Pandora - By Anne Rice Page 0,68

could remember of the dreams, my eyes straining to see by the miserable little lamp in the shadows, too far from the light that filled the fresh green garden of the peristyle.

My arm hurt finally from the speed with which I scratched at the parchment. In detail I described the last dream, the torches, the Queen’s smile, her beckoning to me.

It was done. All the while, I had set aside the pages to dry all about me on the floor. There was no breeze or wind to threaten them. I gathered them up.

I went to the edge of the garden deliberately to look at the blue sky, this sheaf of papers close to my breast. Blue and clear.

“And you cover this world,” I said. “And you are changeless, save for one light that rises and sets,” I said to the sky. “Then comes the night with deceptive and seductive patterns!”

“Madam!” It was Flavius behind me, and very sleepy. “You’ve scarcely slept at all. You need rest. Go back to bed.”

“Go get my sandals now, hurry,” I said.

And as he disappeared, so did I—out the front gate of the house, walking as fast as I could.

I was halfway to the Temple of Isis when I realized the discomfort of confronting this filthy street in bare feet. I realized I wore the rumpled linen dresses in which I’d slept. My hair streamed. I didn’t slow my pace.

I was elated. I was not helpless as when I had fled my Father’s house. I was not edgy and in deep danger as when Lucius had pointed me out to the Roman soldiers last night.

I was not gripped in fear as I had been when the Queen smiled to me in the dream. Nor shivering as I had been upon waking.

I walked on and on. I was in the grip of an immense drama. I would see it through to the last act.

People passed—laborers of the morning, an old man with a crooked stick. I barely saw these people.

I took a cold small delight in the fact that they noticed my loose, free hair and my wrinkled gowns. I wondered what it must be like to separate oneself from all civilization and never worry again about the position of a fastening or a pin, to sleep on grass, to fear nothing!

Fear nothing! Ah, that was so beautiful to me.

I came to the Forum. The markets were busy; the beggars were out in full force. Curtained litters were being carried every which way. The philosophers were teaching under the porticoes. I could hear those huge strange noises that always come from a harbor—of the cargo being dropped, perhaps, I didn’t know. I smelled the Orontes. I hoped Lucius’s body was floating in it.

I went up the steps and right into the Temple of Isis.

“The High Priest and Priestess,” I said. “I must see them.” I walked past a confused and distinctly virginal-looking young woman and went into the side chamber where they had first spoken to me. No table. Only the couch. I went into another apartment of the Temple. A table. Scrolls.

I heard feet rushing. The Priestess came to me. She was already painted for the day and her wig and ornaments were in place. I felt no shock as I looked at her.

“Look,” I said. “I had another dream.” I pointed to the sheets which I had piled neatly on the table. “I’ve written down everything for you.”

The Priest arrived. He approached the table and stared at the sheets.

“Read it all, every word. Read it now. Bear witness lest something happens to me!”

The Priest and Priestess stood on opposite sides of me, the Priest carefully lifting the pages to study each one, while not actually turning over the stack.

“I am a migrant soul,” I said. “She wants some reckoning or favor of me, I don’t know which, but she lives! She is no mere statue.”

They stared at me.

“Well? Speak up? Everyone comes to you for guidance.”

“But Madam,” said the Priest, “we can’t read any of this.”

“What?”

“It’s written in the most ancient and ornate form of the old picture writing.”

“What!”

I stared down at the pages. I saw only my own words as they had flowed in a cadence from my mind, through my hand, through my pen. I couldn’t make my eyes fix upon the form of the letters.

I lifted the last page and read aloud, “Her smile was cunning. It filled me with fear.” I held out the page.

They shook their heads in firm