Scarab: An Awfully Big Adventure

• Scarab: When He Loomed
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Thomm Quackenbush

"We need supplies."

The steward did not look up from the Codex but at once extended her hand, pinky and pointer aloft, the middle two pressed against her thumb in something that could have passed as a magical gesture or just a demonstration of how they should keep their traps shut. When she could spare a moment to allow her gaze to dart over them, her expression was one of faint mania that might have passed for excitement on someone who knew moderate emotions.

"Allow me to rephrase in advance of your inevitable questions. If you expect us to do this soon -- as in, before he kicks it, which in my unmedical opinion isn't more than a couple of hours -- we will have to get creative."

Jacqueline did not relish the idea of cutting corners with her father's last rites. "How creative?"

Mica's finger trailed down the page, her eyes narrowed, then turned to the nurse. "How robust is the booze supply? I can't imagine the ratty jackal in the room is taking many trips to Shoprite, so it would go through you, right?"

"Most of a case of beer still. I thought I saw some vodka in the back of one of the cabinets. Rubbing alcohol, but--"

"Creative," repeated Mica, stretching the word. "We are good on beer, but it gets specific. What 'black beer' is -- at least to the ancient Egyptians? No idea, but beer will work if we pull a Tinker Belle and believe enough. I don't think I'm asking a ton from this crew. It's supposed to be in a vase, but we can play with that. There are different wines, and... do any of you know what a 'stibium' is? That doesn't seem like something I can skip without offending the gods." She glanced over into the living room as though the subject may have heard her thought of negligent blasphemy. "Well, god at least."

"Antimony," said Wick. "A gray metalloid."

Mica shook her head. "Great, anyone got a hunk of antimony in their pockets?"

This did not seem like a creative attitude, nor could she believe the steward would so readily adopt defeatism now. "Why do we need it?"

"Oh..." said the steward. "Not positive."

"It is kohl," said Wick, "to anoint his eyes against the sun."

Jacqueline considered that. "You want eyeshadow?"

Mica brightened. "See, creative. I aggressively want to put makeup on Anubis. Say we can." Again, she held up her odd gesture. "Rephrasing again. I'm preemptively asking forgiveness, not permission, because I cannot even fathom having this opportunity again."

"It is acceptable," said Wick, "as we are pressed for time."

"And we need a pitcher of tuat." Mica brushed the page as though to remove a crumb. "Yes, tuat. As in T U A T. Not, you know, twat."

"And what is that? Arsenic? Lip gloss?" asked Jacqueline, impatient to begin, both in desiring mercy for her father and herself. She ached to be in Wick's car on the way home, leaving Stacy to deal with godly remains.

She turned to Wick for his explanation, who only shrugged.

"My knowledge may be deeper in places, but I am still permitted ignorance."

"We also need a pitcher of seft," said Mica. "Nothing like needing to find some seft tuat and having no luck."

Wick held a finger to his lips, a gesture of consideration. "Are you reading the hieroglyphs?"

Mica snorted. "You overestimate my skills, buddy. I can barely read kanji, and I took Japanese for three semesters."

"The Codex gives you an inexact Anglicized transliteration?"

"Sure," said Mica, her sarcasm of the wordiness unhidden. "Why not?"

"Could it be pitchers belonging to Duat, the Underworld, and Seth, the god of chaos and storms?"

Mica jutted her jaw in irritation. "It would not hurt if the Egyptian Book of the Dead were familiar with the concept of possessives."

"We need some kind of godly pitchers?" Jacqueline asked as this seemed like a bigger ask than missing wine.

"Don't get stressed," Mica said. "He probably has them hanging around. Gods usually do. They won't look like a prop from a mummy movie. Why don't you and Nurse Ratched go scope out the glassware? According to the suddenly helpful Codex, you need to find one with a star in a circle and something that looks like a cane with two prongs on the bottom. Here, I'll draw you a picture. Wick and I will get the rest ready."

