Hypatia sat between two colonnades at the Serapeum listening to her father address his countrymen. Her dark wavy hair gently rustled in the breeze. The smell of horses from the passing chariots mixed with the gentle wafts of salt blowing off the sea. The scent of home comforted her almost as much as the sound of her father’s lessons. Theon was one of the foremost scholars in Alexandria at the time, earning him the title Director of the Library even though the bulk of the Great Library was no longer. The sun was high and the shadow of the stoa barely extended into the agora.
Today’s lecture was on mathematics, one of Hypatia’s favorite subjects, but she’d actually helped her father write this one and found her mind wandering to thoughts of the crowd. How many of these people are actually listening or even comprehending, she thought to herself. The city, which was once the height of human knowledge and scholastic achievement had diminished through the years, brought to its knees by religious intolerance on all sides. She knew she’d have to keep an eye out for her aging father, enemies to knowledge lurked behind every corner.
As Theon reached the crescendo of his lecture, a glint of light caught the corner of Hypatia’s eye. She turned to catch its source, but there was nothing that should’ve caused such a flash. She rose and slipped between colonnades to investigate further. A swaying piece of fabric caught her attention. She quickened her pace.
“Who’s there?” Hypatia called out. No answer.
She wound around the southeast colonnade where she’d seen the movement just in time to catch a lone figure slip into the rear entrance of the Serapeum. Now I’ve got you, she thought. Having grown up spending every waking moment following her father’s footsteps in the daughter library, Hypatia knew better than most the secrets held within the stone temple to knowledge.
She watched as the seedy-looking man slipped conspicuously between rooms. He held a strange torch in his hand, illuminating the shelves of books as if searching for something. She knew eventually he’d land himself in the far-most room with a hidden staircase and conveniently, that same room with a secret gate that few knew existed. Hypatia positioned herself around the corner at the release mechanism, poised to act.
The man entered the small room and with a quick thud found himself behind a retractable series of beams.
“What the-,” he cried out.
Hypatia stayed hidden as she regarded the captured man. He didn’t look much older than Hypatia herself, maybe his late 20s. He had light brown hair the was cut short on the sides, but grew longer on top as if held in position by some solidifying agent. He smelled of salt air and cypress, and not a small amount of sweat. His left eyebrow had a patch of hair missing in the middle, giving him a rugged look that stood in opposition to the kind, amber eyes they guarded.
“What is your purpose here,” Hypatia called out from the darkness.
“Who’s there? Show yourself!” he responded as he quickly extinguished his strange torch.
“You should not be here,” she said, stepping into the light.
The stranger stopped and regarded her for a moment before responding. “I shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t you be outside listening to the old man?”
“That old man is my father and the Director of the Library.” Hypatia immediately felt herself becoming defensive. “I say again, what is your purpose here?”
“Director of the Library, eh? Okay then, so you probably know your way around this place pretty well? Clearly well enough to know how to get me trapped in here, how about getting me out of here?” He smiled as if he was winning. Hypatia was not one to be charmed so easily.
“Not until you tell me who you are and what you’re doing here.”
“You first.”
“I’m not the one trespassing. Like I said, my father is Theon, the Director of -”
“Yes, yes, Director of the Library. And your name?”
“Hypatia of Alexandria, daughter of Theon,” she replied cautiously. What harm could knowing my name be, after all, she thought. Most Grecians and Egyptians that traveled this area knew of her and her father.
“Hypatia? Really? Well, nice to meet you, Hypatia. I’m Jim.”
“Jim? You mean Jacomus?”
“What? No, just Jim.”
“Just Jim?”
“Yes. Well, no, it’s technically short for Jameson, but that’s immaterial. Hey so now that we’re introduced, why don’t we see about getting me out of here.” Jim, as he called himself, began to shake the bars and move about the room looking for a release button. He came dangerously close to the mechanism hidden within the room that opened the passageway down the stairs.
“You still haven’t told me your purpose here, Jim of, where did you say you were from?”
“I didn’t, but I’m from a place I’m sure you haven’t heard of. It’s a bit away from here.”
“Try me.”
“Okay then. New York. I can assume by the look on your face, you’ve not heard of it.”
Hypatia could feel her own eyebrows furrow at not having heard of the place. She prided herself on knowing much of the physical world as every true Alexandrian did. It was a port city and ships graced her shores from more and more distant places every day. Ptolemy III had even required every vessel to turn over their manuscripts for copying to better fill the knowledge of Alexandria and her libraries. But never, in all of Hypatia’s learning, had she heard of a place called York, let alone New York. Her sense of curiosity piqued, she wanted to know more.
