The king stopped with one foot inside Amunet’s shadow.
Beyond the doorway, men were calling his new names. Each name rolled through the court and came back larger, joined by drums, by the clapping of hands, by the voices of people who had waited since before sunrise. Inside, beneath the Red Crown, Amunet watched a thread of blood creep across his palm.
He had gripped the ceremonial staff too hard. A splinter stood out of the wood.
“Give me your hand,” she said.
He glanced toward the doorway before obeying. She drew out the splinter. When he stepped closer to her, the blood stopped falling. A red bead hung beneath his little finger, round and motionless.
The king turned his hand over. The bead remained where it was.
“What have you done?”
“Given you shelter. Now come. They are waiting.”
He extended his hand into the strip of sunlight across the threshold. The bead fell. Another began to form. He snatched his hand back.
Amunet reached for his wrist, but he folded it against his chest.
“My father had seven names when they carried him out,” he said. “The priests called every one of them. He did not open his eyes.”
She knew what he would ask before he asked it. She moved toward the door.
He moved with her.
“Keep me here.”
The edge of her shadow lay across his feet. Outside, the herald drew breath for the next royal name. His mouth stayed open.
A drummer struck once, then lowered his sticks.
Amunet looked back at the king. The gold clasp beneath his chin had become plain metal. The little signs that had named him were gone.
The Place Before Names
She laid her palm flat against the wall and made her shadow narrow.
The king pressed himself into it, shoulder scraping stone. He was younger than the crown made him appear. A patch of skin showed through the linen at his elbow; the attendants had dressed him so carefully that morning and missed the tear.
“Step away from me,” she said.
“You have enough shadow.”
“For this doorway.”
“For all of Egypt. They told me.”
He said it without accusation. That made it harder. Amunet could have dragged him across the threshold. She could have let the light strike him and the blood run, and completed the greeting over his protests. Already she could hear a priest whispering the words meant to rescue a faltering ceremony.
Instead she widened her shadow a little.
The king’s shoulders loosened.
On the wall beside him, a painted bird folded into a black stroke. Its feet disappeared. Amunet lifted her hand from the stone, but the stroke continued shrinking until there was nothing left to distinguish it from the dark.
Outside, the priest said, “We are assembled to welcome—”
He stopped.
The king looked at the doorway.
“Tell them I am here.”
“Then let them see you.”
He set his jaw. “If they cannot remember me, tell them again.”
Amunet spoke his throne name.
The first sound left her mouth. The second would not follow. There was no second sound to remember.
Cold touched her ankles.
The floor was gone beneath the king. He had not fallen; he stood on a darkness that yielded under his heels like deep water. The stone chamber still enclosed Amunet, but she could no longer find the corner behind him. The shadow had opened into the place from which she and Amun had come, before a chamber could have corners, before one thing could be told from another.
The king looked down. He lifted a foot, tested what held him, and laughed once in disbelief.
“It will not let me drown.”
“No,” she said.
His torn sleeve closed over his elbow. The weave itself disappeared. Linen and skin were becoming the same pale shape.
She held out both hands.
He retreated.
A second shadow crossed hers.
Amun stood at the other side of the door. In the court, the waiting people bowed without knowing why they had been summoned. A flower bearer remained upright for a moment longer, staring at the bouquet in her hands, then knelt with the others.
“Bring him out,” Amun said.
“He will not come.”
“Then leave the way open.”
“I am trying.”
His shadow lengthened toward hers. Where their edges touched, the last line of the threshold vanished.
Amunet felt the pull immediately: the old ease of being without an edge, without anything that could be hurt or taken away. No king would have to die there. No prayer would arrive too late. She could shelter him completely if she ceased trying to remain a figure standing in a room.
Amun watched her.
“You remember,” he said.
She did. That was the danger.
Behind her, the king loosened the clasp of his crown.
What He Would Keep
“Hold it,” he told her.
He offered the crown across the dark. She caught it before he could let go. Its weight drove her hands downward, and for an instant she felt the solid floor beneath her again.
“I do not need it in here,” he said.
“What do you need?”
He considered the question. Beyond his shoulder there was neither near nor far. Even his voice came to her without seeming to cross a distance.
“Nothing.”
She set the crown on the surviving strip of stone. He had wanted this morning, once. She had seen him before the doors opened, lifting the crown a finger’s breadth from its cushion, feeling its weight, quickly setting it down when someone entered.
