Page 29 of The Secret Shape of Worship
This time, Mina did raise his hand. He did bring it down, a pathetic little fist, onto Anubis’s chest, which probably hurt his knuckles more than it hurt the god. “You’re supposed to take me to the underworld, aren’t you?” Mina raised another fist and brought it down again. Anubis didn’t try to stop him. “That’s what you were preparing me for. It wasn’t to help mediscovermyself or give me the gift ofawakeningor whatever the shit you told me. So, what, you’re fulfilling some kind of soul quota?”
“Mykianga,please…”
“No!” Mina brought both fists down onto Anubis’s chest this time, hammering over and over. He might as well have been throwing his fists at the stones of the Great Pyramid. “Enough with that beloved shit. Where were you today,jackal?”The word spat out of his mouth like a curse.Dog,he might as well have said. “Negotiating for another extension on my life? Get a few more days or weeks or months with me in your bed beforeyou have to drag me down to the underworld and wait another hundred years for your next sex slave?”
Anubis's eyes narrowed. He threw his hands around Mina’s fists before they could come down on him again. Mina bit his tongue. He immediately regretted his words.
“Is that what you think you are to me?” the god whispered.
Mina stared at the floor, digging his fingernails into his palms as Anubis held them in place above his head. As quickly as the anger had flooded him, it was drained.
“No. I don’t…I don’t know. You had no right to interfere with my life, Anubis. Knowing that this was going to be my fate. All of this has supposedly been about what I want. What I desire. But I wasn’t ready to die. I didn’t consent to being taken to the underworld. Really, it’s just been about you. All along, I’ve just been a pawn in the hands of another selfish god who doesn’t give a shit about me.”
Anubis dropped Mina’s wrists and looked away into the dying flames, the embers painting the sharp edges of his dark form. Obsidian and emerald.
“This city is a tomb,” Anubis spoke into the embers. “There are none who love or worship the old gods. We are a spectacle. A myth. There are no souls who come to me for shepherding. However, in order for me to remain on earth, it is the task I must perform. So, every hundred years, the temple delivers to me a soul to shepherd from the thousands who wander through my home here. A soul on the precipice.”
The god took Mina’s left arm in his, broad thumb brushing across the sensitive area of Mina’s wrist.
“Stop that,” Mina choked.
“You were there, Mina. On the edge of the abyss. You nearly fell in.” Anubis’s finger traced the scar.
“Let me go.”
“We have never spoken of this. I have never asked because I know it brings you pain. I know you pretend this scar isn’t there. That it doesn’t still hurt.”
It was the night before his first day at seminary. Mina’s half-hearted attempt to get God’s attention. He’d stolen a bottle of his mother’s wine that she saved for holidays and guests. He knew she would never miss it. It was his first time drunk. The pocket knife his father had given him as a baptism gift when he was twelve was just sitting there on the corner of his desk. It had felt like a sign.
It hadn’t been a big deal, really. He’d bandaged himself up, thrown away his blood-soaked jeans, and told himself he was fine. If he’d really wanted to end things, he would have. Surely everyone found themselves in a moment like that at some point in their lives. Things would be better once he started seminary, he’d told himself. Everything would be different. He would be different.
“When you drew this cut into your skin, you brought your soul to a precipice. To the shores of the underworld. It was there, lapping at your toes.”
“I didn’t really want to die.” Mina wasn’t sure if that was true.
“You were still there, Mina. On that edge. Maybe one day you would have taken that final step. Maybe not. But when you stepped into this temple, the underworld remembered your soul. The taste of it. The smell of it. It called to you. It brought you to me.”
“And then you saved me.”
“No, Mina. I merely showed you the abyss. Reminded you that it didn’t have to be your future. That all you had to do was turn around and make it your past. So I stood behind you, held out my hand, and hoped you would take it.”
“But still, you knew. You knew that even after all of that, I would still be dragged to the underworld by your father.”
“My job is to do what I can to ready the souls in my care before I lead them through the underworld where my father weighs their hearts. If they are a worthy soul, they are brought into paradise. If not, they are cast into the abyss. Some require a little help. Like you. Three days I am given. But you were different, Mina. I could not part with you. And now the time has passed, and my failure to deliver a soul has been noticed. My father, Osiris, requires that either I shepherd you to the underworld or else…” Anubis paused, reaching up to the gold scarab around his neck and thumbing it nervously. “It doesn’t matter. I will not bring you. I cannot. You have so much life to live, mykianga.So much still to experience. And so, one day, we will have to part. I will have to send you back to your world.”
As Anubis spoke, slowly taking his human form, Mina took his god’s hands in his. It wasn’t possible that this was about to end. Surely Anubis would find a way. He was a god. He’d managed to stretch three days into a year. His magic would find a way to give them more time. But the pain on Anubis’s face made Mina sick with dread. To a god who lived forever, a human life must feel as temporary and impossible to contain as a wisp of cloud in a jar.
“You showed me the way back from my own personal abyss. I’m not going to let you fall into yours.” Mina stared into Anubis’s blazing red eyes. “Nothing is forever, Anu. But that doesn’t mean that just because something isn’t forever, it’s not worth having while you can. We have now. Are you going to keep denying yourself the gift of now?” Mina stepped forward, sliding his hands around Anubis’s hips.
“No, mykianga.My beloved.” Anubis’s human eyes blazed. “I will never deny you. Never again.”
Anubis took Mina’s face in his hands and kissed him with a passion the god had never shown before. Full of love and desperation. Anguish and despair. It was hard and sweet, wildand sour. Anubis’s tongue searched ferociously for Mina’s, tears soaking into both of their mouths. Anubis reached around, grabbing a fistful of Mina’sshendytand ripping it from his body before doing the same to his own. Mina felt Anubis’s cock explode forward and press down half the length of his leg.
Mina caged Anubis’s head in his hands, his fingers catching briefly on the golden rings that looped through the god’s ears. Mina couldn’t pull him close enough. Taste him fully enough. He threw his body up into Anubis’s arms, and the god caught him, rolling their coiled and tangled bodies onto the bed as Anubis climbed on top of Mina.
“It is true,” said Anubis, breathless into Mina’s open mouth. “We may not have forever. But you will be mine for whatever time we do have.” Anubis’s teeth found the tender flesh above Mina’s thrumming jugular. “Tonight, I claim you.”
Mina whimpered, throwing his head back over the side of the bed, eyes rolling momentarily across the dark corner behind the green statue. Suddenly, he remembered who was still there, hiding in the shadows.
