The water jug in his arms was an item of considerable value to his impoverished house, and he dashed it to the ground at his feet, a ruin.

He reached for the tiny amulet hanging around his neck, fumbling like a man who’d lost the proper use of his hands. It was a flat disc no bigger than the iris of Asha’s eye, crudely etched with powerful commands and strung by a thin fishgrass cord. It was, in fact, armor stolen from an unlucky umbrella-shell slug that once crept along the bottom of the Great Green, and how it had come to rest in Bibleb-Akhet he neither knew, nor, at that moment, cared. Seizing the charm tightly in one fist, he struck himself in the mouth much harder than magically necessary, and certainly harder than he’d intended.

“Bibleb eats the storm. The body of the storm is the strength of Bibleb. Behold, the storm is consumed. Bibleb eats the storm.”

He raced back to Asha, slung her beneath one arm and, as she hollered her objections, raced up the trail toward Bibleb-Akhet, shouting as he ran.

“Storm! Storm!” he screamed, through the gathering winds. By the time he reached the village Osiris had disappeared completely behind a veil of blown dust and sand. Already well aware of the descending peril, the villagers were dashing about collecting their animals, herding them inside their tiny huts, and frantically muttering “Bibleb eats the storm, Bibleb eats the storm…” Bib-useka raced to his own dwelling, flung aside the heavy fish-grass mat that was its door, and stepped into the cramped, windowless interior. By the flickering light of a single oil lamp, he could see that his wife, Tinet, was exactly where he’d left her – laying upon a thin blanket upon the packed-earth floor, her small, calloused hands folded over the great mound of her pregnant belly, her legs spread wide apart and her dark eyes round with fear. He set Asha down atop a pile of loose fish-grass against the back wall, and was momentarily horrified to see wet blood spattered on her face and arms.

“What happened, Asha?” he demanded. “Where are you hurt?”

Alarmed by her father’s tone, Asha-shen merely started crying and pointing at his chest, which is when Bib-useka became aware that his energetic prayer in the desert had cracked open his lip, resulting in the bloody cascade that now covered him from chin to sandals. Sighing with relief, he turned away from his disconsolate daughter and knelt beside Tinet.
“It’s a storm?” she asked. There was a hint of panic in her voice, but only a hint.

“It’s a storm.”

“Where’s the water?”

“We’ll have to make do with what we have.”

Tinet gasped as a strong contraction gripped her.

“Nopet isn’t here yet,” she panted. “She’s supposed to midwife. Did you see her?”

“No, but Nopet won’t be coming,” Bib-useka said, trying to sound relaxed and confident. “Don’t worry. I know what to do.”

“This child is not a goat,” Tinet said. “I want Nopet.”

“Nopet will have her own troubles just now. We’ll be alright.”

Tinet’s labors lasted all that night, and all the next day, and for all of the two days after. Every hour, it seemed to Bib-useka, the storm increased in anger and doubled in violence. A slight, but steady rain of grit sifted into the gloomy hut through the small smoke-hole in its roof. He lit incense before the household’s shrine to Bibleb, enticing the god to ease Tinet’s labors. The aromatic resin – a costly commodity Bib-useka had sacrificed much to acquire and now burned with desperate profligacy – added its fragrant vapors to the dense pall of oil lamp fumes until the room’s atmosphere could almost be felt with the fingertips.

Every so often Tinet screamed in pain. When she did, Asha screamed in sympathetic alarm. Each time they screamed, Bib-useka’s heart exploded within his chest. He was frequently tempted to step outside and gather his composure, but he knew without looking that he would find no relief under the storm’s gritty lash.

Fact was, despite the hut’s thick mud-brick walls, little of the screaming could be heard against the howling gale and the sinister hissing of high-velocity sand. In theory, at least, humble Egyptian “beehive” houses were proof against sandstorms, but more than one in Bibleb-Akhet’s history had collapsed under the onslaught of a Lybian storm, and that would spell disaster for his wife and daughter and unborn child. They rationed their water, ate sparingly, recited spells over their charms and prayed to Bibleb.

Just before the fourth dawn, on the twelfth day of Drought, in the sixth year of the blessed reign of Pharoah Amenhotep III, Great Spear and Shield of the Two Lands, Tinet gave birth to a boy. He appeared to be healthy and whole, and flailed his arms and legs with proper energy, and gave every indication of wailing satisfactorily, although it was impossible to be certain within the terrible din. Bib-useka swabbed his first-born son with the cleanest scrap of linen he could find, tied off his umbilical cord with a fragment of fish-grass twine, and gently placed him at his wife’s breast. Then he collapsed and lay for a long time as still and senseless as a corpse.

