“And the others?” Amani asked. “Urban?”
“They are safe,” Cleopatra said. “We're not the children we once were, but I love you the same. I regret what came between us in Rome.”
“Your father prepared my poison.”
“It would have been no different if you were his own blood.”
“If I were family,” Amani said, “you might have let me die.”
Cleopatra took a step closer. She had said they were no longer children, and it was almost true. The time of change would soon come. They had been through so much, done so many things, and, yet, they were still only children, playing at grown-up roles.
Cleopatra took Amani into her arms and held her. “I love you the same.”
Amani closed her eyes.
“Come with us to Ephesus,” Cleopatra said.
The sun was setting. Amani had heard no explosion. “Philostratos has not betrayed your father, but he is traveling now to Alexandria with the secrets of my people. He meant to bring them home to Ptolemy, not Berenice.”
“We will explain that to my father.”
“Is there any hope your father might return?”
“Pompey is still our advocate.”
“Remember Philostratos,” Amani said.
“I swear it.” Cleopatra still held her. Their cheeks pressed together. “Come with us.”
“You've given me a choice between you or your sister. Were you back in Alexandria, maybe my answer would be different, but, now, I need you to give me something else.”
Cleopatra pulled away. Her face grew somber, but she nodded.
“A ship,” Amani said.
“Where do you mean to go?”
“Will you give it?” Amani asked.
Cleopatra took another step back. “When would you leave?”
“In the morning, if you can make it ready.”
“A ship is easy,” Cleopatra said. “Holding on to you is hard.”
Papyrus 5.2
Amani slipped away to Urban’s room. He stood by the window, watching the last light of evening fade away. He looked so big and yet so frail. She came to him, and he hobbled to her.
“No one told me you were here,” he said. “I'd heard rumors about Pharaoh, but I thought perhaps it wasn't true. No one has slaughtered me in my bed.”
She helped him to the couch. “There's no advantage in their killing you now, but I won't be with you. I needed to see you before I go.”
“You won't leave with Cleopatra.”
She lay her head against his arm, unable to tell him the truth. Two nights ago the full moon rose, and the tides always followed by two days. Yet, there had been no explosion. For whatever reason, the books remained, and she had the opportunity to see them saved.
“I've wished for her the throne so that I could vicariously rule with her. That is no longer enough. I want to fight Rome, but that is not reality. I would have my people elevated, but I no longer expect this from any Ptolemy.”
“So where will you go?” he asked.
On the table by the couch, glass clattered. Birds flew from their perches. The room trembled, and thunder echoed out of the woodlands. Amani rushed to the window as a shadow blotted out the stars.
That evening, Cato secured Amani’s departure from Paphos.She walked to Bethzayith, reached the town after sunrise, and found Malachi in the synagogue, his head covered as he prayed. They walked through the olive groves, and she told him everything.
“If there's anything left, I must save it.”
“But you said the annex is destroyed,” he said.
“I can look, or I can walk away. Which of the two is better?”
“Is it even possible?”
“There's a chance, but I can't do it alone.”
“The people know about the explosion,” he said. “If I disappear, they're going to want to know why.”
“You came here to grieve,” she said.
“I did.”
“Your grieving is done.”
He stopped and looked at her. “You'd have me go back to Jerusalem?”
She saw no fear and no distrust in his eyes, only curiosity. She needed somewhere she could hide from the world and someone she could trust.
“I'd have you take me.”
The ship Cleopatra provided was large enough for the sea, but small enough to be manned with a minimal crew. Amani and Malachi sailed it out of the harbor and around the coast to the northern side of the island. The horizon offered no sign of our boats, nor had she expected it would.
They followed the cliff-lined shore and found the cave, small and foreboding against the towering rock face. Waves rolled into the cliff. Any attempt to dock and those waves would break and sink their ship. Instead, they anchored off the nearest beach and rowed the ship's landing boat ashore.
They took with them torches, food, and their longest measures of rope.
Coming from this strange direction, Amani would never have found her way, except they had the smoke to guide them. In only a few hours, they reached the peak above where the temple had been.
The lake covered the temple grounds. At the water's edge, fallen rocks and trees gave witness to the previous night's violence. Toppled temple stones peeked through the water.
Below them, Cato's soldiers stood at the shoreline. Others braved the murky waters, but the ground was uneven. One vanished beneath the surface before sputtering to the surface with cries of volcanic craters that swallowed everything they touched.
Amani crept on, still following the smoke until they found the crevice in the hillside from which it flowed.
“It's burning,” Amani whispered, “the knowledge of millennia past.”
“We should go before we're spotted,” Malachi said.
Amani continued northward, toward the cliffs.
“We can’t reach the cave,” Malachi said with an eye on the ropes they carried. “There's nothing we can do.”
The grass was tall and lush, and the trees sparse. In long lines that followed the patterns of the wind, the grasses were stunted and discolored. Those lines converged on an outcropping of blackened rock where a hole opened up to darkness.
