Ptolemy asked her if it was over.
She backed away from the water, glaring at it as if it was toxic. “No! It will come into me and not you.” She grabbed her own wrists and her forearms burst into flames. She grabbed the wrists of the handmaiden next to her and all the fire went into her, head to toe, flashing off her skin in a loud shower of sparks. The blazing handmaiden screamed until she jumped into the pool and drowned. Sorceress Thrace quickly took a few more steps back so she wouldn’t get splashed on.
Ptolemy tried not to appear as frightened and amazed as he was.
Sorceress Thrace looked at her own sleeves to see how much fabric had burned. She brushed at them, then looked up to Ptolemy and gave a content smile. “I was one step ahead of your sister, again. I have sent Cleopatra’s own fire right back to her, wherever she may be. And no harm to me either. Am I not more beautiful to your eyes, now?”
“You look atrocious.”
“Like what?”
“You look like a witch!”
Sorceress Thrace looked baffled. “Is that bad?”
Ptolemy insisted, “You just threw fire about like it was nothing, and we had a human sacrifice for some reason. That makes you look like a scary witch!”
“I was first a mountain witch. It was sensible for me to master fire. My cave was so very cold and dark… and lonely. I didn’t like that. I corrected that.” She smiled. “I have mastered fire and now fire always makes me look more beautiful. I have mastered it completely. Do I not look younger now? And this time I did not even have to summon up the fire by myself. It was sent by assassins to kill you but they have not mastered fire as I have, so I saved you again. And look at how beautiful it has made me. I am on fire with beauty. I burn with beauty! Are you not on fire with me? Do you not burn for me?”
Ptolemy looked away from her hard dry eyes. “Now you merely look mad.”
~
Cleopatra clung to the tabletop, feeling dizzy. She suddenly remembered that when she’d followed the crow into the library she saw the ghost of her mother, Tryphaena.
While leading Cleopatra into the library, the ghost said, “Your star has fallen from the sky—the star that you’d chosen to pray to. Has it done this just to terrify and leave you wanting to die, too? The sky is high and far away. The road is empty and long. Will epoch help you to clarify why life feels very wrong? Why care at all why flowers close or why water is malevolence by night. When crocodiles eat the feathered piles, is flight only out of fright?”
Cleopatra responded, “My thoughts have fallen from my heart. I’m empty and barren and frigid. I’d stand up but the wind is back and its song is rather insipid. A hope for a friend is far away. The way back to the fort is too much. I’ll sleep on the banks next to such sharp teeth just to see what fate says, no reason, inasmuch.”
Her mother’s ghost silently led her to the side room in the library, to the silver tablet, and then told her to go find Phaedra.
Cleopatra came out of the recent memory and back to the present moment, mumbling incoherently.
Phaedra, puzzled by Cleopatra’s brief trance, asked, “What. What did you just see? You said something... what did you just remember? What!”
“A hope for a friend is far away. The way back to the fort is too much.”
“No I’m here to help you! Tell me!”
Cleopatra finally focused her eyes. “I used to only see ghosts in my dreams. I don’t dream anymore, not for a few days now… but now I see ghosts while I’m awake.”
Phaedra marveled. “By the gods… you see ghosts while awake?”
“I saw the ghost of my mother! Just now! As I was walking in the door.”
“That’s odd you would forget something so recent, but anyway, what’s important is a ghost only speaks in love.” Phaedra tried to give a reassuring smile.
Cleopatra nodded. “As I was entering the library, following the crow, I was actually led by my dead mother. And it was so weird a thing to happen that I blocked it from my memory at first. But it has come back. Maybe the memory of all magical moments will come back to me, in time. What other magical event will I remember next?”
Phaedra questioned, “We forget magical moments? I thought it was the other way around—I thought they were cherished.”
Cleopatra gave a nod. “Magic is when life happens in overabundance. So it should always be unforgettable. I’ll never forget when I first saw my mother’s ghost—when I was little she came to me in dreams. She was the first one to lead me to the throne—I walked in my sleep.”
