Imagine the flames of Hades. I have no other words to describe the devastation.
We all rushed inside together like a Greek chorus, suddenly players in an unbelievable tragedy, grabbing every scroll and codex we could carry in our arms. Outside we threw the bundles high into the air and far into the distance, hoping to get as many of the works as we could to safety.
I raced back inside to the lower gallery, intent on saving the Oracle’s box. As I rounded the corner, I saw my father unlocking the secret door to the lower gallery. I called out to him. When he turned, I saw the truth in his eyes. He knew I had a key, and he knew I had been down there before. He had let me go with his blessing.
“Stay back, Ionna!” he yelled.
Then I saw him disappear down the stairwell. I screamed and tried to run after him, but a shelf fell in front of me, blocking the entrance.
A man called out behind me. His robes had caught fire while he was trying to save a collection of scrolls. He ran toward me, but a wall of flames enveloped him.
I stood crying, waiting for my father to return, but the smoke forced me to go back outside. I collapsed on the ground and gasped for air. People dashed past me carrying buckets of water. At least a third of the library had already been destroyed, if not more. People were still trying to salvage what they could.
The Oracle’s stone box, her writings and symbols, were now surely gone. My father must have known what priceless treasures the lower galleries held. That was why he’d risked his life to save them.
I don’t remember when I was told to leave or by whom. My clothes were singed and covered in ash. When I arrived home, I fell asleep on a pallet by the door so I could hear when my brothers returned and, with the gods’ will, my father.
*
The next morning stillness greeted me.
I rose to wash my hands and feet and wiped my face. I changed robes and drank two cups of water. Dizzy, I sat down. I wanted to cry but knew if I started to weep I would never stop. What the day would hold, I could not fathom. I had foreseen my mother’s death, but not this.
When I returned to the library the blackened walls told the story. An eerie calm rested in the air, as if a great storm had blown through, and then left us.
In one night, nearly all the knowledge, all the dreams of dreamers had been extinguished like stars in the sky no longer shining. I saw bedraggled men staggering from exhaustion as they tried to organize the salvaged scrolls and codices blanketing the lawns. The wreckage was a giant puzzle that could never be put right again.
The director of the library saw me, and his face fell. “Ionna, go home,” he said gently. “I will have my daughter come.”
His daughter was of my mother’s generation. I did not understand why he would send her to me.
“Thank you, but there is no need,” I said. “We will be fine.”
He did not speak, but the anguish on his face told me my brothers would not be coming home either. I backed away, unable to believe that, in one night, I had lost them all.
I don’t remember where I went. I just remember the deep well of grief. For days I moved in a stupor. Eventually the director’s daughter did come with food and wine. She cooked and cleaned and offered me a place to stay with her family. But I didn’t want to abandon my house, the last remaining piece of my life.
The director felt a responsibility to me. My father was a lifelong friend and close assistant. Most likely, he would have taken over the library when the director passed away. Now all that had changed.
While I mourned, Alexandria worked hard to restore order. Caesar had been victorious against the Egyptian army, so we were forced to forget our losses and celebrate Caesar and Rome’s ingenuity. The war ended by January, but the city had paid a price. The library was hardly the only casualty.
Our people accepted this fate. Hundreds of libraries had existed throughout our history, many achieving great prestige and then perishing. I grew up listening to their stories by candlelight—all true, my father insisted. My favorite was about the library in Persepolis, the great city in Persia. Their library contained the Avesta, a sacred book that, supposedly, could grant man immortality.
“Is the book in our library now, Father?” I would ask him, wide-eyed.
“Oh no, no, no.” He would shake his head gravely. “When Alexander defeated Darius III, he burned down the library out of vengeance and the Avesta was destroyed.”
My father would stare into the fire with a sad, faraway look as if he had witnessed the act himself. Alexandria’s library would be no different from those that had fallen before it. I imagined a girl, like me, being told our story far in the future.
How would the record remember us?
My father’s favorite saying had always been “Sweet is the truth.” With so much of it now gone, I could taste only bitterness. He believed that knowledge could never be lost, that other libraries would rise to fill the void. But could the same words be written? Hundreds of thousands of scrolls were lost—our recorded history wiped away in one night.
Aristarchus had tried to prove that the earth revolved around the sun, and that the universe was many times bigger than we had thought. His research was supported by the ancient Babylonian texts our library had housed, all of which had been destroyed in the fire. Every year volatile debates broke out about whether or not the earth did in truth revolve around the sun; Aristarchus’ scrolls and the Babylonian texts were the proving points. Now students would never read those theories.
How Seshat, the goddess of knowledge and the written word, must be weeping. Our library had been a House of Life, and now that life was gone.
The Hierophant
The blaring alarm jarred Semele awake. She was sprawled on her stomach, using her laptop like a pillow. She sat up with a groan and opened her eyes. Her whole body screamed in protest. A combination of jet lag and lack of sleep was taking its toll.
After dinner with Bren last night, she unpacked and faced her overflowing basket of laundry. Between cycles, she worked on translating more of the manuscript and continued well after the laundry was finished. She’d clearly fallen asleep at her computer.
She shuffled to the bathroom and would have laughed when she saw herself in the mirror if she hadn’t been so tired. A huge, angry sleep mark from her keyboard ran down the right side of her cheek to her chin. Her laptop was literally imprinted on her face. Lovely.