"I didn't like that she called me Nurse Ratched," said Stacy, pulling out a Kool-Aid pitcher that was sacred to no one. "I've been nothing but good to your father and every ounce of an excellent nurse and Southern woman since y'all got her." She pushed the plastic pitcher across the floor.

"Mica's just an asshole. She doesn't mean what she says, I promise."

She peered over at Jacqueline. "You know I've been good?"

"Better than he deserved," she replied without hesitation, without thinking.

"What's that mean?"

Jacqueline pulled out another pitcher, this one glass and ridged. It felt older, appropriately hefty. If she wanted to crack a skull, this kitchen had few better options. But nothing was on it to suggest it was in honor of the realm of the dead or the god of storms.

"This is the first time I've seen him in thirty years."

Stacy whistled through her teeth. "I don't suppose time is the same for him as it might be for us. I can't imagine having a daughter out there -- one like you especially -- and not being in contact, even if I'd lived however long. I guess that accounts for the lack of pictures of you. Still, I've been as good as he deserved. Well, deserves."

"Because he's a god?"

She laughed. "I do not give a solitary damn about that. What does that even mean? No, he is a dying man. Maybe he's been dying longer than most people will ever live. Like I said, it's a different sort of time. But he is kind to me. It's not a position where everyone feels generous. Facing death, some people act like bastards. You can't blame them. I try to be compassionate, but how can you feel like yourself when you're hiring someone to wipe your ass because you can't anymore?"

Mica floated into the room as though she did not know care or need permission, opening drawers and cabinets, too roughly spinning the lazy Susan to collect oils and herbs for her improvisation.

As she sniffed at a bottle of something the color of ash, she seemed surprised to see the two of them on the floor.

"What were you two talking about?"

Stacy began to dissemble that it had not been anything much, but Jacqueline cut her off. "How you are an asshole."

"How am I an asshole?" asked the steward, perplexed before realization dawned over her features. "Oh, the Nurse Ratched thing? I am incapable of remembering a single other famous nurse."

"Florence Nightengale," drawled Stacy without hesitation, "Clara Barton, Goldie Brangman, Virginia Henderson, Sojourner Truth. I could go on."

"No need," said Mica. "I get the point -- though I only know two of them, one who I had no idea was a nurse. I'm sorry I am an asshole for not knowing a list of famous nurses and defaulted to the one fictional one at the forefront of my lobes."

The apology was as sincere as it was likely from her, but Jacqueline rose from the floor. "That's not why you are an asshole. It's an example but not the reason. You are an asshole because my father is dying in the other room, and you are excited."

"It's a challenge," said Mica. "I understand the importance of the occasion. I am not going to be flip about it, I swear." She held her hand as though stating an oath, but her fingers curved in after hardly a second. "Well, I can't promise that, but I will try. Being pesky is how I process anxiety."

Jacqueline wanted to tell her this was good enough, but she hesitated. That was an automatic reaction of anything with the tone of an apology.

"Thank you for this," said Mica, reaching to squeeze Jacqueline's shoulder. "It's a relief."

"That I called you out on being an asshole?"

She shook her head, putting her supplies on the tile-topped kitchen table. "That you were finally comfortable doing it. It's the grief, maybe, but I kept hoping. You know why I told that joke on the Ferris wheel?"

"I assumed you were lightening the mood of some evil spirit trying to murder us," said Jacqueline, though not without a touch of acid.

"We weren't gelling. You were worried -- good reason to be -- and you didn't feel connected to Wick or me. The shortest line was to make you laugh -- or orgasm, but that seemed more trouble than it was worth -- and didn't it work better when you did?"

"So -- just to ensure I'm following you -- you like that I called you an asshole because it makes you feel connected to me."

"It is your truth, something that you had been letting accumulate for hours," Mica said. "If I were still some stranger to you, you would have kept it to yourself. That's the polite thing to do, right? The thing we are supposed to. But you don't consider me a stranger."

"Are you suggesting that I consider you a friend?"

The steward cracked a smile. "Oh, I'm definitely your friend, buddy. You don't get any say in that. You called me an asshole, which is only something friends get to do without finding themselves hexed to attract pubic lice."

