We hadn’t, and now it was too late. The solitary beast attacked.
I grabbed Nava even tighter than she’d seized me and scrambled backward in the boat, dragging her as far from the raging creature as possible. The boat pitched and tossed crazily under my feet. I heard Amenophis calling my name. From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of him raising the big steering oar and swinging it at the hippo. The wooden blade bounced off the monster’s shoulder as if it were a fly. I watched, my blood as cold as the deepest night, as the hippo turned and snapped his jaws shut on the oar so forcefully that he nearly yanked Amenophis into the river before he crushed the wood to splinters.
Then, as suddenly as he’d attacked us, the hippo sank back beneath the river. I dropped to my knees, hugging Nava, looking up into Amenophis’s ashen face. My heart was thumping so loudly I thought that it would overwhelm my labored, panting breath.
Just as I drew a long breath of fresh air into my lungs, the beast burst from the water a second time, only a hand’s breadth from the stern, and plowed headfirst into the side of our boat. Our vessel heeled steeply as we all struggled to keep from sliding overboard. Panic began to choke me as I clawed for something, anything, to save me from the water. Slivers of reed slid under my fingernails as I fought to hang on to the boat with one hand and to Nava with the other. Sky and water teetered before my eyes for one heart-stopping instant, and then—
Then a fresh bellow from the beast, a second blow to the boat, and our watercraft turned over, spilling us into the river along with everything aboard. As the water closed over my head, Nava’s small hand slipped from my fingers. I kicked my feet frantically and broke the surface, hair plastered across my eyes. My ears were filled with the sound of brutal crunching as the hippo demolished our capsized boat. He tore the bundled reeds into flying, floating debris mouthful by mouthful in a mad, mindless riot of destruction.
“Nava! Nava, Amenophis, where are you?” I called, desperately scanning the water. The river’s current was carrying me along, away from the rampaging animal. I used my hands the way I’d used the oar, steering myself toward the shore. My head throbbed with prayers: O great Hapy, lord of the sacred river, save them! Lady Isis, loving and gentle, powerful and wise, bring them safely out of the monster’s jaws!
My legs began to ache and tire. I thought that I was near the bank, but no matter how energetically I kicked and paddled with my hands, the land didn’t seem to get any closer. My neck grew stiff from the effort of keeping my head above the surface, and I choked when a wavelet slapped me across the face, filling my nose and mouth with water.
Blinking my eyes rapidly to clear them, I cast heartsick looks everywhere, seeking one glimpse of Nava, of Amenophis, of any sign that the sacred river had spared them. All I saw were three great boats with sails set to catch the wind that would carry them upstream. Some nobleman was traveling south to Thebes or beyond with his family or followers. Laughter and loud music drifted to my ears from the brightly painted ships. I shouted for help, but no one aboard those magnificent vessels heard my voice over the beat of the drums and the jangling of the sistrums. If my cries reached them at all, they must have sounded as faint as birdcalls on the wind.
Every kick I made to stay afloat became more and more difficult. Weariness was a rope lashed around my ankles, relentlessly dragging me down, and despair at seeing no sign of Nava or Amenophis turned my heart heavy as a stone. Something bumped into my shoulder. I turned my head and saw a big bundle of reeds, part of the wreckage of our boat. I threw my arms over it and let it carry me along, but I was too numb with gloom to rejoice over this unexpected, life-saving gift of the river.
Hugging the reed bundle, I was able to rest until my legs recovered enough for me to resume kicking. Every hope I’d clung to since the hippo’s attack was gone, swallowed up by the river, whose banks and surface showed no sign that Nava and Amenophis were still in the land of the living. My face was wet with river water, wetter with tears, but sheer stubbornness made me go on, fighting to guide my tiny float to shore.
At last I felt the blessed sensation of muddy ground underfoot. I staggered out of the river, through shallow places where papyrus plants towered over my head. Waterfowl heard me coming and took flight, squawking angrily. I let the bundle of reeds bob away back into the current, and I sprawled on the bank, my cheek pressed to the warm, welcoming earth. I took one deep breath before my chest tore open with loud, inconsolable sobs for everything that had been wrenched away from me.
“Nava, little Nava … Amenophis, my friend, my dear, brave … Oh, gods, why?” I howled, and beat my hands against the ground. “Why, why, why?”
I don’t know how long I lay there, crying out my sorrow. In the end, grief stole the last scrap of my strength and I fell into a deep sleep. There were no dreams. When I awoke, Ra’s great sun-ship was well on its way to entering the gates of the underworld, past the western horizon. Beyond that gate lay darkness and the giant serpent, Apep, whose one purpose was to devour Ra and his ship, leaving us to perish in an endless night. It was no wonder that so many of Pharaoh’s royal ancestors had ordered their tombs carved into the rocks of the sacred river’s western shore. This was the land of the dead.
I pushed myself up and sat back on my knees, gazing at the sun. My throat felt raw, and my palms were red, badly scraped and stinging. I tucked them under my arms and hugged myself, taking deep, steadying breaths.