Lights on the Nile

by Donna Jo Napoli

  The crew rowed as hard as they could. And the rocking finally stopped.

  But almost instantly the crocodile resurfaced. He floated a moment, then swam fast.

  “He’s coming again!” shouted a man.

  The crocodile swam right for the boat and rose up so his whole front half was out of the water. Kepi watched, terror stricken. His giant jaws snapped—open, shut—on the middle of an oar. The wood split with such force, the top half of the oar flew back and hit the rower in the head. He went flying into the river. The crocodile swam beside the boat for a minute, part of the oar still sticking out of his broad snout. His skin was pale gray and green in the sunlight. The pupils of his eyes had narrowed to thin black slits in a ball of yellow. He slapped the boat with his tail, then dove.

  They all stared in shock at the surface of the river. The water was opaque. They could only imagine what it hid. The man didn’t come back up. The crocodile didn’t come back up.

  One of the two men who normally steered ran over to the empty bench. “I’ll row. One’s enough to steer. Let’s go! Now!”

  The men rowed in perfect unison, fast and hard.

  Kepi looked back in desperation. Please, man, she prayed in her heart, come back up. Come back up! He couldn’t die. No one should die. She didn’t wish ill on these men; she just wanted them to treat her better. Please, great god Sobek, please don’t let that man die. If that crocodile was you, please push him up. Let him swim to the boat. Please. But nothing came to the surface of the water.

  This was horrible. What would happen to the man’s body if he died? How could his family ever mourn him properly? His poor ka would never be honored, never find peace.

  Kepi looked around at the crew. Their jaws were set; their eyes glittered with fear. And in that moment she realized: She should speak up now, before they calmed down. She shouldn’t let the moment pass. “That crocodile was the god Sobek!” shouted Kepi, only half believing herself. “He’s mad because you’re not supposed to keep us locked up in this basket. We’re getting sick in here. You have to let us out on deck.”

  No one answered her.

  “It’s the truth! Inr-ti is sacred to Sobek. I prayed to him when we were docked there. He heard me. He came to tell you. It’s a message.”

  The half-ear man looked at Menes. He sneered and shook his head.

  Menes rushed over and hissed in Kepi’s ear, “Shut your mouth. One of our men died back there. Stop talking nonsense, or everyone’s going to get mad at you.”

  “I didn’t pray for anyone to die,” Kepi whispered back. “I swear. I just prayed for help. I have to get out of this basket, Menes. I’m sick.”

  “I’ll figure out something. Just shut your mouth. Not one more word about the gods.” Menes went back to his rowing bench.

  They rowed hard for a long time, and no one talked.

  Gradually Kepi’s heartbeat slowed again. Gradually she could think straight. No crocodile would have acted like that. She put her hands to her cheeks and held them there as if to steady herself. What she had said was true; it had to have been Sobek. He came to Kepi’s rescue.

  But even if that was true, he hadn’t helped her get out of the basket.

  And that man had gone under the water.

  Things were worse now. Far worse.

  Chapter 17

  Hippo

  Kepi’s thoughts jumbled around. It had been a terrible mistake to beg the gods to interfere. Now the crew blamed her for that lost man. They were even more set against her. Not a single one looked at her. She felt chilled all over. She hugged herself. If she had to sleep in the basket one more night, she thought she might die.

  Babu barked. Nanny sneezed. Kepi clutched the edge of the basket.

  “What’s that?” One of the men stood up. “Hippos. Look.”

  Ahead on the right were many hippopotamuses. Most of them stood in the shallows near the bank, just lolling in the waters, but several swam with only the tops of their heads and their nostrils showing. At home Kepi loved the sight of hippopotamuses, especially their funny round ears and wide, shiny backs. She liked how the mothers were so affectionate to their babies. There were lots of babies in this pod. Cute, with their rolls of fat around their necks. Big happy families. Kepi had to squeeze her eyes shut for a moment, she missed her family so much.

  “Hippos are worse than crocodiles,” said one of the men.

