Page 39 - Demo
P. 39
Scents from a Sarcophagus
When we tenderly swabbed around the mummy’s holy shell,
I felt a little cursed. Horrible fates befall those who interfere
with seals five thousand years devoted to the afterlife detail.
We tubed the cotton-mitted wands. My puny fear faded as instruments
unburied odors we could not smell outright: juniper and pine and garlic and myrrh.
Microbes had been merciful. The bouquet endured as tanned, embalming hands
intended. We tossed around mocking names— “Eau de Pharaoh,” “Blissful Bandages”—
but nobody laughed or twitched a lip. We pondered those eternal smells
that would go on well beyond our pitiful musks and aftershaves. Spicy and sweet,
they would enliven their sleeper’s black dreams with colorful notes, decadent
callbacks to the days of sultry haze and omnipresent Wedjat eyes.
32
