Daughters of the Nile

by Stephanie Dray

  Someday, the priests and priestesses of this temple will call worshippers to find solace here in Lamentations. They will lead the faithful in a Path of Tears, to unbind their hair, streak their faces with ash, and confess to one another what they weep for. But as I consecrate this temple, my tears are not for sadness but for a wild, defiant pride.

  There, beneath the statue, is my chained crocodile. In the hour of judgment, Anubis weighs our hearts upon a scale. And if our hearts are black and heavy with sin in the hour of judgment, it will go to the crocodiles. So I will my crocodile to judge me. If my acts have been wicked, let her eat my heart. And if my heart is light, let it be saved.

  I haven’t the strength to run to the dangerous beast with her rows of sharp teeth, but I make my way, purposefully, such that I hear gasps go up from the crowd. Amphio surges forward to stop me, but the king bars his way with one outstretched hand, for he has faith in my miracles …

  Barefoot, I take one step down into the pool, luxuriating in the feel of the Nile water on my feet and legs. Glancing up at Amphio, who stares at me slack-jawed, I splash into the pool to the waist, my gown floating behind me as I open my arms to the crocodile.

  I am filled with the magic of Africa—the desert storms, ancient prayers, and life-giving rains. They were never mine to keep, only mine to hold. As I did on the long-ago day my mage and I first consecrated the ground beneath this temple, I make of the bones in my feet hollow things through which my heka can flow. I let it seep through the bare soles of my feet into the little bits of colored glass and tile that make glorious mosaic designs upon the floor of the pool. The heka flows into the pool beneath me, spreading like a river on the floor until it is twisting in the grooves between each tile, overflowing onto the floor beneath the crowd’s feet, splashing the stone walls, soaking into the mortar.

  The sacred beast senses my power and, splashing water with a ferocious snap of her tail, glides majestically into my arms, closing her eyes in bliss as I stroke her snout and run my fingers over the roughness of her olive-brown hide. She absolves me, my crimes washed away by the water she splashes up through her snout, and my heart is safe from her jaws.

  You know what you are, you say to me.

  And I do know.

  I am the Resurrection.

  But, my sweet goddess, I can now lay down the burden my mother entrusted to me so many years ago. So when I rise from the pool, Nile water streaming from my hair, my beautiful crocodile swimming in my wake, I take the little jade frog from my neck and I offer it to you to wear with the many jewels with which your worshippers will adorn you.

  For I have been the Resurrection, but now you have risen again, and it will be through you that we find salvation.

  *

  I will live to see my son turn three years old. That much, I am convinced I can do, even though it becomes harder to breathe every day. Though I try to stay awake, I drift in and out of sleep. My memory is clogged and muddy and my vision has become blurry. I’m so very tired, but my heart races erratically, waking me even from the respite of sleep with an incessant pounding in my ears.

  It is like the drums, I think.

  The war drums I heard when giving birth.

  And that was a war that gravely wounded me.

  I do not want to be in my chambers any longer. I want to be somewhere high, somewhere that the winds can sustain me. So on the morning of my little T’amT’am’s third birthday, I demand we celebrate atop the world.

  Perhaps the giant fire they stoke in the lighthouse will put the heat back into my blood, but it is very inconvenient to everyone, since I cannot climb up those stairs by myself. I entrust myself to the palace guard and finally into the arms of my husband, who insists on taking me from Iacentus and carrying me the last bit.

  The effort makes the king fractious. He all but gnashes his teeth when he sets me down on the makeshift bed made ready by the keeper of the lighthouse. “I don’t know why I am indulging you in this foolhardiness. But then, everyone has always indulged you. Caesar. Octavia. All of us. The spoiled princess of Egypt must have her way!”

  Juba is furious with me because I am dying.

  In his place, I would feel precisely the same way.

