And, yes, it was true! There they were, my friends, my dear ones, there! Amenophis crouched in the reeds, holding a weeping Nava close to his bony chest. The two of them looked scrawny and almost as filthy as I felt, and yet to my eyes they were more beautiful than the first nightmare-banishing rays of the glorious Aten. I shouted their names with all the joy in my heart.
For an instant they stared at me, as if my voice had turned them both into stone. Then a wonderful smile bloomed over Nava’s face. “Nefertiti! Oh, Nefertiti, you’re alive! You’re alive!” She leaped away from Amenophis and became a small, swift, happily shouting whirlwind, striking me so hard that I staggered and fell in a heap among the rushes. She swarmed over me, her eyes bright, hugging me so tightly that every breath I managed to take was a victory. “You’re alive!”
“And so are you,” I said when she loosened her embrace enough to allow it. “Oh, my little one, so are you.” All at once, stupidly, I was crying again.
“Why are you crying? What’s the matter? Are you hurt? Stop it, Nefertiti. Please.” Nava’s voice rose anxiously. “What’s wrong?”
Amenophis answered for me, standing between Nava and me so that he could give a hand to each of us and help us stand again. “Nothing’s wrong anymore, Nava. Sometimes people cry because they’re so happy, it’s too powerful to control. Look, I’m doing it, too.” He touched his long, thin fingers to where tears were cutting channels through the grime on his cheeks. “Welcome back, Nefertiti.” He spoke solemnly, but his lips parted in a radiant smile. When he opened his arms to me, I stepped into his embrace and rested my head on his chest as naturally as if I were coming home.
“Me too! Me too!” Nava tugged at our arms until we included her in our hug. It was just as well: If she hadn’t broken the strange spell between Amenophis and me, I don’t know if I’d have found the strength to let him go.
How strange, I thought. Even with Nava clamoring for attention between us, the beating of Amenophis’s heart still lingered in my ears. I looked into his tired, homely face, only to have him quickly drop his eyes and turn from me, looking toward the river.
“When we get to Dendera, I’m going to send a messenger back to Thebes to bring every piece of gold I own.” He spoke softly, as if talking for himself alone. “I’ll give it all to the gods who brought you back to me—to us. Hapy will have a share, because his sacred waters didn’t take you from us, and Ra, because his light guided you to us, and Isis, because I know she’s dear to you.” He spared me a smile so shy and fleeting that I wasn’t sure I’d seen it. “And Hathor, because Dendera is her holy place, and—”
Nava tugged at my hand and beckoned me to bend over so she could whisper to me. “I don’t have any gold, so I’m going to make a new song and sing it as part of my prayers. Not for your gods, though—for mine. Will you mind?”
I kissed her brow. “Not if your god won’t. If you like, I’ll give you a pair of gold earrings to offer him, along with your song.”
She looked at me narrowly, as if trying to judge if I was making fun of her or not. Nava had spoken to me many times about the oddly solitary god that she and her Habiru tribefolk worshipped, a god without a shape, without a face, and without any name except the One. “Do you think my prayers won’t be acceptable without gold?” she asked, so very stern for someone so very young.
“No, of course not,” I reassured her. “We’re together again, and we’re not going to lose one another anymore. I think that giving thanks for that is the important thing, whether to Isis or Hapy or Hathor or the One, with or without gold.”
“Maybe you should tell that to Amenophis,” Nava said. “Otherwise … well, you heard him. He’s going to give away all his gold, and then what will he do?”
I laughed. “Good idea. We wouldn’t want him to return to Thebes as a beggar”—I looked down at my bedraggled dress and my mud-smeared arms and legs—“even if all three of us look like beggars right now.”
We came up behind Amenophis and each took one of his hands. “You know, the gods will hear you even if you come before them empty-handed,” I murmured. “Otherwise it would be a waste of time for poor people to pray at all. Or do you believe the gods are like their priests?”
“Don’t mock the gods, Nefertiti.” Amenophis’s prominent jaw was set in a forbidding expression. “Not now, not after how wonderfully they’ve blessed us. If you knew what I felt when I thought we’d lost you! The moment that hippo threw us all from the boat, my mind went cold. I wasn’t human anymore. All I could hear was your voice calling out to me: ‘Save Nava! Save the child!’ The hippo was still raging through the water, bellowing, trampling, smashing everything, but all I heard was your voice, and all I saw was Nava, flailing in the water. I fought my way to her, got her to hold on to my shoulders, and swam to shore.”
“He told me to hide behind a big tree, in case the hippo came on land,” Nava put in. She was trembling with remembered terror. “Then he went back into the water.”
“Back?” I couldn’t believe it. “What were you thinking?” He didn’t bother responding to my question. We both knew the answer: I had to find you.
“There’s no sense in your worrying about that now,” he said. “You can see that no harm came to me. Or to Nava,” he added. “I didn’t leave her alone on the bank for too long. When I couldn’t spot you in the river, I returned to her and we took the long way around the stretch of shore where that beast was still wallowing. When we came back to the water, we began our search.”
“We looked and looked for you, Nefertiti,” Nava said. “We never stopped. I didn’t sleep, or eat, or—”
“Nava …” Amenophis spoke in a warning tone, but he was smiling at the little girl’s powers of exaggeration.