“Do you not fear her?” he managed.

“I do not,” she said. “She cannot touch me. You can.”

They were finished talking.

26

Elsewhere in Rome, the senator’s man stood looking at the piece of green stone he held in his hand. It was such a small thing, to have had so many people going to such trouble over it. Nothing precious at all. It looked like old glass.

Still, he had his instructions. He placed the holding stone on the ground, taking little notice of the way it glimmered and shone in the dark. He was paid well for this task.

The senator’s man picked up the hammer he’d brought, and with a single blow, he smashed the witch’s stone. Shards of it flew everywhere, but it was broken irrevocably.

With his heel, he ground the remaining bits of magic into the dirt of Rome, and then, with a grunt of satisfaction, he walked on.

Suddenly, she was falling, pulled deep into the darkness, deep into the cold. The burning of the silver net where it had melted into her skin disappeared. The walls of the silver box itself disappeared, and the bed of ash beneath her body was gone as well.

She was adrift in the night sky, or falling through the earth, but she was not alone. Someone held her hand in his, and as they fell, she felt his grasp tighten. Every part of her demanded that she turn back, told her that she did not belong where she was going, but he pulled her deeper, deeper, until she lost herself in his determination. Her body resisted, but there was nothing to be done. Around the hole where her heart had been she felt ice crystals forming.

She gasped, and then darkness took her.

She awoke to cold fingers on her flesh. She was being carried, her body held in rigid arms, her legs dangling. Cleopatra’s head lay against a shoulder she would have known anywhere. She tried to sit up.

“Stay still,” a voice —his voice— whispered. “Don’t open your eyes. Trust me. I am yours. You are mine.”

“In life,” Cleopatra whispered.

“And thereafter,” her husband answered.

Together, they walked downward in darkness.

BOOK OF LIGHTNING

And thereupon shall the whole world be governed by the hands
Of a woman, and obedient everywhere.
Then when a widow shall o’er all the world gain the rule,
And cast in the mighty sea both gold and silver, also brass and iron,
Of short-lived men, into the deep shall cast,
Then all the elements shall be bereft of order.
When the God who dwells on high shall roll the heaven, even as a scroll is rolled,
And to the mighty earth and sea shall fall the entire multiform sky, and There shall flow a tireless cataract of raging fire,
And it shall burn the land and burn the sea, and heavenly sky and night and day
And melt creation itself together,
And pick out what is pure.
No more laughing spheres of light,
Nor night, nor dawn, nor many days of care,
Nor spring, nor winter, nor the summer-time, nor Autumn,
And then of the mighty God, the judgment midway in a mighty age
Shall come, when all these things shall come to pass.