by Ilana Waters
Perhaps it would even cure this ennui or whatever it was that had her in its grip of late. I certainly hoped so. Ever since she acquired it, she’d been more fretful and aloof, withdrawing from me even during our brief visits together. But then, perhaps I should not have been away so often. If only I’d spent more time with her.
If only I’d known.
***
My hands—like everyone else’s—were trying uselessly to cover my head from the rain of fire bearing down on us. I kept thinking that, if we just waited long enough, Vesuvius would stop. She would cease her angry screaming and have mercy on us all. I later learned that hot ash and rock fell for roughly eighteen hours after the eruption. That added up to about sixty feet of debris in total: the height of a five-story building.
So, Vesuvius was not stopping. My backs of my hands were a mess of raw, red marks. It was growing harder to breathe, the hideous stench of sulfur still poisoning the air. The screams continued all around me, and I looked frantically to the left and right. But my eyes met only creatures even more pained and terror-stricken than I was. I kept running until I didn’t see them anymore.
What was it Sabine had once told me? You could toss around bonfires as if they were marbles, if you wished.
I stopped in my tracks. Maybe I could stop Vesuvius. Calm her roaring, douse her rage. I was a fire witch, after all, was I not?
I glanced around and saw I was standing in the center of the Forum. My body was between two stone bases—several feet high—whose statues had never been replaced after the earthquake of 62. I had no memory of how I got there. The Forum was barely recognizable, anyway, with columns and facades crumbled onto one another. Half of one side of the arcade had collapsed. And the entire square was empty. I could hear the echoes of shouts and screams on the streets surrounding it. Everyone had fled this place. They’d gone home to try to salvage their families or belongings, or had taken one look at Vesuvius and elected to run, run, run.
I turned toward the volcano, my back to the heavily damaged Temple of Jupiter. With arms splayed by my sides, I stared the mountain down, felt the weight of its power wash over me. For a moment, I hesitated. Then, I set my jaw, and sent all my magic toward the furious, shrieking Vesuvius.
I could feel the volcano fighting me. As I tried to deflect the ash still firing at my body—at everyone’s—she struggled, gnashed her teeth, tore her hair. She wanted to suffocate me; I could feel her earth magic filling me like stone. My legs were as lead; a heaviness crawled into my chest. Keeping my arms in the air was like trying to balance a building on my shoulders. Fire and ash and wind blew my tunic all around, shredding parts of it. I let out a guttural cry, clenched my fists, pulled them down. I would bottle Vesuvius back up if it was the last thing I did. I would be the one.
And it was working. My fire magic was winning. I could see, on the horizon, clouds of smoke and trickles of red were slowing down. My legs felt lighter, then my chest, then my arms. Rivers of veins lit up the sky. Later, scientists would credit this to electrically charged clouds causing a lightning storm. But Vesuvius and I knew the truth. It was really my magic. It had always been me.
But then, something happened. Vesuvius, in a surge of white-hot rage, sent another blast of fire magic up from her bowels.
I saw it coming straight toward me.
My eyes bulged. Fool. I had thought to wrestle Vesuvius’s magic back into the earth. Now, I saw I had become her magnet, drawing all her wrath toward me. An enormous fireball—bigger than Egnatius’s entire atrium—was bearing down in my direction. I took several steps back, but the ball of fire was growing larger, and not just because it was getting closer. Now, it was almost the size of the Temple of Jupiter. There was no possible way to control it. It was too big, and Vesuvius too angry. It would have taken an army of fire witches to turn it aside, if that. I was trapped. There was nowhere to run.
No no no no no. The sound was deafening as the fire roared toward me, a tornado made of impossible light and heat. The last thing I remember is being thrown backward, slamming into the stone base behind me. My head hit first, and the rest of my body must have followed and slid down. I say “must have,” because after I felt my head crack, everything went dark.
