Page 41 of The Secret Shape of Worship
“It is too late for that,” the god said.
“Why? Like you said, eternity is a long time. So it took a little longer, but Anubis has made me a better person. My heart is more pure than it’s ever been.”
The god paused and seemed to consider. A slight cock of his head. “You would willingly give up your mortal life so that Anubis may return to this temple of death?”
“I would.”Would he?
The dead god stared quietly down for so long that Mina feared maybe he was ultimately deciding whether to just crush him under rubble right then and there.
“When one travels the Duat, they must face the Scales of Justice. There is no escaping them. And in that moment, it does not matter if you are a better person. It matters if you are the best version of yourself. Many good people have failed.”
Mina’s heart thrummed, his stomach churned. “So you’ll let me see him? Because it sounds like you’re saying I can see him.”
“It is not so simple as you might think. Anubis would typically accompany the soul on its journey. But he will not be with you on your way. The Duat is not like the lands you know here on earth. It is a river through many lands. A place of allies and enemies. Of gods and of demons. It will not be an easy journey on your own.”
“I would make it twice for Anubis.”
“Then go. Your soul for his return. That is the price. With Ra well into his nightly journey through the Duat, the way should be lit just well enough before you, and with any luck, you will pass through the Sacred Lands undetected. But know this. Once you cross the threshold, you will be on a path that will inevitably end at the Scales. And with them you must also face…Her.”
“Her?Who is‘Her?’”
But Osiris was gone. Dissolved into darkness and an empty doorway.
And then the doorway became something different.
Still a doorway, but no longer leading out toward a dark, empty hall.
It shimmered a soft blue. And something else beyond that Mina couldn’t make out through an undulating haze.
The ground shifted under Mina’s feet. Another earthquake? But when he looked down, he saw that he was no longer standing on stone but on wood. Long, worn planks of dark wood. And when he looked back up, he saw those same planks extend up on either side of him, almost to his shoulders.
Mina was standing in a long wooden boat. And the boat was moving toward the shimmering door.
It was a portal to the underworld. His journey was beginning.
Mina’s stomach rose to his throat as the boat, though still firm under his feet, seemed to fall out beneath him like a log ride at an amusement park.
Mina closed his eyes, reaching out to the side closest to him and clutching the thick wooden boards, fingernails digging in.
A hymn, a prayer. Mina sang as his stomach roiled:
“O brothers let's go down; Let's go down, come on down; Come on brothers let's go down; Down in the river to pray.”
“Anubis,” he breathed. “I’m coming.”
And then Mina felt his mortal body blink out like a light and become nothing.
PART THREE
The Underworld
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ASCENSION
Mina opened his eyes, and it was twilight. He reached his arms above his head and stretched out his legs, a wide yawn escaping him as he realized he was lying down, his body stiff and aching to be stretched as if he had been sleeping for a very long time. As he lay, his skin cool on the boards of the great wooden boat, the sky was a swirl of soft ocean blues and salmon pinks. He was outside, he realized, with the sleepy detachment of someone reluctant to wake up on a Saturday morning.Wait. Had he really fallen asleep? When? For how long?In a sense, it seemed that moving through the portal had been instantaneous. But now, as he willed his stiff body to lift itself off the floor of the boat, taking in the scene around him, he wasn’t so sure.
The boat was floating down a river, cobalt blue, nearly black. And deep.Deeper than all of the rivers of the world combined,Mina thought.The Waters of Osiris.Where had that thought come from?
