by James Comins
The mouse cheeped.
“Did you hear what happened? There was a snake thing named Seth who ruined the scale!”
The mouse perked angrily up, leaned forward and started cheeping at the room.
“Don’t worry. I think he’s gone,” Lenna said.
The mouse growled protectively.
Chapter Twenty
The Story of Osiris
or, Like Frankenstein
Osiris peered his almost-immobile head up at the ceiling. His hat fell off, and Neftis picked it up and waited for him to balance his head so she could put it back on for him, since he couldn’t use his hands.
“Why are you all wrapped up?” asked Lenna.
Osiris looked at her. “Once, long ago, Seth the deceiver invaded the mind of a mortal. Speaking lies into his mind, Seth caused the mortal to question my existence. Through doubt, the man became brave enough to face me in my own palace.”
“But me and my mouse are here in your palace,” said Lenna.
“But you are not here to challenge me for supremacy.”
“Mm. No,” she answered. “You can have supremacy. I think this is best.”
Osiris went on: “Inspired by Seth, the mortal dreamed of Khemennu, my first palace, a palace in the sun. He dreamed a staircase, winding from the sun down to the Earth. Up the staircase he walked, muttering with his madman ideas. Seth whispered to him, urging him on. When he reached the sun, he disbelieved in its heat and light and walked through them into Khemennu. He met me on my throne of light. Beside me was Isis, my wife. Seth, hiding behind the man’s eyes, fell in love with my wife and dreamed a knife. The madman killed me with it. He cut me into twenty pieces, and the pieces fell to the underworld. The madman thought he would take my throne. But Seth abandoned the madman, who was vaporized instantly by the heat of the sun. And Seth took the seat, knowing that once he had married Isis, the Egyptian world would belong to him utterly.
“But Isis would not marry Seth, and she came after me and found the twenty pieces and put me back together.”
“Like Frankenstein,” said Thoth knowledgeably.
“I became a mummy, and we left Khemennu to rule over the dead in a dead place. And I learned about love.”
What a creepy story. Omigosh, Lenna looked at Osiris and saw that he was still cut up, he was in twenty big pieces and he was only held together by the white wrappings. One tug and he would fall to pieces.
Omigoodness.
She tumbled backward and stumbled down the steps and fell splash into the cold water of the lake of the underworld. It was bitter and shocking and drenchy. Dazed, she felt the strangely sweet water close over her, gasped, and pulled the water into her lungs.
A huge pink spider was jumping on her through the water. No, it was Indaell’s hand, which had became a ladle the size of a bathtub, sieving her and poor Sabine Mouse out of the sweet deathly wash.
“ ’nks,” she mumbled, shivering. Deposited on the marble dais by Indaell, she curled up. Water poured out of her mouth in hiccups. She wasn’t getting any warmer as she weasel-crouched in her sopping slip and spiky leather dress. Colder and colder, in fact, as if she was drifting away from this place. Far away, to somewhere cold as death--
“We’d better give her her heart back,” clucked Thoth. “It’s not going to do us any good right now. Not with the scale poisoned.”
Horace rose by his sharp arched wings, glode to the scale and grasped a bundle of the flowy red tentacles from the top of Lenna’s heart. Lifting the red diamond, he let it swing, swing, swing out of his talons. It tumbled straight into Lenna and felt like a strong sip of warm strawberry tea on a cold day. Warmth and the creepy feeling of being there in the middle of reality came back to her.
“Well,” said Thoth doubtfully. “We still have to test her heart. Without the scale, we’ll have to do it the hard way, I suppose. I imagine that’s what the scoundrel wanted, after all. So. Here we go. What we’ll need to do is read off all the crimes we can think of, and you’ll have to tell the truth in answering whether and how you’ve committed them. Haven’t done this since the Nile sprouted,” the bird muttered crossly. “Listen close, young weasel--”
“Girl,” said Lenna, sitting miserable and soggy on the floor. She was warming up, but Sabine huddled in a heap on top of her head and shivered, wrapping her tailbones around herself.
