Page 21 of The Secret Shape of Worship
He let the tear fall and become lost in the golden tangle of the human he held.
The human he loved.
The god closed his eyes, and he wept, and he braced for what he knew was soon to come.
CHAPTER NINE
HEAVEN
Mina was in heaven. Possibly literally. He was in the presence of a god he loved with all of his heart, a feeling he was no longer willing or even able to push from his mind, experiencing pleasure and purpose beyond anything he could have ever imagined. If that didn’t match the definition of heaven he’d always been taught, what did?
Anubis remained in his human form most of the time now. Mina truly adored him in both forms, but as a human, he was able to run his fingers along the god’s lips. To kiss the tip of his upturned nose. To feel Anubis's hands cup his firm backside that fit perfectly in each palm, his long fingers circling slowly, teasing their way in.
In recent days, however, Mina had started to notice that Anubis was acting more distant than he ever had before. He didn’t search for Mina’s eyes like he used to. Mina told himself it was just that the pair had settled into a comfortable rhythm. Waking groggily together, the emerald fire roaring to life in the hearth as if it were as natural as a sunrise. A quiet breakfast of pita, figs, pomegranate, and dried fish that had become Mina’s favorite. Swimming the golden waters of the Nile andthen walking wet and sun-drunk on its sandy banks. Wandering the dimly lit corridors of the temple. Anubis would steer them wide and clear of the group, assuring Mina that time from their perspective was still moving slowly, while almost a year had passed for Mina and Anubis. Once their time together came to an end, it will all have seemed like only hours to the rest of the world.
End.
That was the only word Mina had heard and was now the forbidden word he had to push far from his mind. As far back as a thought could go. There would always be more to explore. More fires to cozy up in front of. More stories to hear of ancient days and gods among men. More walls to paint with their story. More hymns to reimagine with Anubis at the center.
“Can gods and men have sex?” Mina asked one day, as they skipped stones across a wide expanse of the Nile in the late afternoon sun. The thought had come to Mina unbidden, but he was growing accustomed to freely speaking his mind with Anubis and feeling no shame about it. The god had taught him the importance of giving voice to his deepest desires.
The god looked down at his human toes, sinking slowly in the silty yellow sand. “What do you mean, mykianga?”The Egyptian word for “beloved” and Anubis’s pet name for Mina still filled him with so many butterflies every time he heard it that he wanted to scream.
Mina and Anubis had explored a lot of each other, but there was a fuller intimacy that they’d yet to explore. The thought scared him as much as it filled him with want.
“I mean, you’ve shown me so much. We’ve done a lot together, and I’ve trusted you completely. But we haven’t taken things all the way. I want…”
Mina searched his head, his heart, the deep, dark recesses in the pit of his stomach where all his basest desires gatheredquietly before continuing. He wanted to be sure he said this right.
“I love you, Anu. I want to give myself to you completely. I want…” Mina hesitated for a moment, a flicker of self-consciousness stinging briefly, like a splinter. “I want you to take me. Claim me as yours. I want to watch you be overcome with desire for me and only me.”
Mina picked up a stone and tossed it, making it nearly halfway across the river. “I want that. More than anything in the world. More than my own pleasure. I want to see the want in your eyes, and I want to watch it overcome you.”
The god stared across the river, the black eye makeup and gold jewelry against the dark umber of his skin painting such a portrait of heavenly perfection that Mina shuddered and thrummed with a deep and desperate want.
“You do not know what you ask of me,” Anubis said finally.
“I’m asking you the same thing you’ve asked of me. To be true to your own desires. Or…” Mina’s heart sank at the thought that was only now occurring to him. “Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you don’t feel for me what I feel for you. And if that’s the case…If you don’t love me, please just tell me now.”
Mina raked his hands nervously through his knotted golden curls, grown almost to his shoulders by now. He turned to Anubis, wrapping his fingers around the god’s forearm, barely able to make it halfway around. “But if you do, then show me. Don’t deny yourself. Give me this gift.”
Mina felt pathetic. He knew he was begging, but he didn’t care. Not anymore. He paused, letting the final thought stitch itself together into flesh on his tongue like a eucharist. “Worshipme,Anu.”
Anubis laid a hand over the top of Mina’s clutching desperately to his forearm.
“I love you, mykianga.It is true.” The god’s brow furrowed. “More than anything in the centuries and millennia and eons of life I have endured. You alone have made all of them worth it.”
The god paused again. Looking back into the water. Steeling himself for something. Mina felt a single bead of sweat run down the concave bow of his back and soak into the hem of hisshendyt.
Anubis looked back. “Yes, beloved,” he said, a smile tugging at the edges of his lips. “I will give you this gift. I promise. But when the time is right. You must be patient. You must trust me.”
“I trust you.” Mina squeezed Anubis’s arm, leaning forward to rest his forehead on the god’s bicep, the woven gold cuff there digging into his brow. “Of course, I trust you. I can wait.”
And Mina did. He trusted Anubis with all of his heart. All of the false attempts at lordship in his life before this had been like bad reflections in broken mirrors. His father trying to lord over his future. The church lording over his identity. And then there was Anubis. His true god. Lording over his body and his soul.
Mina realized he was never really against authority and worship. He was just waiting for a power capable of consuming every part of him. To be worthy of every part of him. Not for its own gain, but so that Mina could feel that power pulsing through every inch of him, making him better, stronger, more true to himself.
Mina squeezed, holding onto Anubis’s arm like it was the only floating thing in an endless sea. He closed his eyes and bathed in the moment as the Egyptian sun prickled his skin pink.
