The Dig by Audrey Hart Read Free Book Online Page B

me. I step forward.

    ―Stop it!‖ I shout.

    The men with the clubs pause, obviously bewildered. They turn and look at me. I am close enough to smell the sweat and the dirt on them. But I‘m not backing down.

    The crowd hushes. A few laugh—that nervous giggle that you usually hear at funerals. Is this my funeral?

    The bigger one wipes his mouth with his arm. The saliva glistens on his forearm. The smaller one reaches into a leather pouch tied to his belt and removes a wicked-looking piece of sharpened stone. He rotates it threateningly in his hand while eyeing me.

    ―Let her go,‖ I say.

    The men exchange a look. The nymph whinnies. The larger man laughs and waves me off, dismissing me with a turn of his back. The nymph blinks, her eyes shining with tears, and teeters backward, shaking her tiny head.

    This is the end for her, and you can see that she knows it. Nearby, a woman puts her hand over her daughter‘s eyes. I have nobody here to protect me, and I don‘t want to get beaten down too, but this has to stop.

    I clench my fists, take a deep breath, squish my toes in my boots and stare into the ever-shrinking gap of space between the bearded men and the nymph, and I scream.

    ―Noooooo!‖

    I fall backward, as if knocked over by the jolt of my own voice. But when I reopen my eyes, everyone is off balance.

    The earth is shaking.

    I hear screams. And then the deep rumbling of the earth beneath us. Is this an earthquake?

    No. This isn‘t an ordinary geological event. I blink and stare at the shaking, spasming ground in amazement.

    The earth splits apart. Heavy chunks of rock fly, as light and swift as ash from a volcano, sailing as high as fireworks, until gravity gets the best of them.

    This can‘t be happening. This isn‘t something we‘ve ever studied in science class. This is what we read about in books when we‘re supposed to be reading about earthquakes.

    This. Is. Magic.

    As earth and stones continue to spew into the air, people panic and flee for cover. I just sit there in awe, motionless, as a chasm rips open in the ground and a rock wall comes bursting out of it. The wall erupts from the ground as forcefully as a rocket plunging into the sky. It is about eight feet tall, twelve feet long, and it perfectly separates the nymph from the bearded men.

    The rumbling of the earth stops, and there is only stunned silence. I feel someone‘s eyes on me. The nymph. I look at her and she smiles. Her smile says thank you. I rise to my feet. Thank you? For what?

    Everyone is cheering now, celebrating and shouting as the bearded men flee down the alley. Shaggy and his friends chase them, pelting them with rocks. The men keep running. Wimps.

    All the people who had averted their eyes before are now surrounding me. They paw at my hair and run their hands over my arms, dropping to their knees in prayer. Two little boys run over to me. A vendor, who only moments ago had slapped away the boys as if they were gnats at a picnic, had handed them baskets piled with figs and pointed them in my direction.

    He kisses his hands and looks to the sun and bows his head.

    I murmur in protest of all this devotion. I shake off the women, their eyes wet with tears.
    Have you ever been to a bat mitzvah and seen the girl hoisted in a chair, high above the crowd?
    And everyone gathers around and claps and dances in her honor? Yeah, well, that‘s a cute ritual and all, but this is on a whole other level. These people, strangers, are not treating me like a girl who‘s becoming a woman. They are treating me like a god.

    A gray-haired man on his knees cries out to the heavens and careens forward, fighting for an entry into the inner circle at my feet. Three of his fingers graze my left pinkie toe, then he recedes from the crowd, kissing those three fingers, protecting them from anyone who comes close. Is this what it‘s like to be Lady Gaga?

    As the crowd continues to swarm me, I shake my head and back away.

    The