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The wind blew harshly as she tiptoed along the darkened shore. She cupped a hand around her flame. The storehouses swelled, giants hunched against the sea. The fifth one, she recalled from a trip with Ganymedes, held the medical scrolls. They frightened her, these lurching edifices, even in the sunlight. There, she imagined, was where the scholars had been slain. But she’d been a shrinking child then, and now she was Antigone—brave. Brave enough to seek an audience with the queen and whisper her secrets in Berenice’s ear. What were haunted buildings set against that?

Within the storehouse, her oil lamp barely dented the darkness. The night transformed the dank interiors, but the smell, the scent of yellowing papyrus, stirred her senses. With care, she retraced her steps. Ganymedes had first guided her right, and then down some half dozen rows, and again to the left. There she’d find the works of Hippocrates and Aristotle, Herophilos and Erasistratus.

Arsinoe shrank beneath the shelves, anxious not to stray from her shy ring of light. As she wandered deeper into the black, the scholars’ ghosts haunted more brazenly—one spirit nearly passed through her outstretched arm. She ignored them. She pressed onward through rows upon rows of scrolls. Parchment and papyrus curled snug about itself; a few grander ones spun on rods of brass and silver and gold. She found comfort in these sights; perhaps the philosophers’ shades did too. She couldn’t begrudge them that.

As she made her way through the labyrinth, a thick layer of dust rose beneath her toes. Her torch caught upon stray cobwebs stretched between the nooks, and a plump rat scurried along one wall. Ganymedes often told her that the great library was long past its prime. As she explored these lost corners, Arsinoe saw the truth of his words. Once scholars had bustled throughout every inch of this complex, seeking out new works, new discoveries, new ideas. If she were ever queen, it would be that way again.

Her fears grew bolder in the darkness. As she turned a corner, she nearly thought she saw her sisters’ faces—Berenice and Cleopatra both, rotted in poison sleep. Arsinoe blinked. It was the reflection of her candle in a pair of abandoned oil lamps—nothing more. Berenice lived, and despite the chaos the queen had caused, Ganymedes promised that the Seleucids would fail. No ill could befall her sister in Ephesus. Cleopatra would be safe among the priestesses.

“They’re not real,” she said aloud. “Nightmares, not portents.”

Tryphaena had died—and no dream had foretold that. The murder of her fire-bearded knight could be mere coincidence. She’d obsessed too much over the link between the foxes and the wolves, and the men of flesh and blood, dying and moaning before her eyes.

The visions—fantasies—were an ailment, and like any other ailment they could be cured. Arsinoe would not be Cassandra to Alexander’s Hector. She was too young to be cursed by the gods. There was a physical explanation for her sights, and she would find it. Her fingers tapped over bronze and silver knobs until she reached the golden ones belonging to the medical scrolls. The first Ptolemy the Benefactor, not the fat one, had had them bound this way when he’d sent for the originals from Athens some generations back. He’d kept them for his collections and returned the copies. But then the library had been grand, the envy of the world. He’d never imagined that the scrolls would be hidden here amid a gathering of dust.

The Hippocratic works alone filled two dozen nooks. Arsinoe would never read them all, not even if she slipped from her bed each night until the Nile rose and fell again. Her lamp placed firmly on the ground, she worked one scroll free from its fellows, careful not to let the rest fall. And then, gently, she unfurled the aging parchment across the floor.

“It appears to me a most excellent thing for the physician to cultivate Prognosis;
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for by foreseeing and foretelling, in the presence of the sick, the present, the past, and the future….” Arsinoe skipped ahead, winding and furling through the text. One book, two, three. She’d no interest in reading about why doctors might want to “cultivate Prognosis” for various sicknesses; she wanted to know what sorts of illnesses brought nightmares. She read with a heavy tongue, stumbling over whispered words like “inflanunation” and “phrenitis.”

While the language was unfamiliar, the work focused on patients with the most plebeian of symptoms: fevers and cold sweats, icy feet and swollen ankles. No premonitions shook these patients’ fragile minds. Arsinoe searched on, clinging to the hope that the work might discuss other conditions, specifically men cursed by dreams. Finally, she furled the scroll. This one wouldn’t help her.

