"An immortal who devoted his entire existence to re-creating the elixir. And when he learned that those he'd brought back from death could not help in this endeavor, he walled them away in darkness. I don't believe for a moment this Saqnos ever studied the complexity of what you are. Of what we are. You and I, together."
"Ask him."
"I can't. He is no more."
She brightened at this. Briefly she wore the promise of a smile, then it vanished. There was a glass of wine on the table before her; she brought it to her lips.
"This pleases me," she finally whispered.
"He hurt you," Sibyl said, "he tortured you. I felt it."
"What else have you felt? What else do you steal from me?"
"I steal nothing from you. I see glimpses of your life as you are living it. I feel moments of what you are feeling. There is a man with you. A handsome young man who loves you very dearly, who refuses to believe you are as doomed as you believe you are. And I agree with him."
"Do you?"
"What do you feel of me, Cleopatra? What do you see through my eyes?"
"It is the same," she answered quietly. "It is as you've described, only in reverse."
"You see, so it is balanced, this connection between us. And it became more stable the closer we drew to one another."
"How can you say this?" she hissed. "How can you call this thing stable? This word, it means 'calm,' does it not? 'Even'? 'Flat'? How can you use words like that to describe what is happening to me? I have lost my memories, do you understand? I was raised from the black waters of death itself only to be stripped of all that makes me who I am. The loss. Can you fathom the loss? I have not lost memories of being a shopkeeper or a dressmaker. I lost memories of being a queen."
"But I'm not gaining them," Sibyl whispered. "Don't you see? If I were the vessel for your true soul, and you an aberrant thing that should never have been raised, then all your memories would be flowing across this connection between us. I would assume all of them. They would become mine. Your mind, it would belong to me."
"Does it not?"
"No. The memories I have received from you have come to me my entire life in a gentle and, yes, a steady way. In fragments, passed down through centuries. It is your life now to which I am most strongly connected. And this connection has driven me closer to you, and the closer we have come, the more my fear has left me and been replaced by a love for you for which I barely have words.
"Can't you see? Your soul is not some small thing that can be stuffed into a bottle and passed off to another. Neither is mine. No soul is like this. It can't be. What connects us is far more complex. More intricate."
Sibyl reached into her satchel and removed a copy of The Wrath of Anubis. She placed it on the table so that Cleopatra could read her name on the spine.
"They came to me as dreams," she answered. "All my life I've had vivid dreams, dreams of Egypt. Sometimes only a jumble of sensations and images. Sometimes moments and episodes. I've captured most of them in my books, without knowing that they were yours."
"Mine," she whispered.
"When I arrived at the party, when I saw Ramses in the flesh for the first time, I realized he was the man from one of my dreams. That a moment you shared with him came to me as a dream, and I in turn wrote it in these pages."
"And why do you bring me this book now? To mock me?"
Sibyl reached into her satchel and removed a copy of The Fire of Thoth and then a copy of The Storm of Amun and then Horus Rising. She made a row of them across the table so Cleopatra could once again see the spines, and see her name, Sibyl Parker.
"I bring you these books because in the dream we shared when you were being held in that terrible place, you asked me a question. Do you remember the question you asked me?"
"My son," she whispered, "I asked you about...my son."
"You asked me where I was hiding your memories of him."
"Yes," she whispered.
"And the answer is this. I seek to hide nothing from you, and I never will. But the memories of yours that have come to me, throughout my life, throughout my dreams, they are all recorded here, even though I didn't know what I was recording at the time. And my hope is that if you turn these pages, if you read them, you might be able to restore what you have lost. My hope is that there is something in my words that will affect you just as the sight of Ramses at that party affected me. Perhaps it's in the smallest details. The colors, the smells, the textures. Maybe one of them will produce a moment of clarity and restoration like the one I experienced at the engagement party when I first saw Ramses in the flesh. I am not here to consume you. Or to destroy you. Or to cast you into darkness or madness. I'm here to restore you."
"You believe we are a queen divided? Is that it?"
"I believe that I am Sibyl Parker. American. Novelist. Cursed with two dreadful brothers currently who spend my money on nothing but drink and women. And I am blessed to have a spirit in part from one of history's greatest queens. The mystery of that connection is still unfolding. But this is who I am. And you are Cleopatra the Seventh, last queen of Egypt."