Chapter 4
Anubis
Ihad forgotten how exhausting mortals could be.
Jessica woke at dawn. An admirable trait, in principle, and immediately began a ritual of preparation so elaborate in other circumstances it would have rivaled the mummification process.
Her coffee came from a machine that hissed and gurgled like a dying serpent. She showered for an inexplicable length of time before standing in front of her open suitcase with the expression of a general surveying a battlefield, debating between garments that appeared identical in function.
I watched all of this from my position near the window in my jackal form.
It felt more natural than the human shape I had worn in the pyramid, more honest. I appreciated my true self.
Now I possessed sleek black fur, pointed ears, and golden eyes that missed nothing.
The glamour I wore for the benefit of other mortals would show them a tall, dark-skinned man in contemporary clothing.
I had observed enough to approximate current fashion, but Jessica saw me as I was.
She yelped and took a massive step backward when she first emerged from the bathroom and found me sitting on my haunches beside her bed.
“Why are you…? Why is there a giant jackal in my room?” she hissed, keeping her voice low despite her panic. “I thought you were… You looked human before!”
“This is my preferred form,” I explained, my voice calm. “The human shape requires concentration. This does not.”
“You can’t just…people will see you! Someone will call animal control, or the police, or —”
“They will see what I wish them to see. A traveling companion or a friend to you. Nothing that would alarm them.” I tilted my head, studying her reaction. “Does my appearance disturb you?”
She had stared at me for a long moment, her face cycling through several emotions. “It’s, well…you’re very large.”
“I am a god.”
“Right. Of course. Why wouldn’t the god be a six-foot-tall jackal?” She rubbed her temples. “Holy shit. What has my life become? This is happening.”
Now, as she finally finished her preparations and slung a bag over her shoulder, she glanced at me with apprehension.
“So you’re really coming with me? To all the tourist sites?”
“That was the agreement.”
“And you're going to stay... like that?”
I stood, stretching, enjoying the way she took an involuntary step backward. “Does it matter? Others will not see what you see.”
“It matters to me," she muttered. “I’m going to spend the whole day talking to a giant jackal.”
“A god, actually. But to solve your problem, you could simply not talk. Many mortals find silence peaceful.”
She gave me a look that suggested she disagreed with my assessment. “I have a tour scheduled at the Egyptian Museum. Are you going to behave?”
“I am always well-behaved.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
We left the hotel together, and I observed the way other humans perceived me. To the desk clerk, I was simply another tourist; tall, unremarkable, dressed in the loose linen shirt and dark pants I had conjured for the glamour. He nodded with a slight smile as we passed.
Jessica noticed. “They really can’t see you. The real you, I mean.”
“No.”
“But I can?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I considered the question as we stepped out into the Cairo morning, already growing warm despite the early hour. “You touched the Binding Stone. It marked you, in a sense. In doing so, it allowed you to perceive what is normally hidden.”
“Marked me?” Her voice trembled. “What does that mean? Is it permanent?” She raised her hand looking for a mark.
“I do not know. This situation is, as I mentioned, unprecedented.”
She made a small sound of distress but said nothing more as she hailed a taxi.
The driver, a cheerful man with graying hair, greeted us warmly and launched into a running commentary about traffic and weather and the best places to eat.
He saw me as human, seated beside Jessica in the back seat, taking up more space than mortals typically required.
Jessica kept glancing at me in my true form. She saw my black fur and sharp teeth and eyes that reflected the morning sun. I pretended not to notice.
The Egyptian Museum rose before us, a palatial building in shades of pink and white, surrounded by the chaos of Tahrir Square. Jessica paid the driver and stood for a moment, staring up at the entrance.
“I’ve wanted to see this place since I was a child,” she whispered.
“It is not as it once was.” The words came out more bitter than I had intended. “They have taken sacred objects from their resting places, put them in glass cases for tourists to photograph.”
She looked at me, and her expression shifted. “That must be hard. Seeing your world turned into a spectacle.”
I had not expected her sympathy. It unsettled me more than I cared to admit. “It is the nature of time. Everything changes. Even gods must adapt.”
