Kepi woke to coal black. She rubbed her eyes. Something warm and rough touched the heel of her left hand. She would have jumped away in alarm, but her head felt heavy, her whole body felt heavy. Solid, lumpy heavy. She pushed up onto her elbows with effort, wobbled a moment, then surrendered herself and fell back down again. Little grunts came. Oh, thank goodness, it was dear Babu. He must have woken her.
And now she remembered where she was. How long had she been here?
Babu ran his fingers along Kepi’s lips. He grunted again. He tried to wriggle his hand inside her mouth.
“Funny baby.” Kepi found the energy to search around in the dark for the satchel. She was proud of herself for having thought to save the remainder of the honeyed goat milk in case Babu needed it. She took the stopper off the jar and fed the little baboon from her fingers.
He ate and ate and ate. Gradually Kepi realized something worrisome: This wasn’t just a few little suckles. Babu ate the way he did every morning, after a long night.
Kepi’s cheeks went slack. Was it morning? It couldn’t be. Menes had said they’d take her home. She should have been home long before morning. Something must have changed. Menes’s plans had gone wrong. Kepi should get out of the basket. She tried to stand, but it was hard to hold herself up.
She let Babu finish what was in the jar. Then she got to her knees. Babu immediately climbed onto her head. Maybe he could see in the dark? She didn’t know. They’d never gone anywhere in the dark before. She got to her feet all crouched over, so she wouldn’t mash Babu’s head against the lid, and spread her legs in a bracing position, as anyone should on a boat. But she didn’t feel the least wobbly. This boat was so big, a person didn’t even feel it moving through the water. She reached a hand up to push. The lid didn’t budge.
Menes had tied it shut.
He had told her he would. She fought off fear.
A vibration came through the bottom of the basket. Kepi dropped to sitting. She didn’t know why she was having so much trouble waking up. She snapped her fingers in front of her face; that’s how she usually woke up. Nanu would snap her fingers by Kepi’s head, and Kepi’s eyes would fly open and she’d be up just like that. But it didn’t work now; she was groggy. She lay back down and stretched out. This basket really was huge. Babu settled on her chest. Her eyes closed on their own. Vibrations came up from the floor.
She rolled in one direction and the side of the basket pushed at her right shoulder. She rolled in another direction. Now it pushed at her feet. She pushed back, only to meet an unyielding force. That was a surprise. When she’d gotten into the basket, nothing had been touching it on the outside.
With both hands, she felt the sides of the basket. Instead of bulging outward in the nice way they had when she first jumped in, they were straight. Her hands moved up and down. Yes, it was as though there were five straight, rigid walls around the basket. Something was pushing against them from the outside.
Kepi pushed back hard now. Nothing happened. She pushed harder. Nothing. She was stuck. Like a wild thing in a cage. Her insides banged around inside the hollow of her body.
She dropped her hands and shouted, “Help!” She shouted until her throat was raw and her ears had gone deaf. Babu whimpered the whole time.
Then came a huge lurch. There was no doubt about it: The boat was moving. And it hadn’t been before. She knew that now for sure.
Nothing was the way it was supposed to be. Panic tightened her skin. Where was Menes? He should know she’d be scared. He should be there, telling her what was going on.
What if Menes wasn’t around? What if the boat had left without him and no one even knew she was in this basket?
Kepi tried to dig her fingers between two loops of the basket coil. If she could only make a hole, she could shout through it. She dug. The fibers cut her fingers, but she dug and sucked them and dug some more. Whoever had stitched this basket had done a very fine job.
Kepi searched in the satchel. She found the leaf, opened it, and ate a fingerful of the soft goat cheese. She wasn’t hungry, really, but food might wake her up so she could think better. She ate another fingerful. Then she ripped a strip off the date leaf and chewed, sucking the bitter juice. That was when she realized the jar with the honeyed goat milk was empty. So nothing would be lost if she broke it.
She held the jar by the neck and slammed it on the floor. The thick basket bottom cushioned the blow. She tried again and again, but the jar wouldn’t break. She tried slamming it against the sides of the basket. But they were just as thick as the bottom. Babu pulled on her hair, his teeth chattering. “Don’t worry,” she whispered to him. “I’ll figure it out.” She could bash it against the beer jar, but then they might both break and she’d lose that beer. Anyone who lived near desert knew that losing the only thing you had to drink was too dangerous to risk. She could conk it against her head, but she might knock herself out.
She pulled her dress up to her waist and rearranged herself so she was sitting with one leg straight and one leg bent, knee in the air. She leaned forward and kissed that knee. “I’m sorry,” Kepi whispered. “You’re a very good knee, but I have no choice. I’m getting really scared. I’m sorry.” She brought the jar down as hard as she could on her knee. The blow stunned her, it hurt so bad. Hot blood rolled down her leg in both directions. The jar had broken. The smell of blood sweetened the air.
She gritted her teeth and blinked back tears, then gathered the pottery pieces into a pile near one side of the basket. She moved as little as possible, both because her knee burned and because she was afraid of getting cut on whatever little shards she might have missed. With the biggest shard, she attacked the side of the basket at her shoulder level sitting down. She stabbed and sawed. She couldn’t believe how tough the basket was. Sweat covered her and her knee throbbed. She sawed for a long time.
Finally the hole was big enough to stick three fingers through. That would do. She put her mouth to it and shouted. “Help! Help, help, help!”