Kenna studied her face, and seemed to reconsider. “No—I cannot ask this of you. You’re just a girl, and this… it’s important and necessary, yes, but it’s very unpleasant if you’re not comfortable with the dead.”
“I want to stay,” Neff assured him. She sounded more confident than she felt. In truth, she was already feeling queasy, but she was determined to be there for him. “I’ll learn so much by helping you. It can be… part of my education as a priestess.”
Kenna brightened. “Yes, that’s very true,” he said, taking to the idea. “Itisextremely illuminating. Not simply the ritual itself, but what it can teach us about the body and how it functions. I’d be happy to explain the process as I go, if you think it would be useful.”
Neff swallowed. “I do.”
“Then let’s begin.”
Kenna seemed more relaxed as he returned to his tools and assumed the role of teacher. He plucked the long pointed metal shaft from the table and placed it on his father’s chest. Neff forced herself to move closer as he tilted the king’s head back and braced it with a small curved piece of wood.
“First we must extract the organ inside the skull,” he said, taking the shaft in his hand. “It’s essential that all moisture be removed from the body to prevent putrefaction. The dead must retain their physical bodies in the Duat, so it’s our duty to make sure they are perfectly preserved.”
With that, he inserted the sharp end of the shaft into the king’s nostril until it could go no farther. Then, with a swift, forceful motion, he forced it through with a dullcrack.
Neff made a small squeak as she felt her breakfast threaten to reappear.
Kenna glanced up at her. “All right?”
“Fine,” Neff replied weakly.
Kenna nodded and resumed his work. He moved the shaft around in slow circles inside the skull before sliding it back out, slick with dark blood. Next, he set the tool back on the table and picked up the shaft with the spoon end.
“Now that the organ has been carved into smaller pieces,” Kenna said, “we can remove it without damaging the skull.”
Neff watched as he reinserted the shaft into the king’s nostril and began systematically pulling out spongy globs of gray matter with the spoon, dumping it into a clay bowl with horrible wet noises.
“I thought…” she managed, swallowing the bile rising in her throat. “I thought you were supposed to preserve everything.”
“Yes, everything except that.” Kenna grimaced as he attempted to scoop out the last bits of flesh. “The organ inside the skull is of no use. We remove and preserve the lungs, stomach, liver, and intestines in Sons of Horus jars—only the heart remains inside, to take with him on his journey West. It’s as the embalmer said in that old letter we found in the House of Life. At the moment of judgment, the heart is weighed against the feather of Maat, and if it’s lighter than the feather, he is welcomedinto the Duat. Without a heart, he cannot face judgment and is doomed to wander the earth for eternity.”
“Is that next? Removing everything except the heart?” she asked, unable to keep the dread from her voice.
“Yes,” Kenna replied, wiping a sheen of perspiration from his brow as he finished the extraction. He set the bloody tool aside and took up a clean cloth. Gently, he moved his father’s head back to a resting position and began cleaning the spattered gore from his face. As he did this, Neff saw something change in Kenna’s serious expression. A subtle flare of the nostril, a quiver in the corner of his lip that betrayed his grief.
He must have sensed her watching him, because he cleared his throat and tossed the soiled cloth in the bowl with the rest of the viscera. He turned away, leaning on the table with both hands for a moment before coming back to the body with a shard of obsidian.
“Now we open the abdomen and remove the vital organs. Once that’s done, we pack the body with natron and wait seventy days for the preservation process to be complete.” He glanced over at Neff, his emotions roiling just under the surface. “Are you still with me, little sister?”
Neff didn’t want to see more. In fact, she wished she could wipe what she’d already seen from her memory. But staying felt like the first step in making amends for what she’d done. If she was ever to find forgiveness, she’d have to be brave. She’d failed the king; the least she could do was be there for his son.
“I’m with you.”
Kenna gave her a crooked smile and nodded. Then he lowered the blade to the left side of his father’s belly and pierced the soft flesh. He dragged the blade down, slicing the skin open like Neff had seen fisherman do at the market. He cut all the way to where the cloth covered his father’s waist.
“There,” Kenna said, inspecting the incision. What little blood oozed from the cut was torpid and dark. The prince took a deep breath and pushed his left hand through the opening.
“Bring me a bowl,” he grunted, indicating one of the clay vessels on the table. “The largest one, please.” Neff scurried over to retrieve it and bring it to his side. A moment later, Kenna began pulling a long pink tube from the body, more and more of it, until it almost overflowed the bowl.
“Another bowl,” he said, and reached in again, this time extracting a thicker curved organ, cutting it free from its bonds with the obsidian blade, and depositing it into the second vessel. Neff held her breath as she transported the viscera back to the table, trying desperately not to inspect its contents too closely.
What emerged next was a massive cone-shaped organ, nearly too large to fit through the incision. It was an angry, violent-looking thing—dark, brownish red, and unexpectedly heavy. Kenna gave it a curious look before depositing it into the bowl.
“What’s wrong?” Neff asked him.
Kenna shook his head. “Probably nothing. Strange, though…” He turned back to the body, steeling himself. “One more,” he murmured, and reached deeply into the body, nearly up to hisshoulder.
With effort, he pulled out two more spongy organs, one identical to the other. They were surprisingly light in comparison to the one before, and marred by several odd growths on their surface. Curiosity overwhelming disgust, Neff peered closer. The growths reminded her of a fungus that sometimes grew on old food left too long in the dark—whitish and soft and edging toward rot.
