Chapter 12 #2
“Because Jess says you know things about ancient Egypt. Like, a lot of things.” Her eyes narrowed. “More than the previous docents, multiple Ph.D professors and candidates. An impossible amount of things. Care to explain?”
“I studied extensively,” I said, which was true, and not an outright or complete lie.
“Uh-huh.” Megan did not believe me. I could see it in her expression. “Well, studied or not, they’re hiring. If you’re interested.”
“What do you think?” I asked Jessica.
“Why not go to an interview? It’s a way for you to connect to your heritage; to your homeland.”
I nodded. “I’ll do an interview.”
Megan snapped her fingers. “Good. Let me make a call. The last thing Jess needs is a freeloader in her house.”
I puffed my chest. “I am not a freeloader.”
“Meg,” Jessica said, her tone warning.
Megan put her finger in the air, her cellphone pressed to her ear. She spoke into it for a few minutes. “You have an interview tomorrow,” she said when she hung up.
I blinked. “Tomorrow?”
“Yep. Told you they needed someone.”
The interview was surreal.
The museum director, a woman named Dr. Pagano, walked me through their collection.
I kept my expression neutral as she showed me artifacts I remembered being created.
Their collection was extensive. It contained a ushabti from the Eighteenth Dynasty, a Canopic jar that still carried the faint scent of natron and a false door from a tomb I had personally consecrated.
“This is remarkable preservation,” I said, touching the false door with gentle hands.
“Please don’t,” Dr. Pagano started, then stopped as I continued my examination. “You seem very comfortable with the artifacts.”
“I have experience.”
“It’s obvious from your manner.” She observed me with narrowed eyes. “Where did you study?”
“Cairo.” Technically the truth. “Extensively.”
She asked me questions about dating methods, about the significance of certain hieroglyphs, about the evolution of burial practices across dynasties. I answered them all, trying to sound like I had learned these things from books rather than lived through them.
To my sheer surprise, I got the job.
Jessica was thrilled. “This is perfect! You’ll have something to do during the day, and you’ll be around things you know. An added bonus is you’ll get paid. It’s like the universe is cooperating for once.”
“I still do not understand why I need currency to exist in this world.”
“Because capitalism.”
“I hate capitalism.”
“Everyone does, honey,” Jessica said, patting my knee.
Sophie visited two weeks later, her recovery from surgery complete and her curiosity about me insatiable. She’d asked her mother a barrage of questions about me every night when they spoke.
She arrived on a Friday afternoon after a long week back at school, dropped off by a friend whose car played music so loud I could feel it vibrating in my bones. Jessica hugged her daughter with ferocity, and I stood back, uncertain of my role in this reunion.
“So,” Sophie said, turning to me once her mother released her. “You’re still here.”
“I am still here.” I kept my posture neutral, trying to appear nonthreatening and less otherworldly.
“And you’re living with my mom.”
“I am. I have a job, and I am not a freeloader.”
“In New Jersey.”
“Yes.”
She studied me with disconcerting intensity. “You’re not from around here, are you? Like, really not from around here.”
“Sophie,” Jessica said.
“What? I’m just saying, there’s something weird about him. Not bad weird,” she added in a rush. “He’s different. Like he doesn’t quite fit.”
She was more perceptive than I had expected.
“I am still adjusting to American culture,” I said. “I was raised very differently, and it is a big change here.”
“In Egypt?”
“Yes, I was raised there.”
“Doing what?”
Jessica jumped in. “He worked in tomb preservation. It’s a very specialized field. He spent lots of time underground and didn’t have much interaction with modern society.”
“Tomb preservation,” Sophie repeated. “So, like… archaeology?”
“Yes, something like that.”
She accepted my explanation with a shrug. “Cool. Kinda goth, but cool.”
The weekend was a study in controlled chaos.
Sophie talked constantly. Her conversations focused on her classes, her new roommate, the boy who had cheated on her (whose name she forbade her mother and I from speaking) and her plans for the future.
Jessica listened with the patience of someone who had done this many times before, offering advice and support in equal measure.
I watched them together and felt a tug of envy.
The bond I noticed between mother and daughter, forged over years of shared experience and unconditional love, was beautiful. And beyond my understanding.
I never had a child. Never wanted one in all my millennia. My duty was to the dead, not to the living. But watching Jessica with Sophie, I wondered what I had missed.
“You’re quiet,” Sophie said on Saturday evening, finding me in the kitchen while Jessica showered.
“I am often quiet. Observations are the key to understanding.”
“Yeah, but this is more of a thoughtful, quiet. Not your normal brooding god thing.”
I looked at her sharply, my eyes narrowing. “What did you say?”
She grinned. “Please. I’m not stupid. You appear out of nowhere right when Mom needs you most, you know impossible things about ancient Egypt, you have weird eyes that sometimes look gold, and you move like you’re not quite used to having a physical body.
” She raised a finger to punctuate each of her observations.
“Also, you called yourself Anubis, which is not exactly subtle.”
My heart, metaphorical though it was, stopped. “You know?”
“I figured it out. Took me a while, longer than I care to admit. The painkillers slowed me down.” She pulled out a chair and sat, completely at ease in my presence.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to tell anyone.
Who would believe me? Plus, Mom’s happy.
Like, ridiculously happy. I haven’t seen her like this in years, or maybe ever.
