Chapter 12
Anubis
The first time I accompanied Jessica to a Starbucks, I stood in the doorway for a full minute, trying to comprehend what I was seeing.
“Is this a place of worship?” I asked.
Jessica laughed, tugging me inside. “No. It’s a coffee shop. Come on, the line’s not too bad.” She laced her fingers through mine. “Actually, some people consider coffee a lifestyle, and they can’t function without it. Maybe they do worship it.”
For me, the line was long. At least a dozen people stood in front of us. We joined it, and I studied the menu board with growing confusion. Venti. Grande. Tall. Caramel macchiato. Pumpkin spice latte. Frappuccino. The words meant nothing, or worse, they meant things they should not mean.
“Why are the sizes named backward?” I asked. “Tall is the smallest. That makes no sense.”
“I know. It’s a whole thing and kind of confusing. Don’t overthink it.”
“If I counted right, there are forty-seven different variations of coffee?”
“Or more, if you count all the modifications.”
“Modifications?” I gulped.
She was grinning at my distress, clearly enjoying herself. “What do you want?”
“Coffee. Black. Made from ground beans and hot water, as it should be.”
“So, an Americano.”
“If that is what you call regular coffee, then yes, please.”
She ordered for both of us. Her request took three minutes and involved words like ‘iced’ and ‘oat milk’ and ‘two pumps.’ When she finished, we waited at the end of the bar for our drinks.
I watched the mortals around us, all absorbed in their phones, their laptops, and their conversations.
None of them looked up. None of them noticed the god standing among them.
It was strange, liberating, and unsettling in equal measure.
“Are you okay?” Jessica asked, touching my arm.
“I am adjusting.”
“That’s god-speak for ‘I’m overwhelmed,’ isn't it?”
“Perhaps.” I glanced around the coffee shop. “There are a lot of people in such a compact place.”
She squeezed my hand. “We can leave and get coffee somewhere quieter if you’d prefer.”
“No.” I forced myself to relax. “I must adapt. This is your world. I need to understand it.”
The barista called a name, but not her name, and Jessica collected our drinks. “She did not call your name. Why did you go?”
Jessica laughed. “They mess up names sometimes. It’s a thing. People post photos of the wrong names on the internet all the time.” She sipped her monstrosity. Mine was simple, black, and familiar. Hers was topped with foam and came in a cup large enough to bathe a small child.
“Twenty-seven ounces of coffee?” I said as we found a table.
“It’s been a long day. Don't judge.”
“I am always judging. It is my nature.”
She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling.
Jessica allowed me to adjust bit by bit. She took me on small expeditions into her world; each one revealed new layers of complexity I had never imagined.
Our first trip to the grocery store was a revelation.
Food came in packages wrapped in more plastic than necessary rather than fresh from a market.
She showed me each aisle, and by the time we left, we had spent a few hundred dollars.
Once back at her home, I sat and rested while Jessica took what she called a power nap with her head on my lap.
She took me to the DMV for an ‘official’ license, which I obtained through means that could best be classified as divine manipulation and definitely illegal.
The most confusing place in my first week with Jessica was the hardware store. Jessica’s house’s failing roof had led us down a rabbit hole of shingles and gutters and contractors who quoted prices that seemed inflated.
I was learning and adapting. But by all the gods old and new, it was exhausting.
The funeral home was worse than Starbucks.
Jessica’s neighbor, an elderly woman named Mrs. Fontana, who had brought us cookies when I first arrived, had died in her sleep during my second week. Jessica insisted we attend the memorial service, both to pay respects and to help me understand modern American death practices.
I wished with all my might that she had not.
“Cremation,” I said for the fourth time, unable to keep the horror from my voice. “They burned her body to ash.”
“It’s common here,” Jessica whispered. “And she requested it. It was her choice.”
“But there is no body to preserve, no tomb to protect, no offerings to sustain her in the afterlife. How is her ka supposed to…” I stopped, remembering we were in public. “This is wrong.”
“It’s different. Not wrong.”
The service was brief and efficient, utterly devoid of the ceremony and ritual that should accompany death.
Mrs. Fontana had no weighing of the heart, no journey through the Duat, no judgment.
