Part 4 (1/2)
”Just ju nearhi me, and felt the purest for--no, lurking, lying in wait, ready for me, ready to devour me at last It would not be balked of its prey
You escaped me once, it seemed to murmur But not forever Don't you know that water is your destiny? But not forever Don't you know that water is your destiny?
An odd sort of insouciance--I cannot call it courage, it was too offhanded and fatalistic for that--stole over rapple with it, perhaps take it by surprise It would not expect that
Without further thinking--which would have stopped , poised, above that blue surface, I felt both terror and victory And now the water was rushi+ng up atface with a hard force My body sliced into it and I plunged into the depths, hurtling down so fast that I struck the bottoain All this ti out above the surface again, and I took a great, gasping lungful of air
I was flailing about, otsolid beneathme on the surface, and instantaneously I sensed how to coordinateraceful as a hippo on land,” teased Mardian ”Stop thrashi+ng soto attract sea monsters!”
”You know there aren't seame carefully
I was able to paddle around without worry of sinking The water had been unexpectedly vanquished as an enehtheaded with relief and surprise Surprise that the dreaded moment had come at last and I had survived it, and surprise at how easily it had happened
As the sun was setting, we returned to the dock and tied up the,boat Our wet clothes clung to us, and now I could see the beginning of the differentiation between Mardian and other males Olympos, at almost fifteen, was more compact and s--see of the musculature that was revealed on Olyht
Olympos returned to his ho us for the outing Behind us the sun was setting, and Mardian and I sat on the harbor steps
The sun entle waves, and the shi+ps at anchor were reflected in the fla reflection
”You never swam before, did you?” Mardian asked quietly
”No,” I aded my knees and restedme a bit, but they would soon dry
”It is no accident that you did not kno to swione out of your way to avoid it”
He saw too o out with,” I said lightly ”My older sisters were too grown up, ine you could have found a way If you had wanted to” He paused ”It seems that you find a way to do whatever you wish” There was admiration in his voice ”How did you dare just to jump in like that? Weren't you afraid you would sink?”
”Yes,” I admitted ”But I had no choice It was the only way”
”Then you must have wanted to,” he insisted ”Because you didn't have have to By the way, you did very well The first time I tried to swim, I sank three times!” to By the way, you did very well The first time I tried to swim, I sank three times!”
”I wanted to, because I had to,” I said ”My mother drowned out here-- in this very harbor”
He lost his color ”I knew--she had died I did not kno I am sorry”
”I ith her”
He lost still more color ”And youremember?”
”Only colors, tastes, noises And the loss And that water caused it”
”Why did you not tell Olympos? He would never have forced--”
”I know that But the truth ishow er could I live in Alexandria, a sea-city, unable to venture out onto the water?”
He bowed his head, choosing his words carefully ”May all the Gods preserve our city in that glory,” he finally said ”In her independence”
”Mayreturn and take command” There--I had said the forbidden words Was anyone listening? ”In thethat would cripple or compromise rave handicap”
”So you banished it” He seemed very impressed
”Not without hesitation,” I adood to have friends who lived a safe and uneventful life, because in our children's palace quarters it was anything but that The four of us were guarded and watched constantly, and doubtless everything suspicious we said or did was reported back to Their False Majesties I, as the eldest, had the most freedom, but was also the one likely to incur the most criticism Arsinoe, true to her fretful and spoiled nature, constantly tested the guards and caused trouble in little ways--ways that seeet attention for herself, since they served no other purpose It struck me as very stupid, for the best way to behave around enemies is unobtrusively
The two little boys, Ptole, as they played in their adjoining rooms There was no treason in thean to work againstadulthood--and potential as a political tool--as nature began to reshape s that had little meat on them, and what there was, I ran off with alland thin, my features fine as children's always are But at about the ties started intaller, and as if in response to that, the food that would have gone into added height now filled outsticklike and becaer, so that I could finally wrench things out of sockets that had been too difficult for me, move furniture that I could not before, and throw balls farther
And an to lengthen, and e mouth The lips were still nicely shaped, curved and fitted together pleasingly, but they were sowide The face looking back atan adult's An adult face, which hts?
The changes took me by surprise; I had never watched anyone's looks alter as they matured I suppose I had always pictured a ht of someone's childhood Our unpleasant tutor, Theodotos, would have kept the same looks, in my oing to look like; I had to watchreconstructed day by day I was ot used to myself one way and noould have to see myself another
Of course I wanted to be beautiful, because everyone wants to be Failing that, I wanted to be at least pleasant to look at But what if it orse? What if I turned out to be ugly? It seeory, and then, at twelve or so, be reassigned to another
I had overheard aabout his wife's expected child Someone asked him what he hoped for, and I had assumed he would say that the child be healthy, or that it be clever Instead--I shall never forget it!--he said, ”If it is a girl, I just pray she won't be ugly” I alondered if it was a girl, and if she was ugly
So I peered anxiously into divine the future in , too At first it was just a hint that things were different, but after Father had been away for a year, the changes were un, for that was the n of all I had to wear looser and looser clothes, and even took to wearing a tight garment underneath to squash myself dohenever I had to seeand innocent as long as possible But in arment; it was terribly painful
I had no ”ouide ht have been too shy to discuss it What I really needed was a bawdy nurse or attendant The uards placed on me by my sisters would definitely not serve the purpose
Had things been norht have been able to talk to those very same older sisters But they were Ptolemies first and women and sisters second and third
And then it ca line between childhood and wo children, that summer I elve and Father away for over a year noas prepared for it; I did not think I was dying or any of those things that ignorant girls soh what had happened, but still it was a ain could I feel there was little essential difference between ory ”child” applied to us equally and was the nation, the most descriptive term, that fitted us all
Noould have this element--this fundamental, awesome eleeI could be married, they would say I was ready I could be sent away fron court, wife to some prince Have childrenworry about themand the cycle so short, htened and threatened al rule, not the Romans, not even the cruel water in the harbor It was nature that had done this to me, not another person, and nature could not be pleaded with or dissuaded
Only Isis,the first days after the great change inat her statue
She was all these ether--womanhood, wifehood, motherhood Little wonder that women adored her; she personified all their aspects I could only beg her to protectland of adulthood, of woman, that lay before hts, partly in rebellion against the role nature was assigning roup co I would call it the Society of Iendary physician and , soypt, of what lay far back both in tiue, and learn the old writing; above all, they had to feel the spirits of those long departed, and listen to what theynumber of students froirls ere the children of various palace officials I suspected it was because a princess was leading it, but as tiroup unless he or she was genuinely interested, because orked so hard that the fainthearted fell away We wanted to be able to read the inscriptions on the old reat induces, had to be secret Why? I suppose because children--and I was deterht--love secrets, and itIn a palace rife with spies, we took pride in having our impenetrable secret society (It never occurred to us that no one considered our doings weighty enough to spy on Also, tiilance toward me) So for the next two years, while Father's exile stretched on and on, we sneaked contentedly around Alexandria, studying the ancient language as contained in the scrolls in our great Library, occasionally having a recital of poetry in Egyptian We also--extreht--went into the Jewish Quarter and observed their synagogue, the largest in the world (Was everything in Alexandria the largest in the world? To e was it that a nal with a flag what part of the cere place, as those worshi+pers in the back were too far away to see or hear
Alexandria had a very sizable Jewish population; some said there were more Jews in Alexandria than in Jerusalereat leader Moses had led theo, and they were ecstatic to be delivered Why had they wished to return? In the Greek translation of their holy book--written here in Alexandria--it said that their God had forbidden theypt Why did they disobey?