Shu

Shu had one shoulder beneath his daughter’s ribs when she lowered herself again.

His cheek struck the earth. Grit entered his mouth. Above him, Nut laughed at something Geb had whispered, and the weight of her laughter drove Shu’s elbow into the mud.

“Your father,” he managed, “is still here.”

Nut lifted just enough for him to turn his head. In the narrow darkness he could see Geb’s hand spread across her back. Her fingers were buried in the earth beside Shu’s face. Neither intended to hurt him. That made asking them to move no easier.

“Come out, then,” Geb said.

“There is no room to turn.”

A tremor passed through the ground: his son’s amusement. Shu pushed himself along on one elbow. The space narrowed ahead, and he stopped with his mouth against something soft.

A green tip protruded from a crack in Geb’s skin. It had bent beneath Nut until its point was buried again in the mud. Shu eased a finger under it. The little stem straightened against his knuckle, pale where light had never reached it.

“Lift your shoulder,” he told Nut.

She did. A blade of brightness entered. The shoot leaned towards it so quickly that Shu forgot the ache in his neck.

“There,” he said. “Stay there.”

But Geb drew her closer, and the light vanished.

The stem pressed against Shu’s finger. He held it upright in the dark.

A Little Room

Tefnut found his heel and pulled.

He emerged with mud packed into his hair and one hand still closed around the shoot. He had brought a little earth with it. Beyond the place where Geb and Nut lay together, the first ground sloped into water without a shore. There was nowhere dry to put it down.

Tefnut examined his cupped palm.

“You broke it off?”

“I brought its roots.”

She touched the earth with a wet fingertip. Shu felt the stem stiffen.

From the water came Atum’s light, too low to reach beneath the joined bodies of his grandchildren. It showed Shu a line of other green points caught along their meeting. Some were already flattened.

He knelt beside Geb’s face.

“Roll onto your back.”

Geb opened one eye. “Why?”

“So she can rise.”

Nut’s arm tightened across him.

“How far?” she asked.

Shu looked at the shoot in his hand. It needed so little. A finger’s width had been enough to turn it towards the light.

“Let me try something first.”

He asked Geb to hollow the ground beside his breast. His son obliged, grudgingly, making a shallow place large enough for Shu to crouch in. Shu set the shoot in its centre and pressed the roots down. Nut lifted herself above it, leaning on one elbow while keeping her other hand in Geb’s.

Light entered the hollow. Shu sat back on his heels.

“There. You needn’t let go.”

Geb brushed Nut’s wrist with his thumb. Her smile returned. For a little while, Shu watched the shoot unfold its first tight seam. He could feel the air moving through the opening, across his damp shoulders, into the small bowl of earth.

Then cold touched his ankles.

Water seeped through the hollow’s lower edge. Geb shifted beneath Nut, and more came, a thin shining sheet that reached the stem.

“Raise this side,” Shu said.

Geb raised it. The water slid away, but so did the patch of light. Nut had lowered her face to Geb’s, and her shoulder closed the opening above the hollow. Where she settled against the wet ground, water squeezed back over the lip.

Shu braced a palm against her.

“Only a little higher.”

“Father, you keep asking for a little.”

“Because a little keeps disappearing.”

She stared at him. He had spoken more sharply than he meant to.

Below them the water reached the shoot’s folded leaves. Shu dug his fingers beneath its roots and lifted it. Mud streamed between his hands. The stem lay across his thumb, limp again.

Nut drew back. Tefnut reached into the hollow and took the plant from him.

This time she did not ask whether he had broken it.

Shu remained crouched in the water. To give the hollow drainage, he would have to open the ground beyond it; to give it light, he would have to raise Nut farther. Every small mercy needed another, until he was looking at the thing he had been trying not to ask of them.

He put both palms beneath his daughter’s shoulders.

“Nut. I need you to rise.”

The Ground Rises

She came up slowly, watching his face. Shu stood with her. Water poured from the hollow and ran away across Geb, finding channels that had not existed a moment before.

Light spread after it. Green points emerged along the wet earth, and Shu almost called to his son to look.

Then Geb caught Nut’s hand in both of his.

“You said we needn’t let go.”

“I thought—”

“You said it.”

Shu had no answer that would make those words untrue.

Nut tried to bend towards Geb. Her weight shifted across Shu’s palms, wrenching his arms sideways. He spread his feet and caught her before she fell. Beneath him, Geb’s face tightened.

“Get off me.”

“If I move, she comes down.”

“Then let her.”

The ground surged beneath Shu’s right foot.