The storm blew itself out that morning. The winds died as quickly as they’d risen, leaving deafening silence and enormous drifts of sand in their wake. The gods of Lybia had said their piece and could do no more. The Children of Bibleb emerged from their homes to survey the damage and locate the carcasses of livestock left outside and killed by the storm. The unhappy creatures would need to be butchered before the flesh became too rotten to eat. If their loss was a heavy blow to their owners, at least the village would eat well for a few weeks.

Knowing that Tinet had been due, a neighbor thought to look in on the little family. He kicked away a low drift of sand, tossed off a friendly Opening-of-the-Door chant and swung the mat aside, allowing a flood of fresh air and sunlight to enter the stifling room.

“Congratulations,” he smiled. “Looks like you have a son.”

“Bibleb is great,” said Bib-useka, moving nothing but his lips.

“What’s his name?”

Long custom dictated that males of Bib-useka’s line be named to increase the glory of their god and indicate the possessor’s fervent devotion to Bibleb. Bib-useka, whose name meant “Bibleb’s Ox”, merely gave an almost imperceptible shrug and tiredly rolled his eyes toward Tinet. His wife opened her eyes, looked at the baby in her arms, and them closed them again.

“His name is Djamose,” she whispered. “The Storm Gave Birth to Him’.”

Ra awakened in the east and rose as Khepera, the scarab beetle.

By late morning he’d shed his mighty carapace, allowing the full glory of his personage to fall upon the earth. Several hours later, as he sank low toward the western horizon, he assumed the crown and wrappings of Osiris, in which guise he would descend into the Underworld. Far below, holding a cracked clay pot in one hand and towing his four-year-old daughter with the other, Bib-useka barely registered the approach of evening.

“Pardon me, ladies,” he said, apologetically shouldering his way through a small knot of women idly chatting in the dusty lane. “I need water.”

The village’s main street was really a path, or perhaps more correctly an alley, albeit one with the olfactory aspect of a sewer, winding through the middle of Bibleb-Akhet’s two-score mud huts. A child of 10 could, at any point along its length, easily stretch out their hands and touch the crumbling walls on either side. Besides the bevy of biddies, traffic was further impeded by a smattering of dogs, roving squadrons of chickens and the occasional donkey that had inadvertently wandered into the reeking maze and had yet to find its way out.

“Blessings on you, Bib-useka,” the women cried, shuffling aside and touching the man and child with their hands as they hurried past. “And may Bibleb’s strength be upon Tinet this night!”

Tossing distracted thanks back over his shoulder, Bib-useka raised the pot before him like a warship’s ram and plowed on, shortly emerging into the orange-painted late-afternoon desert and tacking south along a well-beaten track thickly littered with shards of broken pottery. A cat missing one ear and about half of its fur tailed them a short distance into the waste, then grew suddenly and crushingly bored and lay down where it was. The air was perfectly still, and the dust disturbed by his daughter’s racing feet hung in the air behind her like a rare morning fog. That would have struck Bib-useka as ominous if he’d been inclined to notice.

“Slow down!” Asha-shen complained. His only child was named “Abundant Hair” because she’d been born with a full six inches of dark, gossamer tresses falling down over her still-unopened eyes, which tresses were now bound together in a thick braid that stretched down to her heels and swung wildly behind her as she galloped along. “Why do we have to run?”

“Because mommy needs water, sweetie.”

Bibleb-Akhet’s only source of water was a muddy well at the bottom of a deep wadi a good half-mile distant. Lined with nothing more substantial than native dirt and endless toil, the well was forever falling in upon itself and the men of the village were forever digging it out again. North and south of the well, winding between high crumbling banks for a hundred yards in either direction, the wadi’s floor resembled an unlikely green river of vines and trees and grasses. It was there, 50 feet below the Red Land’s scorching face, that the Kher-Bibleb cultivated what fruits and vegetables and animal greens as could be coaxed from the stubborn stream-bed to sustain the meager life/health/strength of Bibleb’s Horizon. A sturdy stone basin perpetually full of sparkling sy-Sobek product ranneth over a short walk east of the village, but that liquid treasure was quite expressly not intended to refresh the Children of Bibleb. As he and Asha made their careful way down the steep, narrow defile leading to the gully’s bottom, Bib-useka silently prayed that he would, just this once, find the troublesome hole intact. To his surprise, it was. He set down his jug and dropped to his knees, bending low and gently striking his forehead on the well’s uneven rim.  

