The House of the Rising Sun

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Truth About My Parents

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Truth About My Parents

Selene

Three years ago, I had fallen in love with a man named Alexander Helios. Three years ago, he had been taken from me. Two years ago, I learned how to move on.

Twenty years ago, an Egyptian priestess had fallen in love with a Hebrew slave. Twenty years ago, a little girl was taken from her parents. Nineteen years ago, her parents were killed on account of blasphemy.

Time works in a strange pattern—as inconstant as the moon itself. No one, save the gods, could outwit time.

“Selene, I have to talk to you,” Sosigenes said, sitting me down in the main hall. Sosigenes was aging, and I hadn’t found a husband—I never would—so I had to care for him here, at home. Not that I minded or anything.

“What is it?” I asked, seeing how Sosigenes was looking upset about something. He sighed.

“Selene, I don’t believe I ever told you the whole story about your parents’ lives and deaths.”

I frowned and leaned my head in. “Wh…what didn’t you tell me?”

Sosigenes hesitated. “What do you know?”

“I know that I was an illegitimate biracial child—my mother an Egyptian priestess and my father a Hebrew slave. Soon after I was born, I was taken away from them and given to you. The punishment for their blasphemy was death.”

Sosigenes looked distant and sad. “My child, I am afraid that is not the whole story. You know more.”

“I…I do?”

“Yes, remember what I told you about their graves?”

“Oh,” I nodded sadly. “After their deaths, they were mummified and placed in nameless sarcophagi so their souls couldn’t continue on into the Afterlife.” I shuddered, and I felt like mourning.

“My dear Selene, you know, your mother wasn’t immediately put to death after your birth.”

“She…” I was shocked. “Wait, she wasn’t?”

Sosigenes shook his head and looked at me with his head lowered but his light blue eyes staying locked on mine. “Selene, I certainly didn’t nurse you.”

I let out a short, nervous laugh. Sosigenes let out a smile but then returned to telling me the story.

“Selene, after you were born, you were given to me, yes, but…your mother was a wise woman and your father, a wise man.”

“Why? What happened?” I begged to know.

“Patience, Selene. Your mother and father knew that every child needs to spend time with its parents—I knew that as well. So”—

“What did my parents do?” I demanded. Sosigenes looked at me with a very stern look on his face.

“If you stopped interrupting me I’d tell you.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“So the night of your birth—the very night your parents were to be executed—they snuck away to a place I had told them to meet me. Here. It wasn’t easy, helping them escape the clutches of the priests and prison guards, but that night, those very priests and guards were also busy with preparations for the goddess Hathor’s festival. Your mother escaped with me easily.”

“What about my father?”

“He helped,” Sosigenes said, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I found myself hoping against all odds that my parents had made it and lived happily with me, but then I realized my parents were absent from this picture, just like they had always been. “I hid your mother and father there”—he gestured to where his room lay—“and I let them spend as much time with you as they could. That time turned out to be three months.”