by Gwenda Bond
We make our way back to Tam’s room, which looks the same as ever. Map of the world on the wall with Skeptics chapters marked by stars. A bookcase filled with reference and school stuff. An ancient poster with a guy and a lady on it that says “The Truth Is Out There” he took from his dad’s office.
I toss my backpack down and flop onto his bed without even considering that it might turn out awkward. I need to not be on my feet anymore. He has a little bathroom and shower of his own, and he shakes his head at me, goes to get Bree her towel. I turn on my side and dig out a long T-shirt from my backpack, toss it to him to give her when he starts to come back in.
He does, then closes the door. The shower starts up nearly immediately.
And Tam and I are alone. He walks around to the other side of the bed and sits back against the headboard. I flip around to face him, staying on my side. “I need to tell you guys some things, but we should wait for Bree,” I say, nervous and wanting to buy time.
Looking at him in such close quarters is like staring my own failures in the face. But he has something on his mind. “You really had no idea about your dad?”
I sit up, even though I’d rather close my eyes and sleep forever. It’s the same whenever I think about Dad, all his lies, what comes next…
“I don’t know why you find it so hard to believe. Do you really think I wouldn’t have told you?” I try to drag a hand through my hair and find it’s too stiff with sandy residue. “I guess I wouldn’t have been allowed to, but that would have been the only reason.”
“Would it?” On Tam, the grime manages to be attractive. Like it’s the next big fashion. His eyes flash. “Are you sure you didn’t go out with me just to get to your dad? If he was Society, that’d be even more rebel points, wouldn’t it?”
At least some of my anger is because he’s not completely wrong. Dad hated that we went out. I liked that. “Look, don’t use my crappy relationship with my dad. Not right now. Please.”
“I’m sorry.” He reaches down and takes my hand in his. He cradles it and is quiet. I don’t take it back, because this whole mini-truce between us feels fragile. He lifts his hand and touches my cheek, gentle. He slides it down until he cups my chin. “You’re going to make it through this. And so’s your dad.”
I want to lighten the moment. “Where’s the doom and gloom Tam I know?” He doesn’t smile. “I’m going to need your help, Tam. I know I have no right to ask…”
Tam leans in closer. “You’re not alone. You’ve got me and Bree. We’re not going to abandon you.”
“I know. But I think it’s going to come down to me getting to Dad.”
“Then I’m not worried.”
His eyes hold mine, and for a breath I worry he’s going to kiss me. Then he is kissing me. His lips are soft, his hand sliding to the back of my neck. It’s comfortable, like I’ve gone back in time. This part of us was always easy. But it isn’t fair to him.
I push back. “I’m sorry. But nothing’s changed.” Everything else, maybe, but not us. “You deserve someone else…”
He lifts his hand from my neck. We look at each other, faces still close.
“I’m sorry about that,” he says. Then, “I should be honest with you.”
I scoot back against the headboard to put some space between us. “What do you mean?”
The shower stops and we both look at the door. Bree will be out any minute.
“When I told you… you know…” he says, and I fill in silently, I love you. He said it and I froze. I broke up with him the next day. “…it wasn’t true. Not yet. You weren’t in this as much as I was and I could tell. So it was a test. I wanted to see if you’d lose it. I know it wasn’t fair.”
When Tam said those three words to me I couldn’t imagine saying them back to him. I couldn’t imagine saying them to anyone. I panicked just thinking about being in love with someone, having to worry about losing them too. I can’t be that girl, that starry-eyed girl who falls in love. Anyone I ever love will leave.
The stacks of cash hidden two feet away confirm it as the truth. No one I love will ever stay.
“You didn’t break my heart,” he says. “You could’ve though.”
I am beyond glad I didn’t. Because I do care about Tam, which means we can only be… “Friends, though?”
“Friends. Definitely.”
The bathroom door swings open, the T-shirt nearly hitting Bree’s knees because she’s so tiny. She raises her eyebrows at us, a silent question about whether she’s interrupting.
