10. For It Holds Knowledge
For It Holds Knowledge
Every quiet street in Rome draws my attention. I strain for the failing heartbeats, for the sound of struggle. Rome is not without its vices. These are sounds so common I have long-since ignored them. Now I tune myself to them, straining to hear Livia and Gaius.
But they never appear again.
An emperor falls, another rises.
“What is an Elder?” I ask.
“There are no Elders,” you say.
Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.
We hunt through the sordid streets. We go to the theatre under the moon. We laugh and dance and make love and life is beautiful.
“This is what I promised you,” you say, looking over the city below. It is dirty and loud and full to the brim of food. We want for nothing, we don’t look over our shoulder in fear of being found.
“This could be our home,” you say.
Home. My home is you, wherever we rest our head.
I want to want this. I want to be satisfied in the calm, in the monotony. I want to find comfort in the familiar. I want to be worthy of you.
But.
“When were there Elders?” I ask.
“Once,” you say.
I open the book, you shut it. I pick around the edges of my questions.
“How old are you?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” you say.
I believe this—I don’t know how old I am. The rat of the temple had no age, no name, no status. She did what she was told and was thankful for a place to sleep. I look just as I did when you gave me a new life. My hair may grow longer, but I do not age. I don’t grow ill.
Every decade I grow stronger.
“Where were you born?” I ask.
“It doesn’t exist anymore,” you say.
Every thread unravels in my hands. I time my questions to when you’re in a giving mood, to when I think you’d give me some semblance of any answer. Never the full truth, that is not your way. You love to hold things close, revealing them only when it suits you.
(“At least I know the secrets I keep.”)
I am between your legs, my knowing tongue darting across your flesh.
My fingers press inside you, curling at that spot that arches your back and threatens to unravel you.
I pull back, leaving you on the edge. I have you chasing release, begging for more, your body pliable under me.
When you finally crest, it’s an explosion of flavor, my name moaned between panting breaths.
Afterward, when you are euphoric with release, I speak.
“Who made you?”
You say nothing.
“Are you the first?”
Nothing.
I know you are not asleep. The sun is hours from rising, the moon making her lazy trail across the sky. Yet you don’t speak.
“Stop asking questions, Melinoe. I won’t warn you a second time,” you say.
I may be a predator, but I know a threat.
There is a library in Egypt.
I’ve heard of it—the rise and fall of it, the knowledge it holds. How it’s been burned or sacked or desecrated, only to save itself. I hear it whispered on the tongues of the academics, mentioned in the squares, heralded in theatres.
Libraries in Rome do not have the answers I seek. I flip through their pages and tiptoe down their aisles in search of others like me. I find the edges of tales, of folk creatures. Stories, fables, fairy tales. Children’s nightmares.
I could leave it. You warned me to stop asking you questions, but the need for the truth digs at me. We are not alone, there are others like us. Two others, with purple eyes instead of red.
Why?
It is your fault for teaching me to read and write, for promising to show me the world and riches. It was only through you that I knew I could ask for more.
If you won’t give it to me, I will take it.
But not without you—never without you. You forbade me from asking you, not asking in general.
“There is a library in Egypt,” I say.
“Alexandria,” you say. A human lays slumped between us, his wrist sliced open, his blood slowly filling a mug.
He will die soon. This is when blood is the sweetest, just before their heart stops beating.
Those last few pulses, the last attempts of the heart to keep them alive…
then the acceptance that it is all over.
Sweet, sweet surrender.
“You’ve heard of it?” I ask.
“I’ve been there,” you say.
I bite back my next question—when? It is how I have to piece together your existence and my history. How long before you found me were you in Alexandria?
“Is it as grand as they say?” I ask.
“It’s been a long time,” you reply.
“Grander than the libraries here?” I ask.
You reach out and run a hand through my hair, toying with the locks. “You have an insatiable thirst for knowledge,” you say. It is fond, but your grip on my hair is firm.
I must take care with my words. I would never lie to you, but I cannot reveal the full truth. I lean into your touch, closing my eyes. Please, I beg silently. Do not take this as disobedience.
