PIETRA

Pietra

— Pietra, can you pass me my other spatula, please? I just dropped mine in that crevice.

Alongside Professor Doyle, Ruth — the Senior Graduate Assistant

—he chuckled as he eyed a deer skull through the theodolite. Two years ago, Ruth would be the one doing the fetching and picking things up from the farm, but now she was more experienced than I was, and I was the one chasing after our muddled-up teacher like a faithful dog.

Sighing loudly—because my sigh would never be heard in the pouring rain outside the cavern—I stepped out from under the stone shelf I was using as a shelter, and walked through the opening straight into the pouring rain. This was the third trowel Frances had lost in that damn crevasse in as many days, and every time I braved the elements to replace it, the weather got worse.

We kept all the site tools in a lockable chest outside the cave mouth, which meant I had to lie on my stomach and slide through a small hole while the muddy water trickled down my bra and then out into the wind. howling and the driving rain, all so that my crazy lecturer could lose her tools again.

This was not how I imagined archeology would be.

When I started my degree at the University of Loamshire, I had visions of wandering around exotic locales in a white blouse and shorts, getting tanned while discovering the glittering jewels and treasures of long-lost civilizations. I've wanted so much to get away from DownMoor my whole life. As a teenager I worked hard to get top grades and was accepted to Cambridge University, but after my dad died I had to give up my place to stay around to take care of my mum. Giving up a place at one of the best universities in the world to live with her was one of the hardest things I've ever done, but I consoled myself by remembering that I would at least travel to remote locations as part of my training to dig up the remains of the past. My dreams absolutely did not include spending four of the coldest weeks of my life trapped in the middle of the DownMoor forest with Frances Doyle, the mad professor of Neolithic rock art.

And the worst part was, I had only myself to blame. All third-year archeology students were required to undertake a four-week field trip to a location of their choosing anywhere in the world. The university had relationships with several ongoing excavations, so we had our pick of sites… Greece, Italy, Egypt, Ecuador, Australia… It was the highlight of the course.

I applied for a classic villa site in Sicily and was told I got the job. But that was before Becky Masters, the stupidest girl in our entire class, the girl with the perfect blonde hair, perfect nose, and perfect laugh, whose past grades came only from the fact that she was screwing her classical pottery teacher. , getting hit by a bus.

She didn't die, but her perfect little nose had to be reconstructed and her arm was broken in three places. Poor Becky, they all said. Stuck in the hospital with a broken arm and a sprained nose. Poor Becky, who missed the deadline for entries and got stuck on a dig in the DownMoor forest. Poor Becky who really, really wanted more than anything in the world to go to Sicily with Professor Hicks to study classical pottery on the spot... inspired?

That was the speech Professor Hicks gave me when he called me in

his office and suggested that I should switch places with Becky.

— You're a good student, Pietra — he said. "I'm sure you'll stand out wherever you are." You would do a colleague a great kindness, and I will definitely take that into account when the time comes to make your recommendation for her postgraduate studies.

Since I was such a sucker, I liked Professor Hicks and wanted to please him, and I didn't want to be the cruel person who said "fuck you" to a girl who just got hit by a bus, Becky took my place on the Sicily dig. and instead of relaxing in the sun beside a Minoan palace with my friend Katie, or digging up pharaonic treasures in the Valley of the Kings with Sinead, I was stuck in a soggy English cave twenty miles away from home during the coldest month. of the year.

Silently fuming at my miserable situation, I lifted the lid of our toolbox. My hand closed around one of the many spatulas we had at our disposal. One of the first lessons I learned at the site was that an archaeologist would never get very far without a trowel or ten. I put a second one in my back pocket, knowing Professor Doyle would inevitably need it before the day was out. The biting wind whipped into my face, the cold stinging my filthy skin.

I knelt at the mouth of the cave and slid inside, feet first, pulling my body through the opening. The rain pelted my face, dripping onto the collar of my jacket, wet drops crawling over my skin.

“Thanks,” Frances said, barely looking at me as she grabbed the trowel and continued to scrape away the layers of dirt on her quadrant. In the opposite quadrant from her, Ruth and Max, the other graduate students, were laughing as they watched the edges of a blackened area of land that signified the position of a hearth. I seethed inside when I noticed that Ruth's clothes were mostly dry and free of mud.

We were working on an elevated area near the back of the main cave complex, above the natural water level — so even through the entrance it was like climbing a waterfall, the site itself was practically dry. This was clearly a floor for the cave's Neolithic inhabitants—functioning as a kitchen, judging by the cutting tools and piles of animal bones we discovered. Foxes, birds and even wolf bones - from when wolves were still common in England - were all dragged back to the cave and eaten. The eating habits of Neolithic cave dwellers were of particular interest to Max, who was completing his thesis on the subject. And Ruth was pleased with the charcoal samples and dried seeds we found inside the hearth, which she would analyze for her doctoral thesis once we got back to the university. But until now, we hadn't discovered any treasures. Glittering jewels, Greek vases and gilded funerary masks were not plentiful in Neolithic caves, and that meant I couldn't find much interest in the site.

