Anubis

The Last Knot

The heart lay in the pan, but the balance did not move.

Anubis touched the beam. Both cords hung freely. Across from the heart, the feather stood with its fine barbs undisturbed. Nothing caught beneath either pan.

The dead man tried to smile.

“A good sign, my lord?”

Anubis lifted the heart. It was dark, firm, smaller than his palm. Hearts came to him heavy with things their owners had forgotten, or light with things no one living had noticed. This one offered no resistance at all. He might have been holding its shadow.

“What is your name?”

“Hori, son of—”

The man’s mouth remained open.

Behind Anubis, Thoth lowered his reed pen. In the darkness beneath the far side of the balance, something shifted its enormous feet.

“My father’s name,” Hori said. He rubbed his lips, as though the missing word had dried upon them. “I said it at the door.”

Anubis returned the heart to the man’s chest. Through the parted burial linen, he felt a beat so faint that he could not be certain it had happened.

Hori caught his wrist. The fingertips were stained with the old brown of resins. Even death had not cleaned the cracks around his nails.

“You worked in the embalming house.”

“For forty years.” Relief brightened the man’s face. “I wore your mask. I said your words. Ask any of them.”

He gestured towards the entrance, where the dead waited beyond sight.

“Then hold still.”

Anubis slipped a finger beneath the linen at his breast.

Hori clamped both hands over it.

“Not that.”

The hall became very quiet. Anubis could hear the reed pen touch its rest.

Under the man’s fingers, a knot pulled itself tighter.

What the Linen Held

Anubis took him away from the scales.

Beside a low basin, where the light reached only as far as the rim, he sat Hori upon a bench. The man kept glancing back at the balance. Each glance took longer, as though the way back were growing in his mind.

“Your hands,” Anubis said.

Hori reluctantly opened them.

Beneath the outer wrapping lay a stone scarab, its underside lettered with a familiar appeal. Anubis lifted it, read it, and placed it beside the basin.

“That stays with you.”

“You will let it speak for me?”

“It asks your heart not to wrong you. I have no quarrel with that.”

Below the scarab was another fastening: a thin strip of linen wound so closely that its edges had become a cord. Its ends disappeared into Hori’s chest.

“This one.”

Hori turned his face away.

Anubis had untied bindings stiffened by years of neglect. He had gathered what water scattered and held together what the desert tried to take. Beneath his fingers, ruined cloth would yield its last sound thread. This knot knew his touch. It drew away from it.

“Who made it?”

“I did.”

“While you lived?”

A nod.

“What did you ask it to do?”

“Keep one thing quiet.”

The bench gave a small scrape. Hori had begun to slide sideways, though he had not moved. Anubis caught his shoulder; for a moment his fingers met no more substance than cool smoke.

“Tell me your name.”

“Hori.”

“And your father?”

“I don’t know.”

Anubis steadied him against the wall. He found the first fold with a fingernail and eased it open.

Warmth struck his hand.

A woman stood outside an embalming house. River mud had dried halfway up her shins. She held a small blue bowl, turning it so the man in the doorway could see that it was whole.

“It was my mother’s,” she said.

Hori stood between her and the room beyond. Behind him, clean linen lay folded upon a shelf.

“I cannot take a bowl.”

“Then take it to someone who can.”

The woman pushed it towards him. He did not reach for it. She had to catch its weight with her other hand.

“My husband is by the landing. I covered his face. There were flies already.”

From inside the house, a child coughed. Hori looked over his shoulder.

“Come tomorrow.”

“Will he keep until tomorrow?”

Anubis felt the door move under Hori’s palm. Saw the narrow blue crescent of the bowl as the gap closed.

Hori jerked away from him.

The basin rang against the wall. Water spilled over Anubis’s feet, and the doorway vanished.

“I had a daughter,” Hori said. “She was ill. I needed payment for medicine. There was work enough for three men and only me to do it.”

Anubis kept one finger beneath the loosened fold.

“How much cloth would he have needed?”

“I told you why.”

“How much?”

Hori looked at the linen covering his own legs.

“Not all that was on the shelf.”

The strip tightened against Anubis’s finger. Hori seized its loose end and pulled.

“Leave it. I have carried it long enough.”

The light behind the basin went out of his eyes.

Anubis caught his hands before he could pull again.

“What was your daughter’s name?”

The dead man frowned at him.

“What daughter?”

For the first time, Anubis wanted to break the knot.

He closed his hand around it. The linen gave a fine, dry creak; beneath his other palm, Hori’s shoulder began to crumble into drifting grains of shadow.

Anubis opened his hand at once.

The shoulder gathered slowly. He waited until it could bear the weight of his fingers again.

Hori watched him with a stranger’s frightened courtesy.

“Have I been here before?”

The Hand That Bound It

Anubis set the scarab in Hori’s lap. The man stroked its rounded back with his thumb.

“You had a daughter,” the god said. “She was ill.”

Hori looked down at his own resin-dark fingers.

“I know these hands.”

“So do I.”

“They did something.”

“Yes.”

“Something bad?”

Anubis did not answer for the heart. He took the loose end that Hori had pulled and laid it across the man’s palm.

“Open your fingers.”

