Listen Now

Here is the final chapter of The Inconvenient Goddess. Of Gods and Mortals is the next story of the Ancient Katie series.

After pacing to and fro and waiting for what seemed like a long time, Katie heard René’s distinctive shuffle coming down the path toward her. “René, I’m pregnant!” Katie exclaimed as she ran to him with her arms out.

Traveling went smoothly for the first thirty miles. The well-maintained road offered little impediment. Katie kept up small talk with René at first, but finally, she let her worries out. “René, I need to talk to you about Çitri,” she began. “Why, Katie?” “I know Çitri is very close to Queen Yuni who, I have learned, is plotting against me. I think you are being played.” “In what way?” René asked. “Yuni has made plans to steal my IUD. She believes it to be the source of my power. Has Çitri said anything to you?”

Emil, Dastur, and Çitri gathered in Yuni's chamber. "We must move tonight," the Queen began. "The Goddess is becoming restless in Nineveh. She is arranging a trip south to see the King. We must move now, we must be careful. King Tushratta cannot hear of this."

The next morning Rabea approached Katie with a worried look. “Ištar, there is something that is not right here, in Nineveh. I believe you are in danger from Yuni’s priests."

Meeting with Dastur, the Zoroastrian High Priest of Nineveh, Queen Yuni decides the best way to deal with Ishtar is to kidnap her while the goddess is on earth.

Çitri offered to take René through Nineveh so he could sharpen his driving skills. Now their two-horse chariot was in unprotected territory. Their helmets and armor were laying on the chariot floor behind them next to a blanket and picnic supplies.

René has a great time exploring metropolitan Nineveh while Katie worries anxiously about their predicament.

René quickly learned how to use his temple credit card. When the young men were full of food, smoke, and brew, they left the tavern and made their winding way back up the temple mount. “See you guys tomorrow.” Devi waved and headed off to the barracks. “It was great, bro, thanks for hanging.” René waved back while he and Cedat stumbled further up the hill. The front guard let them in, and they wandered towards Ištar’s quarters. Katie and Rabea looked up as Cedat fell across the threshold into Katie’s room. “Get up, go to bed, Cedat!” Rabea yelled in Sumerian, harsh enough to clear the alcohol shroud covering his mind. Cedat realized it was a smart idea to make a quick retreat. “Okay, goodnight, everyone,” Cedat said as he scurried away, followed by his scolding mother. “Goodnight, bro, I love you,” René called out. He turned to Katie. “Hey, Katie,” he said with a slur in his speech. “I just learned something. No, I learned more than one thing.” Katie smiled at René’s inebriated enthusiasm. René found alcohol somewhere. “What have you learned, dear atsilí? Come here, sit down, sit here René and tell me.” “A couple things. Oooph!” René said as he plopped down hard on the low bed. “First is, oh my goodness, you will not believe it. You’re famous, Nineveh is totally Ištar’s city.”

Following the Lalish River, the chariots drove through snow-covered hills toward Nineveh. Settling into a familiar routine, the horses functioned well as a unit quickly traveling the ten miles of steep hillsides before they gave way to open meadows. When the road widened, the chariot teams paired and continued the trip side-by-side.

“Ištar, this is Mašda” Moudad began. “He has come from Nineveh and speaks on behalf of my brother Josef, the high priest of Ištar’s Nineveh temple.” Mašda at once knelt and prostrated himself before Ištar, with his arms outstretched he kissed the ground. “Thank you. You can stand now, Mašda,” Katie said somberly. “But why are you sad, Moudad?” she asked again. “Josef says Nineveh is your rightful place. It is your greatest city, Ištar, and High Priest Josef wants you there.” “What do you mean, my greatest city?” “We created Nineveh for Ištar,” Mašda said. “It is your birthright.” “But I prefer it here in Lalish,” Katie protested. “Why should I leave my temple here?”

Bored to tears, Katie latched onto a major comfort in her previous life: the horses in the barn.

Annoyed at being fussed over, Katie waited for an alone moment to go outside. Donning her warmest clothes, she went out for a walk. A dense layer of snow blanketed the hills around Lalish, its sparkling crust punctured by the dark, barren trunks of oak trees. Katie’s cheeks reddened from the chill, and her breath rose in white clouds of fog. It was quiet. The snow dampened the sound waves; her boots crunching the dry snow was the only noise breaking the stillness. She wandered the small valley, enjoying the quiet and solitude. After a half-hour of trudging, she was at ease again. When the wind changed direction, the smell of manure and leather and horse sweat coming from the stables made Katie smile. It invigorated her. Unable to resist the call of horses, she turned and headed toward the barn.

