Geb

Between Their Hands

Geb caught Nut by the wrist as the light opened between them.

A moment before, her cheek had rested against his. Now Shu’s shoulder drove into the narrow space beneath her, and her face moved away. Geb tightened his grip. Stone grated deep inside his chest.

“Take your hands off her.”

His father did not answer. Shu set one foot against Geb’s side and pushed upward. Along the length of Nut’s body a pale opening widened. Cold entered it. Geb had never felt cold on the places she had covered.

Nut reached back. He caught her other hand and pulled.

Shu’s foot slipped. The opening narrowed; the cold vanished. For an instant Geb felt the familiar weight return, and relief went through him so violently that he almost failed to hear her.

“Stop.”

He held still.

“Geb. Under your arm.”

There was something caught there. He felt its pressure now: a fine point pressing into him, too slight to be Shu’s doing. He lifted his elbow. In the strip of light stood a folded green shoot.

Its tip had been bent flat.

Geb stared at it. He could feel the little root within himself, curled tight and gripping nothing. Above it, Nut’s body hovered so close that the broken tip brushed her.

“Lift her,” he told Shu.

His father looked at their locked hands.

“Enough for this,” Geb said.

He let his elbows rise. Shu straightened a little, and light reached the shoot again. It trembled. Slowly, almost too slowly to see, the bent tip lifted away from Nut.

Geb loosened one hand so he could touch it.

“Don’t,” Nut said.

“I won’t hurt it.”

“Look at the size of your finger.”

He looked. He could have hidden the whole shoot beneath his nail.

He laid the hand down beside it instead.

A Place Small Enough

Shu tried to move his foot to firmer ground. Geb felt the pressure shift and closed his remaining hand around Nut’s fingers.

“You have room now.”

“I have room to bend,” Shu said. “Not to stand.”

“Then bend.”

Nut turned her face toward Geb. With Shu between them, she had to twist to see him.

“I cannot stay like this.”

“Come back, then. I can make a place for it.”

With his free hand, Geb pressed a hollow beside the shoot. The earth yielded because it was himself yielding. He deepened the little bowl, careful to keep its rim from breaking. It would fit the plant. Nut could rest above it and the green tip would be safe beneath her.

“Lower it into here,” he said.

Shu’s shoulders shook. “It is rooted in you.”

“I know where it is rooted.”

Geb drew the patch of soil downward with the shoot still in it. For a moment the plant swayed over the hollow. Then it settled, green against the dark interior, and he felt the strain on its root ease.

He looked up at Nut. “There.”

She lowered herself a little. Shu bent with her, unwillingly, keeping both hands braced beneath her. Geb waited for her cheek to touch his.

The hollow went dark.

“I can’t see it,” Nut said.

“It is there.”

“Can you feel what it is doing?”

Geb attended to the small place within his body. The root had stopped uncurling. Above it, the shoot leaned toward a crack of brightness at the hollow’s edge. Its tender stem dragged against the rim.

He opened a channel for the light.

Brightness entered. The tip turned toward it. Geb widened the channel, pleased, until he felt Shu’s heel sink.

His father lurched.

Nut’s hand tore halfway out of Geb’s grasp. Her body came down hard against Shu’s bent back, and the hollow’s rim crumbled onto the shoot.

“Hold her!” Geb shouted.

“Give me somewhere to stand!”

Geb pushed the soil up beneath Shu’s foot. It spilled sideways. He had loosened too much of himself, digging one way for the plant and another for the light. Shu’s heel drove deeper. The shoot disappeared beneath a falling clod.

Geb thrust his free forearm under Nut.

Her weight struck him. For a breath he had her close again, her face beside his, exactly what he had wanted. But his arm lay across the mouth of the hollow, and underneath it something small was being crushed.

“Don’t move,” Nut said.

He heard the fear in her voice and could not tell which of them it was for.

Ground to Stand On

Geb held Nut on his forearm while Shu dragged his buried foot free.

Each movement sent loose earth trickling into the hollow. Geb could no longer see the shoot. He knew where it was only by the pull of its root, a thin, persistent hurt.

“Here,” he said to Shu.

He hardened the ground beside his shoulder. This time he worked deep, pressing the loose layers together until he felt a broad foundation take the weight. Shu set his foot on it. He tested it once, then planted the other beside it.

“Will it hold?”

“It will hold.”

Shu raised his shoulders. Nut’s weight lifted from Geb’s arm.

Geb pulled the arm clear and opened the hollow. A clot of earth lay across the plant. He wanted to pick it off, but remembered his finger beside the stem. Instead he tilted the ground beneath it until the clot rolled away.

One leaf was torn. The other lay folded against the stalk.

He waited for it to move.

“Higher,” he said.

Shu pushed. Light spread across the hollow, and the unbroken leaf began to open.

Nut’s fingers slid through Geb’s hand. He caught them at the tips.

“Wait.”

Shu stopped. He was almost upright now. Geb could see beneath Nut to a distance he had never seen before: empty space where their bodies had always met. He could not find its far end.

“How far are you taking her?”

Shu turned his head. With both arms raised, he looked older than he had when he forced himself between them.

“Far enough that I can hold her.”

Geb looked at Nut. “And then?”

She stretched her fingers against his. “Then I will be there.”

“There.” He could scarcely say the word. It named a place that had not existed before Shu made it.

Nut tried to bend nearer. The light shifted across the shoot. Its open leaf brushed her side and folded again.

She stopped.

Geb felt the root searching beneath his wrist. It had found the edge of the little hollow and was pressing against the hard ridge he had made to support his reaching arm. He could break the ridge, but his elbow would drop. Nut’s fingers already rested at the ends of his own.

He tried turning his wrist. Pain went through the root.

He stopped too.

“I could lift the plant with me,” he said.

“You tried that.”

“I could make it stronger.”

Nut looked down at the torn leaf. She did not answer.

Above Geb, Shu’s arms began to tremble. He was holding the sky on a foundation Geb had finally made firm, and Geb was still pulling it down by the fingertips.

“Say my name,” Geb told her.

“Geb.”

He listened to it at this distance. Her voice no longer moved directly through him. It had to cross the opening, thin and strange, before it reached his face.

He let go of one finger.

Nut did not snatch her hand away. She waited while he released the next, and the next, until only the smallest touched him.

Geb lowered his elbow.

The ridge beneath it broke. Earth fell inward, opening a passage for the root. At the same moment Nut’s fingertip left his.

He almost reached after it.

Instead he pressed his empty hand against the loose soil, holding it back from the stem while the root slid into the space he had made.

Shu stood upright.

Light flooded Geb’s face. Nut rose beyond the reach of his arm, then beyond the reach he could have gained by lifting his shoulder. He felt the great movement recede through the places where they had touched. He kept his hand beside the shoot until the root had taken hold.

Across the Air

For a long time Geb did not look up.

The surviving leaf opened fully. Its torn companion hung against the stalk. He could feel both through the root: one drawing on him, the other scarcely moving. He loosened the earth a little farther around them.

Something passed over the back of his hand.

He flinched, thinking Nut had returned. But the touch continued across his wrist and along his arm. It stirred loose grains into the hollow. The leaf bent under it, sprang back, bent again.

Air.

There was room for it to move now.

Geb looked up. Nut stretched above him, so far away that he could no longer see the small crease his grip had left in her wrist. Shu stood between them with his feet planted firmly in Geb.

Nut’s hand was open.

Geb lifted his own a little. The shoot leaned in the moving air, and he lowered it to shelter the stem.

From above, faint but clear, she said his name.

He turned his palm upward beside the plant.

“Again.”