Granite

“The world is simple. If we wanna get rich, we have to start digging.” Harlan wiped his nose with his sleeve, the navy waffle knit now smeared with dirt and snot. “Haven’t you seen Holes?”

The forest floor, damp and spongy from last night’s rain, left fading imprints where they stepped. His sister tried to match his stride, leaping from footprint to footprint. The soil had barely begun to rise before it was trampled again by the latter half of the vagrant procession.

“Spanish doubloons, and a whole giant chest of rubies. Riches upon riches, I tell you!” Harlan said. He stopped to examine a branch which he deemed fit for a walking stick, attracted mainly by how big it was. His friend had brought claims to recess that week of a stick that could touch the ceiling, and Harlan figured this one was about twice the size.

“You know that all the ships from the Spaniards got stranded in the rivers here.” Malia said, nudging her older brother. “My teacher said so. She said that there were big old rivers, and all the boats use to get holes in them. Then they would dig holes to hide the riches, and come back to get them. Except sometimes they died and never came to dig it up.”

Harlan immediately threw down the branch and began combing the bases of the balsam firs for the perfect wooden lambda, a surefire way to find a body of water. It didn’t take long for the plucky fortune seekers to find a dowsing rod, covered in moss.

“Look at that anthill,” Malia said, her nose crinkling in disgust. Upon the retrieval of the stick, a rust colored mound was exposed to the air, sending miniature laborers streaming out into the mulch. Their black abdomens gleamed in the light, wild rice scattered amongst the tree roots.

“Fire ants!” Harlan said. He shook the stick, showering the area with amber crowned crawlers. The two stumbled backward from the mound, laughter and shrieks blending together in a cacophony that woke up the nocturnals of the forest. Holding up his liberated branch, the pair picked themselves up and marched on, ripped knees of blue jeans stained dark and earthy with mud.

“Well, the river must be this way, cause I can feel the force of the water pulling the stick up this hill,” Harlan said. He’d been holding the stick out in front of him for a quarter mile, much to the protest of his sister whose turn only lasted about two minutes. “You weren’t doing it right, but look. Now that I got the stick back, it’s working!”

“Stop messing around, I can see you moving it!” Malia said. She had long since grown tired of zigzagging through the trees, mindlessly following the broken compass that was Harlan with the rod. Three steps left, five to the right. The tip of the branch seemed to be attached to a string, pulling him along in whichever route it pleased. A route of course, with no river in sight.

“Okay, I’m serious. I’m not following you and that dumb stick any more.” Malia stopped in her tracks, and before Harlan could say a word, split off to the left. No amount of shouting from her brother could turn the heroine around, and no amount of distance between them could get the deserted Magellan to follow. The adventurers split, the wishbone snapped, and the bickering ceased. Finally, the forest had a breath of stillness.

The rain was gone, but thunder echoed through the forest. Steady, rhythmic. Two cracks, and a crunch. Drawn by the sounds, Harlan followed his ears towards the source. Unwilling to admit the failure of the dowsing rod, despite being much less obliged to follow the fictional tugs without his sister watching, he held his arms out towards the sound and began to walk.

Past a fallen log and a rotting beaver carcass, the sounds grew to their peak. The silence between the bangs began to fill with running water. Just over the peak of a small knoll, a river ran through a valley. There sat Malia on her haunches, with a pile of glittering stones by her side. A slab of hard stone served as a prehistoric workstation, and Harlan watched in awe as she took a small rock from the river, placed it on the slab, and brought down a boulder with all her might. The crack rang through the woods, racing downstream. She raised the boulder back up, her small arms straining against the weight, and again. Then once more. The third strike crushed the rock into rubble, sparkling flakes strewn about the bank.

Frozen in place, the gargoyle on the hilltop reckoned with his position. To celebrate meant to concede defeat to the fairer pathfinder, and Harlan hated to lose. In fact, the only thing he hated more than losing was losing to his sister. The thought of the riches, though, was intoxicating. He wondered what his sister would buy first. She would surely buy a big cake, and a heavy coat since her old one was full of moth holes. Would she share, if he didn’t help? These new developments made his heart pound, and he knew what he had to do. Without hesitation, he snapped the once beloved rod in half.

Harlan darted down to the riverbank. “We’re rich! We’re rich!” he cried, his voice hoarse with screams. Embracing his sister, the two joined hands in dance, possessed by the thrill of their newfound treasure. Until the sun had nearly set, the laborers crushed granite, and on the third whack of the boulder, scrambled to pick up every piece of the sparkling shards. Hands full of nothing, placed in their ever growing pile.