Carefully Kepi cupped the beetle in her hands and walked along the canal that was connected to the river.
The soft ground got even softer as she left the bean field and approached the Nile. All the land that the Nile flooded was black earth, rich with river silt. But the land closest to the banks was the richest. Slender flax plants were set close together here to make them grow tall. Anyone could harvest flax; all you had to do was pull it up by the roots. It wasn’t like wheat or barley; those had to be cut with heavy sickles, so only men could do it. After the next full moon Kepi would join Nanu and Mother in harvesting the first flax, it grew so fast. And she’d pull even more flax after the second planting, for flax was a winter plant. When the flax was finished, Mother would be sure to find Kepi something else to do; their family always planted three times before the floods came again.
She gave another sigh. Life had turned into so much work. It had been more fun being a little kid. But Mother needed all the help she could get, and Kepi was ten now.
She went along the riverbank, going the opposite way of the current, until all the fields were behind her. Then she kept walking. Click beetles didn’t travel far; they didn’t fly except at night, and then only within their territory. Kepi knew this because her father had taught her. During the three to four months every year when the Nile would flood and farmers had no work, Father took her exploring in the countryside. They’d be gone for weeks at a time, sleeping in huts they made from palm fronds. Nanu never liked exploring, but Kepi loved it, so it was just Father and Kepi. Kepi knew lots about the animals and plants of the floodplain and the desert. And at night, under the palm fronds, Father would tell Kepi stories of the gods. Mother might be the one who taught Nanu and Kepi what would happen to them if they didn’t obey the gods, but Father was the one who knew all the tales about them.
Best of all, for the last few years Kepi had managed to tame a wild animal on each adventure. Not fully tame—not turn them into pets. But rather, Kepi would make friends with a creature just enough that she could feed it from her hand. Usually birds—a cute hoopoe with a little striped tuft on its head, a kestrel with glorious red and blue feathers, even a Nile goose, despite their usual bad temper. Once she found a mongoose, sleek and long with that elegant tapered snout. Kepi remembered every detail about every one of them.
Whenever Mother complained that Father and Kepi had wasted time out in the wild, Father said, “If you’re searching for a neter, a god—observe nature.” That always made Mother hush. Nothing was better than those days and nights with Father.
But all that was over, for Father would never take Kepi exploring again. She swallowed a lump in her throat at the painful thought. Pharaoh Khufu was building another pyramid, even taller than the three his father, Pharaoh Sneferu, had built. Five months ago, when the Nile waters rose, her father had been offered a tax waiver if he would work on a barge carrying the huge granite blocks from Upper Egypt, where they were quarried, all the way north to the delta of the Nile for the inner chamber of the new grand pyramid. This was the same offer Father had gotten every year. Usually Father said no and, instead, paid his taxes in extra grain. This year, though, he’d accepted the offer. He had wanted to keep all his harvest so that he could trade other farmers for additional land. Nanu was twelve now, and it was time to marry her off—and a woman should have land of her own as security when she entered a marriage.
But the very first week their father had arrived up north, a chunk of limestone fell on him and crushed one leg from the knee down. The pharaoh’s surgeon had straightened Father’s lower leg bones and made him a cast from cow milk and ground barley glued together with tree gum. But Father’s foot was the problem. The open wound wouldn’t heal, no matter how much cow dung the surgeon put on it. It festered until the surgeon had to cut it off and finally sent him back.
Father still suffered pain. He worked only at home now, seated in front of the large stone mortar. He grasped the pestle in both hands and pounded grain for hours as if in a fury until it formed the finest powder. It was grain from last year—so it was old and musty. Nevertheless, neighbors who tasted bread made from it said it was the best ever.
So Kepi’s father was always busy and never lonely. But he was also always at home. Stuck.
At least he could make a little bit of money for the family as a baker, so long as they had their own grain from their own land. It was a good thing Kepi had spotted this click beetle. If she saw others, she had to carry them far away, too. Beetles mustn’t ruin their crops. It was important that her father never have to sell their land.
But it was clear Father would never make enough money to buy extra land for Nanu now. She could get married with or without owning her own property, of course. But if the marriage didn’t work out, Nanu might want to leave her husband. If she had her own land, she could farm it or sell it. Either way, she could take care of herself. But without her own land, what would happen to her?
All this worry. Their family never used to worry.
It was all Pharaoh Khufu’s fault. Now Father had to pay others to plow his land and help in the harvest, and he still had to pay his taxes every year. It was too unfair. Pharaoh Khufu shouldn’t ask Father for taxes anymore. He should give Father money—not the other way around. Pharaoh Khufu should take better care of his people.