Phaedra asked, “She’s come before?”
Cleopatra explained, “Long ago. I didn’t even know she was a ghost at first, or my mother. When I was a child she would come to me in the night, in dreams. I thought I was dreaming about some pretend palace governess, not suspecting a ghost at all.”
“How did you find out she was a ghost and your mother?”
“It wasn’t until she led me to the throne as I walked in my sleep. The next day I asked about her, describing her, telling of her gold star ornaments sewn to her robe, and her crow perched on her hand. I was told that was my mother… and she died when I was an infant… killed by my father for practicing witchcraft. And she was actually coming to me as an angel.”
Phaedra asked, “How can somebody be a ghost and a witch and an angel?”
“Angel is a Greek word that means messenger. There are many ways messengers come to us in life and sometimes they’re sent to us by the gods themselves.”
Phaedra marveled.
Cleopatra continued, “I wonder why Mother comes again, now, and I momentarily forget. I wasn’t sleeping just now as I entered the library—I can’t fall fast asleep in midstep. What makes a person forget such magic, even for a moment? Why am I forgetting some things? What is more mysterious than sleep?”
“Death?”
Cleopatra rubbed her cheeks. “What would make you say that? It struck such a horrible sensation in me.”
“Truth be told, our mind shuns death. We want to live.”
Cleopatra uneasily nodded.
Phaedra added, “They say ghosts come to us in our sleep to warn or assure—give us messages. Why do they come in the daytime? To do that, they must have such power.”
“This time, my mother’s ghost asked me that when crocodiles eat the feathered piles, is flight only out of fright?”
“I suddenly feel afraid.” Phaedra put her hand on her heart. “Something else is in the room with us and I bet it isn’t your mother anymore.”
“Sit!”
“We’re not alone!”
Cleopatra repeated, “Sit!”
“Fright causes flight!”
“What does that mean? Oh, sure… fright causes flight. That’s kneejerk nature. But we’d rather fly for lofty reasons...” Cleopatra jolted.
“What happened? What do you feel? What is happening?”
“I feel…” Cleopatra looked around, flinching as if she was about to be clobbered.
Phaedra asked again what was going on.
Cleopatra wrung her hands. “The air! Do you feel the air? It’s pushing down on us and… it’s so hot!”
Phaedra looked around. “I smell burning mint!”
There was a loud popping sound. The scrolls on the shelves around them burst into flames. Cleopatra jumped up.
“Oh my Pegasus!”
Flames spread along all the shelves throughout the entire side room. Phaedra and Cleopatra ran to a door facing the harbor. Sailors were already gathering with buckets of water. The two women ran through the crowd and circled around to the market plaza.
Mark Antony and Octavian were standing at the colonnade, quarreling.
“You’re alive!” Phaedra blurted, breathless, to Mark. She added, “We’re alive!”
Octavian frowned. “So you are. And look who’s with you still acting like a queen.” He yelled at Cleopatra, “I thought you were dead!”
Mark grinned at Cleopatra and nodded toward Octavian a
s he ribbed, “He’s just pouting that I beat him to it—that I spoke to your brother for Caesar and he didn’t.”
Cleopatra glared at Octavian. “Now that you see that I live are you content?”
Octavian sardonically raised his well plucked eyebrows at her.
Mark spoke, “We are well, I swear by my sword. And I’ll make sure it stays that way.”
Cleopatra turned to the library and shivered. “I hope they put it out soon. If the papyrus in that room is lost it’ll take so much time to record those spells again. I hope the daughter library has all of them copied already.”
Phaedra asked her, “There’s more libraries?”
“The daughter library is in the Temple of Serapis in the Egyptian part of the city… over that way.”
Octavian yelled at the library, “Let it burn!”
Phaedra asked him why.
“Let Rome have the best libraries! Damn Alexandria! Damn the Greeks!”
