Steampunk Cleopatra
Page 33
“I don’t want you to die.”
I’m already dead. That’s why I’m here.
“That’s what you keep saying about me, but I’m not. I swear to you, I’m not. So, maybe you aren’t, either.”
I look to Maat and the scales. The evidence says otherwise.
Amani breathes deep. “I’m not ready to let you go.”
I don’t know if we ever are. I never was. Not then and not now.
“When I wake up, this will still be with me. In my heart, I’ll know you carried me with you, always. You loved me, always, and I will forever love you.”
I am sobbing now. My resistance is gone. The weight is lifted, and I can go into oblivion. Knowing.
Maat drops the feather, it lilts toward the scale, and with each step of its crisscross fall, Amani grows taller. The innocence fades.
“You went to Jerusalem,” she says.
“To know you better, so your family can hear your story.”
“From you?” she asks. “Do you think you’re the one to tell it? The person you remember isn’t me. She’s your interpretation of me, the ideal Egyptian for your Greek guilt, and now you want to feed that back to my family and say this is who I was. Did it ever occur to you they already know me better?”
She grows older before my eyes, becoming a mature woman I never knew, large and strong with a lifted chin and one blind eye. The feather drifts closer to the scale.
Is this real, I ask, or is this just what I wish to see?
“I am not formed by your desire but by my own will. The Nile flows through my blood, and the soil colors my flesh. I am my own creation. This is my people, and this is my land. Don’t look to the gods for salvation. You stand before me, not them. Judgment is mine.”
7
The Seventh Papyrus of Philostratos
Morning bathes Jerusalem. The light is more than my eyes can handle, and I shield them. Grit covers my lips and ears. I feel it in my nose. The Upper City feels holy and pure. I am but a man and don’t belong.
My house awaits against the wall, and I stand before it, staring. I open the door and half expect it to swallow me whole, but nothing happens.
Then, behind me, I hear footsteps.
Andros is there, shaking. Tears stain his face. He holds me, and I lay my head against his shoulder.
He takes me inside and strips off my clothes. He washes away the earth; each clean spot, he kisses.
“Miriam told me about Malachi,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
“Miriam,” I ask, “is she dead, too?”
He is cleaning out my ear but stops to look at me. “No. She saved your life.”
I close my eyes. “Amani saved me.”
He places his hand upon my chest. “Are you okay?”
I never expected to be okay, but I am.
All night, I lay beside him in our bed, unable to sleep. I watch him for hours, and when dawn comes, I return to my writing desk and the history I have promised.
I want to write of Amanirenas, but I won’t. It is a false promise, and, unlike me, your family will believe and sail south to see for yourselves. Still, what a contrast it would be. If she is alive, then her time in Alexandria prepared her for a greater destiny. If she is dead, then she spent her life torn between the obligations of her people’s heritage and her love for those who could not bring themselves to trust her; those who, in the end, abandoned and destroyed her.
She deserves to be that warrior queen, and I deserve to know better, never allowing myself the illusion that her life worked out despite us.
I stare at the scroll and the pen and the ink. I have been here before, and I suppose I will be here again. Death cannot be denied forever. Until then, I will live and love and carry the weight of guilt that must follow me to the grave. Next time, Amani may not be there to free me, and, this time, if that freedom was to mean anything, I should have stayed dead.
I think of Andros, asleep in our bed, and I wonder if it is too late to go to Athens. Yes, it is too late. Athens will bring me no joy, but I still have Andros. We have Jerusalem, this house, and our bed, and he has chosen to cradle me in my old age. Twenty-four years is as good as forever.
He will awake, soon.
I take up my pen and consider what I have written and what I am to write and the difference between mythology and history. Once, I thought the purpose of mythology was to strengthen a people and show them who they could be. Now, I know it hides weakness and keeps the people comfortable in their circumstances. It keeps them blind to those they have wronged and continue to wrong. We want to embrace the myth and to believe we are good, but it is better to face the evil we have hidden. Otherwise, it lives on, the rot within our walls.
This is the truth I would put to papyrus if I knew how.
I write:
The fire did less damage to the library than some would have you believe, but none of the Cypriot books survived. They burned so hot, an entire corner of the library collapsed. The stones crushed rioters on the street below; their bodies were broken and burned beyond recognition. We could never even tell you which was Amani so you could bury her yourselves and mourn properly.
None of us had closure then, but I hope I can offer it, now.
I linger over my words and wonder if I am wrong. Have I learned nothing? Even in my old age, I repeat the old sins whose guilt I loathe to carry. If there is hope, I am wrong to conceal it. If you wish to make the journey south, it is yours to make. Your history is not mine to frame.
I assumed to show you who Amani was, but all I can do is share my version of her, the Amani I knew through my eyes, filtered through the limitations of my understanding. The Amani I knew is dead, but perhaps, the Amani who truly was, the one beyond the confines of my love and betrayal, perhaps that Amani still lives.
A young philosopher studies a tapestry of life that is thick and newly woven; with age, worn spots grow thin, and frayed threads are broken. I knew life as a younger man, but I know better now the wind that blows on the other side.
Perception is the first god of the underworld.
When death takes and keeps me, Andros will build a remembrance according to Dio’s custom. If Amani is truly gone, perhaps you can do the same for her. It may seem pointless, but there are only two things I feel stirring on the other side of this tapestry: memory and emotion. Perhaps it is a rational desire for the living to anchor the dead against winds unknown.
Sia.
The End
About the Author
You can find Thaddeus Thomas online at ThaddeusThomas.com and subscribe to his newsletter to stay updated. Readers, writers, and reviewers can sign up for the genres of their choice at club.ThaddeusThomas.com and discover new, independent voices in fiction.
Thaddeus lives on the Mississippi River with his wife and three cats.
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