The Chaos of Stars

“No. Because when we were old enough, Mom felt like she had given us all the tools she could to have happy lives, and she wanted us to do just that. Live. Make our own mythology, not be swallowed up by hers. Live the kind of happy, drama-free, painful and joyful mortal life she couldn’t, and at the end of it come home to be ushered into our next life by the two people who brought us here in the first place. I know you think mortality is evidence that they don’t care, but giving us the ability to grow and change and progress and then finish? That was the greatest gift two ageless, eternal, very very stuck gods could think to give the children they love more than anything.”

“If mortality is such an awesome gift, why does life hurt so much?”

“Maybe because you’re doing it wrong?”

I look up, glaring through my tear-matted eyelashes, and Sirus laughs.

“Am I scared of the horrible things I know will happen to my kid to hurt him? Absolutely. But would I stop those things at the risk of taking away joy and growth and the absolute embracing of life? Never. Because I love this child for being mine, but I also love him for being who he will be, and I can’t tell you how excited I am to watch him discover that for himself.”

“Or herself.”

“I, uh, may have peeked during the ultrasound. . . .”

“Deena will kill you.”

“Which is why this is our little secret. And also can I say, after spending the last few weeks with you, I’m more than a little relieved my new guy won’t have girl hormones?”

“No, you cannot say that unless you want to get the beating of your life.” I punch him in the shoulder for good measure, then stand to go to bed. I’m as confused as I ever was; things still feel like they’re slipping down a muddy landslide slope in my soul, my desert hopelessly destroyed, and I don’t know how the geography is going to change when everything finally settles. I hope it settles soon. “So you really don’t think they had us just to worship them.”

“There are plenty of other, far easier ways to find worship. They had us because they wanted us. Because they love us.”

I sigh. “You know, life was a lot easier last month when I could hate our parents and be violently opposed to the idea of romance.”

“Heh, yeah, it—wait, romance? What is—”

“Good night!” I run upstairs and collapse into bed, but Sirus’s and Ry’s words spin in my head, swirling and shifting the parts of me I thought were immovable. And the clock counts down to my next meeting with Orion.

Ry.

Orion.

Orion’s stars swirl and dance above me, winking an invitation to join them. I lift my fingers, trailing them through the warm black of the sky, leaving a ripple of sparks like water disturbed. The stars remain just out of my reach, every inch of my skin tingling in their light. There are two new stars, two stars such a perfect and brilliant blue they make an ache flare in my heart. I am hurt and broken, but in these two perfectly blue stars I dare to hope.

My mother has her own constellation, a new one, and it is beautiful though it stirs my rage that here, too, she is eternal and immortalized and I am left on the ground, left to live on it and eventually sleep under it.

Then I notice there’s a section of the sky, not dark but empty, not a glimpse into the eternities, but an endless hole in the sky. It surges forward, swallowing my mother’s stars one by one.

I watch.

No. I will not watch anymore. I have watched this happen time and again, and this time I will not. “Stop!” I scream, punching my fist upward to make it change course.

It does.

It covers my hand, crawling down my wrist, along my arm. It is cold, and hot, and neither. It makes me want to shake out of my own skin, to run screaming, to curl into a ball and let it overtake me, uncreate me, scatter everything I am and could be into the cosmos to feed its own endless entropic hunger. It is despair.

There is no one to help me, no one to protect me. I will be undone, and then it will finish its work on my mother’s stars.

I’ve failed.

Chapter 13

At last the gods were settled, formed into the roles they would have until they fell out of power and out of memory. Osiris, god of the underworld. Isis, dominant queen of magic and motherhood. Horus, god-king of Egypt. Hathor, boozed- and sexed-up wife. Set, tamed god of chaos. Nephthys, companion to Isis. Anubis, assistant in the underworld. Thoth, gentle god of wisdom. Others lost along the way, their dominions taken over by stronger gods. But such is the nature of time.

The kingdom developed, left behind constant strife and conflict. And with movement came a gradual fading. A slipping away, as people moved on from the turbulent, violent eras that required turbulent, violent gods.

And Isis proved, yet again, her fierce adaptability to any situation. Some women have babies to save marriages. My mother started having babies to quite literally save the lives of her family.

“NO, NO, NO NO NO NO NO,” I MOAN, GRABBING fistfuls of my hair and staring up at the new ceiling. We planned meticulously for overhead lights, and they hang perfectly, spotlighting where the freestanding pedestal pieces will go. The stars installed perfectly. Even the electrics have all worked. But I had counted on the lowered ceiling resting against the tops of the new walls and blocking out the light and . . . it doesn’t.