Cleopatra turned to Phaedra. “Did we see ghosts in there? It all seemed too unreal. I can’t remember now… not really.”
Phaedra took Cleopatra’s arm, to steady her, as she said, “Yes, our time together as equals does all seem like a dream now. I’ll remind you as soon as the excitement passes. You are so cold. Octavian, give her your cape!”
He gave it up in a gallant flourish and put it over Cleopatra’s shoulders.
Cleopatra filled with awe. “Yes, we were equals for a moment. We must have many other moments together where we meet, and meet in the middle as equals... a couple that faces the world equally side-by-side has great power.”
“We’re a couple?” Phaedra winced. “We were terrible together… we had a fire.”
Cleopatra frowned. “We threw what we could at the world and I do think we had genuine magic on our side. I think our trouble was all in the impressive strength of our foe.”
“Your brother’s witch did this!”
“Of course. Magic attacked us. We haven’t seen the last of it, I’m sure. We must learn a new mirror spell. If only we had one this very hour so we could send it out when Sorcerous Thrace is unsuspecting.”
“Oh no!” Phaedra ran back into the burning library. Unable to see from the thick smoke, she collided with the first table. She felt on its surface until her hand cupped over a scroll. She ran back out, coughing, smoke still billowing from her robe, and handed the scroll to Cleopatra. “This is the one! This might help!”
“Where did you get that?”
Phaedra smiled proudly. “The source of the Nile!”
They both went to a wall to sit, read the scroll and send out its magic. It began to rain and although the building had a sturdy tile roof the fire quickly went out in a cloud of wet steam.
Chapter eleven
On a mezzanine balcony over a garden within the palace, Ptolemy’s witch stopped at the top of the steps and yelled over the loud thunder, “Egypt and Rome is not big enough for two witches!”
Ptolemy sat on the top step, to overlook the garden and watch it getting soaked, as he replied, “Oh, there’s a lot of witches around. You’re just jealous again.”
Sorceress Thrace sat next to him, shaking her bald head. “No, this one is a special witch and she is helping your sister. She is one witch too many—she has to go! I saw her in my magic smoke and she looks evil!”
Ptolemy was surprised. “What? That snake woman has come in from the desert? You said she was stuck out there in her snake hole—the snake temple. You said she couldn’t leave it! You told me so!”
“No, it is not her. Do not worry about that old lost witch in her desert grave.” The wind changed direction again so Sorceress Thrace jumped back to avoid the rain that splashed across the steps. She looked at her legs to make sure her skin was still smooth. “This is a new witch. She is bumbling and stupid. But she suddenly has a new powerful spell for magical war that she did not have before and it is protecting your sister from my fiery catapults. She has a new spell!”
He said, “They were in the magic spell room. What do you expect?”
“This mirror spell is something new to me. Something unusual is blocking my magic attacks, now. Where could she have gotten something new like that so soon? She has powers!”
“She’s young?” He grinned. “When does she come to the palace? When do I see her? I can’t wait to see her!”
His grin infuriated Sorceress Thrace. She added, “You will be happy when you see me greet her and hug her and kiss her lips at the top of these stairs. You will be happy when you see her fall down these stairs, on fire, choking on her own tongue.”
“Don’t think about her.”
Sorceress Thrace insisted, “She is bumbling and stupid but she is learning fast.”
Ptolemy rubbed his hand over his wet chest. “You’re just distracted with jealously again.”
“She has the potential for great power and she must die soon before it is too late. Dragons are killed easiest when they have just hatched.”
Thunder rumbled again. Ptolemy felt his heart warm. He wondered if he needed a new witch. “There was a fire in my library and I know you did it. Good thing it rained and it somehow put it all out before it spread beyond the room of spells.”
“It was their own fire. I swear it! It was your sister who is all to blame. Hate her for that!”
“The Library of Alexander had a fire—my favorite place on earth! The fire could have spread. That would have been an unbearable loss.”
