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 at that point. I’d swim to Capri if I had to.
When I reached the shore I found… no boats.
“Oh, Hades,” I said.
“Where boat?” Win asked from her perch on my shoulder.
“It’s the middle of the day. Everyone’s fishing in the bay right now.”
“No boat?” she clarified.
“No boat.”
Another massive blast from the mountain shook the Earth and sent me to my knees. Ashes were starting to rain down in force and the sky had darkened considerably. Clouds were forming over the mountain. If prior experience served, lightning would be next.
I shuffled through my options quickly. There weren’t many. “Win, do you know where Torre del Greco is?”
“Tory… ?”
“. . . del Greco. It’s down the beach from here. I need you to fly ahead and see if there are any boats there. I know you can fly very fast.”
“Very fast.”
“Yes. See if there are boats there.”
“You stay here?”
“I’m going to run as fast as I can along the shore. I’d just like to know if there’ll be a boat waiting for me. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“And Win? If the air gets too bad and you don’t think you can make it back to me, don’t. Just fly off to somewhere safe. I’ll be all right.”
“I come back.”
“Only if it’s safe.”
“I come back.” She zipped off.
I knelt down and removed my sandals. Nobody should ever be forced to run in sandals for any length of time. I wore them because everyone else did, but considering I went something like fifty millennia without footwear, for me they were more of a contrivance than a convenience. Plus, you ever tried running in the sand in wood sandals?
I looked up once again and saw what looked like a giant rain cloud rapidly losing altitude. It was a volley of heavier ashes, and they looked hot. Time to run again.
As I said, my muscles don’t seem to grow in time with exercise. I’m about as strong and fast as I was in the beginning. But I was always a good runner. At one time I had to be. It was how we hunted. There were animals that were faster, sure, but we could run for days without getting winded. (This is why I never understood why everyone made such a big deal out of marathon runners, twenty-six miles is a warm-up.)
I took off down the beach. The sand made the going a little rough, but nothing unmanageable. I would have made excellent time if I didn’t have to breathe. Unfortunately I did, and that became a difficult thing to do when the ash fall really got going.
About halfway to Torre Del Greco I had to stop just to find some air. It was a bit like trying to run while breathing through fifty lit cigarettes. I fell to my knees and cupped my ash-covered hands over my mouth, but when that didn’t make a difference I tried removing my toga and breathing through that instead. This helped. It left me stark naked, but people back then weren’t nearly as uptight about that sort of thing as they are today.
Behind me, I could see that the town was on fire. The second floor of most of the buildings in Herculaneum were made of wood rather than the stone used on the bottom level, and a lot of that wood had surrendered to the hot ash and pumice. I wondered if the people now understood that this was not something to patiently wait out. Probably they would do the same as I did and flee to the water line. Maybe they would be safer there. I was thinking it might be a better idea to find indoor shelter and wait it out, but that was because I was trying jog in an ashtray.