Khepri

The sun rolled backward under Khepri’s feet.

He drove his forelegs into the stone. Sparks leapt from the disk, struck his breast, and went out. Above him the eastern passage narrowed to a slit. Beyond it lay the fields, the river, the sleeping houses. A cock had drawn breath to crow and could not finish.

Something held the sun from below.

Khepri braced its weight against his shell and reached beneath the burning rim. His claws touched linen. Then fingers closed around one of them.

“Put it back,” a woman said.

She lay in the furrow the sun had worn through the dark, her wrapped heels wedged against a ridge of stone. A blue scarab hung from a cord at her throat. She had hooked the amulet into a notch beneath the disk and wound its cord around her wrist.

“Take your hand away,” Khepri said.

“Put the day back first.”

He shifted a foot. The disk rose a little, lifting her shoulder clear of the ground. She made a sound through her teeth but did not release the cord.

Khepri lowered the sun.

It settled with a shudder that went through the passage. In the world above, the cock’s unfinished cry remained caught in its throat.

“What day?” he asked.

“The one before they wrapped me.”

The Last Unfinished Thing

Her name was Taret. She gave it sharply, as though he were a doorkeeper who had failed to recognize a regular visitor.

Khepri planted four legs wide and pressed two against the disk. Its heat was familiar. The backward drag was not. Every moment he held it still, the weight found a deeper place in his joints.

“You cannot stay there, Taret.”

“My daughter was outside when I fell. She thinks I chose not to answer.”

Loose linen crossed her mouth. She shook it away, impatiently, and he saw the small stubborn line her lips made.

“She was angry with me. I had promised her a basket. One small basket for the reeds she gathers. I told her there was time after the bread.”

A strand of the amulet cord snapped.

Khepri bent lower. Beneath the disk, the woman could see only a narrow strip of him: one foreleg, the hard curve of his breast, the light caught in his seams.

“Let me bring you out.”

“Will you take me home?”

The stone under his right hindfoot began to crumble. He moved the foot before it broke away.

“No.”

“Then you mean to carry me farther from her.”

She pulled the cord tight again.

Khepri pushed. The sun turned less than the width of a finger. Taret’s arm stretched; her heels lost their purchase. He saw exactly where the disk would take her, into the shrinking space between its rim and the wall.

He stopped.

For a while there was only the slow grinding beneath his feet.

Taret had closed her eyes. She opened them when she realized he was no longer moving.

“You could have done it,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you?”

He hooked a claw beneath her shoulder and eased her away from the wall.

“Help me lift you.”

She would not surrender the cord, but she let him turn her onto her side. Linen scraped over the stone. He lowered the edge of his shell until she could lie across it, above the worst of the heat.

Her weight was almost nothing. Holding the sun in place while he made room for her cost him the tip of a foot. It broke off in the furrow, and the disk ground it to powder.

Taret heard the crack.

“Just until she wakes,” she said. “Keep it here until she wakes. Then I can hear her.”

Khepri looked toward the narrow opening. Beyond it, the river lay black between black banks. Nothing moved there. The day she wanted him to delay was the day in which her daughter would open her eyes.

“She is waiting for what you are holding.”

Taret turned her face away from the slit.

A Place to Stand

Khepri worked a foreclaw under a ridge of his own shell. He prised until a broad, curved piece lifted like the lip of a broken jar.

“Here,” he said.

He slid it beneath Taret’s feet. With the shell wedged across the furrow she could stand clear of the disk. Then he could turn enough to reach the amulet and free it without tearing her arm from its socket.

She tested the shelf with one heel.

“Both feet.”

“If you move—”

“I am already holding it.”

She stood.

For the first time he saw her whole face. She was younger than the strain in her voice had made her seem. A reed splinter lay beneath the nail of her smallest finger. Even death had not taken it out.

Khepri brought his claw around the rim toward the blue scarab.

Taret thrust her free hand against him.

“Leave that.”

“The cord is hurting you.”

“They put it here so I would live.”

“I will free it.”

“And if it falls?”

Her hand trembled against his shell. He could have brushed it aside. Instead he curled his claw beneath the little amulet, making a cup for it.

“Then it falls into my keeping.”

She watched his claw. Slowly, she unwound one turn of cord from her wrist.

Under her heel, the shelf cracked.

Khepri felt the break before he heard it. He caught her with the same leg he had reached toward the scarab. The amulet stayed wedged in the notch. Its cord jerked tight, drawing her against him.

With one fewer leg against the sun, he lost his purchase.

