The small hand broke the surface once, then vanished.
Hauhet plunged her arm into the water. Her fingers closed on nothing. Beneath them a light turned slowly, as though someone were carrying a lamp down a stair.
She reached deeper. The light receded.
“Heh.”
He was beside her before she finished his name. Until that moment, wherever she had reached, she had found him. There had been no shore to cross, no distance worth naming. Now something small lay between them, and neither could touch it.
Heh thrust both hands down. The water brightened along his arms. Far below, the child opened its mouth.
“Stop,” Hauhet said.
He looked at her but kept reaching.
“Look where it is.”
The light had grown smaller. Hauhet drew back a finger’s breadth. It rose a little. She pushed forward again, and it fell away.
Heh pulled his hands out.
For the first time, Hauhet held herself still while something she wanted moved beyond her reach.
Around them the other six had gathered. Nun lifted the waters beneath the child; Naunet pressed against them from the other side. A dark lump swelled toward the surface. It split, spilled mud, and sank. The light flickered through it.
“Give it somewhere,” Naunet said, straining. “We cannot lift it into nowhere.”
Hauhet turned her palms toward Heh.
“Take my hands.”
He caught them. They made a narrow ring with their arms, enclosing a patch of water no wider than the child’s body.
“Here,” she said.
Mud struck her wrists. A ridge rose between them, black and slick, shedding water in threads. The child’s head emerged against it. Heh bent without releasing her, and Hauhet followed, lowering their joined hands beneath the little body.
They lifted together.
The child coughed. A drop of light fell from its lips and hissed upon the mud.
Hauhet laughed once, sharply, with surprise. She had never heard such a small sound as that cough. She wanted to hear it again.
The First Shore
The child lay in the hollow between their wrists. Its fingers worked against Hauhet’s thumb, opening and closing. When it drew breath, a pale glow passed through the mud beneath it. When it breathed out, the glow faded.
“Again,” she whispered.
It drew another breath.
Heh’s hands tightened on hers. His face was visible now, faintly lit from below. Hauhet looked at the curve of his mouth as though she had not known it until this moment.
A movement crossed the child’s face. It pushed against their wrists.
“What does it want?” Heh asked.
Hauhet raised their joined hands. The child rose with them, but the mound rose too, and the low arch of their arms remained above its head.
It pushed again.
She spread her elbows. Mud slid from the island’s edges. Water entered the widening hollow, and the child drew up its feet.
Heh pulled her close. The water drained away.
“Keep it here,” he said.
The child pressed its palm against Hauhet’s arm. A bright print remained when it lifted its hand.
Heat entered her flesh.
She watched the print fade. Then another appeared beside it. The child was standing now, braced between their arms, trying to straighten its knees. Its head touched the arch they had made.
Hauhet shifted, giving it a little room. Heh shifted with her. Still the child could not stand upright.
Its light gathered underneath their arms. The mud began to dry. A crack ran between its feet.
“We are holding it down,” Hauhet said.
“We are keeping the water out.”
The child turned toward Heh’s voice. Its mouth opened, and this time the sound was a cry. Hauhet felt it in the bones of her hands.
She loosened one finger.
A thread of water entered beneath it.
She loosened another.
The thread thickened. It struck the dried mud, gouged a channel, and broke through beneath the child. One bright foot slipped into the crack.
Hauhet snatched at it.
Distance opened under her hand.
The child dropped to its knee. Water surged over its shoulder. Heh closed the ring so hard that her fingers ground together. The wave broke against their wrists, throwing cold spray into her face.
When it passed, the child crouched in the mud. Its light was no larger than the trembling glow in its chest.
Hauhet kept her hands clasped around Heh’s. She could feel him shaking.
“Not again,” he said.
She looked at the child. It was looking up through the space between her arms.
Beyond Her Hand
Hauhet leaned close enough to feel the child’s heat upon her lips. She could hold it like this. She and Heh could close their arms around this one little place, and Nun’s waters would pass outside. The child would have a patch of earth, a roof of hands, their faces above it.
It raised one muddy finger toward the darkness beyond her shoulder.
She followed the gesture.
There was nothing there. No bank, no branch, no other hand waiting to receive it.
She looked back at Heh.
“You must let go of me.”
His grip tightened.
“You saw what happened.”
“I let the water through. I must make room beyond it.”
“How far?”
She had no answer she could put into his hands.
He looked down. The child had caught the edge of one of his fingers. It tried to pull itself upright, failed, and tried again.
Heh lowered that hand to the earth.
“Then keep this side,” he said. “I will keep the other.”
Hauhet laid her own palm flat beside the child. It climbed onto her fingers, leaving warm streaks of mud. She lifted it clear of the crack.
With her other hand she still held Heh.
“Ready?” he asked.
She nodded, then caught his fingers harder.
For a moment neither moved.
The child shifted its weight. Its toes curled around her smallest finger. Hauhet looked at those toes, and opened the hand that held Heh.
The water drove between them.
She turned her empty palm against it. Heh did the same from the other side. Their joined arms had held back a wave; their separated hands now received all the dark water that had never known a shore.
Mud rushed outward beneath the child. The island lengthened. Heh slid away across it, his heels cutting furrows in the wet earth.
Hauhet reached for him by instinct.
The child lurched.
She stopped. Its foot hung over the edge of her hand. Below it, the widening gulf shone with broken light.
Heh called her name.
She planted her empty hand against the water and pushed outward. Far across the island, he answered the movement. The earth between them grew firm. There was a strip of it now that neither covered, a place the child could stand without touching either god.
Hauhet lowered her hand.
The child stepped onto the earth.
It swayed. She kept her fingers close behind its back, near enough to catch it, but the space between them widened whenever she tried. She withdrew them. The child found its balance.
Its light spread along the ground. Hauhet saw the first grain of sand cast a shadow.
Then the child began to rise.
It lifted one foot, expecting another foothold. There was none. It reached back toward her.
Hauhet raised her hand.
Across the new land, Heh stood with both arms braced against the waters. If she caught the child, she would draw it back beneath their shelter. If she closed the distance, the small free place between them would close with it.
The child’s fingers hovered above hers.
She turned her hand palm upward and held it open.
Light poured through the gap.
The child rose beyond her fingertips, then beyond her head. Warmth swept across the island. Water flashed. Hauhet saw Heh lift his face, and for an instant every drop upon it shone.
She called to him.
He did not answer at once. She waited, her hand still raised.
Then his voice crossed the island.
“I am here.”
The Space Between
The sun climbed. The child’s face had become too bright to follow, and Hauhet lowered her eyes.
Her empty hand was streaked with drying mud. She closed it slowly, pressing her thumb into the places where the small feet had stood.
Across the island Heh was looking down at something. He lifted his arm. His shadow stretched over the earth toward her, thin and dark against the first warm sand.
Hauhet raised her own arm.
Between them, upon the land neither of them had touched, the two shadows met.
