Nut

The Space Between

Geb’s thumb slipped from her hand.

Nut caught it between two fingers. Beneath her back, Shu’s shoulders rose another span, and the narrow darkness between her body and Geb filled with a rush of cold air.

“Wait,” she said.

Her father stopped. The muscles along his arms trembled. Below him, Geb lay with one knee raised, trying to follow her upward. His free hand gripped her wrist.

“Enough room,” Geb said. “You have made enough.”

Shu turned his face aside. He could barely move it between them.

“Breathe, then.”

Geb drew breath. Nut watched his chest rise until it struck hers. The air fled with a thin whistle; Shu bent beneath their combined weight.

For a moment she held tighter. She knew the hollow beside Geb’s throat, the warmth behind his ear. There had been no distance in which to lose him. Now her father’s hands pressed beneath her ribs, asking her to become something vast and cold.

“Look at me,” Geb said.

She did. His thumb was still trapped between her fingers.

Then Shu gasped.

Nut opened her hand.

The earth fell away. Or she rose; she could not tell which. Geb’s reaching fingers became ridges, his outstretched body a breadth of dark ground, and air poured into the space she had left. It moved beneath her with a force that made her want to curl against it.

“Your hands,” Shu said. “Put them down in the west.”

She reached until her palms found the world’s far edge. Her feet came to rest in the east. Between them her body curved, lifted on Shu’s arms. She could see Geb entire now, and could no longer reach his face.

He rolled toward her. The ground heaved. Shu staggered, and Nut’s left elbow buckled.

“Stay,” she told Geb.

He stopped at her voice.

It was the first thing she had asked him to do that kept them apart.

The Last Light

Light moved across Geb, revealing the folds and hollows of him. Nut followed it with her eyes. Where it touched, the earth warmed; where it passed, long shadows gathered.

She had thought the brightness would remain between them.

But the sun descended toward her hands.

“Ra,” she called.

His disk had reddened. At its edge she could make out the face of an old man, looking past her toward the darkness beyond the west.

“Stop there.”

“I cannot.”

“Then turn.”

He came on. His light caught the underside of her fingers, making them shine red through the flesh.

She tried to cup one hand beneath him. Her weight shifted onto the other. The vault of her body lurched; below, Shu cried out and drove his shoulder harder against her.

Nut put her palm down again.

Ra was level with her mouth now. Behind him, the strip of light on Geb narrowed. Soon there would be nothing between the earth and the blackness except her body.

“Where will you go?” she asked.

The old face turned toward her.

“Will you receive me?”

His heat dried her tongue. She looked down. Geb’s face was already hidden, but she could still see the hand he had raised toward her, caught in the last red light.

She opened her mouth.

The sun entered her.

Heat struck the back of her throat. She tried to draw breath and found fire there; tried to speak, and the light pushed deeper. Her fingers dug into the western edge of the earth. The disk slid beneath her breastbone, and darkness closed over Geb.

“Nut?”

His voice came from much farther away than before.

She could not answer. The sun’s weight moved inside her, slow and immense, searing a path through places that had never held anything. She felt its rim pass beneath one rib, then another.

Shu’s hands tightened under her.

“Stay as you are.”

She wanted to tell him that she did not know how.

Within the Dark

The heat advanced, then stopped.

Nut waited for it to move again. Her arms had begun to shake. She could feel each grain beneath her palms, yet the thing inside her had become so large that she could hardly locate its edges.

“Ra.”

No answer.

She called again, and a dull warmth stirred beneath her voice. It rose toward her throat. Pain closed her mouth before she could make a third sound.

Below, Geb was moving.

She heard the scrape of earth against earth. Then something touched her wrist: his fingertips, reaching up the western boundary.

“I am here,” he said.

Nut bent toward him.

The relief of that small movement nearly undid her. She lowered her chin, seeking his forehead in the dark, and her shoulders softened. For one breath she felt the old shape of herself returning, the body that could lie beside his.

The sun drove hard against her ribs.

She cried out. Shu’s feet dragged across Geb as the sky dipped. Air burst from beneath her in a violent gust, flattening the earth’s loose dust against the ground.

“Higher!” Shu shouted.

Nut pushed against her palms. The pressure within her eased, though the heat remained fixed.

Geb’s fingers withdrew.

“Come down,” he said. “Let him go.”

She turned her face toward the place his voice had been.

“Where?”

Neither of them spoke.

She remembered the narrowing red strip, the darkness waiting beyond her hands. If she opened her mouth now, the sun would return to that edge, old and exhausted. If she lowered herself to Geb, there would be no room even for its failing light.

“Father,” she said, “can you move him?”

Shu shifted one hand. Without its support, her body sagged around the heat. He caught her before she had time to cry out.

“No.” His voice was rough. “I can hold you.”

She pressed her lips together. The sun had moved when she was stretched between east and west. It had stopped when she began to fold toward Geb.

Nut braced her hands and pushed her feet farther east.

For a moment the heat slid onward.

Then her right foot slipped.

A deep shudder passed through her. Loose earth crumbled beneath her heel; the eastern boundary gave way, and the sun lodged low inside her, burning against a passage too narrow to release it.

She could feel the morning there. It had nowhere to go.

The Eastern Edge

“Geb.”

His answer came at once.

“My foot. Hold it.”

The earth shifted beneath her heel. His hand closed around her ankle, and she almost wept at the familiarity of his grip.

“Pull me toward you,” he said. “I can take your weight.”

“No. Hold me away.”

His fingers loosened.

Nut spread her toes, searching for ground. A little more of the bank fell beneath them.

“Please.”

Geb’s hand closed again. This time he pressed her foot firmly into the eastern earth and set his other hand against her heel.

“Here?”

“Yes.”

Shu raised her. Nut pushed west with her hands and east against Geb. The heat stretched within her; for a moment she could not bear it and bent a knee.

The passage closed.

She heard herself make a small, helpless sound. Geb pulled at her heel, trying to ease the strain.

“Don’t,” she said.

He became still.

She waited until she could breathe. Then she straightened her leg against his hands.

Light showed between her feet.

It was no wider than a reed. Geb saw it too; his grip changed, and the earth beneath her heel rose to meet her. Shu lifted with both arms. She could feel how badly he was shaking, how much of her he could no longer carry.

Nut pushed herself higher.

The sun moved.

Its passage drove the breath from her, but she held the curve of her body. The thin light widened across Geb’s hands. His knuckles emerged from the darkness, then his wrists, then the face she had been searching for all night.

He was looking east.

“Nut,” he said, and there was wonder in it.

She let the sun go.

The bright rim broke free. Heat rushed out of her in a long wave, and the newborn sun rose past her feet. For a moment she could feel nothing at all where she had carried it.

Then air touched her again.

Below her, Geb opened his eyes against the light. It ran along his shoulders and down into the hollows of the earth. Shu stood between them, head bowed, his hands still raised.

Nut wanted to rest. Every part of her wanted to descend.

Geb kept his palm against her heel.

“Will it come back?” he asked.

She watched the sun begin its journey across the open space.

“Yes.”

He pressed his thumb against the sole of her foot, once, as he used to press it into her hand.

Nut spread her fingers in the west.