The Tears of Amon
‘What are you doing?’ Amon appeared next to me, his large feet digging into the red sand. If he hadn’t talked, I wouldn’t have sensed his approach. Silent, as usual.
I pulled my finger from the warm water, popping it into my mouth. The salt exploded across my tongue and I puckered my lips slightly.
‘Just checking something.’ I stood up, brushing my hair behind my ear and glancing across the pond.
It had been two days since Re had visited us, yet Amon still hadn’t gone to his meeting with Hathor. My leg had finally begun to feel normal. The shredded skin had slowly scabbed over during my time here, and the pain when I moved it had turned into a dull ache. Along with the return of my movement came my curiosity. I could finally begin exploring Amon’s realm. My only complaint was that I couldn’t take notes.
‘Are these really your tears?’ I turned and watched him carefully.
The pond was beautiful. If I hadn’t seen the tragic story behind its creation, I would never have known it was a reminder of a painful love. Ibis birds walked around its edges; ducks floated along its middle. The water was crystal clear, small ripples floating along it with the cool wind.
Amon was silent. He watched the water with a strange look in his eyes. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Was it pain? Love? Remembrance? Whatever it was made my heart hurt. It beat out-of-rhythm and I rubbed my hand across it as though I could massage it back to its original tempo. He turned around and walked away. I ran across the sand, trying to keep up with his long strides.
‘Sorry, forget I asked,’ I muttered.
‘I don’t care that you asked,’ he replied coolly as we climbed the few stairs into the gazebo. He picked up his chalice and took a long gulp from it, telling me he really did care.
‘Still. It was a little insensitive.’
He laid himself out across the mattress on the floor, his position relaxed but his face scrunched into a painful expression. I sat next to him, keeping a safe distance. I picked at the thin, golden rope wrapped around my waist, unfurling the edges I had begun to fray with my nervous habit. We sat silently for a while. Only the birds made noise as they chirped happily in the sunlight. I wiped a drop of sweat from my temple. Amon continued to drink from his chalice. The wine never seemed to have an effect and I wondered briefly why he drank it at all. What was the pleasure of wine if it couldn’t relieve the pain?
‘She was human.’ Amon didn’t look at me as he spoke, and I held my breath. Half of me couldn’t believe he was going to tell me about it—he didn’t answer many of my questions, after all—and the other half was confused. I wanted to know the story, the truth, the history. But it hurt thinking about him in pain. I didn’t want him to bring it up if it would hurt him, remind him of what he lost all over again.
‘You don’t have to tell me if you—’
‘She was the first human I ever met.’ He cut me off, turning to look at me for a moment. His eyes inspected my face. I could feel them roaming across my own: around my eyes, down the slope of my nose, over the arch of my lips, and up the ridges of my cheekbones hidden behind slightly rounded cheeks.
‘She was skinny, more so than you.’ I tried to not take offense, reminding myself that she was alive thousands of years ago where food was less readily available. Plus, it wasn’t like I was super over-weight and all. Just a couple of kilos. I was twenty-five, anyway. That’s, like, old enough for your metabolism to stop working as well, right?
‘She had no hair, either.’ It was commonplace for Ancient Egyptians to remove their body hair. All of it. So, it wasn’t that shocking to hear she was bald. I imagine she still would have looked gorgeous without hair if a god like Amon became obsessed with her.
He leant across and twirled a piece of my short, black hair around his finger. ‘I wonder if hers would have been the same colour as yours?’ I didn’t answer and he let go with a sigh.
‘She was just…’ he trailed off, thinking. ‘Different to what I expected.’
He went silent and I debated if I wanted him to continue or not. I leant back, wincing as my ribs pinched in protest.
‘What had you expected?’ He furrowed his eyebrows.
‘I thought humans would be…stronger. More powerful.’ He chuckled slightly. ‘But they were weak and inconsequential. Especially her.’ I wriggled uncomfortably, shuffling my arm in its sling. He took a deep breath before exhaling it quickly.
‘She’s long gone, and so are those weak humans, if what you say is true.’ His eyes glanced at me, lingering on my broken arm before he took another sip of wine. ‘Although you’re not the best advocate for their strength, I must say.’
And then the conversation stopped. A wall erected between the two of us. Although we sat less than a meter apart, he felt further than that. A lot further. I laughed slightly and took a shaky breath, not realising I’d almost forgot to breathe.
‘Yes, well, trust me, we’re not inconsequential. I’d argue we never were.’ Especially her. How could a woman like her be called ‘inconsequential’? A woman who loved a god, and was loved in return? Inconsequential is not the word I would use for a woman like that. Amon hummed slightly, but I wasn’t sure it was in agreement. ‘We’ve been to the moon, you know?’
‘The moon?’ He looked impressed. ‘So, humans really have managed to fix their weaknesses.’
‘No.’ I turned and lifted my broken arm gently. ‘We’re still weak. But we’ve learnt to be strong with those weaknesses.’
