But that’s how she liked it.
She called her menfítu. They stood like fangs around a tongue. Didn’t matter. When I was ready, I’d be back, and they’d never be able to stop me.
All I needed was an ujat.
I rafted across the river to the west bank. Above me on Noot’s dark blue belly and breasts, two blades of a quarter moon. Stars like a million arrowheads.
I was walking towards the Mountains of Manu.
I’d never been out there before. Further I went, the weirder it got. Stone pillars like melted men. Trees like ape skeletons. I swear to gods, a giant lion with a human face.
When the sun came up, I hid under a rock’s shadow. Slept. When the sun went down, I woke up thirsty enough to suck a snake’s blood.
And then the sandstorm hit.
But it was like no sandstorm I’d ever seen before. Like an elephant’s trunk, wider than the River Forever and straight down from the sky. Came right down on top of me, me at its centre, with nowhere to run.
How long was I there? No way to know. Felt like years. No food. No water. The only light came from lightning.
And when it cleared, dust scrubbed out the stars, the moon was dead, and I suppose I was, too.
I don’t know where I was . . . but it wasn’t where the storm had jailed me.
Vines. Choking leaves. Shadow-trees like upside-down spiders, lit by swamps glowing like a moon drowned in piss.
Tried to drink the swamp water. Puked until my stomach nearly tore itself off my spine.
And when I finally finished and wiped my eyes, I saw them.
Statues of me.
Gorgeous ones! Turquoise and gold, with sapphires for eyes. And fires with whole cows roasting on giant spits. Bowls full of sauces and beer and fruit and lotus, laid out on rugs like virgins for a raider-king. Men and women from up and down the river and across the Great Green Sea, dressed like rainbows and sunrises. Kneeling. To me!
Then gone.
And on the other side of the swamp from me, I saw the crocodile.
Bigger than a hippo. Than an elephant. White like a hill of skulls at noon. Fangs like pikes.
If I’d had any shit left, I would’ve shit myself.
Couldn’t run. Couldn’t swim. Couldn’t jump. Didn’t have any ujat or even words-of-power since that son-of-a-bitch never taught me any!
And then I understood. Understood it like when you know the moon is going to rise just before it does. Understood it like the second before your axe hits a neck, the shock that’s going to run up your arms.
I knelt down and let him come take me.
Felt myself becoming bone splinters and blood spray. Felt my screams turn to gurgling until my eardrums burst like boiling eggs. Felt myself falling down that throat, longer than the River Forever, until I hit the rock-spikes in his gut.
And I stayed like that, impaled inside his darkness.
Thinking.
Seeing.
Feeling.
Tasting.
I saw everything, the next hundred moons, like a single day.
My brother out there, sailing across the Great Green Sea, landing and walking home. My wife, House-Lady, with him. Pregnant. Me, tracking her like she was a quail. Taking her when she was out alone gathering eggs. My thumbs on her windpipe, holding her under the piss-waters of the swamp till her last bubbles burst. Me, getting back to Min-the-Beautiful before him. Gathering my own men with minds like daggers, speaking softly as shadows because my returning brother would have new words-of-power and ujatiu whose fires I couldn’t even guess. Me, at my most careful, because my brother could send his souls into animals: fish, birds, hares. Gathering pyrite to stop the golden man, because of warlocks telling me that only a talent of pyrite could stop souls of gold. Me, finding a way—what way?—to trap my brother inside pyrite to stop him from recreating and avenging himself. What way? What way? What—
Me, my smiths, forging a royal bed, walled on the sides and top and bottom in pyrite. With a glittering pyrite lid removable for sleep. Me, planning a victory banquet for our king-come-home, our lord-of-the-limits, our beautiful being, the Instructor of the world, triumphant!
Presenting him his gift. Flattering him to lie down inside it, and bolting down the lid with molten pyrite seals. And my dagger-men pouncing, gutting all his menfítu, seizing their spears and ripping out the spleens of all the idiot subjects who rushed to stop us.
And in front of all the survivors, taking his Throne-girl and mounting her until she came in silence. And every day, again, and every night, again, in my kingdom without limits.
But there I was, impaled down in darkness inside a world-crocodile’s gut, and dreams did me no better than trying to cook with a pissed-on campfire.
So, I grabbed onto those stone spikes and pulled.
My own screams, like lightning.
I humped over the rocks. Writhing in my own blood. Shattered bones splintering even more.
Wriggling and slithering forward till I joined a river of shit. Felt myself falling, then clutched by throbbing muscles from my skull to toes, pressed and squeezed towards a crack of dim, thin light.
And when I got there, assholed out and dropped steaming in the dirt.
Shivering in the flat pale light of a dust-choked day.
No sign of the beast. Not even a tail-swish in the swamp grass.
I agonied myself over the rocks and through the reeds towards the swamp.
And lapped.
And stood up on new bones, solid as pyrite.
All I had to do was close my eyes to see my brother, a hundred brothers, ten thousand of them for ten thousand years in ten thousand lands, and me sealing each one in a pyrite coffin, and if even one escaped, carving him like a pig and scattering the pieces so far from each other no Throne-girl, no words-of-power, no ujatiu