I don’t know how long I was unconscious. It couldn’t have been that long; I could still hear the screaming of mortals all around me. I tried to stand, but the pain in the back of my head blinded me. I closed my eyes and leaned on the stone base with one hand as nausea rolled in waves inside me. I opened my eyes. Behind me, the Temple of Jupiter was an empty shell. The roof had blown away, or been obliterated. Only a few of the entrance columns remained, splayed out like fingers roughly chopped off at different lengths.
It went past me, I realized. The ball of fire didn’t hit me directly. It sailed overhead and grazed me. But I had little time to thank the gods for their mercy. I knew my injuries were grave. I reached around and touched the back of my head. I barely laid a finger on it, and the pain came again, like a thousand knives piercing my brain. Another wave of nausea hit, and I doubled over, clutching my stomach. With great effort, I managed to stand again.
The shoulders of my tunic were drenched with blood. That my head was bleeding came as no surprise; the blow would’ve splattered a mortal’s brains all over the travertine. What was surprising was that it wouldn’t stop bleeding. I tried to will magic into my body, to heal it. In agony, I could feel the plates of my skull shift, reaching for one another. But they barely touched before shrinking back again.
I tried a second time, a third. I was drenched in sweat from the effort. Each time, the pain was so great, I was left gasping. My lungs clutched for breathable air in the thick, hateful fumes around me. I coughed and coughed. My body shook with great, ugly hacking noises as my stomach spasmed. The pain felt like Vesuvius itself. Like my head exploding.
But it was no use. The wound would not close. My skull and Vesuvius had that much in common. I’d used up too much of my magic—nearly all of it—on that last spell. That was why my body couldn’t repair itself. Sabine had warned me of this. How illness and injury could wreak havoc with a witch’s body if they weren’t careful. Now, I was able to appreciate her warning—at the worst possible time. The volcano was belching smoke and death just as enthusiastically as before. I had to get inside, somewhere.
As I walked, the vertigo was like a sadistic bully. Like the older slave boys I grew up with, until I learned to put them in their place. It felt like there was one on either side, pushing me into the waiting, laughing fists of another, who pushed back just as hard. I was jostled violently between them, the road rising and dipping, coming up at different angles to meet me. But I couldn’t let myself fall. If I did, I might not get up. I would lie there, like so many others, forever entombed in ash.
Fool. I cursed myself again as I stumbled along the road, trying to avoid the panicked imbeciles crashing into me. I should’ve known better. Stop Vesuvius? No man could control that evil woman, and no witch, either. What hubris leads us to believe we can steer the gods? Today, one of them had struck us down with little more than her poisonous breath. If only I’d saved some of my magic—just a portion—I might’ve been able to put out the other, smaller fires all around me. To stop them from spreading. But there were too many, and everything was burning, burning. My own element had turned trickster, betrayed me.
I thought being immortal meant I had all the time in the world. Now, I knew that was a lie. Fate can snatch opportunities from our open palms as surely as she does from humans’.
I was not going to be able to stop Vesuvius. No one was. Pompeii was going to be gulped down, one last swig of wine at a feast before blowing out the final candle. Everything I cared about was going to be extinguished. Everyone. In that moment, a single thought filled my mind. A single name only.
Sabine.
***
I have no idea how I made it to Sabine’s house in the state I was in. Magic, force of will . . . th
ese things battled over which would sustain me. Flying was out of the question. The only thing worse than stumbling through Pompeii’s buildings would be to careen into them, courtesy of vertigo. In my panic, hideous scenarios danced and dangled before me like smiling, jerking marionettes. Sabine was trying to stop Vesuvius. She’d failed to stop Vesuvius, and the volcano claimed her. She was searching as frantically for me as I was for her. She’d fled without me.
Another thought flashed through my mind as I combed the streets. Sabine had fastened me to her side just as surely as Circe did to Homer. She might not have used a spell or charm, but the effect was the same. I was incapable of leaving Sabine. Me, who, from the moment I was born, would do anything to anyone to ensure my survival. But getting out of Pompeii now, without knowing what became of her, was unthinkable. Even if it meant I died.