  It is with a shaking hand that I reach to stroke his smooth cheek, and my fingertips long to memorize the lines of his handsome face. He will say that he has aged, grown stouter, his good looks marred by an increasingly furrowed brow. But I see the handsome young man with desert skin who offered water to a terrified girl and reminded her of home. I see the young tutor who told stories to children at my first Saturnalia and said that the hue of my dress brought out the green in my eyes. I see the dashing cavalry officer who once lifted me into his arms and carried me, bleeding, from a gladiatorial arena.

  The things that happened between then and now, the betrayals and disappointments, they are long forgotten. All I see in him is the happiness he has given me.

  Drawing him close so that I do not have to shout to be heard, I whisper words of love. His lower lip trembles as he puts his hand over mine, pressed tight against his cheek. “I will put no stock in your love for me if you don’t recover, Cleopatra Selene.”

  I am too well trained in lies and artifice. He cannot fool me. So I smile because he knows the truth. Both that I love him and that I will not recover. It will be difficult for him to finish all we have started here. He will have to be mother and father to our children. King and queen to our kingdom. When I am gone, I would have him remember all the joys of the life we made together and none of the sadness.

  So we celebrate here, high above our kingdom, bathed in morning light. Little T’amT’am—or Ptolemy, as surely he must be called now that he is a man of three—does not understand that anything is wrong. They know there will be feasting afterward. Crinagoras will recite a new poem. Maysar will lead our Berber tribesmen in a wild drumbeat dance while Tala’s son and the other young men of our court will make wagers in a dice game, and Chryssa will chase after their boys.

  Meanwhile, my little prince and his playmates are excited by the crashing sea below. They are charmed by the gold-painted dome of my Iseum. They squeal with delight when they are given cakes sprinkled with saffron and other pastries sticky with honey.

  Luna’s excited bark grates on my nerves, and even my son’s beautiful laughter, usually so precious to me, hurts my ears. And I find that I am too weak now to hold him upon my lap while he sips from my cup. The king reaches to take our son from me. “Come, Selene. This has been too much for you. Let us get you back to your bed.”

  I smile in surrender, pressing my lips against my son’s chubby little cheeks and admiring his tiny fingertips with their perfect pink nails and their tiny half-moons. When Juba scoops my baby up from my tired and shaking arms, I say, “The wind soothes me. Can I rest here until you come back for me tonight after the festivities?”

  He narrows his eyes, but I can see that he will not refuse me. “I’ll stay with you and send the boy with his nurse.”

  I wheeze, fighting back a cough. “Oh, no, they are waiting for you at the palace. And my son should not be without both his mother and father on his birthday! Look how happy he is in your arms. How he needs you. Come back for me tonight and we can have supper together on pillows and low tables as we used to. I will feel much better by evening.”

  It is the last lie I will ever tell him, I think, and he must forgive me for it, because I cannot bear to see my king weep in sadness at my bedside. It will break my spirit when I most need my spirit whole. He said once that he could not bear to lose me, so I whisper the only words I know that will make him understand he will never lose me. “When and where you are Gaius, I then and there am Gaia.”

  The words make him smile, and he presses a soft kiss to my cheek. “When and where you are Gaia, I then and there am Gaius.”

  Then Juba hoists my squealing son atop one of his shoulders. Ah. My strong king. My little prince, my little war drum. I close my eyes, carving the sight in m
y soul so I may always see it.

  *

  THE king goes down the stairs followed by servants, a merry group of children, and the dog that watches over them, but my daughter lingers behind with me at the top of the lighthouse. She closes the door and leans her back against it. Taking a deep breath as I struggle for mine, she says, “Papa doesn’t know how much you’re suffering, does he? None of them know …”

  I grit my teeth and try to deny it to no avail. I have used up all my strength to hide it, and now I am wrung out, sweating and dizzy. I cough and cough until my throat is raw with it and a sob catches in Dora’s throat. “I don’t know how to make you better, Mother. I have tried everything. Every potion I know. If I knew a magic spell of healing, I would cast it. But I don’t know what else to do.”

  There is nothing else to do. She cannot turn back this River of Time. Just as all winds must die, so must I. And I try to remember that death, well done, is a gateway from this world into another. It need not be the end of anything.

