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"Well, we must find out if it's the same for her," Sibyl said, as if it were the most obvious of suggestions. "We must find her and bring her here. If this is a refuge for me, among sympathetic beings, then can't we provide the same refuge for her?"
Silence.
"In the dream," said Sibyl, "the one where we spoke, she asked, Are you the one who took me? She's being held captive somewhere, isn't she?" Sibyl studied their faces. What she saw in their expressions seemed to frighten her. "You will help me find her, won't you? Is that too much to ask of you? That you help me bring this to an end?"
Ramses smiled, but it was a small, secretive, and sad smile. After all this woman had endured, she wanted only to help the resurrected Cleopatra. Here, surrounded by immortals, privy to revelations that should have shaken her to the core, she thought only of the other, the horrid revenant that he'd brought into being, as if she had no choice. That is it, he thought. They are so intimately connected this woman can't think of anything else.
"An end," Julie said, as if she dreaded the thought. "What end do you imagine to this, Sibyl?"
"An end to this confusion will surely help us both," Sibyl said. "How can I tell you the urgency I feel to be with her, to look into her eyes, to hold her hands?" She paused. "Yes, Ramses," she said finally. "To answer your question, something has changed in the wake of the party. For the first time, we seemed to share a dream, she and I. We chased each other through the streets of some city. A child's voice called out to his mother. In Greek. The word mother again and again. And then we stared at each other across a canal of some sort. For the first time we gazed upon each other without vagueness or distraction. We spoke."
"What words did you exchange?" Ramses asked.
"She asked me where I was hiding him. Where I was hiding her memories of her son. And I told her..." Tears again. "And I told her I would never hide anything from her."
"She's losing her memories," Julie said. "She said so in the temple today. Specifically she mentioned her son, Caesarion. She can remember nothing of him at all. The knowledge that she even had a son torments her now. A great yawning blackness. Those were the words she used to describe the place where the memories of her son should be, but are not."
"Did she mention Sibyl specifically?" Ramses asked.
"No, but there was something she was holding back, something she would not say. I asked her why an illness in her mind would cripple her body so. She wouldn't answer me. But that was the moment in which it seemed she was being tossed about by invisible forces. The very moment when Sibyl was assaulted, I believe." Tears hovered in Julie's eyes. "I felt sorrow for her," Julie confessed. "Much as I loathe her--I can't help but loathe her--I felt such pity for her." Julie's voice softened, became little more than a murmur. "What must it be like to have no soul, to be groping for a soul that resides in another? What is it like to be conscious that one is an empty shell?"
"The man who attacked me," Sibyl said, "he knew my name. He accused me of invading her mind, of trying to destroy his queen."
"Ah," Ramses said, "and so it was that one, just as I thought. The doctor with whom she traveled. This Theodore Dreycliff. And so we know that Cleopatra is aware of you as well. That she detects your presence just as you detect hers. And that she was able to do so before the party today, before you two were within a stone's throw of each other."
"I sent her a message," Sibyl said, as if it were a shameful admission. "I sent her a message when I was aboard the Mauretania. I told her my name and asked her how I could find her."
"And did you receive a response?" Julie asked.
"Only the man who brought a knife to my throat," she answered, lips quivering from her tears. "I wanted to help her. I wanted to help us both. And now I feel as if I have done a terrible thing."
"You have done nothing terrible, Sibyl Parker," Julie said quickly. "Nothing terrible at all."
"But you believe that she has, don't you?" Sibyl asked. She was fighting sobs now, and it put a miserable tone to her voice that made Julie hug her closer. "You see her as a villain, as a monster. And so you will not help her, because you believe that I will be better off if she continues to decline, as you put it. And if what you say is true, she will experience a madness that is permanent because she cannot die. And I am supposed to be relieved by this, comforted by it, even. And if I tell you that I feel a connection to her more profound than the love I have felt for any person, for my departed parents even, you will not believe me, will you? You will think me blinded by emotion and the strange nature of this connection, as you call it. You will think me unable to see her accurately. Unable to properly judge her crimes."
"She has taken life wantonly, Sibyl," Ramses said as gently as he could, but even these soft words caused Sibyl to screw her eyes shut and shake her head. "She has struck down humans as if she were a lawless being, soulless, as Julie has said. She is capable of doing this again."
"I know," she said miserably. "I know this. It feels as if I was present for it. But I was also present for her pain and her confusion. I feel those things now. I feel her fear. I feel her terror in the darkness. And it overpowers me, and it will overpower anything you say to me of what she truly is. I crossed the world for you, Mr. Ramsey, thinking you might be the key to my dreams. But now I treasure you, implore you, because you are the key to her. She and I, who we are..." She broke off, her words failing her.
"We are glad you have come, Sibyl," Julie whispered. "You must know this. You must know that we are glad you have come."
"Then find her. Please. Find her and free her so that we may learn if her experience matches mine. Find her so that we can discover if another meeting between the two of us will change the nature of this connection in some way that will prevent it from destroying us both. At the very least, let her face your judgment. Not the judgment of whoever holds her captive now. For I can feel her fear of these people as I would a second heartbeat in my breast."
She had silenced the room with this plea. She collapsed into Julie's half embrace and let her sobs claim her.
Ramses had done this to her. He and he alone. He had done this to this woman, and he had no choice but to fix it. Like Sibyl, he was not sure if he believed Julie's theory, or if he simply thought Julie's current version of it, which cast Cleopatra as a declining aberration, and Sibyl, the custodian of her true spirit reborn, was too neat. Too simple. But did this matter now? Did anything matter more than healing the despair he had brought to this poor, sobbing woman, who had traveled so far under such duress only to almost lose her life at the tip of a drunkard's knife? Yes, there was something that mattered more: providing rest to that horror that he had resurrected in Cairo. That mattered more.
Sibyl needed more than rest just now, he thought. She needed truth. She needed a truth that they did not yet possess, despite their powers and their knowledge.
These thoughts swam in Ramses' head.
Julie looked up suddenly. He felt a gentle pre
ssure on one shoulder. A hand coming to rest there, a voice in his ear, Bektaten's voice. "It seems we have more to consider."
"Go," Julie whispered. "I will stay with her."
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