Page 11 of The Secret Shape of Worship
“It’s a sin. It’s not…I’m trying to get rid of those desires.”
The god cocked his head like a dog that hears its owner’s voice but doesn’t understand the meaning of the sound. “And where will you put them?”
Mina nibbled at a corner of his pita. “I’m praying that God will take them.”
“God? Which god?”
“TheGod,” Mina answered, too quickly. A defensive reflex. Rehearsed. He looked away, brushing crumbs absently off the silk in his lap, accomplishing nothing more than moving the mess from one place to another.
“What a strange thing to say, to claim to believe, after what you have seen.”
Mina plucked a fig from the tray, stuffing the whole thing in his mouth, a spurt of juice shooting out and landing between them. “Sorry.” He swiped at his lips with the back of his hand.
“Do you regret?” the god asked, his eyes glowing a deep crimson.
“I’m embarrassed.” His stomach churned.No.
“But do you regret?”
“I’m ashamed.”
No, no, no…
The god’s eyes flared. Mina readjusted the sheets around himself and cleared his throat. “My group will be looking for me,” he said weakly.
“And yet not once since waking have your eyes searched for the door. You have not even asked me to let you leave.”
Even as his cheeks burned with defiance, Mina held Anubis’s gaze. The god was right. Something was holding him here, and it wasn’t some almighty power. It wasn’t an expectation or an obligation. Mina looked behind him. A doorway led out into the dark hall of the necropolis.
He turned back around, slowly, a flower trembling open in anticipation of the rain.
If he wished, he imagined he could walk out of here right now. But sitting here, speaking with this impossible creature, it was just as easy to imagine that there was no door.
Mina had come in search of god.
Swallowing his fourth fig, he wondered, for the first time in his life, if this was what an answered prayer felt like.
CHAPTER SIX
WRATH
The shimmer of a dream began to form around the edges of Mina’s consciousness. Voices. Faraway and echoing.
After filling his stomach with pita and figs, exhaustion had overtaken him so suddenly that he couldn’t even remember actually falling asleep.
The voices continued, but the dream never materialized. Calling out his name, over and over.Mina! Where are you? Mina! Mina!
He shot up in bed, the thick pile of blankets tumbling off his sweat-sticky body. It wasn’t a dream. He recognized those voices.
His class group!
Not close, somewhere far and higher above him, their thin voices drifting down the long and echoing halls.
Mina looked around for Anubis, but he was alone in the room. The same room he’d been in since he was first bound to the wall with decadent furniture, statues, pottery stacked haphazardly, and half-finished murals painted over stone.
But no Anubis.
Quietly, Mina slipped from the bed and onto the cold stone floor. He was still wearing the whiteshendytand nothing else. He searched the room for his ruined clothes, but they were nowhere. How on earth was he going to explain this?