“Or get bound to stones in pyramids for three thousand years?”
“Especially then.”
She almost smiled. Then she squared her shoulders and walked toward the entrance, and I followed.
The museum had a dense crowd. Throngs of people filled the rooms. Although the climate control managed the heat, it still couldn’t eliminate the lingering scent of antiquity.
Glass cases stretched in every direction, filled with artifacts that had once held power and purpose.
Now they were curiosities, reduced to objects of academic interest and tourist fascination.
Jessica moved through the exhibits with genuine interest, reading every placard, taking photographs with her phone. I stayed close, watching the way modern humans interacted with the remnants of my world.
A tour group clustered around a case containing ushabti figurines,
servant statues meant to work for the deceased in the afterlife.
Their guide was explaining the concept with the confidence of someone who had learned from books rather than from experience.
“They believed these little statues would come to life and serve the dead,” the guide said, and several tourists chuckled at the quaintness of ancient superstition.
I growled low in my throat, and Jessica shot me a warning look.
“Don’t,” she whispered. “They don’t know any better.”
“They should.”
“They're tourists. Like me.”
“You touched a sacred stone and released a god. They are taking selfies with a case of funerary equipment. The comparison is not favorable to them.”
She bit her lip, but I saw the corner of her mouth twitch. “You’re being judgmental.”
“I am being accurate.”
We moved deeper into the museum, and I found myself drawn to objects I had not seen in millennia.
The first was a ceremonial knife that had belonged to a priest I had known.
Then we saw a Canopic jar that still carried the faint resonance of the soul it had protected.
To our right was a golden mask that had once graced a pharaoh’s mummy, now staring sightless through glass at strangers who would never understand its significance.
“This is wrong,” I said, stopping before a display of burial goods. “Living eyes were never meant to see these items. They were placed with the dead for eternity.”
Jessica studied the artifacts, then looked at me. “I understand that. I do. But,” she hesitated. “If they had stayed in the tombs, grave robbers might have stolen or destroyed them. At least here, in the museum, people can learn from them and appreciate them.”
“People photograph them and move on to the next case. That is not appreciation.”
“Some of them do more than that.” She gestured to a young woman standing before a statue of an Anubis, a smaller version of my form, carved from black stone.
The woman sketched it in a notebook, her face intent with concentration.
“Look at her. She’s trying to understand it, to capture something of what it meant. ”
I watched the artist work; her hand moved across the page with surprising skill. She had captured the stance correctly; the angle of the ears, the alert watchfulness of the jackal’s gaze.
“One in a hundred,” I conceded grudgingly. “Perhaps one in a thousand.”
“Doesn’t that one matter?”
I had no response to that. No one had ever asked me before.
We continued through the museum, and despite my better judgment, I found myself providing commentary.
When Jessica paused before a collection of amulets, I explained which gods they invoked and what protections they offered.
When she studied a papyrus depicting the weighing of the heart ceremony, I described how it worked, starting with the balance, the feather of Ma'at, the devourer waiting to consume those who failed the test.
“Did you really weigh hearts?” she asked. “Or is that just mythology?”
“What is the difference?”
She frowned. “One is real. One is a story.”
“In my experience, the most powerful stories are genuine. And the most important realities are stories.” I watched her try to make sense of my statement. “Yes, I weighed hearts. I still do, in a sense. The dead still pass through my realm, though they no longer recognize what is happening.”
“That sounds lonely.”
Her observation caught me off guard. “I have never considered it.”
“Maybe you should.”
We had reached the Tutankhamun exhibit, and Jessica stopped to stare at the famous golden mask. Around us, tourists jostled for position, holding up phones and cameras, trying to capture an image of something that defied true capture.
“They’re selling miniature pyramids in the gift shop,” I said, spotting the display near the exit. “Made in China. This is sacrilege. They should make them here.”
Jessica laughed, and it startled several nearby tourists. “You’re such a snob.”
“No, I am discriminating. There is a difference.”
“You’re a snob.” She grinned now, and I realized it was the first time I had seen a genuine look of happiness since our first encounter. “An ancient, divine snob who judges souvenir quality.”
“If I do not maintain standards, who will?”