Nephthys's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Nephthys had promised the dead a shield, and the sun kept breaking it. She sat at her loom on the pyramid's high steps, weaving a shroud of shadow. If she could finish it, the darkness would blanket the Duat below and keep out the chaos serpent forever. But her thread was too pale. Every strand she gathered came from ordinary shade, and ordinary shade could not hold. The morning light reached over the bronze-tipped peak and touched her work. One by one, the strands unraveled and vanished. The pattern fell apart in her hands. She gathered shadow from beneath the great statues below. She pulled it from the cracks in the mud brick. She twisted it tight and fed it to the loom. For a moment the cloth held, black and deep. Then the sun climbed higher. The threads thinned to gray, then to nothing. Her fingers closed on empty air. Footsteps came up the steps behind her. She knew them without turning. Her son moved the way he did everything, without waste. "It keeps failing," she said. "The light is too strong. No shadow lasts." Anubis stopped beside the loom. His jackal head tilted at the empty warp. He did not offer comfort. He never did when there was a problem in front of him. "You are pulling from the wrong place," he said. "Daylight shadow belongs to the day. It leaves when the day leaves." "Then where do I pull from?" He crouched and touched the pyramid's stone. "The tomb below. Grave-dark. It has never met the sun. It cannot unravel because it was never woven to light." He looked at her. "I gather it every time I lead a soul down. It stays." Nephthys stared at him. The answer had been under her the whole time, in the sealed dark where her son did his work. "Show me," she said. He led her down through the pyramid's throat. The air turned cold and heavy. No light followed them. In the deepest chamber, the dark sat thick as water. Nephthys reached into it. This shadow had weight. It clung to her fingers and did not thin. She carried a spool of it back up to the loom. When the morning sun struck the first strand, she braced for it to fade. It held. The black stayed black. She wove faster, and the cloth grew under her hands, drinking the light instead of dying in it. By the time the sun stood high, she had woven a full arm's length of true shroud. It would not tear. It would not fade. Anubis watched the finished piece. "It is a start," he said. "You will need far more. The tomb-dark runs out. And it only gathers when a soul goes down." Nephthys held the black cloth to her chest. She had her thread at last. Now she had to find enough of it to cover a whole realm.