Amani looked at Malachi. “This is where we climb.”
Papyrus 5.21
Cleopatra had given her what she asked for. Maybe it came out of love, guilt, or an attempt to prove herself and change Amani's mind, a final proof that coming with her to Ephesus was the best option. The ship she gave was not her own. Cato presented it to her father. Her father gave it to her, and she passed it on to Amani, but the effect was the same.
Amani asked herself if Cleopatra's generosity could atone for her father's horrors. If this was an act of love, maybe Amani loved her back, even now.
It didn't matter.
Her entire life, she had clung to the idea that being good and smart would be enough, that some quality in her could make the world run right. She had believed in herself and she had believed even more in her princess. Together, they would unite the Greek and Egyptian peoples, the present and the past. Some quality in them, through their patience and hard work, would make the world a better place.
Nobody cared how smart they were or how many languages they knew. The world cared only for its own appetites, and relevance came only in their ability to feed.
No longer. Let the world lose its way. Nothing else mattered but the books.
Amani let go of the rope and climbed out of the fire pit that had once warmed the dock. The remaining ships and their supports were gone. The explosion had torn them from their fastenings, and the waves had claimed them for the sea.
A cave-in deeper in the tunnel reduced the stream to a rivulet. Whatever fires burned elsewhere, they cast no smoke here. Waves crashed at the cave entrance, and Amani lit a torch as Malachi followed behind her.
Amani found the doorway to the secret passage, the one she had stumbled through a few nights before. They followed the stairway down until it disappeared beneath cold water. Amani
, against Malachi's desperate cries, tied the second rope around her waist and slipped beneath the surface.
She found the tunnel just below and had rope enough to reach the next stairwell, in either direction. She turned right first, to the south, and emerged into a stairwell thick with smoke and the flicker of flames.
She returned to Malachi, trembling and gasping for air.
“Never,” he said, “never do anything that stupid again.”
As he bent to untie her ropes, she caught her breath and slipped back under. This time she traveled north, a longer journey to the next stairwell, and her lungs ached.
She emerged from water into darkness. The air held neither scent of smoke nor the heat of fire. Shivering and blind, she untied herself and groped her way upward.
If only she could remember which tunnel was to the right of the ship-dock tunnel and adjacent to its steam-powered arm and wheel. In the dark and the cold, uncertain the rope would be there when she returned, the memory would not come.
The door at the top opened to the smell of dirt and ash. She reached out, touched metal, and knew where she was. The books were lost to her. She wrapped her arms tight against her chest and heard her own breathing echo back.
She had found the workshop.
Neither the dock nor the workshop used the gas lighting system that ran through the rest of the annex, and that had saved them from the worst of the destruction. As Malachi and Amani lit the wall torches, however, they saw heaps of machines fallen in metal avalanches.
Incomplete prototypes mixed with presumably working devices. They could not guess the purpose of most machines by their design, and nothing survived to provide instruction.
She sifted through a pile, sorting machines by size, but she stopped to look at him. “Will you return with me to Jerusalem?”
“The books are gone,” he said.
“You're the only reason I suggested Jerusalem. If you're not ready to go back, you can leave me in Athens. Once we sell the ship, you'll have more than enough for the voyage back, and I'll rent a room where I can work in private.”
“Work?”
She motioned to the surrounding piles. “What we can carry through the tunnels, I mean to take with us.”
“The waters are still rising, and even if we get them through the tunnels, there's still the chimney and the trek overland.”
She lifted a small machine, no bigger than her hand. It was covered in gears and served no discernible purpose. She had picked it blind and regretted the choice. “The books we lost were used to create these machines, so these are what I'll study.”
“The chimney,” he said.
“In two weeks, the spring tide returns,” she said. “We'll row the landing boat into the mouth of the cave.”
Papyrus 5.22
The remnants of the stream carried a strange film that reflected light in the colors of a rainbow. Amani dipped her fingers in it and brought it to her nose. It smelled no better up close, and her fingers clung to the memory of that scent for days. It was sharp and rotten, like the carcass of the dog she'd found in Andros's house, left as a memorial to a man she'd never met. Now, it seemed she'd never see Andros again. She would never see me nor her family.
She would never see Cleopatra.
She made two trips topside for water, one with Malachi and one alone. The second time, she journeyed into the woods for an hour until she found the spot where the metal man once stood. The imprints of his feet were deep in the earth, but he was gone. She knew he would be, but some things had to be seen.
They made frequent trips to the workshop and organized the collected machines on the stone walkway that wrapped around three sides of what had once been the ship's dock. Maybe, now, it was just a cave again. Its stone walls, no matter how unnatural their planes, contrasted with the metallic glint of the devices.
She grouped some according to purpose, like those that best resembled weapons. Others she put together by similarity of appearance. The very first piece they rescued was the suit of metal arms, like Moira's. The metal men were not in the workshop. We had left them in the tunnels to be destroyed.