Arsinoe stood and surveyed the rows of texts. Eyes closed, she picked another at random and slipped it from the others.
“On the Sacred Disease,”
it began. That sounded promising. “Men regard its nature and cause as divine from ignorance and wonder, because it is not at all like to the other diseases…” She’d found it. This surely—this sacred disease—must be her ailment. And this text would detail her cure. She read on hungrily. But though she studied each word with care, she couldn’t discover what, precisely, the sacred disease was. Nor could she find any mention of a cure. “But this disease seems to me to be no more divine than others; but it has its nature such as other diseases have, and a cause whence it originates—”
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“Arsinoe.”

Ganymedes’s voice. She wound the scroll shut. Only now did she notice the round shadow he cast over her flame. How long had he been watching her? She could hardly believe she’d been so careless, so absorbed, as to miss his approach.

“I’d no idea you took such an interest in Hippocrates. But there’s no shame in your desire to study medicine. You might even do so in the light of day, if the passion moves you.”

His voice teased, but when Arsinoe looked up at his eyes, she found softness there. She expected him to admonish her for being out of bed, out of the palace. Instead, he sank to the floor beside her.

“There was a time, my dear,” Ganymedes began slowly, “when I, too, sought out medical texts in secret, desperate for a cure for my own unspeakable illness. Of course, I didn’t have access to a grand library such as this. But curiosity always seeks out its satisfaction. Several of the men in my traveling troupe carried a single text or two with them on our journeys. They weren’t doctors, but I’d seen more than one act the part for a talent before an unsuspecting patient. I suppose they found a bit of knowledge useful for such tricks. My search began by rooting through their trunks. I stumbled over each and every work I could find. I didn’t know my letters well back then, and so my frenzied reading proved both a hardship and an accomplishment.”

Arsinoe nodded eagerly. The eunuch never spoke of his early life. In her mind, he’d sprung fully formed into the palace, like Athena from Zeus’s head.

“In time, I found that I’d rooted out every volume and devoured them all. Yet I’d discovered nothing of use. I hadn’t come across a single case that resembled mine, never mind met with any text that proposed a cure. And so my desperation grew. At night, I snuck into the homes and shops of local apothecaries. As we traveled often, these visits exposed me to a vast range of new works.

“One night, perhaps a year after I’d begun my quest, I broke into the home of a learned man, a physician. I sat at his table, a fine piece carved from a single oak, and pored over a scroll. It was one I hadn’t seen before, in all my nights of searching. It was the second of Hippocrates’s volumes on disease. I’d consumed the first long before, and I was convinced that here, in the second of the great doctor’s works on ailments, I’d find the cure for my despair. I read ferociously. By this time I’d grown accustomed to mouthing over the complex terms “ulcerate,” “dysuria,” and “bilious.” And though the work began with a discussion on various injuries and illnesses of the head, I soon became so engrossed that I didn’t notice that the doctor, the master of the house, was watching me. I looked up with a start to find him, a well-muscled man but a few years past his prime, looming over me.

“Remember, now, that I was but a boy then, a plump and frightened boy, and I began to tremble. I thought he’d rage and strike me—and he would have had every right to do so—but instead he put a gentle hand on my shoulder and said, ‘My poor, poor child. I grieve for you, but these texts won’t bring you comfort. They’ve no answer for what it is that ails you.’ And I couldn’t help myself—I wept. For years I’d clung to this notion: that if I read enough, knew enough, I could overcome my pain. I could regain what I’d lost. And the man, he rubbed my shoulders and comforted me. When my tears had dried and my breath returned, he told me something I remember to this day. He said, ‘You may mourn your differences, but remember that the gods give mysterious gifts. There may come a time when your affliction seems an advantage, not a shortcoming.’”