  “No, they’re not. They don’t eat people.”

  “They turn over boats and drown them. That’s just as bad.”

  “We’ll be all right so long as we don’t rile them. We’ve passed hippos before. Lots of times. You’re just upset because of that monster croc. But he was crazy. That never should have happened. He was just plain crazy.”

  “Right,” said the man at the steering oar. “Hippos are nothing. We’ll give them wide berth. It won’t be a problem.”

  The men rowed hard, and the man at the rear steered the boat straight down the center of the river, where the current was strongest. But oh, one hippo came swimming at them determinedly, foam rising around him like a cloud.

  No! This couldn’t be happening again. No! Kepi stared; that hippo was definitely coming fast and furious. He was so big, he set up waves in his wake. Go back, Kepi prayed. Please, please go back.

  “He’s a giant.”

  “The biggest bull I’ve ever seen.”

  “Another monster!”

  “He’s coming right for us.”

  The hippopotamus rammed the boat on the right side near the front. The blow was so strong, the bow of the boat lifted out of the water and came slapping back down with a huge splash that soaked everyone. Boxes went crashing against one another. Baskets tumbled onto their sides. Babu clung to Kepi’s head and neck so tight, she had trouble seeing and breathing, but she managed to hold fast to Nanny’s neck anyway. The three of them went skidding out of their toppled basket and slammed into the mast.

  Kepi heard a hiss: sssssssset. The god Set!

  Then came a snort and a second enormous blow, stronger than the first. The splash that followed was denser than the heaviest rainfall Kepi had ever been in. Men screamed. Babu and Nanny and Kepi went careening across the boat the other way now, slammed up against a rower’s bench. Everything tumbled and tossed.

  Gradually, though, the boat stopped rocking. No more blows came. The hippopotamus had gone away.

  Without a word, the men took their places at the benches and rowed. But now there were only three at each side and one man at the rear. Four more men had disappeared under the water.

  Kepi stared at the surface behind them, willing those men to pop up. But they didn’t. Maybe they couldn’t swim. Maybe they got conked on the head in all that tossing and sank straight down. Maybe things hidden under the water had gotten them.

  Tears blurred Kepi’s eyes. She hadn’t intended her prayers to the gods to have such hateful effects. These men had done a very wrong thing. They had stolen her, when it was illegal to steal an Egyptian girl. They had stolen Babu, too. They intended to trade away both of them. That was wrong, but not so wrong that any of them should have died. The god Set had been cruel. Kepi brushed at her tears, but they kept coming for a long time.

  The men rowed, and Kepi studied their faces. They looked straight ahead. But she could see they were shaken. Probably nothing this bad had ever happened to any of them before. She had to try to find a way to make things better.

  Lots of baskets had been lost. Kepi’s basket was still there, though. It had gotten hooked on a harpoon. She unhooked it and righted it. But she didn’t climb in.

  Broken pottery pieces littered the deck. Kepi walked around, tossing them into the water. At least this way no one would get cut. A box had gotten bashed open against one of the benches. The copper chest inside it was exposed. Its top had been twisted askew. Kepi opened the top, to try to straighten it. Inside the chest was a mound of gold and, even more precious, silver. Most of the pieces were just lumps of the raw metals. But t
here were several flat ingots and cups of coiled silver.

  No one Kepi knew had gold or silver. But she’d seen these valuable foreign metals in the jewelry worn by rich people in the city of Wetjeset-Hor, near her village. That gold came from Nubia, in the south. And Father had seen a lot of silver and gold when he was up north, because he had visited Ineb Hedj. He said these metals were imported to that city from places far away, Minos and Mun-digak and the land of the Hattians. So no matter what, these were foreign metals. What were they doing here, in this chest?

  Kepi looked around. No one seemed to be watching her. She quickly slipped a single piece of silver into her mouth. It sat heavy on her tongue. She knew it was wrong. But silver might be able to pay her and Babu’s passage back home from Ineb Hedj. And she wouldn’t need to do that in the first place if these men hadn’t stolen her. So really, even though she had her own reasons for being on this journey now, really it was only right that they should pay for her to get back home.

