“He was born in the desert,” a man’s voice said. Jeb’s voice. “His mother laid herself out upon his father, the earth, her belly a great blue egg speckled with stars. His father impregnated her with his trees and his mountains, his fields of wheat stalks and corn. He and his sisters and his brother burst forth in the light of their grandfather Sun, the maker of all, the bright dung beetle in the sky, the golden scarab, the all-seeing eye.

“He and his sister-wife Isis bathed in the lotus pool, anointed each other’s pulses with fragrant oil of myrrh and frankincense, adorned each other’s brows with garlands, adorned each other’s eyes with lapis, tourmaline, and emerald, adorned each other’s lips and hearts with carnelian, adorned each other’s skin with gold. Hummingbirds thrummed at their necks and wrists. Butterflies flew from their lips when they opened their mouths. Their scapulae sprouted wings. They let the wild flowers grow unfettered. Bees hummed in their hive and it sang like a lyre.

“He and his wife went forth hand-in-hand to irrigate dry land, to plant wheat and corn, to weave fine linen and make barley beer and date wine. They were not wasteful. They burned the wick all night and wasted no light. Draped in white linen and gauze, she knelt before him and offered her breasts and her thighs like cakes of saffron and honey. He offered her his cow’s horn, his stalk of wheat, his golden staff.”

The words had bound and drowned Izzy, seeped into her pores, as if they had been spoken directly to her. But she could not let them rule her. She tried to rouse herself, but she could not. The man’s voice continued:

“When you create, you sacrifice a little of yourself, a little of your seed, a small blue egg. When two bodies struggle against each other in the war of love, a child may be conceived. Children are small deities, slick with blood as they arrive in this world. When you paint a story on the temple wall, you lose a little blood. But when you are done, you will walk the flower path dripping with hyacinth, fragrant with calamus, unfurling the blue lotus in the silver pool; you will go forth into the flower fields of peace.