Sorceress Thrace pleaded, “I can help you. Let me protect you. Do not grow tired of me! Please look kindly upon me!”
“I don’t know what you mean. Speak plain and clear. And, no, I’m not taking you to my bed so I hope it wasn’t about that.”
“I can help you!”
“How? Be clear!
“Let me have my own army and I can do so much more for you! Then you will know my worth.”
Ptolemy glared at her.
She looked stern. “You have no good reason not to grant me this request.”
He stated, “Only a man can control an army. A large group of men can become very dangerous if not well disciplined and controlled, like a pack of hunting wolves. I’ll rule as a man and destroy my enemies as a man! I must! If I’m to be a pharaoh who’s respected by Rome I must show them my own strength.”
She begged anew.
He griped, “When my eunuch first gave you to me as a birthday present I thought I was just getting a slave with tricks. I didn’t realize you’d be so noisy and wearisome. And then when he was found dead he was not only half-eaten but cooked. Are you sure you had nothing to do with that?”
Sorceress Thrace folded her hands in supplication. “But I can control any group of men. I can control the lowest criminals and make them work for me… and so work for you. Give me the criminals the cutthroats and thieves! My spells will convert them! We must take power this day with a great army or it might be too late!”
“Too late? I have the throne today.”
“Your sister and her witch are playing games!”
Ptolemy glared at her. “For now, just play the game Rome has for us. We can’t win if we don’t play with Rome and it must be played out in the open.”
“Small things become big things. Crush them now. Crush your sister while she is small.”
He argued, “Small things are small things and big things are big things. I’m the man. I’ll get the throne in the end. I am the big thing now and Rome will have to agree. Girls are always little things.”
She argued, “The image of the sandal strap became the ankh, the greatest religious symbol ever. Small things can become big things.”
Ptolemy walked down the stairs into the driving rain, into the garden.
Watching him walk away, not wanting to follow and get wet, she moaned to herself, “I want my own army of men! I will be the queen of Egypt and I will rule the world with the greatest armies! Armies of cutthroats and thieves!” She stood and glowered. “I will control all men! I wil
l burn all witches!” She walked the other way, set fire to a chair in the hall, and then withdrew to her secret room.
~
Six days later, Mark Antony and Octavian summoned Ptolemy to the throne room. Ptolemy sat on the throne and impatiently watched Cleopatra’s troops from Syria file in. As they stood at attention, a black cat sauntered in and meandered toward the throne.
Ptolemy watched in growing horror until he finally pointed at the cat and yelled, “That’s Cleopatra! She’s turned herself into an atrocious cat! She has new spells! She’s come to kill me with her witchcraft! Kill the cat, Mark Antony, kill it!”
Mark ignored him.
“You have to do it! Rome has to kill her so that it pleases Rome! Kill the cat!”
Mark shrugged. “It just looks like a cat to me.”
“No! She has great witchcraft!” Ptolemy leapt off the throne and chased the black cat around the room but it kept out of reach by often darting between the feet of her troops.
After Ptolemy fell to the floor, too exhausted to continue, a harp began to play. Cleopatra, a human, slowly walked down the center isle holding a bouquet of blue lotus flowers that were the symbol of Upper Egypt. Its long stems were intertwined with papyrus reeds that were the symbol of Lower Egypt—a classic representation of the political unification of the two different lands. She gracefully sat on the throne.
Ptolemy cursed her, and added, “That was no grand entrance. You just walked in.”
Cleopatra looked daggers at her brother as he got up off the floor. She replied, “It was your ludicrous exit.”
He grumbled, “You’re not a cat.”
“No, if you think I could turn myself into a cat you have a lot of growing up to do.”
Mark Antony asked her in a quiet voice, “Is that what it means to crash into repose?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said that to Caesar once. It made him laugh so loud. What does it mean? I just thought of it again the way you just sat on that throne with such loveliness.”
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