11. The Gap
The Gap
We see the light of the Pharos of Alexandria first. It blinks on the horizon, a beacon the ship crawls toward.
I am ready to get off this boat. I am sick of the stale blood collected before our voyage, of the ceaseless rocking of the ship, of not sleeping in the ground.
Even without drowning, I would still hate travel by sea.
And yet, to see the Pharos this way is worth the journey.
Beyond it, the harbor is alive with ships, and beyond that is Alexandria.
The ship docks well into the night, just as you’d planned. You don’t tell me how you knew to find a ship that would get us here in under two weeks and land in the dark. After that night, you didn’t speak of our trip again, and I feared bringing it up and seeming too eager.
Then you announced it was time to leave, and we did that evening.
Our home in Rome was cleaned of evidence of our nocturnal hunts, our grave filled in and covered with ornate tile. It was to be rented out until we returned, but not until all our neighbors were dead.
I thought that would be enough time to find what I was looking for.
Then I walked the streets of Alexandria.
The stone buildings dwarfed what I’d seen in Rome.
In comparison, Rome was dirty, feral, uncivilized.
Alexandria breathed a life of sophistication and knowledge.
No two people looked alike—they spoke different languages and worshiped different gods.
The streets teemed with Greek, Latin, and Egyptian.
Rome fell flat before Alexandria.
I could not have hidden my awe if I’d tried. My wide eyes could not focus on one thing, my ears followed the accents and words that reminded me of Greece. We moved through wide streets and passed palaces, gardens, theatres.
You found us a place to rent in the Βρουχε?ον, the Royal Quarter. We had a home with a courtyard and a garden. Did you write ahead? Was it yours from before? I tried to pick around this, to find the seam and unravel your history this way.
“The Egyptians were here first, the Greeks here second,” you said, as though that answered any questions.
I wondered how many homes you kept, amassing fortunes in lands I’d never know.
What antiquities did you possess? If the scholars of Alexandria knew of your existence, they’d hound you to the ends of the Earth.
But I am getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?
Alexandria was a breath of fresh air after the monotony of Rome.
Every evening, we explored a new facet—a neighborhood filled with Egyptians, who worshiped Isis in their temples.
Alexandria was technically of the Roman Empire, but the Romans stuck to their military bases.
How did I once think them scholars? They were nothing to the Jewish people of the Delta Quarter.
The Roman customs paled next to the Nubians, the Syrians, the Arabs.
And there, just a stone’s throw away in our Royal Quarter, was the library.
Naming it so singularly did not do it justice.
There was the Mouseion library, normally hidden from the common people.
At night the scholars bent over their papyrus, their fingers smudged with ink.
They rarely noticed me as I moved through the eaves, tracing the words and sections with my finger.
I read and spoke Greek and Latin, but I learned Egyptian for completeness.
The Serapeum library was southwest of us, near the Egyptian Quarter. This is where I started my search, before I realized what I needed was not there. It was public; anyone could browse through the files.
At first, it seemed like the best place to start my search. Public knowledge, warnings to the humans of a predator in their midst. Would this not be where anyone could find it?
Or was our kind clandestine? Known to no one but ourselves?
Early evening we would hunt in the agora, weaving between the merchants of perfumes, ivory and gold.
Sometimes you’d purchase an item for me—an ivory rose, a gold bangle, an alabaster earring.
I saw a lion up close for the first time there.
It crouched in a cage too small for it, lashing out with a giant paw when anyone came too near, muzzled. His master laughed.
“Humans are cruel,” I said. I’d been in a box like that before, cast into the sea. Left to drown, had it not been for you.
You hummed your agreement, already on to the next stall. But I lingered.
“A deal for you,” said his master in Greek.
“Perhaps a deal for you,” I countered.
He was easy to lure and even easier to kill. I didn’t drink from him, I had a suspicion it would taste foul. I freed the lion as far south as I could take him.
He didn’t spare me a glance as he disappeared into the night.
