Written in the Ashes

by K. Hollan Van Zandt

  The travelers shared glances of supreme relief and smiled back at the crone as she led them to several simple rooms furnished with washbasins and down beds. “You may sleep here tonight,” she said. “I will have some supper brought up to you. In the morning you must go to the sacred spring and wash, and gather white narcissus as an offering to the Pythia. You may stay one night, and then you must go. The city is no place for visitors now.”

  The Pythia. Hannah wondered about the regal channel of the gods. Synesius had told her the Pythia had once been of tremendous importance when the oracle belonged to Gaia, the earth mother, but was gradually replaced by the priests of Apollo when the oracle was rededicated to the Greek sun god. What role did the Pythia play now that the city lay in ruin? Hannah sat down to untangle her thoughts.

  Of all the travelers, it was undoubtedly Hypatia who was the most delighted see the simple yet civilized furnishings of the rooms. While the others sat by candlelight and discussed their quest, she zealously scrubbed her arms, hands, face, and feet, then curled up like a cat on the softest bed and fell fast asleep.

  25

  Hannah awoke the next morning to the flutter of shiny black wings in a patch of grey sky through the window. As she propped herself up on her elbows she could see that Hypatia was already awake, her chin resting on her hand as she sat at the base of the window looking out. “Kalimera,” said Hannah.

  “Kalimera,” said Hypatia. She was worlds away, her blue eyes lost at sea.

  Outside the raven cawed. “My father says a raven at dawn is a good omen,” Hannah said.

  “We could use a good omen,” said Hypatia without turning her head.

  The four travelers walked together silently, side by side, out of the temple and east to the site of the sacred Castalian spring.

  “It is said the spring was formed where the hoof of Pegasus struck the earth,” said Gideon.

  “I can feel the divinity of this place,” whispered Hannah. “Like a synagogue.”

  Sofia nodded. “It is the presence of Gaia, the Earth Mother, and of the Goddess herself.”

  As they passed through the pine forest, they could hear water trickling. Several paces later they found the small stream and followed it to find two thrones carved into the mountain, a rectangular pool beneath them where a great blue heron was wading. The outer perimeter of the pool was a dried-up basin that had clearly once held quite a bit more water. The stone channel out of which the water flowed was smoothed by what may have once been a great waterfall that was now nearly dry. The heron ignored his visitors, and went about searching for unsuspecting frogs.

  Hannah sat at the bank before entering the water. She had read about the Oracle of Delfi in the Great Library, and the scrolls had told of ornate marble halls lined in gold, magnificent statuary set all around the entrances, and massive gardens filled with flowers brought as gifts to the Pythia from all over the Mediterranean, Persia and Africa by kings and emperors: rare orchids, lilies, roses and fragrant vines. What had happened to them? There was supposedly a temple in the east built to house all the treasures of statues, vases, precious stones, perfumes and silks, but all the temples in the east lay in ruin. Why must the Christians destroy such a sacred place? Hannah dropped her head. When she finished praying, Hannah carefully removed and folded her clothes and entered the spring, which was hardly knee deep. The others did the same. Together they raised the water to their lips in cupped palms and drank of the cool spring. It was the purest water they had ever tasted, cold and sweet.

  When they emerged and dressed, Hannah walked around the wood in search of Persephone’s flower, the tender narcissus.

  “Here,” said Gideon, pointing down to a cluster of the tiny white flowers growing between two rocks beside the pool. Hannah picked one, drawing the little blossoms up to her lips to inhale their divine fragrance. Such a small gift did not seem like enough. She wished she had some wonderful treasure to offer the Pythia like the ones she had read about, a gold piece, Persian silk, something more.

  “I am sure the Pythia considers all earnest requests, regardless of the expense of the offering,” said Hypatia. “One of the Indian texts I encountered said that one humble tear offered to God is more precious than a thousand chests of gold.”

  “I hope so,” said Hannah, “because I have nothing else.”

