Page 44 of The Secret Shape of Worship
Because hiding his truth had been easier than facing it.
He was no better.
Mina hung his head into his hands and wept.
For every person he’d ever looked down on and thought he couldsave.
For every unkind thought he’d ever had against himself.
He wept for his love whom he now began to fear he would never see again. There was no telling how long he’d been here. If the professor was here, that meant he’d probably died in the temple. Had his entire class been killed when Osiris collapsed it? If so, then that was entirely his fault. He was the one who’d wandered off. And it was his fault his professor had ended up here. He could have taken more time to explain. To help him see the truth of his arrogance and hatefulness before it was too late.
Mina dug his fists into his hair as the sobs wracked his small body, scraping their way out of his throat so that they echoed through the cave around him.
The boat lurched forward.
But Mina no longer cared.
Another land was coming, and he didn’t think he could take it. He just wanted to see Anubis again. But Mina understood it now. That this was to be his fate in the underworld. To travel forever through land after land, remembering all of the things he had done wrong while he was still alive.
That’s why Osiris had agreed so quickly.
Because this was what he deserved.
This was the afterlife he had earned.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SERPENT
Darkness. More complete than any Mina had ever seen. So dark that he could feel the pressure of it pushing against his eyes. He closed them. Opened them. No difference.
Even though Mina thought he had resigned himself to his fate of wandering the endless lands for all eternity, panic started to scratch beneath his skin like beetles.
He wriggled his toes, toenails catching on the wooden boards of the boat. He reached out his arms on either side, his right catching the edge. Mina took a deep breath. And then another. And then another. Maybe this was it. The end. Complete darkness forever. Lost on an endless river in an endless land.Was this the abyss? No,Mina realized.But close.He wondered how long a person could stand complete darkness before they started to hallucinate.
Apparently not very long,Mina thought, as high above he saw a pair of twin red stars moving slowly across the sky, swaying from side to side, dancing in perfect synchronization with one another. Mina tried to blink them away, but they remained. Not only that, but they appeared to be getting closer. And with their light came something else. A shift in his vision.Patches of lighter darkness in the deep, inky black. A soft shine below and all around him. As black night became deep twilight, Mina thought maybe he could see water all around him, a vast and endless sea. Except, as the red light from the twin stars grew stronger, he realized it was not a sea. Not water. It writhed. A mass of long black snakes, undulating smoothly as if they might be sleeping. Mina felt numb. Neither repulsed nor scared. Everything had started to take on an unreality so that even the sight of a sea of snakes felt like nothing. Just the next step in an endless, pointless journey.
As the twin stars high above continued to approach, something else took shape around them. A face. A long, rounded mouth. A head, diamond-shaped. A flicking tongue. A huge open hood, like a cobra, spread as wide as the canopy of an oak tree above two broad shoulders and tree trunk arms. A muscled, serpentine, humanoid body rose out from the sea of snakes and moved toward him until it stopped, towering ten feet above and looking down, abs flexing as it bent to examine Mina more closely.
It looked down, swaying side to side, eyes locked on Mina’s. Mina stood and stared back. He should be horrified. Terrified. But all he felt was tired. Deeply, endlessly tired.
After what felt like several long minutes, the god spoke.
“Ssson of man,” it said, the sound of steam escaping from deep within the earth. “You are not like the others. What is your purpossse?”
“I was given passage by Osiris. I'm going to his temple.”
“You sssearch for something,” hissed the creature. “But you doubt. That is why you have been delivered here. To the land that sits at the doorstep of the abysss.”
“Who are you?”
The creature rose up higher and crossed its arms across a smooth, scaled chest so that its muscles bloomed as large as boulders.
“I am Apep, god of chaos and darknesss. You have entered my home, borne upon the backs of my children.”
“Will you let me pass?”
The serpent god’s eyes flared brighter. “You have come with no shepherd. Your soul unguarded. A man with no god, it would ssseem.”
