Sekhmet

The Offering

The priest had laid a child across Sekhmet’s threshold, and now he was asking her to open her mouth.

He had been asking for some time.

Around him, the evening offerings cooled on their dishes. Bread hardened. The fat on the meat grew pale. He touched none of it. His hands remained under the boy’s head, keeping it turned so that the thin trickle from his lips ran onto the paving rather than back into his throat.

“Take what is yours,” he said.

Sekhmet stepped out of the darkness behind her image.

The priest’s shoulders jerked. He did not run. The boy was lying on the hem of his robe; flight would have required him to move the child first.

“What have you brought me?”

He looked at the dishes, then at her. His gaze reached her teeth and stopped.

“Your heat.”

The boy’s eyelids fluttered. Sekhmet could feel the fever before she bent over him: the fierce pulse beneath his jaw, the parched furnace of his mouth. It answered something in her, as a distant lion answers another across the dark.

She reached down.

The priest caught her wrist.

For a moment neither moved. His fingers were small against her. He saw where he had put them, but kept them there.

“Not him,” he whispered. “Only what is yours.”

Sekhmet looked at his hand until he removed it.

“What is his name?”

“Panehsy.”

“And yours?”

“Dedi.”

“Move your knee, Dedi. You are kneeling on his fingers.”

He shifted at once. Four small fingers uncurled on the paving, their impressions whitening slowly out of the flesh.

Sekhmet crouched beside them. She set one hand against the boy’s chest and opened her mouth.

The heat rose eagerly. It belonged with her. Beneath her palm she felt it loosening from the child’s limbs, streaming out of his cramped belly, gathering beneath his ribs. His body arched.

Dedi tightened his grip on the head.

The fever surged towards Sekhmet’s breath. For one clean instant she felt the pleasure of a thing obeying her completely.

Then the heart beneath her hand faltered.

The boy’s eyes opened without seeing.

“Stop,” Dedi said.

She could have finished before the word ended. Another breath would empty the small body. The fever would be gone; the struggle would be over.

Dedi pushed his face into the space between hers and the child’s. His breath struck her muzzle, sour with sleeplessness.

“Leave him something to live with.”

Sekhmet closed her jaws.

The force she had called struck the back of her teeth. Her head snapped sideways. A golden cup beside the offerings softened and folded, spilling wine over the stone.

Dedi pulled the boy against his knees.

“Do not move him.”

The priest froze.

Sekhmet lowered her palm again. The heartbeat was still there. She waited through its broken rhythm until she found the next beat, and then the next.

Outside, a door closed. Sand whispered across the courtyard.

This time, when she drew the heat, she took less than a breath.

The King’s Bread

By the time the lamps were lit, Dedi’s legs had begun to shake.

He had a bowl of water beside him and a strip of linen spread over his thigh. Whenever the boy could swallow, he moistened his lips. Whenever the swallowing stopped, he waited. He spoke to Panehsy of ordinary things: the river steps, a missing sandal, someone who would be angry about the sandal if he did not come home.

Sekhmet listened for the heart.

The fever resisted now. Drawn slowly, it seemed to fasten itself around every small effort the boy made to breathe. She had to let him finish each breath before she could take more. Once she hurried, and his ribs shuddered beneath her hand.

She waited longer after that.

The returned heat collected in her throat. She could feel its desire to pass out again. A single roar would send it across the courtyard and into the streets beyond, where doors stood open to catch the night air.

Dedi wrung the linen over the bowl.

“You may sing,” she told him.

“I have been.”

“Then sing louder.”

He began one of her praises. Halfway through, he lost the words and began again.

A man carrying a sealed basket stopped at the entrance. Two attendants came behind him with fresh bread and flowers. The first man saw the boy and stepped backwards into the others.

“Who brought sickness here?”

Dedi did not turn. His song thinned until only his lips moved.

The man looked beyond him and saw Sekhmet.

The basket struck the paving. Its seal broke. He went down on his knees so hard that she heard bone hit stone.

“Lady. These are the king’s offerings.”

“Put them down.”

“They are for his protection.”

“Put them down.”

The attendants obeyed. The man remained bowed, looking sideways at the child’s feet.

Then he crawled close enough to whisper to Dedi.

“You must take him out.”

Dedi shook his head.

“The rite is for the king. The household is waiting. We cannot carry this back with us.”

He pulled his robe away from the spilled water. Sekhmet watched the movement. The hand on Panehsy’s chest began to press harder.

Under it, the child flinched.

She eased her fingers apart.

“Dedi,” she said. “Your linen.”

The priest looked down. His cloth had fallen into the bowl. He reached for it, missed the rim, and put his hand flat on the floor to steady himself.

Sekhmet heard another pulse answer her: a quick, uneven beat inside his wrist.

“How long?” she asked.

He knew what she meant.