Hori obeyed. The linen slackened a little.

“There was a woman at your door. She brought a bowl.”

“I remember a door.”

“Let it open.”

The hand began to close. Anubis held out his own beneath it without touching.

Hori’s fingers stopped.

A cough came from somewhere neither of them could see. Hori turned so sharply that the linen at his neck tore.

“Nebet?”

The name trembled between them.

He said it again, and his weight returned to the bench.

Anubis slid the first winding free. Hori bent forward, gasping. Under the god’s fingers came a cramped room, a little girl twisting away from a spoon, the bitter scent of medicine.

“Let me do it,” she said.

“You’ll spill.”

“Then I’ll lick it off.”

Hori laughed despite himself. He let her hold the spoon. She spilled almost half and looked at him with such immediate alarm that he wiped the mess with his sleeve and pretended not to see.

On the bench, the dead man’s face folded.

“She lived.”

“Yes,” said Anubis.

“I had forgotten that she lived.”

He bent over the scarab. For a while Anubis let him sit, one hand cupped around the amulet, the other open with the strip of linen lying across it.

Then Hori looked towards the scales.

“Will the girl be there? When you put it down?”

“Your heart remembers her.”

“And the woman?”

“Yes.”

He picked at a crack beside his thumbnail.

“I went to the landing the next morning. Someone had taken him away. There was a piece of cloth caught under a stone.”

He paused, then pressed his thumb hard into the crack.

“I was glad he was gone. I could tell myself someone else had done it.”

Anubis lifted another winding. This time Hori did not resist.

Under it was the last knot. Small, neat, almost elegant. The same fastening an embalmer might use where a bandage must not slip. Hori had made it well.

Anubis put the two ends into his hands.

“You must release this.”

Hori stared. “You are the god.”

“And you are still pulling it shut.”

The man’s hands trembled. The knot answered, tightening and easing with each movement.

“If I do it,” he said, “will you get me through?”

Beyond the basin, a heavy breath travelled along the floor. Hori heard it. His toes curled inside the linen.

Anubis could promise to hold him together. He could keep teeth from closing upon him before the weighing. He could find every fragment the binding had hidden and return it to its place.

The feather waited on the other side of the hall.

“I will bring all of you to the balance.”

“That is not what I asked.”

“No.”

Hori drew one end of the linen through his fingers, measuring it by touch. An embalmer’s habit. Anubis watched the man’s skilled hands seek a way to perform the work without paying for it.

At last they stopped.

“What if I keep it?”

Anubis touched the place where Hori’s shoulder had almost vanished.

Hori looked at the god’s hand. Then at the scarab in his lap.

“Nebet,” he said, testing the name.

He hooked a nail beneath the final crossing and lifted it.

The knot opened.

Hori doubled over. Anubis caught him before his forehead struck the basin, and with his other hand drew the linen steadily from the heart. It came hot, then cold, then wet against his fingers. Hori clutched at his arm. A door closed. A little girl laughed with medicine on her chin. A blue bowl tipped, righted, remained unbroken in a woman’s hands.

Anubis kept drawing.

When the end came free, Hori was kneeling on the floor. He leaned against the god’s legs, shaking.

Anubis lowered himself beside him and waited until he could stand.

The Balance

Thoth raised his pen when they returned.

Hori gave his name. This time he finished it.

Anubis took the heart from his breast. It pressed warmly into his palm, crowded with a life that would not lie still. He lowered it into the pan.

The cord snapped taut.

Hori stepped back. Beneath the balance, the waiting creature lifted its head. The pale teeth parted, and Anubis could smell the hollow darkness behind them.

His fingers were still on the cord.

He could feel exactly how little pressure would be needed.

Across the pan, Hori saw his hand. Hope moved across the man’s face before he could conceal it.

Anubis remembered those hands setting a broken finger straight beneath linen. The years of work. The daughter. The door.

He lifted his fingers away.

The heart fell another finger’s breadth. Hori made a short, involuntary sound.

Anubis stood between him and the waiting jaws, close enough for Hori to touch, and watched the beam.

It moved upwards.

Then down again.

A small tremor ran through the feather. Hori had reached for the god’s wrist; now he let his hand drop. Thoth’s pen hovered above the page.

The beam settled.

Neither pan descended.

For several breaths nobody moved. Then Thoth bent to his work, and the sound of the reed travelling over the sheet filled the silence. The creature beneath the balance lowered its head.

Hori stared at the heart as Anubis lifted it out.

“Is it gone?” he whispered.

“What?”

“The door.”

Anubis set the heart back into his breast.

Hori closed his eyes. His shoulders drew together, and the god knew he had his answer.

At the far end of the hall, the way into the presence of Osiris stood open.

Hori took one step towards it. The torn linen slipped from his shoulder.

“Wait.”

Anubis drew the cloth into place. Hori held the end for him, understanding at once what was needed. Between them they made a simple fastening, loose enough to let the shoulder move.

“The woman,” Hori said. “Do you know her name?”

“Tamit.”

“Tamit.”

He put the scarab against his breast, beneath the cloth.

Anubis smoothed the fastening with his thumb. Then he released it, and Hori walked through the opening with nothing in his hands.