Renifer had had the servants put together a picnic basket and she fed Pankh dates and they drank sweet fig juice from the same bowl. She offered him cold duck and he nibbled the meat right down to her fingers. They dipped bread in salted oil and shared a block of cheese.

Twice he kissed her, and the reed boat trembled as they fought for balance, both physical and emotional. He was so handsome. When she looked at Pankh, she could think of nothing but marriage and the joy it would bring. Father, however, had lost his joy in the coming event. He was quiet. He was, in fact, fearful.

What could it mean?

Marriage must not be entered into lightly. She must be sure of Pankh, and he of her. So Renifer said to him, “We must talk of important things.”

He had to laugh at the idea that girls had important things in their lives. He poled into the swamp until the papyrus towered above them, six and eight and ten feet of strong triangular stalks, the wide flat heads darkening the sun.

“You are the most beautiful girl in Egypt,” said Pankh. “I am all that is important to you. I will give you everything.”

“But what I want, Pankh, is the truth. Tell me what is between you and Father.”

“That is between men, Renifer. Men make choices in life. Your father has made his. He will live with them or he will die with them. It is not your place to consider truth or lack of truth. It is your place to obey. Yesterday you obeyed your father; from now on, you will obey me.”

Renifer had stopped listening to him. She was watching the most amazing terrifying thing she had ever seen. A spirit was materializing before her. First there was mist. Then shape. Then color and movement.

It was a ka.

Renifer had known all her life, and worshiped the fact, that the ka returned one day to the body. That was why it was necessary to save the corpse. Without a body, no ka could find its way home. But she and Pankh were deep within a jungle of papyrus. There could be no body buried here. The ka was lost.

Renifer could think of nothing more dreadful. She prayed that the ka would depart without touching them. Its shape was thickening now, and taking on human form, creating its own body, here in the papyrus! Renifer gazed in awe and terror.

Pankh, realizing he had lost his audience, turned to look where she looked.

“It's a lost ka,” whispered Renifer, so frightened she could not think what god to call upon.

But the ka saw them and cried out.

“Hetepheres,” whispered Pankh. He fell to his knees and the reed boat, fortunately stable and hard to sink, shuddered under the weight of his collapse.