by A. L. Knorr
Keeping my eyes closed, I took off my long sleeved white button-up and shook it. I took my hair out of its low ponytail and ran my fingers through it. I felt the movement of Jesse brushing sand away, too.
"Ugh." I felt the grit that had built up on my scalp and on the back of my neck. "Sand everywhere, and I still can barely see." My eyes were stinging.
"Here." Jesse fingers found my face again. He removed the sand from my eyes as best he could, until I could finally open them. We were crouched together in the entrance compartment of my tent, and when he finally came into focus, my heart tripped. His face was startlingly close to mine.
I unzipped the inner door and reached in to grab my toiletries bag. Retrieving a bottle of spray and a towel, I gave my hands as good a wash as I could before crawling through and into my tent. I kicked off my runners and left them in the first compartment.
"We're going to get sand in your house." Jesse had to raise his voice over the sound of the wind outside.
"I've had sand in my bed from day one. The stuff gets absolutely everywhere."
"Ain't that the truth," he agreed, crawling in behind me and zipping the tent door closed.
We sprawled onto my bed and lay on our backs looking up at the tent ceiling. The wind howled and the barrage of sand against the canvas was loud and unrelenting.
"Sounds almost like we've angered some god," I said.
"Yeah. I think that's what the locals think too. This is the promise of much worse winds to come," said Jesse, eyes staring upward and head slightly cocked to the side. He'd taken off his shirt to use as a headrest and lay there in a white tank top. In the dim light, his skin looked even darker than normal against the contrast of the light fabric. I noticed a cord around his neck, the end of it disappeared under his shirt. I thought of asking him what the necklace carried when he said, "This is the Ghibli."
"There's a name for this storm?"
Jesse nodded. "It's seasonal, and it’s caused enough damage over the centuries to warrant a title." He turned onto his side to face me, tucking his folded shirt under his cheekbone. "Every summer, a hot dry wind blows up from the Sahara toward the Mediterranean. It can reach hurricane speed by the time it hits the coast of North Africa." He paused as the wind and sand gave a particularly violent bash against the walls of my tent.
"Geez, I hope we don't fly away. Maybe we should have run for one of the vehicles," I murmured.
"Frightened?" Jesse examined my face.
I shook my head. "You?"
"I'm okay. It won't get that bad. This is just the start of the season. We'll be gone before the real Ghibli hits. Thankfully."
"Why would they plan this dig for when they knew the winds picked up?" I put up a hand. "Not that I'm complaining. I would have come even if we had to use ice-picks to excavate the site from under a glacier."
"Ethan has a contract with the sponsors. The site has to be excavated by a certain date. We're the last team to be scheduled before the dig pauses for the summer."
I gasped as the walls of the tent whipped tautly in and out, snapping loudly. Jesse put a hand on my wrist and his thumb stroked across my pulse. I swallowed and my heart rate increased a notch. A warm feeling flushed through my stomach.
"How long do you think this will last?"
"Hard to say," Jesse said, as we stared at each other in the strange dun-colored light. "Worst case scenario is that we'll be stuck in here for the night." A dimple appeared in his cheek. "All alone. Just the two of us." His eyes dropped to my lips.
I cleared my throat and lowered my voice to a whisper, "With the Ghibli screaming her fury around us and throwing sand all over our work."
Jesse closed his eyes and rolled his face into his shirt. He groaned dramatically. "Ugh. It's going to be a disaster out there when this is over." He let go of my wrist and rolled onto his back. He rubbed both hands over his eyes. "Ethan is going to be furious. Even if the tarps stay down, this will put us behind."
"He knew it could happen," I said. "We talked about it at orientation."
"Yeah." He turned his head to look at me again. "But there's always hope right, that things will go as smoothly as possible."
I nodded and turned on my side to face him. We gazed at each other and listened to the storm for several minutes.
Jesse surprised me by putting a hand to my cheek. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," I said with surprise. "I mean, I'm glad I'm not weathering this storm alone, but I'm totally fine. Why?"
