Aries Fire Read Online Free

mother. 
    “Crying is done. It’s been eight days since your mother’s tragedy. If all words in any dialect were linked together, they would still do no justice to the meaning of our beloved and virtuous Hypatia.”  His voice softened as he soliloquized. He made no motion toward her but kept speaking. “We’ve lost neither her wisdom nor her essence.  She lives in our minds, Seira.  She whispers her existence to our very impulses.”
    His voice faded.  It couldn’t compete with the rushing thoughts through Seira’s mind.
    Did he think I was crying?  Perhaps I should. Let him lecture, she thought.  It’s his way of grief.
    She didn’t really want to fight him.  That would have been cruel. 
    Athens?  No, my dear grandfather, that is not the way of it. That won’t do at all.
    “If you must, weep now for the students who’ll not have a mentor. We shall thwart the Christian devils and their doctrines by keeping the knowledge of truth alive for the freedom of future generations.”  He stared at the back of his hand then suddenly looked at her.  “There’s no time for girlish foolery.  Instruct Marina to pack for your journey and make haste.  You leave before the cock crows,” he finally finished. 
    Philosophers talk too much and I’ve had no intention of becoming one.  The stars hold my course, she thought.
    Seira was determined to seek out the wisest of astrologers and study for her own reasons.  She held her tongue.  There was no use pleading her case with a logistician.  Seira’s facts and reason were born in her heart and not in her head and she wasn’t about to argue that point.
    She stood.  He looked about the room awkwardly, saw that there would be no more resistance from her, and came around the table. Theon crushed his granddaughter in a hug.  For the first time in years, she felt the warmth of his broad chest.  She gazed over his shoulder through the terrace window. A curious star glimmered in the East and she intuitively knew it would be their last embrace.
    “Theon,” she mumbled into his sleeve, but left her sentence unsaid.
    •  •  •
    M ARINA, SEIRA’S MAID, was a silly and delicate little thing; always tiptoed about as if she feared the ground would eat her heels.
    “Why do you walk like that?  It’s unnerving,” Seira blurted.
    “I’m sorry, Mistress.  I don’t wish to disturb,” she said in a fragile voice, bowing her head.
    “Please don’t call me mistress.  It makes me feel, oh, I don’t know, old and dried up. Call me Seira. Or better, call me, Oh Exalted One,” she said.
    Seira puffed up her chest and squinted her eyes. Marina burst into laughter and suddenly contained herself.
    “I will be sad to see you go,” she said and lowered her head again.
    “Rina,” Seira said.  It was hard enough to be comfortable with her own frailty let alone have to speak to another’s. “Come here and sit by me…and stamp your feet into the floor,” she teased.
    “You have always been like a little sister to me, Mistr..um, Seira,” she said.
    Her disclosure was peculiar to Seira since Marina was only two years her senior and Seira already stood a head taller than her maid. 
    “I’m saddened by your mother’s passing. With her murdered, what’s to become of us?”  Marina sniffled and the tears began to flow. 
    Oh, by the stars, thought Seira.
    “Marina.  It’ll be grand.  Just think of it,” she said with one arm stretched toward the sky, the other around Marina’s bony shoulders.  “I’ll be out in the world and I’ll send you gifts from all the big cities. You’ll be here in the arms of a fine, rich man and have lots of runts, um, babes.  What do you think?” 
     “Is that one of your visions?” she asked. Her tears abruptly ended.
    “Yes.  Yes it is,” she lied.  “I saw it just last night in my dream.  Now, that’s better.” Seira urged her in the direction of her clothes.
    “Oh, that’s a wonderful vision,” she