The Closed Jar
Nefertem heard the lid strike stone, and the eastern sky stopped brightening.
He turned from the temple pool. A stem stood broken above the water. Beside it, the round impression of a jar marked the mud, and a woman’s footprints led toward the gate.
The lotus had been there a moment before: the first flower, the one whose fragrance rose to Ra when night loosened its hold upon the world. Now the pool reflected a narrow band of gray that would not widen.
Nefertem followed the footprints.
He found the woman in the perfumers’ court, pressing wax around an alabaster lid. Her thumb left a red smear on the pale stone. She had cut herself gathering his flower.
“Open it.”
She pulled the jar against her belly.
“Lord, there are oils inside. Nothing fit for you.”
From beneath the lid came a sweetness too fresh for any oil. He could distinguish the wet root, the unopened heart, the first breath of the world. Beneath it lay the sour smell of a fever.
“Where is the child?”
The woman’s eyes moved toward a reed curtain.
Nefertem put it aside.
The boy lay on a workbench cleared of bowls and grinding stones. Each breath lifted the hollow beneath his ribs; each pause lasted long enough for his mother to lean forward. A little clay boat rested beside his hand. Its mast was a crooked reed.
“I put the flower near him,” she said. “He breathed without fighting. For the first time in three nights.”
“What is your name?”
“Tia.”
“Tia, that flower must open.”
“It did open. I saw what it could do.”
She showed him the lid. A thread of reed lay beneath its edge. Pull it out, and a narrow passage would let a little fragrance through. Push it back, and the scent would remain enclosed.
“I make perfume,” she said. “I know how to keep something from being lost.”
Beyond the court, a man called to another man about the hour. Neither had heard the temple’s morning signal. Nefertem could feel Ra waiting beyond the horizon, drawing toward the breath that had not reached him.
“If you keep it shut, morning cannot come.”
Tia looked through the doorway at the stalled gray sky. Her fingers tightened around the jar.
“And if I open it, what will I have tonight?”
The Broken Seal
Nefertem held out his hand.
The woman backed toward the workbench.
He had come expecting a thief. There should have been a demand, a surrender, the flower restored to water. Instead there was a mother measuring the space between her son’s breaths, and the space was growing.
“Give it to me.”
“Tell me he will live.”
The boy’s mouth opened. No breath followed.
Tia pulled out the reed. A thin sweetness escaped. The child’s chest rose, and she thrust the reed back beneath the lid.
“Tell me.”
Nefertem had no promise he could place in her hands. The flower was cut. Its fragrance would diminish whether it escaped into the court or passed beneath the boy’s nose. He could feel the severed stem inside the stone, drawing on the last life it held.
He stepped forward.
The sound in his throat made Tia recoil. It was a low, terrible sound for such a small room. His teeth lengthened against his lips; the muscles of his jaw gathered into the strength of the lioness whose son he was.
Tia struck the workbench with her hip.
The jar slipped.
She caught its neck, but its base hit the stone mortar on the floor. A crack leapt up the alabaster. At the same instant, the boy rolled toward the edge of the bench.
Nefertem caught him.
The jar struck the floor a second time.
Fragrance flooded the room. Outside, the gray sky flashed gold. Tia dropped to her knees and pressed both hands against the crack, but the sweetness streamed between her fingers.
“Help me!”
Nefertem set the boy down. He knelt beside her and closed his palm over the broken stone. The escaping breath thinned, then stopped.
For a moment they stayed like that, their hands locked around the jar.
The gold beyond the doorway faded.
Tia looked at his mouth. The lion’s teeth withdrew, slowly enough that he felt each one.
“You frightened me,” she said.
“I know.”
“You frightened him.”
On the bench, the boy was watching them. His eyes were open now. One hand searched the wood until it found the clay boat.
Nefertem kept his palm against the crack.
“Bring water.”
Tia did not move.
“I will not take it while you turn your back.”
Only then did she rise.
She returned with a shallow basin. Together they lowered the jar into it. Nefertem broke the wax seal with his nail and lifted the lid.
The lotus lay crushed against the inner wall. One blue petal clung to the stone. He eased the flower free, guiding its damaged stem into the basin, and waited.
The petals did not spread.
Tia touched the water as though she might find something wrong with it.
“Fresh from the well,” she said.
Nefertem lifted the stem. The cut end was dark. No root followed it.
He could place a cut flower in water. He could not make that the same thing as leaving it alive.