A handful of people gave speeches about how much she would be missed next to a small urn that held what remained of Mrs. Fontana’s eighty-eight-year long life.
Afterward, when we were alone in the car, Jessica let me rant.
“These foolish mortals do not understand what they have lost,” I said, gripping the dashboard. “The sanctity of death, the importance of preservation, the journey the soul must take. All of it is dismissed as superstition.”
“Most people don’t believe in an afterlife. Not the way you know it.”
“They should.” I took a breath, forcing myself to calm down. “I apologize. I know this is not your fault. But to witness such... such casual disregard for the sacred, it’s mindboggling.”
“I know.” She put her hand over mine. “But this is part of my world. Death happens here too, and people react differently than you’re used to.”
“Everything is different from what I am used to.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Are you having regrets about coming here? About staying with me?”
“No.” I turned to look at her. “Never. But I would be lying if I said the adjustment was easy.”
“I know. And I appreciate you trying.That’s all I could have asked for.” She started the car. “Come on. Let’s go home. I’ll make dinner, we can watch something mindless, and you can decompress.”
Home.
Her three-bedroom ranch with the sagging roof and the lawn that required constant maintenance, and neighbors who asked too many questions. It was not a palace or a temple. It was not even nice by modern standards.
But it was hers, now ours, and that made it sacred.
I discovered streaming services a few nights later. I’d known about the internet and videos I could watch on there, but streaming opened up a whole new world.
Jessica was asleep, exhausted from a job interview that had not gone well, and I was restless. Sleep was not something I required, though I had learned to lie still beside her, feeling the rhythm of her breathing, the warmth of her body against mine.
That night she fell asleep on the couch after dinner, and I found myself alone with the television and a device I couldn’t remember what it was called, but it had a remote control. According to Jessica it contained infinite entertainment.
I pressed the button as Jessica taught me, and found a channel with documentaries about ancient Egypt. Finally, something familiar.
Clicking on the first one, I realized my mistake.
“That is not how mummification works,” I said to the empty room as a cheerful British narrator explained the process with alarming inaccuracy. “One part is almost correct. The priests removed the brain through the nose, yes, but not with a spoon. Imbeciles.”
I changed channels.
Another documentary. This one claimed the pyramids were built by aliens. Dumb. Do mortals know anything?
“Aliens,” I said, my voice full of disdain. “This idiot attributes monuments built by human ingenuity and divine blessing to aliens.”
I must change the channel. There is too much inaccurate information and stupidity. When Jessica wakes, I’ll tell her how they were built.
The next channel showed a dramatic recreation showing Cleopatra as a vapid seductress rather than the brilliant strategist she had been. “This is character assassination!”
I recognized a jackal in the next video. This was a movie (fiction, according to Jessica), where Anubis was a villain set on trying to destroy the world.
I pressed the red power button and turned off the television.
Jessica found me an hour later, sitting in the dark, glaring at the blank screen.
“Bad documentaries?” she guessed.
“They portray me as a villain! A destroyer of worlds! I do not destroy. My job is to guide souls to the afterlife. I maintain cosmic balance. I am not a… a…” I gestured at the screen.
“Hollywood monster?”
“Yes. That.”
She sat beside me, pulling my arm around her shoulders, snuggling into my side. “Welcome to being a pop culture figure. They get everyone wrong. You should see what they did to Dracula.”
“I do not know who that is.”
“Point proven.” She yawned. “Come to bed. You can write angry letters to the History Channel in the morning.”
“Can I do that?”
“Probably not. But it would be funny.”
The job at the Burke Museum came as a surprise.
Jessica’s friend Megan, who had regarded me with deep suspicion at our first meeting, worked in fundraising for one of the largest universities in her state.
Over coffee one morning (at Starbucks, because that was the only place mortals seemed to socialize) Megan mentioned that her university’s Egyptian Museum needed a new consultant.
According to both women, the university acquired a massive collection over the years, enough to fill a museum.
“Their last guy retired,” Megan said, watching me over the rim of the largest beverage made higher by a huge dollop of whipped cream with some kind of sugary drizzle.
“The museum and university need someone who knows their stuff. Someone who can authenticate pieces, provide historical context, maybe give some lectures.”
“Why are you telling me?” I asked.