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.”
Mina felt strength start to leave his body as if gravity itself were increasing. His knees threatened to buckle, and beads of sweat ran from his forehead. He pushed all of the strength he had left down into his legs.
But he did have a god. His god was pleasure and truth. His god was himself and Anubis and the love they’d found. Those were his gods. And they would be his shepherds through fire and through darkness.
The creature cocked its head. “Yesss,” it said.
“Yes, I do see a glimmer in you. I sssee the truth that you tried to hide from yourself and othersss.” The creature’s muscles flexed and rippled beneath his glistening skin.
“I see the echoes of it blooming in you now. But you shall never make it to the Temple of Osiris. Not without the help of me and my children. For you are but a hair’s breadth away from forever darkness. The abyss into which even I cannot go.”
“I’ve made it this far. I can make it the rest of the way. If only you’ll let me pass. Please. It feels like I’ve been lost here forever. It feels like my time is running out.”
“Worssship me, ssson of man.” The great serpent’s eyes burned as it reached down toward Mina, brushing a smoothly scaled finger down the length of his neck to his stomach, pulling at the hem of his shendyt so that it began to hang loose around his hips.
Mina’s eyes fluttered. His skin beneath the monster’s touch sizzled, and from it a warmth spread as if a drug had been injected directly into his veins. His eyes rolled back, and his knees started to give again.
“Yesss,” the serpent hissed. “I can taste you. Desire sits so close beneath your ssskin. Lust is your worship. Pleasure is your piety. Bow to me.”
The boat rocked, and Mina’s eyes fluttered open again.
The serpent had shrunk itself, standing now seven feet tall inside the boat with him, two strong legs to match its muscled arms. Its serpent tail, which extended beyond the length of its broad back, coiled up Mina’s leg, and he felt the tip of it caressing the hardness under his shendyt.
“You will be my first supplicant. Let Ra have his sun. Let Horus, Bastet, and Thoth have their adorers. You will be mine. My little golden star at the edge of the abyss. You will shine for me. Do this and I may let you pass.”
Mina’s stomach tensed with pleasure. A desire to please. To do what was expected. To do what was asked. To submit to the authorities that stood before him and told him to kneel. To bow. When to close his mouth and when to open it. A part of him wanted to give this god what it wanted.
But beneath the desire, there was something else. Anubis’s words, the first lesson his god taught him.
You should never devote yourself to a god in whom you do not trust. The first god you must trust, the first you must love, is yourself.
Trust. An earned thing. Not something to be dictated or demanded.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart had been a lesson his church had taught for as long as he could remember. But what had that Lord ever done to earn his trust? What had this god done?
Mina was done giving himself to gods who did nothing to deserve him.
He took a step back. “No.”
Red eyes flared. “You would deny me? Deny yourself? I can feel the want sssizzling in you, wanting to boil over. You wish to be devoured.”
“My worship does not belong to you.”
“Foolisssh!” The great serpent god hissed. “I have offered you a way out of the abyss and ssstill you deny me?”
The god began to grow. The boat began to tilt, and Mina saw the sea begin to writhe.
“Stop!” he screamed, scrambling for the sides. “You’ll tip us over.”
“Let me introduce you to my children. For they will be your companions along your long journey into forever darknesss.”
The god slunk into the sea, growing back to its full size as the front of the boat dipped into the writhing mass of snakes.
Their bodies pulled at the bow as they slithered their way up the planks.
Mina tried holding himself to the side, but the tilt was too great, and he began sliding down the length of the boat.
He scratched and kicked his feet, but with only smooth boards beneath him, he couldn’t stop himself.
First his feet and then up to his knees, and finally his entire body up to his neck was submerged in the cold, undulating mass of snakes.
They moved between his legs and filled every inch, holding him up just enough so that he could breathe.
So that he could watch the boat sink into inky blackness.
So that he could continue to look into the eyes of the monstrous god slithering down to his level.
“Now,” it said, a giant forked tongue flicking out and caressing his face and neck. “You will descend into darknesss. Farewell, mortal.”
Mina began to descend. The snakes became frenzied, sliding all around him, nipping at his skin, coiling up his neck, and pulling him down.
Mina closed his eyes and pictured Anubis, a curious sense of peace coming over him.
For the first time in his life, Mina found himself doing the right thing for the right reason.
For himself. He would never worship halfheartedly ever again.
Would never let another unworthy god make demands of his body or soul.
He would be true to what he loved. If there was any real justice in the afterlife, then that had to count for something.
A hymn, the wordless melody he’d first hummed for Anubis, soft and delicate as the scent of a flower on the wind, rose from Mina’s throat.
It filled his senses. The slithering bodies pressed in around him became the arms of his lover.
The darkness cresting over him became the warm furs of their bed. Mina sang…
…and then the sea overcame him.
Mina held his breath and squeezed his eyes, refusing to let one of those awful slithering things find a way inside of him.
But just as his lungs were beginning to burn, he felt something press against his feet.
The familiar feeling of smooth wood. It pressed, and Mina began to rise.
Soon, his head was above the writhing mass, and he pulled in a desperate breath.
The ship had risen, and the snakes had all slithered back into their sea.
Apep was again before him. Eyes wide and searching.
“This song. I have heard it. Sung upon the shore by another.”
The serpent’s red eyes flared as a realization seemed to strike it. “You are the beloved of Anubis?”
A fire sizzled beneath his skin at the sound of his god’s name. Mina pulled back his shoulders, feeling suddenly taller than the towering serpent. “I am.”
The great god hissed, recoiling as if it had been struck a blow or burned by fire.
“You are a mortal among gods, and yet your soul glows as one of us. I see it now. Forgive me, beloved of the great Anubis.” The god bowed its head.
“Forgive me. I have been alone with none but my children for these many eons. No one worships the reviled Apep. We crave companionship. We crave devotion. Please, do not condemn me to your beloved.”
“Show me the way to him, and I’ll make sure he knows you helped me.”
“He waits for you upon the shore.”
“The shore?” Mina looked around for any sign of land. “What shore?”
But the great snake didn’t answer, already coiling upon itself, sinking into the sea, and leaving Mina in total darkness. And once again, he was moving, a familiar lurch in his stomach as he was transported through a tumult of darkness.