Menhit

The Hand Above the Wheel

The child on Khnum’s wheel opened its eyes before he had made the lids.

Menhit caught the hand reaching over his shoulder.

It was thin and cold, with too many joints. Her fingers closed around its wrist; the rest of it remained in the darkness beneath the roof. Khnum stopped the wheel with his heel. Under his thumbs the child’s face sagged, still wet, its two bare eyes following the thing Menhit held.

“Keep working,” she said.

The wrist bent backward. A finger touched the inside of her arm.

Where it touched, she felt nothing. No pressure, no cold now. A small round patch of her flesh had ceased to feel as though it belonged to her.

She bared her teeth.

“Not here.”

Her knife passed through the wrist. The hand fell beside the wheel and broke into five pieces, each no thicker than a reed. Before she could put her foot on them, they had slipped between the floor stones.

The arm drew back into the roof.

Khnum cupped his hands around the child. “Menhit.”

She was already looking up. Something moved along a beam. It moved badly, folding where no living creature ought to fold, and each time it passed a strip of light she saw daylight through it.

Beyond the workshop door, feet scuffed in the courtyard. People were carrying water to fill the temple jars. Someone called for a cup.

The thing on the beam turned toward those voices.

Menhit leaped.

She struck it against the lintel hard enough to shake sand from the roof. It spread beneath her palm like a hole in cloth. She drove the knife into its center. The blade hit stone.

A laugh came from the other side of the door.

She tore the knife free and went after it.

What Slipped Behind Her

It ran along the foot of the courtyard wall, darting behind the jars. Menhit could see it now: a narrow darkness with a mouth at either end. One mouth laughed. The other sucked at whatever it passed.

A jar gave a dry crack. Its side vanished, and water struck the paving stones.

The carriers dropped their poles.

“Against the far wall,” Menhit told them.

The thing swerved toward a young man who had frozen beside the spilled water. She stepped between them and opened her mouth.

Her breath struck the ground white.

The darkness whipped back. She followed the movement with the flame, driving it away from the man’s feet, past the broken jar, into the angle of the wall. Stone reddened. The two mouths shrank to one.

For the first time it made a sound that pleased her.

She took another step.

From the workshop, Khnum called her name.

There was no command in it. That stopped her more sharply than a command would have done.

She shut her jaws. In the corner, the mouth flickered.

“You missed one,” it said.

She drove her heel into the flickering mouth. Fire spread beneath her sole; she held it there until the stone glowed through the last shred of darkness.

Then she crossed the courtyard in three strides.

Khnum sat motionless at the wheel. One broad hand supported the child’s head. The other covered its mouth.

The body was finished now. There were creases at the elbows, nails fine as flakes of shell, a little depression at the throat. One foot rested against Khnum’s wrist. It did not move.

Between two of his fingers, something black pushed outward.

Menhit put her knife beside it.

“Lift your hand.”

“No.”

“I can cut it.”

“It is behind the lips.”

She lowered herself until her eyes were level with his fingers. A pointed darkness withdrew into the mouth. The child’s chest remained still.

She looked down at the floor. Five narrow seams ran beneath the wheel. She had seen the hand break. She had counted the pieces.

She had left them there.

Outside, someone began to cry over a burned foot. The sound reached her as if from a great distance.

“How long?” she asked.

“He has not breathed yet.”

“How long can you hold him?”

Khnum’s fingers were trembling. She had watched those hands shape wings so delicate that sunlight passed through them. She had never seen them tremble.

“Until I cannot.”

Menhit put away the knife.

Upon His Brow

She set a finger against the child’s cheek. Warm clay yielded beneath it, and at once the darkness pushed toward the pressure.

She withdrew. The cheek kept the mark.

From under Khnum’s palm came a voice scarcely louder than a fly.

“Let him open it.”

Menhit bent closer.

“I will leave,” the voice said. “One breath. You may have everything after that.”

Khnum’s hand tightened. The voice made a soft, wet clicking sound.

Menhit understood what it wanted. An open mouth, a first breath drawn inward, and something waiting where that breath should go.

She could burn the mouth. She could burn everything inside it. The ease of that answer was almost unbearable.

Khnum shifted the child against his arm, protecting its small back from the edge of the wheel.

“Look at me,” he said.

She did not.

“Menhit.”

His voice made her lift her head.

“If you strike through him, there is nothing left for me to finish.”

“I know.”

But she had needed him to say it. The white heat gathered behind her teeth had begun to make the wet clay steam.

She closed her mouth and stepped back.

At the doorway, one of the water carriers lifted a rattle. Its beads struck the frame once, then again. An uncertain rhythm crossed the room.

Menhit turned on the sound.

“Not yet.”

The rattle stopped.

She looked from the child to Khnum. The black point showed between his fingers again, feeling for an opening. It had fled her in the courtyard. It would not flee now. It had found a place her fire could not reach.

Yet the arm had reached over Khnum’s shoulder before it reached for his work.

