She was gone.
Anya still wouldn’t cry. She trembled, she slumped to the floor, back against bookshelves, but she wouldn’t cry. She’d had enough. She didn’t want to fake it any more, day after day, totally alone, until the day she’d be discovered.
Just take it.
The thought flashed into her mind. It wasn’t the first time. Her life would be easier, she could join everyone else, there would be no more pretending. Days would slip easily into one another, her mind empty of everything except Arthur. The world would become grey and empty without him.
No.
No. She would never do it. Rachel wouldn’t have done either: she had been tricked. She would never have taken it if she had the choice.
Anya would not be going home. No more pretending. She realised what she had to do.
•
She could see them there; through the dirty brown glass of their living room window. Rachel and the faceless spouse. Two fuzzy, indistinct shapes, ghosts of the people who had once written letters and joined book groups, gone to demonstrations and fancy dress parties, had affairs and intimate discussions with long-held friends.
Was she in there? Was that her? Doubt clouded Anya’s mind, holding her motionless. It wasn’t the illegality of breaking in—for all that she was beyond caring. It was the thought that it might not work. It simply might not work.
And so what if it didn’t? Anya watched the blurry figures on what looked like a sofa. Did it matter? Rachel was one person. Anya knew her plan. It had always been there, hidden away, waiting for her to discover it.
She would find others. Others were necessary. If it were simply her and Rachel then things would be no better. They would be alone in their very own cocoon, separated from the world; just like the other nine billion. With or without Loyalty, what difference would there really be? Her and Arthur; her and Rachel. It would be the same eventually. She needed others. Then they could truly start again—rebuild their messy, tangled networks—overlapping and intertwining in a hundred thousand different ways. An open future.
Anya closed her eyes.
It was a warm night. Anya’s hands were aged and withered, her back stiff and legs creaky. She knew her face was tangled in wrinkles. Naked bodies danced in and around one another, flashes of white and pink and brown and orange; breasts and chests and birthmarks consumed in one another. People. The heavy build of their erotic dance was broken now and again by laughter. One had broken away and was pounding on a drum, beating, beating, beating. They moved in and around one another, each lover temporary; respected and cared for by the mass. The evening air was crisp, the ground moaned with bare feet pounding green and brown. There was a grunt as a leg made its way beneath her back, a thigh gently against her face, red hair near her eye. She shuddered and rolled ecstatic, legs and arms and bellies and shoulders, beating, beating, beating against one another. So many people. Another grunt, lighter, a prayer to a god of shattered unions. A hand rested on her shoulder.
She opened her eyes and it was gone. Anya was young. She reached into her bag and clutched at the bottle of eye drops in her hand. This was the start. She quietly made her way to the back of Rachel’s house.
•
The bus headed toward the depot—its driver couldn’t wait to return home to his wife. Perhaps they would watch a film together, or just cuddle on the sofa. He turned off the ignition, locked the driver’s cubicle and stepped down from the vehicle. On its side was the new advert, one with a retro theme:
Loyalty. You’re the One that I want.
He was shocked to see that someone had defaced it, smearing words beneath in crimson red:
But perhaps I’ll take some others too
For a moment he laughed. Then he remembered himself and shook his head at the senseless act of vandalism. It was disgusting. He would have to tell his wife.
•
Her
Infinite Variety
Sacchi Green
The basket in the corner quivers, each coil of braided reeds whispering and hissing against the next. I know those trapped within, how swift their death-strike, how scarcely more swift my own; three times I have saved my Queen from serpents. And how will I bear, this time, to stay my claws and fangs as she commands?
I am Mnemnet, Queen’s Witness, and Queen’s comfort as well since her dreams of empire have splintered like ship’s timbers under the ramming prow of Rome. To Witness I am bound; comfort is mine to give, or to withhold. Love I give by choice.
She gazes out over the harbor, and none dare approach. Does she brood on the Caesar that was, the Caesar that might have been, the Caesar-to-be who stays his assault lest she ignite her treasury’s encircling pyre? Does she see past the stain of her lover’s self-spilled blood on the marble sill, to the days of passion and glory? Her women glance sidelong, hoping she will call me to give her final moments ease, to take her so deeply into memory that the present fades to nothing.
