Authors: Peter Joseph Swanson
“I only heard your confusion.”
Cleopatra admitted, “I can’t remember what happened to me to put me in the desert. I thought for sure I’d recall by now. What happened to me?”
“You’re quarreling with your brother. He won a battle but he hasn’t yet won any war.” Iset regarded the cave walls. “I meddle as I can.”
Cleopatra asked why this temple would help her.
Iset explained, “Egypt has been ruled by the Greeks since Alexander the Great, Persians before that, and before that the Nubians took over for a whole dynasty. I don’t hate rulers merely because they have conquered and they’re not Egyptian.”
“Only I can keep peace in Egypt in these mad times.”
Iset picked up a thin red snake from the floor and wrapped it around her wrist. It stayed and she had a bracelet. “You’ve had some time now to think and remember.”
Cleopatra cringed. “I was suddenly in the desert. But how?”
Iset tapped her finger at her hefty old-fashioned wig. “For me to proceed I need to know what’s going on at the palace, from your memory.”
Cleopatra frowned. “I must have been hit on the head and it hasn’t come back to me yet.” She felt for a bump.
“You must remember something of it.”
Cleopatra took a deep breath. She felt like she was about to weep. She dabbed at her eyes but they were dry.
Iset looked concerned. “Have you forgotten it
all
?”
“I assume my stupid brother somehow found my hidden apartment. He must have hit me on the head—wait a minute. I remember… I remember a terrible storm. I felt ghosts in the wind!”
Iset grinned knowingly.
Cleopatra continued, “I remember now that I’d just seen the witch that’s coming to help me—I saw her in the smoke of my magic fire. That’s the first time I ever got the fire to work for me like that—that’s when the magic first grew strong inside of me, as the storm raged over the palace. I’ll never forget such a storm. Finally, now that I’
m
twenty-eight years old, my eyes have finally become magic enough to see that! Finally!”
Iset frowned. “Perhaps that’s when Ptolemy’s witch, Sorceress Thrace, first saw where you were hidden. A mirror spell.”
“I didn’t know it could do that.”
“Too late now. Could you see the witch who’s coming to help you?”
“No, the wind blew the smoke away too soon before I could make out the face. The storm came inside the room!”
Iset frowned. “Oh, what a shame. I suppose we’ll have to wait and see who she is after she arrives and we introduce her to you somewhere in Alexandria… somehow.”
Cleopatra was surprised. “Do you know her identity?”
Iset frowned. “Not sure. Not yet.”
“But you’re
sure
she’s coming to help me?”
“I’m doing all I can…”
“Is she
still
in Rome?”
Iset nodded her head.
“When we last spoke of her she should have been running to the harbor!”
Iset answered, “Before she can leave Rome she must first ingratiate herself with Mark Antony.”
“Why waste time? My victory may come down to the minute. ”
Iset counted on her fingers. “First, Mark is important. Second, for this witch to not be found out, she must have no idea she’s been sent—her travels must be her own. Third, she must not even know she’s a true witch at all.”
Cleopatra looked baffled. “You sent for a powerful witch who doesn’t even know she is one?” She slumped.
“Correct. She doesn’t know what she’s destined to do. Not yet anyway.”
“Will she have enough power to fight my brother’s witch? Sorceress Thrace is strong. Look what she did—he has the throne now! He rules Egypt. I’m in a hole in the ground.”
Iset moaned sympathetically. “Sorceress Thrace is very strong, indeed. She had enough time to smell you out at the palace. I’d hoped we had more time—I expected it to take longer. She’s always so distracted with her own mad vanity and lust. And like us, she isn’t in as much control of the wild forces of nature as she would like.”
“Why wait for witches at all? Just have anybody cut my brother’s throat.”
Iset grinned. “And Mark Antony just might do that for us. Let’s wait and see what can happen.”
Cleopatra asked, “Why not just send any assassin to get my brother?”
