Chapter 7 The Scholar #4
“With access to everyone’s secrets,” Thoth continued, voice barely breaking or betraying fatigue despite the sustained rhythm of his hips and hand, rocking me forward and back again on trembling legs, “no one could ever act against you. You would be more powerful than even Pharaoh, blessed by a god.”
“B-but Pharaoh… is a god. Isn’t he?” Sometimes I thought I could read the words that glowed, fading in and out of view with my euphoria, but just as quickly, recognition faded the moment I thought I had it. “He is already your avatar on earth.”
Thoth’s left hand brushed over a line of hieroglyphics on my chest, while his right continued to pump my length, ever hardening me, maddening me, but not letting me come. His eyes met mine in the glass as he whispered, “Is he?”
When the words he had touched glowed and looked readable to me, they remained that way, and their meaning remained in my mind as well.
Pharaohs lie.
Pharaohs are mortal.
All the heat in me oscillated to a sudden chill. That had to be the truth, but then… there were no gods on earth. Pharaoh did not deny bringing back the dead out of some duty to preserve balance. He refused because, in truth, he did not have the power to do so.
Thoth snapped his hips again, forcing my elbows to buckle and bringing me closer to the glass.
He was increasing his rhythm, and every phrase that lit up now without translation taunted me, while also making me feel more and more like I should already be coming, but I couldn’t—I couldn’t!
It was like the brands of the phrases that glowed also sent pulses directly to my core in tandem with Thoth’s relentless thrusts.
“Do you want to know more?” he demanded. “Do you want to know everything? Including the truth of your parents?”
A new phrase glowed across my heart and held its brilliance rather than fading. I couldn’t read it, but I knew it must be the answer to that question that I had so longed to learn.
I didn’t care that the other children had teased me, like in Meryt’s relived memory.
Most of them knew only a single parent’s identity, and it was easy to act out against each other when we were young for the most foolish of differences.
I cared who they might be, however, because not knowing had always made me wonder if I could ever really know myself.
I knew my mother had been the slave of a high-ranking commander in Pharaoh’s army who had died in battle.
He was supposedly responsible for the loss of an entire unit, his choices condemned as cowardly, and therefore, his name had been stricken from the records.
Without a master to serve, cast out into the streets, she knew my birth would kill her, so after I breathed my first breath from Ptah, she trekked, bleeding the entire journey, to the steps of Pharaoh’s palace to offer me to his service.
She collapsed and died almost as soon as I was passed into the arms of a guard, so no one ever learned her name.
Whether any of that was true, I couldn’t even say. I didn’t know if her master was my father either. I wasn’t allowed to ask. I wasn’t allowed to know. Because with slaves, all that mattered was who you served.
I had often wondered what she might have been like.
Stern yet compassionate like Meryt's mother?
And what of my father? Was he that disgraced commander or just another slave, one who had dallied with a fellow slave in dark corners?
Who would I have been if they had raised me instead of the palace kitchen staff, and later, Meryt's mother and the other dancers?
I wouldn't be me. Not this version of me.
Just like if I had allowed Geb to change my outer self, I would be a stranger if I saw in my reflection the version of me who had always known his parentage.
It was unfair that I hadn't been allowed to know, but to change that now would be to admit that lacking such knowledge meant I didn't feel whole.
And if I needed to know every secret to feel whole, how empty must I be?
I knew my answer, yet I also recognized that if my prize at the end of these trials had been anything other than having Meryt returned to me, I might have been tempted to tell Thoth yes. But I knew who I was, and I didn’t need to know where I came from to continue believing it.
So I told him, “No. I know enough as I am.”
An archway appeared in the reflection behind us and framed within it was Meryt.
Thoth rocked inside me harder, faster, deeper at the arrival of our audience, but I still glanced as best I could over my shoulder, over Thoth’s shoulder too, to meet the real Meryt’s gaze.
He wasn’t there.
I whipped my head forward again, and the reflection persisted. Like in Geb’s pool, only there could I see my Meryt clearly.
Thoth molded himself across my back and bent to lick my neck, up to my earlobe, tonguing the tinkle of gold that hung from it. But although his hips continued to snap faster and faster, the pumps of his hand on me suddenly slowed. “No? Even if I could offer you Meryt’s secrets?”
Several of the unreadable phrases on my skin glowed, this time with mocking pulses, but the offer only made me snarl, “Especially then,” while keeping my eyes on my beloved’s face.