“Good,” I say to Tam, and I mean it. I need all the friends I have to get through this. “Legba told me Dad’s at Enki House. I have to get in there tomorrow, without anyone knowing. Including your dad. Cash is not an issue. Possible?”
Their expressions of shock almost make me laugh. Almost.
CHAPTER SIX
The next morning, the three of us skip school and hire a commercial carriage to take us over to S Street, as close as it will go to the Houses of the Gods (of the gods who live here, anyway). We lurk behind a boarded up mansion at the back edge of the huge overgrown gardens and park, waiting. Right in front of us is the tall stone fence marking the border to the back edge of the property claimed for the Houses. But there are no guards, not back here.
Going in the front loghouse way was out of the question, but Tam had come up with an alternative by the time I was done showering. Bree handed me a photocopied sheet he’d gotten from his dad’s study with the solstice week schedule of blessings. “Not revelers, please not revelers,” I’d said when I understood, but Bree and Tam insisted it was the best idea. I had to agree they were right.
Blessings are a shadow tradition, not done out in the open. No one’s sure exactly what they are, and if or how they work. But at the big seasonal shifts, they’re popular with tourists and acolytes and people desperate for a divine encounter for whatever reasons of their own. A lost job, a sick kid, a broken heart. You wouldn’t want your name registered on a log if you showed up at a House to get one, and so in the week before each solstice or equinox, revelers gather and climb the back fences to visit the trickster of the day.
We’re lucky. Today they’re heading to Enki House. The plan is to blend right in and hope for the best.
I’m not used to doing either of those things.
“You really think this isn’t a trap?” Tam asks. “Legba usually stays out of the gods’ games with each other.”
“It’s all I’ve got,” I counter. “I need to find Dad, and Legba said to try Enki House.”
Tam sits against the brick wall. His boots and jeans and T-shirt are the usual, but, like us, he’s sporting elaborate face paint. Our cheeks and foreheads are covered with shining suns, random dots and swirls and bone shapes. A pretty smart disguise.
The paint isn’t so bad. I forget it’s there, but I can’t say the same for the leftover solstice junk jewelry Bree and I are wearing. A strand of black plastic skulls hangs around my neck, over the random Ramones T-shirt from Dad. Bree has on an outrageously tacky snake motif necklace done in a hot green shade. Tam was able to beg off the jewelry, but he has extra paint swirling across his forearms and hands to make up the difference.
We look like goofy tourists playing with divine fire. That’s the point.
I’m serious when I tell them: “You guys don’t have to come in. After yesterday, you really shouldn’t. I can meet you after.”
Bree shakes her head. “I already told you, no. No, no, no. It’s not that I’m looking forward to seeing gods up close again, but you said that Mehen tried to take you. Someone needs to be there.”
“To report me missing like my dad, you mean? But you won’t be able to if you’re with me.”
She says, “K. We’re going to get through this. You are not disappearing. And neither are we.”
I pretend to be convinced. “Sure, and if we don’t make it, then there’s a Big Bad Relic for everyone to worry about. It still doesn’t make sense to me why Dad wou
ld have taken it. Operative or not. No one wants gods stalking the skies and streets doing whatever they feel like.”
“Someone probably does,” Tam says, ever the conspiracy-lover.
Bree twists the snake necklace in her hand and frowns at him. “I sure don’t.”
“If your dad’s at Enki House, he’ll be explaining it to you soon enough.” Tam climbs to his feet, pointing. “Here they come. We’re on.”
The quietest bunch of revelers I’ve seen, thanks to no drumming, shamble along the street toward the wall. The lack of noise is probably a nod to the semi-secrecy of this tradition. A guard back here’s all it would take to kill it. So they climb over the wall, get blessed, and then leave, as silently as possible.
Tam hesitates for a second. “Look, guys, I told you I’ve heard stories about blessings. This is probably going to get intense.”
Bree is not happy. “You’re telling us this now, because?”
