Earth, Sun, and Moon Saga Ch. 10

Hey, y'all! Dakota here with a new chapter in my smut-laden series about a guy who teams up with a few sexy supernatural beings to do battle with ancient gods. It's been a year since I embarked on this journey, and the response from the Lit community has been phenomenal. Seriously, guys, your comments, ratings, and emails keep me going. I'm frankly in disbelief at how many of you have been reading my dorky series. Without you, this story would have stalled out a while ago.

This is essentially a serialized novel, so I recommend starting at the beginning to avoid unnecessary confusion.

Returning readers, hello! I'm so excited to finally get to share this chapter as I'd been planning it for a while. Here we're going to learn a lot more about the mechanics of this universe and answer a ton of questions about it. This chapter is going to expand on several characters we've only seen glimpses of, including getting real intimate with a certain slithering deity.

Okay, without further ado, let's visit . . .

Somewhere Else

Edward wandered the afterlife.

It was supposed to be heaven, or so he was told.

After weighing his heart, Anubis wasn't much interested in answering his questions. His assistant, Ammit, terrible in her amalgamated animal form, transformed again. She became human, or something close to it. Shiny green scales and the fur of a lioness fought human skin for real estate over a well-endowed body.

"Not what I would have predicted for you," she said. Her smile dripped with disdain but she no longer looked at him like a hungry predator. "Welcome to Sekhet-Aaru."

"Better than oblivion, I guess."

"Indeed. Maybe I'll see you later . . ."

"In a while, crocodile."

Sekhet-Aaru—The Field of Reeds—was a bit of a misnomer. A great river, its current calm and steady, cut through a large valley and Edward wondered about the convenience that the Egyptian afterlife featured the Nile running through it.

The afterlife had its perks though. He felt great, for one. He no longer suffered from hunger or thirst, and still, drinking from the river was refreshing. It was warm, and the sun bore down on him with steady heat but never became oppressive nor did it burn him. He didn't sweat, nor did he need to urinate or defecate. He walked without fatigue, occasionally stopping to lie down on the riverbank, watching the stars move across the sky at night.

Days came and went and Edward walked.

After a time, he wasn't sure how long, he came upon a farmhouse, set back from the river's edge. It was made of mudbrick and, oddly enough, was rather humble.

A man worked in the field next to the river. A woman, presumably his wife, walked with a basket on her head, gathering reeds.

Edward approached them cautiously.

"Greetings," he called. "Nice day, isn't it?"

The man regarded him for a moment in confusion. He looked up at the clear sky.

"It is."

"You speak English?"

"That your tongue, eh? No. You're speaking mine. To me at least. And I am speaking mine to you. That's how it is here. It's not perfect but you'll get used to it."

"I guess I've revealed my newness. I'm a bit embarrassed to ask but I'm not sure what I should be doing."

The man, barefoot, was covered in mud to his knees. He wore a simple wrap of undyed fabric around his waist and had been working the land with a simple hoe. But he was fit and healthy-looking. He flashed a broad, white smile.

"That's the trouble with eternity," the man said. "What to do with all that time?" He turned to his wife, who'd set the basket down and came to meet the stranger. She was beautiful, with angular features and straight black hair that framed her face. "I met my wife only briefly when we were alive. Circumstances didn't allow us to be together then but we found each other here. I vowed to spend eternity being worthy of her love."

"You've always been worthy, my husband," she said, her smile genuine.

"So you spend eternity farming?" Edward asked.

The man smiled, leaning against his hoe. "It's something I was unable to pursue in life. Bringing life from the soil. Seems quaint but it suits us just fine."

Edward regarded their modest plot of land and their simple home next to the great sweep of the river. "It's nice here. What did you do in life?"

"Politics, mostly. But it's no longer important. Would you like to sup with us? There's plenty to eat."

Edward almost said no automatically. He hadn't eaten anything since he arrived as he didn't feel hungry. But the idea of food was enticing nonetheless.

His host led him to a small cooking fire near the house and he was directed to sit on a rough-spun mat while the wife ladled a delicious-smelling stew into wooden bowls for them. She sat with her own bowl next to her husband.

"How about you?" the farmer asked. "What were you in life?"

"I was an apprentice to a druidess."

"A what?"

"A witch. Although she hated to be called that."

