Tefnut

The Far Bank

Tefnut put one paw over the baboon’s shadow.

“You may go,” she said. “Your shadow stays.”

Thoth looked at the immense paw, then at the strip of black that joined it to his feet. He had spent the afternoon arranging himself on successively cooler stones. There were no cool stones left.

“It will be poor company.”

“It will be quiet.”

Beyond him, the river had taken the last red light. On the opposite bank a woman was beating dust out of a cloth. Each stroke came across the water a moment after Tefnut saw it. Once she had known all the small sounds of Egypt without having to listen for them. Here, south of the places where anyone called her home, even a woman finishing her work could hold her attention.

She pressed harder on the shadow.

Thoth did not pull away. That was one of the things she disliked about him. He had arrived without a chain, without a command written by Ra, without so much as a gift she could refuse. He had only sat down and begun to make leaving him alive troublesome.

“There is a boat,” he said.

“There is a river.”

“This one has come for you.”

She followed his gaze. A little ferry was coming around the reeds, its square sail lowered. A man in the stern pushed with a pole. In the bow, a girl held something bright against her chest; each time the boat touched a ripple, it gave a thin metallic rattle.

Tefnut drew back her lip.

“You told them.”

“I asked for a crossing.”

“For a baboon.”

“I said I hoped to bring a companion.”

The girl lifted the sistrum and shook it. The sound was small and badly timed. Tefnut could have swallowed it in a breath.

She lifted her paw instead.

“Send them away.”

Thoth rose, rubbing one stiff knee. “Tell them yourself.”

She could still turn inland. Behind her lay the country where no one expected gentleness from a lioness. She had found good hunting there, warm stone, nights empty of petitions. For days she had wanted nothing that bore her father’s name.

Now the ferry was close enough for her to see that the girl had tied a broken handle with thread.

Tefnut stood.

A Welcome of Reeds

The landing was a shelf of mud between two banks of cut reeds. A mooring post leaned toward the water. The ferryman threw his rope over it, missed, and threw again.

“Stay where you are,” Tefnut called.

He caught the post on the third throw. Perhaps he had not heard. Perhaps, having come this far, he could not imagine that a goddess might mean what she said.

She descended slowly. Sand slipped beneath her pads; the river smell rose to meet her, mud and fish and the damp interior of boats. At the foot of the slope, a movement in the air touched her whiskers.

Shu stood on the water beyond the landing.

He had neither approached nor announced himself. His feet made shallow hollows in the current. The sight of him opened an ache so old that she mistook it for fresh anger.

“Did he send you too?”

“Thoth asked me to keep the channel clear.”

“Then keep it.”

He moved aside.

That should have pleased her. Instead, the space he left seemed wider than the river.

Tefnut took another step. The ferryman bowed so low that his pole slid from his hand. He caught it against the gunwale with his knee, looked up at her, and tried to bow again. Behind him an older woman pressed the girl’s sistrum down into her lap.

“Lady,” the man said. “We have—”

A smell of scorched fibre reached Tefnut.

The rope around the post had begun to smoke.

She stopped. A narrow orange thread ran along its upper edge. She had not meant to kindle it. Yet the heat that had travelled with her through the south was here too, gathered under her tongue, behind her eyes, beneath each tawny hair.

“Untie it.”

The ferryman looked down. He dropped the pole and bent over the knot.

“Not that end. Push off.”

His fingers had already closed on the smoking rope. He cried out. The older woman pulled him backward just as a little flame leapt from the post to the loose reed bundles beside it.

Tefnut struck the mooring with her paw.

Wood broke. The rope sprang loose. For one breath the boat was free.

Then the current caught its stern. The ferry turned broadside, its bow dragging the burning rope, and struck the reeds farther down the bank.

The girl screamed.

What the Eye Must Hold

Tefnut leapt into the shallows.

Steam rose around her legs. She shoved her shoulder beneath the bow and heaved. The boat moved, but the rope had caught around a submerged root. Its burning length tightened across the gunwale. A small heap of cloth began to smoulder beneath it.

The older woman tore the cloth away and thrust it into the river. Water slapped over her wrist. The girl clung to her belt, still holding the useless sistrum.

Tefnut pulled back to strike the root.

Air rushed into the space she left. The reeds flared. Heat struck the passengers full in the face, and she saw them recoil from her exactly as they recoiled from the fire.

She stopped with her paw raised.

Across the boat, Shu had stretched out both hands. The wind died. Flames that had bent toward the passengers stood upright. He could hold the air still, but the current continued to press the ferry into the bank, and the trapped rope creaked tighter.

“I can open the channel,” he said. “You must turn her bow.”

She bared her teeth at him. He had watched her break the post. He had watched her make the danger worse. Now he would take her home after all, with Thoth walking behind to tell the story.

The ferryman reached for his pole with his burned hand. His fingers failed to close. He tried again.

Tefnut looked from that hand to Shu’s waiting hands.

The boat would not last for her to decide what they would say about her.

“Shu.”

His eyes met hers.

“When I pull, give them air. Away from the bank.”

“And you?”

She lowered her head beside the gunwale. The girl was close enough now to see each tooth.

“Stay behind me.”

Tefnut bit the rope below the knot.

Fire entered her mouth. She knew this heat; it was hers. She had sent it ahead of her so often that she had forgotten what it asked of anything that had to remain in its path. The fibres split against her teeth. She could sever them with one bite, but then the bow would swing back into the burning bank.

She held.

Shu stepped downstream. A long crease opened in the river where his breath pressed against it. The stern shifted a hand’s breadth away from the reeds.

Tefnut planted her hind feet. Mud slid beneath them. She sank her claws deeper and dragged the bow toward the opening.

The rope scraped across her tongue.

For an instant she wanted to roar. Let the whole landing burn; let the river boil; let everything that had come near enough to hurt her learn to keep away.

The girl coughed behind her head.

Tefnut closed her jaws.

“Now,” Shu said.

His wind passed over her back, cool and narrow, and filled the space above the boat. The older woman lifted her face into it. The ferryman found his pole with his good hand and drove it against the bottom.

Tefnut pulled once more.

The root came out of the mud.

The ferry lurched into open water. Its bow cleared her shoulder. She felt the last weight pass from the rope and bit through it at once, dropping the burning end into the river.

Shu took the boat downstream. Tefnut remained between the bank and the channel until the reeds had spent themselves, their little hollow stems collapsing into ash. Whenever heat rose in her throat, she lowered her mouth to the water and waited.

A Place Beside Her

They brought the ferry to a gravel spit beyond the smoke.

Tefnut could have left them there. The inland slope was open. She could climb it before the passengers finished disentangling themselves, before thanks began to feel like claims upon her.

She watched the ferryman bind his hand with the wet edge of his garment.

“I told you to stay away.”

“You did,” he said.

He did not bow this time. He was looking for something beneath the seat. At last he brought out a clay cup, rinsed the ash from it, and filled it from the water jar.

He set it on the gravel and stepped back.

Tefnut looked at the cup. It was much too small.

She bent and drank from it anyway. Cool water touched the raw place beneath her tongue. When she lifted her head, the cup was empty and her whiskers were wet.

The girl raised the sistrum a little.

“Later,” Tefnut said.

The girl lowered it. Then she smiled.

Shu came up the spit, carrying the torn length of rope. He put it beside the broken mooring wood that the ferryman had retrieved, and sat a short distance from her.

For a while neither of them spoke. Across the river, the woman had finished beating her cloth. A lamp appeared in the doorway behind her.

Shu shifted on the stones, leaving Tefnut the broader patch of gravel.

She moved her forelegs and made room for him.