"I don't mean about the storm."
"You mean about falling into the cave? Why wouldn't I be?" I kept my features calm but inside, my heart had begun to hammer. Why was Jesse so insistent that something major had happened to me that night? He wasn't wrong; it was just weird that he was so intuitive about it.
Jesse's shoulder lifted in an elegant shrug. "You've been pretty quiet since then. At meals. While you're working." He took his hand from my cheek. "I'm not the only one who’s noticed. Some of us are worried about you."
"Who else is worried about me?"
"Ibby. Ethan. Those of us who've gotten to know you a bit better."
I frowned. Was it really that obvious? "There is nothing to worry about. I'm just focused on the work. You know this is my dream job, right? It'll be over before we realize it. I want to make it count."
"Mm-hmm," Jesse said, like he didn't quite believe me. "If that's true, you really are an overachiever."
I laughed. “You sound like my therapist.”
A gust of wind threw more sand over our tent than I even wanted to think about.
Unexpectedly, Jesse scooted closer to me and pressed his lips against my cheek. His warm stubble scratched pleasantly across my skin and my heart exploded like a thoroughbred from the starting gate. The sudden coming alive of my body was as much a shock to me as the kiss was. If Jesse had meant the kiss to be sweet and platonic, he had radically failed. Jesse pulled back, but kept his face close. In his eyes reflected the same surprise at the electricity between us and I heard him take a quick breath. My cheek tingled where all the blood had rushed to the surface. We surged toward each other, moving like a set of magnets compelled to make contact.
Jesse met my lips with his and suddenly his weight was half on top of me and we were straining against each other, our arms wrapping around one another as though we couldn't get close enough. My heart felt as though it was throwing itself against my ribcage, my fingers wound through his hair, oblivious to the sand that fell onto my face and trickled across my skin.
The Ghibli screamed around the tent, the sharp sound of sand against the canvas drowning out the sound of our kiss. I felt a rumble in Jesse's chest as he pulled me on top of him, his hand rucking up the bottom of my tank top of find the skin of my ribs.
Jesse's heartbeat became audible to me, pulsing not just in my ears but against my body. Underneath his heartbeat, a second rhythm was detectable; a faster oscillation which grew stronger as his lips moved against mine and the thrumming of our bodies ramped up. The strange pulse seemed to reach toward me and then wrap around me like a cocoon enfolding both of us. It called forth my own rhythm and the two began to play a little rhythmic game. I couldn't tell whose was faster but I could tell that the rhythms were working to get in sync with one another. What would happen when the frequencies met?
The memory of the rupturing desert glass exploded into my memory and shattered my pleasure with panic. I gasped and pulled back, my heart pounding and chest heaving. I sat up, my thighs on either side of Jesse's hips. His eyes opened wide with surprise, hands reaching for me.
"What's wrong?" Then a look of horror crossed his face. "I'm sorry. Are you okay?" He sat up underneath me and put his palms on my waist. "I thought you liked it—"
"I did!" I said, hating the look of panic I’d put on his face. "Don't apologize, I loved it, really." I put a hand to where my heart was hammering under my breastbone and ribs. The sensation of our two rhythms was gone and I let out a long sigh of relief. My hand
s were trembling. There was no way of explaining this to him.
I wove my fingers through his hair and kissed his lips and his cheeks and across his jaw, wanting nothing more than to erase the distress from his features and then keep kissing him and never stop. But fear had rattled me. I had destroyed that desert glass by matching its rhythm to my own. What would happen to Jesse if I let our frequencies meet in the same way?
"It's just a little fast," I said, finally, to give him some kind of explanation.
He let out a pent-up breath and I felt him nod against me. "Okay," he whispered, wrapping his arms around me and giving me a hug. He kissed my ear, my neck. "You're in charge, Petra," he said, his lips moving against my ear and sending shivers of pleasure down my spine. "Whatever you want. Whatever makes you happy."
His words made me melt, made me want to tear his clothes off, and made me want to scream with frustration at the unexplained powers I suddenly had. Was I dangerous to him? Was there a way I could find out?
