CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
BAPTISM
Mina thought he might throw up. Not the first sensation he expected from paradise. But as the vertigo of his transition through the portal eased, Mina blinked into his bright new world.
Warm sand nestled between his toes, burning away the chill from the cold stone of the temple.
To his right, the Nile ran wide and slow, its banks glowing like gold in the afternoon sunlight.
Everything around him looked so familiar.
Had he been sent back to the necropolis?
But as he looked around, the great stone temple was nowhere.
And there were subtle differences. The river, instead of a muddy brown, was a clear blue.
Like the beaches he used to visit as a child.
As Mina continued to take in his new home, just up the river, nestled in a cluster of trees, he noticed something else. Something man-made and not at all familiar. A purposeful arrangement of palm bark and green fronds. A shelter.
“Anubis,” he breathed.
Mina ran so fast he nearly tripped in the powder-soft sand, arms pinwheeling to keep from falling onto his face.
Mina was right about one thing. It was indeed a shelter.
Like a log cabin made with palm trees. One large room with a small limestone hearth and chimney built into the side and a huge bed in the middle piled high with silk sheets and furs.
One whole wall of the structure had been purposefully omitted so that the dwelling had an unobstructed view of the river and the dunes that rose and fell endlessly beyond.
It was breathtaking. It was perfect. But Mina had also been wrong.
There was no Anubis. No sign that anyone had yet even stepped foot into the cozy little home.
On the bed was a tray, filled with pita, figs, pomegranate, and salted fish.
It was the same breakfast Anubis used to bring him every morning.
Mina’s heart fluttered warmly at the memory even as an aching sadness settled heavy on his chest. This couldn’t be right.
Paradise was meant to be perfect. Right?
No. That wasn’t what Osiris had said. Mina’s paradise would be what he had earned. Everything that he deserved. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Had he made a huge mistake? He’d left his old life behind with barely a thought.
He would never see his mother or father again.
How could he have abandoned them so easily?
His whole life back home, his life in the church, had started to feel so much like a dream that even his parents had become like mirages in his memory.
But now, the permanence of his decision finally dawning on him, Mina’s heart sank.
He missed them. He missed Anubis. He even missed the inane yammering of his professor, whose fate he remembered with a pang of guilt.
And yet, this was the freedom he had fought for.
This, for Mina, would be both the reward and the cost of stepping away from his old life and into the one he’d made for himself.
Without realizing it, Mina had wandered to the bank of the river, the tips of his toes sinking into the wet sand. He reached down and unbuckled the shendyt from his waist. What was the point of clothing in this place? He was the only one here.
He stepped into the river, breath shooting up and out of him until his lungs ached, the water instantly chilling his sun-warmed skin. He took in small sips of air, walking further into the water.
He’d been baptized as a young teen, a meaningless gesture, he now realized, for the benefit of his parents and friends.
But he always thought the symbol of it was beautiful.
At the time, Mina had wanted it to mean something.
When he’d walked up the aisle to tell the pastor he wanted to be “saved,” he had meant it.
He did want to be saved. Who wouldn’t? Save me from hell.
Save me from these feelings. Save me from temptation.
Save me from myself. But as the pastor had cupped the back of his head, held his nose, and dunked him in the water in front of the congregation the next Sunday morning, all Mina had felt was wet and embarrassed.
And all he’d felt from that moment forward was guilt and shame.
Mina walked further out into the river until it reached his shoulders.
Everyone needed some kind of baptism. A commitment to themselves that living a life of truth meant leaving everything else behind. The fear, the guilt, the shame, all of it. It meant letting it wash away and stepping forward into something new.
Mina stretched out his arms and fell backward into the water.
He stayed under as the cold pressed in around him.
It bubbled in his ears. It pushed against his eyelids.
It tickled the tiny hairs in his nose. He imagined the pressure of it squeezing out every lie he’d let himself believe.
Every fear he’d ever let inhabit his body.
In that moment, Mina was baptized into his new life.
In that moment, under the water, in the middle of his new paradise, Mina was happy.
Perhaps one day Anubis would show up. If that was what Mina needed.
If that was what he truly deserved. But if not, that was okay too.
As long as his love was happy wherever he ended up, Mina would find joy in that, too.
Mina pushed himself up from the river and into the warm light of the afternoon. He squeezed the water from his eyes and stepped back onto the shore, turning toward his new home. This paradise had arisen from his own soul. The first real thing he’d chosen for himself. A life that would be truly his.
The setting sun cast long shadows, painting his cabin and the trees surrounding it in hues of green and gold. He saw it then—a flicker? A trick of the light? Warmth emanated from the open wall. A scent, familiar as the smell of home. Cloves and wood smoke.
His heart leaped into his throat, and a sudden, choked sob caught behind his teeth.
Impossible.
He lifted a trembling hand to his mouth.
Two red eyes glowed.
A single ear twitched.
Wild green flames danced in the hearth, silhouetting the hulking shape of a jackal god.