The disk rolled backward.

He thrust his body into its path. The impact drove him down the furrow and crushed the broken shelf beneath him. His shell jammed between the disk and the stone. Taret struck his breast and held on.

The sun stopped.

From high above came the sound of stone closing on stone. The eastern slit had narrowed. Khepri could no longer see the river, only a thin black strip of sky.

Taret lifted her head.

“What was that?”

“The way out.”

“Open it.”

He pressed upward. His shell was caught at three points. Every effort drove its edges deeper into the rock.

“Open it,” she said again, less loudly.

Khepri tried to draw a hindleg beneath him. There was no room. He could raise the disk only by raising himself, and the body that had carried it through so many mornings now locked it in the dark.

Taret looked from him to the slit. Then she began unwinding the cord as quickly as her cramped fingers allowed.

It was too late for that to release him.

The New Body

A seam beneath Khepri’s breast split.

Hot light entered it. He clenched, and the seam closed again.

Taret had finished freeing her wrist. The cord dangled from the trapped amulet. She touched the thin line in his shell.

“Have I broken you?”

He did not answer at once. He was remembering the sound his foot had made beneath the disk. All his old strength was lodged behind him. Ahead lay a space too narrow for that strength to enter.

He pressed outward from within.

The seam opened. Light struck the unarmoured body beneath, and he recoiled so hard that the sun rang against the wall.

Taret crawled back from him. Her fingers found the hanging cord again.

Khepri saw her close her hand around it.

“Stay where I can reach you.”

“What are you doing?”

He pushed once more against his own shell.

This time he did not retreat from the heat.

His breastplate parted. One foreleg came through, small and pale, its joints folding beneath a weight they had never borne. He set it on the stone. Then the other. The old shell held fast while he pulled his head clear of it.

The sun sank a little.

He thrust his new body beneath the rim.

For an instant he had no purchase at all. His feet skated across the stone. The heat passed through him without meeting armour, and he could feel the whole curved burden above, vast enough to obliterate the small thing pushing it.

He dug into the furrow.

One foot caught. Another found the hollow where his broken claw had been. He straightened them together, and the disk lifted from his abandoned shell.

Behind him, Taret cried out.

The old shell was falling apart. A fragment slipped beneath her knee. She swung from the cord over the dark groove, the little blue scarab turning in its notch.

Khepri stretched a foreleg toward her.

“Step here.”

She reached with one foot and missed.

“Look at me.”

She did. His new shell was darkening in the heat. The leg before her was still shaking.

“You won’t hold me.”

He lowered it until its hooked end rested on the stone, making a narrow bridge from her ledge to his back.

Taret put a heel upon it. Then she stopped.

Her fist remained closed around the cord. From there she could not reach him.

“If I go,” she said, “she will finish the basket without me.”

The eastern stone scraped downward. Khepri pushed against it with the sun. A sliver of light appeared along the threshold, barely wide enough to lay a reed through.

“Yes.”

Taret stared at that light.

Then she opened her hand.

She came down hard on his foreleg. He bent with her weight, caught her against his breast, and felt her climb. Behind them the blue scarab fell from the notch and vanished among the pieces of his former shell.

Taret lay across his back. Her hands searched for something to grip. They found the lip of the disk.

“Like this?” she gasped.

“Push.”

She pushed.

Her strength scarcely changed the weight. But she was no longer pulling backward.

Khepri drove his feet against the stone. The disk turned. Its rim caught beneath the closing threshold and forced it upward. Light burst through, narrow at first, then broad enough to strike the far bank of the river.

He pushed until his new shell rang, until the sun’s weight passed the lip of the world, until it began to draw him forward.

The cock finished its cry.

The First Reed

The morning boat received them beyond the opening.

Taret sat against its side while Khepri settled the disk in its place. Daylight touched the linen at her wrists. She rubbed the deep groove the cord had left, then looked down toward the waking houses.

A girl came through a doorway carrying an unfinished basket.

Taret rose so quickly that Khepri put a leg across the boat’s side. She stopped against it. Below, the girl sat in the dust and tried to turn a stiff reed around the rim. It sprang loose.

“Wet it first,” Taret said.

The boat moved on. The girl could not hear her.

Taret stayed at the side until the house passed out of sight. Then she sat down.

A loose reed lay near her feet, shaken free from the boat’s binding. She picked it up and held its end in her mouth. When it softened, she bent it around her thumb.

Khepri watched her make the turn twice: once for the rim, once to keep the small loop from slipping.

She pulled it tight and reached for another reed.