Then, to avenge his father, he did go.

But Set was strong and raped and blinded him.

From Horus’s eyes the lotuses will grow.

In pity, Isis freed Set from his bonds.

In anger, Horus severed off her head.

Replaced it with a cow’s beneath the fronds.

Then Horus raised his father from the dead.

Like Isis I’m beheaded, Horus-blind.

Osiris I re-member, Set re-minds.

The words fell around Izzy like a shower of chilly petals. She could not quite catch them all.

The woman retreated.

Amanda?

Izzy tried to walk back through the lines of the poem.

Sky turned and looked at her. “Aurora, will you sit up, please.”

It took Izzy a moment to recognize her name; then, as if hypnotized, she did as Sky asked.

Sky fastened a white papier-mâché mask over Izzy’s face and tied it in the back with a ribbon. The mask fit too well, as if it had been made for her. Izzy tried to breathe normally through the tiny nostril openings; she stared out of the ragged eyeholes into the crowd of masked people.

“You will portray Isis this evening,” Sky said. “And you—” She beckoned.

A dark-haired man with an eerily smooth white face came forward. Izzy gasped out loud. It was Ever. He was here. What was he doing? What were they doing to him? Why was his face like that?

“You will portray Osiris,” Sky said. She lit a stick of incense on the candle flame and held it aloft. “Bless us as we enact the mystery of Isis and Osiris,” she said.

Jeb stepped forward holding a sistrum that he shook lightly. “Lament with us. Osiris is dead! Dismembered by his brother, Set.” He blew out the candles in the courtyard, one by one, until the only light came from the almost-full December Moon—the moon called Cold.

“Dismembered…” Izzy whispered. What were they talking about? What had happened? Dismembered…like Cyrus… By his brother, Set, like… She struggled to sit up, but she was too weak.

“Osiris saw the beautiful chest painted with wondrous images and lay down in it. But the chest had been made by his brother Set, made to Osiris’s dimensions, and so he lay in it and died.”

Sky said, “Now Osiris lives only in Isis’s dreams.” Izzy was shaking like the sistrum, now. She smelled more roses—always roses—and frankincense. “Repeat after me,” Sky whispered.

“What’s wrong with me?” Izzy asked.

“Repeat after me,” said Sky, but Izzy couldn’t speak.

“I, Isis, take the form of the kite, flying over the land to seek him as he dreams. In my womb, I carry his child, Horus,” Sky said.

She went on, “I, Isis, search everywhere, and as I do, the people mourn with me.” Her voice changed, became commanding once again: “Show Isis that you are with her in her search.”

“Isis!” the company cried. “Isis!”