“What, is she a girl, Neftis? A human girl?” asked Thoth, looking wide-eyed at Isis and Neftis.
Neftis inclined her head.
“Well,” Thoth went on, “no matter. By the end we’ll know precisely who she is.” He puffed himself up and opened the giant musty book to a new chapter with his bulbous toe.
“Come forward and for Maat’s sake stand up straight as a scepter. Osiris will know if you’re lying. Here we go.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Judgment
or, I Slept in the Guest Bed of a God
Shaking, Lenna stood.
“By Annu, have you ever done wrong?” asked Thoth.
-- Yes,
said Lenna.
“By Kheraba, have you stolen?”
-- Yes.
“What did you steal?”
-- A cork for a doll’s head. But--
“No buts. Onward. By Fentiu, have you murdered?”
-- I don’t think so. Unless the earthquake--
“If you didn’t mean to, then you didn’t.”
-- Okay.
“By Qernet, have you ruined prayers?”
-- Yes.
“Whose and how?”
-- I walked in on Aitta praying once.
“Very well. By Nu, have you despoiled the things of gods?”
-- Um, I slept in the guest bed of a god.
“Oh, pooh, don’t worry about that. By Qesu, have you carried food away?”
-- Away from the big house in a bucket, before the Change. Or do you mean stolen?
“Yes, that’s what it means. Dashed old-fashioned words.”
-- Um, from the slop bucket. When I was a servant. It was gross, but I was hungry.
“I see. By Amentet, have you--ooh, I shouldn’t think so. Not that one. Hmmmmmp. Not that one either.”
Thoth turned the page with his toe.
“Ah! By Hraf-haf, have you caused weeping?”
-- Yes.
“Whose?”
-- Omigoodness. Brugda and Kaldi and Aitta, oh! and Joukka Pelata, those times I ran away. Probably Talvi, too, by now. And probably Binnan Darnan. And Andy, definitely. And I don’t know if any of the other dragon farms had servants I made cry. Oh, yes. There was a visitor in a hat, and his lip definitely wiggled when he first saw me, but I don’t know why. I was young. Oh! And the sun, after I crossbowed it.
“Anyone else?”
-- Probably.
“Onward. By Bast, have you eaten your own heart?”
-- Nope.
Lenna clenched her hands happily. There was a crime she hadn’t done.
“By Snef, have you acted deceitfully?”
-- Like what?
“Lying,” said Isis.
-- Yes.
“To whom?” said Thoth.
-- Everyone, all the time,
she said.
“Sadly, we shall need specifics.”
-- Ono. Mmm, I told Binnan Darnan she never lied. But she did.
“And?”
-- I told Brugda that I hadn’t cursed her. In Pol’s study. But I did.
“And?”
-- I told Aitta I had just dreamed the angels in Nupsstaður. Only I knew it wasn’t a dream.
“And?”
-- I told Brugda I didn’t mean to run away. Only I did.
“And?”
She thought and thought. There were tons.
-- I told Miss Morgan that Andy had told me some things about her, only it was other things.
“And?”
-- I promised myself I’d never use Brugda’s spells. But I did.
“And?”
&nbs
p; -- I told Binnan Darnan once that I had never seen a bjorn before. But I did.
“And?”
-- I told Brugda that I was happy she was my sister. But I wasn’t.
“And?”
-- I told Joukka Pelata that I was happy with my birthday presents. But I wasn’t.
“And?”
-- Oh! I told Isengrim a ton of lies. I don’t remember them all.
“And?”
-- Um, maybe I should do this the other way around. I never lied to Kaldi. Probably I never lied to Talvi. I lied to Joukka Pelata when I ran away. And Brugda lots of times, mainly because she was mean when I wasn’t nice to her. And to Binnan Darnan since I was really young. And Andy and Pol sometimes. But not Miss Morgan or Mo Bagohn or or or even Bres. I think.
“And?”
-- I think that’s it.
Sabine leaned over from the top of Lenna’s head and kissed her on her whiskery cheek, upside-down.
