Chapter 2 The Maker #2
“M-my lord… are you admiring your own work?” I asked, I had to, for if he was the creator god, had he not crafted me?
Ptah smiled, and it certainly seemed like the expression of a proud patriarch. “With my hands, my breath, and my voice speaking your name.”
A chill ran through me, not from his touch, but his voice speaking that truth and awakening something in me like a shock of renewed life. I did feel small, like I had with Anubis too, but to have such a powerful being solely focused on me was strange and humbling.
I thought Ptah would lay me upon his work table, cluttered though it was, but instead, he led me to a corner where a daybed rested and laid me upon that.
He’d said he wanted to paint me, and it was the most vibrant and shimmering of all pigments he brought over upon a palette, like I was his papyrus.
I hadn’t considered that my face was still bare from my mourning when Anubis dressed me.
“My lord—”
“Tell me, Nakht, why do we paint our faces? Close your eyes now.”
“I, um…” The simplicity of the question surprised me, but as Ptah dabbed one of his fingers into a swath of bronze color, the components of which I couldn’t be certain, I closed my eyes in wait of his touch.
It was gentle but strange, almost ticklish with the shifting of his skin blending the pigment into mine.
“For protection. From the sun. From infection. From evil. And to signify one’s status in Pharaoh’s court. ”
“And…?” He worked quickly, and each time he returned from gathering more pigment to apply it to me, I couldn’t be sure what was being applied or of what color, only where.
“And… because it’s beautiful.” Like the blue that outlined just faintly the blackness of the kohl around Meryt’s eyes when we danced.
“You list that last, but it is the only one that made you smile,” Ptah said.
“Because it is the only one that conjured my beloved. I love how different colors, different designs upon his skin, changed him, yet he was also always still him. The way brighter shades were so much more vibrant on his darker complexion, and in contrast, the way kohl around my eyes appears more prominent because of my tanner skin. Neither is more or less beautiful, just uniquely presented. Contrasts. Complements.”
“The very blueprints of creation,” Ptah added in a close whisper, I thought, perhaps, with a smile in his voice. “As a maker, I never tire of the multitudes of ways that what I create, who I create, can be beautiful, whether with no embellishments, many, or even but a single stroke.”
He swiped beneath my eyes with both of his thumbs, then swiped again over my cheekbones and lips. As my mouth gasped open from the tingle of his touch, he leaned closer as if to catch my breath.
Or to give me some.
Ptah breathed where he hovered over me, pushing warm, sweet-scented air past my lips, so near to touching them that a simple lean would have stolen a kiss.
Heated flooded, blood rushing to my cheeks, into my limbs and loins.
I was awakening with entirely new pulses of life, but unlike with Anubis, I did not feel fear or shame.
Ptah stirred me thus on purpose, I knew, and I had never felt more energized.
“Open your eyes,” he ordered.
As I did, a flourish of one of his hands above me seemed to pull water from the air, forming it together into a swirling, floating mass, all at Ptah’s bidding. It tightened into a perfect circle, its surface calming until it was utterly still, and within its surface, I saw my face.
I knew I was beautiful, enough to be coveted by Pharaoh, but beauty was fleeting, and much was done to make us appear more beautiful when dancing.
At my most critical of myself, I thought my chin slightly uneven, my mouth too wide, my nose too long.
Meryt called me mad when I said so, and painting my face did not change those truths to my eyes, but doing so did please me, for it made me accept those aspects of me more by highlighting the rest of me.
This was so different from that. Never before had I looked so much like…
well, me. It was a queer thought, but this was the closest to how I pictured myself in my mind, yet didn’t always see in my reflection.
The kohl and colors on my skin were not as heavily applied as when dancing, but with just the right amount of bronzy tints and shimmer, and a glossiness to my lips that made them look wetted and ready to be kissed, I was the version of me I always hoped Meryt saw. Not overly made up or altered, just…
Me.
The water evaporated with a second flourish of Ptah’s hand, and he stood upright, scanning from my painted face down the length of me.
“Perfect. I need only put the finishing touches on the other now. You may get up if you like.” He left my side and went to the linen sheet covering the tall… something.
“Other?” I questioned and sat up to watch him.
He pulled the sheet from the figure with little ceremony, and I immediately lost my breath.
It was a man with his back to me, frozen like a doll.