The maker had been within its grasp too.

“Would you leave the little one for him?” she asked.

Khnum went still.

Beneath his hand, the clicking ceased.

Menhit moved behind him. She laid her palm against the back of his neck, where the pulse of his work beat slow and strong.

“No,” he said quietly.

“You must let it think it has you.”

“And when it comes?”

“I will be where I should have stayed.”

For a moment she felt his neck stiffen beneath her hand. Then his head inclined, barely enough to admit her touch.

She gathered herself close. Her weight drew inward; the floor dropped away. Scales closed over her skin. She passed around his head in a single tightening coil, and raised her hood above his forehead.

From there she could see the child, the covered mouth, the narrow space between Khnum’s face and his working hands.

She could also feel his pulse against her whole length.

“Slowly,” she said.

He lifted one finger.

The darkness bulged into the opening. It formed a small head, without eyes, and turned toward Khnum’s breath.

Menhit held still.

It came farther, a glistening thread drawn out of the child. Khnum lifted another finger. The child’s lips parted beneath it.

The thread brushed Khnum’s thumb. A patch of his skin went gray.

Menhit’s hood widened.

The little head stopped.

She pressed her coils against Khnum’s brow and waited. His pulse quickened. Beneath his hand, the child’s foot twitched once.

The darkness lunged for his face.

Menhit struck sideways.

She caught it behind the head and swung it clear of the child. Its body pulled taut between her jaws and the open mouth. She could not burn yet. Part of it was still inside.

It pulled back.

Her coils slid against Khnum’s skin. She tightened them. The thing thrashed, opening a second mouth against her lower jaw. Where its teeth touched, feeling disappeared.

She held.

Khnum slid his thumb along the child’s throat, drawing the wet flesh into its finished shape. The black thread came another finger’s breadth into the light.

Menhit pulled with him.

The child arched.

A last length of darkness whipped from between its lips.

Menhit threw her head away from the wheel and breathed through her closed teeth.

Fire forced itself along the thing she held. It writhed against the heat, growing thin, thinner still. A mouth opened to laugh. The flame went into it.

There was a brief hard taste, like biting sand.

Then nothing pulled against her jaws.

She stayed coiled, unable to release her hold on the place where it had been.

Below her, Khnum bent to the child.

He breathed.

The little chest rose. Menhit watched it fall, and waited with him through the terrible space before it rose again.

The child cried.

The Potter’s Hands

Menhit unwound from Khnum’s brow. Her feet met the floor, and she caught the edge of the wheel to steady herself.

A black mark spread beneath her fingers.

Khnum wrapped the child in linen. Its fists pushed out, furious at the cloth. He gave a tired laugh and loosened it.

Menhit reached toward them.

The nearest fold of linen curled from the heat of her hand.

She stopped.

Outside, the water carriers drew back when she appeared. One was sitting against the wall while another poured water over his foot. The broken jar lay where her breath had struck it. Its edges had melted smooth.

Menhit walked to the center of the courtyard. There was room there. Nothing near enough to scorch.

She could still feel the devourer’s teeth, although that part of her jaw felt nothing at all. Her shoulders waited for another movement to answer. When a sandal scraped behind her, she turned so quickly that its owner stumbled.

Khnum stood in the doorway.

“The child?”

“Asleep.”

He came toward her with his hands empty. Clay had dried white in the folds of his knuckles. The gray patch on his thumb remained.

“Stay there,” she said.

He stopped just beyond her reach.

Then he raised one foot and set it down with a firm slap against the paving stones.

She stared at him.

He did it again. This time he moved sideways, giving her space. His heel caught a fragment of the jar; it skittered away. He glanced at it, then lifted his foot more carefully.

“You have work,” she said.

“Yes.”

He held out his hands.

The water carrier at the door began to shake the rattle. Very softly now, listening for Khnum’s feet. A second man clapped, missed the beat, and waited before trying again.

Menhit could have stepped away. Beyond the wall lay the desert, wide enough for all the heat she carried. She knew how to walk there alone.

Khnum’s palms remained open.

She lifted one hand, stopping before it touched his. The air between them shivered.

He moved his foot. She followed it with hers.

Again.

Her first step struck too hard. Dust jumped. Khnum did not retreat; he answered with a smaller step, and she had to shorten hers to keep beside him.

They went slowly around the broken jar.

The rattle grew steadier. Menhit heard the two men disagreeing under their breath about the rhythm. She heard water drip from the cracked vessel. Her next exhalation left her without flame.

Khnum’s fingers brushed hers.

She let them stay.

They made another circuit, and another. When he finally stopped, she found that her hand had closed around his, and that the dried clay in his palm had softened with their sweat.

From the doorway came a small complaining sound.

Khnum looked toward it. Menhit went with him.

The child lay awake in the crook of a water carrier’s arm. One fist had escaped the linen again. Menhit held her finger above it, close enough now to feel the warmth of the small body.

The hand opened, found her finger, and held on.