When their water ran out a third time, they decided to return to the ship before they lost it to the waves. On the hilltop above the lake, Amani stopped. Cato's men were gone. The waters were still. A breeze played through the grasses and the treetops. A single deer stood at the water's edge, her legs splayed as she drank.
Malachi sat, and Amani rested with him.
“I need to return to my village and set things in order before we leave for Jerusalem,” he said.
They anchored in the harbor of Arsinoe, the nearest city to the temple. From there they walked south toward Bethzayith. As they approached the village, they saw the lonely house where Andros once lived, nestled against its small field, the single olive tree growing alongside the wall. This time, they would not see the soldiers until it was too late.
“For the Greeks, the olive tree is a symbol of friendship and peace,” Malachi said. “We have the same in Jewish tradition. The dove returned to Noah with an olive branch, but it also speaks of putting down roots in the land. Andros and I, we believed ourselves rooted here, but that was not to be.”
“Am I doing wrong by you?” Amani asked.
He had no opportunity to answer. Soldiers emerged from the olive grove. They left Malachi in Bethzayith; Amani, they marched to Paphos.
Amani slept that night in Cato's house without having seen anyone. She woke early, long before the sun, one truth weighing heavy in her thoughts. The next spring tide would come in three days.
With the sunlight, she recognized the room as the one where Urban had convalesced. A change of clothes lay waiting on a nearby table and beside the clothes, an ornate wineskin and a note written in Ptolemy’s hand.
We will meet you in the garden when you are ready. Bring the wine.
She held the skin in her hands and recognized the design. She wondered if I would build her a memorial.
The garden was empty, but she walked out into the center and felt the cool of the morning blow in from the sea. Soon, soldiers and servants followed. Then came Cato and, after him, Cleopatra and Ptolemy.
Amani turned to face them. “This life will pass too quickly, but we are richer, all, for having met.”
Ptolemy smiled. “Are you richer, my child?”
Cato stepped forward, placing himself between the two parties. “Ptolemy believes you would take from Cyprus something that does not belong to you.”
“I take nothing which belongs to Pharaoh.”
Cleopatra kept her gaze fixed on Amani, her face unemotional and still.
“I have no doubts,” Ptolemy said. “We are only here to ask if you have chosen your path well.”
“I am only a child,” Amani said, “but I follow what wisdom I can find. It has guided me well.”
“Then there is nothing left, but for us but to say our goodbyes,” Ptolemy said.
Amani felt herself tremble.
“You know my tradition of the wine,” he continued. “I offer you an alternative. If you wish to stay, we will pour it out as a drink offering to the gods.”
“And if I wish to go?” she asked.
“You may drink,” Ptolemy said. “If that does not please you, Philostratos can drink in your stead when we return to Alexandria.”
Amani felt her breath come quick and shallow. She looked to Cleopatra. Cleopatra nodded once, so slight a movement as to be almost imperceptible. Amani thought she might have imagined it.
Ptolemy's fat lips contorted into a snarl. “What do you choose?”
Amani tilted the wineskin and drank.
Papyrus 5.23
Amani thought she would drown. Her heart beat fast and erratic. She breathed deep, but her lungs still ached for air. Cleopatra’s face bent and blurred.
Cleopatra slipped away. The grass at Amani’s feet became the sands of the underworld, and she stood before a pyramid, white and smooth. A beam of light
shot skyward from its golden cap. Somewhere near, a beast roared.
Once inside, the pyramid ceased to be. The hall she stood upon was flat and lined with pillars. As she walked, the hall entered Cleopatra’s palace, and Cleopatra, now grown, sat in judgment.
Anything you take from us, you take from your people, Cleopatra said.
I’ve taken nothing that belongs to you.
You’re leaving empty-handed? Cleopatra asked.
I’ve plucked my people’s history from the ashes.
Will you come back to me? Cleopatra asked.
Confused by the question and uncertain of the answer, Amani asked, Have you murdered me?
My father has agreed to let you go without harm, Cleopatra said. He insists on these rituals to test your resolve.
I am free to go?
You are.
Then no, Amani said, I will not return.
She was free. One could hope. One could pray, Amani supposed, but what good did such things do? The gods were statues, animated by ropes to fool the ignorant. They were a ruse to maintain power and control. Even the farmers had to know that or had known it once.
You made yourself a sacrifice to save Philostratos, she said.
Love demands nothing less.
Philostratos will be safe, Cleopatra said. I promise.
You seem certain you'll return to Alexandria.
Pompey and Caesar will stand beside us.
Amani thought of Malachi. Like Pompey conquered Jerusalem?
It won't be like that, Cleopatra said. He'll take the city in our name.
Amani closed her eyes. Let Egypt solve Egypt's problems, she said. If you trust in Rome to save you, it will only bring death.
That's not up to me.
I hope one day it is, Amani said.
Cleopatra drew close and held her until Amani awoke in bed, alone and feverish.
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