Dad laughed from the living room.“Sister Leo.”
Mom giggled, and I’d left, feeling exposed and ugly.
So, yeah. When my date had asked, “Are we?” I’d shrugged and answered, “Fine.”
That fourth date had also been our last date, but I couldn’t say it left me broken-hearted.
Sitting in the deep, high-backed chair, I took a moment to look around. This part of the library was mostly empty. A few people were packing up, like I expected.
Turning back to the desk, I placed my bag in front of me to remove my laptop and notebooks.
As soon as I opened my computer, my wallpaper—the shard of pottery—glowed.
My entire life was based on this relatively small piece of gold and obsidian. And I was fine with that.
I’d always lived in my head. I had two selfish parents with enough money to do whatever they wanted, none of which included me, so I had spent my childhood and adolescence with people paid to keep me alive. They hadn’t loved me. Like my parents, my nannies and babysitters thought I was odd, so I found ways to occupy my time and distract myself from being lonely.
It was my father’s copy ofBulfinch’s Mythologythat had started the obsession I’d turned into a career. Stories about creation, told in slightly different ways in different places around the world pushed out the thoughts of my mother telling me I had been a huge mistake, and my father laughing at her bluntness.
Instead of being hurt, I had shut down and read about the Greek gods. Compared to them, my parents didn’t seem so bad. At least, they hadn’t tried to murder me as a baby, the way the Titan Cronus had when he swallowed Zeus whole.
“Dr. Ophidia.”
It was Ms. Whitmore. She had my books on a rolling cart along with a plastic lectern with clip that would allow me to examine the books under the light.
She placed the pile next to me and left. Or—I assumed she left. As soon as the books arrived, I forgot all about her.
Speaking of Zeus…I bypassed the books and went straight to the Sprenger sketches.
And was immediately disappointed.
It was the same illustration I’d seen a hundred times. A huge, white stone monolith, wider at the base than the top, with a giant round mirror set at the apex.
Disappointment was part of research, but I couldn’t help sighing. I had such hope that maybe,maybe, there would be something here. Something different.
I went to the Arabic version ofMeadows of Goldnext, carefully scanning the pages and translating with my very beginner level Arabic. It was a long shot, but I knew the key words and phrases I was looking for.
A needle in a haystack.
That’s what being a historian was. Digging into the past, hoping something corresponded with something else and suddenly the incomprehensible made sense.
Thunder.The word seemed to leap off the page, and I drew the light closer to the book.God dammit.If I could go back in time, I’d forgo Old English and learn Arabic instead.
Father.I knew that word, too. In conjunction with the word “thunder” it was possible this referenced Zeus, the Greek god who ruled over all other gods.
I opened the de Courteille translation, trying to find about the same spot in the book.Nothing.No mention of Zeus or any other Greek god.
Something at the top of the Sprenger illustration caught my eye, and I closed the book, replacing its spot under the light with the sketch. There was something different about this sketch, and it had gone right over my head. In most illustrations, the highest level of the lighthouse, the one even above the giant mirror, was framed by four statues of Triton, the son of Poseidon, Greek god of the sea, and above him, a golden statue of Poseidon himself.
Not in this one.
Images of Poseidon and Zeus were similar in that they were two scantily clad, bearded men, but Poseidon usually held a trident, a three-pronged spear. I thought that was what this figure held, but if I looked closer…gah!I needed glasses.
I thought—no.I was certain—the figure on top of the lighthouse wasn’t Poseidon, but Zeus.
That wasn’t a trident. It was a lightning bolt.
Of course, when Al-Mas’udi saw the lighthouse, the entire top had tumbled off and rested beneath the sea, so he would have drawn this based on what other people told him. Other people who hadn’t been alive when the lighthouse was whole.