Chapter 1 The Caregiver #2
“A good answer.” He stepped the last bit closer to me, and as I took in his slender but well-muscled human body, I saw that he was nearly as bare as I was and well-proportioned for it.
Everything he wore was gold and white to contrast his black body.
The flaps of his headdress hung in front of his shoulders like Pharaoh’s, slightly covering a gold collar.
Gold accented the ties of his white loincloth as well, with accents of lapis lazuli in all of his adornments.
The blue stood out where it shimmered, though not nearly as much as the helmet’s eyes.
Real eyes again, I realized, not the stones of a helmet, for once my scanning of his body was complete and I looked at his face again, I found the jackal head from before.
It startled me, for this was a beast with the body of a man, yet he was still so strangely handsome.
Around his eyes was something that mimicked how we added kohl and other colors to ours, yet his appeared to be actual gold leaf attached somehow, making his gaze even more striking.
The shimmer of gold I had seen on his forehead, however, was a gold coronet connecting his headdress around his long ears.
“Drink,” he said again, and I found myself relaxing even before he brought the cup to my lips. It was the richest, most flavorful, and instantly soothing chamomile I had ever tasted, sweetened with honey.
I sank more comfortably upon the table, bound though I remained, taking in the frankincense that wafted from him. It was his signature scent, just as calming as the drink, and like the oils used to make the bodies of the dead more pleasantly fragrant to meet their gods.
I was meeting my gods. I was literally staring up at one, and yet I felt a wonderful sense of peace.
“Is this how you greet all those who come to you?” I asked.
“In part.” It was strange now, watching his snout move when he talked, so different from the parting of lips. “Death is always frightening at first, but with it comes your reward for a life well-lived.”
“Not for everyone.”
“No. But those unworthy of me never reach me.”
A chill traveled through my body, but unlike my panic, the remaining warmth from the chamomile soothed it away. I was here, and at some point, he would test me, tempt me, and I would have to prove worthy in how I resisted.
The torches seemed brighter in the room now, as if my willingness to accept Anubis in his true form meant the shadows were no longer necessary.
He gave me a bit more to drink and then moved back to the pedestal near my left foot to replace the cup.
Then, starting at my ankles, he began to unwrap the linen bindings.
“What are you going to do now?” I asked.
“Prepare you for the journey ahead.”
“In a funerary chamber? But I am not dead.”
“No, but you are traversing death, and the living deserve care too.”
He said it so kindly, so earnestly, all I could do was lie back and allow my unveiling.
I thought his claws might nick my skin, but even their faint scratches as he unwrapped me were exceptionally gentle.
I shouldn’t be surprised. This was the protector of the dead, guardian and guider of souls.
Fearsome though he appeared as this beast who stood in judgment of mortals, the stories always indicated that he wanted us to reach the Field of Reeds and did all he could to lead us there.
We alone were responsible if our hearts were weighed heavy.
Unsure what to say or do while Anubis removed the linen strip by strip, I settled in wait of my true trial, allowing the chamomile to do as it should.
The careful caresses of Anubis’s skin—fur?
—helped ease me as well. If it was fur, it was so soft, he may as well have been covered in the finest linen, more like a cat’s coat than a jackal’s.
The occasional drag of his claws was pleasant too.
Even with the temperature in the chamber balanced, the more Anubis touched me, the more my skin prickled in answer like on a cold desert night or at the height of pleasure.
Had something else been in that chamomile?
No, he said there would be no trickery. But the intimacy in the act of him unwrapping me left my mind and body abuzz.
I had been bare before so many others besides Meryt.
Pharaoh and his elite. Other dancers. Other slaves.
To have a god’s eyes on me as the last of the linen was drawn aside, made me feel naked in a whole new way, as if my soul was what was bared.
I supposed it was.
“I will bathe you now,” Anubis said, “as final preparation for what is to come.”
I understood the significance of undergoing the same cleansing that Meryt’s body had, but the anticipation of such an act by Anubis’s own hands made my skin prickle further, and my cock gave a telling twitch.
The only other person who had ever bathed me as an adult was Meryt, and it usually ended with us needing a second wash.
“I will roll you first to wash the back of you.”