This was about two or so hours after Vesuvius erupted, though I will gladly employ the cliché here to say that it seemed an eternity. Because it was. The streets were emptier now than they were before. But this did not mean they were easier to navigate. Mounting piles of ash made it impossible to open doors. It was difficult for people to run, and that same ash quickly buried those who fell.
Overturned buildings blocked the roads; the streets were a sea of broken stone and splintered wood. The huge bodies of animals, horses and oxen, lay extinguished in an ocean of gray powder and fire. A thick layer of ash formed on the remaining rooftops; I heard the shrieking of those both inside and outside the apartments as roofs collapsed under the weight.
I was surprised to find Sabine’s house still standing, though I knew not for how long it would remain that way. The proconsul was one of the most important men in Pompeii; it wasn’t surprising his home was solidly built. But the doors were blocked by triangular mounds of ash. I had no choice; I’d have to make an attempt to fly. I fixed my eyes on the roofline, took a deep breath, and launched myself into the air.
I made it over, but faltered at the last second, catching my sandal on a jagged piece of broken tile. My heart leaped as I almost stumbled and fell back onto the street, so weak from loss of blood and magic. Still, I managed to right myself. Out of habit, I glimpsed down and over my shoulder to see if anyone had spotted me. Then, I then realized it didn’t matter. If anyone was shocked at the sight of a man flying through the air, their incredulity would soon be swallowed by the greedy wrath of Vesuvius.
I jumped down into the courtyard, now a lake of ash. I landed harder than I expected. I felt the shock of it through the ash to the ground below. The pain told me I nearly broke my ankles. It reverberated all the way to the wound in my head, bringing fresh waves of nausea. This would never have happened if I’d been at full strength, full magic. I looked around. The fountains had stopped running. Statues were knocked over and partially submerged in ash, as if trying to swim free. One could not make out where the hedges and paths had been.
In addition to the gash on my head, I could feel bruises forming all over from being pushed and shoved in the streets like chattel. Rivulets of blood were running down my limbs from various cuts and scrapes. I had seeping, open sores from ash burns. Ordinarily, they would have healed by now. I briefly considered trying to do a spell for the pain.
But I realized that, even if it worked, using magic on anything other than healing might mean my doom. I had to conserve as much magic as possible if I expected to survive. As it was, my stores might not be replenished in time to save me. It was starting to look like a chance I was willing to take. I thought I knew suffering. But I hadn’t understood just how much my healing powers spared me from it over the years. I almost sympathized with mortals, if this was what injury felt like to them.
Slogging through the ash was like moving through quicksand until I got to the atrium, which was only slightly better. It was no easier to breathe indoors; the smell of gas followed me everywhere, which did my queasy stomach no favors. I futilely brushed ash from my hair, my shoulders.
I could see how Vesuvius’s rumblings had taken their toll on the house. There was more ash in the atrium than in the other rooms because of the skylight. The gray powder had quickly overflowed the shallow impluvium and spilled onto the mosaic floors, now cracked and broken. Oil lamps had been knocked over and extinguished in the ash. Now, the only light came from small fires burning all around me. Brought in by pieces of the volcano, these unmoored torches were fed by the wall tapestries and shattered furniture. I tried to shield myself from them, covering my face with the back of my hand, moving as quickly as I could from room to room.
Huge pieces of the walls had been ripped away, leaving gaping holes where scenes of farms or dancing gods had been. I saw several of these pieces suffocated by ash as I made my way through the house, the deities’ features eroding as Vesuvius claimed these lesser gods. Egnatius was nowhere to be found. I doubted he’d managed to sober up and make it back from the brothel yet. He could be lying dead in a heap of whores, for all I cared. My only thoughts were of Sabine.