  Stella met them at the temple gate, her eyes aglow. “The Pythia will see you now,” she said softly, leading the travelers through the long corridors of the temple and into a large hall to wait.

  The hall was clean, though sparsely decorated with a few vases and sculptures set on marble pedestals before large arching windows that afforded a view of the now barren garden, and a patch of the sky between two tall hills.

  Hypatia and Sofia sat before the windows to look out, a heaviness upon their shoulders. Gideon took Hannah’s hands and squeezed them once. “I believe in you, Hannah,” he said. “We will pray to the spirits here and await your return.”

  “Thank you,” Hannah said, moved by Gideon’s acknowledgement. Then she turned to Stella. “I am ready.”

  Stella looked to Gideon. “Your slave will speak?”

  Gideon nodded. “She is more than any slave. She will speak.”

  Hannah nodded in thanks.

  Hypatia closed her eyes. She had never believed in oracles or omens. She had lived her life empirically, scientifically, looking to life itself for answers. If what had happened to Delfi was any sign of what was to come to Alexandria, she did not need an oracle to speak any words of wisdom, or an Emerald Tablet.

  The future was already laid out before them.

  Stella led Hannah through the back of the temple to the end of a long hall, where an ornamental rug hanging on the wall concealed a secret door. “The Christians never found this one,” whispered Stella as they stepped inside and descended a long flight of steps that took them beneath the earth to another door, which Stella unlocked with a brass key that was kept hidden behind a loose stone in the wall.

  Once inside, Hannah gasped. The long, ornate room opened to a dais where a veiled figure was seated upon a tripod throne, perched above a fissure in the earth that leaked a cool and pleasant smelling vapor. The oracle! Hannah felt her heart leap. At last her quest was at an end. Between her and the Pythia burned the eternal blue flame said to have remained lit for a thousand years, set in a wide copper bowl supported by a marble base inlaid with opals, abalone, and rose quartz. Completely covering the floor, and even stacked three high in places, were elegant rugs brought as gifts from Asia Minor and Persia, now threadbare in spots where the knees of thousands of noblemen over the centuries had knelt before the oracle. All around the seated Pythia, and in every corner of the room, stood enormous crystals: glittering amethyst clusters as tall as children, phantom quartz points, mounds of cut emeralds and sapphires like glittering anthills set in golden bowls beside shimmering peacock feathers in tall painted pots. Frankincense burned in long smoky coils, filling the air. As Hannah looked around at the concealed treasure of the Temple of Apollo, she was overcome by the feeling that here in the inner chamber of the Pythia, beneath the surface of the earth, there was a pulse, a promising heartbeat still supporting life, even though the city lay in ruin.

  “Gaia,” said Stella. “I bring you Hannah of Alexandria.”

  Hannah stepped forward, her head bowed.

  The Pythia laughed chimerically. “The Goddess will never die, dear girl. The Christians are not so powerful as that.” The voice of a child spilled from the veiled figure seated upon the dais, a sapphire gown of silk flowing all around her like the tide. She was merely a girl.

  Hannah looked up, surprised.

  “Do not be afraid, Hannah,” said the child, her voice so pure and kind. “You are the last. The last seeker who will ever come to Gaia, the oracle of Apollo, the oldest vestige of the ancient wisdom. I have many things to tell you, and you m
ust listen with your heart and promise to remember.”

  Hannah nodded and knelt upon the floor at the base of the dais. “I promise,” she said.

  “Good,” said the oracle firmly. “Do not despair over Delfi. Anything that dies is reborn a thousand times. In this way, there is nothing that does not live forever.

  “In human ignorance of transformation we seek to preserve forever what thrives today, but the great secret is that our world is always changing forms. What blossoms must also wilt. What dies will be reborn. It is the way of life eternal, and the greatest secret the Earth possesses.”

  The oracle laughed, amused. “All tides must flow in two directions; their source is what remains the same. But no matter how they ebb and flow, all seasons, all tides, all contraries are connected. Forever. It has always been this way: one extreme becoming the other in a never-ending spiral of birth, decay, rebirth.”

