If August could speak, what would it say?

Gaius kicked a stone, it rolled on the uneven and parched ground coming to rest at the foot of one of the oldest olive trees. The heat was already rising from the plains and up on the hill, the boy could still feel the morning breeze rustling in his hair. He swallowed some remorse at the thought of Grandma Julia searching for him. He had managed to slip away in the early hours, even Tina the slave that slept closest to the door didn’t rise. He needed time alone. The tumbling feeling of injustice that swept through him was still there but it had abated a bit. Like the waves in Ostia just after a tempest, still choppy and lurking ready to sweep you up in Neptune’s wrath. Once feelings invaded him like that, he couldn’t speak. Words dried upon his tongue and his vision got blurry and white, like molten metal before it became swords and lances. He read about men or gods getting angry all the time during his lessons with his preceptor, but no one ever spoke of the feeling of utter frustration and impossibility to do anything or say anything. Maybe he was really too soft like Lucius taunted him. His stepbrother had arrived at their villa in the hills yesterday. When they were younger Marcia and Octavia would be there to separate their quarreling. The four children spent many summers together in the villa when their parents, after both being widowed early, had re-married each other. The children would play war games among the trees. Lucius was a couple of years older than Gaius, he would climb an olive tree and declare the grove his territory. The other three children would scamper off in fits of giggles spare tunics billowing behind them as capes. Then usually Octavia, Gaius’s older sister, would come up with a cunning plan to dethrone Lucius with the help of the youngest. Only when she was safely in the throne of the olive tree with scraped knees and a defiant grin would she declare it her territory and Gaius and Marcia would have to scamper off again in defeat.

The last time they had played Gaius protested it was unfair. The words had come out in a confused splutter, his legs felt like led rooted to the ground. He knew it wasn’t fair but he couldn’t quite put a finger on why. Lucius had laughed at him and they had ended up in fist-blows at the bottom of the tree. It was only a year ago, but it felt like a lifetime. The quick spirited Marcia had run to the villa for help. By the time one of the slaves had separated the two boys, Gaius had collected a black eye and a bloody nose. Later that day Marcia had sat next to him while he reclined in the deserted dining room holding a cool wet rag over his mashed face. She had put her hair up like a lady, her white short tunic was held together with a scrap of red material, her arms and legs were bare, brown and strong from playing in the sun. Gaius had started noticing how her hair curled at the base of her neck, how her long fingers touched things delicately, and how the front of the tunic was now shaped around her small firm breasts. He would steal glances at her when the others were not looking. In the cool shade of the villa, she had laid her hand on his bare knee and squeezed it sympathetically. He had groaned inwardly trying to stop the tingling feeling that had started to overcome him each time he thought of his stepsister.

‘Why did you provoke Lucius? You know the rules of the game, we have been playing for years’ she had whispered. It was the hottest hours and everyone was resting, a timeless silence had overcome the villa, you could only hear the distant buzzing of bees on the pink oleander. Gaius moved the wet rag from his nose to the nasty cut on top of his eyebrow to get a better look at Marcia.

‘I…I don’t know. I suddenly felt cheated’ Gaius faltered trying to remember how he felt and struggling for words.

‘Here, let me rinse that’ Marcia leaned over him to retrieve the bloody cloth and dip it in a wooden pail of water close to the triclinium. As she leaned over him her earthy smell and the flowery scent of her hair invaded him. Even with one of his eyes puffed and closed he could see the line of paler skin just below the neckline of her tunic. As she wrung out the rag, he self-consciously moved a cushion between them and tried to collect his thoughts.

‘Here, keep it over the eye too’

‘I don’t know what came over me but it felt wrong. The game… I mean we always end up helping Octavia or Lucius getting to the tree, and then they ban us. It’s like me being banned out here in the winter’

‘Gaius, you know that our father decides what is best for us’

‘But Lucius is only a few years older and at my age, he was already in Rome studying. Our parents prefer taking Octavia on travels, and I mean she is a girl!

Marcia gave Gaius a hard stare, her eyes always made him think of rough lumps of obsidian caught in the sun.

‘I didn’t mean it like that, and I am happy for you that you are going to Rome.’

Marcia set her chin coquettishly ‘I am supposed to find a good husband, I heard grandma say I have great potential since I started schooling early with my brother but that I shouldn’t show off too much, nobody wants a know-all’

Gaius felt his insides melt at the idea of Marcia being married off to someone. He chased the disturbing image from his head and tried to focus through the pounding headache that was seizing him.

‘I mean if we help them up there, don’t you think they could give us a hand?

‘Up where?’

‘The tree!’

‘Oh you are still talking about that silly game, well that’s how politics work my dear brother. It’s all about who you have power over and how you use it.’

With that, she jumped to her feet, a malicious smile playing on her lips. ‘I’m going to the baths, maybe you could join me when you are feeling less like a baby complaining about a child’s game, brother.’

Marcia held his gaze, her dark eyes hard as rocks as she slowly undid the knot of the red sash circling her waist. The image of her brown tout body emerging as the white tunic slipped off her shoulders had haunted Gaius’s dreams for the past year. With a trill of laughter, she had sprung off in the still heat in direction of the family baths leaving him heaving and sweating on the triclinium.

He was now reaching his twelfth year and had reflected upon how this summer would be different. He would not be a smaller brother anymore. Marcia would see him as the man he was becoming.

It was indeed different this summer. But not in the way Gaius had hoped. Lucius had come with stories of military campaigns he would follow in the autumn and tidings of Marcia’s wedding. While Gaius was still stuck in the summer villa. Like the forgotten doll of grown-up children. Lucius had even laughed over their scuffle the previous year, he held himself like a man now and insisted on paying his respects to the family gods, something he had always said was boring.

When quizzed on the wedding, Lucius only replied that it was an advantageous match for the family and that he would be attending it in Rome. Gaius had felt tears prickle his eyes, his throat went dry and he heard himself stutter something and turn away.

If he could have spoken calmly and composedly he would have asked his stepbrother to take him to Rome too. He would have protested at the injustice of being cooped up in their childhood home while Octavia went on travels with their parents. He would have told Marcia how he felt about her delicate hands and dark glassy eyes. Instead, feelings rushed through him like the god of wind in his carriage. White molten iron immobilized his insides and molded his body with the ground. All this bottled up power and anger he felt had to burst out at some point. It just had to, or it would consume him. The day it burst he would make sure everyone knew about it. It would cover everything, like the gold in the Re Midas tale, this white boiling power he held inside would cover the whole of the Roman Empire. That’s what the future emperor Augustus thought as he kicked stones in the olive grove, tears streaming down his young face.

Disclaimer: The prompts for ‘A story a month’ are from Neil Gaiman’s project A Calendar of Tales (in collaboration with BlackBerry), but the content is totally mine 🙂 .