From beyond the eastern edge of the world came the beginning of an enormous inhalation. Dust crept across the court toward the gate. The reed curtain lifted and remained suspended.
Ra was seeking his flower.
The boy began to cough.
Beneath the Flower
Nefertem carried the basin to the workbench. There was a little fragrance left in the heart of the lotus, folded tightly between the inner petals. Enough for one deep breath.
The east pulled at it.
He could lift the flower into that waiting current. Light would enter the court. Doors would open throughout Memphis; men would go to their work, and smoke would rise from the cooking fires.
Tia put one hand against her son’s back. She did not reach for the basin.
The boy tried to sit. His little boat tipped off the bench and struck the floor, breaking its mast.
“Leave it,” his mother said. “Stay still.”
He tried to speak, but the effort became another cough.
Nefertem bent the lotus toward him.
Tia looked up.
The god loosened the inner petals with two fingers. He held them beneath the boy’s nose and sheltered the flower from the pull of the east with his other hand.
“Slowly.”
The child breathed in.
The sweetness passed out of the flower. Its blue deepened, then dulled. A petal dropped onto the blanket.
Nefertem waited through the next breath, and the next. The hollow under the boy’s ribs no longer tightened so sharply. His hand opened on his mother’s wrist.
Outside, the suspended curtain fell.
Tia watched the dead flower in the god’s hand.
“What will you give the sun?”
Nefertem looked toward the gate, where the path led back to the pool.
The memory that rose in him had no temple around it. No bank, no well, no firm place for a foot. Only water, and the effort of something small pushing upward through it.
He had been a flower before anyone could carry one to him.
“Bring your son,” he said.
Tia wrapped the boy in the blanket and tucked the cracked jar into its folds. Nefertem picked up the broken boat and laid it beside him. He left the dead flower floating in the basin.
At the pool, the broken stem had disappeared. The water had risen over the lowest step, although no channel fed it. Beneath its surface he could no longer see the tiles. The blackness went down farther than the temple’s foundations, farther than the ground on which Memphis stood.
“Keep him here.”
Tia laid the boy on the upper step. When Nefertem entered the water, she caught his hand.
The cold bit into his legs. On the bank, Tia shivered.
The water climbed to his knees, his waist. Beneath his feet the steps dissolved into yielding silt. He searched for the next one and found nothing.
Tia braced her heels against the stone.
“There is no bottom.”
“There was none the first time.”
She pulled. For an instant he let her. His shoulder rose from the water, and he felt how easy it would be to return to the bank, stand beside the child he had saved, and remain himself.
The eastern sky was black now.
He opened his hand.
Tia kept hold of his fingers.
“If I let go—”
“Let go.”
Her grip loosened one finger at a time.
He sank.
Water closed over his face. He thrust downward with his feet, seeking purchase, but each movement carried him farther from the bank. His lungs demanded the very thing the waiting sun demanded.
He tried to draw a breath and found water.
The impulse to strike rose in him. Teeth, claws, the fierce strength of his mother’s blood: he could tear at anything that held him.
There was nothing here to tear.
He stopped fighting the descent.
His feet narrowed into roots. They entered the dark without finding its end. The weight of his body gathered into a stem, and the hands he had opened upon the bank folded around the small, unspent brightness within him.
Above, somewhere, the child coughed once.
Nefertem pushed upward.
The water pressed against the closed bud. He pushed again. Its tip met a resistance so slight that it might have been nothing, yet all the darkness lay beneath it.
He broke the surface.
Cold air touched one blue petal. He opened it. Then another.
Across the water came the searching breath of Ra.
Nefertem opened the heart of the flower.
Open Water
Light reached the upper step first.
Tia put a hand before her son’s eyes. The boy turned his face into her shoulder, complaining at the brightness with the small, impatient voice she had not heard for days.
Below them, the tiles reappeared beneath the water.
Nefertem stood in the shallows. Mud held his ankles. Beside him, a blue lotus rested on its own leaves, its stem descending unbroken into the pool.
Tia drew the cracked jar out of the blanket. She looked from its open mouth to the flower.
She lifted her son and carried him down one step. Nefertem held out a hand to steady them.
The boy leaned toward the lotus. He breathed its scent, then reached for it.
His mother caught his wrist gently.
“Here,” she said. “You can smell it here.”
He settled against her and watched a drop of water travel down a petal.
From the city came the sound of someone opening a wooden shutter. Then another. Tia set the cracked alabaster jar on the bank to free both arms for her son.
Its lid lay beside it in the sun.
