by Brian Hodge
Too far from the city to be part of the city. Too far from the Nile for tilling or growing. Too deeply buried for anything but a secret, and the secrets of the ancients were that much more difficult to unravel, buried as they were in sand and years.
Cyrus believed he’d find the answer. He believed the words would speak to him, and the belief was an odd one. It was more a remembering, an act of reacquainting himself with facts long known, but buried deep in his subconscious. Deeper than he was comfortable delving. Deeper than he knew how to reach, but still there.
The wind grew stronger. Sand swirled around his ankles, tore into his arms, and his legs, stung his neck and slipped in through every opening in his clothing. He walked steadily on, ignoring the whirling cloud of desert that rose to escort him. A minute? Ten? He turned for just an instant, but the camp — the tents and the scrolls, professors and students — might as well not have existed. It didn’t matter. The whirling sand formed hieroglyphs, spinning madly — out of control. Indecipherable. Lost.
Cyrus tripped, stumbling forward with his arms stretched out before him. He couldn’t see where he was going or what he was falling toward. He closed his eyes and braced himself, almost prepared when his hands brushed the ground. Almost, but not quite. His forehead struck hard and bright pinpoints of light scattered the sand into diamond-flashes of pain.
He lay still for a moment, sand whirling around and over him, into his mouth and against the lids of his eyes. He knew he had to get up, but his head was pounding, and he couldn’t order his thoughts. He kept his eyes closed tightly, pressed his palms to the sand, and gathered his strength.
Before he could push upright, something gripped his hair so tightly he felt the roots screaming for release from his scalp. Cyrus cried out, but this allowed the sand to whip between his lips and he bit it off. He was dragged to his knees and held, though he raised his hands over his head and tried desperately to rip that hellish grip away and free himself.
The wind died down perceptibly. Cyrus felt a pounding in his forehead, and knew there was a nasty knot there from his fall. He tried again to tear free, only managing to send a second wave of searing pain through his scalp. The roar of wind and sand was shifting. It didn’t grow any quieter, but shifted in tone — in rhythm. Cyrus felt sweat dripping down his cheeks and reached to brush it away. The sand had stopped whipping against his face, but he did not open his eyes.
Then something struck him, hard, on the side of the head. The bright spots of pain returned, spreading down from his forehead toward his ear. He heard a voice, guttural and incomprehensible, grating near his ear.
Cyrus shook himself violently, trying to rise, but a second rocking blow to the head brought him up short. The voice grew louder and more commanding, and Cyrus forced himself to listen. If he didn’t figure this one out quickly, he had the feeling his days of figuring things out would come to an abrupt halt.
The voice sounded again, and Cyrus caught a single word (Latin for eyes). He opened his eyes quickly, and a flash of his dream passed through his mind.
“Open your eyes, scribe.”
The roar suddenly took a shape in his mind’s eye, and Cyrus forced himself to look up. It could not be there, but it was, the pyre, flames leaping to the sky with fingers that groped and tongues of destruction that leaped and danced. He could make out the shapes beneath the flames, through the billowing smoke and the shimmering heat. Even the sweat dripping into his eyes and forcing him to bite back tears that would blur things more completely couldn’t fully disguise the scrolls. Thousands of scrolls, and not like those so carefully pinned beneath the protective covers in the tents behind him, but full scrolls, rolled and yanked from the ornate canisters that had housed them. Soot and ash rose from the fire and shot to the sky, and each one seemed to form a letter, or a word, darting away forever.
Thoughts crowded in on him. Cyrus recognized the thoughts, and yet, he didn’t. He tried to twist his head, to get a glimpse of the man gripping his hair, but this won him a hard shake that nearly made him pass out, and he gave it up. The fire blazed.
More voices sounded to his right, loud and insistent, and there was a flurry of motion and sound. Cyrus couldn’t see what it was, but he sensed that it was important. Those around him scuttled in all directions. Only his captor stood firm and silent.
