Ancient Fire (10 page)

415 C.E.

It’s definitely the hat.

But shooting through the Fifth Dimension like
a bodysurfer, without being in a ship like Clyne’s, is hard. It’s
like every wave pulls you under, and you feel like you’re gonna
upchuck when you arrive.

I’m woozy when I materialize inside the
library grounds at Alexandria. No rhinos this time—just lots of
statues. I’m in a tiled courtyard. It’s night, and I can see the
full moon through the open roof. Somewhere I hear a scratching
sound.

In the distance, I can also see that a couple
of the walls I’d jumped over earlier with Clyne are now on fire. I
look at the blaze, look up at the giant statues that surround me,
then hunch over to throw up.

Raising my head a moment later and wiping my
mouth, I start to feel better.

I see the cap on the ground, and I’m about to
pick it up, but this time I stop. I just got here. I’m still
holding the Thickskin Mr. Howe gave me. I wrap the cap in it, touch
it lightly—it seems safe to handle that way. I pick it up and put
it back on my head. As long as the Thickskin holds, I’m okay.

Or at least, I would be okay if I didn’t just
see one of the statues start to move in the dark…

No. It’s not a statue. Did I say no rhinos? I
was wrong. I’ve just puked all over the feet of one.

Even the rhino isn’t sure what to make of it.
I hear him snort and snuffle and paw the ground a little. Maybe
he’s not sure whether to be insulted or feel sorry for me.

Either way, I can’t move, so it’s a relief
when somebody suddenly tackles me and drags me behind one of the
real
statues, where the rhino’s going to
have a hard time getting at me.

It’s the girl. She talks to me, but I can’t
understand her. I’ve left my lingo-spot back in my own time. I like
her voice, though. She sounds like she knows what she’s doing, but
she doesn’t seem bossy about it. She just seems…kind of cool.

She speaks again, and I gesture that I don’t
understand. Then she reaches behind her ear. Clyne’s given her a
lingo-spot, too. She peels some of hers off, reaches over, and rubs
it near the base of my skull.

“Wizard boy. You’ve come back.” She gives me
a kind of smile. Not like she thinks I’m a doofus, but like she
finds me faintly amusing, anyway.

“I’m not a wizard. My name is Eli Sands. How
do you do?” I hold out my hand, but she doesn’t shake it. Maybe
that’s not the custom here. “Wow, we’re really talking. I mean, I’m
talking to you, but you’re part of history!”

“What do you mean? Whose history?”

“Everybody’s! You’re living even before
George Washington was born…or Shakespeare! You’re really old!”

“You claim not to be a wizard, yet you claim
to know who will be born? And for your information, rude wizard, I
have lived only thirteen years.”

“Look, I’m not claiming to be magic, and I
didn’t mean you were old like a grownup…” Maybe I’m getting off on
the wrong foot. I search in my pocket for something to give her as
a gift. My fingers feel the baseball cards Mr. Howe had given to
me. I pull one out. Ken Griffey Jr.

She looks at it, watching the holographic
highlights of Griffey’s career. “Perhaps you’re not a wizard. I
certainly don’t need any cheap magic like this.” She flings the
card away, and it lands somewhere on the tile floor with a small
click
. “And my name is Thea, daughter of
Hypatia, head librarian of Alexandria and chief lecturer in math
and astronomy.”

“Was that your mom with you at the
lighthouse?”

“‘Mom?’” Her lingo-spot translates. “You mean
‘mother’?” I nod. “They took her. I watched them.”

“Who?”

“Tiberius. ‘Brother’ Tiberius. You saw him at
the lighthouse, too.”

“Why does he hate you so much?”

“He thinks my mother and I are witches.”

“Are you?”

She gives me the kind of mixed-up look my dad
specializes in, only this one seemed to say she’s mad at me, a
little hurt, but still feels sorry for me, all at once.

“Okay
, you’re not a
witch, and I’m not a wizard, but I
did
just come back through the Fifth Dimension. And I’m still a little
foggy. And I could use your help.”

“Fifth Dimension? But there are only four.
Anyway, wizard, I might need your help. Your lizard friend might
need it, too.”

“Clyne? Is he all right?”