“Since midday.”

“Why did you not say so?”

“You were busy.”

He tried to lift the bowl. Water spilled over his hand. The attendant drew back again.

Sekhmet looked at him.

“Hold it.”

“Lady, I have children in my house.”

Dedi’s arm sagged. Sekhmet caught the bowl with her free hand before it hit the paving. Steam lifted from the water.

She could not hold it long.

The attendant watched the steam. His mouth worked soundlessly. Then he shuffled forward and took the bowl from her.

“Under his head,” Dedi said.

The man looked at the boy, then at his own clean sleeve. He folded it into a pad.

Sekhmet turned her attention back to the heart. For several beats she had scarcely heard it beneath her anger.

A Mouthful of Fire

Dedi was sitting against the wall now. He still directed the attendant, though his instructions came slowly and sometimes had to be repeated. One of the others had gone for more water. The remaining woman broke the fresh bread into pieces, then stopped, uncertain what to do with them.

“For him,” Sekhmet said, looking towards Dedi.

The priest took a piece. He held it between both hands as if he could not remember what bread required of him.

Beyond the entrance, the sky paled.

Sekhmet had stood beneath the sun through battles that consumed cities. She had heard men call for her when their enemies fled and curse her when illness entered their own doors. A battlefield gave her room. Here her hand covered nearly all the life she was trying to spare.

Panehsy stirred.

“Mother?”

The attendant bent close.

“She is outside.”

Sekhmet had not known that. Dedi lifted his head from the wall.

“She would not go home,” the man said. “The porter kept her at the gate.”

“Bring her,” Dedi said.

The woman put down the bread and hurried out.

Panehsy tried to turn towards her footsteps. Something caught in his throat. His chest pulled sharply under Sekhmet’s palm.

The attendant lifted his head too high.

“Sideways,” Dedi said.

The man fumbled with the sleeve beneath the boy’s neck. Panehsy coughed once, hard, and could not draw the next breath.

Sekhmet felt the fever loosen.

There it was: the last fierce knot of it, slipping free as the body failed. She drew it towards herself. The child’s mouth opened wider. Nothing passed through it.

Dedi was on his knees, crawling.

The heat filled Sekhmet’s throat. Her jaws opened of their own accord. Beyond the boy she saw the attendant’s face, his wet sleeve, the doorway where a woman had just appeared.

If she let the heat go, it would find them.

She tried to turn her head away. Her hand moved with her, dragging the child against the paving.

Dedi seized her wrist again.

“Here,” he said. “Stay here.”

The mother’s breath broke into a cry. She started forward, and the attendant who had fetched her caught her by the arm.

Sekhmet could smell every living body in the room. Their fear rose warm and irresistible. The fever pressed behind her tongue. She wanted space, an open plain, anything she could strike without measuring the blow.

Dedi’s fingers tightened.

She drove her free hand into the paving.

Stone split under her nails. The movement steadied the other hand. She kept it spread over Panehsy’s ribs while Dedi turned the boy’s head and cleared his mouth with the linen.

Sekhmet swallowed.

The heat went down like a blade.

She bent over the child, teeth locked, and bore it. The gold cup melted into a puddle beside her knee. The flowers on the offering tray curled and blackened. Dedi worked beneath her shadow, one hand at the boy’s jaw, the other supporting his neck.

Still no breath.

Sekhmet felt for the heartbeat. It was so faint that for a moment she could not tell it from the trembling in Dedi’s hands.

The mother tore free and knelt beside them.

“Panehsy.”

She said it as if calling him in from the river.

His chest lifted.

A small, scraping breath entered him. He coughed against the linen. Dedi turned his face farther to the side, and the next breath came more easily.

Sekhmet did not move.

The mother put two fingers against her son’s cheek. The attendant still held the bowl. Nobody asked the goddess to speak.

At the Threshold

When Sekhmet finally lifted her hand, the boy kept breathing.

His mother gathered him against her. He complained at the movement, a weak, cross sound, and she began to laugh. She tried to stop because she was in the presence of the goddess. Then the laughter broke apart and she held him closer.

Dedi leaned back against the wall.

“Give him time,” he told her. “Small drinks. Let him rest.”

The attendant set the bowl within her reach. His sleeve was stained to the elbow. He looked at it for a while before folding the wet part out of her way.

Sekhmet rose. Beneath her, five deep marks remained in the paving.

Dedi tried to follow her to his feet and failed.

“There are others,” he said.

She looked down at him.

“Outside?”

He nodded.

The gate had opened for the mother. Through the courtyard came the sound of someone coughing, then a man asking whether he might bring his wife into the shade.

Dedi pressed his palm to the wall and pushed himself upright. The attendant reached to help him. This time the priest let him.

Sekhmet moved to the threshold. Morning light touched her face. She stood aside, leaving room for them to carry someone through.