A face haunted him. A woman’s face, foreign and unfamiliar, yet not. As close to his heart as the image of his mother, or the first girl he’d ever loved. Perhaps closer. The woman frowned at him, disapproving. Tears rolled from his eyes to trickle down his cheeks, and Cyrus cursed silently because he knew they’d see the weeping as weakness. They would believe it was because of the hand in his hair and the sand grinding into his knees. In his mind, the woman wept with him.
“Release him.”
The words snapped from Cyrus’ right side. For a long moment, the grip in his hair tightened, as if willing the words away. With a quick snap downward that forced Cyrus’ eyes to the ground, the hand was gone, and though he knelt in the sand, tears running down his cheeks and his head pounding from the falls and the cuffs of those he could not see, he was free. He did not move.
Footsteps drew near — slow, odd steps. Uneven and not too heavy. Cyrus could just make out the sound over the crackling of the flames. He wanted to scream, but no sound would come. Nothing. His chest had constricted so tightly with pain, frustration, and sorrow that he could scarcely believe it was possible to breathe. The emotions were off-kilter, some his own, some those of another Cyrus, buried and dim. The pain he understood. The sorrow he felt more deeply, and the frustration, but he could not assign them a place in his mind. He did not understand the fire — not exactly. He knew that it hurt to watch it, and that he should stop it, should fling himself on it and burn with the words, leaving the nightmares behind.
“They burn well.”
The voice was the same that had demanded his release. The words came so suddenly that Cyrus nearly missed them in the sound and well of emotion.
“It is almost as if,” the voice continued — in Latin, Cyrus understood that much by now — “the demons trapped in those scrolls were screaming for release.”
“Demons?” Cyrus’ voice cracked. His dry throat proved unfit for the task of translating his thoughts, and beside the smooth, articulate voice of whoever stood beside him, he knew he sounded crude. His face burned with indignation, and anger.
“Oh yes,” the voice continued.
Cyrus stole a quick glance to the side. He caught sight of one sandaled foot and the hem of a robe — toga? It was ornate, decorated in gold. Elegant. “The demons are banished with the words, scribe. They flee before us, as your armies fled — as your queen would have fled, given the chance. They flee us because they are evil, warping the minds of good Roman citizens and reaching out to ensnare even our leader; they flee because we are strong.”
Words floated up from somewhere deep within Cyrus’ mind. Not his own, he knew, not his own because the words weren’t in his own tongue. He did not reply in Latin, but in Greek, fluid, easy speech that belied the difficulty of the translation. Greek because it was what the man beside him hated, symbolizing things beyond his grasp.
“The words aren’t evil,” he spat. “Their destruction — that is evil. The burning of history, one page at a time, one scroll after the other. You can’t kill the past by destroying its records; you only deny yourself the chance to experience it.”
The guard drew back his arm and smashed a fist hard into the side of Cyrus’ head. He nearly bit his tongue as the pain shot through his temple, exploding in a thousand sparks that flew up to join the flames in his vision. He heard voices from far away, but he could no longer quite make out what they were saying. He would have fallen, but again, the rough hand of the guard gripped his hair, and sagging, Cyrus leaned forward, letting his full weight hang from that grip.
He felt a shift, and knew the guard was drawing back to strike again, but the blow never fell.
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sp; “Take him away.” The words filtered through it all, and Cyrus staggered to his feet as the guard turned without a word and started walking, never loosening his grip.
“Keep him alive. He has seen, and he will remember. When we return to Alexandria, he will write of our conquest. He will preserve our deeds — or die.”
Cyrus shook his head, regretted it as the tear on his hair screamed through his brain with stabbing lances of pain.
“No,” he whispered. He couldn’t tell what language, but he knew what he was thinking — what they were thinking — what must be said and done and not done. “No,” he repeated.
And then there was darkness. Blessed, complete darkness. He dreamed of letters that streamed from spiraling smoke into a papyrus sky. He dreamed of her face — a woman he didn’t know — a queen he loved. He dreamed of asps and through it all, a voice whispered to his mind of Rome and conquest, war and always in Latin. He knew the voice now, knew it could be none other, and he tried to silence the words, but there was a power in them he could not deny. A destiny. Octavian was mad, but he was Imperator. He was conqueror. He would take the queen to his homeland in chains and parade her like an animal if he could, but this did not frighten Cyrus. He dreamed of asps, and his joined mind, then and now, gone and back again, knew the simple truth.