“Tell me of this New York.”
“Nope, sorry. Now it’s your turn. How about getting me out of here?”
“The answer to that question lies behind your answer as to your purpose here.”
“Touché. I’m here for a book-er scroll I mean,” he said glancing around the small room of shelves filled to the brim with ancient scrolls.”
“We have a lot of them, as you can see. Along with books and codices, you’re in Alexandria after all. Which are you after? Perhaps I can help you find it.” She now wanted to know more about this stranger and his home of New York.
Jim looked as if he was pondering his options.
“Look,” Hypatia said, “I know you don’t know how to get out of here. I do. You need to find a scroll. I probably know where it is. You are one girlish scream from me away from being taken away in irons. I want to know more about this New York. I let you out, we work together. Deal?” Hypatia knew how to be succinctly persuasive when she needed to be.
He squinted at the young woman before answering. “Deal.”
Hypatia released the lever that freed Jim. He strode out of the small room with a certain air about him not typical of Alexandria. He came closer to her, uncomfortably close for Hypatia’s liking. Only inches from her face he reached out for her arm and whispered, “thank you.”
Hypatia felt herself being pulled towards the small room that she had just freed Jim from. Nearly stumbling, she caught herself just in time to turn and see the beams fall from the ceiling, sealing her in.
“Hey!” She screamed. “What are you doing?”
“Sorry, but I work alone and can’t really have you following me, but thank you for letting me out. Oh and that was the room I needed after all.” Jim waved a scroll in front of her before placing it in a strange-looking shiny box and into his bag. “So I guess thank you twice.”
With that Jim turned and ran out the same direction from whence they’d entered the building. Hypatia was left alone in the small, confined room with nothing but questions and anger, plenty of anger.
As soon as Jim was out of view, Hypatia pulled the series of levers behind the scrolls to reveal a stone staircase. There were secrets in this building that few, and surely no thieves, knew about.
She reemerged into the light of day outside the agora of the Temple of Serapis. Only minutes had passed and she was sure she could catch the thief before he got too far. The lecture had just ended and a mass exodus of listeners exited the agora at the same time. There’s no way he planned that, Hypatia thought. She jumped up on one of the nearby carts, eliciting a series of screams and shoe-ing from the owner, but it didn’t matter. Hypatia eyed her prey. She caught Jim running through the plateia, almost getting crushed by crossing chariots.
Hypatia jumped into a passing chariot herself, determined to catch the man. As she neared him, a horse and its rider let out a scream from Hypatia’s left.
She turned to find the horse rearing its hoofs only inches from Hypatia’s face. With a scream, she fell off the chariot into the dirt. Another horse appeared to her left. The world seemed to stop. Hypatia could see her situation, the one horse bearing down on her while the chariot she was just on teetered on its axle, threatening to fall in her direction. She could see it all but was unable to make herself move. No amount of learning, no amount of knowledge could muster the strength her muscles needed to move out of the way. She raised her hands in a feeble attempt to protect herself when she felt someone grab her shoulders. As she was pulled out of the way, time caught back up to itself.
“Are you okay?” A breathless voice exclaimed.
“Yes, I…” she turned to find Jim standing behind her, panting from exertion.
“And why didn’t you just stay in your little room nice and safe?”
“You!” Hypatia regained her focus. “I want my scroll back.”
A crowd of guards appeared in the distance, drawn by the commotion. “Okay,” Jim said, “I get that you’re probably going to follow me anyway, so why not come with me? I’ll tell you about New York and you can not give me up to the guards. Deal?”
“Why should I deal with you, you broke our last one.”
“That’s true. But that was then, this time I promise, I won’t leave you behind. Provided you keep up.” He held his hand out to lift Hypatia out of the dirt. Against her better judgment, she wanted to agree. Her curiosity was too powerful to cage in the name of supposed safety. “Any time, lady, they’re getting closer.”
“Fine. I’ll get you out of here. But I’m holding onto the scroll.”
“Whatever, let’s go.”
The pair immediately started winding between the various merchants along the plateia. Most trying to draw the attention of the crowd back to their wares, paying no mind to two individuals that clearly showed no interest in buying.
“In here,” Hypatia said as she grabbed Jim’s arm and led him through a small opening between two colonnades into a bathhouse. Hypatia stayed near the door, watching to spy if the guards had truly been following them. Jim, on the other hand, had already released himself from Hypatia’s grip and wandered the apodyterium.
