Free Written in the Ashes by K. Hollan Van Zandt

spotted butterflies with elegant seashell wings collected from all over Africa and Europe. “You put honey on your finger and they land there.” Jemir held out his finger in the air and looked up at an imaginary butterfly that circled and then alighted.
    Hannah smiled, almost happy. Jemir stopped short. It was the first time he had ever seen her smile, and it changed her face completely. Her beauty was amplified a thousand fold.
    So.
    He cleared his throat and continued. “There are enormous lions in cages, one even that lived in the great Coliseum in Rome and ate a hundred men, or maybe it was two hundred. But now the lion is old and has bad hips. The keepers cut the meat into bits for the elderly beast.”
    Jemir hunkered next to Hannah and waved his hands through the air. He wanted her to feel the greatness of it in his words. He wanted the legendary size of the library to come alive for her right there in Alizar’s kitchen.
    She laughed at his impression of the lion.
    “Then there are the docks in the harbor with the manuscripts piled higher than any building in the city, even Alizar’s tower. Imagine. Forty men side by side, all writing translations of the most famous literary and scientific works in the world. Homer. Aristotle. Pythagoras. Plotinus. Euripedes. Archimedes. Erostosthanes…” Names that would mean something to Hannah once she learned their contributions.
    Jemir explained that the fragrant lecture halls had been frequented by the greatest minds of the last three centuries. Mathematicians, philosophers, astronomers, rhetors, physicians, poets. Ptolemy penned his Almagest in the garden beneath one of the tall obelisks called Cleopatra’s Needles, crumpling the pages he disapproved of and tossing them into the manure pile behind the elephant enclosure.
    Hannah’s eyes danced with some newly aroused feeling.
    “The gardens were even planted by Cleopatra herself in honor of Caesar, or perhaps Mark Antony, no one can remember anymore. She and Antony were both buried beside the pond. It is said that the vine covering her golden tomb that appeared there one year after her death has lived these hundreds of years as a symbol of Cleopatra’s love for Egypt. When the vine blooms, women from all ends of the Mediterranean come to collect its pretty purple flowers and crush them into potions for love.”
    Hannah hugged her knees to her chest and rocked. “This is Alizar’s gift to me?”
    Jemir nodded. He had to tell her one more thing, and in the telling, confess his secret love, a love an entire empire shared with him. “Did you know there is a woman who runs the Great Library?”
    “A woman? How could that be?”
    “It is because she is a star descended to earth. Hypatia, The Great Lady, Virgin of Serapis, daughter of renowned astronomer and mathematician Theon of Alexandria. She is the most brilliant philosopher alive, a hermeticist said to alone hold the secret teachings of the Chaldean Oracles. She is a friend of Alizar’s house. Her mind and her beauty are the envy of everyone in Egypt. And so, as you can imagine, she has hundreds of friends, and more than a few enemies.”
    “Enemies?” As Jemir spoke Hannah remembered the woman holding the torch who had come running from out of the gates when they first arrived in Alexandria. Could it have been Hypatia?
    “People cannot abide purity, kukla . It offends the poor and the rich at the same time.” A lightness entered Jemir’s features as he sighed, and for a moment Hannah could see him as a youth, before the deep lines had settled around his eyes and beside his mustache.
    Realizing he had become lost in his infatuation with Hypatia, Jemir quickly regained his composure, excused himself, and went outside to check on the bread in the oven.
    When Tarek strode into the kitchen and asked Hannah if she was ready, she leapt to her feet. “Jemir was telling me about Hypatia,” she said as Jemir came back inside, set the bread down to cool, and busied