horns she wore that cradled the star-like flower. She was robed in gold, just like the statue in the Temple of Venus Obsequens. In one hand she held a sistrum; in the other an ankh.
“Almighty Isis,” said Nona.
“We’ve met.”
Nona just nodded. Then she reached into her tunic, lifted the vial from around her neck and handed it to me. I looked at her uncertainly.
“Pour some for her.”
“But I thought you said you lived on whores’ tears,” I argued for the sake of argument.
“These tears are her tears,” said Nona. “Pour the tears over her.”
I shrugged. There was no harm in humoring her. Taking care not to knock anyone over, I reached into the Lararium and poured a few drops of the salty water on the figure’s head. It pooled in the petals of the flower, then overflowed and began to trickle down her terracotta face.
“Her tears,” Nona repeated.
I closed my eyes, and the dream came back, the boat curved like the moon, the river, the mud, the severed limbs, the sorrow.
“When the moon is full again, it will be the Isia,” Nona announced.
“The Isia?” I felt a prickling at the base of my skull. Whatever it was, this Isia happened at the same time as Samhain.
“The mysteries, the sorrows. We who belong to Isis mourn with her, search with her. The priestesses go in moon-shaped boats to seek the Beloved in the waters. When he is found, we rejoice. We embrace the stranger, and everyone eats.”
I suddenly understood—no, that’s wrong; I didn’t understand anything—but I knew: I had been dreaming Isis’s story. Why? Why was this goddess pursuing me?
“Little Bright One,” she called me by my mother’s name for me, and I could no longer see, but I felt her take the vial from my hand. How could a flood fit in that tiny container? “You belong to her.”
Before I could argue, Old Nona was gone.
“All right,” I said when my sister whores and I settled into the bath.
“Tell me everything you know about Isis.”
“Why do you want to know?” asked Succula.
“You started it, Succula.” I accused. “The Temple of Venus Obsequens. Did you know it’s really a Temple to Isis?”
“Well, sure. But you didn’t expect me to shout it out in the street, did you?”
“Why not?”
“Red,” said Dido, “don’t you know? Isis is dea non grata in Rome. Temples to her are prohibited inside the city walls. It’s been that way since good old Queen Cleopatra, her late representative on earth, led first Julius Caesar and then Marc Antony around by the dick. Cleo had the audacity to want to be more than a Roman puppet. She had some notion that her country existed for some other reason than to feed Rome. What was she thinking?”
“Well, she lose in the end, poor thing,” sighed Berta. “But at least she was no captive. Do you know the story, Red? She puts poisonous snakes in her bosoms and when Roman soldiers break into her palace, they find her dead.”
“Original.” I was impressed.
“That’s not the only thing the purple have against her,” Succula said. “They’re afraid of her, because she draws riff-raff, slaves, foreigners, whores.”
Well, that description fit everyone within splashing range of me.
“That’s not entirely accurate, Succula,” said Dido. “If her followers were only from the dregs, the purple would pay no attention. She’s also popular with some of their own wives and daughters. It’s a trend—like wealthy matrons becoming Jewish proselytes and sending money to Jerusalem. The purple don’t like that kind of mixing. Their silly wives might end up funding an insurrection.”
Isis was sounding more and more appealing.
“So what is it about her?” I asked. “Rich, poor, slave, free, Roman, foreigner. Sounds like she takes all comers. She sounds like one of us.”
Everyone laughed and we did our whores’ high five (fingers in twat, then pressed together).
“You know, Red,” said Succula thoughtfully. “You have a point. Do you know the story?”
“Oh, let me tell it,” Berta pleaded. “So romantic. Just like your story, Red.”
Something inside me that had been drifting and dreaming woke up all the way.
“Listen, liebling. Isis loved her brother Osiris—it’s Egypt, kinder, that’s the way they do things down there and besides she was a goddess—they are twins, and they are lovers, you know what I mean, lovers even in the womb.”
Berta gave a gusty sigh and continued the story with lots of interruption and embellishment from the others. I closed my eyes and listened with my whole being. Berta didn’t know how right she was; she was telling my story, the story of my beloved and me, eternal twins in the great starry womb.
“After the wicked brother Set kills Osiris and sends him floating down the Nile in a coffin…”
A coffin! If I had needed more confirmation of the connection between Isis and my dreams, there it was.
“…Isis searches the world for her beloved. She wanders for years and years. She never gives up…”
Neither would I. Then I shook myself. The story was wrong, all wrong. My beloved was not dead. Why was I dreaming Isis’s story? What did she want from me?
“…she finally finds his coffin in a tamarisk tree, a column in Astarte’s temple. She brings him back home. She fans the air with her great bright wings, she breathes the breath of life into him, and he lives again to make a child with her…”
“Then he dies again—but she’s got the baby, so who needs him anymore?” said Dido.
“Dido! You are heartless! Heartless! You always ruin my stories. Now where was I?”
“The nasty brother cuts him into fourteen pieces, and Isis goes fishing.”
“Dido, stop. Liebling, don’t listen to her. Isis is true to her love. She gives a sacred burial to each part of him—”
“Except his prick,” Succula
