Hathor giggles from the dim back corner of the long hall, then sways her h*ps as she walks toward us. “Relax. He’s family, right?” From my vantage point I see Hathor trace a finger along Anubis’s arm.
But his hungry black eyes are still on me.
My mother must notice, too, because without looking at me she says, “Isadora. Go to your room. Now.”
That had been my plan, but now I want to see what’s going on here. And I really want to see Hathor get it for hanging out with Anubis. “But I—”
“NOW!” Her voice shoves me down the hall, and I trip and run into my room, slamming the door behind me.
My mother follows after a few short minutes, looking harried and distracted. “I need to know exactly what you have been dreaming of.”
“I can’t remember.” I look anywhere but at her. She’ll know I’m lying. She always knows. When I was little, it got to the point that if I even thought about doing something naughty, I’d get a headache anticipating her disapproving glare. She lets out a small noise like a hum, then puts her hand on her stomach.
“I do not like Anubis’s reappearance in our home, or the way he was looking at you. Normally I wouldn’t worry, but a woman is never more vulnerable than when she is with child and giving birth.” She sounds genuinely concerned.
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, but you’re not a woman. You’re a goddess.” I barely manage to avoid tacking on a so shut up about it already.
“Have you learned that little from our family history?”
“You mean lessons on incest? Betrayal? Jealousy? Murder? It doesn’t count as dying if you come back to life, which everyone always managed to do.”
“It is not myself I am worried about.” She reaches out and takes my hand with a strange, frightened intensity, and suddenly, in spite of my insistence that dreams are only dreams, I really, really want to know what hers have been about. Or I really, really don’t. I can’t decide.
“Well, I think I’m pretty safe. Who would care enough to hurt me?” In the grand scheme of things, I don’t matter. At all.
“With the baby coming, I worry. I can’t watch you. I should have known Anubis was in our temple, but I didn’t even feel him.” She reaches up and takes a strand of my long black hair between her fingers. “I wanted this baby to be something we did together, to bridge the gulf between us. To make us a family again.”
I grit my teeth. She’s such a liar. She only has babies to serve her own selfish purposes.
She lets go of my hair, nods like she’s come to a decision. “I won’t have you in danger. Which is why I’m sending you away.”
“Wait, you’re—what? You’re sending me away? That’s not fair! That’s—” That’s exactly what I want. Hope rises, lumping in my throat and threatening to choke me. “Okay,” I manage to squeak out.
“Nephthys mentioned it just now when I confided my worries. She thinks it would be for the best.”
I want to pump my fist in the air, to jump up and down on my bed. Nephthys, silent slouching Nephthys, actually came through for me!
“You should be safe at Horus’s.”
“No. No way. I will not go live with Whore-us!”
“I need to know you’re safe and that I don’t have to worry about you.”
“Well, I’m certainly not going to be safe with Whore-us! He can’t even remember my name; what makes you think he’s going to watch out for me? And besides, you want me to spend all my time with Hathor?”
“I don’t know,” she says, her voice drifting off, worry clipping its edges.
I am winning. Idiot gods, I am going to win. This is the first time in my entire life I have been able to push my mother on an issue and actually get her to budge. I take a deep breath, determined not to blow it.
“If you’re going to send me away to keep me safe, you should really send me away. Somewhere far away, away from the gods, away from Egypt. If no one knows where I am except for you, I couldn’t be any safer, could I?”
“It’s out of the question. You are too young to go anywhere on your own.”
No, I can still make this happen. I have to. “You’re absolutely right.” I try to sound nervous, hesitant about leaving her. “If only we knew someone who lived outside of Egypt and was out of contact with everyone here.”
I gag on the thickness of my own hint. Please come to the same conclusion, Mother. Please.
“Hmm. There is Sirus.”
“Sirus?” I should win some sort of an award for the delicate inflection of surprise I weave through my voice.
“You remember Sirus, don’t you? He hasn’t been to visit since you were small.”
