look at the parts and make little drawings, trying to figure out how it worked.” She smiled as she pictured the crude pencil drawings that had made her mother so proud. “What about you? What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“I used to want to be a princess,” Bastet said. “My aunt said that was silly, but I still want to be one. To wear the dresses and the jewels, and to have parties and music and feasts. To have a thousand friends. I’ve seen princesses, so I know all about them. It’s so much better than being a stupid goddess.”
Taziri slipped and fell knee-deep into a pile of prickly broken baskets. She twisted around to look at the girl. “I’m sorry. Did you say goddess?”
The girl shrugged her thin shoulders. “I mean, I know we’re not real goddesses, but it amounts to the same thing in the end. Not that it matters anymore. We have to live in the undercity now where no one ever goes, so no one even knows we exist anymore.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” Taziri pulled her leg free and climbed down off the rubbish heap. “Go back. Now, when you say goddess, you mean…?”
Bastet raised an eyebrow. “You know, goddess. Immortal. Divine. Holy. Magical. You know, you’ve seen me.”
Taziri made several thoughtful faces as she tried to frame her answer as diplomatically as possible. “I’ve seen you move through a cloud of aether, that’s true. But I’ve been to the north where it’s so cold that the aether pools in every hole in the ground and ghosts are as common as sneezing. I’ve even seen a demonic ghost called a water-woman.”
“Oh? What was she like?”
“I didn’t really get to talk to her. She turned into a flock of ravens and attacked my friend, so I shot her.” Taziri absently rubbed the medical brace under her left sleeve. “Bastet, tell me, are you a ghost? Are you dead?”
The girl laughed. “No, I’m not dead. I can’t die.” She tapped the little golden heart pendant on her chest. “I told you, my grandfather made these for everyone in my family. They’re made from sun-steel. This holds a piece of my soul, but just a piece. Not the whole thing, of course. Dividing the soul creates an immortal bond between the flesh and the steel. So as long as the steel exists, so do I. And with my soul permanently stretched through the aether between my body and this little gem, I can do all sorts of things with the aether, like move through it.”
Taziri nodded along slowly. “Okay. I think I follow all that. Divided soul. Immortality. So, how old are you exactly?”
“I don’t know.” Bastet pouted. “Four thousand, I think. I stopped counting when I got to two hundred. Birthdays really stop being important after a while.”
“Four thousand?” Taziri leaned against the wall of the alley. “And you don’t age, or get sick, or anything?”
“Nope.”
“Doesn’t sound too bad.”
The girl grinned. “It’s not awful. Plus I have all the cats a girl could want to boss around.” As if in answer, a pair of gray and white cats sauntered into the entrance of the alleyway. The girl rolled her eyes. “Not now.” The cats left.
Taziri decided not to ask about the cats. “And what do you do? You and your family? Do you…answer prayers?”
Bastet laughed.
Taziri smiled, feeling foolish. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay. I mean, back in the beginning, we lived here in the city and did all sorts of things where people could see us. We were more like high priests than gods, I guess. I had a lot of fun back then with my cousins. But eventually my uncles and aunts decided to move into the undercity where they could rest and study and do whatever they wanted away from all the people. People can be pretty tiring after a while.”
“You keep mentioning your aunts and uncles. What about your parents?”
The girl shrugged and looked at her feet. “I don’t remember them. I think they died when I was little. Grandfather isn’t really my grandfather. He just found me and took me in, started calling me his granddaughter, and said the others were my aunts and uncles. And when he made the steel hearts, he made one for me too. So I’d never be alone again, he said.” She looked up. “I miss him.”
“What about the others? Do you get along with them?” Taziri asked.
“More or less. They’re my family now. What can you do?” She smiled. “I mostly play with my cousins though. We still have fun, even though we’re still playing the same games we did before we became immortal. That’s why I like things like trains. They’re new. New is good.”
“Yeah, I like new things, too.” Taziri smiled. “That’s why I build them. I could teach you to build things too, if you wanted.”
“Maybe later.” Bastet turned and pointed at the trash. “Hey, is that a cowl?”
Taziri wandered back into the garbage. “This?” She pulled out a large basket with a small hole ripped in the bottom. The inner frame of the basket was wicker, but outside it had a water-tight skin of oiled leather. “Yeah. This’ll do nicely. Now we just need a hose. Where can we find some rubber around here?”
“Can’t. Rubber only comes from the New World, right? Well, there’s been a quarantine for a couple years now. They’re all afraid of some plague or something. You need rubber to make a hose? A hose is like a pipe, but bendy, right?”
Taziri nodded.
Bastet grinned. “I have an idea.”
A few minutes later they were standing in a dark street looking at a small, closed shop. Taziri frowned. “I think that’s a butcher shop.”
“It is. You need a long bendy pipe, right?”
Taziri grimaced. “Really? There isn’t anything else in Alexandria that we can use?”
Bastet crossed her arms. “Well, I’ve only lived here four thousand years, so maybe I’ve missed something. If you want to go looking around somewhere else, be my guest.”
Taziri sighed. “Fine. Let’s just get this over with.”
Bastet walked up to the door and vanished in a swirling cloud of white mist. A moment later the door opened and Taziri walked in. The girl pointed to the ceiling. “I think that’s what you want.”
Taziri grimaced again and started breathing through her mouth. “What is it? Cow?”
“Horse, I think.”
With a bit of stumbling in the dark and a few eye-watering gasps, Taziri pulled the coiled intestines down and looped them over her shoulder. As she turned to leave, she dug into her pocket and pulled out a fistful of Mazigh coins, which she slapped on the butcher’s counter as she walked out. Bastet closed the door and walked beside Taziri all the way back to the rail yard with a playful whistle on her lips. Taziri focused on not breathing too deeply.
Four thousand years old, and still a little girl? I…I just can’t imagine… Lorenzo never said anything about divided souls or living forever. I wonder what else he didn’t know about ghosts and aether.
When they returned to the Halcyon, she stowed her makeshift cowl and hose in the back of the cabin. “All right, now it is definitely time for some sleep. Can you wake me up before sunrise? We need to start working before the sun gets too high and our hose starts to rot.”
Bastet nodded. “I’ll see you then.” And she vanished through the closed hatch.
Taziri lay down on her tarp on the floor with her feet toward the coiled guts. A minute later she was settling in for the night up in her flight chair. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was a few inches farther from the rear of the cabin. She was asleep in moments.
Suddenly a hand was shaking her shoulder and she was mumbling and there was pale sunlight streaming in through the windscreen onto her lap. Taziri blinked and sat up.
“Good morning!” Bastet held out a piece of flatbread cupping a handful of dates. “Did you sleep well?”
“Good morning, thanks.” Dates again. Taziri ate slowly. “It felt like the night just flew by. Did you get much sleep? Do you sleep?”
“I did. But first I had to visit my cousin. I sent him on a little errand for you.”
“For me? Well, I hope your cousin didn’t mind the late visit.”
