The Fortune Teller(5)

In my youth, I did not know I had the sight. Only at certain times did the faintest glimpses of what was to come strike me like glimmers of light. Suddenly, I could see when the rains would fall, whether my brother would marry, if my father would buy me the wesekh collar from the market. This kind of simple knowledge would present itself, but for the most part, I thought nothing of these inklings.

Only once did a dark premonition creep into my mind. My mother was eight months with child when one night she asked me to comb her hair after her bath. I was smoothing her long tresses when the feeling gripped me. I knew I would never touch her hair again.

The next morning I heard her moans, and my brothers ran to get the old women we called the birth goddesses to help bring our new sibling into the world. For hours we huddled outside the room, listening to our mother fight for both their lives. The long silence that came afterward told me she and the baby had not won.

Perhaps if my mother had survived, she could have taught me about my gift and eased me into understanding, for I often wondered if she too had possessed the sight. Instead, she left me orphaned with searching thoughts and a precocious nature that my father encouraged. For I was a librarian’s daughter—his daughter—and not from just any library, but the Library of Alexandria, the largest in the known world.

The great library and connecting Musaeum were Alexandria’s pride, and had been since the city’s birth hundreds of years ago. Just as our lighthouse, the tallest lighthouse ever built, could signal any ship at sea, so too was the library a beacon of light, offering its wisdom to every seeking mind.

My family’s position at the library extended back to Alexandria’s first days. Alexander the Great founded the city but died shortly afterward, and his trusted general, Ptolemy Lagides, had claimed Egypt as his own. It was his advisor, Demetrius Phalereus, who hatched the plan to build the library and make Alexandria the Navel of the World.

When word reached Athens that a magnificent temple to the Muses—the Musaeum—was being constructed and would serve as a prominent university, Aristotle’s students began the pilgrimage from the Lyceum. One of those scholars was my ancestor. Since then, every male in my family has taken his place at the library with high honor. Even I, a young girl, enjoyed the privilege of my father’s station. Librarians were close to royalty in stature, so no one dared to question me when I roamed the grounds.

Imagine that the most majestic palace from Mount Olympus had been handed down to earth. This is how splendid the Musaeum was. Marble walls gleamed like hammered pearls in the sun, and a domed ceiling arched its graceful back against the sky. Inside, meeting halls, theaters, and an observatory composed the complex, along with a dining hall for scholars to break bread. A grand colonnade led from the Musaeum to the library’s main doors, and linked pathways to the zoo and botanical gardens—each another vainglory of Egypt’s new ruling family, the Ptolemies.

In the library’s interior, murals depicted the creation of the world and man’s quest for knowledge. Ten halls, each devoted to a specific subject, connected alcoves and circular reading rooms. These halls were massive, the size of any other city’s library.

I used to pretend to go on official errands and then hide in the empty alcoves to read what the great minds had to say. I would find a cushioned seat in a quiet corner, lay out my chosen scroll, and watch dust scatter and catch the sunlight as I unrolled the parchment.

The library’s works spanned thousands of years, exploring medicine, religion, astronomy, geography, mathematics, philosophy, physics, and the arts. Most scrolls and codices were either written in Greek or translated to Greek by the library’s army of translators.

My brothers were appointed as both translators and transcribers—a great honor—though their excitement quickly turned to horror once they saw the never-ending pile of work. The Ptolemies confiscated the books from every ship entering our ports so they could be copied. Usually the library kept the originals, only giving back the copies. Entire warehouses at the harbor stored countless texts that had yet to be sorted and translated.

The transcribers worked at a mad pace, sequestered in small, candlelit chambers in the back of the library. The translations and annotated editions they created were exquisite, but still there was never enough time.

I tried to offer my services to my brothers, to deliver messages or food to them—anything to give me a reason to be inside those walls. How could I be anywhere else? I was a librarian’s daughter, spoiled, imaginative, and a voracious reader.

But my simple life changed the day I found the key.

*

On my eighteenth birthday, my father surprised me with the wesekh collar I had seen at the market. I went to put the necklace in my mother’s jewelry box, where I kept all my jewels and ornaments. A Trove of Isis, the lacquered inlay chest had been in our family for centuries. The wooden jewelry box had hidden panels and dainty drawers to hold pendants and gems.

I lifted one tray to place the collar in the bottommost compartment and discovered a panel I hadn’t known existed. When I found the secret latch and opened it, my breath caught. An ornate gold key was nestled inside the nook. I would have recognized that key anywhere. Why my mother had a key to one of the library’s chambers was a mystery.

When I read the inscription, a chill traveled over me. This was a key to the subterranean galleries, where the oldest works were kept away from the light. I had never visited the lower galleries—no one could except for the pharaoh and his most trusted associates.