Her Name

They use her name but they do not know her and she does not know them.

They move like a pack of hyenas, destroying cities and places of worship, spilling innocent blood and spitting on the downtrodden, the very people she lives to protect. She screams with rage from the deepest pit of the Duat, cursing the mortals who dare profane her name.

She was the great goddess. Mother. Midwife. Creator. Healer. Queen of Heaven. Her breasts swelled with life-giving milk and her tears flooded the fields and gave sustenance to her children. But she was the patron of the downtrodden and enslaved, and when the Hebrews invoked their great and terrible God against her own children, she alone remained silent. She sympathized with their plight and watched with approval as they left for their promised land and she was content with the belief that she had seen the last of them and their strange ways. But she was wrong.

The worship of the Hebrew God spread like wildfire, igniting the minds and hearts of men against their old gods, and as His empire grew, his followers sought more and more control. They pushed back the gods, driving them from their temples and banishing them to the very depths of the underworld.

And here she is now, screaming in helpless rage up at the mortals who dare profane her name.

A family gathers to pray on their holiest month in their holy city. They pray to the God of the Hebrews, the very same whose name was invoked to banish her to the Duat, but she smiles at them. These are not like her conquerors. They feed the poor among them and care for the oppressed and downtrodden. For a blink of an eye, their presence calms and soothes her.

Suddenly, an explosion, shots, a machine gun. The good family lies dead, their innocent blood spilled. A small girl lies in a pool of her own blood mixed with her mother’s. The last thought that went through her uncorrupted mind frozen on her face in a look of terror and confusion. The attackers step over her body like it means nothing and move on.

She strains up at them with all her strength, screaming curses and weeping in frustration and righteous anger.

Though they do not know her, they use her name, and names have power.

Her fragmented mind travels backwards thousands of years to an ancient memory: the time she poisoned the aging and decrepit king of the gods and tricked him into telling her his secret name. She then had complete power over him, forcing him to abdicate in favour of her husband.

Names have power, and every time her name is misused, she claws her way further up towards the surface, where the Duat meets the upper world.

They rage on like a violent storm, spilling more blood and causing more destruction. A journalist is decapitated with a sword. An ancient monument to some forgotten god is destroyed. They pay lip service to the Hebrew God but she does not feel His presence among them. They disregard his covenants and edicts and defile the tombs of his prophets. Instead she feels another presence. One all too familiar. She seethes. It is Chaos. Pure, unbridled Chaos. Like her treacherous brother who dismembered her husband and tossed his remains into the Nile. Like the serpent who tried to devour the sun as it traveled through the underworld every night. She strains with all her might and curses her oldest enemy.

Years have passed. They no longer use her name, but names have power and they stick. The mortals on the surface have forgotten that the name ever belonged to anyone else. But she is almost there. Waiting just below the surface of the Duat. Waiting for the right moment.

The girl is on her way to school when the attack happens. It is sudden like lightning. One moment she is at peace, thanking her God for good fortune, the next moment, her world is torn apart. Exposions. Shots. A machine gun rips into a panicked crowd. She runs, but they chase her. She hides but they find her. They drag her by the hair, kicking, screaming and crying past the charred remains of her friends and acquaintances, past the burned shells of familiar buildings, towards what was once the city square. They throw her to the ground, kicking her, beating her, spitting on her and cursing her. She prays for deliverance and the prayer is heard but not only by its intended recipient.

This is the right moment. The goddess breaks the surface of the Duat.

A shockwave knocks the attackers off their feet and throws them back several meters. They get up, dazed and confused and stare at the still, trembling body of the girl. As they watch in their confusion, she slowly pulls herself up. She looks up at them and they stagger back in fear as they see her eyes glow with an inhuman light. She rises to her full height and stretches out her arms and legs. Free at last! She screams in triumph and the men scatter in fear. One makes the mistake of glancing back and what he sees melts the last shred of sanity in his twisted mind. The girl is no longer a girl. Her skin glints in the sun like gold and she advances on them slowly, her feet clearing the ground, suspended by a pair of great wings like an eagle’s and she appears to be swelling in size until she is taller than the tallest mountain. She waves a hand and the man and several of his comrades burst into flame. The rest flee, but they cannot hide from her. She will find them and make them know. Make the whole world know. Soon all will know her name and they will remember who it truly belongs to.

Isis.