no, the way is too narrow and strewn with rocks. Anyway, I don't know anyone who would lend me such a valuable animal. A group of three or four men might be able to do something. The same problem arises, though: nobody is likely to want to help me.

I eat my supper without speaking. My mother is silent as well, and she merely picks at her food, which is once again lentil stew. It appears that Konnidas has gone to some trouble to make it especially tasty tonight, though whether to soothe my mother or to cheer me up I don't know. He seasoned it with the last of his store of herbs and has grated dried goat cheese over it. I eat mine, and as soon as my mother rises from her stool, leaving most of hers untouched, I take her bowl and eat what remains in it, too.

With such a full stomach I should sleep well, but instead I lie awake, pondering the problem of the boulder. I need a plan. I always need a plan. Sometimes I think life would be easier if I lived day to day, the way my mother and stepfather do.

Before he married my mother, Konnidas was a merchant who wandered all around Attika selling trinkets. He showed up on our doorstep one morning when I was very small, and he never left. He gave my mother the remaining store of his ribbons and earrings and good-luck charms, and for all I know he never gives a thought to the home he left—if he had one—or the people he grew up with.

But I can never stand to leave anything up in the air. I lie on my pallet on the floor, listening to the two of them talking quietly until they drop into sleep and my mother's breathing falls into rhythm with Konnidas's light snore.

I try not to think of the possibility that my mother has forgotten exactly which stone my father showed her and just pointed at the first one she came to after she grew tired of walking. This part of the seaward path is littered with rocks, thanks to the frequent shakings by Poseidon. I could never push over each one of them. No, I have to figure out a way to move only this one boulder, and if there's nothing under it, I'll know that her story was just that: a story. It sounds like one of the tales she used to tell me when I was little.

If
my mother didn't just point out some random rock, and
if
the man who was my father intended me to be able to move it (two big ifs), then there has to be a way that someone who is not a giant and not a god can find what is lying under it. My father was not a god (this much is clear now), and if he had been a giant, my mother would have mentioned the fact. Yet he managed to move the rock, if she is to be believed. It's not impossible; after all, the temple in town is made of stones much larger than the one on the path, and they had to have gotten there somehow.

I squeeze my eyes shut and remember the scene. The path is steep, and the rock lies at the bottom of an incline. Maybe he placed whatever he meant me to find on the ground, then climbed up on a ledge above it and pushed the rock on top of it. That would be difficult, but not impossible.

Even if true, though, that theory won't help me. The boulder now sits firmly on the flat ground. Unless...

I have a plan.

I AM UP and out of the house before Konnidas finds me a chore that will keep me from my task. The air is still chilly, especially as I draw close to the sea and the winds pick up, bringing a briny smell and the sounds of far-off gulls. Under a gray sky that is starting to turn pink, I test several flat rocks before finding one suited to my purposes, and then I set to work.

The sun is high when I sit back and survey my efforts. I've dug a deep trench along the downhill edge of the boulder. My hands sting; they're already pretty well calloused, but even so, I've sprung a few new blisters with the unaccustomed work.

If someone indeed tipped the huge rock off the ledge above me, surely not much of it is buried in the sandy ground. This means that with some effort I can, in turn, topple it over into the trench I've dug.

I straighten my stiff legs and poke through the shrubbery until I find a long, stout branch. I plant myself on the uphill side of the boulder and work the end of the stick under it. I push down. Nothing. I press harder, finally leaning so much of my weight on the branch that I'm standing on tiptoe. The branch snaps and I fall backwards, my tunic flying up around my waist. I lie there to catch my breath, and suddenly I hear a giggle. I sit up hastily and pull my clothing down.

Three girls are standing on the path. I know all of them, and I also know that I'm in for an uncomfortable time. For tormenting, girls are even worse than boys. I'd rather be punched in the face by the biggest of my enemies than have to listen to the taunts that girls seem capable of throwing from the moment they learn to speak.

"What is he
doing?
" asks the smallest of them, a pale-faced little thing who I think is distantly related to me. My mother has so many brothers and sisters that I don't try to keep track of who is a cousin, who is married to a cousin, who lives with a cousin's family but isn't related, and all the rest of it.

"Looking for buried treasure," offers an older girl, whose face is heavily marked with smallpox scars. She would be pretty but for that, with a graceful shape, large, dark eyes, and shiny black hair that hangs in braids almost to her waist.

The third, a thick girl with a round face, snickers. "Going to dig himself a hole and hide in it. Then he won't have to worry about Arkas beating him up again." When she laughs, she looks like the Gorgon mask that hangs over the entrance to the temple in town, snaggleteeth and all.

The other girls laugh with her. I stand, resigned to their torment. I'm gratified to see that they shrink back as I rise to my feet, but then, to show that they aren't afraid of me, the two bigger ones straighten. I pretend not to notice them as I search in the brush for a stouter stick.