“By Lord of Maat, have you eavesdropped?”
-- Uh-huh.
“What did you hear?”
-- So much. Brugda said she couldn’t understand why they kept me. Joukka Pelata said Kaldi should get married, back at the farm. Binnan Darnan talked to herself about these two dolls she had. And she would sing to the draglets sometimes. Talvi said things to Aitta in their bedroom, but I didn’t understand what they were talking about. There was this boy, Velju, at Svensen’s store, who talked to himself in the bathroom with the door closed. I didn’t understand that, either. There were others, too, but I don’t remember what.
“That’s fine. By Amemt, have you caused terror?”
--I ran away a bunch of times.
“For this, I must regretfully ask: Why?”
--I hated Brugda and--
Lenna frowned her furry eyebrows. In her new memories, in her new life as Lady Joukka Pelata’s daughter, she found that there were new times that she had run away. There were, like, four times she had run away from home:
In Nupsstaður, after the World Tree got exploded and Brugda had hit her when she was screaming in the empress. That was the same in both sets of memories.
In Reykjavik, on one of Aitta’s big annual shopping trips, when Brugda had screamed at her for talking endlessly about wanting to go to school. She had run and hid in someone’s backyard and stayed there until they found her.
One August when Momma Joukka Pelata had caught her unwinding the woven crystals in her room and told her that as punishment she couldn’t go watch Binnan Darnan and the dragons for a week. She ran off into the wastes toward the Ring Road, and a delivery truck picked her up and brought her back home.
When she was little, and Aitta was new to the house, she had heard her and Talvi having a screaming argument about who was going to go to sleep first, or something like that, and she had pushed the door open, and Aitta was wearing underclothes, and they both started screaming at Lenna instead of at each other, and Lenna had run out the door into the woods and hid in her secret place in the wood, behind the rotting trunk that looked like a troll, and the whole family had had to go out looking for her and calling for her and she didn’t want any of them to find her secret place, so she snuck out of it through the trees to the far end of the wood and climbed a tree and waited for them to find her, quiet quiet quiet, not even making a sound when they were right below her, and they looked up and started screaming at her more, but at least they didn’t find her secret place in the wood.
Why had she run away so much? Joukka Pelata had given her every toy she asked for. There was nothing she was required to do, no work for her. But ...
-- Momma Joukka Pelata wouldn’t play, wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t teach me things. She always told me to go away. She would only only sit and sit and tell me to sit and be quiet and would make me go. And she gave me nothing ever to do and Aitta would whisper hints of a wide wide world and tell me how exciting and important the world was, only I was never allowed to find out about it.
She sighed and gasped a big cry away.
--Talvi taught me English and told me about all of the other places like France and Norway and Russia and America, but I never got to learn about them. And we’d go to Reykjavik every year and there was so much in the world. But they never taught me things. There’d always be no children around on the farms or in the city because they were always always in school. But I was told that school was wrong and that I shouldn’t ask to go. And I’d sit in my room and imagine whole whole worlds with Thor and Odin in them, and Surtur the fire monster and Frigg the beautiful queen. I made paper cutouts of them and I’d make up what they would do. Because I wasn’t allowed anything exciting. Ever. And there were no friends and Binnan Darnan was always trouble and Momma was boring and and only Kaldi would play games and make-believe, only he was always cooking.
It all came rushing out.
-- And Brugda would yell if I talked to her and mostly she ignored me even though she was sort of my sister. And I--I knew she wasn’t. Everybody did. And Joukka Pelata ... um, she wasn’t ... married, and everyone thought I came from somewhere else. My hair was a different color, and we didn’t even look alike. And I always wondered where I came from. I--I think I ran away to find out.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Food of Dead Gods
or, Give Her the Cookie
She breathed in, and there was a warm blue mist in front of her mouth, waiting to make her feel better.
