Which was totally unacceptable to the Pale Queen.
But you know how kids are supposed to help around the house? How they are supposed to have a list of chores and just do them without being nagged ten times? Well, same thing in the Pale Queen’s house. Her daughter expected to have everything handed to her: goddess robes, flying sandals, chariots drawn by unicorns, parties with her friends (she had no friends), and she didn’t want to have to do any of t
he work.
“Listen to me, young lady, I’m giving you a chore to do. You will make the Babylonians worship me. I want a main temple and two smaller—”
“Why are you picking on me?” Risky demanded.
“I’m not picking on you. I’m telling you what I want you to do.”
Heavy sigh. “Okay, what? Gah!”
“I want a main temple and two smaller ones. The main one has to be bigger than Astarte’s. I want a cult. I want sacrifices. And I want some kind of invocation.”
“What’s an invocation? Am I supposed to know that?”
The Pale Queen gritted her thirty-six teeth because Risky was grinding her last nerve. “An invocation is like when someone says, ‘Praise Astarte!’ or ‘Zeus, that hurt!’ or, ‘Where the Baal are my keys?’ That kind of thing.”
So Risky rolled her eyes and promised to do it next millennium. But the Pale Queen wasn’t having it and insisted her daughter get out right now, young lady, and get started.
So verily did Risky go forth into the land of Babylon. Babylon was watered by two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. In those very early days Babylon was still a bit scruffy. Some of the best buildings were made of stone, but a lot were just mud smeared over sticks.
Risky was walking through the ox-poop-strewn streets, threading her way past lepers and refusing offers of souvenirs from the many shopkeepers.
And then she saw him.
Yes, him.
He was the strongest, handsomest, most armored-up guy she had ever seen in her life.
To be honest, Risky hadn’t dated much during the first thousand years of her existence. What human males she had even seen had been in the process of being eaten by her mother. Or occasionally by Risky herself. And it’s hard to get a good impression of a guy who is crying and begging for his life, only to be gobbled up.
This, however, was different.
He was tall. His hair was lustrous black. His armor glittered silver and gold in the sunlight. He had almost all of his teeth and he did not smell like a goat, which was pretty rare in Babylon. The concept of hotness had not yet been invented, but if it had been, Risky would have said he was hot.
Risky stopped in the middle of the street and stared. She did not know how to play it cool. Like hotness, cool had also not yet been invented, so people just pretty much acted however they felt and expressed their emotions openly.
These were very primitive times.
“Why are you staring at me?” the young man asked.
“Because your hands are as gold rings set with beryl,” Risky said. “Your belly is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires. Your legs are as pillars of marble set upon sockets of fine gold. Your countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars, and your mouth is most suh-weet.”
Somehow the sight of this boy was making Risky go weak in the knees but strong in the similes. She knew she was babbling. She knew it was crazy, but it was how she felt. She felt smitten. She felt gobsmacked. She felt . . . love.
“I like your hair,” the boy said. “You have the hair of a goddess.”
“I am a goddess,” Risky pointed out. “See?” To demonstrate, she transformed into a huge beast made up of the useful parts of a lion, a bear, a ram, and a bull. But she kept the hair through the whole thing.
The boy turned and ran, but Risky bounded on her powerful kangaroo legs (yeah, kangaroo, too) and smacked him down on his back. She landed atop him and once again became her usual amazingly attractive self.
“What’s your name, human boy?”
“G-G-G-G-Gil.”
“G-G-G-G-Gil?”