he was alone, he pocketed the small item and picked up his toy dinosaur.
“We’ve been watching you,” Ian continued. “You’re a magnificent swimmer.”
Shaking his head, the boy looked down at his feet.
“What’s your name?” Mattie asked. “I’m Mattie. I’m ten and a half years old. And this is my daddy. His name is Ian.”
The boy studied Ian and Mattie. He stroked his dinosaur. “Rupee,” he said softly. “I Rupee.”
“Is that your friend?” Mattie wondered, pointing at the blue triceratops.
Rupee covered the toy with his hands but nodded. “He Prem.”
Mattie smiled. “How old are you?”
Shrugging, Rupee put on his sandals. “Bye-bye.”
“Wait,” Mattie said, standing up. “Do you want to go to lunch with us? We’re about to have lunch.”
Rupee looked around again, his thin toes moving back and forth in his sandals.
Ian sensed the boy’s fear. “I promise we don’t want anything from you. Nothing at all. Mattie just hopes to make a new mate. A new friend, I mean.”
Rupee’s eyes narrowed and he bit his lower lip. “Me no have money.”
“We know,” Ian answered. “We don’t want your loot. And we’ll buy you lunch.”
“Whatever you want,” Mattie added.
Rupee was confused. People had stolen from him so many times before. He’d been beaten, thrown naked into the river. He was afraid of most everyone—of the bullies who also looked for gold teeth and tried to take whatever he found, of the gangs that preyed on the homeless. Only his dinosaur, Prem, had always remained faithful, had never hurt him.
“Please come with us,” Mattie said, nodding. “We only want to have lunch with you. In a nice restaurant where you can get really full.”
Rupee wasn’t sure what she meant. He had never been in a restaurant. But he watched her eyes and they did not seem to be the eyes of someone who would hurt him. They reminded him of Prem’s eyes.
“You look hungry,” Mattie continued. “Don’t you want some food?”
For two days Rupee had been hungry—he hadn’t eaten for longer than that. He longed to trust this girl, who smiled at him, who didn’t turn away.
Mattie nodded. “Will you be my Indian friend? Please?”
Rupee had never been asked to be anyone’s friend. He dipped his head, his heartbeat quickening.
Ian smiled and walked up the steps, followed by Mattie and Rupee. The smoke and heat from a nearby funeral pyre drifted over him. He smelled flowers, incense, sandalwood, and the scent of a body being transformed by fire. As he increased his speed, Ian glanced behind him, unsure what to do with the boy, but glad that Mattie wanted to help him.
Forty or fifty steps brought them to a funeral procession—a body covered in layers of marigold flowers, surrounded by a few dozen relatives. Ian turned to his right, avoiding the procession, stepping up and up until the riverbank plateaued and the city stretched away from him.
Holding Mattie’s hand, he led them forward, pleased that Rupee hadn’t run away. Varanasi appeared far different from the interior than it did from the river. People had been living on this stretch of land for three thousand years, and buildings looked to be about that old—stained and crumbling, covered in faded advertisements and draped with electrical wires. Where the buildings met the streets dozens of beggars congregated. Lepers held crying children. Cows lay in filth. A woman with no legs had tied herself to a tire and moved by putting her hands on the pitted pavement and lifting herself up. Hundreds of middle-class Indians also filled the alleys, as well as a few tourists with their digital cameras and oversized traveling hats.
Rupee knew how to speak some English but was afraid to ask anything of these foreigners. He didn’t want them to leave him, not when he was so hungry, when his stomach felt as if two snakes were fighting inside it. He followed the tall man down the streets, wondering where they were headed. His hand in his pocket, Rupee felt Prem and the silver nose ring that he’d found on the bottom of the river. The nose ring, he believed, would feed him for a few weeks. He’d been lucky to find it hidden beneath an old tree trunk that had shifted in the silt. He would have to hide it well, for the gangs would search him.
As Rupee walked, he studied the girl beside him. She was dressed in simple but nice clothes—red shorts and a T-shirt with dolphins on the front. She often smiled at him, and he liked the way