Free Casting the Gods Adrift by Geraldine McCaughrean

1
A Boatful of Monkeys
    I know what made me careless. It was the thought of seeing a god – in person – breathing, speaking, eating, moving about. Priests had worshipped at his shrine every day for two years. Now
I
was going to see him in the flesh – the pharaoh. God on Earth. The thought filled my brain. How could I think about anything else? So you see, it was all my fault.
    Our ship, when we set sail that day, was a wonder to see. Even I was amazed, and I was accustomed to my father’s trade. My father, Harkhuf, dealer in rare beasts, was himself a rare, golden creature in my eyes. Mostly away in the south – beyond a dozen white-water cataracts of the Nile, beyondthe southernmost districts of Egypt, beyond even Nubia – Father would reappear once or twice a year, his clothes threaded with strands of the fur of leopard, cheetah and lion. He took wild animals and tamed them into purring house pets for mayors and noblemen and, of course, for the pharaoh.
    â€˜Pharaoh Amenhotep, may his names be spoken for ever, relied upon me completely for baboons,’ he used to say, cocking his nose in the air and sniffing.
    Baboons were always Father’s favourite. Well, he was born in Hermopolis, and the people down there worship Thoth the baboon-god above all the rest. Pharaoh Amenhotep loved the beasts, too. So our home was always leaping with baboons, caged or tame, and little bronze figurines of baboons crouched in the living room. All the time I was growing up, they grinned at me, or bared their teeth – I never quite knew which.
    Now the new pharaoh, son of Amenhotep III, had commanded my father to bring him animals; lots of animals, he said, for his new capital city. When word reached Father, hewas breathless with delight. Despite my aunt’s objections – ‘Tutmose has his studies,’ and ‘Oh, surely you won’t take Ibrim on the river!’ – he invited my brother and me to go with him on the journey down the Nile to deliver the animals. ‘The trip of a lifetime,’ he said.
    A lifetime, yes.
    So, we set sail from Nehkeb in the
Palm of Thoth
, its decks laden with cages containing baboons, some smaller monkeys, a few serval cats and three dozen scarlet ibises. There were six baby crocodiles in a wooden trough, and two hunting falcons tethered to their perches with lengths of leather. The noise was cacophonous.
    Father posted me in the prow to keep watch for sandbars. The river currents shift so much sand and mud about that the navigation channels are constantly changing. The hippopotami can wreck a boat, too. The holy Nile is a treacherous river, and boats have to be so shallow to sail it that they are quite frail.
    My brother Ibrim sat up on the deckhouse roof, chanting the spell against crocodiles –we never cross water without saying it – and playing his harp. Ibrim was losing his sight, you see. He had river blindness. Not unusual. Terrible, but not unusual.
    My father would keep saying, ‘You’ll get better, son. Your eyes are improving every day.’ But even then, young as we were, Ibrim and I knew it wasn’t true. Father just wasn’t very good at coping with bad news. He made sacrifices to the goddess Ishtar. He went on pilgrimages. He hung a gold case around Ibrim’s neck. Inside it was a little rolled-up note from the great baboon-god Thoth, promising to protect him. Even so, I had to keep look-out on my own for sandbars, while Ibrim sat on the cabin roof. He had a sweet voice; I loved to hear him sing. But that day, all I could hear was the rush of water under the prow, and the baboons jabbering. All I could think about was seeing a god.
    The broad sail was furled; we were travelling with the current. Even so, the northerly wind was blowing so strongly that we made slow headway. The rowers had to pull without rest on their oars. It occurredto me that, with our cargo of livestock, we must look like the Ship of a