  Dora stays at my side as I try to sleep, but my every breath is agony. My hands do not look like they belong to me—they are dead fish dangling from the ends of my arms, pale and wet. I am a horror to myself; helpless and drowning in my own body.

  For many hours or moments—I cannot tell anymore—I gasp, shuddering with pain. Every breath is agony. And when a tear slips from the corner of my eye, it wrecks my daughter.

  She knows I am fighting. That I am grappling with death. The moon has risen before the sun has set, and in the strange glow, my daughter’s face shines with tears. “Mother, if you—if you cannot bear it …”

  Isidora cannot finish whatever she was going to say. She is trembling and tortured, her slim shoulders shaking as she reaches for my hand. My daughter’s tears fall upon my cheeks as she kisses my fingertips. But when our fingers lace together, something changes in her, as if she has found something inside herself to hold on to. “If the pain is too great … there is something I can give you that will take it away …” Then she shakes her head back and forth with a wail of dismay. “But you will not wake from it, Mama. You will not wake from it.”

  She is offering me an easy death. She is offering an escape to me as I so unwillingly offered one to my own mother. But my daughter volunteers it with full understanding and the strength of love. She foresaw that she might bring me death, and it terrified her, and yet she offers it to me now.

  There is her inner gift. Compassion and courage. She is better than me. She is stronger than me. Let her save that strength for something greater. I will not place upon her the burden that was put on me. So I gather my words up, one at a time, rasping, “Not in this River of Time, my love.”

  I swore never to leave her. Anubis may take me, but I will never leave. I will fight to the end. And it is a fight, each breath a battle. When at last I hear the rattle in my own chest, Isidora says, “We love you and will always love you, but you can go … you can go …” Wiping the tears that have streaked her cheeks with kohl and salt, she whispers. “You can go home now.”

  Win or Die. That is the motto of the Ptolemies.

  I think I have won.

  I am Cleopatra’s daughter. I am less than she was, but in some ways greater too. I found the world cut apart and flung into the winds of war. I gathered the pieces that remained. I was a girl weighed down by chains in the dirt who rose again to bind people together with the wrappings of a Golden Age.

  I am not my mother. I am less and more. She played for the world with armies and ships, while I have shaped the world in whispers and shadows. She lost Alexandria and I rebuilt it here.

  She lost a kingdom and I carved out a new one.

  I will live on in my daughter, who loves me, forgives me, releases me. She has given me leave to let go my hold on this world. And I bequeath it to her. I bequeath this world to her and her daughters after her, and all daughters of the Nile.

  With the last of my strength, I lift my shaking hands to the heavens as a queen bestowing her majesty. From my fingertips, my winds come like the whisper of feathers, then grow loud like the flapping of wings, and I know I am going to fly away …

  The happiness inside me becomes luminescent, my skin no barrier to it. I glow like moonlight through pale glass, my soul separating into beautiful pieces like a blooming lily, petals folding away from the center.

  The winds grow stronger, blowing at my face, sending my hair whipping up into the night. Yes, the winds come for me and Mauretania, and the fire in the tower burns brighter and hotter, illuminating my kingdom. At the blaze, my daughter’s head jerks, her eyes on the window, wide with amazement. “The moon. The moon is going dark …”

  She breaks off, realizing what she has said, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. But I see it too, as vividly as anything I have ever seen. How lovely is the moon in eclipse? Mantled in shadow. So beautiful. So dark. So extraordinary.

  And mine will not be an ordinary death after all …

  *

  A strong hand stretches out for me. It is a hand I know as well as my own. It is the hand that took mine when we first stood defiantly against Agrippa beneath the banner of the Ptolemies. The hand that lifted me from the ground where I knelt beneath the unbearable weight of the emperor’s chains, unable to breathe.

  There is no breath for me now either.

  Shall Pharaoh’s son open the mouth? Helios—Horus the Avenger, open the mouth!

  I clasp this hand. His fingertips dance over mine in gladness, then grasp me tight. Helios pulls me to him, wrenches me up from the dark ocean in which I was drowning. He kisses me, breathes for me, filling my lungs with the sweet fragrant air of a new world.

