I hold up my hands in surrender. “Fine. Awesome. Two months.”
“Another thing,” Isis says, her voice getting distant and tight.
I groan. “If you say it’s twins, I’m going to stab myself in the eye with this fork.”
“I wanted to ask if anyone has had any dreams lately.”
The gods all shake their heads, then everyone turns to me.
“Loads of them,” I say. “Every night, in fact. It’s amazing.” Isis’s eyes begin narrowing, and I hold up my hands. “Sorry! You’ll have to be more specific.”
Worry clouds her face. “Dreams of darkness. Dreams of danger.”
I shrug. “Nope. Nothing but sunshine and frolicking in the Nile with a herd of purple hippos.”
“Purple. Hmm.” Her face is way too thoughtful. Never underestimate the ancient Egyptian emphasis on the ability of dreams to portend the future. As far as I’m concerned, a dream is a dream is a dream.
Osiris uses my mother’s distraction to stand and drift back to the underworld section of the house, as the others continue talking about the baby news.
I feel a wave of bleak sadness, a desperate, gasping sort of terror. This new life coming to our house forces me to face my own impermanence in a way I try to avoid at all costs. I’m replaceable. Utterly, completely replaceable.
When my first baby tooth falls out as we eat lunch in the ruins of the temple, my mother holds it in the middle of her unlined palm and smiles; her eyes shine with tears, and I worry I’ve done something wrong.
“It’s so small,” she says, tucking it carefully into her bag. “When it first came in, it looked so big, sitting alone in your tiny pink gums. And it was very, very sharp.” She reaches over to deftly twist my long hair in a braid so the wind will quit blowing it into my face.
My tongue darts in and out of the hole that tastes faintly of blood, and I’m fascinated by the new landscape of my mouth, proud that I’m shedding my baby teeth.
“Finish eating quickly, Little Heart. We have to help someone today.”
“Why?” I ask, though I know the answer. The repetition is our little game.
“Because it is my job, and you are my special helper. We are defined by what we do for others, so . . .” She taps my nose and raises her eyebrows expectantly.
“So we must have happy, helping hands, and then we’ll have happy, helping hearts!”
She beams at me, and the sun shines brighter around us in response, warming me through. “That’s my beautiful little girl. If you always let yourself love others, you’ll get back more than you give. And that is why I am the happiest mother alive.”
“Because you love me.” I stand and brush my hands against my bare, knobby knees.
“Because I love you.” She kisses my forehead and starts walking toward the dirt road that leads to Abydos’s neighborhoods. “There is a woman with a very sick child. We’re going to fix both of them. And when we get home, you can help me with some magic before you go see Father.”
She’s walking quickly and I run to catch up, but my short legs won’t cooperate and she’s getting farther ahead. And then I remember that my legs aren’t short anymore, they’re long long long, and I’m not six, and this already happened, but still I can’t run, my muscles won’t cooperate, and the horizons at the edge of my vision are blurring into black, black that is swirling and eating its way toward my mother, beautiful and oblivious to the danger, and she will be swallowed, and I can’t let that happen.
The black seems to laugh at me as it curls past, making me complicit in its work, my inaction enabling its destruction. I am an accomplice and it knows it can count on me to simply watch as my mother is destroyed.
I cannot move.
2
There are as many versions of the myths as there are gods of ancient Egypt.
Amun-Re, king of the gods, had reached his limit with the impudence of humans. Pushed into rage, he called on his Eye to destroy all of humanity. Who was this Eye, capable of ending an entire race? None other than Hathor, who was also Sekhmet, vicious and bloodthirsty goddess of destruction. She killed everything in sight until Amun-Re repented of his wrath. But Hathor-as-Sekhmet could not be stopped. So Amun-Re gathered all the beer in the land and dyed it red, placing it where he knew she’d find it. She was tricked into thinking she’d sated herself on the blood of all the living and fell into a drunken, peaceful stupor.
This is much more like the Hathor I know.
However, this isn’t one of the stories I was raised on. My mother taught me the important ones. Meaning the ones she starred in.
