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closeness we had always shared, and define our affection in other, less forgiving terms. I heard the anger and sorrow in his voice as he at last gave me the information I needed.
    “There are two tents, set up on this side of the temple wall. Two soldiers stand guard over the Seer, who sleeps in his cabin on the barge. The rest stand down. He will be here for two nights and will cast off for Pi-Ramses at dawn on the third day. If you take to the river and swim up the canal you should be able to accomplish your desire. The guards are really for show.”
    I did not thank him. I sensed that he would be insulted if I tried. But the coldness in my ka had gone and I felt obscurely dirty. After a long time I said tentatively, “I love you, Pa-ari.” He did not reply. He was either asleep or had chosen to ignore me.
    All the next day I thought about what I would do. The village remained largely deserted, the people hurrying to the temple in their spare moments to try and catch yet another glimpse of the sinister figure who had glided under the pylon and into their imaginations, but my father slept late and then went out onto the desert for reasons of his own and Pa-ari disappeared with his friends. Mother and I retreated to the relative coolness of her herb room and busied ourselves in grinding and bagging the dozens of leaves that hung drying from the ceiling. There was little conversation and I was free to make plans, each more fantastic and impossible than the last, until I was ordered sharply to soak the lentils for the evening meal and stop daydreaming. With an inward sigh, part hopelessness and part recklessness, I did as I was told. I had discarded all flights of fancy and decided on a direct course of action. I would go simply, nakedly, to my fate. After all, what was the worst that could happen? Arrest, and an ignominious march back to my father’s door.
    Father came home at sunset, blood caking his chest and dried in rivulets down his arms. A dead jackal was slung across his shoulder, and more blood dripped from its mouth and nose down my father’s sinewy back. He tossed it outside the door, together with his bow and two soiled arrows. “I’m hungry!” he shouted into my mother’s horrified face. He was laughing. “Don’t begrudge a man an afternoon’s sport, woman! Thu, bring beer to the river immediately. I am going to wash off this carrion’s remains and then I will drink and eat and then you and I,” he planted a kiss on my mother’s silently protesting mouth, “will make love!”
    He set off for the river at a lope and later, watching him splash and plunge about in the water, I understood that the time he had spent with the soldiers had freed him to briefly be the man he had laid aside, willingly but perhaps regretfully, when he chose my mother as his wife. He was fine, my father, straight and honest and strong, yet in my arrogance I pitied him that day for the choices he had made.
    We all ate together, sitting cross-legged on our mats with the food on a cloth before us while the sun dropped behind the desert. My mother lit a lamp. Father said the evening prayers to Wepwawet, our totem, and to Anhur and Amun and mighty Osiris, his voice reverential but still full of happiness. Then he and my mother walked out under the stars and Pa-ari and I went to our room. He busied himself with arranging his pallet, his back towards me. “It is the Seer’s last night,” he remarked non-committally at last, his face still averted. “Have you come to your senses, Thu?”
    “If you mean am I going to meet my destiny tonight, yes I am,” I replied loftily. The words hung between us, fraught with a dignity I had scarcely intended, and I finished lamely, “Please don’t be angry with me, Pa-ari.”
    He had lain down and was motionless, a dark column on the pallet. “I’m not,” he said, “but I hope they catch you and whip you and drag you home in disgrace. You know that none of us has actually seen under all