“Hapi will open his mouth and water will pour forth,” he murmured, eyes closed. “Blessed is the gift of Hapi, may his breasts never wither.” He kissed the dirt, shifted ninety degrees and repeated the ritual, then again, then again, until he was certain that Hapi had no valid procedural reason to withhold his benediction. “Hapi is satisfied,” he said, rising to his feet. “Behold his bounty.”

He ordered Asha to stay put. She was happy to, contentedly squatting down and drawing pictures of birds in the packed earth with her tiny finger and softly humming to herself.  Bib-useka quickly lowered the well’s ragged goat-skin basket hand-over-hand into its dark mouth until, perhaps 30 feet down and just beyond the reach of the dying light, he heard it strike water with a muted splash.

“Well, thank Bibleb for small favors,” he muttered, hauling up the rough, fish-grass rope. He was rewarded with a half-gallon of milky brown water. It took about 10 minutes to fill the pot. As anxious as he was, Bib-useka carefully coiled the rope next to the well’s mouth and fortified it with a brief protection spell for good measure. Water and the rituals associated with it were matters of considerable gravity to the people of Bibleb-Akhet.

“The birds are red,” Asha said, regarding her artworks with curiosity.

“Yes, Asha. Red birds.”

Bib-useka hoisted the jar in both hands and started back up the path.

“Stay right behind me. Hurry up, Asha.”

They climbed back onto even ground and retraced their steps toward Bibleb-Akhet, the father’s eyes staring blankly at the beaten earth, his attention already far ahead. Despite the heavy burden in his arms and the even heavier one on his mind, Asha-shen’s father was nevertheless instantly aware when the rapid patter of her footsteps behind him suddenly stopped. He turned impatiently, silently cursing even that momentary delay, but the admonishment that rose in his throat never made it to his lips.

His daughter’s face, ordinarily rather pale for an Egyptian, was the color of boiled beets and facing directly west.

“It’s red, like the birds.”

The tiny square teeth peeping through her smile looked as though they’d been tearing at a fresh kill. Her eyes glinted like polished onyx set down in blood-red pools. Erratic gusts of wind softly played with the loose hair around her temples, blowing them first forward, then back. Bib-useka cursed himself as he realized the whole barren expanse within his field of vision was awash in crimson light. Somehow in his preoccupation he’d failed to receive the warning sent up by the spirits of Asha-shen’s crude representations, and managed not to notice that the world was on fire. He spun around to face the setting sun. Where one would expect to see Osiris shining like burnished copper, the King of the Underworld had instead donned a scarlet cloak and the black underworld seemed to be boiling up through the dim heat-haze to meet him.

“Damn,” he said, instantly chilled to the bone. Bib-useka knew the desert, depended on it for his livelihood and lived at its mercy. “Damn.”

The way he had it figured, a man was who was neither alive nor dead was on a one-way trip from one to the other. Osiris seemed to be dodging the central issue.

“If I was alive, and now I’m between, can I conclude that I’ll shortly be dead? I’m on my way to the Underworld, right?”

Let him dodge that.

“Only the faithful may enter the Fields of Rejoicing. You are not faithful. The gates of the Underworld are shut to you.”

It was an alarming response in no way superior to previous hedging. The dead enjoyed few options, and the Underworld was most of them. He tried to imagine himself a feeble shade lingering miserably above the desiccated wreckage of his corpse for all ages to come, forever formless, powerless and alone. The prospect was too dismal to contemplate.

“Great and Merciful Lord,” he began, diplomatically reversing a longstanding policy against flattering titles, “that I receive this condemnation from your own perfect lips is a blessing beyond measure, and I’ll concede your point that I haven’t always spared the gods their due attention. But if I’m not staying here, O Light of Compassion, and I’m not traveling through, then where am I going?”

“You will return whence you came.”

The words were plain enough, their precise meaning somewhat less so.

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“You will resume your place among the living.”

Disappointing, yes, but he’d heard worse news. Going back to an unsatisfying life was certainly better than eternal impotence, and he could consult with a priest regarding his prospects for eternity at leisure. Still, he was a meticulous man accustomed to straight lines and right angles, and he could see no sense or object in this strange ordeal. He cleared his throat softly and stole a glance toward the silent kings, still perched indifferently upon their bench like graven images. Even should Osiris excuse him from final judgment today, wasn’t it just a matter of time before he was again summoned into their presence for a more permanent accounting? He shrugged his shoulders, blinked twice, and lifted his gaze to address Osiris directly.

