“Not your tree. Ground’s tree. Tree’s tree. Tree’s fruit.” Munch, munch, munch. It was exasperating.
“I grew tree,” I tried to explain. You ever notice how your syntax changes when you’re talking to an idiot? “Tree is for me.”
She frowned. “Tree is for you?”
“Yes, tree is for me.”
“Silly.”
“No, not silly.” I was ready to take another shot at her with the broom.
“Silly. Moon for you?”
“No, the moon is for everyone,” I said.
“Tree is for everyone.”
Pixies, the first communists. I decided to change tactics. “Do you like the fruit?”
“Good fruit.”
“Is there anything else you like to eat?”
She thought about it. “Mushrooms.”
“You like mushrooms?”
“I like.”
“Better than olives?”
“Okay.” That might have been a yes. Hard to tell.
“If I got you some mushrooms,” I asked, “would you stop eating the olives?”
She ran through her options carefully. “You have mushrooms?”
“I can get mushrooms.”
“Okay.”
“We have a deal?” I asked.
“Deal.”
“What is your name?”
“Win.”
“My name is Antony.”
And that’s how I made friends with a wild pixie. Every night I’d leave out a plate of mushrooms I’d either bought in the market or picked myself, and she left the olive tree alone. Every now and then I’d hang out in the garden and strike up a conversation with her. Once I got used to the interesting syntax and the Edenesque world view, it became a fairly easy matter, and by the end of the summer I even felt like I’d made a friend.
You can never have too many friends. They especially come in handy in bad times, like on days you discover that you’re living at the base of an active volcano.
I’ve seen my share of volcanoes, mostly from a distance, which is how you want to see one in case you’re wondering. The closest I’d ever gotten to one—up until that day in Herculaneum—was during the Minoan empire. I was working on the island of Crete as a fish merchant when a massive volcano on a nearby island—it’s called Santorini now; we called it Thera back in the day—basically wrecked the whole region. I mean wrecked. Earthquakes, showers of ash, and this nasty junk called pumice. It killed thousands of fish—which put me out of a job—and took down the Minoans almost completely. Plato even wrote about it, although he called the island Atlantis. (Between you and me, Plato was a hack. All that crap about higher forms and caves? He was drunk when he wrote it. I know. I was there. And Aristotle? Seriously obsessive-compulsive.) After that experience, I swore I’d never set up shop anywhere near an active volcano ever again. Nonetheless, sixteen hundred years later there I was at the base of Mount Vesuvius, which nobody even knew was a volcano. My own fault, I guess, for trusting mortals to check that sort of thing.
The morning began as most did on the Bay of Naples: sunny, breezy, and generally pleasant. If anything, it was too calm. I did notice as I tended to the garden that there were no birds. Unusual, but not terribly so. It was just past noon when Win showed up.
“Ant! Ant!” She called me Ant because Antony was too difficult. Pixies prefer one-syllable words.
“What are you doing here?” She always slept during the day. Pixies are not strictly nocturnal, but do prefer coming out at night.
“Must go!” she insisted, landing on my shoulder and shouting in my ear.
“But you just got here.”
“Ant must go!”
“Where?”
“Away! Away now!” She was almost hysterical.
“Win, calm down. What is this about?”
“Bad sky come.”
“What, a storm? A hurricane?” I’ve lived through a few hurricanes, too.
“No, hot!” she exclaimed. “Hot fire sky!” Like that helped.
“Honey, you need to take a breath and add some words to your sentences, or this is going to take a while,” I said.
“Just go!”
“Where do you want me to go?”
She looked around anxiously. “Boat?”
“I don’t own a boat. And you know I can’t fly. Now seriously, what’s this about?”
Just then, the ground rumbled. It felt like Naples had indigestion. I knew that sound.
“Oh,” I said. “Hot fire sky. A volcano.”
“Mountain goes up,” Win confirmed. See, now if she’d said that right away I would have gotten it.
I looked at the peak and saw a faint curl of smoke work its way out of the center.
“How long do you think I have?” I asked her.
“Ears hurt.” She felt the same thing that had sent the birds away. Not the best forecasting method around but it would have to do.
Just then the mountain ejected a larger mass of smoke and running seemed like a very good idea.
“Okay,” I agreed. “Let’s run, shall we?” The proper thing to do would have been to warn Adolphus and his wife first, but they were in Rome on business at the time, so I was obligation free. I ran.
I headed down the hill, taking the most direct path I knew of to the shore. Any boat close to the mountain would be rendered useless by a big enough pumice rock or flaming ember—wood boats and all—and I was betting that any boat owner with half a brain would know this and act accordingly. Getting on one of those boats before they left would be a good thing.
And then, as I was halfway to the dock, Mount Vesuvius erupted. It began with an earthquake tremor, which knocked me off my feet, leaving me prone and looking up at the top of the mountain, which put me into position to see something amazing. The entire top cone of the mountain rocketed skyward in a million pieces propelled by an enormous column of ejecta that spread outward in all directions. It looked a bit like those mushrooms I’d been picking for Win, only writ large and much deadlier. As horrifying as it was, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything quite so magnificent.
My immediate and very human reaction was to sit there and watch, as one rarely gets a chance to see something this extraordinary. (I’d been sleeping when the volcano off Crete blew.) Fortunately I had Win to watch my back.
“Move now!” she urged, tugging at my earlobe.
Snapped from my reverie, I got to my feet and stumbled down the hill as the ashes began to rain down from the initial blast. I’d gotten about twenty paces, still turning from time to time to admire the view, when a massive chunk of pumice landed right where I’d been admiring the volcano. That sealed it. It was time to get the hell out of Herculaneum, and fast.
As I sprinted through town, I came across dozens of neighbors who didn’t seem at all inclined to motivate themselves toward the shore. They just stood there and watched. Either they simply didn’t comprehend the peril they were in or they knew there was no place to run and figured they might as well catch the show. I wasn’t quite