They cannot know how truly far her thoughts have flown, nor how her blood quickens with longing. No Roman’s voice, no man’s, calls to her now.
With a gesture she summons me. The women fall back at my approach, at my unblinking stare, at amber eyes through which lion-headed Sekhmet sometimes gazes. Great Isis commands my lady’s first devotion, as befits a ruler, but the warrior goddess too is ever watchful of her fierce spirit. Even with no goddess present I command respect, for I am none of Bastet’s brood, no mewling household pet. The cheetah is a hunter bred of sun and wind, and they are wise not to come within my reach as they withdraw.
Still she muses, silhouetted against the evening sky. Below us the city murmurs in all the tongues of the known world. Camels, freed of the caravan’s rich burdens, groan in guttural relief; boatmen call across water iridescent with sunset. Geese and herons etch dark glyphs against prawn-pink clouds as they fly toward refuge in the marshes. For a moment thoughts of fat geese and sweet prawns distract me, though I do not truly hunger for such palace fare; my dreams are of gazelles and endless plains and the blazing joy of the chase.
But I am bound to her, and to the cities of men; and Alexandria is the greatest of cities. I absorb each detail as it passes through her senses, holding them all against a time when even this shall live only in memory—if memory endure. Immortality is an unknown land.
I will be her guide, she trusts, though I do not yet know how. She has dreamed of a buried tomb where a boy-king lies beneath a great mask of gold, and seen amidst the heaped treasures the figure of a cheetah bearing his master’s spirit into eternity. It was for this that she chose me from my mother’s litter. For this the Goddess opened my mind to hers and bade me carry her memories; for this I am bound to her.
“Mnemnet…” she murmurs. I sit erect beside her. Then, with a glance to be sure none can see, I bow my head to nudge against her hand.
She strokes between my ears, down my arched neck, making my skin ripple in delight. Almost I am wholly cat, wholly sensual. There have been times when the flow of fur beneath her hand, the rumble of contentment in my breast, has been enough to ease her. But not this time.
“Take me to her, Mnemnet,” she murmurs. Her dark gaze turns full upon me. Her fingers trace the lapis beads of my collar and come to rest on its golden amulet. In her eyes I see my own eyes mirrored, two crescent moons, swelling until a tide of light engulfs us; and we are there, six years past, in the summer palace at Antioch while her Roman general pursues his Parthian campaign.
•
The Amazon burst upon us in a swirl of smoke and serpents, all illusion. What I saw as smoke resolved into a shadow-wraith pacing at her feet, while the serpents were merely tethers whipping about her body as she spun and dodged. No pursuing guard dared be first to grasp a line, lest she charge him; and soon she had gathered the ropes into her own hands, wielding them like whips.
“Guards! Stand away!” My Queen’s voice pierced the chaos. The men flinched; the barbarian swung toward us. I crouched, prepared to spring, confident
against even such a she-lion as this—and with that thought the haze encircling her long, well-muscled legs resolved into the wraith of a lioness indeed, more sinuous of form than any I had known.
All other eyes looked only on the wild, fierce countenance of the warrior. None but mine could see the lion-shade; even her companion seemed unaware. The wraith, once recognized, flowed toward me with a snarl of challenge, but fear was her only weapon, her silent threats impotent against me. She drew back as the fury faded from her mistress’ face, leaving an impassivity just touched with arrogance.
“Withdraw!” the Queen ordered the guards. “I forbade the use of chains; how should ropes escape my notice?”
“Majesty…” their captain began, then subsided beneath her obsidian stare. His life would be forfeit as soon through disobedience as by failure to defend.
“Post guards at every portal and archers in the gardens, but leave us without any man’s intrusion. Mnemnet and my women are defense enough.”
The men’s glances showed more faith in me than in the women’s ceremonial daggers, but they obeyed.
My Queen arose. Even from the dais, though she is of noble stature, her eyes were scarcely level with the prisoner’s. The hand on my collar tensed, but her tone held only imperious disdain.