I GROAN, THE SOOTHING FINGERS AT MY temple not soothing in the slightest at this hour. “What time is it?”
“Nearly dawn. I need you to help me with some protection amulets. Get up! Quick as a bunny, Little Heart.”
Quick as a bunny. I’d like to find the bunny that inspired my mother’s favorite saying and skin it alive. I flop over onto my back. My heart settles as I see the constellations mapped out on my ceiling. A few years ago I painted it shimmering black, with twinkle-lit crystals mapping out a chart of the stars on the night I was born. Orion has always been my favorite, right over my bed, watching and protecting me. Sometimes I try to write myself into a constellation, imagine what it would be like to be forever painted across the sky.
I’d be right next to Orion. I smile. I’ve never called him by the Egyptian name for the constellation. It’s one of my few successful rebellions—mostly because my mother doesn’t know about it.
“Isadora . . .” Her voice comes out like a song but my muscles start twitching, trying their hardest to obey her against my will. With a final sigh, I throw back my silver comforter and stumble after Isis.
“Did you have any dreams I should know about?” Her face is clouded with worry, distracted as we wind our way to her wing of the house.
A chill rushes over me as I remember my disturbing dream. I had forgotten the memory of losing that tooth. But it’s better not to feed her groundless dream paranoia. “This time the purple hippos had wings.”
“Hmmm. Were you frightened of them?”
“Only when they told me an evil woman would wake me up before dawn.”
She looks sharply at me. “Really? You saw what would happen?”
I roll my eyes. “No. It’s a joke. Sometimes people tell them to each other.”
“Dreams are not a joking matter, Isadora.”
“Absolutely. Your brain firing off random images while you sleep is dead serious.”
“As long as we are agreed.”
We enter her workshop, the pale-yellow stone walls always cool, the room flickering from candlelight. Our entire house is underground, about a mile from the remains of a temple in Abydos that tourists still visit. Luckily my parents have enough power to keep away unwanted visitors. Even the entrance is invisible unless you belong here. Most gods barely have the mojo left to stay in physical form, but my parents manage to do some small pieces of magic.
I sigh. “Which one are we doing?”
“Luring and protection.”
I heat beeswax over one of the candle flames until it’s liquid, then carefully pour it into the vulture mold. Vultures for protection.
“And the hippo,” Isis says as she lines up the ivory amulets. “I think your dreams were correct.” She places a hand absentmindedly on her stomach.
That’s right. Female hippos for Taweret, goddess of childbirth. Floods, I should have picked a different fake dream. I set the molds to the side, grabbing the jar of golden sweet honey. Isis whispers words, the true names of the gods and goddesses that I’m not allowed to know. The wax hardens quickly, and I pop out the miniature animals, setting them up next to each other on the stone table.
I carefully tip the honey onto the figurines, letting it coat them. Sweetness to lure out evil spirits, then trap them in the protective animals.
Yup. Sure. Beeswax and honey to combat bad dreams. Just some more early-morning mother-daughter bonding time in the House of Life.
Isis finishes whispering names to the ivory pendants, then drapes one around my neck. I clench my jaw, feeling the rough leather cord on my skin, the ivory warmer than it should be. “Do I need one?”
“Of course, my heart.” She drapes another over her own neck, clutching a third in her hand. The wax figures are left where they are. “This should be sufficient. Thank you, Isadora. Don’t be afraid. The baby will be a good thing. It will give us something to do together.” Her voice is odd. Almost . . . vulnerable. And she’s avoiding my eyes.
A soft noise, so quiet I almost miss it, sounds behind us and I turn to find my aunt Nephthys, half hidden by the doorframe.
“Come in,” my mother says, barely looking at her sister. “Isadora can help with anything you need. Horus asked me to make breakfast.” She smiles as she swishes out of the room.
Nephthys hovers over my mother’s workroom table, flitting from stone jars to ceramic containers of herbs, spices, dungs, her hands dancing nervously like two wounded birds. She nods to herself sometimes, but doesn’t ask me what anything is for. She’s helped my mother a lot, kind of an assistant through the ages. Lucky me, I inherited that role as soon as I was old enough.