  I have already passed through the Lake of Fire and faced my own serpent. My heart has already been weighed against a feather and spared anyway, by the mercy of Isis. How else can I explain that my twin brother and I are young again and in our power?

  On the prow of his warship, we sail into the harbor of Alexandria in Egypt. There is our lighthouse, a tall white tribute, blazing orange fire against a clear blue sky. Our people throw flower petals in the harbor. They greet Helios as their king. And just as he once promised, he takes me straightaway to the Iseum, where I am anointed.

  He puts the sparkling royal diadem upon my brow and the golden scepter in my hands—and I hold it fast. We journey up the Nile, all the way to Aswan, on our luxurious river barge. We see the fields golden with grain and watch fat little children running on the towpaths beside the oxen. We see the pyramids on the purple horizon and our shining city of Thebes, rebuilt. We sleep upon a perfumed bed draped in netting with silver stars. And I wear emeralds that match my eyes.

  We swim together in the green Nile, my gown floating ghostly white. Helios washes my shoulders, my arms, my trembling belly. He bathes me. He runs his hands through my hair, combing his fingers through it, thumbs massaging my scalp. And stroke by stroke, drop by drop, the salt water of my tears mingle with the sacred Nile water until I am wrung out, rinsed away of life’s pains. In this sacred space, he is the youthful god and I am a maiden goddess. My skin glows like the pale moon and he is the golden god.

  Just as Osiris then rose from the dead, so too shall the deceased Cleopatra walk in the great company of the gods.

  There, in the temples, we find our mother in a pure white robe, her complexion a sun-kissed copper as I remember it, her bare arms outstretched like Isis to welcome us home. Our father stands within the sphere of her ethereal glow—having set aside his warrior’s helmet in favor of a simple tunic and a reveler’s wreath of grape leaves—raises his glass, and makes a toast, merriment in his eyes. I feel as a girl again, as if I would rush to him and find myself staring up at him like the giant he once seemed to me. Our brothers are here too. Caesarion, Antyllus, and Philadelphus. And we fall into one another’s arms and weep for joy.

  It is all as Helios once vowed to me it would be.

  But just as the Rivers of Time flows before us with slippery possibility
, so too does the life after. There is no choice to be made between Egypt and Mauretania.

  No choice to be made between the men I have loved.

  It is Mauretania where I have left the essence of myself. There that I am buried. There that my beloved husband leaves honey cakes and pours libations for me. There that I will be reunited with Juba. And there that I find Ptolemy, my beautiful boy, riding his prize stallion outside our tomb. He rides in the sunshine under the flinty gaze of Memnon, who is young again and holds a sword in one hand and a round shield painted red with my initials in the other. Tala is there too, mixing her henna, shaking her head at me as if to scold me for being away for so long. My sister Hybrida lifts a hand to wave to me, Bast weaving around her ankles, tail twitching in excitement.

  Grabbing hold of my skirt, I run through the golden grain fields to reach them. Ptolemy cries out, leaping off his horse to welcome me. How proud he is! He wants to show me the tall spires of antelope horns he has taken as his prize, and we embrace, my happy tears wetting his straight hair.

  We will have roasted antelope for our feast when the king and Isidora and little T’amT’am return home. Our hearts are filled with so much love that we cannot want them to hurry, but we will welcome them with the grandest celebration when they come.

  For I know. Now I know the truth of it.

  I may crumble away to dust, but my spirit remains. I journey home now, and though my lands fall fallow and my palaces turn to sand, my kingdom lives a million years in me. I do not fear, for death is not the end of all things. I shall again warm myself by a fire, loved by a man, children upon my knee. And in the Nile of Eternity, I shall live forever.

  Epilogue

  ISIDORA

  The moon herself grew dark, rising at sunset,

  Covering her suffering in the night,

  Because she saw her beautiful namesake, Selene,

  Breathless, descending to Hades,

  With her she had had the beauty of her light in common,