Of course I remember Sirus. He’s my favorite brother, the closest in age to me and the only nonweirdo. Sirus did it right. When he turned twenty and was set free, he cut ties completely, moving to San Diego.
“Yeah, I remember him. I guess that’d work, right? All the other gods have forgotten he even exists. And he’s really responsible.”
She frowns. “He drives cars for a living.” My mother thinks cars are distasteful. All that metal and plastic without personality or intelligence. Not much money in the chariot business, though.
I don’t answer. I hold my breath, keeping it caught in my chest with my hopes.
Finally she sighs. “I think it might be for the best. Only for the next two months, until the baby comes.”
I exhale so loudly she jumps, startled. On the inside I am screaming, spinning in dizzy circles, bidding my Egyptian prison farewell forever, because one thing is certain: Once I make it out of here, I am never, ever coming back. I will no longer be a temporary guest checked into the Hotel of the Gods.
My voice is utterly calm when I finally speak. “Okay. If you think it’s best.”
“I hope it’s best. But you should go ask your father first, just in case.”
And the part of my brain that is still jumping on the bed screaming in triumph trips and face-plants into the floor. Because now the only thing standing between me and the freedom I’ve been dreaming of for the last three years is a quick trip to the underworld.
I nearly bump into old Thoth in the hallway. He’s here often, in a quiet, slightly senile old geezer capacity, and he’s always been my favorite. “You look sad,” Thoth says in his wobbly, soft voice. His neck is cricked in the middle, bringing to mind the ibis he was often drawn as. He winks one small, deep-set eye at me, bringing a hand up and turning it into a bird head, which also winks at me. He used to do puppet shows with his hands, having the “birdies” tell me the stories of my heritage, like the time the Earth knocked up the Sky and my parents were born. I loved it. When I was eight. I roll my eyes but try to force a halfhearted smile for his effort.
“Gotta go see Osiris,” I say, and Thoth steps aside with a quiet shuffle. I hesitate at the top of the worn stone steps. I haven’t been here for so long. There’s a special scent to this place—not terrible, not even unpleasant, but distinct. No rotting, just age. Weight. The passage of centuries and millennia marches unmeasured beneath the earth. The Sun comes and goes in his eternal cycle, but the dust and air and stones here take no notice.
I reach up a hand to trail along the rough stone at the bottom of the stairs. It shocks me how . . . small it feels. Now I’m less than half a meter beneath the ceiling.
Two more turns and straight past the room where I spent so much of my childhood. I don’t look in, but my chest tightens as I leave it behind. Finally the end of the passage. The great room, high ceilinged, with murals in blacks and reds and blues telling the stories of Egypt. I thought they were my stories, but I’m not even a footnote.
My dad sits ramrod straight on his low-backed, elaborately carved throne. He holds two staffs, his white atef crown towering over his head, and observes his kingdom with eyes that can’t see me right now. I shiver, wondering if anyone’s actually here on their journey into the afterlife. I stick to the side of the room just in case. And to avoid Ammit, sitting in the middle of the room looking for all the world like a bizarre statue—head of a crocodile, front legs of a lion, and rear half of a hippo. She is silent and still, jaws awaiting the hearts of the unjust dead.
I stand in front of Osiris, who doesn’t respond. I clear my throat.
“Father? Father!”
Nothing changes. Anger flares up in my chest, and I’m tempted to grab one of his silly staffs and knock off his stupid crown with it. But I don’t want to touch him, not when he’s like this, so far removed from me. So . . . dead.
“OSIRIS.”
Finally he blinks, eyes slowly focusing on me. “Child. You’ve come back?”
Ah, floods, he thinks I’m here to work on my tomb. I straighten my shoulders. “I’m leaving. Going to live with Sirus because Isis thinks it’s not safe here for me until after she has the baby.” I pause, but he doesn’t react. He could still blow this whole thing for me. “Er, if it’s okay with you.”
I think for a minute that there’s a trace of sadness in his eyes, but then again, he always looks serious and mournful. He nods slowly. “If that is the path your mother feels is best. But you will return home when the time comes?”
