Page 42 of The Secret Shape of Worship
He could feel the rush of the water, something like gravity, pulling at him. Wanting him.
A swirling, ethereal quality hung over everything, like a Van Gogh painting come to life. The banks of the river were marshy with tall reeds bathed in dark hues of blue and pink, swaying on a gentle breeze. Beyond them, date palms as tall as skyscrapers towered. Mina followed their trunks as wide as school buses up into the sky until he felt dizzy and had to look back down. As he regained his balance, Mina felt at peace. Drunk almost on the tranquility of the place. Before him, the river stretched on as far as he could see. Endless and unbroken. Mina closed his eyes and felt the warm breeze. Inhaled the sweet mingling smells of papyrus reeds and fallen dates the size of watermelons ripening in the sand, still warm from the sun, at the base of their trees.
Mina shook himself back to the present, remembering why he was here, and started to wonder how long this journey would take. How long he’d already been on it. Gods had no real concept of human time. He could be here for a relative eternity. He had no food, no water, no shelter. Completely exposed under the otherworldly sun. Except—Mina looked up—there was no sun.Because Ra was the sun in this place,Mina realized. And he was on his nightly journey through the underworld. And if there was no sun, perhaps there was no danger of the elements. No hunger or thirst or any of the things he had to worry about in the mortal world. Because Mina was no longer on the mortal plane. He wasn’t even surehecould be considered mortal at the moment.
He’d done it. He’d really made it. He was in the Egyptian underworld—the Duat.
Just as the realization began to fully dawn on him, something thumped the side of the boat. Mina latched onto the side to steady himself, the boat rocking gently. Again,thump,on the opposite side. Mina stepped closer to the edge and peered down into the water. As he did, he threw himself so hard in the opposite direction, he had to pinwheel his arms to regain his balance and keep from teetering over the other side. Beetles.Giant scarab beetles the size of sea turtles skated across the water, knocking their pincers against the boat. Trying to eat it? Trying to eat him?
Mina pulled himself back to the center of the boat and looked around for some mechanism to steer or propel himself. But there was nothing. No paddle or oars or even a seat to sit on. He was moving at a glacial pace as more and more beetles were drawn to him, their knocking becoming incessant, the boat rocking side to side, the edges tipping closer and closer to the water. They were trying to tip him over.
“Shit!” Mina cried out, looking frantically around. “How am I supposed to make this boat go?” No sooner had the words left his mouth than the boat lurched forward, sending Mina flying onto his back, legs in the air.No way.
He stood and in a loud voice said, “Boat, go!” And again, the boat lurched out of reach of the congregating beetles.
“This is fucking wild.” All Mina had to do was tell the boat to move forward, and it would move forward. But even as the wordmovepassed through his mind, the boat jolted again.Wait.Mina imagined the boat moving at a steady pace down the river, and instantly the boat began to move as if by a small propeller. Mina looked back to see the beetles skating after him, but much slower than he was moving. They wouldn’t be able to catch up.
Thoughts have power, son of man.
Anubis’s words came back to him.
Keep a bird caged long enough, and it will forget it can fly.
Fly.As the memory flooded him, the boat picked up speed, leaving behind a wake and a flurry of dancing reeds. Ahead, the cobalt sky began to spin. And then it elongated into something like a tunnel.
Mina’s stomach lurched, and again he gripped the side of the boat. This one was even worse than the first, and Mina thought for sure he would capsize.
He shut his eyes and prepared for the plunge into the water and the eventual pinch of giant beetle mouths eating him alive.
Despite the sensation of falling, the plunge never came, and Mina fell deeper into the underworld.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BLIND
The boat steadied, and Mina felt a pulsing warmth across his skin as he lay crumpled and curled in on himself at the bow, hands fisted against his eyes, knees tucked up between his elbows. He wondered how many more of these portals he’d have to go through, because he wasn’t sure how much more of it his body could take.
Slowly, he opened his eyes and stood to find that he was in…
Hell. Literal hell.
Mina yelped, clapped his hands to his mouth, and folded himself back into the tight corner at the bow of the boat. Stalactites hung from the ceiling like giant drips of lava and glowed a bright fire red. Around him, huge obelisks and pyramids and sphinxes rose in various states of construction. But it was something else that caused terror to course through Mina’s veins.
Across every surface of the place, hanging from the cave formations and scurrying over all of the stone structures, pale and lank humanoid creatures clung like giant, cave-dwelling spiders.
The Land of Demons,Mina thought, again somehow possessing some innate knowledge of the places he was traveling through.
Mina buried his face in his hands, willing the boat to pass through quickly.Go,he thought. But nothing happened. He squeezed his eyes.GO, GO, GO.
Nothing.
This was a different land with different rules.
Carefully, Mina untucked his head from his arms and looked up and around. About midway up one of the particularly large pyramids, he saw one of the creatures hauling a huge stone and setting it down with a loud thud and snarling grunt. But no sooner had the creature pushed the stone into place than another came up behind him, wrapped two spindly arms around it, and pushed it over the side so that it toppled and broke apart down the side of the structure and into the river.
His neck screaming in agony at the awkward angle, Mina watched the demons in their toiling. Building and tearing down structures in an endless loop. None interacting directly with one another. They seemed not to even register each other’s existence. And certainly they hadn’t noticed him or his boat or even seemed to have heard his cry earlier.
Slowly, Mina unwound himself from his crouched position. He looked in every direction, but still none of the creatures reacted. On the right bank, the square base of what he guessed would eventually become an obelisk was just being started by a pair of demons, and Mina got his first good look into the face of one of them. And he understood why they had not reacted to his presence here.