“Great God, it looks to me like you’ve gone to a little trouble for this interview, and I know I’ve gone to a lot of it, but I’d feel more comfortable about the whole business if I knew exactly what kind of business we’re in. If this is a trial, shouldn’t I get a word or two on my own behalf?”

“This is not a trial, and no words can expunge your guilt.”

“Perhaps if you told me what I’m guilty of…”

“The greatest crime of which a man is capable,” said Osiris, without apparent rancor, his voice still the stealthy rush of water and reeds. “You abandoned your god.”

That was a glancing blow. There was no disputing the fact that he’d devoted considerable thought and energy to minimizing his religious involvement. On the other hand, one simply could not exist in Egypt without yielding the occasional nod to its gods, and he’d ever been careful to make what conciliatory gestures as tradition and geography required.

“You do me a disservice!” he cried, genuinely aggrieved. “Maybe I never saw the inside of the king’s temple, and that’s no easy trick, I can tell you, but who serves a country serves its gods, and I’ve been sweating in Pharoah’s service these many years without rest or complaint. And haven’t I always made offerings as the law requires? I think it’s fair to say I’ve been faithful to the letter of the creed, if not the spirit of it.”

“You have been faithful to neither. Gods are not sustained by tax and tithe only, but are most nourished by true allegiance and honest devotion.”

“Well, I suppose it’s no secret I’m not much for worship, Lord, but I’ve been given to understand that even murderers and heretics can find a berth aboard the Eternal Barge, whether or not they like the accommodations.”

“Even a murderer may worship with a true heart, and the heretic, however misguided, acknowledges the gods’ primacy. Your sin is neglect – a murder of the spirit and a heresy against the living and the dead. There can be no harvest for one who does not sow.”

It seemed to him that Osiris was quite deliberately ignoring some very solid arguments in his favor, and his frustration was mounting.

“I hope you’ll correct me if I go over the banks, here, Splendid One, but was all of this really necessary just so you can tell me in person that I’ll have no place to go when I die?”

“It was necessary. You are an affront to Ma’at.”

There was no mistaking the sharp edge on that statement, or the hot force of the god’s displeasure. He studied Osiris to see if he could get a better read on the god’s mood, and realized the room had gradually brightened until the source of its illumination was apparent. Light rose from the god’s wrappings like a fog, a curiously substantial radiance that drifted slowly about the chamber in blooms and tendrils, winding about the pillars and insinuating itself into every corner, steadily accumulating until no place was left in shadow. In a very few minutes, he estimated, the tomb would be, quite literally, blinding.

“Stand,” ordered Osiris.

He rose hesitantly to his feet, casting a nervous eye at Eater of Souls. The twelve silent judges turned their heads toward him, their eyes as white as new limestone, without iris or pupil. He realized with a shudder that their eye sockets were stuffed with wads of clean linen. Thoth raised his right hand to his shoulder, holding in his grip a sword as long and slender and curved as his mighty beak.

“The impious may not enter the Land of the Dead,” continued Osiris. “Yet for the dead to remain among the living disturbs the balance governing both dominions. It is for Ma’at’s sake, not yours, that  I grant this audience.”

Now we’re getting somewhere, he thought, relieved and gratified, but forcing himself to a remorseful expression. Osiris himself was about to reveal the foolproof antidote to damnation. A little penance, a few prayers, the appropriate offering at the appropriate shrine and all would be forgiven. Despite the harrowing journey, it looked as though his long-term situation was about to improve. He was suddenly glad he hadn’t died in the river.

“I am your clay, Lord Osiris,” he said, bowing deeply for effect.

“Take care, irreverent fool, for your path to the Underworld will not be as straight as you imagine. To achieve balance, you must practice balance. To satisfy Ma’at, you must obey Ma’at.”

“I see what you mean.” He knit his brow and nodded slowly, trying to convey thoughtful agreement, then carefully brightened, assuming what he hoped was a credible mask of resolve. “Balance will hereafter be my guiding principle, and Ma’at will be my guide. I think the gods of Egypt will find me a most attentive servant from here on in.”

“The gods of Egypt will accept those words as your binding oath,” said Osiris, “but your chief sin is not against any god of this land. Your crime is against the god of your inheritance.”