“Because there’s no time to get into the rumors and freak you guys out more,” Tam says.
He’s right. I don’t know about Bree, but I’d rather be in the dark. I take off to join the pack of revelers, waving. “Wait up!” I call.
A middle-aged woman in an impractical-for-climbing-over-walls flowing dress beams at us. Her flushed cheeks round into apples as she welcomes us. “Stragglers,” she says, “you’re just in time. Don’t want to miss today’s blessing.”
By the time I reach her, Tam and Bree catch up with me. I don’t point out to her that we were here waiting, not late. There are about ten people total, a ragtag assemblage. Most look like the typical worshipful hippies – our face paint blends right in – but there are a few with a harder edge. I’d expected more, in numbers and character. Then again, even though the Houses are technically open, most humans avoid them. Other gods visit only when they have to. From all reports, it’s just the chief trickster of each House and a handful of others from their pantheons who got relocated to D.C.
Most gods stay where they woke. And most humans are smart enough not to go visiting.
Tam makes a scoop of his hands to help us over the ten-foot wall. “Here goes nothing,” I say, stepping in first. I fit my fingers and then the toes of my boot into the grooves between stones, copying the reveler to my left. When I reach the top, the view steals my breath.
I’ve seen pictures, but they’re flat, static, easily faked. Seeing this for real is something else. Like stepping out of our world – or it will be once I land on the other side.
This area used to be a sprawling park beside a private estate with formal English gardens, before it got annexed and transformed. Now the whole place feels strangely ageless, out of time. It’s hard to imagine it ever having been different, and even harder to accept that it exists in its current state.
Plants and trees grow wild. Trunks and limbs bend into strange shapes, making the lush, green forest more like something you’d wander into in a dream than reality. Within the overgrown wildlands are the seven Houses. I see the top of Set House’s pyramid and fight the urge to shiver because he’s probably in there. There’s a majestic temple beyond it that belongs to ladies’ choice god, Hermes. Opposite, the black castle of Loki. Then the grove of massive trees surrounding Legba’s home. The slanting sides of Coyote House. The bright flat-topped pyramid of Tezcatlipoca House. But once I fix on our destination, the rest fade into the background.
Enki House is to our right. The forest gives way to marshland around the enormous ziggurat, its angles sharp, golden. What look like birds wheel through the clear sky above the temple at the top of it, but they’re so large they must be gods.
“You OK?” Tam asks, and I glance down at the not-crazy side of the wall. Bree clambers up and swings a leg over at the top, joining me. She’s as silenced by the sight as I am.
Not the revelers, though. They whisper and giggle and are generally obnoxious. “Hurry up, slowpokes!” the lady who greeted me says, as she launches herself off the wall and into the waiting arms of her companions.
Tam reaches the top of the wall, climbing up on my other side. The three of us stand at the same time, without agreement, and jump down together. We land in a messy tangle of arms that keeps any of us from falling.
With Tam’s hand gripping my arm, it’s hard to believe we were kissing last night – and coming to terms with the end of the kissing. Bizarrely, I feel more comfortable around him knowing he was never really in love with me. We can safely return to the status quo.
“This way,” the lady hisses.
We stumble around bendy trees and jagged-edge vines that look so sharp I’m afraid to touch them. No one speaks. There’s something about sneaking through this odd, shadowed wood that feels unbelievably stupid. If someone told me we were being hunted, I wouldn’t doubt it.
At that thought, I make sure I have Bree’s arm and that Tam follows as I get us to the front, right behind flowing dress lady. She’s clearly done this before. She weaves through the trees, turning sideways when she needs to keep from touching blooms like hungry mouths. We mimic her as closely as we can. The aroma is of earth, breathing and living. The feeling of unseen eyes that consider us prey never goes away.
Finally, our feet hit mud, and we’re out of the forest. I’m relieved until I look up, where Enki House towers over us. But we aren’t quite there yet. There’s a paved path broad enough for the three of us to walk beside each other nearby, and the apple-cheeked hippy makes for it.
