The Chaos of Stars

I grab fistfuls of my hair and pull, so frustrated and scared I feel like I am fraying apart at the edges.

“I’m sorry.” His voice is so utterly sincere that another piece of my stone heart flakes off, stabbing into my ribs. I was stupid to think he’d hurt me or my family. Whatever else I know or don’t know about him, I know that at least.

“Don’t be sorry. You’ve already helped me so much. I’d probably still be on a layover somewhere, if I’d even figured out how to get to the airport. You . . . you were there for me. Again. Thank you.” I stare at the ceiling to avoid his eyes.

“I will always be here to help you however I can.” There’s a long pause. “Since I have you pretty much captive, I want to explain some things. I know it’s a bad time, but it might be my only time, and I need you to understand.”

I slump lower into the leather chair, more an armchair than an airplane seat. “I can’t do this right now.”

“You don’t have to do anything. Just listen. You don’t have to respond, or answer. I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you about my parents. I promise that everything else was true and real, and I’m only seventeen and not a god and never will be. I should have told you sooner, and I should have realized that it might not be a happy revelation for you. When I figured out you were the same as me, it made everything feel even more right, but it was stupid and selfish of me to assume you’d feel the same way about it. Oh! I forgot.” He gets up and, holding on to seats and the wall to stay steady in the wildly bumpy air, opens a small fridge and pulls out a Coke.

“Bribery?” I take it anyway, desperately needing sugar and caffeine. My mother was right—it is so addicting. Of course she was right. Oh, Mom. Be okay.

“You know, the poem said all of this a lot better. I even betrayed Calliope and went with Erato as my muse so I could make it lyric poetry instead of epic. Calliope was pissed, too. Um. So.” His long, olive fingers pick nervously at the dress pants he’s still wearing from last night. “I guess we’re kind of opposites, because you’ve spent the last few years determined to love no one, and I’ve spent the last few years determined to find you.”

I want to yell at him, to tell him dreams are a perfectly awful way to make life decisions, until I remember my strange obsession with Orion. Not the one next to me, but the stars, and the way they made me feel safe and loved when I didn’t have anything else. The way that feeling seemed to jump to Ry against my will.

“It’s stupid to fall in love with someone because of dreams,” I finally say.

“But that’s just it! I didn’t fall in love with you because of the dreams. All the dreams told me was that you were out there, somewhere. They made me look for you. And then I found you, and I didn’t fall in love with you.”

What the crap? I raise an eyebrow at him, and he grins.

“I didn’t fall in love with you. I walked into love with you, with my eyes wide open, choosing to take every step along the way. I do believe in fate and destiny, but I also believe we are only fated to do the things that we’d choose anyway. And I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you.”

I can’t look at his eyes, because they are too blue, too sincere, with too much flooding in, and I cannot swim. “I don’t know. I can’t—you don’t even know me; you shouldn’t love me. I’m mean and I’m cold and I don’t know if I even can love someone else yet, or if I want to, and—”

“Isadora.” The floods and crashing waves quiet. “You are not mean or cold. You’re strong and funny and smart and beautiful. And okay, maybe sometimes you are a little bit mean, but like you said, it’s a fine line between confident and arrogant, and someone has to help me walk it, right? I’ve found my path, and I’m going to stay on it. I wanted you to know how I feel, and also to know that it’s okay to feel however you feel because I’m a very, very patient person.”

“What if I decide my d

estiny is someone else?”

“Then that’s your decision and I would respect that. Also I know a whole lot of gods to smite whoever it is you choose instead of me.”

“You—”

“Kidding! Totally kidding. Mostly kidding. Okay, not really kidding.”

I laugh, and it hurts my head but it frees a little bit of the pain in my chest. “Can we finish talking about this after I save my mother?”

“Absolutely.” He leans back, smiling and obviously relieved. “That went better than I thought. You didn’t yell at me. But for the record, the poem had some really amazing imagery with the desert and the ocean and flowers waiting to bloom.”

“That probably would have gotten you yelled at.”

“Prepare for landing,” a cheery voice crackles over the intercom. “There’s no runway here, so it might be rough.”

Not as rough as what I’ll face after we land. I buckle my seat belt and start praying to every god I can think of that my mother is still okay.

Chapter 18

Wadjet, goddess of lower Egypt. Neper, god of grain. Montu, god of war. Taweret, goddess of home and childbirth. Baba, god of aggression and virility. Khonsu, god of the moon. Tayet, goddess of weaving. Sia, god of divine knowledge. Shay, god of destiny.

These are gods who were prayed to, worshipped, feared. Gods who had altars and temples, gods who had priesthoods, gods whose names were whispered and revered and remembered.

Nothing is truly eternal. No one remembers them now.

Do they have an afterlife?