 That caught him up short. He gaped, disbelieving. The idea that he might owe a debt to his ancestral deity seemed preposterous.

“Begging your very great pardon, but are you talking about Bibleb?”

“It is to Bibleb that you must atone.”

“But…but…Bibleb isn’t even Egyptian!”

“You are Egyptian. Bibleb is your god.”

“Well, okay,” he said, not really following, “but I can’t imagine why you bother extending yourself on his part. I can assure you Bibleb doesn’t rate the trouble.” He was genuinely incensed and didn’t bother to hide it. “I don’t know if you’ve got all the facts of the case, but my clan has been propping up that holy fraud for ages, and all they’ve got to show for it are double helpings of abuse, grief and sand for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I’d say it’s we who’re due for some atonement.”

The amorphous light filling the chamber abruptly fell in upon itself until only Osiris remained, a shining white sun from which no reflected beam escaped, afloat in a black and empty universe.

“You have forsaken the god of your fathers. If you would live beyond your grave, it is to him that you must atone.”

He feared to test the god’s patience, but wasn’t yet ready to accept the absurd pronouncement.

“I don’t think you understand, Great God Osiris,” he began again. “It’s me and mine that are forsaken. Bibleb failed us. He’s always failed us. He failed me!”

Light flooded back into the tomb. Without sound or warning Thoth reached out his sword and, with a single fluid motion, hacked off his left leg at mid-thigh. He felt the impact, like a kick from an ass, but no pain. The severed leg tipped over, hit the floor with a dry thud and began surrounding itself with a dark moat of blood. The silent judges regarded him passively with their white linen eyes. He stared at his severed limb in bewilderment, feeling like he should say something, but unable to think of the appropriate words.

“It is you who do not understand,” said Osiris. “The failure is yours.”

A dull ache began growing at the neatly cleaved frontier of his missing leg. His head started to swim, and the slowly swirling white light began dimming into shades of gray.

“As by your inattention Bibleb was hobbled,” the King of the Dead continued, “so by the judgment of Ma’at you will travel the path of atonement a cripple.”

He stood balanced, quite unconsciously, on his right leg, but as his senses rapidly drained away with the blood pouring from his wound he toppled over onto the gushing stump. He gasped and winced, bracing himself for the agony that must result, but the throbbing merely kept expanding apace. His relief of moments earlier was quickly disappearing beneath spouts of red horror. Dismemberment was a particularly serious matter to an Egyptian, who can take nothing into the next world that they don’t possess in life. For most of common station, the only reward for drudgery and sickness and subjection and privation was the prospect of a marginally better life in the death. Irretrievably maimed he faced the strong likelihood of spending the remainder of his living days an unemployable ruin, his mutilated Ba thenceforth a useless shade, an object of pity and scorn begging contemptuous strangers for crusts and prayers. Terror returned, far stronger than before, but it was not the hot, immediate terror of impending pain and death, but the cold, slow, infinitely sad terror that his every secret hope had slipped forever out of reach. If a conciliatory gesture toward his ancestral god seemed preposterous before, it now seemed outrageous.

“Don’t you see?” he groaned, weakly. “Bibleb let this happen. Bibleb lets everything happen.”

“You let this happen. And yet the god that you despise may yet provide the key to your redemption. If you would find peace, it is to Bibleb that you must atone.”

It seemed a slim reed, and monumentally unjust, but he grasped it with everything left in him, his only thought to somehow salvage

“What do you want? How do I …?”

“Only by your god’s rehabilitation will your own be accomplished,” murmured Osiris. “Your fates one. Your fates have always been one.”

The soft light was bleeding away quickly, and he felt the stone begin melting beneath him, sensed his body dissolving and his mind tipping into the void. His last chance to get a straight answer out of Osiris was rushing away on a relentless current, and he needed an answer. His life, and afterlife, depended on it.

“For the love of Set” he rasped, “just tell me what to do…”

But his mouth had already evaporated into the ether, along with the rest of his face and attendant parts, and his words fled like water spilled on sand. Damn the gods and their riddles, and damn me for asking, he spat, the voiceless curse dissipating into nothing as his lamed spirit plunged into oblivion.

 And yet, as luck would have it, the gods are perfectly capable of hearing mortal thoughts, and are, when they care to be, equally adept at answering them.

“Do as you have been told, Djamose,” commanded Osiris, “for the love of Bibleb.”