Heh

The Distance Between His Hands

The oar struck Heh’s wrist for the third time.

Each time, the boat had been a spear’s length away. Each time, he had reached for its prow. Yet the blade came back to strike the same place, and the prow remained beyond his fingers.

“Stop rowing,” he said.

The figure at the stern lifted the oar. Water slipped from it without a sound.

Ra sat low in the middle of the barque, wrapped in the last red light of his passage through the dark. A thread of smoke rose from the wood beneath his feet. Behind him, the wake ran straight into a darkness without stars.

“Where is the landing?” Ra asked.

Heh turned.

There should have been a pale edge there: the eastern opening, narrow as the cut in a closed eye. He had helped the sun toward it through more mornings than any tongue could name. Now there was only water.

He dipped his hand. Nothing resisted it. No cold, no current, no bottom. The water entered the spaces between his fingers as easily as if those spaces had never been occupied.

He knew it.

This was the depth in which he and Hauhet had existed before there had been a shore to approach. It had found a way into the passage. The last reach of the night’s river had opened into his own immensity.

Across the bow, Hauhet’s face appeared.

She was close enough for him to see the small reflection of Ra in her eyes. When she put out her hand, however, her fingers dwindled into the distance.

“Can you hold the far side?” he called.

“There is no far side.”

“Find where it was.”

She looked past him. For a moment he could see what she was seeking: two dark slopes with a fine seam between them. Then the slopes slid apart, and her face was alone again.

The rower lowered his blade.

“No,” Heh said. “You have already made that stroke.”

“I have made it a hundred times.”

A bright drop fell from the oar. It hissed as it touched the water.

Heh looked at Ra. The red light around the god’s knees had thinned.

The Longer Reach

Heh planted one foot beneath him. There was no ground, but he had stood in the waters before ground existed. He rose until the barque was small beside his chest, then reached around it with both arms.

His fingers passed beneath the hull. He felt the heat of it, the narrow keel, a roughness in the timber where the rower had worn it with his heel.

“Now,” he told Hauhet.

She caught at the prow.

Heh drew the boat toward her.

Water opened between his wrists. The barque, which had lain against his chest, was suddenly far below it. Hauhet stood beyond the bow, receding as he pulled. He drew harder. His arms lengthened; the gap lengthened with them.

“Enough.” Her voice reached him faintly.

He spread his hands farther, meaning to gather the whole passage.

The last trace of the eastern slopes disappeared.

“Heh. Enough.”

He stopped.

The boat swung loose. The rower fell against the stern and caught himself with the oar across his knees. Ra put one hand on the gunwale. Where his fingers touched, the wood glowed and then went black.

Heh had not brought them nearer. He had given them farther to go.

He lowered himself until his eyes were level with the boat. The movement took him past the same strip of hull again and again. He forced himself to stop trying to arrive.

Ra was watching him.

“You cannot carry me out?”

“I can carry you.”

“How far?”

Heh did not answer.

The rower rubbed his palms together. At first Heh thought the man had burned them. Then he saw that he was shivering.

Ra drew his hand from the rail and cupped a little fire between his fingers. He offered it to the rower, who leaned over it with his eyes shut.

“Keep that,” Heh said.

“He must be able to hold the oar.”

Beyond the boat, Hauhet raised one hand. Something pale lay across it. A palm rib, long and stripped, its edge cut with marks. Heh lifted its fellow from the water beside him.

The notches had always been there. People cut them into stone beneath kings’ names. They shaped his lifted arms on things small enough to wear against the skin. Years upon years, held between two hands.

He put a thumb into one of the marks.

An edge pressed back.

One Stroke

“Hauhet. Hold yours beside the bow.”

She laid the palm rib along the water. He set his parallel to it, beside the stern.

Between the two pale stems, the barque lay in a channel scarcely wider than its hull.

“Row.”

The blade entered. The rower pulled. Heh watched the bow pass a notch on Hauhet’s rib.

Another notch appeared in front of it.

The blade came out. When it entered again, the same notch lay ahead.

The rower made a small sound through his teeth.

