“You think bad dreams are a legitimate reason for making huge choices?”
“Good dreams, too. Good dreams especially. Don’t you?”
“No.” I pause, thinking of all the dreams I’ve had lately. The dreams of darkness swallowing and unmaking everything around me while I . . . do nothing. Do I really feel guilty that I don’t worship my parents like they want me to? I didn’t think I did. I thought all I felt about that was anger. But . . . “Maybe. I don’t know. I hope not.”
“Okay, don’t get mad, but it sounds like your parents care. They’re trying to keep you safe in the best way they know how.”
“No, that’s just it. They don’t care. This was an easy solution for them, so they took it.”
“Why are you so sure they don’t care?”
“I can’t explain it. It wouldn’t make any sense to you. But trust me. My dad’s whole job, his whole life is taking care of people, and he’s so consumed by it he doesn’t even know who I am. He doesn’t even live in my world. And my mom, she’s like this legendary mother figure, but when it comes down to it, she doesn’t actually care about me. I’m a means to an end. Period. They don’t love me. They never have.”
“I don’t think you know what you’re talking about when you talk about love. How do you define it?”
“Well, according to you, I wouldn’t know.”
He smiles. “My family has made a special study of love. It’s kind of our thing. Did I ever tell you my mom is a professional matchmaker?”
Of course she is.
“Anyway, we Greek poets think a lot about love, too. We finally went ahead and made three separate definitions and words for love just to try and explain it. So maybe—maybe your parents love you in a way you don’t understand, or a language you don’t speak.”
“That’s crap, Ry.” I speak every language in the world. They don’t care about me in any of them.
“Okay, maybe they don’t love you in the way that you need. But I can’t imagine that they don’t love you at all. That’s not possible.”
“You don’t know them. They’re capable of anything.” Adultery, blackmail, attempted murder, having kids just to create more worshippers. What’s not loving one stupid, noncompliant mortal daughter on the list of their sins and shortcomings?
“No, I mean it’s not possible not to love you. Even if they are the worst parents in the world. If they didn’t love you, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Whatever,” I mutter, grabbing his phone to find some music so that hopefully he will stop talking. He doesn’t know them. He doesn’t understand. He can’t understand. If even Sirus doesn’t get it, Ry never ever could.
I scroll through the playlists and stop. “Why do you have a playlist named ‘Isadora’?”
He snatches the phone from me with a sheepish grin. “In the interest of not pissing you off anymore tonight, let’s not select that particular playlist.” Ignoring my glare (why oh why couldn’t I have inherited the instant-headache glare?), he turns on something instrumental. “So, if you could reconcile with your parents and get what you need from them, would you be willing to date someone? Is that the hang-up?”
“What’s the point of it all? Love sets you up for disappointment and pain, and we all end up alone one way or another. Nothing—nothing—in my life can last.”
“I take issue with every aspect of that. Love is a point in and of itself. But the core of your argument is that relationships are pointless because they don’t last, right?”
“Sure.”
“Then why do you design rooms? I mean, they’re nice now, but styles and tastes change. You aren’t creating anything permanent. The museum wing you’re killing yourself for will only be there for a few months. So what’s the point in spending so much time and energy investing all of yourself into something that isn’t permanent?”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“Well, for one thing, rooms don’t betray you. I’ve yet to meet a room that snuck around and slept with its sister-room’s husband.”
Ry snorts. “Well, most people won’t do that, either. And unlike rooms, people can give things back to you. Contribute as much or more than you do.”
“People aren’t like designs. I can’t pick and choose everything that goes into them, and I can’t imagine anyone picking what I am.”
“You have a terrible imagination then. But what I’m getting is that this is a control issue. You’re scared because the other person is outside of your control, and so is the way they make you feel.”
“This is a terrible analysis. Designing is nothing like love. Idiot gods, you must be the worst poet ever if these are your metaphors.”
He laughs. “See? How could I ever be arrogant with you around? Someday I’ll let you read my poems and decide for yourself. But I’m not backing down on this. Are you a coward?”
“No.”
“So stop being such a wimp about the potential for pain. If that’s how you’re going to live your life, you may as well be an empty room yourself. I like you. I want to be your friend, but I also want you in ways that are very much not just friendly. And I’m not going to apologize or pretend I don’t.”
I tip my head back and squeeze my eyes shut. Why is he forcing me to address this? We were fine. We were doing fine. I liked what we had. It was safe.
He pulls to a stop and I’m shocked to see we’re already back at Sirus’s.
“I get that you’re scared and that you’ve been hurt. But doing what is easy and safe is no way to live, and a life without passion and love is so far beneath what you deserve.”
His words hit me in the gut and my head spins. He’s right. I’ve been choosing alone because it’s safe and easy. It doesn’t mean that I’m stronger or smarter than everyone else. Just that I’m . . . scared. I’m letting all of the hurt I’ve had over the last few years keep me from moving forward.
I climb out robotically as Ry opens my door, avoiding his eyes. I am a coward.
“I hope you have good dreams tonight, Isadora,” he says, and the way my name leaves his mouth, it sounds like I should be as strong and brave as I used to think I was. It sounds like the part of myself that I left locked in my tomb isn’t as buried as I thought. It sounds like there’s a possibility for an Isadora who is strong and brave without being hard and closed off. Who is strong and brave and hopeful and open. Who is lovingly optimistic and forgiving.
It sounds terrifying.
I want to hear it again.