“Yes, K’lion” —she pronounces the name in a
way that makes sense to her — “is fine. I hope.” She points out
toward the grounds. “He is somewhere out there, trying to fix his
vessel. But the zoo animals have been loose since this afternoon.
The guards have fled —or gone over to Tiberius. And Tiberius
himself has almost broken through the walls. Or burned his way
through.”

The smell of smoke is definitely getting
stronger.

“He’s coming here to get you?”

“Not just me. The scrolls, too. Everything.
Everything the library stands for. That’s why I’m taking a few
things now and planning to get out.”

She has a satchel over her shoulder with a
few odds and ends in it. She tiptoes back toward one of the walls,
and the scratching sound resumes. She’s trying to chip a piece
loose with a small pick she’s taken out of the bag.

“What are you doing?”

“I will not let them destroy everything,” she
says. “This is my favorite tile and I’m taking it with me.”

“What’s so special about it?” I ask.

“It’s a picture of my mother when she was my
age. My grandfather, Theon, put it up here when he was the head
librarian.”

On the other side of the statues, the rhino
suddenly bellows and charges, followed by a “
Tchkkk! Tchkkk! K’laaa!
” from close by.

“Who’s there!” Thea yells. But we both know.
There’s only one voice like that on Earth.

I can’t see clearly in the dark, but there’s
another crash, and it sounds like the rhino has stampeded right
through the pillars and stumbled down the stairs.

“Poor thing. He’s nearly blind, you know.”
Thea rises up, then shrieks as Clyne leaps down from the head of
the statue above us.

“Eli Boy!
Klaak!
Hello!”

He turns to Thea. She hardly needs a
lingo-spot with him—despite his
klaaaks
and
tikks
, Clyne is mostly speaking in her
tongue. Their voices are too low for me to get a good
translation.

Thea looks grim. “You heard him. They just
broke through the walls. We need to leave.”

Clyne is a bit frantic. “My ship is going to
stay
gra-bakked
and never get fixed! The
school’s going to kill me!”

“What’s ‘
gra-bakked
’?” I ask.

“You don’t have a good word for it,” he
explains.

We can hear shouting in the distance but
can’t see anyone yet. In a few moments, Tiberius and his followers
will be inside the library.

“We need to leave,” Thea says slowly, “or it
will not be the school that kills you.”

She slashes at the wall and with a grunt,
finally pulls the tile free. She tosses it in her bag and takes off
in the dark. She’s familiar enough with the layout of the library
grounds, and Clyne, apparently, can see pretty well without light.
But I keep bumping into things. I hit my right shin twice.

We get out of the courtyard, and by the time
we’re inside the main building we’re almost running. Smoke trickles
in behind us and keeps us moving along.

There’s a little light now — some of the
halls have torches in wall holders, and the ones that are still lit
are casting long shadows. It would be fun to play with the weird
shapes we’re making if there was any time. But we’re surrounded on
both sides by stacked rows of cubbyholes — thousands of them,
stretching all the way to the ceiling, holding scroll after scroll
after scroll.

Thea hands me her satchel. “Hold this.”

“What are you doing?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer me directly but keeps
moving down the halls, plucking scrolls out of the shelves almost
randomly. She glances at them and shouts out the subject matter,
almost angrily, as she gives them to me to stuff into the bag.

“Planetary motion!” she shouts. “Healing with
plants! …
A History of Atlantis
! ...Maps of
the world!”

She keeps going, taking what she can,
practically tossing them to me, as the bag gets heavier and
heavier.

“Jewish history! …Roman history! …Egyptian
history! …Secret history!” More scrolls.

“The Frogs
and
The Birds
,” she yells.

“Do you study nature?” I ask, panting a
little as I try to keep up with her.

“Those are the names of plays!”

Clyne has taken a cue from her and jumped up
to the top of the shelves, running above us, grabbing scrolls from
the top shelves and flinging them down, even carrying one in his
mouth like a pirate holding a knife.

I guess he thinks he’s helping, but there’s
hardly any room left in the bag.

“This is getting pretty heavy,” I tell
Thea.

She turns to face me with more scrolls in her
arms. “
The Proper Care of Chimaeras and Other
Rare Beasts
,” she says, sticking another one into the
satchel, “and
How to Build a Pyramid.
”

She stands, looking right into my eyes. “I
have to save what little I can.”