Cleopatra would die.
Cyrus would not.
The great library was a ruin. Ashes blended with sand on the hot wind, no more a record of history than the sand itself. Lost. The second library, the hidden place that was to have preserved so much, was a ruin as well. An urn for the cremation of history. They had found it, and they had found him — and he had not died. The life he should have taken had been taken from him, instead, and the words he’d learned — the words he’d sworn to protect — had been taken as well, replaced by lies, and deceit, histories that were not and never had been, and yet endured. Endured because he, Cyrus, had carefully recorded them as he was told, a dog on a leash with quill in hand. The final betrayal.
Though he slept, he wept. The silence dragged him in and down, and the world swirled away into accusing silence. Her eyes glared from the depths of shadow, accusing and dark.
Cyrus woke to hands shaking him by his shoulder. He jerked back, smacking his head solidly into whoever was behind him. There was a cry and the sound of stumbling footsteps.
“Christ, what the hell is wrong with you?” He knew the voice, but it took him a moment to place it, to clear the Greek and the Latin from his mind and focus. Professor Rosenman.
Cyrus spun, nearly falling from his seat as his stiff arms and legs ignored the commands he sent them, stiff from being too long in one position. His head pounded.
“Where are they?” he asked, catching himself on the edge of the table.
“Where did they go? The fire … I—”
“Take it easy, Cyrus,” Rosenman snapped. “Jesus, you fell asleep on the god damned table. Who are you talking about? And what is all … that?”
Cyrus started to ask more questions, bit off the words, and spun back to the table. He was seated in the work tent — somehow, impossibly — and the table was covered with scribbled notes. Page after page of notes littered every inch of the work surface. The cover was open, and his pen lay dangerously close to the scroll — too close — close enough to damage, or stain — for ink to blot. He grabbed the offending pen and gripped it tightly, grabbing a page off the desk at the same time and staring at it — reading what had been written. What he had written. He mouthed the words, hearing that voice in his head that was so close to his own.
His mind spun again, the tent — the carnival — so many years before, and so few in the scope of the moment.
“Words.” the old woman breathed softly. “Words were your life. Words and life. Bound. You brought life to the words — words to the life and they took it. All gone. Took it away and burned it.”
He let his hand fall to the table and he stared at the wall across from him. He was shaking. His heartbeat was out of control, and his breath was short and harsh. Behind him, he felt Rosenman’s eyes boring into the back of his head.
“You’d better have a damned good reason for this,” the older man said at last. “You’ve broken every rule we have, worked too long, too late, let alone that you took the cover off the scroll.”
Cyrus turned, and he spoke, his voice seeming to drift in from the distance. “I’m finished,” he said softly. “It is done.”
“What is done?” Rosenman growled, stepping suddenly forward and grabbing at one of the sheets in irritation. “What in the hell do you think you’ve done?”
Rosenman started to read, but Cyrus was already standing, staggering toward the door. He knew what he’d done. He knew what was written on those sheets, because he’d written the words, once and again — one language, one world, to the next. His words. He’d betrayed his queen, and he’d warped the passage of time into a romanticized version of Roman glory — but he’d written the truth, as well. Without a backward glance, Cyrus staggered into the bright sunlight of morning.
Rosenman read, eyes growing wide, and then sat down before his knees could give way.
“They stole the words and set them free. The queen was strong, and she escaped through the portals of time, but I am left behind to record. The words were my responsibility, and I betrayed her trust. I did not join her, I cowered, and I served those who burned time. In the hours between midnight and the dawn, I have set myself the task of atonement.
I leave these words with a prayer to the Goddess Isis that they will be found, and that they will be understood. In time, perhaps, time can right itself. This is my story.”