Sirus is on the couch when I drift inside, confused and exhausted.
It’s the middle of the night, but he’s sitting there folding pieces of clothing so tiny they can’t possibly be for a person, even a baby. He smoothes the wrinkles out of a creamy-white satin blanket, the look on his face a combination of wistful and tender.
I lean against the wall, so tired I want to sink into it and sleep forever. I have to be at the museum in three hours. I have to see Ry again in three hours. I don’t know what I’ll do. Tonight feels like it changed something. Maybe everything. Maybe nothing.
Sirus looks up and smiles at me.
“How can you love it already?” I ask. “The baby, I mean. You don’t even know what it is, much less who it is. But you love it.”
He pushes his thick-rimmed glasses back up where they slipped down his nose. “I don’t know. It’s funny, isn’t it? But I think Mom was right when she told me I’d have no idea how much she loved me until I had my own.”
“Floods, please don’t ever let me utter the words ‘Mom was right.’”
He laughs, and I walk the rest of the way into the room and curl up on the couch, staring at the floor.
“You all right, kiddo?”
“How are you okay with our parents? How can you be okay with them after what they did to us?”
He lets out a long breath. “You mean the death thing.”
I wipe under my eyes. Ry’s words echo through my head, that maybe they do love me,
just not the way I need. “How can they love us if they’d let us go like that? Shouldn’t they want to keep us forever? They could. I know they could. Stupid Whore-us is immortal, and Anubis. Why did they change the rules? Aren’t I—aren’t we good enough for them?”
“Oh, Isadora.” He sits next to me and puts his arm around my shoulders. “Didn’t you ever let Mom talk to you about it?”
“I’ve spent the last three years trying my best not to talk to her about anything.”
“You should have let her explain. She talked with me about it a lot. But I guess I never had the shock you did. You assumed immortality from all the stories. I kind of assumed I’d drop dead at any time, but it wasn’t a big deal to me.”
“How is death not a big deal?”
“Because it’s not the end. We have this life, we make it the best we can, and then we discover the next life.”
“Mother never did. Why should we die when she doesn’t?”
“Did you ever wonder why none of us live nearby or visit often?”
“Because Mother’s a crazy control freak and you couldn’t wait to get away.”
“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.
They match up. Almost perfectly.
Almost.
Almost perfect takes this room from awesome to amateur.
Little cracks of light seep through here and there from the now-blocked windows, and it makes the whole thing look cheap and thrown together.
“We’ll fix it,” Ry says.
“Yeah, it won’t be that hard. Right?” Tyler answers, her voice drifting on into almost a plea at the end.
“We can’t do it. We have to be done in twenty minutes for the moving guys and security to come install the pieces. Only Michelle and I can be here while they do that, and it will take them until tomorrow morning to set it all up and get everything wired for alarms.”
“So that gives us eight hours until the gala?” Ry asks. “We can do a lot in eight hours.”
“That’s assuming they get it done in time. And besides, I need those hours to fix whatever the movers screw up, to deal with anything that might need last-minute attention! All that time you bought us, Ry.” I shake my head, feeling sick to my stomach. It was going so well. “It was for emergencies. It gave me time to deal with emergencies.”
“Well, say hello to your emergency.” Tyler squints upward. “We could line it with black electrical tape or something?”
“You’ll be able to see it. If we caulk it and then—”
Ry shakes his head. “It’ll never dry in time to paint it.”
“What if we do the tape and then paint over it?” Tyler says, walking into the middle and swinging her arm in an arc over her head. “If w
e do a smooth line of black paint, you won’t be able to see the tape, right?”
I bite my lip. It’s not a permanent solution. If any of the walls get shifted, it could rip away and damage the paint underneath, causing an even bigger problem. And it’ll be a nightmare working in here tomorrow, because everything will be set up and we won’t have much room to maneuver, and we’ll have zero room for error with the paint.
“It doesn’t have to last forever.” Ry puts a hand on my bare shoulder and I close my eyes at the sensation of his skin on mine, momentarily lost in the heat and feel of him. Amun-Re, focus, Isadora. “It can be good enough for now, and if we have to fix it later, we fix it later.”
“I don’t like good-enough.”
“Good-enough can always be made better. Later. Right now we’re going to take good-enough and we’re going to be happy about it.”
I nod, not missing the fact that his hand is still on my shoulder. All day we’ve worked side by side, and he hasn’t pushed anything from last night. But his eyes seem bluer, and I can’t ignore that even disasters feel more manageable with him here, and when he’s next to me, my traitor body reacts in ways that I definitely did not give it permission to. I don’t know what to do with these feelings or where to put them or if I want them or why I should or why I shouldn’t.
It’s been a complicated day.
“Good-enough is good enough.” I take a deep breath. “I have to stay here to make sure they put everything where it’s supposed to be. You two be in charge of getting tape?”
“Me! Me! I want to be in charge of tape on my own.” Tyler bounces up and down on the balls of her feet, her shoulders twitching to a beat I can’t hear.
I smile. “Okay! And it’s a good idea, too. I never would have thought of it. You’re brilliant.”
“All my ideas are good, Isadora.” She looks pointedly at Ry’s hand and I want to shrug it off I’m so embarrassed, but then that would mean I actually noticed and cared that it was there, and . . .
I don’t know. I don’t know what to do, and it’s driving me crazy. Grinning, Tyler runs out past us, leaving us alone. In the room. Alone.