climb on ropes and chisel at sections on the spire, at the cupola and the pillars around the beacon, working like industrious ants.
“I apologize that the masons have not yet removed the scaffolding. We are still hauling up stone for the outer casing and, of course, the great golden statue of Poseidon has yet to arrive by barge from Memphis. I have invited Euclid to pay me a visit and calculate how best to raise it to the apex.”
Demetrius makes a grunting sound, then reaches over and clasps his friend. “By Jupiter, you have done it.”
“Why so shocked, my friend? Surely you have watched my progress from your precious library across the harbor?”
Demetrius stops and teeters as he cranes his neck and gazes up. “In the scroll rooms, there are few windows. We need to safeguard the world’s most important books, not expose them to the elements.”
Sostratus chuckles. “Well said. And of course, in all your courtyard festivals you never thought to lift your head over the wall and glance westward to admire my creation?”
Demetrius looks down at his sandaled feet, taking strange comfort from such a common sight. “I have, my friend, I have. A remarkable achievement, your lighthouse has become an integral part of the landscape in the mere twelve years it has taken to build. Alexandrians may take it for granted, yet they speak of little else but its completion and the coming festivals Ptolemy has planned for its dedication day. Your lighthouse has, in fact, become synonymous with Alexandria. The thousands of daily visitors to our harbors are awestruck by its magnificence. Indeed, it is the first thing they see, well before the coast even appears.”
Sostratus smiles. “I hear they are already calling it ‘The Pharos,’ after the island itself.”
“True, Homer’s little epilogue in the Odyssey granted us fame enough.”
“Even if he had it wrong. Egyptian settlers at Rhakotis told Menelaus the island belonged to Pharaoh, and out of ignorance, the name stuck. Pharos Island.”
Demetrius nods, waving off the same boring discussion he’s endured uncounted times. “Believe me, I know the tale well. We have over ninety copies, translated into fourteen languages, with scholars working on the Iliad now.”
“Wonderful ambitions you have,” Sostratus says, intending the complement to be genuine, however eliciting a wounded look from Demetrius. “Or is it our king’s ambition?”
“A little of both. Although, from time to time I have to fuel our benefactor’s interests.” Sostratus nods in empathy. “Now, my friend, do I get the promised tour, or must I wait another twelve years?”
“In just a moment. First I want you to look up, right there.” He points to a low-level scaffold, untended for the moment, above which a lengthy inscription is chiseled in Greek letters large enough to be seen by arriving ships in the Eastern Harbor.
Demetrius squints and reads it aloud:
“SOSTRATUS OF CNIDOS, SON OF DEXIFANOS, DEDICATES THIS TO THE SAVIOR GODS ON BEHALF OF THOSE WHO SAIL THE SEAS.”
He blinks. “All honor to Castor and Pollux aside, I think Ptolemy Philadelphus may have something to say about your name on his monument.”
“Indeed he would,” Sostratus says, his lips curling into a grin, “if this were what he saw. Our king wants his credit, and he shall have it. I am humble and patient. My thoughts are ever in the future, beyond the horizon of mere generations.”
“What are you going to do?” Demetrius asks, genuinely confused.
“Tonight, when the sun’s heat diminishes, my slaves will cement over this inscription and carve into it all the credit due our great king.”
A smile creeps across Demetrius’s face. “Ah, ingenious! Assuming your slaves are mute, or you have them killed, in time, the cement will crumble and erode away, revealing your name.”
Sostratus spreads out his arms and closes his eyes, basking in some private, faraway vision. “I shall be immortal.”
“I had not thought you so vain. Is it so vital that you are remembered?”
“Only for what I have done. It is the same with your books, no? Those authors, their wisdom must endure. Hence the need for your library.”
Demetrius nods. “Of course, but-”
“This tower is important in more ways than are immediately obvious. Beyond safety, beyond practicality, beyond a mere symbol of our grand city and a testament to Alexander’s genius. Beyond all that, I intend it to house something even more precious, something that, like my inscription above, will emerge in time and bring truth to a clouded world.”
“Then by all means, sir.” Demetrius bows. “Now… the tour?”
High above, the sun peeks through the open-air cupola between gilded pillars supporting the roof where Poseidon’s feet are destined to stand. A lone hawk circles the mid-section, vainly beating its wings to ascend farther.
Caleb gagged, reached for the fading vision and saw his fingers spear through a cascade of bubbles-bubbles spewing from his own throat. He’d spit his mouthpiece out! The world was darkening, his mouth filling with foul water.
For so many years he had pushed this power away, dreading the visions that came: horrific sights of metal cages in the mountains, of emaciated hands reaching through the bars, of whimpers and moans and cries for help. Visions dredged up by a talent he couldn’t control, alive with sights, sounds and smells. A gift he’d never wanted.
A curse.
But today was different. What he saw was new-an original, unprovoked vision. Too bad it would be the last vision he ever saw. Then it surged back, and…
… Demetrius whispers, “It’s marvelous.” He shuffles around two slaves at work polishing a marble Triton as he exits the hydraulic lift, the water-powered elevator that has shot them up three levels in less than a minute. He steps up to the terrace’s southern wall. Mouth open, he gapes at the view: the sprawling twin harbors below, the Heptastadion connecting the mainland to Pharos Island, the hundreds of multicolored sails dotting the sea and the boats anchored at the docks, the wide stretch of the magnificent Imperial Palace, and behind it, the gymnasium, the Temple of Serapis… and there, the shining walls and columns and the golden domed roof of the museum. Inside its walls are the library and the mausoleum of Alexander, whom Ptolemy buried there, establishing his direct connection to the legend.
“Incredible, seeing it from this vantage.” His gaze follows the Street of Canopus from the Moon Gate by the sea across Alexandria and through the Gate of the Sun, parallel to the canal connecting to the Nile, then weaving across the sands back through the haze and dust of the desert toward Memphis and Upper Egypt. The fierce cobalt sky engulfs all else, until the startling turquoise sea grazes at the horizon and consumes everything beyond. Over the dark blue waves, the shadow of the Pharos arches to the east as a lone marker etching its imprint upon nature as it would graft itself onto human consciousness for millennia to come.
“You were saying?” Demetrius takes great gulps of air and slowly backs away from the edge.
Sostratus takes his arm and leads him inside the spire to a staircase weaving in a double spiral up the last hundred feet. “I was speaking of impermanence and of a future that is even beyond the sight of the oracles.”
“If even the gods are blind to it, then what must we fear?”
“The unknown.” Sostratus speaks as they make the same ascent he has made three or four times a day for the past three years. His friend, unconditioned to the exertion necessary for such a climb, needs to rest.
“Must we continue to the top?”
“I wish to show you something before we go back down-down into the very bowels of the earth to illuminate the real reason you are here.”
Demetrius shoots him a look. “What, was it not for the view?”
“Not entirely. Come, we are almost there.”
Caleb bolted back to the present, fighting the brackish, cold water rushing into his lungs. He screamed-or tried to-dimly aware of another figure swimming toward him. The darkness softened until it gave way to the bright light of day, and a familiar man in white robes …
… emerges alone at the top. Sostratus climbs inside the “lantern,” a thirty-foot-wide cupola, where four