He lurched higher. For an instant he thought Geb was helping him. Then he saw his son’s hand rising with the earth, reaching for Nut. The ridge pressed into her flank. Farther away, the widening light narrowed to a bright seam.

“Geb, stop.”

“Give her back.”

Another ridge rose beneath Shu. His knees buckled. Nut cried out, and he thrust upward to keep her from being crushed against the new height.

He was stronger than he had known. He could lift her. Each time he did, Geb rose beneath him, lending him height and taking away the space he had gained. Shu stamped a heel down to hold his footing. A crack split the ridge, and water broke through it.

The shock of his own strength silenced him.

Below, Geb had turned his face away.

Shu tried to ease the pressure under his heel, but Nut began to sink at once. He locked his knees. He had meant to save what grew on his son, and now he stood upon him hard enough to break him.

Tefnut came along the ridge, the little plant cradled against her breast.

“Move back,” Shu said. “I cannot hold this.”

She looked at his feet, then at his swollen throat.

“When did you last breathe?”

He could not remember. He had drawn breath for the first lift and kept it, hoarding every part of himself against the weight.

“If I let it go—”

He could not finish. His chest would not permit it.

Tefnut stepped close enough to press her free hand beneath his ribs.

“You are hurting him.”

Shu looked down at Geb. He wanted Tefnut to tell their son to yield. He wanted Nut to choose the height, so that he could be the hands that helped her there. Instead his children clung together beneath a sky with no room for either of them to move, and the air was shut inside his chest.

He lifted his right heel.

The earth shuddered as the pressure left it. Nut dropped an arm’s length, and Geb seized her wrist.

“Father!” she cried.

Shu raised his face to hers.

“I have you.”

Then he opened his mouth.

Between Them

The breath escaped roughly at first. It struck Geb’s wet cheek and lifted the hair from Nut’s neck. Shu felt his chest give way, and with it the rigid strength on which he had depended.

His left knee bent.

For one dreadful instant all three of them fell towards each other.

Shu reached beyond his hands.

Air ran under Nut’s back, beneath her hips, into the places his arms could never have reached. It spread across Geb in a low rush, flattening the water, stirring the crushed green tips. Shu felt the curve of his daughter’s whole body bearing upon him. He felt every rising place of his son beneath her.

He no longer had a heel to drive into the ground. His weight passed over Geb as wind.

Nut rose.

Her face moved away from Shu’s, but he could still feel the small hollow at the base of her throat, the place where her next word gathered.

“Wait.”

He held her there.

Only their hands still touched: Geb’s fingers closed around hers, Nut’s arm stretched down through the growing light. Beneath that last clasp, the ground lifted into a steep point.

Geb pulled. Nut’s shoulder twisted. Shu felt the strain pass through her, and he could have lifted harder. He could have torn their hands apart.

He did not.

The rest of the sky rested on him while he waited.

“Geb,” Nut said.

Her husband stared up at her. Mud had dried in the lines beside his mouth.

“Come down.”

She bent her elbow, trying. The sky dipped with her. Across the earth, water that had begun to drain turned back towards its hollows. Shu bore her upward again, slowly, and she gasped at the pull on her arm.

Geb heard it.

His grip changed. For a moment he held only her fingers, and Shu felt how easy it would be to finish the separation for him.

Geb opened his hand.

Nut’s fingers slid over his palm. Their nails touched, and then there was daylight between them.

Shu rose through that opening. He lifted his daughter until her body arched across the earth and the water below could find its own course. He spread beneath her from one far reach to the other. The strain did not end. It changed into something he would have to keep doing.

Below him, the high point of earth slowly subsided.

The Open Hand

For a long time Geb would not speak.

Shu moved over the ground, touching the places his feet had hurt. He could cool them. He could not close the deep crack without moving the earth again, and that belonged to his son.

At last Geb turned his face upward.

“Will you ever put her down?”

Through Shu, Nut listened.

He searched for some smaller answer. He had already given his children one promise because he could not bear to give them the truth.

“No.”

Geb shut his eyes.

The word remained between them. Shu held the sky.

Tefnut came to Geb’s open hand. The shoot lay against her wrist, its roots wrapped in the last of the wet earth. She lowered it into his palm.

He did not close his fingers.

For a while nothing happened. Then the roots took hold, and one narrow leaf lifted clear of the mud. Air moved under it. The leaf trembled and stood.

Geb watched it without looking at his father.

High above, Nut stretched her empty hand. Shu passed across the damp earth in Geb’s palm, gathered its scent, and carried it up to her.