Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [107]
She was adrift in the night sky, or falling through the earth, but she was not alone. Someone held her hand in his, and as they fell, she felt his grasp tighten. Every part of her demanded that she turn back, told her that she did not belong where she was going, but he pulled her deeper, deeper, until she lost herself in his determination. Her body resisted, but there was nothing to be done. Around the hole where her heart had been she felt ice crystals forming.
She gasped, and then darkness took her.
She awoke to cold fingers on her flesh. She was being carried, her body held in rigid arms, her legs dangling. Cleopatra’s head lay against a shoulder she would have known anywhere. She tried to sit up.
“Stay still,” a voice—his voice—whispered. “Don’t open your eyes. Trust me. I am yours. You are mine.”
“In life,” Cleopatra whispered.
“And thereafter,” her husband answered.
Together, they walked downward in darkness.
BOOK OF LIGHTNING
And thereupon shall the whole world be governed by the hands
Of a woman, and obedient everywhere.
Then when a widow shall o’er all the world gain the rule,
And cast in the mighty sea both gold and silver, also brass and iron,
Of short-lived men, into the deep shall cast,
Then all the elements shall be bereft of order.
When the God who dwells on high shall roll the heaven, even as a scroll is rolled,
And to the mighty earth and sea shall fall the entire multiform sky, and There shall flow a tireless cataract of raging fire,
And it shall burn the land and burn the sea, and heavenly sky and night and day
And melt creation itself together,
And pick out what is pure.
No more laughing spheres of light,
Nor night, nor dawn, nor many days of care,
Nor spring, nor winter, nor the summer-time, nor Autumn,
And then of the mighty God, the judgment midway in a mighty age
Shall come, when all these things shall come to pass.
—The Sibylline Oracles, circa 30 B.C.E.
Translated from the Greek
Milton S. Terry, 1899
1
Sekhmet, daughter of the sun, Lady of Slaughter, crouched high above Rome, looking out at her new terrain. Her body quivered with anticipation. It had been so long since she’d had a true form, so long since her strength had been more than a shadow.
She remembered the day the Nile had turned crimson, when human blood had first filled her hands, her mouth. She remembered the beauty of her task. Kill the betrayers, her father had told her, and she had done his bidding, until Ra forgave them and betrayed his daughter.
He flung Sekhmet into nothingness, gathered his human children into his arms, and soothed their fear, kissing them and singing to them, while his daughter suffered.
The goddess had barely survived, fading with the passage of time, the sacrifices made by her few remaining priestesses growing smaller and smaller until she was fortunate if a rabbit was killed in her name. Ra forgot her, grew ancient and frail, and fled the bloody, joyful, rageful earth for the sky.
Egypt forgot her.
Everyone forgot her, except Cleopatra.
It had been three thousand years, more, since Sekhmet had felt so strong. A queen as her worshipper. A queen laying waste to the world on her behalf. A queen set on fire. The heat of the flame had brought Sekhmet back entirely. It was as though she dwelt in Ra’s eye again.
But Cleopatra was invisible to her now, gone somehow beneath the earth to Hades, the dwelling place of the Roman dead. Sekhmet was banned from the Underworld, and in any case, there was no blood there. The goddess could wait for her servant to emerge, but still, she needed sacrifices.
Her father had promised her things, but he had never given them to her. Now Sekhmet had only the tears she’d shed after her father’s abandonment. Those tears had created seven companions for her loneliness. Seven shining children.
She’d given them names, one by one as they were