Instead, she threw up. It was a little cold lakewater, a little yellow stomach stuff, and mostly nothing. She threw up again, and this time there was nothing inside of her to throw up. But her stomach squoze up into her, and she leaned over and her guts squeezed into her neck, and just when it stopped and she could breathe she threw up, and her mouth tasted awful and her nose burned and her whole body bent and it hurt inside her stomach and her head got a headache and her arms were weak and she threw up and threw up like a piston was chugging up her guts.
It hurt more than anything.
She lay down on the marble dais and curled up and grabbed her knees and they were human beneath a black tough-girl dress. It was smooth and rubbery and chilly and skinly and she felt alive for the first time since taking Renard’s stupid magic pill.
“Welcome back to us, Llenowyn,” said Neftis quietly.
“Rawwwwk,” added Horace. It ground up her eardrums, but Lenna supposed it was well-meant.
“We know you now,” said Isis. She waggled a filmy sleeve and in her hand was a round red-orange bird, very small and stupid-looking. With her fingernails, she tore the bird bloodily in half.
Lenna threw up again ...
“Hey everybody! If you get this note, and I don’t care if you do or not, but there’s going to be an All Thing because my rotten peabrain nephew says there’s something funny going on. I don’t believe him, but Mimir says there is and heck, I don’t do anything unless Mimir says it’s all right, so you should all come to the Thing in Asgard whenever you get this. Bring everybody. Or not.” It was very very loud.
“Honnur, liege of the Norse, calls us to an All Thing,” said Osiris. “We will take you. But to open enough doors, there must be a Change within a Change. You will need to cause a shift, and shift the door.”
“Errrrhhrrrm,” said Lenna from the floor, clutching her gut.
“Have we got any food to give her?” asked Thoth quickly. “Tmu-who-createth knows I’m no expert on the living, but I feel certain, fairly certain, that she’s had not enough to eat.”
Sabine crawled to Lenna’s lips, made a biting-bite motion, and laid her bones down across the girl’s mouth.
“Not gonna eat you,” whispered Lenna miserably. The mouse mewed and lay down over Lenna’s lips again.
“Go ‘way,” she whispered to the mouse, who tried to crawl into her mouth to get eaten. Lenna squinched her hand between her mouth and the mouse.
“Sabine,” said Isis, “you aren’t much food.”
Sabine squeaked up at the goddess, frowning.
> “Wouldn’t it, a-ha, wouldn’t it be perhaps a trifle amusing if, a-ha, instead of feeding her to the crocodile, we fed the crocodile to her? Ouch, Horace, do quit pecking me,” said Thoth.
“Miladies,” said Indaell, going down on one bony bony knee, “milord Osiris. Birds. Crocodile. The ceremony had a prayer in it, and the prayer spoke of pepper tarts. I beseech you--”
“I don’t like getting beseeched,” Neftis said.
“Milord Osiris, if there is other food here--” said Indaell.
Thoth shook his head.
“Then the tarts--” Indaell went on.
“In Egypt,” said Osiris, “and in Duat, pepper tarts are the food of dead gods. There is one pepper tart for each century. To give a single pepper tart away would be a century without speech or thought.” There was five thousand years of sadness in Osiris’ voice.
Indaell stretched around the draped ropes and black wood of the scale and flowed his legs after him to stand in front of the wrapped-up god. Lenna and Sabine watched from the floor. Lenna feld empty. That feeling she’d had when she used time magic and had become a very old weasel, the feeling of having a soul empty of strength ... that’s how she felt.
“I see everything,” Indaell snapped. “I know the past, present and future.”
He poked Osiris in the gut with a flimsy finger. Osiris frowned.
“I can see how important this girl is. And I can see hunger and thirst chewing her life away.”
Indaell stretched an arm ten feet to point into the water.
“This water is poison to the living. It burns away their life. The air here--” He pointed--“is poison to the living. It pulls their death closer. And this girl--”
His arm spun around like a confused earthworm and got knotted around the ropes trying to point at Lenna.
“Has not eaten food or drunk living water in three years.”
“My oh my,” twittered Thoth. “My oh my oh my.”
“She is essential to the survival of the world. If she dies,” concluded Indaell, retracting his arm, “so do we all.”