“Okay, you’re in charge of leading from now on,” he said. Hypatia turned to see him walking up to the few women still remaining from the morning women’s hours. More than a few shot her disgusted looks at having brought a man into the bathhouse at this hour. Hypatia didn’t care. Being the daughter of a philosopher and mathematician that taught her as if she was a son had already branded Hypatia as different. She was no stranger to stares.
“Jameson!” She hissed, “stop bothering them. Once they leave, we should have an hour before the men begin to arrive.” The pair waved at the last few women as they left the bathhouse. Jim tried to follow one of them, but Hypatia pulled him back.
“What? I was just being friendly. Alexandria is a very nice place.”
“Is that what you call it back in New York?”
“Hah, no, in New York it involves spending $28 dollars on an overpriced cocktail just to have it thrown in your face.”
“You come from a very strange place, Jameson of New York.”
“Really, you can call me, Jim,” he said as he grabbed the box from under Hypatia’s arm. He turned to the stone bench along the wall, taking the scroll out of his shiny box.
Hypatia glared at him with incredulity, why would someone want to be called by something other than their name. Unless Jim is a title, she thought. “So what is so important about this scroll that you had to steal it from the Serepeum?”
“It’s a very special one, to me at least.” He rolled it out along the bench and immediately Hypatia knew the scroll. It was one special to her father as well. He’d only showed it to her once when she was very young. It told the story of a girl from the time of the earliest Pharaohs. Her father wouldn’t go into more detail, but she hadn’t seen it since the day her mother died and left it for him.
“That’s my fathers! It belonged to my mother before that. What do you want with it?” She tried to grab the fragile parchment from him.
“Woah, careful. This is an antique,” Jim replied, gently pushing Hypatia away from her family’s scroll. “And you can have it back. I just need to snap a pic of it.”
“Snap a pic?” Hypatia questioned. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, right. I mean copy it down.” Jim pulled a small box out of his bag and held it above the parchment. His hand continued frozen in that position, hanging his small box just above the scroll as he turned through the various sections of text.
“What… What is that thing?” Hypatia finally questioned.
“It’s a camera. It copies the images on this parchment and saves them for later.”
“I’ve heard rumors of studies coming from the East about optics, but the idea that your small box contains enough parchment for all of this? Impossible.”
“You’re a scientist, you should know better, most impossible things are merely impossible at the moment.”
This took Hypatia back for a moment. This stranger from ‘New York’ was right. The world previously thought the earth was flat, but Eratosthenes proved that it was a circle and measured it. She’d read the codices of Hero and his research into a device that turns steam into work. Even the great lighthouse Pharos was laughed at and heralded as impossible until it was built. Science took time to catch the impossible.
“See, all done,” Jim said as he placed the device back into his bag. He rolled up the scroll, placed it back in the box, and handed it over to Hypatia.
“Thank you!” She grabbed the box from him, perhaps too quickly. “Mind if I take a look at that camera device of yours?”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea. Not sure you’re ready for it just yet.”
“Alexandria is one of the most advanced centers for learning in the modern world, I think I can handle the science of it.” She crossed her arms in protest at the denunciation of her mental abilities. Humility was one thing her father had failed to impress upon her.
“How ‘bout this, maybe one day.” Jim got up and headed for the door. “I’m sure you’re anxious to get that scroll back to your library.”
Hypatia crossed just in front of him, attempting to stare him into submission. “You’re never going to let me have that device. But it’s okay, you keep your secrets and I’ll keep mine.”
“Oh, you have secrets now too?”
“Yes. Plenty. A woman always does.” She smirked as she continued out the door of the bathhouse.
“It’s her!” A voice yelled above the dissonance of the crowd. Hypatia looked up to discover a group of monks pointing at her.
“Oh no. I have to get out of here.” She turned to run, but Jim caught her shoulders.
“Wait, who are those guys?” He held her close as he surveyed the group of men.
“Let’s just say they’re not the biggest fans of me or my father. And especially not of his academy or the library.”
“Come on, this way.”
The pair burst into a run, hoping to lose the men in the crowd. As they ran, the streets got even more crowded. Hypatia felt as if she were running through mud. It was already the peak hour for the market and few cared to move out of the way of a woman. Jameson continued to pull her forward.
She felt a tug at her tunic behind her. She fell to the ground, her head slamming against a nearby rock. The box she held went flying away from her.
“What are you doing so far from your precious academy, witch?” One of the men had caught up to Hypatia and pulled her to the ground. She hated these men. They hated her father for teaching science and hated her even more for being a woman that had learned it. “And what is this?”
The man grabbed the box from the ground, surveying it with curiosity. “Another invention of evil, I assume?”