I find a likely looking pine branch and swing it experimentally over my head. Now the girls scatter, skimming down the path and out of sight. I hear the rattle of loose gravel, then a thud, then an "Ow!" One of them must have fallen. Since they will never know that I took notice of them, I allow myself a grin of satisfaction.

I don't dare to deepen my trench. If I dig too deep, the rock might tip over while I'm in front of it, landing on top of me. Nobody would find me for hours, and when they did, they wouldn't be able to move the boulder any more than I can now. If I survived the impact, that is. Instead, I concentrate on working the end of the long stick under the uphill edge. Once it's in as far as I can push it in the hard ground, I prop a smaller rock under it and then lean on it.

At first, I think nothing will happen, but then the boulder shifts. Not much, but enough to allow me to push my stick a bit farther in, and then farther, and then I hold my breath and heave with all my might. The rock hangs suspended for an instant before crashing over. At the same time, the branch flies out of my hands and whacks me on the right cheekbone. I fall to my hands and knees, dazed and with black mist swirling in front of me. I shake my head to clear it, but that makes me want to vomit, so I stop. I feel something sharp on my tongue and spit out a molar. It lies in a puddle of blood and drool.
That's my offering to whatever god looks after those who seek what is lost,
I think. I blink the tears out of my eyes. Manly tears are nothing to be ashamed of, as when a comrade falls in battle or at news of the death of a great king, but tears of pain and frustration show weakness. I won't allow them, even if no one can see.

When my vision clears, I carefully push myself to my feet. The rock hasn't tumbled all the way over but lies at an angle, leaving a space of the span of two or three hands between its bottom and the ground. It partially reveals a patch of earth that is roughly square, each side about as long as my arm. I survey the damp sand and dirt. Snakes sometimes hide under rocks, and I'm not about to risk being bitten. I bend over, but that makes my mouth throb, so I squat and poke my stick around in the darkness and finally put a tentative hand into the shadow.

Nothing strikes, so I kneel down and reach farther, patting the ground. I hope I'm not supposed to dig; it would be hard to work even a small stone, much less a spade, into the tight area. I wish I knew what I was looking for. I pat the cool earth and dig my fingers into it. I brush aside grubs and many-legged cold things that scurry away from the dim light under the boulder.

It would make a better story if I said that a god appeared and told me where to look, or even that I had almost given up when I was dazzled by a light that broke out in the narrow space under the boulder, but after only a few minutes I feel something that is clearly not rock or dirt, not plant or animal bones. Somehow I know it's what I'm looking for. I tug at the edge of what feels like a piece of leather barely under the surface. It comes away easily. I sit back on my heels and pull it out into the light.

It's a pouch, perhaps a saddlebag, and something heavy in it shifts as I pick it up. I tuck it under one arm and pat around a little longer, prying clods out of the hard-packed sandy earth. There appears to be nothing else.

Before I have a chance to inspect my find, I hear voices. I hold my breath, listening hard, not even daring to spit out the blood that is pooling in my mouth. If it's the girls again, I have nothing to worry about.

I recognize a harsh guffaw as being in Arkas's tones and, before I've considered what to do, I've scrambled to my feet and am pelting toward home. I should feel disgraced at running rather than staying and fighting, but while I'm defending myself from one of them, the others will surely grab my leather pouch. I'm not about to risk that.

So I run, each step jolting the hollow place in my jaw.

"I found it!"

Konnidas looks up from the patch he's tilling. He's breaking up clods and mixing the leaves from last year's vines into the earth to make it fertile for the spring planting. It's hard work, and boring, but he doesn't act resentful that I've left him to do it alone.

He eyes the pouch in my hands and turns back to his work. "What's in it?" His voice is careful, like he's trying not to show any emotion.

"Don't know yet." I decide not to tell him about fleeing from the boys. Let him think I ran home out of excitement. "Where's Mother?"

"Resting." Konnidas must mean "pouting." I know what will bring her out, though. She's as curious as a mouse. I go to the house and stand in the doorway. I dangle the pouch from my hand. I feel something shift inside again.

"Mother?" No answer, so I say more loudly, pretending to address my stepfather, "Must be asleep. No matter, I'll show her my find after she wakes up."

"I'm not asleep." Her bedclothes rustle, and then there she is, her light brown hair mussed, her cheek creased where it rested on a fold of blanket. The dog at her side shows the pink interior of its mouth in a yawn. "I was waiting for you to come back." My mother eyes the leather pouch. I move aside to let her out, and then both of us sit on the bench.

Konnidas comes up, still holding his spade. He drops it and smacks his hands on his thighs to knock off the worst of the dirt. He looks at my face, appears to be about to say something (I'm sure my cheek is swollen and purple by now), but doesn't. "Show us," he says.