In the moment of waking, how do we tell our dreams from our lives?
He frowned.
By the sudden rush of relief or disappointment, I suppose.
Sighing, Anubis sat down on the edge of the carpet in front of the other man. He laid his staff on the floor, leaving its sun-steel rings glowing softly to illuminate their meeting.
“Osiris?”
The older man did not move. He sat cross-legged, his hands resting limply on his knees, his eyes staring blindly straight ahead. A colorless pile of tattered cloth covered his waist and thighs, but the rest of his clothing had rotted away years ago, and Anubis suspected that it would take only the gentlest of breezes to blow away what little remained.
Osiris had thin arms and a flat, hairless chest. His face could have been that of a young man with many cares or the face of an old man with few troubles. It was timeless and ageless, and beardless. A thin veil of black hair hung from his head, but it reached only down to the man’s shoulders and no farther.
The hair only grows when we eat. It is the one thing that still changes as though we were normal, living beings, unconstrained by the changeless immortality of our sun-steel hearts. But his hair hasn’t grown since the last time I saw him. He hasn’t eaten in years. He probably hasn’t moved in years.
“Osiris?”
The older man did not answer. Only his thin breathing betrayed the fact that he was indeed alive and not some lifelike statue. Though as lifelike as he appeared, he was not completely natural in complexion. His skin, once light brown, had tarnished to a sickly green hue. The first time that Anubis had noted the change, it had been shocking. He ran to tell the rest of the family that something had happened, that something was wrong. Their sun-steel hearts were supposed to be changeless, and to make their bodies changeless in turn. But Osiris had changed. He was green.
And after days of study, it was his wife Isis who had discovered why. The sun-steel wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t changeless, not entirely. Like glass, it merely looked to be solid and permanent, but in truth it could shift and slide and flow, but slowly. Very slowly, and only under certain conditions. Ages ago, Osiris had led his family out of the sun-kissed world and its mortal concerns, and retired to the city in the darkness to rest and study, to await something else, something new, something worthy of their time.
But the rest of the family had their own interests and ambitions. And while they did live in the undercity, they did not dwell there in silent repose awaiting the next epoch of humanity. They lived new lives. Set and Nethys had gone out often to explore the rest of Ifrica, to see its wars and weapons, to see its storms and plagues, and to play their strange games amid the chaos of the wider world. Isis and her son Horus continued to pursue their true passion, politics. They slipped up into Alexandria, into the halls of power among the warlords and queens, to whisper words of wisdom into receptive ears and to watch the grand spectacle of the Aegyptian court playing out over the centuries.
This left young Anubis and his cousin Bastet to play in the streets, daring one another to test the boundaries of what it meant to be immortal, and through shocking and wondrous moments, learning such remarkable abilities as aether-walking and cat-talking. And when they weren’t slowly marching farther and farther from what it meant to be truly human, they wandered the streets with the mortal children, watching over them, trying to preserve what little innocence there was to be found in Alexandria between the wars and the politics and the relentless tides of history.
But Osiris remained all alone in the darkness, true to his word. He sat and rested, and awaited the dawning of the next age of mankind. Whatever that might be. But there in the dark, drenched in the cold mists, the little golden pendant hanging from his neck had drawn in more and more aether, swallowing an endless flood of aether, year after year. And somehow, that vast ocean of aether, compressed into the tiny sun-steel trinket, had begun to warp and tarnish the metal. The hand-crafted human heart was rounder and smoother and beginning to resemble a drop of falling water in its shape. It had taken a greenish tint, not unlike rusting copper, and now the man who shared his soul with the sun-steel also had that color, and that strange smoothness in his skin. Not that he ever noticed.
Anubis squinted in the dim half-light.
Where is his pendant? Perhaps the chain rusted away, and it fell down into the tower somewhere. No matter.
“Osiris!” the youth shouted in his deep, commanding voice. The name echoed over and over down inside the tower and out in the streets of the deserted city.
The older man blinked and shifted his face ever so slightly toward the youth seated in front of him.
“Are you still alive in there, old man?” Anubis frowned at him.
Osiris made a thin, crooked smile. “Always.”
“We have a problem,” Anubis said. “And we need your help.”
“Problems do not concern me. Step back. Step away. Wait for this problem to resolve itself. Wait long enough, and it will simply go away,” the green man whispered. “And when it is gone, you will ask yourself, why was I ever worried about this?”
“No, not this time. This is not some mortal issue, or politics, or even religion. This is a family matter.”
Osiris went on smiling as his dim eyes swept across the shadowy room. “Family. Politics. Is there really any difference?”
“This isn’t about politics, old man,” Anubis said. “This is about life and death. Set is dead.”
Osiris paused, his face lined with worry for a moment, but the moment passed. “I’m sorry to hear it, for your sake. I remember when my father died. Dimly. But I remember. It was a strange loss. It made me feel older, very suddenly, because he was no longer there between me and my own death. It made death feel nearer, somehow.”
Anubis sighed. “I know that Set wasn’t my blood father. I know that Mother came to you for a child, because Set wouldn’t, or couldn’t. I know it all.”
Osiris nodded. “It’s good that you know. Truth is always good.”
“No, it isn’t,” Anubis said. “The truth is that Set is dead, and your beloved Isis has been turned into a rabid steer running through the city streets above us. And if we can’t stop her and save her, then we will have to kill her. And your son. And my mother. There is nothing good about the truth today.”
Osiris went on nodding gently. “I understand.”
“You understand?” Anubis glared at him. “I didn’t come here for your understanding, I came here for your help. Innocents will die today, unless we can undo this madness.”
“Wait. Watch.” Osiris exhaled slowly. “The world will unravel itself, and all its problems will vanish on the tides of eternity. There is no need for suffering. Stay here with me, my son. Sit with me, and wait.”
“Wait for what?” Anubis shouted. “For our family to die?”
“Wait for the next world, the better world,” Osiris whispered. “It’s coming, day by day. The world is growing, evolving, improving, by tiny degrees. And one day, it will be the paradise that you and I deserve to live in. In the mean time, sit with me, my son, and let go of your pain and your worry.”
Anubis clenched his teeth and stared at the old green man with hate in his eyes. “Get up!” The youth leapt to his feet, grabbed Osiris by the arms, and hauled him up to stand in the center of the room, face to face.
“Listen to me!” Anubis roared. “Isis and Horus and Nethys are all slaves, all suffering, and all in danger. They will slaughter innocents, unless they themselves are slaughtered. I don’t give a damn about the world or the future. I only care about them. My mother! Your wife and son! Your precious world and precious future don’t care about them. Only we care about them. The world is an empty stage, not a warm embrace. It’s a place, not a person. It doesn’t care about anything, and least of all you!”