A command was given. Individual soldiers coalesced into a solid line. As they inched toward Apollyōn their shields closed together, giving the horse less and less freedom with every step they took. Now the stallion could see no escape. Unable to temper his unease, he pinned his ears back, snorting and pacing back and forth, back and forth. Apollyōn was accustomed to the soldiers. Venerated as both a pet and a nuisance, he had been allowed to follow his whimsy as long as he maintained his manners. But now these men were a threat to his very existence. Running back and forth, from right to left he pushed the length of the corridor keeping to the edge. What did they want? Why were they pursuing him? He had to decide which to do, die or surrender, jump or submit? Raising his head high Apollyōn looked about. Trotting worriedly to the right for twenty feet he stopped and looked at the soldiers as they continued their slow and steady advance. He turned back again and ran up and down the ten-foot-wide safety zone, deciding between death and surrender. A human voice broke the standoff. “Hello Apollyōn, how is my friend? It’s me, Ištar.” A tall, slender woman emerged from the threatening wall of men. She stood relaxed and smiling as the stiff breeze twirled long strands of silky black hair around her face. Pressing her hand to her forehead, she shielded her eyes from the sun as she watched the magnificent horse. Ištar carried herself with a composure that seemed studied but was a well-learned facade she used to mask her shyness. She was born Katie Reynolds, of Navajo/Anglo descent and was raised on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. During her college and post-graduate years, she lived in California studying veterinary medicine. With her long black hair, dark flashing eyes, and light copper skin she was strikingly exotic and mysterious. It was no wonder Katie had been mistaken for the Goddess Ištar. Only months before, she and her co-worker René were on a research assignment in Lalish, Iraq when they took refuge in Ištar's ancient temple during an attack by invading marauders. The power of a grenade blast blew them into the very distant past. They were still in the Middle East, but the time was now late winter 1328 BC. Katie’s sudden appearance dressed in a royal colored blue UN jacket was taken as a sign. The Goddess Ištar had to come to earth to show her pleasure in her loyal worshippers, and René, her consort, was there to look after their Goddess during her time on earth.

Closing her eyes, Katie took a breath thinking back weeks earlier to the day she and René were forced into Lalish’s modern-day temple. A grenade’s explosion inexplicably shifted her timeframe. Katie was just now realizing she was recovering in ancient times. Katie and René were flown overseas to study an infectious disease of sheep that was spreading to the people of Lalish, a mountain village sixty miles north of Mosul, Iraq. The study was going well; the group was collecting valuable information during the modern Yezidi fall festival in Lalish’s temple. Until ISIS invaded.

Katie Reynolds, a young veterinary doctor from California, and her colleague René were sent to war-torn Kurdistan to find a disease spreading from animals to people. Unexpectedly caught in a firestorm, she is blown back to the ancient Middle East, where she has only her intelligence to keep her alive in the extraordinary and archaic time of the Egyptian Pharaohs. Following a lengthy convalescence in a primitive and foreign place, it takes Katie a while to realize she has been cast into a very ancient time. Luckily she finds two things to help her maintain a grip on her sanity; these ancients believe she is a goddess who has come to earth and treat her accordingly, and she is thrilled when she discovers René, her twentieth-century colleague, miraculously passed through the same time portal she did during the firestorm. Katie's real acceptance as Ištar could not begin until she came to understand the ancients truly believed she was their divine Goddess sent from heaven. They took her earthly appearance in stride. The priests left meals for their deities three times a day so they would protect them. It was natural to assume a Goddess visiting earth would take on the form of a woman. But no previous god had ever deigned to walk among men. When Katie’s accident cast her inside the ancient temple in Lalish, the head priest immediately felt this was divine intervention. Wise enough to see how this could work to his advantage, he championed the goddess in human form.

With Lalish paralyzed by the unusual snowstorm Queen Yuni renewed her push to know more about Ishtar. Worried, Moudad doubled his efforts to keep Ishtar’s power from being stolen, moving Katie deeper inside the temple. But, it was a good time her Rene when he found solace helping repair chariots. That’s when he met Çitri.

Katie becomes distraught as she and René search for clues to find their way home.

Inside the Lalish temple Katie’s meeting with Queen Yuni remains formal and bland as the Queen of the Mitanni kingdom offers gifts to her Goddess Ištar while poor René is smitten by the Queen’s beautiful niece, Çitri.

Katie and René are introduced to the tediousness of royal protocol as they are prepared to be formally introduced to Queen Yuni. Their moods lighten when René excites Katie with news that marvelous chariots and impressive horses came with Queen Yuni’s entourage.