Ancient Fire (Danger Boy Series #1)

by Mark London Williams

  Chapter Eight

  Thea: Bazaar

  415 C.E.

  My name is Thea, daughter of Hypatia, last librarian in the city of Alexandria, keeper of archives and records, seeker of truth. This is my record, and whoever reads this, know that I would not lie. A lizard man and a boy wizard really did come to my city, fly around the lighthouse, and escape from a rhinoceros.

  And that was before we’d been properly introduced. But proper is the wrong word for this story.

  Their ship came at the stroke of noon. I’d climbed the tower with my mother, who was preparing a demonstration for her lecture on “The Bending of Light and the Movement of Time.”

  With the sun at its zenith, she revealed a carefully placed row of crystal prisms she’d set up in front of the lighthouse mirror. Normally, that mirror is used at night, or during dense fog, when the flame of Pharos burns and is reflected and thrown far out to sea.

  But now, the lighthouse threw instead a blazing rainbow, and within moments, the airship appeared.

  “What’s happening?” I asked Mother. There had always been whispered stories about ancient flying ships from distant lands, but I had never seen one before.

  “The lighthouse signal seems to have drawn another kind of ship here. I wonder where it’s from? Or, perhaps, when it’s from? And if it’s friendly.” My mother looked at the rows of crystals. She’d spent months shaping them and calculating how to line them up. “I wonder if this was such a good idea.”

  I leaned out over the railing to get a closer look at the ship, and that’s when I first saw the boy.

  He was staring at me, too.

  “Where are you from?” I shouted, but I’m not sure he understood me. He said something that sounded like “Neujarzii,” but it made no sense.

  Still, we might have shouted more questions, marveling at each other’s strangeness, if “Brother” Tiberius hadn’t hit him in the head with a rock.

  Tiberius is friends with Cyril, the head of the church in our city. It used to be the Romans who ran the place were always mad at the Christians. Then the Christians began taking over, especially Cyril, and it was their turn to get mad at the Romans.

  So the Christians began doing to everybody else what had been done to them.

  Mother said, “People have long memories here in Alexandria. And in a place with so many different names for God and heaven, that can be dangerous.”

  Perhaps the city is not so advanced after all. Tiberius had been saying in public that Mother was a witch, because she lived alone—without a husband — and because she played music, knew both elemental and advanced science, and believed in Serapis.

  Serapis is a god who dwells mostly in the underworld. They say he brings light and dark together and can heal both human and animal.

  I don’t know if he’s real.

  Nor, at that moment, did I care. The ship disappeared, heading off in the general direction of the Royal Quarter with its museum, zoo grounds, and library. And it didn’t seem as though Serapis, or anybody, human or god, could get us safely out of that tower.

  I wished that we were on the airship, too. Between the appearance of the boy wizard and his strange, lizard-like companion, Tiberius and his dozens of followers were convinced, utterly and forever, that Mother and I were witches of the most terrible sort. It didn’t help that the lizard man resembled the snake-like parts of Serapis.

  “If you leave now, we won’t harm you!”

  There was just one thing they did to witches.

  Letting them go without harm was not it. But Tiberius was shouting from below, suddenly claiming he was going to give us secure passage out of the lighthouse.

  “Is it a trick, Mother?”

  “It has to be,” she replied. “But I don’t know how else we’re going to get out.”

  “Then we’ll stay.”

  “Then we’ll starve. Or they will get in eventually.” Mother lifted my chin and smiled right into my eyes. “Don’t worry. For all his ravings, Tiberius is right about one thing. Sometimes there is magic in the world. Maybe we can trick them, too.”

  She and I went down the seemingly endless stairs to the bottom and flung open the doors.

  Tiberius and his mob were waiting. He smiled. “Witches. We only want you out of our midst. We’ve seen your trickery. It’s too strong for us. Please. Just…go.”

  He gestured with his hand, and the crowd parted like a gate being swung open. We stepped through.

  There was a long, narrow bridge running along the top of the seawall that controlled the flow of water into the harbor and connected Pharos to the mainland. The way across seemed clear. “We mean no harm to anyone,” Mother said, looking directly at Tiberius. “We’re interested in truth. And in what light can teach us.”

  “You’re lecturing again, Hypatia. Leave here. Walk away, go back to your library, and be out of Alexandria by sunrise. Let the light teach you that.”

  Mother’s shoulders sagged a little, and she turned away, putting an arm around my shoulder. “Come, sweet Thea.”