I bent down to help Frances scrape off the remaining layer of soil on her quadrant. When I rolled the tip of the spatula over the surface, the corner of a small bone was visible. It was probably a fox rib bone, judging by the size and shape, but animal bones weren't exactly my area of expertise. I put it in a small bag, wrote a number on it, and left it in place to be filmed with the theodolite—a surveying instrument used to create a three-dimensional map of all artifacts and features—once the others were done using it. in your quadrant.

As I worked, I saw Frances, her messy brown hair falling out of her ponytail and spilling over her shoulders, her face covered in dirt stains where she'd scratched her nose or pushed her glasses over her eyes. She didn't even wear gloves when she dug, and her hands looked like they were permanently stained from the dark soil of the cave floor.

- What time is it? she asked absently as she scraped the edges of the quadrant, her wrinkled hands doing expert work in the square's corners.

“Three-thirty,” I replied, pulling my phone out of my pocket and squinting at the screen. There was no reception in this remote corner of the forest, so my expensive smartphone became nothing more than a cumbersome portable watch. Mud stains ran across the screen where I watched her frantically all day, anxiously awaiting the time when I could go back to camp and get out of my mud-soaked clothes.

—Oh! So late already?! That new guard was supposed to be here around three. He could already be out there.

"What happened to Daniel?"

The county required that a park ranger accompany us throughout

the digging, ostensibly to ensure our safety, but really to ensure we didn't damage any fragile forest ecosystems. Ranger Daniel Davies has been living at the camp with us for the past two weeks, although he hasn't spent much time on site, preferring to spend his days inspecting the trails and bridges in this area of the forest. He was a cheerful guy and a lot of fun to be around. He was also the park ranger who found Ben's body, so I felt a special connection with him.

'He got a call the other day saying his flat had been broken into, so he had to go back to Liverpool,' Frances replied. “Can you find the new ranger?” He's probably wandering around, wondering where the cave entrance is.

“Either that or giving us red crosses for health and safety violations,” Ruth said.

I stiffened at the words. Most archaeologists had a blasé attitude towards health and safety at the site, believing that their “common sense” would prevent an accident. I was the opposite. She was the only one on the team wearing a helmet in the caves. I wanted more security procedures, more lectures, more equipment. But I had my reasons.

A flicker of panic crossed Frances's face. If a ranger considered a site unsafe, he could disable it. Daniel was very laid back, but who knew what this new ranger was like?

“Find him, take him back to camp and show him how it all works. Don't let him come here until we've had a chance to… clean things up. Tell him I'll be back around six to let him know. I want to finish analyzing this area.

Why didn't she tell me all this before I crawled back through the hole again, saving me a trip? I sighed once more. She wouldn't be called Crazy Frances if she did that.

I emerged from the cave again, just as a four-wheel drive truck pulled up along the narrow dirt road near the site. The truck parked and I sprinted towards it, my feet slipping on the muddy ground. I knew I must look like a golem climbing out of mud, but rangers tended to be pretty dirty, and it wasn't like I was showing up for a date. I wore my helmet, which was the only important thing.

"Hello," I began when the door opened. - I am…

My words died in my throat as the new ranger got out of the car. His tall, muscular body towered over mine, bulging biceps trying to poke out through the rolled-up sleeves of his work shirt. He wore dark blue jeans and work boots with the laces loose, and looked like he'd just walked off the set of a Sexy Bikers calendar shoot. On the edge of his sleeve, I caught the outline of a black and gray tattoo encircling his upper arm.

But most of all, it was his eyes that froze me. Deep, green puddles moved over my body, sizing me up. He gave a curt nod, a dark brown curl falling over his eye. Another curled around her ears, the rest pulled into a tight ponytail, like a Viking warrior preparing for battle. A light beard covered his broad jaw, giving him a wild, untamed look.

He was handsome, and here I was, wearing baggy overalls, a shirt that belonged to my father, and mud caked on every inch of my body.

“Oo-hello. I plastered a smile on my face and extended my hand to him. A strange electrical energy sizzled along my veins. The air around us suddenly became thick and heavy. My stomach turned, and not from anything I'd eaten. What was happening to me? The patrolman was hot, but he wasn't Tom Hiddleston or anything. Why did I feel as nervous as a doctoral candidate about to defend his thesis? “Welcome to DownMoor Caverns. I'm Pietra SanDiir from the University of Loamshire. I would be happy to show you...

He looked down at my hand held out in front of him, an expression of cruel disdain crossing his handsome features.

“No thanks,” he said, looking me up and down, his frown deepening. “I don't deal with students.

My face turned red from the heat. I stared at my boots, hoping he didn't notice.

Seems like someone that hot could be a complete asshole.