The Chaos of Stars Read online

  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.

  Chapter 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 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 nearly 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, and 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 before my eighteenth birthday? 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.

  Hathor giggles from the dim back corner of the long hall, then sways her hips 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 eighteen 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 ca
se.”

  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, his wobbly voice soft. 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.