“They are not your secrets to tell… nor mine to steal. I could accept any of Meryt’s secrets if he wished to tell them. But only from him.”
Again, Thoth licked my ear, up along the curve of its rim, making me shiver and stutter my hips into his hold. He kept his mouth right there to whisper, while slowly, so fucking slowly, running the flat nail of his thumb through my slit. “Then I guess you win.”
I came—finally, finally—and my hot release stained the glass.
My legs immediately failed me, but Thoth kept me upright, while he pumped, pumped, pumped until he spilled within me, and with that wash of heat, all the unlearned secrets faded like the ones before.
I kept my gaze on Meryt, watching him fade to nothing too, but just before he was gone, I saw him mouth:
I love—
That was all.
I closed my eyes and envisioned him finishing the missing word, knowing that, wherever he was, he meant it.
Thoth pulled from me, and I was almost too exhausted from that stamina marathon to stay upright, but just when I thought I might truly collapse—pain seared through my left forearm.
My eyes snapped open as my body reawakened, gaze immediately drawn to my sizzling flesh. It wasn’t actually sizzling, but a true tattoo had been branded there, not a lengthy phrase of pictographs, but a single symbol.
The feather of Ma’at, like an ostrich feather with its tip slightly bent.
The moment I thought that, the feather’s outline glowed with dark blue radiance rather than the usual black of such markings. Ma'at's feather was the very thing that the hearts of the dead were weighed against to determine if they were worthy of the Field of Reeds.
I looked back into the reflecting glass, upright after my startled jolt. I was still as stunning as the gods had made me throughout this journey, however spent. However ready to be done with this. Thoth stepped out from behind me to stand proudly at my side.
“I weigh you worthy, Nakht—for now. But I am not the last who will judge you.”
“I know.” I ran my hand over the feather. It was already healed with no lingering ache. This was Thoth’s gift, like many of the others who had given me decoration or vitality. “But to be seen as worthy by the god of knowledge gives me hope.”
When next I looked at our reflections, Thoth had dressed himself, as pristine as if he had never disrobed, and with a wave of his hand, the same was soon true of me.
There was more though. Not actually more, as in tangible to hold or wear, but renewed energy and strength in me, even more than what Horus had gifted me. I looked like the best version of myself I could ever hope to be.
“Prrp!”
The sudden chirp at my feet drew my attention from the glass. It was Pasht, rubbing against my shins, and not in brief passing or like a phantom soon trotting out of view, but right there, waiting like always for me to pluck her from the ground.
I did so without a moment’s pause, cradling the soft and gentle feline in my arms. She purred instantly, looking as content to be held as ever.
“Does the little one grow so impatient?” Thoth asked, almost like a rebuke, but as he said it, he reached over to pet Pasht’s head and scratched her chin.
She purred even louder.
I looked from the seemingly normal cat, to the seemingly normal man beside me, who was so much more than he appeared.
“Is she…?”
Thoth’s crescent eyes glowed, much like my tattoos had, only with silver radiance within the turquoise, reminding me just how godly he was. “Would you really ask such a silly question when you already know the answer?”
I supposed not.
All cats were emissaries of the gods in some way.
“Go.” He gestured behind us at where Meryt’s archway had and also had not been, at least outside the reflection, and in its place was a new opening, fully tangible in reality as well as the glass. What lay beyond its threshold was awash in bright light. “He awaits.”
I nodded, still holding Pasht as I turned to face it. While I could not see through the archway, I knew what awaited me, or at least who.
There was only one god left, and through him was Meryt.
“And Nakht?”
I looked once more at Thoth.
“The right words are emblazoned on your soul. When the time comes, you will know what to say.”
I hoped so, but I also took his words to mean that speaking the right words was not something I needed to rush. “Thank you.”
As soon as I took my first step toward the archway, I hesitated and looked at him again.
“Are you not going to ask for me to stay with you?”
“Did all my brethren ask you that?”
“Most, in one way or another.”
Thoth quirked an eyebrow as if amused by the thought. “Nakht, I am the god of secrets and knowledge.” He said it as if speaking to a child who really should know better. “Why would I ask you such a thing when I already know how this ends?”
I wasn’t sure if that was encouragement or a warning. Regardless, with a purring Pasht cradled against my chest, I nodded once more and moved forward into the light.