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high wind blowing in would keep him from becoming faint.
    “I heard there was a glass lens here,” said Olympos.
    “How could there be? The heat would melt the glass,” said Pompey.
    “We tried to make one, once,” said the beacon-master. “But we could not cast a piece of glass large enough to serve our purpose. It would be an excellent idea, though. If we could magnify the light we have, we would not need such a large fire. And no, the heat would not melt the glass, unless it was thrust right into the flames.”
    “It seems to me,” said Olympos, “that if we had a lens, we could use sunlight instead of a fire.”
    “Good enough in the daytime, Olympos,” said his father, “but what of the nighttime?”
    Everyone laughed, but Olympos persisted. “Ships don’t sail at night.”
    “But they sail in cloudy weather,” Meleagros said. “And get caught in storms. Your sun-lens would fail then.”
    Ships…sailing…the thought of being on the water was unnerving for me. Just walking across the seawall toward the Lighthouse today had been difficult. I hated the water, because of that stabbing memory of the boat, and my mother. But I was forced to live by water, and look at it every day. I had yet to learn to swim, and I avoided boats whenever possible. Even the little lotus pools in the palace seemed threatening to me. I dreaded being called a coward, should anyone notice how I avoided the water.
    “Your city is fair,” said Pompey, turning slowly to see the entire panorama. “White…fair…cool and cultured…”
    “No one could love it as we do,” I said suddenly. I knew they were the right words, exactly the right words. “We will guard it for you, and it will always be waiting for you.”
    He looked down at me and smiled. “I know you will, Princess,” he said. “It is safe in your hands.”
    Was it then I felt—or discovered—the strange power I have in personal encounters? I do not do anything extraordinary, I say no special words, but I seem to have the ability to win people to my side, to disarm them. I do not know how. And it works only in person. In letters I have no special magic. Let me see someone, talk to him—or her—and I have persuasive powers I cannot explain. It must be something granted me by Isis herself, who has ever been my guardian. And she alone knows how I have tried to use her gift to bend the world to my vision and spare Egypt from Roman destruction.
     
    Mercifully, the Romans departed the next day, but not before extracting more money and aid from Father for their campaigns. But they were gone, gone, gone…and Egypt had been spared. Pompey and his retinue sailed away, to grapple with politics in Rome. I hoped never to see him, or another Roman, again.

    But it seemed our fate was inextricably entwined with that of Rome. Three years later, a visiting Roman accidentally killed a cat—an animal sacred to Egyptians. The population of Alexandria rioted, and tried to murder the Roman. The city was in a tumult; it was all our guards could do to protect him and quell the mob. All we would need was such an incident to invite Roman intervention, which was always a threat.
    During those years my two youngest brothers made their appearance. Both were named Ptolemy; if the women in our family have few names to choose from, the men have even fewer. There were eighteen years between Older Cleopatra and Older Ptolemy, and the same number between Berenice and Younger Ptolemy. Were they supposed to marry each other? Strange thought.
    As Isis, most Egyptian of gods, married her brother Osiris, so in the process of becoming Egyptian—that is, becoming the ruling house of Egypt, although by lineage we were pure Macedonian Greek—we Ptolemies adopted some ancient Egyptian customs that others found shocking. One was brother-sister marriage, as the Pharaohs had done earlier. Thus my mother and father were actually half-siblings, and I was forced in turn to marry my brothers—although it