There were occupants remaining, but they were all slaves. “Where is Sabine?” I demanded of them. “Where is your mistress?” But they all said they did not know, even when I shook them, slapped them, and punched a few of the men in the face. The blows did not land as hard as I expected. I am weakening, I realized. These were the lower slaves, chained to tables and chairs—no doubt by the ones with more authority. Perhaps, the latter thought Egnatius would look on their own attempts to escape with pity, should they be returned, if they helped minimize his other losses. All were screaming to be freed, begging me, with outstretched arms and pitiful wails. They promised to serve me faithfully if only I would release them, spare their lives.
I ignored them. I wouldn’t have been able to save them, anyway. If I sent them into the streets, they would’ve been killed by the same forces at work inside the house. Better they should meet the end here, than have to witness it through the apocalypse outside.
No, I had to find Sabine. She was all that mattered, and the sole person who could save me from my own grievous injuries. I tried calling her name, but my throat was so dry, hardly any sound came out. Unlikely she would hear it above the slaves’ shrieking, anyway.
Sabine! I screamed in my mind, sending fresh pain reverberating through my skull. Sabine, where are you? But there was no reply, either in my thoughts or out loud. Finally, I reached Sabine’s bedroom, and nearly collapsed from shock.
There she lay, in bed, as I had seen her many times before. But unlike those other times, she still had her stola on. There was hardly any ash in the bedroom; its door had been closed against the onslaught, unlike the rest of the house. Which meant the lamp here had not yet been extinguished, and I could see Sabine clearly in its flickering light. She was slumped to one side, head resting in the crook of her arm. Although her eyes were wide open, she could not see me. She was not moving. Blood oozed from the center of her chest.
A dagger protruded from it.
My heart stopped. Then, it started to pound uncontrollably. Though I moved only a few steps toward the bed, perspiration poured down my body. My breath came in short, gasping hiccups.
It’s a trick, I thought. A glamour to fool onlookers. Maybe she needs them to think she is still here because . . . I didn’t know why. What difference would it make who knew she was here? The slaves were chained up; the rest of Pompeii was running for its life.
But I knew enough of magic to see there was no glamour. Sabine lay before me, as cold and lifeless as the corpses of Pompeii piling up outside. Blood seeped out from her stola onto the bedclothes. Pompeiian red. A warm draft moved through the room, gently lifting and dropping the curls on my lover’s forehead, as I’d done so many times with my own fingers.
One of the slaves killed her. Revenge for years of servitude before running away. Or Egnatius managed it. Yes, that must have been it. Egnatius had come home early, found out about her and me, somehow. Then, in a fit of rage, he—
No. That couldn’t be. Eve
n if he’d stabbed her, Sabine was a witch. The wound would have healed with supernatural speed. Which meant she’d have a hell of a lot of explaining to do to Egnatius—far more than she would about our affair. But that was a whole other story. The only way a knife to the heart would kill her was if she didn’t have magic to heal from the blow.
But there was no indication she’d depleted her magic the same way I had: battling Vesuvius. The volcano hadn’t calmed down even a mite, except when I tried to subdue it. Possibly Sabine had tried at the exact same time, but that seemed unlikely. And there was no way Egnatius could have woken from his drunken stupor and made it back before me—even accounting for my fight with Vesuvius in the Forum.
Besides, after more than two decades, I knew him better. Egnatius wouldn’t have returned to his house for anything. Not slaves, not gold . . . not even his wife. He’d want to save his own skin, to leave Pompeii as quickly as possible. And if I were a slave, I’d think along the same lines, if it were my life at stake. No matter how much I might want revenge, I wouldn’t have wasted precious time killing my mistress. Not after I’d just gotten done tying down the other slaves. The first action rather defeated the point of the second, anyway. Why trying to impress an owner you were only going to murder?
A memory was coming back to me now, one I desperately didn’t want. It was Sabine and I, in a different bedroom. I was standing behind her, arms wrapped around her waist. But she was irritated with me. She was saying something . . .
There are ways we can die, Titus. Fire. Decapitation. Certain kinds of spells. Sometimes, even by our own hands.
Certain kinds of spells. Even by our own hands. All a witch would have to do was perform a spell to prevent themselves from healing. After that, it was simply a matter of choosing the manner of—