So do we.
“Stay on the yellow brick road,” Bree says.
“We’re off to meet the wizard,” and I wince at how grim my tone is.
“Off to meet something,” Tam says. “But seriously, let’s try to stay on it. I’ve heard stories…”
“Keep them to yourself,” Bree says. “Those stories are warnings. We’re ignoring them.”
She’s right. Even I can’t believe we’re doing this. But there’s no choice. Dad may well be in there. He doesn’t want to see you. I’m sure that’s the truth, not just the little voice inside me being evil. It doesn’t matter. He’s going to have to deal with me. He can’t vanish and expect that to be fine, that I’ll take the money and go. We owe each other something more than that.
I want us to, anyway.
The way the path curves reminds me of a twisting snake, and not the harmless plastic kind around Bree’s neck. We are careful to stay on it, winding through muddy river delta swampland, all the way to the foot of the ziggurat. The stone and sand sparkle, like the sun itself is inside the bricks.
“Up we go!” Apple-cheek announces, a greedy hunger beneath her cheer.
Her excitement is as troubling as anything else.
The long ramp that extends down the front like a tongue is our new path. To the sides are wide steps carved out of the pyramid-shaped base. Maybe talking will help distract us.
“Tam,” I ask quietly, as we climb, “tell me about Enki.”
“You already know the Sumerians were among the first, the oldest, gods that we know of.”
“Tell me something I don’t know, I mean.” We all have a working knowledge of the tricksters and the major pantheons. Public schools scrambled to add better no-longer-mythology units after the gods woke up. “And let’s drop back. More time to see what the deal is up there.”
The three of us slow to let the revelers pass us.
Tam goes on. “I guess you remember that there are a lot of them? More than most other pantheons combined – one scholar estimated almost four thousand. And in that number are chaos monsters, sentient ancient darknesses, demons with animal heads. Enki has always been one of their leaders, sometimes the leader. He’s the lord of the watery deep, the abzu. Think of it as the mysterious water that yielded creation. For what it’s worth, Enki was always supposed to be one of the good guys. Even before.”
“How good?” I ask.
There are pictures of bearded priests and winged creatures and ornate inscriptions in long forgotten languages carved into the zigg
urat alongside the ramp.
“One of the most famous stories about him involves the creation of humankind.”
Bree says, “Hang on… I thought that, yes, they’re older than people, but they didn’t create us. We’re just different species, different evolutionary tracks.”
“Listen to you, evolutionary tracks,” I tease. “Someone’s been doing their science homework. Fancy.”
Bree pulls a face at me.
Tam shrugs. “So the Society claims. Who knows for sure? But we do know that gods exist and what they’re like. They don’t care about right and wrong, not like we do. A lot of them view us as…”
“Cows?” I supply. “That they can kill and eat and… do whatever else they want with? And my dad may be giving them carte blanche to do just that and we’re walking in the front door of one of their houses. OK. This is making me feel so much better. Please, go on.”
“So, there are lots of versions of this story. In the one I like the best, Abzu is still a being – a god himself – in addition to being the mysterious water. The older, more powerful gods are basically using the newer, less powerful ones as slave labor. And the new ones start complaining. It’s loud, because Abzu starts making noise of his own, about how he’s going to flood the entire world, drown everything out. Enki’s mother decides her son can take care of Abzu, so she goes to wake him up.”
“But supposedly the new gods were being so loud – how’s he asleep?” Bree asks.
“Chalk that up to story blur.” Story blur is the part of myths that don’t make any kind of sense. “Or maybe he’s just a really deep sleeper. Enki does finally wake up for his mother, and he then magically puts Abzu to sleep and confines him below his city.”
“Where do the people come in?” I ask.
“Oh,” Tam says, “right. Well, everyone agrees that gods shouldn’t be doing all this hard labor, so Enki makes people, to do the work for them.”
“Cows,” I say. “Labor cows. I’m not getting the part where he’s a good guy.”