“So this,” she said, “is that Amazon queen, legend made flesh, who has set all Antioch aclamor!”
The barbarian’s gaze moved boldly over my Lady’s regal form. “So this,” she retorted in passable, if archaic, Greek, “is that Egyptian queen, seduction in the flesh, who blunts Rome’s spears between her thighs!”
My Queen’s anger surged, but my deliberate yawn diverted her. This was mere bravado, not true challenge. Stately indifference was response enough.
“It seems I was mistaken,” she said, settling again into her royal seat. “I had thought to converse with one who shares some knowledge of a woman’s power in a world of men. A commander left undefended as her forces flee casts doubt upon her generalship, yet there might have been something of interest to be learned.”
A flush rose beneath the Amazon’s bronze skin. Eyes narrowed in anger glittered like green stones. Her chin lifted. She drew in a deep breath, seeming even larger than before—and then she laughed. Tawny hair moved serpent-like across her shoulders as she shook her head. “Well-thrust, Lady!” A scar at the corner of her mouth gave her smile a rueful twist. “Though if we are to speak of generalship, consider this; my people are few, and luring the Romans into pursuing me ensured that all but one remained free.”
“Consider also,” said my Queen, “that my people are many, and remain free only so long as I persuade Rome to an alliance short of conquest.”
“A fair point.” The other inclined her head. “But if we are to discourse on these matters, more might be learned were you to offer me the courtesy due a guest, rather than a filthy prisoner.”
The Queen’s women murmured, but she stilled them with a look. “There is much in what you say. Come, sit by me.” She gestured toward a low bench near the throne. “My servants will prepare both bath and meal, and we shall meet as colleagues while we may. Freedom, though, I could not give you if I would. Were you Antony’s prisoner…but Amyntas of Galatia claimed you first. That web of alliance is too fragile to be strained.”
“I understand, Lady, as you must understand that I will grasp at any chance of freedom.” She sank onto the bench and disposed her long legs as best she might. “I have met your Antony. He is said to have a weakness for a forceful woman, as none would know better than Egypt’s queen.”
The women shrank back as though in fear of flying sparks, but my Lady retained her poise. The only sparks I sensed shimmered in an invisible current between the two monarchs, like the tension that binds predator to prey, except that here both were predator.
“He has a taste for the dangerously exotic,” my Lady agreed, her smile revealing sharp white teeth. “In his letters he speaks with interest of reports of your sorcery, but not so much interest as to put it to the test himself.”
“Such a reputation has served me well.” The Amazon sat tensely erect, though her tone was level. “Any man who approaches me has suffered, I have heard, even beyond what marks I may leave on him. But what is it they say, in these reports?”
“They tell of a demon in lioness-form,” my Lady said, watching with interest her guest’s reaction. “A ravening beast who claws her way into their dreams, devouring sanity, until they tear at their own eyes trying to pluck her out. I had thought it merely an excuse for those who would not admit to fear of a woman.”
The warrior rose abruptly and paced back and forth before the dais. The shadow-beast paced with her, looking upward, pleading to be seen. “Do they truly see her? Can she be with me still?” She paused, her shadow falling across me. “What do you watch, swift one? Do you track my steps, or something half a pace behind?” She sank to her knees, looking into my eyes, and deep within I felt the divine fire begin to glow.
“Lady,” the Amazon said huskily, all bravado gone, “I will bow to you in any way you choose if your Seer can show me what my heart has lost.”
“Even to revealing the way to your hidden domain?”
The tawny head lifted. Green eyes stared into black. “You know I cannot pay that price.”
“Then I do not ask it. Mnemnet shall show us both whatever is to be seen.” Her hand brushed my ear and moved gently down my collar to the amulet. “Lay your hand here, by mine, if she permits.”
A shiver swept my skin as I, who had endured no other hand since birth, fought to tolerate a foreign touch. Then all else was forgotten as the lioness thrust her head onto her bond-companion’s shoulder, and the woman’s lion-tawny hair swept forward like a curtain, and words poured forth in an unknown tongue that yet was clear as Greek to we who shared the vision.
