Epilogue
It has been thousands of years since my first death. And I have had many, many more. I have come to understand the magnitude of the curse bestowed upon me.
I have suffered for the crimes I committed, and there will be countless others.
No one is made perfect in the likeness of a god. No matter how hard I tried.
It is an exquisite pain unlike any other, to watch your children die.
We were not entirely successful in our escape.
Selene and Helios were captured by Octavian two years later, and as a final insult to me were sent to Octavia, who raised them as her own.
Caesarion was also captured young, and I was only thankful his death was swift.
I was left with Ptolemy, and together we found sanctuary on an island off the coast of Greece.
We called the isle the Land of Punt and lived there simply.
The next time I died, Ptolemy was barely into adulthood.
I fell from a great height while picking olives by a cliff’s edge.
Once again, I visited Isis’s realm before returning to the moment before my death.
When I awoke, I found Ptolemy weeping next to the olive tree.
It was only then that I told him of the truth of my curse. He wept all the harder.
But as the years passed, I knew that he was comforted that old age would not separate us during his lifetime.
And when my mind grew weary and my body frail, I welcomed the gentle release of death.
Of course, my peace was curtailed as I was reborn once more, awakening in the body I had first died in, not yet forty years of age. Ptolemy was fifty-seven.
Of Helios and Selene, I knew a little. One summer, a sailor shipwrecked on our isle, bringing with him news of all kinds. The sailor, injured by his ordeal, succumbed to infection despite my attempts to prevent it. But before he died, he told me of a queen, newly crowned, in Mauretania.
I repaired his boat over many months, my suspicions growing by the day.
When I deemed it seaworthy, Ptolemy and I sailed across the ocean that separated us from the continent.
It took us many months to locate Mauretania.
Neither of us were sailors, and we were unaccustomed to the harbours of the new world.
When I finally caught sight of the Queen, my heart soared.
Selene. And there by her side was Helios, among her courtiers.
I could have gone to her in secret. I almost did, but I worried about the consequences my presence would bring. Most of all, I feared she would be killed for my deception.
So Ptolemy and I returned to the Land of Punt to live out his remaining days. It was half a century later that I learned that both Selene and Helios had died from a swift and sudden illness that had swept through the court.
I did not linger on whether I would have been able to heal them.
I could have chosen to become a mother again—across the years I took many lovers—but the torment of my own children’s death is the only grief I will never recover from.[*]
I spent many years after they had gone dying. I tried it all the ways: with a blade at the throat, at the neck, in the heart. I tried drowning, fire, poison again. But every time I found myself there—with her.
I lived a life like Caesar’s: full of integrity and agitation.
I lived a life like Marcus’s: full of debauchery and drink.
But eventually I learned to live a life like mine: full of curiosity and reflection.
I travelled the world under many names and learned more languages—twenty-five at my last count.
I spent hours upon hours in your libraries and universities.
I have not come much further than the woman you met in the first pages.
Or perhaps it is that I have returned to her again.
Do you remember her? The grit of sand beneath her legs, her hair and belt loose, her mind preoccupied with a game of senet, and not the ruling of a kingdom?
Even her mouth was filled with the simple pleasure of a ripe fig, and not the words of a queen.
And as the years have passed, I have watched myself in your plays and your films and your paintings.
I have seen your costumes—polyester and plastic—an indignity of the worst kind.
I have even read your books, both fiction and non-, but false both.
You try to capture my essence but cannot, for you seek the truth in all the wrong places.
Look within and you will see me. I am every woman scorned, and every girl wronged. I am the wrath of vengeance and the heat of desire. I am everything carnal and your darkest sins. I am all that is innocent and pure.
Witch. Whore. Villain.
But I am also Cleopatra; the mother, the lover, the friend, and so much more. I am abundant. You will never define me, and that is the purest form of freedom I can hope to find in this life I’ve been cursed to endure.
I told you at the beginning, this is not the story of how I died. For death will forever evade me.
No, this is the story of how I lived.
And live still.
Skip Notes
* Pregnancy was an easy thing to avoid; if you had my texts you’d have the means too: a simple tincture brewed for two days.