“That would be worse.”
“Good.”
Iset insisted, “No, no! Never take a terrible thing and make it worse.”
“Nothing is worse than my brother.”
Iset insisted, “We must keep this little Egyptian civil war within the family, if we can. If his throat were cut now and the throne were seen empty for it, you’d have a far bigger fight to get it back. If Mark Antony kills him, though, it’s Rome’s problem. Caesar already likes you—you’ve shared a lot of laughs.”
Cleopatra rubbed her arms, realizing she didn’t feel cold even though the cave must be cold. “
So what
about this Mark Antony… I’ve met him in Rome. What a dick.”
Iset wagged her finger. “He’s Caesar’s great general. When abroad, he acts in Caesar’s name.”
Cleopatra nodded impatiently. “Yes, I met him when I was with Caesar, and Mark is ridiculous—all swagger.”
Iset winked. “That will be used in our favor.”
Chapter three
In the temple of Serapis in the Egyptian neighborhood of Alexandria, Cleopatra’s brother, Ptolemy, lounged nude watching the orgy of Greeks and Romans. Drums encouraged hips.
A clothed Egyptian priest stepped up to him. “The gods will be horrified.” Like all Egyptians he wore black eye makeup to give him cat eyes.
Ptolemy dismissively waved the priest off with his hand. “It’s the proper way. The crops will grow more fertile now if much seed is spilled. Athena likes seed. The Greeks do it best.”
The priest stayed. “But in an Egyptian temple?” He looked around at the tall walls decorated in colorful paintings of papyrus plants and lotus flowers, and hieroglyphics. “For this fertility you bring on, like this, I fear only the crocodiles will grow larger.”
Ptolemy said, “This city has always been for the Greeks and it was a mistake of my forefathers to let others in. This temple looks foreign and weird. I shouldn’t have left the palace, for this. This is horrible.”
The priest warned, “Don’t offend the gods.”
Ptolemy waved him off again. “They should have kept Egyptian temples out of Alexandria. It only makes people worry about the savage Nile.”
“But we’re in Egypt.”
“Egypt,
back there
, with Africa,” Ptolemy rudely gestured south, “is merely its farm. Those ignorant people face a river, not Rome.”
To the Romans,
Africa
was the name of the land west of Egypt while
Asia
was the land east of Egypt. Ptolemy always dismissed everything beyond the main neighborhoods of his Hellenistic enclave of a city.
Hellenism was a time in Greek history from Alexander the Great in 323 BC to Cleopatra in 30 BC. During this period Greek culture flourished throughout the Mediterranean. It thrived most at Alexandria in Egypt.
The priest spoke cautiously, “The gods see all of this as one land.”
Ptolemy picked his nose.
The worried priest added, “We have a desert full of sins today. Isis has so much to forgive us for.”
Ptolemy yelled at the orgy, “Do it like you mean it! Don’t insult Athena! She knows what’s in your heart! We’ll have no sinning here! You’re all atrocious!”
The priest added, “And the gods will certainly punish us for how your sister was denied a proper burial.”
“She’s jackal poop by now.” He laughed. They watched a man grow more frenzied as he tried to get himself to climax again. “And to think she’d told everybody she was Isis.”
The priest remained grim. “The goddess requires chaste and gentle attention.”
Ptolemy insisted, “Cleopatra needs no funeral. She needs no afterlife. She took all she’s getting from this life.”
“But the gods! You must retrieve her body and lay it to rest properly or we’ll all be cursed!”
Ptolemy took a sip of beer. “We were cursed before. Now she’s gone. I’m sure the jackals really did eat all of her. Now go hump a whore so the Nile flows even richer. Oh I forgot. You have no testicles.”
The priest glared at Ptolemy’s.
As he lounged, Ptolemy stretched his legs. “They say my sister gained her evil powers by biting at many men. But then she had the face of a crocodile so biting was in her nature. Only
hungry
biting. But she was never fed. Where are her powers now?” He gulped the rest of his bowl of beer.