Jacqueline didn't see a reason to fight this. Mica was her friend simply by being here right now. She had volunteered and had no cause to do it beyond a book suggesting that she ought to (well, that and the boredom of working the front desk of a hotel attached to a cavern). It didn't make her less of an asshole, but Jacqueline counted a few of those in her small stable of friends -- who would never hear an eighth of this.

"Now that we are all cozy," said Mica, grinning down at Stacy, "how do you feel about going topless?"

The first pitcher was in the refrigerator. From the floor, surrounded by pitchers that had not met their satisfaction, Jacqueline noticed the star etched on its bottom when the nurse went for a drink.

Stacy lifted it over her head, squinting at the mark, then rubbed it with her thumbnail. "Well, how the heck was I supposed to notice something like that?"

Jacqueline called Mica back for confirmation. The steward wore a white dress with embroidered blue flowers now, though her leather jacket over it.

"What are you doing?" asked Jacqueline.

"Ceremonial vestments," answered the steward with a smile that approximated but did not fulfill being apologetic. "This is not going to do the trick. Anyway, what's the deal?"

Stacy held the sweet tea pitcher out.

"I'm too busy to be thirsty right--" Mica stopped, tilting her head to one side. "The pitcher of Duat."

"I can dump out the tea," said Stacy.

"No, don't," said Mica, shocked she would even suggest such a thing. "Who doesn't love a glass of sweet tea brewed by our lovely Stacy? Did you find this somewhere special before you used it?"

"Dishwasher," said the nurse. "Same as always. Tea always tasted a little better out of it, you know?"

The pitcher of Seth held blue lotuses, placed behind a piece of driftwood on which the word Believe in Comic Sans was burned. Stacy brought it to Jacqueline in complete confidence, then fell to doubt when met with anything less than enthusiasm.

"It's got the mark."

It was a crack in the side -- or what could have passed for a crack -- the vessel's length, the imperfection did fork at the bottom as Mica had drawn, a slope near its head. It did not look enough like the sketch to be unambiguous, but Jacqueline felt the pressure to know.

"When did you put these flowers in there?"

"Oh. I didn't. Maybe one of the other nurses?" As Stacy said this, it was clear that she knew it had not been, and her guess was vindicated.

"Do you remember this vase not having flowers in it?"

The nurse shook her head.

"Good enough."

"The ritual does not have a precedent the Codex knows," Mica explained when they gathered again. She wore again the clothes in which she had arrived.

On the chocolatey wood of the dining room table sat an array of powders, objects, and oils. If Jacqueline had arrived at the house to see this, she would not have mistrusted its magical intention. As she had been in the other room, she knew it to be baking soda and salt, beer in various containers, a shot glass of rubbing alcohol or vodka (she did not want to get close enough to it to be sure), and cooking spices. She had not been privy to what most of these were meant to approximate. As the daughter, she wondered if this were something she ought to remedy before the ritual began. Without thinking, she reached to wipe the condensation from the Vase of Duat but stopped, unsure that it was safe to touch any longer.

"This is the bog-standard ritual for the dying," Mica continued, "since it is not as though many have been around to scribble down that they did for a dying god. In ancient Egyptian practice, a dying person has much to leave behind, bodies and what have you. The gods -- like their children, the daemons -- have only their kas-basically, souls. There is every chance we do this ritual, and your dad isn't there when we finish. Just... nothing in the bed. I don't know. As I said, it's a ritual that no magician -- at least those mentioned in the Codex -- has done. It could be that only gods attend to these things, and they don't always tend toward taking notes."

"I do not worry. We have you," Wick said, lowering his head to Jacqueline in reverence. "You are his daughter and the closest thing to his pantheon we can find."

The last few words abraded her. "You tried to find others? Other gods or their children or what does that mean?"

"The gods don't come around these parts," said Mica, her mild drawl close enough to an imitation of Stacy that the nurse's nostrils flared. She said this as though whispering in confidence a secret both self-evident and dangerous.