“You wanted them to see you wearing it.”
“That was before.”
Before the splinter. Before the blood had stopped. Before he learned there might be somewhere his father could never have died.
Amunet drew her shadow toward herself.
The king cried out. A line opened down his palm, brighter than it had been in the chamber, and he clutched his wrist. She stopped pulling. The cry died before its echo could return.
He looked at her with the first real hatred she had seen in him.
“You said shelter.”
She had.
Amun’s hand waited beside the doorway. If she took it, they could withdraw together and leave the king where nothing could reach him. There would be no frightened man in the sanctuary, no empty place in the procession. The court would disperse. In time, someone else would come to be crowned.
Amunet tried to recall the king’s throne name again. She could not. The fear she felt then was sharper than his accusation.
She turned to the court.
The kneeling flower bearer had lowered her bouquet. One of its binding reeds had split; the flower heads sagged against the paving. Amunet caught the broken reed before it slipped free. Its wet, newly cut end stained her fingers.
She broke off a length no longer than her forearm.
“What are you doing?” Amun asked.
She pressed the sharp edge across the base of her thumb.
The pain gave her a hand, a wrist, an arm: one place in which something had happened. She gripped the reed until its edge bit deeper.
Then she stepped into the darkness.
The court disappeared. So did Amun. Her Red Crown became a weight she could feel but could not locate. She kept her fingers tight around the reed.
A pale movement passed ahead of her.
“Give me your hand,” she said.
She had used those words in the chamber. They made a small connection now, a direction she could follow.
“You will pull me out.”
“Yes.”
“It will hurt.”
“Yes.”
He turned from her. The movement was slight, but she felt him becoming harder to distinguish from the place that held him.
Amunet went after him. She no longer knew whether she was walking. The reed softened in her fist, and the pain in her hand began to fade.
She could not hold herself separate much longer.
“Your father,” she said. “What did he call you?”
The pale shape stopped.
“When there were no priests listening.”
A mouth moved. Nothing came from it.
She waited, fighting the urge to supply a name, any name, to make an answer possible. The reed bent between her fingers.
“At the water,” he said at last.
Amunet felt ground beneath one foot.
“Tell me.”
“He would not let the boatman carry me. He made me climb in myself.”
A small hand appeared inside the fading outline of the king’s hand. Not another person: his own hand as he remembered it, reaching for the side of a boat. He looked down at it.
“I fell.”
There was almost a smile in his voice.
“He laughed at me.”
The king’s face returned, and with it an anger so immediate that Amunet could see him clearly.
“Then he jumped in.”
The reed broke.
Her fingers opened. She lost the pain, the hand, the knowledge of which way the court lay. For an instant there was only the king’s face and the terrible relief of no longer having to hold anything apart.
He reached for her.
His injured palm struck hers. The wound opened between them, warm and wet.
He spoke a short name she had never heard from any herald.
Amunet closed her fingers.
Through the Door
The name gave her someone to draw toward the world. His hand gave her a direction.
She pulled.
He came one step, then stopped. Behind Amunet, far away, a drum sounded. The court was returning. So was the day in which he would grow old, and every other day he had hoped to escape.
His grip slackened.
She could have tightened hers. Instead she opened it enough for him to leave.
He looked at the blood on their joined hands.
“Will you be there?”
“At the door.”
He caught her wrist with his other hand and stepped forward.
Stone struck her heel. Amun seized her shoulder. She stumbled into him, bringing the king down hard on one knee beside the crown.
For a moment all three remained there. The king bent over his hand. Blood dripped onto the paving between his feet.
From the court came the herald’s voice, suddenly fluent, piling name upon name. A priest hurried forward with a cloth. The king took it and pressed it to his palm himself.
Amunet lifted the crown. Its clasp was covered in tiny, exact signs.
This time the king bowed his head to receive it.
He rose slowly. At the threshold he hesitated, and she thought he might turn back. Instead he tucked the bloodied cloth into his belt and held his wounded hand where the people could see it.
His first step into the sun brought a shout from the court.
A small shadow followed his heel.
The flower bearer came through the doorway after him, gathering the loosened stems against her chest. One blossom had been crushed under a sandal. She tried to hide it beneath the others.
Amunet held out her hand for that one.