Kepi hated Pharaoh Khufu. It was wrong to hate the pharaoh. Dangerous, even. He was a god in his own way, after all. But Kepi couldn’t help it. If she ever got the chance, she’d tell him off, all right. Someone had to take care of her family. The pharaoh wasn’t doing it, and the gods sure weren’t either.
Father wasn’t happy anymore. Mother wasn’t happy anymore. Nanu wasn’t happy anymore. How could Kepi be happy? A feeling like tiny cold feet raced across her shoulders.
Kepi raised her cupped hands to her eyes and peeked through her fingers at the treasure within. “How did you ever get to our field, little click beetle? Were you exploring? Don’t you know it’s dangerous to go that far alone?”
She stepped up her pace now. Kepi herself had never strayed this far alone before. It had taken so long to get here that it would be dark by the time she made it back home. That meant they wouldn’t be able to work anymore today. And that meant she had gone far enough. Kepi wasn’t really trying to shirk work, just to put it off a little while. It was a pity that broad beans were so thirsty all the time. They were as bad as chicory and lettuce. In fact, most crops demanded watering all the time. Only the grapes and grains weren’t greedy.
Kepi blinked at her own thoughts. When she said things like this aloud, Mother would answer that the god Set was watching her. Mother said that the god Set often watched her. Set was the god of storms, and Kepi’s name meant “tempest”—so, according to Mother, Set’s eye was on her. Lettuce was Set’s favorite food. It was not a good idea to say bad things about lettuce, even inside your own head. Set could be vengeful. Mother had a list of vengeful gods, and Set was among the worst.
There was a stand of date palms ahead. The click beetle would be happy among the trees. Kepi ran.
Within moments she heard grunts. She was amazed, for she recognized those rhythmic noises. Most people from Egypt wouldn’t. But Kepi had traveled south with Father into Nubian lands, so she knew animals her neighbors had never seen. She stopped dead and squatted, curling her shoulders forward as tight as possible.
It wasn’t just the one grunter—no, no, a whole troop of baboons came dropping out of the date palms and went romping away on all fours. The bigger one had a silver mane, crimped perfectly. There was a dent in the middle of his head, as though someone had bashed him with a thick pole. He was double the size of the others but still shorter than Kepi, even stretched to his tallest. But size wasn’t everything; Kepi had seen baboon fangs tear an antelope apart. They could easily tear a child apart.
She put her chin to her chest and clamped her head between her knees and squeezed her eyes shut. She knew she should pray in her heart, but a roar filled her. The only thoughts she could form were help help please help.
Gradually the roar faded. Noises from outside her filtered in now. Grunts. They were distant. Faint. Finally even that noise stopped. She dared to lift her head. The last of the baboons’ pink bottoms disappeared through an acacia thicket far off.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “Whoever helped me, thank you.”
Uābt.
Kepi whipped her head around and touched one ear with the back of her hand, then the other. She could have sworn she heard someone call her “pure.” But there was no one around.
She straightened upright slowly and walked to the nearest date palm, where she set the click beetle free on the bark.
But, oh, she was wrong: The baboons weren’t entirely gone; in the date tree closest to the water was a mother with a tiny black baby clinging to the back of her head. The baby’s bright pink face peeked out above the mother’s dull one. Some of the mother’s whiskers were white against her greenish-brown fur. She must be old. She climbed down slowly and awkwardly, as though she was in pain. Her eyebrows raised, showing a white eyelid above ebony eyes that glittered angrily at Kepi. Her head bobbed.
Kepi lowered her gaze and backed away. She mustn’t run or the baboon would chase—Father had taught her that. She searched out of the corner of her eye for something to protect herself with. That was when she saw a slight movement. It was the tip of a muddy log floating near the base of the date tree the baboon was coming down from. But no, it wasn’t a log; logs didn’t move like that. Instantly Kepi knew. She had to run! “Climb back up, baboon! Climb!” Kepi turned to run, and tripped and fell.
The baboon jumped the final bit from the tree, and made as if to chase Kepi, when the crocodile burst forth and closed its jaws around her hindquarters.
The baboon didn’t shriek. She just looked at the crocodile, then looked at Kepi. She ripped at her head, and a black scramble of skinny legs and arms and tail flew through the air.
Kepi caught the baby and ran as the crocodile slipped back into the river with the silent baboon mother in its jaws.