0316382981 by Emily Holleman Page A

each step against the stone. She stubbed her toe, hard, on an uneven bit but didn’t cry out. Instead, she savored the pain; it distracted her from her aching loneliness. By the time she looked up, Ganymedes was far ahead, and she had to race across the plaza to catch him.
    The palace entrance to the library loomed even grander than the one that opened to the street. Four arches sprouted from the ground, each guarded by a separate goddess: Arete, Episteme, Ennoia, and—her favorite—Sophia, with her turquoise eyes gazing up from her scroll. Arsinoe wanted to walk through Sophia’s entry, but Ganymedes headed toward Arete’s door. The goddess of virtue had always seemed cold and unforgiving, her face a stoic slab, with love for neither learning nor wisdom, and certainly none for girls who sought their favors there.
    “No one’s goddess.” That’s what she and her friends called Arete, for there were only three in Arsinoe’s closely woven set. She had chosen wisdom and Sophia; Aspasia had claimed Ennoia, goddess of intelligence; and reluctantly, Hypatia had agreed to serve as Episteme, guardian of knowledge. They all three had eschewed virtue. Arete looked too daunting then as now.
    “Will Aspasia and Hypatia join me for today’s lessons?” she called after her tutor.
    “Put your playmates from your mind.”
    Arsinoe said nothing. She didn’t want her playmates anyway. She could renounce them if she must. She needed only Cleopatra. To her sister, Arsinoe might confess all, under the laurel tree in the forgotten gardens of Ptolemy the Potbelly. There they used to whisper away the afternoons, hidden from all interruptions. And she knew, with certainty, that Cleopatra would fix everything; she’d teach her how to impress the court. Her sister was the one who had convinced their father that Arsinoe needed a tutor of her own—that it wasn’t fair to leave her behind with no one to teach her every time Cleopatra sailed.
    But as it was, her sister was a memory, nothing more. Arsinoe had only Ganymedes, so she needed to show him, to prove how much she’d changed. If he lost faith in her, she’d have no one left. Except maybe her fire-bearded guard. And who knew what had become of him? She’d seen neither hide nor hair of her Menelaus since he’d left her food on that first frightful night. She’d been a fool to think her recent victories would be enough. Myrrine was to blame; the nurse had been too free in her encouragements, too eager to pretend that the way she’d met her trials had been remarkable. And now, though attended, she felt lonelier than she had before.
    The interior of Alexandria’s great library had been stripped bare of life. Arsinoe gasped at the metamorphosis. In the main gallery, where dozens of wizened scholars once bent, copying ancient scrolls to fresh ones, there sat nothing but rows upon rows of barren desks. Far across the sea, there must have been some parallel palace, bustling with all the disappeared: Aspasia and Hypatia; her two little brothers and her mother as well; her father’s guards, though she could only picture them as headless corpses; and these departed sages, the kindly men who’d doted on her and, in happier days, allowed her to braid their winding beards.
    “Take a seat, my child.” Ganymedes guided her to an empty bench. Several scrolls were furled upon its companion table. They must have been abandoned as their readers fled. “Don’t dwell on what’s gone,” her eunuch counseled. “Your lessons still must be learned; more histories await your eyes. I’ll return with those scrolls in a moment.”
    The eunuch scuttled off toward the scholars’ dormitories. Arsinoe couldn’t imagine what those chambers looked like now. Usually the building rattled with men drinking and eating and talking on divans, but she imagined that it, too, must lie empty, its cells and halls forsaken. Her eyes wandered over the scrolls; they were not ordinary texts but rolled with care