He was dark-skinned with short, coiled black hair, and he wore…
a sheer blue dancer’s ensemble with sleeves trimmed in gold, and had blue lotus flowers crowning his head.
I leapt from the daybed, not daring to believe this was who it appeared to be.
I moved cautiously around the worktable, more and more certain, and yet terrified to see the truth.
Ptah was painting the figure’s face just as he had mine, and when I finally rounded the table’s corner, there was no doubt.
The figure’s eyes were closed, but the face was my beloved’s.
“Meryt!” I ran to him, uncaring in that moment that I tossed all decorum aside in the presence of a god, nearly pushing Ptah out of the way to throw my arms around Meryt’s neck and hug him.
He did not rouse, nor lift his arms to hug me back.
“Mer?” I asked, voice trembling, for my entire body was shaking now.
He still did not wake, but stood frozen.
As I stared at him, I became aware of how…
wrong he seemed. He was too smooth, too perfect.
He was always perfect to me, but usually, he had a tiny black mole near his left eye.
Where was it? His frozen face was smiling faintly but too even.
When Meryt smiled, one side of his mouth curved up more than the other. I loved that smile.
This was not my Meryt. This was the empty doll it appeared to be, an empty vessel crafted to look like him.
I jerked away from it, not wanting to touch such an abomination. Meryt but not. A body that was warm and almost alive, but not.
“Are you not pleased?” Ptah asked, setting aside his palette of pigments. “I perfected his inconsistencies and flaws for you, making him even lovelier than he was in life.”
In the quiet of my mind, I had sometimes cursed the gods when thinking that my lot in life was too unfair, but never had my ire been sharper than hearing someone, anyone, even the god of creation himself, dare to imply my Meryt needed perfecting. “This is your temptation for me?” I snarled.
Insolent though I was being, Ptah smiled wider. “You can have him right now and end your journey here.”
“But this is not him. Not really.”
“Is it not?” Ptah moved in front of the Meryt doll, took hold of its chin, squeezing the jaw slightly to part its lips, and breathed into it as he had me.
I hadn’t noticed with my own added breath of life, but as Ptah gave some of himself to this doll, the green of his skin faded slightly, still verdant in hue but nearing a more bronzy shade.
Black eyes blinked open, and I startled back a step. The doll gazed not at Ptah before it, but looking around, sought something else until it locked eyes on me.
He smiled, radiant and happy.
“Nakht,” he said with the devotion I had adored for so many years, and as soon as Ptah stepped aside, the doll of Meryt threw himself at me, hugging my neck as I had his.
He… felt like Meryt, warm and solid in my arms.
“Oh, my love,” the doll said, “how I’ve missed you.”
I hugged him tighter. “And I you. But is this… you?”
He released me and pulled back. “Of course, silly. Who else would I be? I am Meryt, the dusk to your dawn, and yours, my love, always.”
The spike of fury I had felt twisted into longing.
I wasn’t sure how to respond. He wasn’t right, but he was so very close.
“Exquisite, isn’t he?” Ptah joined us and tilted Meryt’s chin toward him. Meryt blinked at Ptah with equal devotion “Shall we show him, hm? How well you move?”
Meryt’s smile was an eerie, even curve. “Yes, my lord.”
The faintest music had been in the air all along, as if coming through the walls of the workshop. It grew louder, enough for me to take notice, as Meryt moved away from the worktable to a more open space and began to dance.
I stood fixed to where I was as I watched him. He looked more fluid than ever, sensual and enchanting in the motion of his hips, shuffling of his feet, arms dancing around him like flowing scarves. Just like him, it was almost too perfect, yet so similar to how the real Meryt danced.
Ptah moved to the daybed and sat upon it.
An unnerving echo of last night began to replay before me.
Meryt dancing toward the general, but now toward Ptah, god of all makers, with me left to watch.
Every motion, every curve of his back and arch of his neck, lips parted and eyes heavy-lidded, spoke of sex and desire.
I felt it deep inside me as my gut grew warm, that familiar want of him, just by watching.
As Meryt neared Ptah, the green god motioned him closer, and when his thighs were within reach, Ptah placed his hands upon them, slowly moving them upward with Meryt’s encouraging gyrations.
“Stop.” I was suddenly there, though I knew not when I had moved. I had slapped Ptah’s hands from Meryt. I had struck a god in my haste. “I-I… I am sorry, my lord.” I bowed my head.