  She carefully worked at the hinges on the chest until she finally bent them enough that the lid closed again. She carried the chest to the center of the deck, where it would be safe. And she went on with her job of cleaning up the aftermath of the hippopotamus attack.

  Chapter 18

  Loss

  They pulled the boat over to the shore and anchored. The crew formed a circle and sat down on the deck.

  A man shook his head and wiped his mouth. “What can we do for them? We’ve got to do something.”

  “We’ll be at Djerty soon.” Another man pointed. The outermost buildings of the town could be seen not far up the river.

  “Nah, it’s best to do it now.”

  So they talked about the five men who had gone under the water. They said their names and whatever they knew about their families or where they were from. It wasn’t much. The men had come together on this big trade boat for the work. They hadn’t known one another beforehand, and they never intended to see one another afterward. Still, they had been together all day long, all night long, during this journey; they had developed strong bonds. Some of them cried.

  “What about their things?”

  “We can’t go back and deliver them now.”

  “If we throw them into the water here, there’s a chance they’ll find them.”

  So they gathered any personal things that remained on board that had belonged to the lost men. They tossed it all overboard, for use in the afterlife.

  “At least their kas will have sustenance for all eternity. They can eat fish.”

  The others murmured agreement.

  Then someone said, “That was no ordinary crocodile.”

  Up to this point, Kepi had been sitting motionless beside Nanny at the bow of the deck with Babu on her head, outside the circle of men, completely stilled by the sadness of it all. But now she nervously petted Nanny’s ear with one hand and Babu’s tail with the other. She studied the men’s faces. They wouldn’t look at her. They’d never looked at her much, but now they wouldn’t look at her at all. Her mouth went dry.

  “He was bigger than other crocs. Lots bigger. Like some magic thing.”

  “And he came at us in the middle of the day, for no reason. We didn’t have meat or fish hanging off the side of the boat. No one was dangling an arm or leg in the water. No reason. No reason at all.”

  “The god Sobek sent him.”

  “Or maybe it really was Sobek himself.”

  “It’s like the girl said. She prayed to Sobek, and look what happened.”

  Menes twisted the tips of his beard. “I told her Inr-ti was sacred to Sobek. She didn’t know on her own. She’s just a little village girl. She knows nothing. I won’t tell her about the gods of the towns we go to anymore. Not a word.”

  “But what about the hippo?”

  “What about him?” asked Menes.

  “Hippos aren’t sacred to any of the gods of the towns we’ve been to, but he came after us all the same.”

  “That’s right. We didn’t do anything to annoy him. He just charged us.”

  “Hippos are the most dangerous animal of the Nile,” said Menes. “We all know that.”

  “This one wasn’t normal, the way he rammed twice, then stopped. It was like he wanted to hurt us, but not all of us.”

  “Not the girl.” It was the man with the half ear. He glared at Kepi.

  “It could have been another god in disguise.”

  “Maybe Set. He sometimes comes as a hippo.”

  “Oh! I heard him.” One of the men slapped his forehead in recognition. “I heard him announce his name. I forgot it in all the confusion till you said it now. But I heard the name Set.”

  Kepi bit her lip so hard, she tasted blood. Someone else had actually heard the hippo say he was Set. It was real—every last shred of doubt disappeared; the gods were with her.

  “Set protects her!”

  “Why, the girl doesn’t need to pray to gods of the towns we visit. She can just pray to Set and we’ll get attacked.”

  “How could the god Set care about a simple village girl?” Menes spread his hands palms upward in entreaty. “Come on, it was just a crazy hippo.”

  “Look at her name. You call her Kepi. She’s a tempest. And Set’s the god of storms. She’s Set’s girl, all right. He came to avenge her. And he’ll come again.”

  “Yeah. He’ll come again!”

  “We can shake rattles at him. Rattles frighten Set.”

  “You really think that hippo would have been scared at a rattle?”