“Actually it’s mine.” Jameson appeared from the crowd and hit the man in the face hard with a fist. “And it’s none of your business. Let’s go.”
He pulled Hypatia back to her feet and grabbed her hand as they continued their escape. Hypatia’s senses were all heightened, the smell of exotic spices filled the air. The cacophony of merchants selling everything from silk to sheep made her already pounding head hurt even more. She tried to focus on what she could, her feet moving one in front of the other. Her eyes focused on Jim’s feet just inches ahead of her own. The feeling of his strong hand in hers, guiding her to safety. She felt the smooth ring on his finger as they ran. It was smoother than any other ring she’d felt. She’d have to ask to inspect it later. Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot, she tried to compel her feet to continue moving out of sheer force of will, but her eyelids were getting heavy. Black teased at the corners of her vision. As she collapsed again on the ground, she was left with the image of Jim’s face close to hers. I think you’re attractive too, Jim. Hypatia blacked out.
Hypatia awoke with her father standing over her.
“Thank the gods, you’re alive,” he said. Cradling her head in his arms.
She was back in her room. The smell of incense filled the air. While Hypatia and her father considered themselves learned individuals, they still ascribed to the way of their ancestors, just in case. She glanced around the room, searching for Jim. When she didn’t immediately see him, she began to question whether the afternoon had actually happened as she recalled it.
“How, how did I get here?”
“Because this young man found you and brought you back to me after that horrible mob attack. Don’t think I’m not mad that you went off on your own, young lady. You know better than that.” Her father Theon moved enough to spot Jim leaning against the door.
“Father, please. I’m a grown woman. Can I have a moment to thank my savior privately, please?” She tried to sit up and look as authoritative as she could but having her swollen head pounding didn’t lend itself to any sort of power. Her father Theon begrudgingly left the room, leaving Hypatia alone with Jim of New York.
“Ya know,” he said, “if you wanted to be closer to me you could’ve just asked, you didn’t need to hit your head just for a hug.” He winked at her and she felt a certain attraction to the man that she couldn’t quite place. She knew better than most the thoughts of men and for once, she felt safe around this one.
“Right, because I threw myself down on the ground just to be closer to you.”
“Hey, who am I to judge a woman.” He sat next to her on the frame, causing the reeds to rustle at the added weight. “Seriously though, are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” Hypatia responded. “Did you save the scroll?” Jim smiled at her. Hypatia knew there was something more to this man. She just couldn’t quite pinpoint it with the pounding causing her focus to dull.
“I did. Safe and sound back with your father as promised.” His arm brushed up against hers and a rush of electricity seemed to travel between the pair. She instinctively grabbed his hand, tracing the lines along his skin until her fingers found the ring on his middle finger.
“That’s right! How did you get a metal so smooth? What metal lends itself to being so smooth, is it still structurally sound?” Her mind erupted in an abundance of questions about such a small thing.
“Oh, this?” He looked at it for a moment, then as if making a decision took it off and gave it to Hypatia. She regarded it closely, there were markings on the inside, but they were worn down and difficult to read.
“Something about balance?” She questioned.
“Yea, old family motto. It means-” Jim was interrupted by a sound coming from his bag. “No! Now? Really, now you decide to work?” A look of concern flashed across his face as he pulled a strange-looking bracelet out of his bag.
“What is that? What’s going on? How many things do you have in the bag?”
“I’m so sorry, Hypatia,” he said, taking his ring back from her. “I have to go. I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Wait, you’re leaving now? But you haven’t held up your end of our deal. What about New York?” She suddenly felt worried that he was being ripped from her life before she was ready to say goodbye.
“I know. I’m sorry. Maybe in another time. I -”
Jim was gone.
Hypatia played the event over in her head. He was talking. There was a flash of light. A strange sound, then gone. He was just gone. She ran out of her room to search for him. Then to the street. Then she climbed up on the boxes outside their house. No sight of him. As quickly as he’d entered her life, he’d left it. Jim of New York was gone.
Years passed, but the memory of Jim of New York never faded. Instead they caused Hypatia to throw herself into her studies even further. She made landmark strides into the fields of science and mathematics until the day her father passed and she once again set her eyes upon the scroll he left for her. The scroll that had brought Jim into her life. As she unrolled the delicate parchment out before her, a familiar glint caught the corner of her eye. The voice that accompanied it filled her soul with excitement.
“So, Hypatia of Alexandria, ready to see New York?”
A shortened version was submitted to Reedsy short story contest: https://blog.reedsy.com/creative-writing-prompts/