“I have you to thank for that,” I say and smile. I do—you taught me to read, to write. I did not know the depth of my ignorance until you opened my mind to the world around us. My life was a temple in Delphi, now it is the entire world.
“Yes,” you agree, and your grip loosens. Not enough to know I am out of danger.
“I hear the Egyptians are older than the Greeks,” I say. “That they knew astronomy and counting before the Greeks did. That they built grand pyramids and diverted water before Rome had running water.”
“They did,” you agree and stroke my cheek. “Do you wish to see this library?”
“One day,” I agree. “But…we cannot walk there.”
“No,” you agree.
The quiet stretches between us. You tilt my face to yours, and I open my eyes to search yours. They’re the twin of mine—red, glowing softly in the evening light. I swallow more questions—why red? Why why why.
I am an endless hole of whys.
“Boat travel is not always treacherous,” you say.
I am in the box again, the water trickling through the cracks, my voice swallowed by the sea.
I shiver, and it’s not feigned. We walked from Greece to Rome, up along the contested territories and through the wars of humans.
We walked through endless valleys and plains, where I thought we might starve for lack of humans.
But never, ever by boat.
“The wars of man are quiet,” you continue. They are not—they are never quiet. But I do not interrupt.
“We cannot go in winter,” you say.
“Oh?” I ask.
“The water is treacherous,” you say. Your thumb brushes the edge of my lip.
The human takes his last shuddering breath before he dies. You pull away and I think I’ve lost my moment, that I squandered my one chance to go to the library. To bring it up again so soon would be too obvious, I’d need to wait years.
You take the mug of his blood and sip, closing your eyes and inhaling in pleasure. You hand the mug to me, my lips pressed to the same spot yours did.
“Spring, on a passenger ship,” you say.
“Hmm?” I ask.
“To go to Alexandria. No hiding in boxes, no skulking below deck. We will have our own room and will be left alone. We’ll book a room with no windows, it will be cheaper anyway.” Your finger taps along the arm of your chair, thinking.
Tap tap tap.
“It used to take weeks, perhaps it is less now. I don’t like to drink stale blood, but it might be necessary.”
Tap tap tap.
“It is time we moved on. The neighbor made a comment about how my skin doesn’t sag yesterday.”
Tap tap tap.
My stomach churns. The thrill of going to Alexandria mixes with the horror of being on a boat again. Your finger stops its tapping, your gaze snapping to me.
“Do you wish to see Alexandria? Truly?”
Yes yes yes, a thousand times yes.
“Is it worth getting on a boat?” I ask, my voice disappearing into the night.
“I will never let anything happen to you, pische mou,” you say. I believe you. Through it all, you’ve protected me. You’re the one that pulled me from that box, swam me across the sea, dragged my body to our cottage. You nursed me to health after the sun burned me blind and feral with pain.
I thought I was always safe with you.
(“You are.”)
“Then yes, I wish to see Alexandria,” I say.
Whatever you see in my face settles you. Your smile is fond as it looks over my face. “I promised you the world. Alexandria holds the knowledge of the world.”
“You’ve given me the world,” I object.
“No, I have not. I have given you but a grain of rice, but a sip of blood. There is so much more to see, to know, to touch. I want to give it all to you. I want you to know the decadence our kind deserves.”
I want that because you want that. I did not know what it meant. I did not know the world extended so far to the east, west, north, and south. I did not know that cultures existed across an ocean too broad for us to fathom.
But that wasn’t the knowledge I craved. I wanted something more personal, something that I hoped would be found amongst the leading scholars of the world.
“To Alexandria,” I say, taking a swig of the blood and offering it to you. You swallow readily, a small trail of blood trickling down the side of your mouth. I lean forward to lick it off, my tongue tracing the edges of your lips.
We fall into our grave, the dead human’s blood running through us like fire. I bite your thigh in triumph and drink from you greedily. You pin me down, your hips settling over my face so I can worship you all over again.
To Alexandria, and the answers you won’t give me.