It’s physically painful to hold back my eye roll, but I can control my attitude long enough to get out of here. “Yup, sure, I’ll be back.”
He nods, satisfied. “Go well, little one.”
That’s it? I just told him I’m leaving to live somewhere else, and all I get is a go well? I thought I’d be elated, but instead I’m disappointed. “Are you going to miss me at all?”
He smiles, his stiff features resisting the movement. “We will have eternity. I can let you go for these few heartbeats.”
No. Once I step out that door, I’m gone forever.
A small, aching part of me is sure my parents won’t care either way. They won’t notice that I never come back. They’ll probably forget my name. Maybe my father already has.
I turn around and leave, glancing back and hating myself for it. His eyes have gone blank, seeing only his real home, the real world he loves. Chaos take him. I’m done.
I play in the sand on the banks of the Nile, scratching out the glyphs I’m just barely learning while my mother searches for the best reeds and dirt for our spells that day. A shadow blocks the sun and I look up to see tall, tall Anubis.
“Hello, whelp of Isis,” he says, and I admire his teeth and wish mine were sharper. My new front ones are starting to grow in, but they’re just big and bumpy.
“Hi.”
“Do you know how to swim?” he asks.
“No.”
“Time to learn!” He picks me up, lifting me high, so high in the air, and then throws me straight out into the middle of the river before I can even process what is happening.
I sink. I’ve never been in the water without my mother before, and she isn’t here, and I don’t know what to do without her. I look wildly around, the water murky and stinging my eyes, but I know if I wait, my mother will come for me.
She has to. She always comes for me.
When my chest hurts so much I want to cry and I can’t hold my breath any longer, the water turns inky, creeping black.
No hands pull me out. Hands were supposed to come—they came, I remember they came, but . . .
Everything turns black, and I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t—
3
Amun-Re ruled over the other gods, preeminent and most powerful. But someone needed to fill the throne of god-king of Egypt, where war and cannibalism reigned supreme. The country needed peace.
Osiris was made god-king of Egypt, with Isis (who still talks about how fabulous her outfits were during this era) by his side. Together they taught the people proper worship and ushered in an era of unprecedented order.
Probably they should have worried more about how his brother, Set, god of chaos, would feel about this turn of events.
I SHIVER IN THE EXCESSIVE AIR-CONDITIONING of the San Diego airport. Everything is shiny and sleek and cool, all white and chrome and lifeless. Neon signs for food that makes my stomach turn with its smell flash at me as I hurry down the huge hall, looking for the exit. For a few seconds I long to be on one of my rare trips outside to the open-air market near my home, in the dust and heat and shouting chaos. The energy there is palpable, the city a living thing. The colors, the noises—it feels like a heartbeat, like art. Here, it feels like money.
I hope this isn’t what all of America is like.
But I don’t want to go back to Egypt, not ever. I’m just tired beyond belief. I didn’t sleep at all on the flights, and I’m loopy with exhaustion.
I’m glad to be here. Thrilled. America has no culture. There’s no weight of history, barely even centuries to pull on people. You can be whoever and whatever you want, genealogy and history and religion as fleeting and unimportant as the latest trend in style that’ll be gone as quickly as it came.
America has no roots. Nothing here lasts forever. I’ll fit right in.
My goose-pimpled arms make me wish that instead of luggage I’d been able to bring my mother’s bag. She always has exactly what anyone might need in that bag: a snack or a cardigan or a tampon or antivenin, so on and so forth.
I turn the corner and the airport opens up, the escalators leading to the bottom level with baggage claim and huge windows dark with night. I go down, looking around, and there he is.
Sirus’s hair is perfect, shiny black, cut close to his head. He has my same strong, straight nose, but he wears glasses over his dark eyes. No way you’d guess he was actually thirty-six. He looks midtwenties, tops. My heart leaps, happy and excited to see him, to have something familiar in this strange new place. He sees me and grins, waving with his free arm.