"We have you," Wick repeated. "You are enough."

Having given her warning of the potential insufficiency of the ritual, Mica excused herself to get changed again. Absent this officiator of the rite, the three of them sat in silence, awkward between the women and serene for Wick.

Mica emerged from the bathroom, but her carriage had changed. Absent her leather jacket, wearing an unadorned cotton dress and an ankh no bigger than a quarter, the steward looked inversely larger and bolder. Her face had lost its puckishness, now serious and resolute. Her book appeared to be the wrong prop, belonging to someone whimsical, but she held it with reverence due to an artifact of its power.

Mica's bluster was absent as she painted the Eye of Horus on Jacqueline's father. The steward was far from a scribbler, rendering the lines crisp on his withered and sunken cheeks, her hands possessed with steady patience that contradicted every previous movement Jacqueline had witnessed from Mica. If Jacqueline were capable of this precision, she would find every excuse to demonstrate it. For Wick and Mica, her father was a god. To Jacqueline, something more elemental, the fundamental archetype of a father, but not a dad. To Stacy? It wasn't easy to imagine. Perhaps all at once, with the direct responsibility for the end of life beneath.

It would be a lie for Jacqueline to pretend her father became an object of beauty when Mica retreated from her work. Yet, for the first time today, Jacqueline saw majesty. She could not believe this was Anubis, not in her dearest heart, but she would grant that this was perhaps something greater than a man. The steward looked to her for approval. She swallowed a lump of sadness midway up her throat, mourning like heartburn, and nodded.

"It will give his heart vigor enough for the ritual," Mica said.

"Vigor to die."

The steward shrugged, looking away as though to hide her emotions. "Ever read Peter Pan?"

"I've seen the Mary Martin version."

Jacqueline could see by Mica's somberness abating that this would not be good enough. "Peter is on this rock, the tide rising. It's him and Wendy. He sends her off to safety over her objections. He is too tired to swim or fly. This is curtains for the boy who wouldn't grow up. You'd think Peter would freak out just a bit, but the little bastard doesn't. Oh, he's scared, but just one tremor, you know. He squares his shoulders and says, 'To die will be an awfully big adventure.' Your father cannot die weak. He is weak right now, but he needs to die well. He needs the vitality for an awfully big adventure."

"Peter doesn't die, though." It wasn't much of an objection, and she could not remember this in any version of the story -- too morbid for kiddies -- but she wanted to be contrary. She didn't have to know this story to be sure that Peter Pan could not die this way.

"No, Peter gets saved at the last minute by birds who give him their nest," said Wick. "He was willing to die, but he was not ready. He had never truly lived, after all."

Mica went about her work around the room. She assured the others that she did not initially need them present, only that they left her alone while she did it.

"She has explained the ritual to me," said Wick. Jacqueline did not see why he would need an explanation. She suspected he knew The Egyptian Book of the Dead by heart but was too bound by etiquette to admit it and expedite the affair. "The Egyptians -- like many cultures -- divided the world into four parts, corresponding to the four pillars holding up the sky. The cardinal points, in simpler terms. All witches are intimately familiar with these. I doubt Mica would even need to look out a window to know true north, cave-dweller as she is. She will solicit the gods of those pillars to assist in permitting Anubis to pass."

"The gods who have skipped town?"

Wick looked her over as though the answer to her question was far more intensive than she could imagine, which she granted might be true. "The gods embodied are not in attendance. The aspects in our minds are. We do not have time to show you the distinction at present."

"That's okay," said Jacqueline, and she meant it. It was okay that she didn't understand. She was comfortable not picking at this. The night was full enough without this curiosity.

"Mica will repeat her incantations four times in deference to these gods, their aspects," Wick said. "We will not sacrifice bulls or geese, as was the original tradition."

Jacqueline sighed in relief that Mica had thought better of it.

"I have selected appropriate dishes to compensate," he said. "They were delivered while you were in the kitchen and wait for us on the porch, surrounding the wax fruit."

In a sense, they had still made the sacrifice, then. It simply was one to which she was daily accustomed.