  “‘Sweet Thea.’” That was Tiberius repeating the phrase, mocking us.

  “Does sweet Thea have slow pox, too?” he went on. “Or is she protected by one of your charms?”

  The slow pox epidemic was something else that was blamed on us. We were suspect because no one at the library had come down with it. In truth, I think the only “magic” we used was that we bathed regularly.

  “We don’t use charms.” Mother still had her back to him.

  “It’s said witches never suffer from their own spells. If you caused the sickness, and we let you leave, perhaps you’d take the cure with you. We can’t have that.”

  Suddenly a hand shoved me off the bridge, and I was engulfed by the warm green-blue of the Mediterranean. I recovered and swam back to the top. When I broke the surface, I could see my mother’s face. “Swim!” she yelled at me. It was her hand that had pushed me. They were hauling her away.

  “Swim!”

  Her last words to her child.

  But she also knew swimming would give me a better chance than running. I am a good swimmer — Mother used to call me Mermaid as a nickname — but, more important, I could now see Tiberius had the other end of the bridge blocked off by two fierce-looking men. He had never had any intention of letting us go.

  I could swim back toward the necropolis. There was an underground tunnel there with an entryway near the harbor. It led back toward the library.

  It might have been safer to travel underground, but speed was more important to me. I decided to swim for the docks and return to the library on foot, and, once there, I would get help. Besides, since the slow pox had broken out, there were a lot of unburied dead down in the catacombs. And I was in no mood to make my way past them in the dark.

  As I swam away, an arrow whizzed past my nose, disappearing in the water.

  An arrow!

  Normally only palace guards carry bows and quivers. Who among Tiberius’s men was shooting at me?

  Tiberius’s influence—and Cyril’s — must have been growing among the guards themselves. I knew then there would be fewer and fewer safe places for me.

  Another arrow skimmed by me. Swim, Mermaid!

  A few minutes later, I pulled myself out of the water, up on the wooden pilings of the harbor, shivering and soaked. But I had very little time before Tiberius and his mob would catch up with me.

  I hurried to the Gate of the Moon, the main entrance to the city from the harbor side, staying close to the city wall instead of the main boulevard. The fewer people who saw me, the better.

  As I approached the Royal Quarter, I was surprised to see a few vendors still lined up by their stalls or selling trinkets from blankets.

  Normally, you could buy everything and anything here — fruits, nuts, olives, smoked meats, fabric, and spices from far-off lands. You could find the services of a medic or a midwife, or get your fortune told.

  Since the pox had come, however, t
he open-air bazaar was supposed to have been closed down. But people still have to eat. And to eat, some people still had to sell.

  “Child, child . . .”

  I recognized her. Her name was Sarai, one of the fortunetellers. She saw me shivering and took the shawl from around her shoulders to wrap around me.

  “Thank you…,” I gasped.

  Sarai handed me a piece of smoked fish. And then, looking around so as not to be seen, she slipped a small statue of Serapis into my hand. “For protection,” she whispered.

  But I hardly noticed. I was watching a griffin vulture fly by overhead. The only griffin vulture I knew about lived in a cage in the zoo.

  How could he have gotten out?

  In answer to my question, the animals roared; elephants were trumpeting, and you could hear human screams from the groundskeepers. As this terrible music grew louder, the lizard man leaped over the mighty wall from the garden side and landed in front of me!

  In his arms, he was holding the boy wizard. Everyone in the bazaar was shouting, too, falling all over themselves to get away. Everyone except Sarai.

  “Who are you?” I asked them.

  The boy wizard spoke again in some strange tongue.

  At that moment, Tiberius’s mob rounded the corner. They stopped and pointed at the lizard man.

  “Look at the creatures she commands! Can there be any doubt she’s a sorceress?” It wasn’t Tiberius who spoke, but someone stockier and beardless. Where was their brave leader now? “And that this sorceress should not be allowed to live?”

  Somehow, the boy wizard and lizard man knew what was being said. They looked at each other, then at me.

  The boy nodded, and the lizard man put him down. Then picked me up.

  I was still shivering.

  The small Serapis talisman fell out of my hand. The boy bent down, perhaps to give it back to me.

  But by now the lizard was holding me tight and began bounding away on powerful legs.

  Tiberius’s followers tried to give chase but could not keep up. Angry and exhausted, they turned their attention to the boy.

  The last glimpse I had was of the boy hopelessly surrounded.

  Until he put on some kind of soft helmet—and disappeared.