Page 36 of The Secret Shape of Worship
“Why?”
Devon squeezed his eyes closed, eyelashes glistening. “For every reason you should already know. School. Friends. My parents are gone, and my grandma, she’d be so…I can’t do this to her. I can’t have this for a million reasons.”
“Devon. I get that you want to protect the people around you.” Mina sighed, lowering his hands to his lap and sitting cross-legged to face Devon more fully. His classmate followed.
“It’s because you’re a kind person. You want to do what’s right. But that’s the problem, Devon. Our understanding of what’s right has been so twisted by this idea we’ve been taught to follow that when the chance comes to do something that’s right for ourselves, we say no to it because that’s what we’ve been taught to do.‘Take up your cross and follow me. Deny yourself.Die to yourself.’We hear these things as kids, Devon. As fucking children. No wonder when you and I started to experience these feelings, our first reaction was to stab them in the chest. To take all the things that make us who we are and fucking maim them beyond recognition. Until all that we’re left with are all the things we hate.”
Devon looked away, his eyes distant. Piecing together. Reconciling. Reimagining.
After a long, quiet moment, he said, “I’ll get kicked out of seminary.”
“Yes.”
“My grandma might kick me out of the house. Might never talk to me again.”
“Maybe. Yeah.”
“My girlfriend…” Devon shook his head. Buried his face in his hands. “Fuck.” After another long pause, he chuckled darkly. “You know those tiny airplane-sized vodka bottles? I’ve got probably twenty stashed under my mattress. I know I’d get kicked out of school if anyone found out. But the panic attacks hit about a week after I started seminary. It’s the only thing that lets me get back to sleep. I know it’s going to kill me eventually. Maybe that was the point.”
Mina’s stomach twisted. “Devon…” He reached into his classmate’s lap, taking his hand, hot tears soaking the twisted knot of their fingers. “It doesn’t have to be like that for us. We canwant.We canhave.We can lay down that fucking cross before it kills us.”
Something quiet and reverent settled between the two as tears fell and the green fire blazed, wood crackling softly in the quiet and warming the air around them. Mina squeezed Devon’s fingers. Devon squeezed back.
A voice, quiet but deep and commanding behind them, broke the silence. “It is time.”
Devon sucked in a breath and fluttered his eyes, looking around and seeming to only just then realize they’d been having this whole conversation naked, sitting cross-legged on the stone floor, covered in dried come. He let out a weak laugh, sniffing and rubbing his eyes dry.
They stood.
“You can’t take him, Anu. To the underworld. He’s not ready. His soul isn’t ready.”
“I know, beloved. The boy will go back to his group,” said Anubis, thumbing the golden scarab that hung around his neck, soft eyes glowing.
“Can’t he stay?” Mina wrapped his arm around Devon’s waist, walking them both closer. He felt Devon tense, the boy still not used to the looming, otherworldly form of the jackal god. Mina placed his other hand assuringly, protectively, on Devon’s chest. “He’s on a journey now, too, right? Can’t you help him?”
“When the day of reckoning comes with my father, things are already going to be complicated. It will be hard enough to protect you, mykianga.I cannot be responsible for two souls. It is best for Devon and for you that he return to his group.”
“Will he remember?”
“He will not.”
Devon’s body went loose, shoulders slumped. “So, all of this was for nothing.”
“Your conscious mind may not remember.” Anubis stepped forward, placing a giant hand on Devon’s head, rubbing gently down to his neck. “But this is more than just a journey of the body. It is a journey of the soul. And the soul never forgets. It will ache for movement. For the growth it remembers. Your short time here with us has not been for nothing, son of man.”
Devon smiled, rubbing his hands across his face before nervously raking them through his hair. “I don’t suppose there’sa shower in this place? I feel like I’m going to get some uncomfortable looks if I show up looking this freshly fucked.”
Anubis chuckled, deep and warm. “There is a basin of water in the other room. Get clean, and then I will point you in the direction of your group.”
Mina hated that Anubis was so terrified of Osiris, his father. That he was obviously not telling Mina something. Holding back to protect him from whatever he feared was to come. Thisday of reckoning.A silent resolve flooded Mina’s mind, but he held it down, just below the surface where he knew Anubis wouldn’t sense it.
If Mina had changed the heart of one god, certainly he could change another. When Anubis left to take Devon back to his group, Mina was going on his own quest. He was going to find Osiris.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
GODHEAD
Mina wandered the dark and endless halls.