Mica called them into the room, her voice flat and deep.

"Osiris takes all that is hateful from you. Be purified by this water." Mica sprinkled some of the prayed-over tap water onto the forehead of the dying god, then on each of them as they entered.

"I have brought you the Eye of Horus," she said, holding her hand near the face of the sleeping god. He stirred a moment, though Jacqueline could not be assured that he heard what occurred over him. "May it refresh your heart. I have put it under your feet. May you walk in peace. I give you what has left your body that your heart may continue without care or want. Your voice will never leave you."

A high breath of uncertainty escaped Jacqueline's mouth.

Mica looked sidelong at Jacqueline, though barely opened her eye. "Problem?"

"You just don't sound authentic, I guess."

The steward rolled her eyes. "I have a magic book translating hieroglyphics. You expect it to spit out Shakespearean English because that's what you would see in movies? Did you want it to rhyme? But that language would be no more authentic than this. Less so because none of us could connect to it."

Jacqueline pulled back, having had her prejudices so immediately called out. "Sorry."

"Let the witch do her work," said Mica, straightening her back to regain a more mystical posture. She applied a white mixture to his parched lips. "Here is salve. Open your mouth and taste. This is the scent of your home, to which you will return. Your siblings purify you."

She sprinkled over him a powder of salt and baking soda. "You are purified with natron. Your mouth is as pure as that of a calf with its mother." Mica pointed at Stacy, mouthing, Put your boob on his face.

The nurse hesitated a moment, unsure how serious Mica had been when first she asked this. However, the words the steward had spoken at full volume fit the action. Stacy reached behind her back, unsnapped her bra, then pulled both it and her shirt over her head.

It was not the set of breasts whose vision Jacqueline would have wanted to carry into the afterlife, but the ritual did not call for aesthetic perfection. She wouldn't offer hers up. Mica -- who might otherwise think it a lark to strip down -- was occupied. Stacy leaned over Jacqueline's father with remarkable delicacy, her dark nipple barely on his cheek.

"You are purified," Mica said. "You rejoin the gods, your family. Your head is purified with natron; your bones are washed clean. All that belonged to you is returned."

Jacqueline's father gave a hoarse moan, going so long that she feared it was the opening act of his death rattle, but no more came. Then, a smilet visited his lips.

"Open your mouth, god Anubis. Receive the nipples of the bosom of Horus! Drink the milk of Isis!" Mica held her hands aloft in a grand gesture. She waited a few seconds before widening her eyes at Stacy, nodding down at the dying man's opening mouth. "Put that titty in his mouth," Mica whispered.

"Is that necessary?" asked Jacqueline, not eager to witness a sex act in general but between these two in particular.

Stacy did not need convincing, laying her breast on the god's bottom lip. He remained brutally weak, but he closed his mouth over her nipple.

It was not sexual by any stretch, not more than a baby suckling. This was an act of sacred quiet between them all, one Jacqueline did not wish to see end. Her father was as she had never seen him, a helpless infant. Stacy projected the profound serenity of motherhood, her eyes half-lidded.

They remained still until her father opened her mouth. Stacy retreated, covering her breasts -- made beautiful by the act -- with her arm but not replacing the shirt.

The rest of the ritual continued with incantations, new garments, an iron nail tossed into the corner, and other necessities that made no impact on Jacqueline. She felt it when her father suckled. This divinity evident to everyone else, this godhood hiding beneath liver spots and sagging skin. It was only a fraction of a second, but it was inarguable. For that alone, she could not regret a second of the day.

Her reverence broke only when Mica said, "We need to eat now."

Jacqueline could almost feel guilty for the rumbling in her stomach in reply, as though she had shut off the sensation in the presence of the takeout and this five-word incantation was enough to summon it all back at once.

"In eating," continued the steward, "we will join more deeply in unity with Anubis, the essence of the food passing through us." She caught Jacqueline's eye, mouthing, Yes, actually eating, as though she sensed Jacqueline's worry that the eating might only be as symbolic as corporeal gods.