I lean against the wall, wishing I were back in bed.
Then she surprises me. “How are you?” she asks. I hardly even know what her voice sounds like. She’s always been on the edges, there my whole life, but never really connecting. Just there.
“Umm, tired?”
“You seem unhappy.” Her voice is barely above a whisper, as tentative as her trembling hands when she twists a fingertip through the thick, golden honey. “Do you help your mother in here often?”
“Yeah, all the time.”
“Can you decipher her handwriting?” She lifts the corner of one of my mother’s papyruses, the cramped and flowing glyphs there a language in and of themselves. Since it’s a written language of my mother’s own making, though, the gift of tongues does not apply.
I give a halfhearted shrug. “Yeah. Took me a long time to learn, but I can read anything she writes. Very useful life skill, there.”
“Hmmm.” She licks the honey off her finger. If Hathor did it, it’d be like something from a music video, all tongue and sexy eyes. But Nephthys darts her tongue out like the honey will burn her, sucks her finger like it’s bleeding. “I don’t think your mother understands you.” She offers me a thin smile, her eyes watery.
I’m shocked. No one notices me enough to get that I’m not happy, and my mom is oblivious. “No,” I say, “she doesn’t.”
Nephthys nods, looking into a corner along the ceiling. “Time and distance, I think, might be good.”
Her words stun me. Is she on my side? Could she talk my mom into sending me away early? I need to get out, now more than ever.
“I couldn’t agree more.” I bite my lip, then go for it. “It’d help if someone else convinced my mom of the same thing.”
“Oh. Oh. Well. I don’t . . . Isis is so . . . Perhaps I could say something? Soon. Maybe when the baby comes. Or after. It’s not my place, and . . . I will try to say something. Soon.”
I slouch, deflated. I can’t pin any hopes on this timid shell of a god. Compared to my mother, Nephthys is a shadow.
Leaving her alone, I walk out into the still-dark hall. Maybe with precious Whore-us here I can get a few more hours of sleep in before my mother realizes I am being lazy and gives me something productive to do.
Or maybe I’ll use this free time to plot how to escape. I’m lost in thoughts of sneaking out while my mom gives birth when something muffled and strange, a noise that doesn’t belong, comes from the other direction and I whip around.
There are two people tangled together. The sound is . . . oh, idiot gods, it’s their mouths slurping at each other. Thank you, Hathor and Whore-us. I’m about to run and bleach my eyeballs when I realize—those pointy features? The face that still carries a hint of predator? That is not the falcon-proud face of my brother.
That is the jackal-mean face of Anubis. Who has been banned from the main house since I was a kid. And who is now sucking face with Whore-us’s wife.
I try to sneak down the hall unnoticed but freeze when a voice I thought I’d forgotten hits a spot between my shoulder blades, making me tense up. A memory tickles, something about why he was banished from our house, but I cannot for the life of me remember. “Good morning, little one.” I turn to find Anubis right behind me, looming and leering. “Not so little anymore, though.”
I back up a step. Anubis is handsome, his features all sharp cunning, with a hint of cruelty to his eyes and the twist of his mouth. His ears are high and almost pointed.
“Oh, uh, hey. What are you doing here?”
“Visiting my domain, as is my right.”
My nose stings this close to him. Being the god of embalming doesn’t make you smell very nice. “Yeah, cool. Well, you know where to find my father.”
“Our father.” His teeth snap on the words, and he leans in, his eyes focused in the region lower than my face. “You are definitely not so little anymore.”
Floods, is Anubis hitting on me?
For once the sound of my mother’s shriek is music to my ears. “What are you doing here? You are not welcome.”
Nephthys comes into the hall from the workroom. Her eyes go wide when she sees her son, and she squeaks with panic.
“Did you bring him?” my mother demands, and I have a headache from the aftershock of her voice.
“No! No, I—no!” Nephthys backs away, not looking at any of us.