  Half Ear shook his head. “He’ll kill us all next time.”

  “All right, all right.” Menes rubbed his hands together. “Listen. Most of the pottery we traded for was broken or fell in the river. We still have one chest of precious metals to trade, and we can bring back a decent load of pottery from it. But it’s nothing compared to what we should have had. We need a way to make up for our losses. Am I right?”

  The men grudgingly nodded.

  “So the answer is the baboon and the girl. Selling them is our only way out of ruin.”

  “I’d rather be ruined than dead.”

  “Me, too.”

  “No one else has to die.” Menes put his fists on his hips. “All we need is for the girl to want to come with us. Really want to come. If that happens, the gods won’t have any reason to attack us anymore.” Menes walked over to Kepi and took out his knife. He held it in front of her nose. “If you come with us willingly, I won’t kill your baboon. But if at any point you resist or try to get others to help you or pray to the gods for help, I’ll kill him.”

  Kepi shook her head in horrified disbelief. “You need Babu. To sell.”

  “Five men died. Think. You really want to take a risk on what I will or won’t do?”

  “You’re awful.” Kepi locked her eyes on Menes’s. “But you’re not that awful.”

  Menes went to the leather strop hanging from the mast and sharpened his knife.

  Kepi closed her hand around Babu’s tail. “All right. I won’t pray to the gods anymore. But you have to be kind to us. All three of us.”

  “What does ‘kind’ mean?”

  “We can’t be locked in the basket anymore. And we get to come into town with you whenever we dock.”

  Menes shook his head. “Into town? I don’t . . .”

  “We get to come into town. That’s the deal.”

  Menes looked around at the other men and nodded. The other men didn’t nod back, but Menes kept nodding as though they were all agreeing. “All right. It’s settled.”

  It wasn’t even midday when they arrived in Djerty, it was so close to Inr-ti. Menes stepped off onto the dock, and Kepi went to follow, with Babu on her head and Nanny in tow.

  “The goat stays,” said one of the men.

  “She needs exercise,” said Kepi. “Besides, you agreed.”

  The man looked at Menes. “Is this girl in charge of us now?”

  Menes stared at Kepi with a lowered brow. />
  “All right,” said Kepi. It didn’t matter. She would take Nanny for a walk later.

  “Leave the baboon, too.” This time it was Half Ear.

  “No!”

  “Someone might steal him off your head.”

  “Babu comes,” said Kepi.

  “I’ll keep the girl with me at all times,” said Menes. “No one will steal the baboon.”

  The man at the steering oar said, “Let’s tie everything up and all go together to trade this chest of metals for as much pottery as we can get. Just fill her to the brim—and then not have to trade at all the rest of the way home. That way we can simply dock at night, and we don’t have to go into towns at all—and we don’t have to deal with this girl’s nonsense.”

  “All of us? Who will guard the boat?”

  “What’s left to guard? No one’s going to steal the whole boat. You’d need a crew to row it. And it will take all of us to carry back that much pottery.”

  And so the seven men trooped off, carrying the chest. Kepi walked in the center of them, with Babu on her head. She waved to Nanny, who was left behind, tied to the mast.

  Djerty was a smaller town than Wetjeset-Hor. But it clearly had some rich people, judging from the jewelry of those who passed them.

  They went straight to a pottery workshop. Within the hour, they had traded gold and silver for a boatload of pottery. Then they went to a basket workshop and bought enough to hold all the pots. After that, it was a matter of several trips back and forth from the workshops to the dock to fill the boat. The potter’s helpers joined in carrying the largest vessels. No one asked Kepi to carry anything. That was good, because she still felt ill. Sometimes chills hit her so hard, her teeth chattered.

  When they finished, it was the middle of the afternoon. Half Ear said, “The rest of us will stay here now and rearrange the full baskets, so there’s a better distribution of weight. Menes, you take the girl for a meal. When you get back, you’ll guard the load, and the rest of us can go eat.”

  “Babu needs to eat now,” said Kepi. “So I’ll stay on the boat with Nanny.”