We attended plays and fights and theatre just like we did in Rome. Unlike Rome, it did not grow old. How could it? Every quarter a different culture, every theater a different story.
For years, I forgot why I insisted we come. My nightly pilgrimage to the library became every other night, then once a week, then once a month. The scrolls told me nothing, and the city beyond the walls of the library were too much of a draw to ignore.
I’d lay on my back in our garden, staring up at the moon, my fingers tracing the petals of a flower. You’d sit in your chair, your gaze faraway, your fingers tapping along the armrest.
I don’t remember what drove me to the Mouseion.
It was not boredom—Alexandria was a city that fell apart often, just to come together as something more inspiring.
Riots, administrative reforms, and revolts sewed chaos into the populace.
I watched the affairs of the humans from the Royal Quarter with the disinterest of most gods.
The humans were but food, moving around the world in short, insignificant strides.
One night I ignored the Serapeum and instead head to the Mouseion.
The statues of the Muses look down on me as I move through the courtyards and the lecture halls, learning the layout.
I slip into shadows to avoid the heartbeats of the guards or servants.
I could not feign belonging in a place that disallowed women.
I wander the lecture halls, down walkways shaded by pergolas, all the while avoiding being caught.
I am the temple rat again. It is a fun game, to sneak around as though I could be caught. By now I’d mastered compulsion on humans. There was no fear of consequences, because I had none. I was immortal. Short of the sun or starvation, I couldn’t be killed.
Or so I thought.
Maybe this is why I allowed my guard to slip one night. Or maybe I wanted to get caught, to be seen within their sacred halls. To be a legend amongst the scholars—the woman who broke in and disappeared before their eyes.
A ghost. A spirit.
Something to fear.
I move through the quieter rooms in the library, my fingers playing over the scrolls.
These were newer, written in Latin. Would I find the stories of those that came before me in Latin?
Such a new language, one that bullied its way into relevance.
At first I thought the answers would be in Greek, until I learned of the age of the Egyptians.
My disappointment rose when I saw what survived after Caesar.
“Lost?” comes a voice in Greek.
I’d been so distracted I stopped listening for heartbeats.
I turn slowly, ready to use my compulsion, when I see who was behind the voice. It wasn’t his size—taller than any other Greek I’d seen—nor the air of authority about him. It wasn’t the amused quirk of the brow juxtaposed against the flat line of his mouth.
It was his eyes. Green, glowing faintly in the dim light.
And the heartbeat I didn’t hear.
We stare at each other, shocked, for several long moments.
I contemplate running. I contemplate throwing myself at his feet and asking all the questions that plagued me.
This man was another of my kind, and he stands within the chambers of the center of knowledge.
He wears the robes of the scholar, his fingers stained with ink, smelling of cedar oil and blood.
“Your eyes…” he said, his voice a whisper.
“You are like me,” I said back.
We stare, until footsteps reverberate down the hallway. I slip into the shadows just as a man steps into the room, glancing about. “Who are you talking to, Theon?”
“Myself,” Theon says. He moves to block me from view, as if I need his help. I was a temple rat, and now I am a library rat, and I know how to stay hidden.
“Well, it’s late,” the man says.
Theon says nothing. The man sighs and leaves, his footsteps growing quieter as he moves through the halls.
“You can come out,” Theon says.
“Why not call the guards?” I ask, though that wasn’t the answer I was looking for. He recognized what I was, just as I recognized what he was. Was he surprised to see me, or to see me here?
“They are no match for you,” he says.
I step from the shadows and stand before him, but I could not bring myself to speak. How did I start? Did I tell him why I was there? Did I beg for answers? What answers did I want first?
“Why are you here?” he asks, saving me the trouble.
“Answers,” I reply.
“To what questions?”
“All of them.”
He sits at the table in the middle of the room and motions for me to sit across from him. I do, folding my hands before me to keep from fidgeting.
“How old are you?” I ask when the silence has gone on too long.
“One hundred, a few years one way or the other,” he says.
