Atum

The First Breath

The thing that had come out of Atum’s mouth was drowning.

He caught it between both hands. It had no face yet, only a hollow that opened and shut against his thumb. Water ran through it. Atum bent low over the patch of mud beneath his feet and breathed into the hollow again.

This time, something breathed back.

The small resistance startled him. He had made his own limbs, his own weight, the sole of his foot and the ground that resisted it. Nothing had ever answered him before.

“Again,” he said.

The hollow drew itself inward. Water shivered between his fingers. Then a young god coughed against his palm, hard enough to lift it, and Atum heard a sound he had not chosen.

He laughed. The laugh shook the mud.

The young god seized Atum’s wrist. “Do that more carefully.”

Atum held still. Beyond his heels, beyond the reach of either hand, the dark water lay without shore. There was no place from which it came and no place to send it. He had risen from it alone. Now another face looked up at him.

“Shu,” he said.

His son tried the name with a breath, then another. His chest moved in a rhythm Atum could feel without commanding. Atum eased him onto the mud.

Shu stood. His first step pressed water into a footprint. His second took him to the edge of the ground.

“Stay here.”

“There is no here left.”

Atum looked down. His feet occupied most of the mound; Shu had one foot beside them and one suspended over the water. Atum moved to give him room. Mud slid beneath his heel.

Shu tipped outward.

Atum reached, but his son’s wrist passed through his fingers like a gust. The face he had just learned lengthened above the water. There was no bank for Shu to catch, no branch, no other hand.

Atum drew a breath to call him back.

The pull ran deeper than his lungs. He knew the substance of his son. It had been within him before it had a name; it could be within him again. He gathered it toward his chest.

Shu rushed back.

Atum felt relief before he saw what the relief was costing. His son’s mouth flattened. The eyes sank into a smooth brightness. Fingers, reaching for him, joined together.

“Fa—”

Atum stopped breathing.

The unfinished word hung between them.

He pushed his breath outward, slowly, afraid that force would scatter what remained. The brightness wrinkled. A mouth opened inside it; a hand struck his shoulder. Shu fell against him, coughing, with a face once more.

For a while Atum dared not move. His son’s knuckles rested against his throat.

“You called me,” Shu said at last.

“You were falling.”

Shu looked at his own fingers. He spread them, shut them, spread them again.

Atum waited for him to step closer. Instead, his son set one foot back.

The distance was no greater than the width of a hand. Atum felt it everywhere.

Something gathered beneath his tongue. He bent and spat into his free palm.

The moisture clung there. He tried to loosen it with a finger, and it closed around that finger instead.

Ground for Three

Tefnut came into the world holding on.

She pulled herself from Atum’s palm, slid down his arm and landed between his feet. Shu caught her elbow before she struck the mud.

She looked first at him, then at the black water, then up at Atum.

“Is this all?”

“For now.”

She crouched. The edge of the mound slumped beneath her fingers. She pressed it back and watched a thin black thread of mud escape into the water.

“It is getting smaller.”

Atum knelt and put his hands around the mound.

His fingers sank past the mud into water that yielded without bottom. He pressed inward until the earth rose between his palms, lifting his children clear of the wet edge. He could give them this much. He bent his hands higher, a wall on either side, and the water stopped spilling over.

Tefnut stood inside the shelter. Mud reached her ankles.

Shu turned his face sideways.

“What is it?” Atum asked.

“I cannot get past you.”

“You do not need to.”

Shu took a breath. It struck Atum’s palm and came back warm. He tried again, harder. The air drove a furrow through the mud at Tefnut’s feet.

She stamped on the furrow. “Stop.”

“I need room.”

“You are taking mine.”

Atum tightened his hands. The furrow closed, but the little basin between his palms filled with moisture. Tefnut braced her feet. Shu’s breathing turned shallow.

Atum could feel both of them: the quick outward thrust of his son, the gathering weight of his daughter. He tried to hold them in balance. The harder he pressed, the less space they had to move.

“Lift one hand,” Tefnut said.

“The water will come in.”

She pushed both palms against the mud. “Then lift it slowly.”

Atum looked at Shu. His son had turned toward the narrow seam between Atum’s wrists, where a little breath could still escape.

He lifted his right hand.

Water leaned into the gap. Tefnut pressed toward it. The mud beneath her hands grew dark and close-grained; it sagged, but held together. Shu drew air across its surface. A dull skin formed on the wet earth.

He looked at his sister.

“Again?”

She nodded without taking her hands away.

Atum eased the hand back farther. Tefnut followed it on her knees. Shu bent beside her, and a strip of firmer ground stretched between the creator and the water.

It was hardly wider than Atum’s smallest finger. Tefnut put one foot on it.