The man nodded. "Is she here?"

Edward shook his head. "No. It's just me."

"You're the first new soul we've seen in a long time," the wife added. "No one is holy enough anymore. What happened?"

Edward shrugged. "Things changed, I gather. Thousands of years have passed. People forgot. They moved on."

"But not you? You believed."

Edward thought about his fight with Anubis. About his participation in what he now understood was a ritualistic orgy. "I believed what I saw."

The stew was full of vegetables and barley, and they ate it with a dense black bread. It was, without a doubt, the best meal Edward had ever had. He recognized that, if he wanted to, he could eat that stew continuously for all of eternity. He'd never get full just as he'd never starve. To a poor English kid who spent his childhood two missed meals from starvation, this really was heaven.

"I expected the afterlife to be more crowded," he said, thinking out loud. "I'm not sure when I arrived. Time is strange here. But you're the first people I've met."

"You'll get used to how days work here," his host said. "And you are right to observe that this place seems empty."

"It is empty," the wife agreed. "I miss the children."

"Children?"

"Children, especially the very young ones, arrive here easily. Nothing to weigh the heart down, you see. That's what we did, my Ani and I. We watched over the children while they waited here."

"There would be laughter all up and down the river," Ani added. "They would romp and frolic the way children are supposed to. Many of them did not have pleasant lives on Earth. They died young, obviously. But here they could just be children."

"What happened to them?"

"They left," the farmer said matter-of-factly. "Reincarnated for another life, their soul a little brighter for the time they spent with us."

"Some returned to us again," his wife explained. "They'd visit us as adults after living full lives. The soul remembers, you see. But over the eons less and less did. Then none did."

"So heaven is empty?" Edward asked. He found the idea of an empty afterlife depressing.

The farmer shook his head. "Of course not. Many choose to stay. And this isn't the only heaven. Of that, I'm convinced."

"My husband thinks that souls ascend higher and higher. That this is just one afterlife among many."

Edward nodded, agreeing that it made sense. "So you can choose to leave this place whenever you wish? How?"

"Of course," the man said. "You simply build a boat and let the river take you to the end."

Edward had never built a boat, nor did the prospect of that entice him.

"Why do you stay?"

The farmer's shoulders slumped as if he'd been dreading that question. He gazed upriver. "I had enough of life on Earth. I sent too many to their own afterlife. No. I like it here just fine."

"You were a warrior?"

His wife grinned and stifled a laugh. "Tell him, darling. Maybe he's heard of you."

The farmer shot his wife an annoyed look. "They called me Ramesses, second of his name. My father was Seti. For a time, I was Pharaoh."

Edward's mouth dropped open. Though he had never had formal schooling, his mistress taught him to read and write and gave him an in-depth education on classical history. Rightly so, as his mistress had lived through much of that history.

"You're Ramesses the Second?"

"So you've heard of him?" his wife asked, a glint in her eyes. "Even after an eternity they still speak your name, dear! The universe is strange indeed!" She threw up her hands with a laugh.

"Some call you the greatest ruler of the ancient world. Most agree you were the greatest pharaoh Egypt ever had."

"Bah!" the farmer scoffed, tossing his bowl down. "Who says that? Only fools and liars would call what I did great."

Edward backpedaled. "I've upset you. My apologies. That wasn't my intention. It's just that people have studied your rule for thousands of years now."

"And Ammit didn't eat your heart, dear," Ani said, soothingly. "She wasn't wrong about you. Nor was I."

Rameses grumbled. "Maybe so. But they call rulers great for the wars they wage. For the battles they win and the cities they siege. Sorry for being cross. Others have come before you to bow at my feet as if I were some god."

"Remember that Cleopatra woman?" Ani added. "New soul and a nice enough girl. Claimed to be a distant relation of some such, but she would not leave him alone! Followed him everywhere like a puppy. She insisted he was a god himself."

"I could see that becoming tiresome pretty quickly."

Ramesses nodded. "Let's just say I was thankful when she chose rebirth."

"Where are the others?" Edward asked. "The souls that stayed, I mean."

"They're around. Many are in the Golden City. Some, like us, stay in the wilderness for the quiet."

"Golden City?"

"That's Ra's domain," Ramesses explained. "Many spend their eternity among her shining temples and gardens."