Too young to know anything firsthand. I was older than him, and you were older by far. What would this man tell me that I didn’t already know?
“This disappoints you?” Theon asks.
“Are there scrolls here of our kind?” I ask.
“Our kind?”
I narrow my eyes. He relents.
“That is a question that has many layers. What is ‘our kind’? Is it the Lamia, who devours sleeping victims? The Empusa, a female demon that seduces men and drinks their blood? Or do you favor the Roman Strix, the bird demon that flies at night? Perhaps you want to investigate the Egyptians, who think we are Akh-spirits who failed to transition properly when we died? Are you Lilith of the Jewish folklore? Or perhaps Lamashtu, with lion features who preys on newborns?”
I know some of these names. They’d been whispered on the street after we left a village, or told to keep children from wandering at night. Were they built on truths? Was it what happened when our compulsion failed, or was there text about us? Warnings?
“Which are we?” I ask.
“None and all,” Theon says with a sigh. How did he do that, when we did not breathe?
“I dislike riddles.”
“This isn’t one. You are asking an impossible question. Now it is my turn. Who is your maker?” He leans forward in his seat, his hands pressed to the table.
“My maker?” I ask. Is that what you are to me?
It was too simplistic, it didn’t include all the things you were to me.
You gave me life, you breathed into me a gift like the gods from my youth.
You taught me to hunt, to use compulsion.
You loved me, and I loved you. Maker. The word tasted like ash in my mouth.
“Your eyes—I’ve never seen another with red eyes,” Theon says.
“So you’ve met more of our kind?” I ask. It was my turn to lean forward.
“Yes, of course,” Theon says simply. Of course. I hate the way he said it, hate the look he gives me.
There were more like us out there. I would find them. I would find one old enough to know things instead of this youth before me, speaking in riddles, hiding behind his scrolls.
My answers were not in this building.
“Wait,” he says, grabbing my wrist before I could stand.
My lip curls at the contact. How dare he touch me.
Only you were allowed to touch me. I pull.
Hard. He flies over the table, his grip slipping in surprise.
His large body makes a loud noise when it hits the floor.
The guards would come to investigate soon, and I needed to be gone by then.
Theon stands quickly, blocking my exit. Of course he was unphased, he was like us. Immortal. Stupid stupid stupid. I was so used to fragile humans I didn’t think what that move would do to another like us.
“Wait,” he says again. I wait for an apology for touching me, but none comes. “Sit again. I will answer your questions if you answer mine.”
This is what I wanted, was it not? This is what I sailed across water for, what I carefully crafted for you to suggest. All the hours I spent reading books in Rome or buried in the Serapeum alone was for this moment. To find answers, to find another like us.
I return to my seat.
“How old are you?” he asks.
“Two hundred and fifty, a few years one way or the other,” I answer
“That explains your strength. Go ahead, ask your question.”
“Are there others like us in Alexandria?”
“Yes. Ten that I know of, likely more.”
“Where are they?” I ask.
“My turn,” he says, holding up a finger. I wonder if it would grow back if I snapped it off and fed it to a dog. “Who is your maker?”
That word again, that insult. I grind my teeth.
This is why I stopped speaking to the humans in the taverns.
Their conversation was dull at best, and tedious at the worst. They were food and nothing else.
As such, you were the only other I spoke to.
This was the longest conversation I’d had with someone other than you in decades.
“She is more than just a maker,” I hiss.
“She?” Theon’s eyebrows rise, considering me anew.
“Yes, she. Aletheia,” I say.
“The Mother of Silence?” Theon asked, his already white face paling.
The hair on the back of my neck stands on end. I don’t have an answer, because I do not know.
I think back to this moment often. What if I had left when I wanted to? Broken his wrist, left him crumpled on the ground as I walked out of the library. Used the words and names he gave me to start my own research. Would I have ever found answers? Would I have found the others like us on my own?
What would my life have looked like had I not stayed to hear his words?
“Your maker is an Elder?”