Free Year of the Hyenas by Brad Geagley

a last breath of fresh air and
crossed the threshold into the dim interior of the House of
Purification. The boy closed the door.
    Slowly
Semerket’s eyes
adjusted to the gloom. He was in the entry hall where Osiris’s shrouded
limestone form loomed, blackened with generations of oily incense. The
god was still garlanded from the festival, though the flowers were
limp. An equally filthy Anubis stood to Osiris’s right. Windows set
near the roof admitted the hall’s only light. Beneath his sandals
Semerket felt the soft crunch of natron, the fine granular soda
quarried in the desert.
    “Wait here,”
the boy
said. “I’ll fetch the Ripper Up.” Semerket realized he had not taken a
breath since he entered the house. Steeling himself, he exhaled. Even
before his nose drew in its next breath, he could smell the cloying
spices. Heavy resinous myrrh clashed with the effluvia of sweet floral
attars. Juniper resin, salts, and above all the salty smell of natron
conspired to make his gorge rise. But it was the intense underlying
odor of rotting meat that made him gag—a pervasive stink the perfumes
failed to mask.
    Semerket
fumbled in
his sash for the bag of cedar chips he’d brought and inhaled deeply of
the aromatic wood. Though he could still smell the rot, it was fainter
now.
    With knowing
steps he
made his way through the entry hall, cedar bag held resolutely to his
nose, finding his way through the gloom to the rear of the compound. A
wooden shutter was propped slightly ajar, noon sun streaking through
its slats. He pushed it farther open and stared, blinking, into the
gauzy light of the yard.
    The sheds were
to the
left of the yard, as he remembered them, placed tightly next to one
another, each monotonously alike. Built to the fringes of the desert,
with layers of tight shelving, every level was covered in mounds of
yellow natron.
    At the far end
of the
yard, Semerket saw furtive movements at the desert’s red edge—pariah
dogs nervously worrying the rim of the estate. The dogs eyed the sheds
avidly, ears pricked in their direction. The boldest of them, his
scrawny beige flanks a moving carpet of ticks and fleas, crept toward
the farthest shed. The sentry boys had withdrawn to sleep through the
hottest part of the day. Only one youngster was on guard at that hour,
and he ran forward to fling stones and yell at the curs.
    The lead male
dog
stood his ground, head down and snarling. When struck by a piece of
broken pottery, the dog ran at the boy, barking ferociously. The young
sentry instantly turned and fled, screaming for the other boys to help
him.
    Seeing the
sheds
temporarily unguarded, the dog immediately seized his chance and ran to
the nearest one. He pawed furiously at a mound of natron, the dust
flying up in yellow clouds between its legs. In seconds, his quarry was
exposed—a thin, shriveled, human arm.
    Seizing it by
the
wrist, the dog yanked. The rest of the body soon emerged from the
yellow dust, a woman in the last stages of her purification. Her hair
was bleached yellow by the natron, her body a thing of leather, taut,
dry, and stringy.
    With a sharp
crack the
dog snapped the arm off at the elbow. Two ragged bones and a hand with
blackened nails were his reward. The pariah dog ran as fast as he could
back into the desert, growling fiercely at the other hounds who now
hurled themselves at him, tearing at the arm for a morsel of the
desiccated flesh.
    Semerket saw
other
sentry boys emerge from the house to bury the woman once again under
the heaps of natron. The woman’s relations, if she had any, would never
know she lacked an arm, for the embalmers in the House of Purification
would supply her with one of clay, or perhaps a palm frond whittled to
the correct shape. Under her tight wrappings no one would be able to
detect the forgery.
    Semerket
returned to
the reception hall to wait for Metufer on a rickety bench. The heat,
together with the nauseating smells, combined to form a kind of
narcotic