What can I tell her? I’m about to offer to
put one in my back pocket, but then we hear voices. Not ours.
They’re coming from behind us.

“But I suppose I have to save all of us, too.
Come on.” She’s running again, but this time there aren’t any more
stops to save scrolls.

“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Underneath.”

Clyne jumps down and follows behind us.

A few more twists and turns, and the walls of
cubbyholes open up into what looks like a kind of ancient
apartment, or maybe a fancy Las Vegas hotel room: a couple of low
beds, a table with parchment and more scrolls piled on it, bowls of
fruit set out everywhere, a couple of chin-high statues, and piles
of clothes draped over the carved marble chairs. Large pillows and
cushions are scattered everywhere.

“What’s this?”

“Our living quarters,” Thea tells me.
“There’s an entrance here that goes down to the catacombs.”

“What’s a catacomb?”

“Tunnels under the city. We can head away
from here, out past the necropolis, past the city gates, and try to
get away.”

“What’s a necropolis?”

She stares at me a moment. “Do you not go to
gymnasium?”

“I get my exercise.”

“Gymnasium! A
school
!” She throws up her hands. “Necropolis is a
city of the dead! The tunnel out of Alexandria goes through
it.”

“Yum!”

That was Clyne. Both Thea and I turn to see
him eating an orange from one of the bowls. “Orrranngge!
Brkkk!
No thing like it at home! Snacked
one previous from an outside tree!”

Thea shakes her head. “He has been eating
them all afternoon. He’s never seen them before. Tell me, what
world do the two of you come from? I realize this isn’t the only
planet in the universe.”

Clyne answers her. “Not just!
Cmmk!
This isn’t the only universe in the universe,
either!”

“Mother always said the same thing. I should
write that down. But there isn’t time.” Thea goes over to the
marble desk and tries to move it with her shoulder. It doesn’t
budge. She knocks a couple of half-finished scrolls off the top and
picks one up to look at it. “This is Mother’s work. This one is
about slow pox.” She throws it down. “It doesn’t matter now, does
it?”

I pick it up and stuff it in the satchel. If
it can help Mr. Howe, it can help get my mom back. “It matters to
some of us, Thea.”

“At the moment, moving this desk matters even
more. The entrance to the tunnel is underneath.”

Clyne and I help her push. As we huff and
puff, I ask her about slow pox. I don’t want to seem too eager.

“You don’t want to know. Uhhh…” The desk is
starting to budge. “It saps the life out of you—and the spirit. And
leaves a wrinkled shell of a body afterward. According to my
mother, it jumped from goats and sheep to people. No one believes
her.”

But I might. Or someone else in the future.
We’ve moved the desk a couple feet; there’s a large hole in the
floor, like a sewer opening with the cover taken away. Which, in a
way, I guess it is.

“If we go through the necropolis, there’ll be
fresh bodies in there. From the pox. If it’s any comfort, by the
time someone’s dead, they can’t spread the contagion. Still, we
will have to make our way past them very carefully in the
dark.”

I don’t say okay to that, but I don’t say no
either. The air is getting smokier, and I know we have to get out.
We push the desk another foot over when we hear them:

“DEMON!”

I think they mean Clyne. There are two of
them, from Tiberius’s group, standing at the entrance to the room.
One holds a sword. One is enough.

“Come on!” Thea grabs my arm and pulls me
down into the hole. We roll down a muddy slope into pitch
blackness. I stand up, relieved not to bump my head. We’re
definitely in a tunnel, and I can’t see a thing.

“We need a torch,” Thea says. We’re also
missing a dinosaur. I hear more shouting from above, followed by a
brkkk!
and an
akkk!
or two.

“What about Clyne?”

“The lizard god’s on his own right now.”

“But I can’t just—”

“They already took my mother. Who knows what
they did to her. But they will do it to us. And we won’t be able to
help anyone. Come on!”

Then more commotion at the tunnel entrance,
and with a loud screeching sound, Clyne catapults himself down in
the darkness. We hear him tumble, then in the next moment he jumps
past us. “Go! Angry mammals above!”