"Thank you." I held him close as the wind and sand cycloned around the tent.
He pulled back and smiled at me, brushing my sandy hair away from my face. We listened as the wind bellowed, gazing at one another in the near-darkness.
"I wonder what the others are up to?" I listened for any sign of life outside the tent.
Jesse pressed another kiss to my mouth and grinned, his teeth gleaming in the dark. "Not this, I can assure you."
I laughed as he rolled me over onto the bed, pressing his stomach against my back, spooning me. Between the two of us, there was too much heat, but neither of us seemed to care so we lay there spooning and waiting out the storm.
Chapter 12
The vision of the man with the silver-gray eyes haunted me every night that week. I saw him in my dreams and behind my eyelids whenever I closed my eyes. I never saw him as clearly as I’d seen him in the cave, but the intensity of his message remained the same. I became edgy and mildly paranoid, watching the security team when they didn't know I was looking. My ears perked at conversations had within hearing distance. I saw nothing, heard nothing that hinted of danger. After a week of this, I told myself I was being silly. I might never get to be on a dig in Libya again. How could I enjoy the experience if I was constantly jumping at shadows?
I felt Jesse's eyes on me frequently as the dig progressed. I would catch him looking and he would look away, but not before I caught the look of concern, and if I wasn't mistaken, sadness. It reminded me of the sadness I’d felt on his thoughts during the team orientation meeting back in Saltford. Concern I could understand, but sadness? I reassured him in whispered words twice over meals in the mess tent that I was fine. He would nod and smile and squeeze my arm, but the concern and sadness did not go away.
Then I caught Ibby doing the same thing, her eyes lingering on me, charged with worry. She'd look away quickly as soon as my eyes met hers. I began to wonder if Jesse had said something to her. I asked him a the dry-screening table as we sifted through our sand and dirt for finds. He assured me he hadn't said anything to anyone about that night, and I believed him.
As one week slipped into the next, the events in the cave haunted me less frequently. I still hadn't made up my mind to tell Ethan about the cave. I was dying to share the discovery with the team, but I still wasn't sure how to explain the presence of the glass–unless I didn't say anything about it at all. But leaving out such an important feature grated unbearably against my professional sensitivities. The glass had been embedded in the wall by someone, for some reason. I couldn't believe that the stones had been put there just to wait for me to come along. And so I wrestled with myself until the day came when I had a much bigger problem than the discovery of the cave.
I was treading across the sand to the mess tent to refill my water bottle when a movement at the nearest basalt monolith caught my eye. The rock had swayed, I was certain of it. I stopped walking and narrowed my eyes, thinking I had perhaps experienced some trick of vision. Ibby and Jesse were working in the trench in the shadow of the crooked monolith, seemingly deep in discussion. The stone shifted again and I gasped. The top of the monolith had moved, probably mere centimeters but I had seen it move.
"Ibby! Jesse!" I dropped my bottle, which went rolling away across the sand. "Get out of the trench!” My heart leapt in my chest as the top of the huge stone shifted again. It had been a microscopic movement but this time, I felt the vibration under my feet, just for a moment before it stopped again. I broke into a run. "Move!" I screamed.
Jesse and Ibby and every other person in the camp watched me in surprise as I bolted across the sand toward my friends.
"Petra, what the—" Ibby’s voice and expression was full of confusion, but had she known the danger she was in, it would have been full of terror. Her lack of understanding turned my blood to ice. Jesse was getting to his feet, but Ibby was still on her knees. I felt a sound of frustration tear at my throat. Why did she not understand?
The monolith moved again, and this time it did not stop moving. It telegraphed full intent to topple over and crush my teammates. There was a groan of grinding rock from its base. Ibby and Jesse looked up and understood what was happening. It was unmistakeable now, to anyone who had a set of working eyes. Both of their faces paled with shock and fear.
They scrambled to their feet, but their movements seemed so slow and laborious. Why weren’t they moving faster? They’d never be free of the falling stone in time.