The eunuch paused; the lamp licked his face, but it didn’t reach his weary eyes. Those looked as dark and forlorn as Arsinoe had ever seen them. She didn’t speak; she didn’t wish to break the spell. She wanted the candlelit Ganymedes to go on, to tell her of what happened with his ailment and what had become of the kindly physician. But the eunuch kept his silence, too absorbed by his own story to note her anxious eyes. When he spoke again, it was in a different vein.

“And so tell me, Arsinoe, daughter of gods, descendant of Alexander the Great: why do you wish to rid yourself of visions?”

“I don’t even know if they
are
visions.” Now that her surface had cracked, her secrets spilled out swiftly. “I often see things that never come to pass. I can’t tell what is real and what’s not, who’s dead and who will die and who will breathe another day. And I dreamed of Alexander. I was feasting on his flesh. Ganymedes, I can’t—” Tears choked her words. Furious, she brushed them away.

“You’re allowed to cry, my dear.” Ganymedes took her fingers in his own. “I wouldn’t put too much stock in all these grave sights. Dark dreams have many causes. They aren’t always sent by gods to reveal the untarnished truth.”

“But some are true, aren’t they?” What of the foxes? What of her Menelaus’s death?

Ganymedes took a deep breath. “There are many false seers, but yes, we’ve all heard tales of true ones too.”

“Will you teach me to know which visions will come to pass? And which I may simply forget?” She pleaded with him now—she needed desperately to understand, to know, which dreams would come true.

“I’ll help you, my child, as I always seek to do. But I’m no seer, and I’m afraid this isn’t the sort of thing that can be taught. It must be learned in its own way, and in its own time. In the meantime, I wouldn’t dwell too much on these dreams.”

“I don’t wish to dwell on them. I wish that I might forget them all.”

“But you will not,” the eunuch said sadly.

“No, I will not.” She hesitated. “I thought you’d be angry.”

“Angry?” Her tutor laughed. “Where would you get such a notion?”

“I know you loathe priests and sorceresses. You always have.” She paused, wondering if it was better to leave these thoughts unsaid. The eunuch’s open face made her bold. The time had come for confessions. “I thought that you hated them because they saw things you couldn’t.”

Ganymedes’s eyes clouded. Arsinoe hoped that he would cry, that his tears would avert her own.

“No, my sweet child. That’s not the reason. Though you’re quite wise to notice my aversion to such magic, I’ve no need for the gods to show me what is to come. There are other ways of finding out the future. Kinder ways. And if there are those who do see such things, I imagine it’s more a burden than a blessing.”

Arsinoe wanted to ask why, then, he hated seers and magic, both of which seemed such useful things to her, but a yawn stole away her words. She rushed to cover it with her hand, but she wasn’t quick enough.

“It’s late.” The eunuch’s tone was firm and final. “Long past time for you to return to your bed. What will Myrrine think when she discovers I’ve kept her charge out of her chambers into the wee hours of the morning?”

“But I’m not sleepy,” Arsinoe protested, though her eyes felt heavy. “I want to talk more.”

“We’ll talk tomorrow. For now, we must both get some rest.”

Her tutor scooped her up in his fleshy arms, and Arsinoe wrapped hers about his neck. The return journey passed quickly, her mind dipping into quiet dreams. Soon the eunuch was carrying her across the gardens. The clouds had cleared and the moon shone through the great laurel leaves, wine-dark in Selene’s soft light.

Already, Ganymedes was slipping her into her bed. Myrrine wasn’t there—she must not have stirred from the antechamber. Only her tutor had noticed her absence. There was a lesson there…Arsinoe’s heavy lids grew cumbersome. She blinked them open.

“Did you ever come to see it as a gift?” she whispered as her tutor made his way toward her door.

Ganymedes stopped and turned back to her. “Did I ever come to see what as a gift?”

“Your ailment. The physician said you might one day see it as a gift from the gods. Did you?”

Ganymedes smiled. “Well, it brought me here, did it not?”

Long after the eunuch left, Arsinoe wondered what he’d meant by those words. And what illness had afflicted him. And how it had brought him to the palace. And then her limbs weighed her down, and she sailed into the sky.