“No,” Atum said.

She froze.

He could still feel the moment when Shu’s mouth had disappeared. The power that had almost swallowed his son lay quiet inside him, ready to answer the least inward pull.

“Test it here.” He offered his palm. “Where I can hold you.”

Tefnut looked at the hand, then at the strip of earth.

“If you carry it, we will not know whether it holds.”

Shu reached past her and touched the new surface. A little dust lifted beneath his fingertips. Tefnut wetted the cracked place, and the dust settled.

They were looking at something together. Neither looked to Atum to tell them what it was.

He laid his palm beside the narrow strip, close enough to catch them.

“One step.”

Tefnut shifted her weight. The strip bent. Shu moved with her, breathing along its edge, and it steadied.

“One more,” she said.

Before Atum could answer, the old mound split between his knees.

The Open Hand

The crack filled without a splash.

Atum pressed down. The two halves slid apart. On the farther piece, Shu grabbed Tefnut by the shoulders; she was reaching into the water after a length of ground that had broken loose.

“Leave it!” Atum shouted.

She caught the broken strip. It dissolved around her hand.

Shu pulled her upright, but the movement carried them farther away. Atum stretched across the widening gap. His fingertips brushed Tefnut’s wrist.

She caught two of them.

For a moment all three held still. Shu crouched behind her, his breath spreading over the little raft of mud. Atum lay forward on what remained of the first mound, one hand buried beneath him and the other extended across the water.

“Come back along my arm,” he said.

Tefnut tried. The moment she lifted her foot, the earth under Shu loosened.

“Wait.” She put it down again.

Shu sank to one knee.

Atum reached farther. Water closed over his supporting elbow. He had made himself before there was ground; he could exist when it was gone. But he could not make his arm longer without drawing power away from the hand Tefnut held, and he could not draw the children nearer without beginning the movement that had erased Shu’s face.

His son saw him hesitate.

“Do not call us that way.”

The water touched Shu’s ribs.

Atum knew how little effort it would take. A breath inward. An end to the gap, the crumbling ground, the labor of keeping three distinct shapes above the water. His son’s breath would be his own breath. His daughter’s weight would gather within him. Nothing of their substance would be lost.

Tefnut’s fingers slipped to his fingertips.

But no one would look at him.

He closed his grip around her hand.

The world contracted.

Shu’s shoulders blurred. Tefnut made a short, furious sound, and the fingers in Atum’s grasp began to lose their joints.

He opened his hand at once.

His daughter dropped away. He thrust his arm after her, too late to catch her wrist, and struck the water beside her. Mud washed over his forearm. Across it, Shu’s breath came in broken bursts.

“Tefnut!”

Her head rose. Both hands were spread beneath the surface.

“I am here.”

Atum reached again.

“No. Keep it there.”

He stopped with his arm across the gap.

Tefnut pressed mud against it. Shu bent close and breathed. A dark ridge gathered along Atum’s skin. It broke near the elbow; Tefnut pushed more earth into the break, and Shu changed the angle of his breath.

Atum felt them working against him, each pressure different. He let the arm lie heavy. The ridge widened.

Behind him, the first mound slipped beneath the water.

His knee dropped. His weight pulled at the new ridge. Tefnut gasped, and a crack ran from his wrist toward Shu’s foot.

Atum drew his leg up, trying to take the weight away. The remaining ground under him tilted. There was nowhere left to set it down.

Shu stretched a hand across the ridge.

“Here.”

Atum stared at the place his son indicated. Water showed through it.

Tefnut pushed until her wrists vanished in the mud. “Now.”

He could still gather them. Even with the first mound gone, that choice remained within reach. He would stand alone in the water and be sufficient to himself again.

Atum lifted his foot from the ground he had made.

For one breath, nothing bore him.

Then he stepped where his son had pointed.

The ridge sagged. Water rose over his ankle. He bent forward, fighting the impulse to seize, while Tefnut held the mud together and Shu drove a long breath across it.

Something rough pressed against Atum’s sole.

He put down his other foot.

The ground held.

No one spoke. Shu remained bent at the waist, his hands on his knees. Tefnut sat in the mud. Atum stood between them with water draining from his fingers.

Beyond his feet, new ground extended in an uneven tongue. Its edges were wet. One side crumbled whenever Shu breathed too strongly; the other softened where Tefnut lingered. They would have to work at it.

Tefnut got up first. She walked to the edge, pressed a crack closed with her heel, and came back.

Atum watched every step.

She took his hand. He had closed it without noticing.

One finger at a time, she opened it. From the earth beneath them she picked up a grain of dark grit and laid it in his palm.

Shu leaned closer to look. His breath moved over Atum’s skin.

Atum kept his hand open.

The grain stayed.