"But not you?"

Ramesses smiled. "No. Not us."

***

Edward walked on.

A tributary, tiny compared to the behemoth Nile, joined it in a marshy area and Edward took the opportunity to follow it upstream. Again, with time being what it was, days and nights passed and, although meeting Ramesses and his wife felt like yesterday, Edward guessed it'd been much longer.

The stream disappeared into the undergrowth of a strange forest.

Tall trees with trunks twice as thick as he was tall grew out of loamy soil as the tributary broke up into a dozen small creeks that snaked their way around and under giant exposed roots. The wide canopy blocked the sun except for lone rays that cut through the shade like a knife.

Edward soon found himself climbing over or walking on roots as he traveled through, smiling as he did so. The forest reminded him of the woods outside the village where he was born when he played at knights with the other village children. Together, they darted, climbed, balanced, fought, and generally cavorted in the woods.

That was, Edward remembered darkly, before the sickness came. Before both his parents lay dead in unmarked pauper's graves from cholera. Before he wandered the countryside, lost and starving. Before a kindly witch gave him a new life.

Gwendolyn.

He loved her immediately. First, with the mindless, grasping desire of a boy needing a protector, and later with the nervous infatuation of an adolescent, and, finally, as her full-fledged apprentice and lover. She was a lighthouse in an ocean of despair and she guided him with a calm and steady hand. He owed everything to her.

And he missed her terribly.

It was clear to him that being raised by her, only to become her lover wasn't how normal people conducted their relationships. But to hell with them. Nothing about her was normal.

Oh, how he wished he could see her once more, if only to show her that he was fine, that death wasn't the end.

So lost was he in these thoughts that he almost didn't realize that he'd reached a waterfall.

Well, waterfalls. Plural.

The forest opened up into a shallow pool, clear water shining, and fed by a half circle of cascading falls. They were gentle, too. Water poured out of multiple spots from only fifteen or twenty feet, from another broad pool above. And another above that in a natural staircase. Edward traced the water higher and higher until it looked like it descended from the sky itself which, he realized, it did.

Edward was not a well-traveled man. The journey from Wales to London, the journey that ended with his death, was the farthest he'd ever been from his home. He'd never left the island, escaping only through books and Gwendolyn's stories.

He could scarcely believe the beauty of this place.

Dirty from his traipsing through the forest, he didn't hesitate to strip off the loincloth (his sole article of clothing) and wade into the cool water.

It was perfect.

That was until the snake appeared.

Edward was no stranger to the odd and the supernatural, but the giant cobra coming out of the same water he was waist-deep in startled him nonetheless.

"Bloody hells!" he shouted, diving backward, splashing away from it.

"Oh, sssorry!"

The snake managed to look embarrassed somehow. It reared back as if it were scared of him, as ridiculous as that seemed.

The snake transformed. Like the other gods Edward had watched twist themselves into new forms, he had to look away. Watching it happen made his head spin.

When he looked up, he instinctively looked away again, and his hands covered his nudity.

"I apologize, madam," Edward said, stumbling over his own tongue. "I didn't mean to intrude."

The woman standing before him was clearly a goddess. Her skin was dark, nearly black. Not like the mestizo Africans he'd sometimes seen in the crews of Spanish trade ships docking at Cardiff or the overwrought characterizations of the newsie cartoons, depicting Africans as having bones through their noses. Though Edward was a product of the Victorian era, he recognized this woman for what she was: very beautiful and very naked.

The woman laughed. "Quite alright, mister formal sir. I'm happy to see one of the newly dead. It is I, Qebhet."

"You're a goddess."

"I guess," she said with another laugh. "Although, is one really a goddess if there's no one to worship them?"

Edward wasn't sure how to answer that, keeping his eyes up and away, pretending the waterfalls were much more interesting.

She sighed, sounding almost musical. "I forget that some are more uptight than others. It's alright. You may gaze upon my form."

Edward hazarded a slight glance at her.

"Relax, good sir. They're only breasts."

Qebhet was certainly nude.

The water was barely waist deep and she appeared to have bloomed out of it. Her skin was the color of onyx. She was slender, keeping a serpentine curve to her hips, the V of her sex covered with only the slightest shock of black hair. Her breasts stood out proudly, each capped with areolas somehow even darker than the skin around them.