Rosenman set the paper aside carefully and leaned hurriedly to the beginning of the scroll. He worked slowly, meticulously, and somehow — symbols that had seemed obscure became clearer. Things he had not seen, or had ignored, became truth. Hands trembling, he began to gather the papers, not bothering to cover the scroll, or to reach for the gloves he knew he should wear. Not daring to read further.
He felt the sudden weight of eyes on his shoulder, standing the hairs on his neck on end. The image of a woman’s face flashed through his mind, and then was gone. Gathering the papers, he hurried after Cyrus.
Behind them, left alone, the scroll flapped gently in the breeze, as if waving in approval.
The Call of Distant Shores
The barber shop in Cedar Falls was more than just a gathering spot for tired old men with nothing better to do than to trim the few remaining wisps of gray from their temples and pass on the latest fish stories. Brown’s small shop sported two chairs, three barbers, off and on, and the memorabilia of dozens of lives. Terry Brown was the sixth generation of Browns to run the small shop. His father had come back from the war, honored and decorated, just in time to take the reins from Jeremiah Brown, who’d cut hair in Cedar Falls for nearly forty years. There were sighs of relief when that torch was passed. More than a few heads of hair had borne the mark of a slight palsy and un-attended cataracts, but it hadn’t been enough to keep them away.
Jeremy stood on the steps, taking in the changes time and weather had etched across the face of the old building. He hadn’t stepped foot in Cedar Falls in nearly ten years, but he remembered the last time he’d mounted the steps to Brown’s Barber shop with a clarity that ran like cold rain down his spine. Small details surfaced with more clarity than those he could have brought to mind from the breakfast barely cool in his stomach. The aroma of his father’s cigarette-scented flannel shirt, the rustle of leaves, rolling and scurrying down the sidewalks as he’d stepped up onto the curb. Cars had been larger and Jeremy smaller. The scents of gas and oil had carried on the wind, blending with wood-smoke and the acrid scent of burning leaves.
There had been chairs outside the shop in those days, metal chairs that bounced if you hit them just right and leaned back nearly to the sidewalk behind if you had the proper size and age. They were usually full, pulled close in beside the sand-fi
lled ashtray and flanked by a Thermos cooler.
Now anti-smoking laws and open-container fines had ended all that, and what remained of the chairs themselves were deep scrapes in the wooden planks of the Main Street boardwalk. Jeremy hesitated outside the door. The exterior changes had done nothing to still the presence of the place. He closed his eyes, and years melted away in an instant.
There were animals of all sorts lining the walls, mounted heads, or fish so large they seemed surreal and improbable to a young boy whose fishing experience extended to bluegill and catfish. There were the heads of deer, a bear, a wild pig, and in the corner, Jeremy’s favorite, a stuffed mongoose poised in eternal battle with a coiled, moth-eaten snake. There were tools of unknown use and origin, black and white photos so yellowed and dusty you had to stand with your nose pressed to the glass of their frames to make out the images. Squat figures in black pants, black shoes and white shirts, standing in front of buildings that only peripherally resembled the city streets Jeremy had walked as a child.
And the wooden figurehead. Jeremy stood, leaning against the frame of the doorway, and shook as the memory of that worm-eaten chunk of wood invaded and took over. Dark wood, so dark it seemed soaked with sea-water, damp and rotting, the thing had glittered with coat after coat of varnish. Jeremy’s father told him it was to fight off the rot, but Jeremy had never believed it. The varnish – so thick it clogged the lines of the original sculpture – had seemed more a prison, holding that rot in so it couldn’t escape and infect those standing too near.
It was a woman, or had been, at some point in history. Carved from a single log, long angular features, huge, mournful eyes that stretched down and down to high cheekbones and a slender, pointed nose – almost Roman, he’d heard others say. You could tell the woman the piece had been modeled after had been beautiful. Even the ravages of the ocean, the weather, and the years hadn’t been able to mask it. There was an eerie sense of something hovering just beneath the surface of the wood, staring back at you if you studied it too closely and watching you move about the room if you pretended not to notice. Always.