Amon thought for a moment. ‘How can you be strong if you have a weakness?’
‘Because we’ve learnt to live with our weaknesses. We can climb mountains, live in extreme conditions, fly through the sky, explore space—all because we’ve learnt to live with them.’
He shook his head. ‘Why not try to fix them?’
‘Not everything can be fixed. Some things are just the way they are.’
‘That is what makes you a human, and me a god.’
I scoffed and rolled my eyes at him. ‘Easy to say when you’re a god with godly powers. We were born as humans, “weak and inconsequential”.’ I drew invisible quotation marks in the air as I repeated his own words back to him. ‘I’d even argue humans have done more with their small, inconsequential lives than you have with your powerful, godly one.’ I huffed and cross my arms, my eyes daring him to object.
‘More?’ He threw his head back and laughed. ‘You think you humans’—the word rolled from his tongue with slight poison and power unusual for Amon—‘have done more than me?’
‘Well, what have you done? You entered this world with power, the ability to do nearly anything, and what do you do? Help humans out for a few hundred years and then, what? Disappear? Sit here, drinking wine and looking at the water for thousands of years?’ I waved my arms around as I shuffled onto my knees, my voice cracking in slight anger.
Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t an advocate in thinking humans were the best. We were—are—horrible beings. We ruin the earth and destroy our own kind. We’re like a bad plague, but one that never stops. Yet, somewhere beneath all the grime that dirties our reputation, I know we have some good in us too. We are smart, creative, beautiful. We’ve advanced the world, made some things better, some things worse. We aren’t perfect like the so-called gods, but we try, and I think that makes us worth it. And I can’t stand someone like Amon, someone who seemingly has it all and uses none of it, calling us weak and inconsequential. Everything we’ve done, everything we are, cannot be boiled down to a two-worded insult.
‘You know what?’ I continued, my anger flaring as I edged closer to him. ‘Maybe you’re the weak and inconsequential one.’ I poked his hard chest, ignoring the feel of his smooth skin and the heat rolling from it and focussing on the way he watched me intently, nostrils flaring in a human-like sign of anger.
‘You dare call me weak and inconsequential?’ His voice was deep, guttural. Louder than usual. He placed his chalice on the ground next to him in a simple movement that made me nervous, but it didn’t stop me from saying what I wanted.
‘Isn’t that what you are?’ I argued, poking him again. ‘You lost your girlfriend—the woman you love—and you decided to mope here for thousands of years. You left your believers without you! You left your subjects without you! No wonder humans forgot about the god they called Amon.’
He grabbed my finger quickly, curling his hand around it. I jumped in shock and instantly felt sick to my stomach. I shouldn’t have poked him—hell, I shouldn’t have said half of what I said. But I was so mad, and he was so…indifferent. Indifferent to humans, to life, to her. It hurt me, knowing she was someone who loved him, who he loved, yet he could call her that. Like she didn’t mean anything. Like she wasn’t worth anything.
I pulled my finger roughly and he didn’t let go. He sat up, his own bigger form shadowing mine. I shied away for a moment before deciding I had nothing to be afraid of. What I said was true. He was weak, and that’s why he was hiding here. But I wasn’t going to be weak. I wasn’t going to let him call me weak. I looked up at him defiantly, narrowing my eyes.
‘What?’ I barked, daring him to say something.
He pulled my finger forward and gently unfurled my clenched fist, placing my palm flat on his chest. I could feel his heart beating beneath his warm skin, strong and rhythmic. I unfurrowed my eyebrows. He watched me closely, tilting his head to the side slightly. His eyes swirled like the ripples on the pond, a pale, clear blue that I wanted to dip my feet into.
I looked down at my hand and back up to him. I didn’t understand what he was doing. What he wanted. I pressed slightly, relishing in the feel of his strong body under my palm. He was warm, his skin slightly tacky with a small sheen of sweat. His skin was smooth and soft. His chest rippled with power as he moved forward, his breath itching across my eyelashes.
My heart beat in my chest with a power that hurt. It felt like it was going to burst out and fly away, like the duck that startled on the pond and careened across it. Amon touched my hair gently, twirling it around his finger as he had earlier, and I froze in place. He dropped his hand and rested it on my own on his chest. He curled his fingers around it and ran his thumb in small circles on the soft, fleshy part near my thumb.
‘The woman I love,’ Amon hummed, his warm breath fanning across my cheeks. I wanted to lean in, capture his breath with my own, but I leant back instead.
‘What?’ I squeaked out, my breath a mere whisper.
Amon let go and brushed the hair on the top of my head, running his hand down until he caught my chin.
‘She was my mother,’ he said sadly, letting go of my chin and leaning away. I let out a shaky breath and ripped my hand back, holding it to my chest. ‘That weak, inconsequential human woman was my mother.’
I curled my hand into a fist and wondered how long the heat in it would last.
Comments (0)
See all