Read Online Flow Down Like Silver: Hypatia of Alexandria by Ki Longfellow - Free Book Online

will allow one to see clearly what lies below water.   Bones?   What of bones?”
    By now I have learned the mind of this one is a strange mind and a surprising mind.   And it wanders.   I am glad it is not my mind.   How burdensome to live so much in the head.   I live in my body and feed its desires.   I glance at Hypatia, glance away.   It seems a fine life to me, and one that gets better by the hour.   I think of the sisters.   Hypatia is all mind, Lais all spirit, Jone all bodily emotion.   “Since the time of Augustus, Romans have banished men to this desert.   Earlier, when the Persians conquered Egypt, King Cambyses II and his army of fifty thousand men vanished in a sandstorm and were never seen again.   There must be bones everywhere.”
    “I have heard of this, Minkah.   But men are banished to the oasis of Siwa, not here.   And King Cambyses was supposedly looking for precisely that oasis in order to destroy the Temple of Ammon by traversing the Great Sand Desert.   But surely, that is legend.”
    “Surely, it is not!”
    “It is.”
    “It is not.”
    From this point on, she searches for bones as I search for caves.   Sandstorms also occupy my thoughts.   If one were to suddenly spring up, our bones would mingle with the bones of outcasts and Persians.
    “Hypatia!   Look!”   Ia’eh has suddenly stopped as if she too knew what we look for.   I am pointing at an outcrop of dark rock shimmering in the distance.   “See how high that place is.   When the rains come and flood the desert, the water would never reach here.   And see how low it is.   What solitary would find it alluring?   And how far from any path it is!   Should a wanderer lose himself here, he would not seek a way out through this place, but would turn and retrace his steps.”
    All is heat.   It simmers in every direction.   It causes the eye to create illusion of palace and temple and great ships of many masts.   Hypatia asks, squinting, “It seems perfect.   There is no oasis, no water.   Are there caves?”
    Standing in my stirrups, I shield my eyes with my hand.   “Dozens of them.”
    “We must explore them all.”
    Glancing at the sun, I frown.   “Already it will be dark before we return to the city.   We have no time.”
    “The books cannot stay with Didymus.   Neither he nor they are safe.   You will search one cave and I another.   We shall do this until it is dark.   And then we shall sleep here, and begin again at first light.”
    I know what is so in the house of Theon.   Hypatia has a class to teach on the morrow.   If the daughter does not teach, the father cannot peaceably lie in his bed.   If the father does not lie in his bed, how shall I be of use?   “And your students?”
    Hypatia shrugs.   “They will come.   I will not be there.   They will wait.   I will not appear.   They will go home.   The following day I will apologize, talk longer, and all will be forgiven.”
    As used to her wandering mind, I am as used to her fine and easy arrogance.   I nod.   We will spend the night.   Seeing this, she whispers into Desher’s ear, and we are away.   I follow on Ia’eh, who seems like Pegasus, feathered in white.
    I am Parabalanoi .   I have done harder things than innocently sleep near a woman like this woman far out in the reaches of a wilderness with no man near.   But not many.
    ~
    Three times now, well laden camels have gone out into the night.   And each trip I make, those who come with me are at a certain point blindfolded, and each trip I make is taken with different men, most poor, most Egyptians—none are fellow Parabalanoi.   The caves I first sighted are many.   Some reach so far back into the crest of rock, searching them, I could go no farther for loss of light.   Some have caves within caves, only reached by crawling through tunnels jagged with sharp and twisted shapes.   And some would end in darker holes into which I have peered and these