Page 10 of The Secret Shape of Worship
Mina fell in and out of a dazed sleep. When he finally woke, his eyes sore and swollen, he heard the creature walk into the room from somewhere behind him and reappear by the side of the bed.
“My group will come looking for me,” he said as the creature laid a wooden tray on the bed beside the pile of furs and silks under which Mina had burrowed himself. Pomegranates, figs, breads of various kinds, dried fish, nuts, and a dish of amber liquid that looked like olive oil.
The god hesitated for a moment before answering, “They won’t.”
Mina thought he might vomit. “You killed them.”
“You think me a monster?”
Mina didn’t dare answer.
“Eat. You are wounded and healing.”
“It’s just a few cuts, I’ll be fine.”
“That is not what I mean.”
Something in the strong brow of the creature unwound, causing his eyes to soften. Mina again felt like a child being coddled. He bristled and kicked at the tray with his toes under the blankets, sending the dish of oil sloshing onto the wood.
“I don’t need your food, and I won’t let you make me do that again.”
“If you will not eat, you should rest,” the creature said simply, turning away and walking behind the bed and out of the room.
Mina didn’t think this creature meant to harm him. He didn’t know what it wanted. But somewhere deep down, Mina had the suspicion that if he flat-out told this creature to let him go, he might just oblige. So, why hadn’t he tried that? Mina groanedlow and long to himself, pulling the warm blankets over the top of his head. Sometimes, he hated how little he understood his own mind.
Soon, Mina felt exhaustion threatening to overcome him. The warm glow of the candle chandelier above and the warmth of the furs tugged on his eyelids as he let his body sink into the softness of it all. Maybe when he woke, it would be from a dream. Or a coma. Maybe he was actually in a hospital somewhere in Cairo, hooked up to monitors, his mother crying on a chair in the corner, his father clutching Mina’s silver cross in his hands, guilt-ridden for wishing his son was something different instead of accepting the one he was given. But as Mina sank into sleep, the voice of the jackal god came back to him, deep and husky.
I want you to see yourself for what you are.
Which is?
A flame.
The dark, coiled thing in Mina’s gut twitched. Grew. And his final thought as his anger and confusion waned and sleep took him was:Please, god, let this all be real.
An involuntary moanrolled through Mina as he bit into the soft bread. He’d woken sometime in the middle of the night or early hours of the morning with a growling stomach and a thrum of reluctant relief when his first sight was the deeply furrowed brow of the creature who had apparently sat and watched over him while he slept. The wooden tray, cleaned of the spilled olive oil from his shame-fueled tantrum, lay balanced in the god’s lapas he sat cross-legged on the larger-than-king-sized bed that Mina had become burrowed in like a tick.
The presence of the god was like a thundercloud in a wide-open sky. Huge and looming.
“I’m sorry,” Mina mumbled through a mouthful of the warm pita Anubis had handed him, dusting flakes from the corner of his lips, sending them landing on the black silk sheets he’d pooled on his lap to hide the stiff erection from the dreams he was trying hard to forget.
Oiled skin. Hands and knees. Flail. Hungry mouth, wide open…
Mina shook his head and bit off another mouthful before he’d swallowed the first.
“For what are you sorry?” That familiar ghost of a smirk twitched at the corner of the god’s mouth, softening the husky gravel of his voice.
Mina shuddered, barely managing to stop his eyes from rolling back in his head at the sound of it. “I think I yelled at you before. When you helped me off the floor. I shouldn’t have.”
“To grow is to stretch beyond your limits. To become more than you once thought possible. It cannot come without pain.”
Mina swallowed his mouthful. “I shouldn’t have done…that.” His cheeks flamed. It wasn’t the god’s fault. He’d been in full control when he’d done it. The temptation had simply gotten the best of him. The heat of the moment. The rush of adrenaline. It wouldn’t happen again. It couldn’t.
“And yet you did it.”
“It was a mistake.”
“In what way?”