The chamomile could only do so much, and I tensed as Anubis did so, manipulating me like a priest would an empty vessel, but by that I do not mean roughly.
He moved me expertly, with hardly any jostling or discomfort.
Since the head of the table was slanted, to bring me flat, he slid me lower down the table, so my legs bent at the knees over the edge.
At least like this I might quell the traitorous heat building in my belly.
Anubis ran the claws of one hand through my tangled hair. I had bathed earlier—not that I would resist this cleansing—and last I’d checked, my hair was still damp. It felt dry now as he dragged his claws through it.
“First, I will comb this for you.”
Why Anubis narrating his acts warmed me further, I couldn’t say. Although his voice was nice to listen to.
I peeked from my prone position to watch him pluck my comb from its pedestal and return to me. It was usually only Meryt who combed my hair now too, more so than I did, though all the dancers aided each other when we needed to be presentable.
I had unraveled all my plaits when I removed my baubles, leaving me fresh and plain for my mourning. After Anubis finished combing my hair, he re-plaited portions of it in the manner I usually wore it.
“Do all the dead, if they reach you, have the honor of you braiding their hair?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Am I the only living?”
“Yes.”
I shivered from the low breathiness in how he answered the second time, for I also felt his breath on my neck, as he draped my finished hair to the side.
Next, after Anubis bent out of sight beneath the table, I heard the fall of water, presumably him retrieving cloth from a basin that he would use to wipe me down.
He started with my neck and shoulders. Such tenderness was welcome, with the warm water smelling as much of frankincense and pleasant oils as Anubis himself.
His empty palm followed the path of his cleansing, like a separate wicking cloth in the fine ends of his fur.
I sighed into his kneading, his massaging with steady motion into the grooves of my shoulders and down the center of my spine.
Anubis’s hands were so strong, his fingers independently talented in their distribution of pressure.
After he reached my waist, he returned to the top of one shoulder and started working down my arm.
My thought processes slowed, the breath pushing from my lungs when he finished with a spiral of his thumb along the inside my palm and then moved to my other shoulder to begin again.
“Are you feeling more relaxed now?” he asked.
I moaned before I could answer, as he finished that arm with the same motion of his thumb circling my palm.
“I will take that as a yes,” he said with a chuckle.
It shouldn’t feel so incredible, but I had never been bathed or attended to like this.
Fanning his fingers across my shoulders, he drew down, first the wet cloth again and then his hand along my spine. This time, he went left and right, trailing over the curves of each of my sides.
“Such lovely skin, supple and soft,” he said. “The dead are not so lucky at first.”
At first.
I wanted to ask if Anubis brought their suppleness back to them, but I was rendered mute as the cloth and his fingers trailed lower, worsening the growing problem between my legs. I desperately wanted to grind into the table.
Anubis paused, and rather than continuing down my thighs, he bent again beneath the table to gather more water.
When he returned, he moved to my feet. That was no less exhilarating.
As a dancer, often strained and sore, having my foot rubbed, my ankle, my calf, my thigh eventually as he worked higher, made me moan deeper and louder than before.
“Your voice, too, is quite lovely. I enjoy the many differences between mortals, you know. The tones of voices. The varied hues in skin and hair and eyes. The unique curves and divots in your bodies.” Anubis circulated higher to the crease where my thigh met hip—and near to the heaviness of the sac between my legs.
“All so beautiful in your distinctiveness, with none, not even twins, ever being truly identical.”
I couldn’t help imagining that he might keep going and let his long, elegant fingers slip more intimately between my thighs. What arousal could we bring to Meryt if he were witness to such a thing?
The smile that thought conjured dwindled quickly. Meryt could witness nothing, for he was not here.
Anubis moved to my other leg. Even though I longed for my beloved, I could no longer deny how hard I had become, erection trapped beneath me. I wanted to move, to rock against it to relieve the growing pressure, but then Anubis would know, and I had no idea what might happen after that.
“Relax,” he said. “You are tensing again.”
“S-sorry.” A whimper left me when he reached the tight muscles of my other thigh, sliding higher and higher again, but not high enough to be indecent before he stopped. “I-I’m just… sore.”