Ancient Fire (Danger Boy Series #1)
Page 14
Chapter Thirteen
Thea: Survivor’s Tale
415 C.E.
After seeing so much, it would have been far easier to tell myself I had gone mad. I was soaking wet and trapped in the lighthouse, where a mob had assembled—for the second time that day—calling for me to be burned. Mother was gone, taken by the same crowd, and I was left with a talking reptile and a boy trying to be a wizard as friends. And my city was burning. How much easier to tell myself it was all some kind of insane vision. But the vision wasn’t insane. The city and its people were.
I had been with my mother, Hypatia, in that very lighthouse the day before as she con- ducted an experiment on the nature of time. That had been at noon.
By then, Mother already stood accused of being a witch. Me too, not only for being her daughter, but also for knowing stars the way I do and for suggesting once that our Earth is not the center of divine creation, but a piece of it.
Just for surviving the flood in the catacombs, they would suspect me of black magic. Eli the boy wizard, K’lion the lizard man, and I were all in the tunnels, trying to escape from the great library, which had been put to flame.
I am glad, at least, that Mother did not see the fire. It would have broken her heart and her spirit at last.
“Sorceress!” they were yelling from outside. Me, sorceress. Here I was, a thirteen-year-old girl, shivering and cold. Where was my magic now?
In the catacombs, the docks and channel locks had collapsed above us, destroyed by flames.
I was covered with water and swept away. I had been pretending to be dead and now found myself clutching one of the many real dead bodies rushing by, using it as a raft. That body, that person whose life had been given to slow pox, saved mine in the flood. Eventually, I floated out past the shattered Gate of the Moon at city’s edge. I shook myself off and staggered to shore.
I gazed back where the docks had been. Fire seemed to be everywhere.
I remember once looking at a statue of Serapis—the serpent god, the healer, the city’s protector—on Mother’s desk. I asked her if there really was a Serapis. I argued with her that if a god, or gods, exist, how could their greatness and mystery be contained in a mere statue?
“What there is really,” she said, “what exists, is people’s hope that there’s a way to balance things, heal them and make them better. ‘Serapis’ is one of the names we put to that hope.”
“Then Serapis is not real?”
“Hope is a very real, very living thing. But it needs to be taken care of and nourished, or it dies.”
Brother Tiberius’s view was that if you even mention Serapis, you should have your tongue cut out.
That seemed neither helpful nor hopeful. And now our city was burning. There were screams in the distance, panic. Everyone going through their own sorrow, their own grief.
Walking along the ruined shoreline, I heard the flapping of wings. I expected an owl hunting in the night, but saw instead the escaped griffin vulture from the zoo circling overhead. These loose bodies would be a feast for him.
Eventually, heading in the direction of the lighthouse, I was surprised to see the long wooden footbridge leading out to Pharos Island still intact. Once again, that bridge provided the promise of escape.
I thought that perhaps nobody would think to look for me in the lighthouse a second time, but I had only just arrived inside and bolted the door when I heard a loud thump and the first cry of “Witch!”
Tiberius had eyes all over the city, and the fire had not managed to blind them to my whereabouts. It seemed his whole mob was after a final reckoning with their perceived enemies that night.
An hour or two went by, and from the yelling, I could tell the crowd below had grown in size.
I had no idea if my new friends were still alive. Or if Mother was. In a lighthouse, surrounded by people, I had never felt more alone.
I thought of letting the mob in. Perhaps, in the end, that would be less painful.
Then, suddenly, came a new and distinct pounding on the door below. I froze, listening to the loud booms. And realized they had a battering ram. Now it didn’t matter what I did. They would get in anyway.
The battering ram crashed into the door again, and instinctively, at the top of the tower, I stepped back away from the noise. I stumbled over the remains from Mother’s experiment.
Because of the chaos in Alexandria, no one had come here to spark the lighthouse bonfire, which is why the signal was dark for the first time in memory. But the mirrors were there, and the fuel lines from the ground floor were still intact, drawing up oil from below to keep the giant wick lit...
I realized I could make the lighthouse shine again if there were a way to start the fire. And perhaps, seeing the signal, someone would come. Someone not connected to the mob below.
The crystals were sharp in my hands, almost cutting my skin, but I hardly noticed. I began to wonder if those two stones could be used…like flints.