I could hear the grinding crush of stone against stone and dense compacted sand being disturbed as the basalt pedestal that had held the stone upright for a millennium finally gave way. The years of wind and shifting sands had finally worn it down. It was a moment that was mathematically certain to happen. But incredulity that the moment had arrived when my friends were in its shadow flushed my limbs with shock and adrenalin. I had to do something. This could not happen!
Its top, so far away and cast in sharp relief against the blue of the sky, drifted across my vision and flooded my stomach with a sickening vertigo. My inertia broke like a wave.
I vaulted the string cordoning off the trench and baseball-slid on my hip between Jesse and Ibby as they scrambled to get out of the way.
I heard someone scream my name but I couldn’t tell which of my friends it was.
Jesse's fingers grazed my arm as I flew by. A deep sonorous frequency emitted itself from my chest and began to repeat on an endless loop. I felt my heart hum like a generator. I slid onto my back in the shadow of the falling stone and held my palms face up. A cold certainty that what I was doing would work replaced my terror.
There were screams in the back of my mind but I didn't know if they were real or imagined. I ignored them. The pounding resonance continued, my cells quaked with it; my heart was the drum making this beat. The creak became a scream as the stone fell faster and the monolith made to crush me. It tilted dramatically, making to crash on the earth. Then it froze, as I knew it would, mere inches from my hands. The base of the single monstrous rock swung upward as it leveled out. Rubble and stones broke away and fell. I became the fulcrum on which the slab rested and balanced.
Jesse and Ibby should have been at least partially crushed, and me completely, but I held the stone there as my friends scrambled free. The monolith hovered, still and waiting, as the power emanating from my body supported it. Mentally, I pushed the monolith away and it reversed its course, slowly tipping upright once again.
But halfway through the procedure of righting the stone, I recognized a problem. My sonic booms were being diluted as the monolith slowly erected, their energy diffusing around the rock and up into the sky. I paused the stone there, thinking, ruminating about what to do with the massive rock now hovering overtop of me.
I could try punching the rock upward with a single powerful blast and scramble out of the way before letting it fall again, but it might not be enough. Instead of taking that risk, I chose to keep the stone where it was, allowing it to level off perpendicular to
the earth again. When the stone was still, I gave it a mental push to slide it to the left. I rolled to the right and let my sonic booms die. The hum in my body went silent as the stone dropped with a crack, landing mere inches from my body. Sand blew over me and I squeezed my eyes shut and turned my face away.
Near silence descended. My own breathing was all I could hear.
I couldn't regret what I had done. Jesse and Ibby would have been seriously injured or killed, that I knew for certain. But there was no doubt in my mind that every single team member had just witnessed what had happened. So much for my secret. I got to my feet, keeping my eyes down. I wasn’t ready yet to see the looks on their faces.
I brushed the sand from my hair, face, and clothes and looked at the monster stone lying across the dig pit. I took several breaths before I had enough courage to look up. No one had said anything or moved a muscle, as far as I could tell.
Jesse and Ibby stood the nearest. Ibby was down on her knees, and Jesse was on his back. Both of them seemed like mannequins from a haunted-house, their faces pale and eyes stretched so wide I could see the whites of them. Beyond Jesse and Ibby was Ethan, his hat dangling from one hand while his other hand shielded his eyes. He too was frozen; only his hair and hat moved in the desert wind.
The security team and our dig-labor from Ghat stood scattered about like toy soldiers. Here, a disembodied head frozen and staring from across the top of a Jeep. There, a figure with his hands held on either side of his head stuck in a parody of surprise. The shocked faces of our dig-crew peered in my direction from several pits. Figures were poised outside the mess tent, one with a broken cup at his feet and a wet patch in the sand, another with a hand on the arm of a companion. Every face stared, every body was still, every eye was locked on me.
It seemed as though the camp was stuck there for an eternity. No one knew what to do, what to say. Until—
"Euroklydon," came a fearful whisper on the wind.