  “But everything will be lost,” said Hannah.

  “It is true that the teachings of the Goddess are disappearing. Her sons reject her. They do what every child must, or all would remain with the parents forever.” The oracle shifted her position slightly, an aura of blue light appearing around her veil. Her voice lilted happily. “But you, fair daughter of the desert, you have been chosen to bring a child into the world who will learn the sacred ways and carry them in its blood through the coming times of darkness. All will not be lost.”

  Hannah shifted on her heels. “When shall this child come to me?”

  The Pythia smiled beneath her veil. “When? Why, it grows within your womb even now.”

  Could this be? Hannah brought her hands to her belly. Her moonblood had not arrived, but this was not unusual; she assumed the seasickness had delayed it. But what if the Pythia was correct? Could this child before her truly see what Hannah herself had not even known? As she traced the weeks in her mind back to the time of her last moonblood she grew anxious. She could not even remember now when she had bled last but it had to be before leaving for Pharos. If this was so, then she had only one question: would the child be Gideon’s or Julian’s? Perhaps the oracle knew. “If this child grows within me, Gaia, then who is the father?”

  “God is the father, Hannah. Your child is of heaven and earth.” The Pythia paused. Universes unfolded in her breath. “As are all children.”

  Hannah listened intently and her heart felt lifted with this strange news, news she dared not ponder any more deeply, for there was something she needed first to say. She stepped forward, “Beloved Pythia, I have come from Alexandria, sent on a quest by Master Junkar of the Nuapar.”

  “Yes, I know,” said the Pythia child, pointing. “Look there.”

  Hannah turned and took several paces toward a small wooden chest, simple, its lid painted with the image of the winged sun disk of Isis. It was probably the most unadorned item in the room.

  “Open it,” said the oracle.

  Hannah knelt and unlatched the chest, lifting the lid. Inside was a bundle of burgundy cloth. She withdrew it and held it to her breast, then closed the chest.

  “Unwrap it,” said the Pythia.

  Hannah set the bundle down on a kilim and slowly unbound it until she saw the green glass of the Emerald Tablet, so beautiful it seemed alive, pulsing with energy and light, a curious script embossed on its surface. But when the last of the cloth fell away, it revealed a jagged edge where the tablet had been broken.

  Hannah held it aloft in her naked hands. “This is only the lower half of it?” she said, realizing as she stroked her hands across the jagged edge what it meant. It seemed so utterly wrong, the fluted edge jagged and sharp. Hannah trembled with fear. Was this what Julian had intended?

  The Pythia shifted on her tripod chair. “Hannah. Listen to me now. The other half you must retrieve from the Oracle of Amun-Ra, deep in the Egyptian desert in the Siwa Oasis.”

  Hannah looked up. What? Surely the Pythia did not mean this. “No. It cannot be. And even if it is, I must refuse.”

  The Pythia laughed. “So you thought this was the end of your quest. No. It is the center. You are already bound, by oath and by fate. You have no choice.”

  Hannah touched her belly with one hand. “But—”

  “The child will be safe. Your lineage of children, Hannah, all through the generations, must guard the secret of the Emerald Tablet. The world will be entirely different one day, perhaps open to its wisdom. People will soar through the sky in metal birds and communicate though tiny boxes. You cannot imagine what I have seen.”

  “I will do as you ask,” said Hannah, troubled but fervent.

  The Pythia dropped her head forward. Sadness seeped from her bones into the room, as if what she had to say came from such finality she knew nothing could undo it. Even for such a young child, her burden seemed so heavy. When the girl on the throne lifted her head again, it was to speak the very last words of the Oracle of Delfi.

  “Tell your people that the carven halls of Delfi have fallen in decay. Apollo will not come again to this prophesying bay. The talking stream is dry that hath so much to say.”

  Hannah drew her breath in sharply. The only sound in the room came from the fire in the basin.

  The oracle froze like a statue, and Hannah knew at once she was expected to leave. She rebound the upper half of the Emerald Tablet in the linen cloth and clutched it to her breast.