“Lakri! You fought like ten warriors, though I ordered you to flee! And still they came, and slew you, and bore you away on their spears.” Her hand slipped from the amulet, yet it was clear that she retained the vision, and felt as flesh that which was only shadow. “They would not let me die. I had no comfort but that you were spared the net, and the jeers, and my captivity.”
My Queen loosed her grasp. We turned away, that they might have solitude, but still the rumbling in the spirit-creature’s breast vibrated through me like a tremor in the earth.
Servants entering with food and wine and the water for bathing were soon dismissed, and the Queen’s women also. “Surely, Lady, you will not wait upon the barbarian with your own hand,” the foremost objected, to no avail.
“That is none of your affair. Stand with the guards,” her mistress ordered, “within call but not sight, and do not gossip of what you have seen here, or not seen. Mnemnet will know if any disobey!”
I bared my fangs at them, and felt my eyes glow; they believe that I can read their thoughts. At times, indeed, I can. Then they were gone.
At last the warrior stood. “Your pardon, Lady.” She inclined her head. “Blood of the Greeks, consort of Romans; I doubted your right to rule Egypt. But if this dappled huntress and her deity bless you, so too must the land.”
“I am Egypt!” For the first time anger flared unrestrained in my Lady’s eyes. “The River Nile flowed into me with my nurse’s milk! Egypt’s gods I have ever honored; from Egypt’s soil the bones of my ancestors to eight generations have been formed. The blood of great Alexander is in me, but so too is all the ancient mystery of my land!” Her head was held so regally that she seemed to grow in stature, the more so when the taller woman dropped to one knee in ritual salute.
“I no longer doubt, great Queen,” she said gravely. Then, formality discarded, she rose and surveyed my mistress with frank appraisal. A hint of amusement crinkled the corners of her eyes. “Were you not bound to Egypt I could have made an Amazon of you!”
My mistress’ hauteur wavered. Her eyes shone wide for a moment, and then she shook her head. “You are twenty years too late. In
my youth I devoured such legends, and dreamed such dreams, but now destiny has led me on to other dreams that seemed no less fantastic then.”
“Destiny, and your own strength.” The Amazon turned toward the table set with food and wine. “Your pardon, Lady, but my strength fails with such a repast near at hand. Prisoners do not fare so luxuriously.”
“You have distracted me from hospitality!” My mistress moved to pour out wine into silver goblets. “Dine as you will, though you might wish to bathe while the water is yet hot.”
The warrior eyed the rising steam. “Perhaps not quite yet. I am more accustomed to cold mountain streams.” I heard no condescension in her tone, rather something of embarrassment, but my mistress took it otherwise. While the Amazon ate, struggling to keep a civil rein on hunger, my Queen said little, taking wine and a few honeyed nutmeats for herself. When her guest had followed her lead in use of finger bowl and linens, she turned toward the bath with an almost child-like toss of her head.
“So you judge that luxurious living leads to softness?”
The other looked at her in surprise, then at me, a smile twitching the scarred corner of her mouth. She offered a morsel of herbed duck, and I accepted it with dignity.
“So, Mnemnet, has soft living weakened you? Your body seems lithe and strong, your spirit fierce. And your mistress, I know, has commanded fleets and armies, though her soft hands bear no callus from spear and shield.”
She approached the huge silver basin and pulled off the remnants of her tunic. “I do not fear luxury, but only my own ignorance. We have ways, in my hidden land, of observing the outer world, but I see that there are gaps in our knowledge. How does one manage this business?”
My Lady regarded the warrior’s strong, scarred body with a hint of envy, and something stronger, but instructed her guest graciously. “Step within, and I will pour the water over you. Then, if you wish,” and she looked doubtfully at the other’s long legs, “you may sit in the bath as I sprinkle soothing herbs. There are sweet oils on this table, if you choose, and luffas and pumice to smooth away rough skin. My maidservants are skilled…” She paused, clearly wondering how much hospitality she wished to personally extend, dignity at war with the urge to touch. I wondered idly why humans did not simply groom each other with their tongues.
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