The priest backed away.
Ptolemy’s witch, Sorceress Thrace, slinked up to him. “Do you think I look wonderful? Like a magical bird of youth? A phoenix with new feathers?”
He glanced at her. “I don’t care how you look. I keep you around because you say you’re the most powerful witch.”
“I am. I am an outcast from a land most wild. The Balkan Mountains are wild and far.”
He shrugged. “So I suppose you can boast
about that
.”
“But do you like how I look today?” Sorceress Thrace slid her hand down the back of her bald head. “And I see you are already excited by the crowd. Take your excitement out on me.”
“No.”
“I am always one step ahead of you, ready to please you.” She took his hand. “Let us talk about the orgy.”
He pulled his hand out of hers. “What does being an outcast really have to do with being a witch, really? And how is a witch not like a priestess?”
“You want to talk about my beauty and the orgy.”
He angrily repeated his question.
Sorceress Thrace explained, “A temple priestess should feel like a mother in her safe home. A witch should feel outcast, homeless, weird and dangerous. And men often desire weird dangerous things from afar… the
unusual
things of life.” She winked. “Men like to gamble.”
Ptolemy looked away from his witch. “
Desire
the weird? Not me. We’re all from incest in my family, back to Macedonia. We do things the familiar way.” He stood. “I want to get back to the palace.” He regarded the rows of hieroglyphics. “This is horrible.”
~
The next morning, Cleopatra entered the kitchen of the underground snake temple and asked Iset, “What is sleep without dreams? All magic must begin with dreams. If I’m to have strong magic…”
Iset reached up to make sure her jar-shaped wig was situated correctly over her head. “Calm down.”
Cleopatra glared at the clay pot of wheat paste. “I don’t think I could eat that.”
“We don’t live like queens down here.”
Cleopatra wrung her hands. “I’m too upset to eat anyway. How can I get a throne back without magic? I thought I had so much new magic but this happens—no dreams at night! That’s a disaster! Cast a spell on me to help me dream again.”
Iset said, “From now on you only get the magic you need.”
Cleopatra insisted, “I need dreams! Everybody does! Everybody needs that magic.”
Iset shook her head. “That’s not what you need anymore.”
Cleopatra asked, “At least give me the dream of the black cat. You have more than enough power to give anybody that dream, being as powerful as you are. That’s such a small spell. If I can dream of the cat she’ll give me magic in my sleep.”
Iset licked at a large wooden spoon. “What was the last thing you remember dreaming when you still lived in the palace?”
Cleopatra answered, “A wolf was chasing a desert hare. The hare didn’t have a chance.”
Iset explained, “Maybe it was about the Egyptian gods. Anubis is the wolf god. He is the god of mummification and the afterlife. He protects tombs. He’s like a guard dog.”
Cleopatra doubted. “I was being chased by death? Or protected in death by Anubis?” She held up her hand and wiggled her fingers. “But I’m not dead...”
Iset asked, “Who is the hare?”
“It felt like it was me. I woke up so terrified that night.”
“Did the wolf capture the hare in your dream?”
Cleopatra winced. “I awoke when they were still running. I awoke because I was afraid of being caught. And forthwith I was obviously caught. And I lost my throne.”
Iset explained, “The hare is often a sacred messenger. The hare is the goddess of the otherworld.”
“
Under
world?”
Iset looked off in thought. Her eyes went wide. “No. That is rather ordinary. The
other
world, a place in the desert between life and death, and it’s neither life or death.”
Cleopatra surmised, “The undead?”
Iset glanced up. “This temple is under the shifting blowing sands of desert where the living and dead meet. It’s always unsettled. Valleys are exalted and hills are made low. The natural order is chaos. Things are always indirect. To ever leave this place again you must go through that otherworld. To find the green gardens of the living again you must follow the locust swarms.”