So whatever you are, whatever is going on with you and my mom, I’m okay with it. ”
“Your mother does not know that you know.”
“No, and let’s keep it that way. She’d freak out.” Sophie tilted her head. “Can I ask you something?”
Like mother, like daughter. “You may ask, but I reserve the right not to answer.”
“Are you going to hurt her? Because immortal or not, god or not, I will find a way to make you regret it if you do.”
The threat from a twenty-something-year-old mortal girl should have been absurd. Instead, it moved me to my core.
“I love your mother,” I said. “More than I have loved anything in five thousand years. I would sooner cease to exist than cause her pain.”
“Good answer.” She stood, heading for the refrigerator. “Want a beer? Or do gods not drink beer?”
“Gods drink anything mortals do. Usually more of it to get close to the same state of inebriation.”
“Excellent.”
We sat in the kitchen, drinking beer and talking about nothing in particular, and I realized that I liked Sophie. She was sharp, honest, and protective of her mother. She reminded me of Jessica with the same steel spine, and the same refusal to accept easy answers.
When Jessica emerged from her shower, she found us laughing about something Sophie had said about her father’s new wife, and the expression on her face made every difficulty of the past month worthwhile.
“What are you two plotting?” she asked.
“Nothing," we said in unison.
“That’s what worries me.” Jessica smiled, opened the fridge, grabbed a beer, and sat down. “Now, let me in on this conversation.”
But despite the moments of connection and found family; despite the job and the growing familiarity with Jessica’s world; I struggled.
Everything was too fast, too loud, too much. The constant barrage of information from screens and devices drove me to the brink of insanity. I hated the traffic that clogged every road and the way mortals rushed through life, barely acknowledging the sacred in the mundane.
I missed the quiet of the underworld and the certainty of my duties. I missed the clear delineation between life and death, order and chaos.
Here, everything blurred together.
Jessica noticed. “You hate it here,” she said one night as we lay in bed after making love.
“I do not hate it.” I leaned in to kiss her. “I could never hate being with you.”
“You’re miserable.”
“I am adjusting.”
“Anubis.” She turned to face me. “Be honest. Is this too much? Are you regretting coming here?”
I wanted to say no. I wanted to reassure her that everything was fine, that I was adapting; that mortal life was exactly what I needed.
But I had told her once that I was incapable of lying.
“It is harder than I expected,” I admitted. “Your world moves at a pace I do not understand. The customs are strange, the death practices are disturbing, and I find myself constantly unmoored. Like I have lost my purpose.”
“You’re a god. Your purpose is eternal.”
“My purpose was judging souls and guarding tombs. Here, I consult on museum pieces and struggle to understand why coffee requires options.”
She was quiet. “Do you want to go back?”
“No. I want to be with you, but I do not know if I can be what you need while also being what and who I am.”
“You’re already what I need. You, exactly as you are.
” She took my hand. “Maybe we need to find a better balance. You can’t abandon everything you are to live in my world.
Maybe we split our time between here and Egypt?
Or we find ways to incorporate your duties into this life. Or…I don’t know. Something.”
“You would do that? Divide your time between worlds?”
“For you? Yes.” She kissed my palm. “I’m not asking you to stop being a god, Anubis. I’m asking you to be a god who also lives with me, however that looks.”
Relief flooded through me. “I do not deserve you.”
“Probably not. But you’re stuck with me, anyway.” She nestled against my chest, touching a matching ankh I wore.
I pulled her closer, breathing in her scent. It would not be easy. But we would make it work.
We had to.
The message came three days later.
I was at the museum, examining a newly acquired stele, when I felt the familiar pull of divine communication. Thoth’s voice echoed in my mind with the weight of urgent news.
Anubis. We have a problem.
I excused myself to an empty storage room and opened myself to the full connection. Thoth appeared before me, not physically, but as a projection of his essence, shimmering and translucent.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s about your mortal, Jessica.” His expression was grave. “I was reviewing the cosmic ledgers, updating records of souls and their fates. I found something concerning.”
“Tell me.”
“Jessica Thomas. Forty-five years old.” He paused. “Scheduled to die November 3rd of this year.”
The world stopped.
“What?”
“Her death. It’s already written in the ledgers. A car accident on Interstate 95. Her death will be instantaneous and unavoidable, according to the Fates.”
“No,” the word came out strangled. “No, that cannot be. She wears my ankh. She is protected.”
“Protection from harm, yes. But not from fate.” Thoth’s expression was sympathetic. “The ankh guards against illness, injury, and malice. It cannot protect against what is meant to be. And according to the cosmic order, Jessica Thomas dies in eight months.”
Eight months.
That was all the time we had.
I had known she was mortal. I had known she would eventually die. But eventually was supposed to be decades away, not months.
“Can we change it?” I demanded. “Rewrite the ledgers? Alter the timeline?”
“You know we cannot. The Fates govern death and destiny. Even gods must submit to their decrees.” He moved closer. “I am sorry, Anubis. Truly. But you needed to know. You need to prepare.”
“Prepare for what? To lose her? To watch her die, knowing I could not prevent it?”
“No. Cherish the time you have. Make it count.” His projection began to fade. “Eight months, my friend. Make them matter.”
He vanished, leaving me alone in the storage room, surrounded by artifacts of dead civilizations, facing the reality of my own impending devastation.
Eight months.
I sank to the floor, my head in my hands, and for the first time in thousands of years, I wept.