Heh felt the rib lengthening in his hand. It offered more marks, more room, more years. Every time the boat used a little of the passage, he supplied more. He had been doing it without knowing.

He clamped his thumb against the notch.

“No more.”

The stem pulled through his grip.

He caught it with his other hand, and the barque rolled. Ra braced a foot against the side. Smoke rose where his heel struck.

“Hauhet, choose a mark.”

“Which?”

“The one beneath your hand.”

“There are others.”

“Keep that one.”

She looked down. He saw her close her fingers.

Heh pulled his rib against his breast and held one notch under his thumb. Beyond his fist it continued into the dark, bearing more marks than a world could use. He let that length lie. Here, between his thumb and Hauhet’s fingers, he would give the boat only this much water.

“Again,” he said.

The rower looked at Ra.

Ra opened his cupped hands. Their little fire ran along the oar shaft. The rower caught it before it went out and drove the blade down.

The boat moved.

Not an appearance of movement. Its stern passed the notch beneath Heh’s thumb. Water struck his knuckles. The rower’s mouth opened, and he pulled again before anyone could speak.

The palm rib burned.

Heh jerked his hand. Instantly the prow slid backward.

“Hold it!” Hauhet cried.

He tightened his grip. The prow stopped beside her wrist.

Heat travelled through the rib. A red seam opened beneath his thumb. There had always been room for him to draw away from whatever touched him. Now the whole small passage depended upon his remaining here.

Ra lifted his head. A faint line shone behind Hauhet’s shoulder.

The east.

The Last Length

The rower pulled until his back shook. The seam widened enough to show a strip of pale earth. Heh could smell it: dry dust, a bank warmed by yesterday’s sun.

The scent went almost as quickly as it came. The palm rib was bending in his hands.

“Do not pull against me,” Hauhet said.

“I am holding.”

“You are making yourself larger.”

He looked down.

His fingers had grown around the stem. Beneath them the notches were spreading apart. He had tried to escape the pain by giving it more of himself to cross.

He brought his hands back to the size they had been.

The burn gathered beneath his thumb. His knees gave, and he went down into the water, clutching the rib against his body. One knee found something firm. He did not look to see what it was. He needed it to remain there.

The bow scraped Hauhet’s palm.

She reached for it with her free hand, but she could not catch the rail without releasing her mark. Her fingertips brushed wood and fell short.

“One more stroke,” she said.

The rower lifted the oar. Its blade hung above the water.

“Row,” Ra told him.

“I cannot feel my hands.”

Ra stood. The boat tipped, and Heh bore down on his rib to keep it in the channel. The sun god crossed to the stern. His light no longer filled the boat; it lay close along his limbs, showing each movement separately against the dark.

He placed his hands over the rower’s.

Together they lowered the blade.

Heh felt the stroke begin beneath his scorched palm. The whole passage pressed against the little edge he held. If he opened his hand, the pain would spread into distances where nothing could ever reach it. He could feel those distances waiting, familiar and without demand.

The oar bent.

He drove the rib against his raised knee and closed both hands around it.

The bow came up. Hauhet caught the rail.

For a moment the boat stood slantwise between them, its stern still in Heh’s water, its prow above the pale bank. Ra and the rower leaned together. Hauhet pulled. The palm rib split beneath Heh’s fingers with a sound like a reed torn lengthwise.

He held the two pieces together.

The stern lifted free.

Light struck the water. Heh shut his eyes, but he felt the passage empty between his hands, felt the pull leave the broken stem. Beyond his eyelids the world reddened.

An oar knocked against wood. Once, then again, moving away.

He stayed on one knee until he could open his hands.

Hauhet stood across from him in the shallows. The eastern slopes had returned. Between them the barque climbed into a sky that was beginning to show its breadth.

She laid her palm rib down and came toward him.

Heh reached for her. She was several steps away. He let her remain there while she crossed them.

Water moved around her ankles. She took another step, and another. He watched each one.

When she reached him, she turned his hand over. A dark mark lay where his thumb had held the notch.

Her fingers rested against it.

He closed his hand around them.