The Chaos of Stars

Finally my mother caught on, and her expression softened. “Oh, Isadora, when you understand—”

I ran out of that horrible room. For the first time in my life I did understand. All of the stories, the histories I’d been raised on? I had no part in them. My parents brought me into the world to die. They didn’t love me enough to keep me forever—they didn’t even pretend like they did. My entire childhood of warmth and love was a drawing in the sand—impermanent and fragile and gone in a breath of wind.

Just like me.

Chapter 1

Nut, the sky goddess, had disobeyed Amun-Re, god of the sun. She’d taken the god of the earth as a lover. Amun-Re feared that introducing more gods into the world would create an imbalance of power.

Amun-Re put a curse on her that she could not give birth on any day of the year. But Amun-Re did not account for Thoth, gentle god of wisdom and writing. Thoth challenged the Moon herself to a game, and won enough light to create new days. Because those days were not cursed, Nut was able to give birth to Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys.

Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys went on to commit theft, adultery, fratricide, and even attempted murder and extortion against the sun god himself. In retrospect, Amun-Re was probably on to something with that whole “more gods, more chaos” thing.

I FORGET TO ACCOUNT FOR THE TIME OF YEAR when I turn on the sink to scrub the charred remains of the lamb skewers I’m cooking. A torrent of water shoots out, bouncing off the pan and soaking me.

“Chaos!” I shout, furious. I shouldn’t even be making dinner. We’re having family over, so Mother wants everything to be nice. If she wants it to be nice, she should cook. But no. It’s summertime. Every summer Isis mourns the death of her beloved husband, and the Nile overflows with her tears. Used to be the whole country would flood, but then they went ahead and dammed the dang thing. That, combined with the lack of worshippers, means now when my mother enters her period of mourning, the only difference you can tell is a substantial increase in water pressure. Awesome for showers, but otherwise pointless.

Still, she uses it as an excuse for everything. Yesterday I asked what was for dinner, and all I heard back were wails for the death of her husband.

Made even more awkward by Father, sitting at the dining room table in his robe and mummy wrappings, reading the paper. Because sure, he was murdered, it sucked, but guess what? Not dead anymore!

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nbsp; I slam the pan back onto the stove and throw new skewers on it. This kitchen was supposed to be ornamental. When I was designing it last year, I never thought I’d actually have to use it. I don’t even know how half the state-of-the-art appliances work. They were picked based on color scheme.

Despite a second try, the skewers come out more charred than browned—my mother’s efforts to domesticate me foiled yet again.

I throw everything together and balance it on my hip as I walk out of the kitchen (eggplant walls, shiny black granite counters, sleek black fridge, apparently useless black stove set flat in the counter) and into the dining room. This room is butter yellow with white wood paneling, and a black table to pull in the color theme from the kitchen. The table is perfect: sleek, modern lines, not a scratch on it, one of my best buys ever. It’s also occupied by two of my least favorite relatives—Horus, my nightmare know-it-all of an oldest brother, and Hathor, his drunken floozy of a wife.

I slam the platter of charcoal, sauce, and garnishes down in the middle of the table and then sit for dinner. Mother clears her throat primly. She looks strange. Normally she barely gets out of bed during her mourning period, but other than the occasional freakout like yesterday, she’s been downright perky.

“Did you pray?” she asks.

“For the last time,” I say, narrowing my kohl-lined black eyes at her, “I refuse to pray to my own parents. It’s ridiculous.”

“Osiris?” My mother looks at him as though he might, for once, step in.

My father slowly turns to the next page of his newspaper. This one’s in Tagalog. The whole family is blessed with the gift of tongues (even me), and my father’s hobby is reading every newspaper he can find in every language imaginable. No doubt he realizes that newspapers are a dying form. He sympathizes with all things obsolescing and dead. He is the god of the underworld, after all.

I smirk at Mother, knowing that the second she appealed to him I won the argument.

“Very well.” She cuts a dainty bite of the blackened mess and chews it, a very nonseasonal smile gradually pulling at her mouth. My mother is beautiful, in a warm, comforting sort of way. Wide hips, full lips, and a bust that inspired art for thousands of years. I’d prefer not to have inherited that from her, but in the grand scheme of things it’s not something to complain about. I’m also rocking her same thick, jet-black hair and large almond eyes, though I have heavy bangs that skim my eyelashes and layers that obscure my jawline, strong like Osiris’s. Still, no one’s making any statues of me.

And no one ever will.

Hathor takes one bite and gags, washing it down with her glass of beer that magically refills itself. She’s the goddess of beer. And sex. My mother’s favorite son married an eternal lush. It’d be funnier if Hathor weren’t always slinking around, touching everyone and giving long, lingering looks to anything that moves.

Her dramatic, cat-eye-lined gaze fixes on me. “Essa!” she coos. “This is wonderful.”

“It’s Isadora.”

“Of course!” She laughs, low and intimate. “After all this time I can’t keep track anymore! If only your mother would branch out a bit.”

Sometimes it hurts to be forgotten while I’m still alive. But she has a point. Every single one of my mother’s hundreds of offspring have had variations of her name or my father’s. Hathor and Horus (and pretty much everyone else) don’t even bother trying to remember my name.

“Nice as always to visit.” Hathor smiles at my mother. Or bares her teeth, really.

“It’s such a pleasant surprise when I invite my son to a family dinner and you tag along, too.” My mother’s smile has even more teeth.