  Her audience with the Pythia had ended.

  So.

  The travelers returned to Athens by nightfall on a rickety cart given them by Stella, driven by Gideon and pulled by the bay horse, its shiny black eyes the size of bumblebees. Above them the dark sky rumbled, and two fat drops struck the backs of Hannah’s hands. Gideon clucked to the horse and smacked it on, eager to miss the rain, though they had to stop several times for sheep in the roads, the shepherds and their golden dogs never in a hurry to push the animals along.

  The women gathered the blankets tightly around themselves and huddled together for warmth, taciturn and solemn, but none more so than Hannah, who felt at the bottom of the world with a whole new quest before her, and one that may be even more dangerous than the last; and she was with child. She had not been able to bring herself to tell them. She could scarcely even admit it to herself, lest her heart come undone.

  Each traveler felt a deep, silent sorrow in the oracle’s pronouncement. They did not speak as they neared that place in the road where the body of the ox driver, or what might be left of it, lay hidden in the river. How could they?

  Hannah could not keep Julian from her mind. She could be carrying his child, if what the oracle had said was true. His child. How could it possibly be Gideon’s? With Julian, there had been so much. She wanted nothing more than to see him, to press her ear to his chest and hold him, to tell him how their child was growing inside of her. Hannah watched the clouds in the sky, scrying for an answer. How she wanted to return to Pharos to find him. But Julian was dead, and Master Junkar was on his way to India. She was alone, entirely alone, and with a secret that would tarnish her reputation and leave her without a home, for even Alizar would surely reject her now and cast her into the street.

  Hypatia also struggled within herself as with the finest adversary imaginable. She had murdered a man. Murdered. His blood had stained her hands. Every time she shut her eyes she saw it all again. How could she ever reconcile herself to what she had done? She felt ill a thousand times over. How could she face her students with such a treacherous secret to hide? She would have to cleanse herself somehow, perform twice as many austerities to atone for what she had done.

  As the cart waggled along, a wheel would strike a stone and jostle them, and the women in the rear would look at one another, their eyes filled with concern. And so it was that the women became bonded to one another beyond what any of them had known or defined as family. They were bound by the experiences they had shared, by death, the journey, the words
of the oracle, the unfamiliar wilderness, as people are always more bonded to one another that have shared a bag of salt than a bag of sugar.

  “I am going to speak to Alizar. I think you should live in the Great Library when we return,” affirmed Hypatia, squeezing Hannah’s hand as a white vein of lightning struck the distant mountains. “Synesius will continue to tutor you. I will see to it that you have a room with a view of the gardens.” How she longed for the precious, safe walls of the Great Library, the only home she had ever known. Once they retuned to Athens, Hypatia decided, they would collect their things and the Vesta would sail straight away, provided the weather would allow it.

  Hannah nodded, unable to speak the words that were turning in her mind.

  The damp stone streets of Athens lay shrouded in heavy-bellied clouds that hung low to the ground, suggesting that rain had come and would return again soon. They slept only one night in the Inn of the White Raven, and then packed their belongings. At dawn, the full force of the storm struck, turning the sparkling cerulean sea to a dismal slate grey. The Vesta rocked and swayed gently in her slip as Alexandria’s dolphin circled slowly in the dimpled water, rising for breath just beyond the stern of the ship.

  Gideon felt eager to get underway to avoid further inclement weather in the crossing, and suggested they stay the night in Harmonia before taking on the Mediterranean. As they carried their things up the dock, Hypatia looked over at Hannah and noticed how her cheeks began to pale. “Oh, Mother of Zeus, I forgot.” Hypatia dropped her bags. “We must get some herbs for your seasickness. Gideon!” Hypatia yelled for the captain. “We must go to the herbalist. Do not sail without us.”

  Hypatia and Hannah took off down the docks, asking where they might find the apothecary. An old woman with a tattered scarf drawn over her head lifted a gnarled finger and pointed down an alleyway.