And the gold.

She wore gold armbands and bracelets. A broad necklace, like a thick golden collar with topaz-dotted chains, gave contrast to her skin. Woven gold links, so fine Edward imagined they could melt in a hot cup of tea, hugged her curved hips like a scarf made of chainmail. Her hair was pulled back in a collection of thick braids like snakes and decorated with rings of gold.

Her eyes, however, were the same color as the crystal clear blue waters in which they stood. Edward realized they were the color of the Nile herself.

"I'm Ed-Edward," he stuttered.

"Pleased to meet you, Ed-Edward." She looked him up and down, appraising him. "Tell me, Ed-Edward, from where do you come? You look rather unique for a denizen of Sekhet-Aaru."

"I'm from Wales," Edward answered. "English parentage but raised there nonetheless."

"Is it far from here?" She seemed to glide around him, studying him.

"I guess that depends on where 'here' is, madam."

"I suppose that's true," the goddess agreed. "It's been frightfully long since anyone has required my divine services. Word amongst us god-folk is that humans don't worship us at all. So how did someone from a whale find their way here, I wonder?"

"No, you misunderstand, Wales is my home. It's on an island called Britain. Far away from Egypt, I'm afraid. I had a bit of a run-in with your fellow gods. And, like they say, seeing is believing."

"You encountered us on the Earthly plane?" she raised an eyebrow at him, clearly skeptical. "We haven't walked there freely since our last temples were destroyed."

Edward was suddenly unsure how much he should divulge to this strange and beautiful goddess. He had, after all, arrived here because he died fighting Anubis, keeping him from killing the vampire Lenore and resurrecting a mummy.

But the jackal-headed god hadn't appeared to harbor any hard feelings about that fight. He'd even treated him fairly during his judgment.

"It's a rather unbelievable tale, truth be told."

Qebhet danced her fingers off the water. "Let me guess, Anubis was trying to bring forth Bastet? Perform a big ritual? Transcend?"

"Well, um . . . Actually, I believe it was a priestess. How do you know?"

Qebhet laughed. "Ah, he found another tether. How amusing. My father has been attempting that since forever."

"Your father?"

"Yes."

"And you're not upset that I stopped him? For now, at least."

Qebhet giggled and ran a finger up his arm. "Hardly. He's more tenacious than even you realize. Believes that this heaven is a dead-end. That the gods here are doomed."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, you're not that dense, are you? The other denizens of Sekhet-Aaru don't understand what's been happening out there but us gods have a pretty good idea. No one worships us. Maybe that's for the best, maybe not. But what do you suppose happens to us when the last soul leaves this afterlife?"

"I met Ramesses. His wife and he seem pretty satisfied here."

"Ahh yes, a whole pantheon of gods and a pair of simple farmers. What a religion we would make! No, my father wants to escape this place permanently."

"You don't agree?"

Qebhet smiled again, flashing white teeth. "We're forbidden to leave by Ra, the sun god. He believes humans will once again discover their allegiance to us. I am but a minor river goddess. He could strike me down in an instant should he suspect my disloyalty."

"That seems like an overreaction."

"Hmmm, it does, doesn't it?" Qebhet circled him, dancing her fingers off his back and shoulders playfully. "There was an incident involving Osirus and his son Horus. They managed to escape to the Earthly plane permanently. Some say they were then able to transcend to a different pantheon of gods. To reinvent themselves. Ra saw this as a betrayal of the highest order. Divine treason."

"I guess I don't understand," Edward admitted. "What does Anubis want with this Bastet goddess if he has already escaped once?"

"Bastet is the goddess of life. And he of death. They love each other, you know. But their love is forbidden too. My father wants to be with her on the Earthly plane. He believes that with her at his side he can do what Osirus and Horus did and transcend to another divine realm."

Edward tried to take in the information. Power politics among ancient gods was outside his knowledge base. Besides, Qebhet's fingers on his skin were distracting. He felt himself growing stiff in the water.

"And what do you want?"

Qebhet leaned from behind him and flicked her tongue across his earlobe as if tasting him. "Like most gods, I crave purpose. My purpose was to comfort the newly dead," she whispered. "I hold them. I talk to them. I guide them. You could say I'm a real people-person."

"You must have been lonely then, if I'm the first in however long."