Noah Page 12

  Ham waited. She sniffed, wiped her eyes, still chewing. Eventually she said, “I pretended to be dead, too. They threw us in here.”

  Two nights. Ham couldn’t imagine being down here all that time among rotting corpses.

  “I can help you get away,” he said.

  The girl glanced at him, then looked up at the edge of the trench, at the white sky above. Her eyes became troubled, as if the reflection of a dark cloud had suddenly passed over them, and she shook her head.

  Although she hadn’t said a word, once again Ham found that he knew exactly what she was thinking. She was too scared of the world out there, or rather of the cruelty and violence within it. She would much rather remain here, among the dead and the stink and the flies, because at least here she could remain unseen and forgotten, and therefore safe.

  “Then I’ll stay here a little while and keep you company,” Ham said, before adding hastily, “If that’s all right?”

  The girl nodded. Then she smiled. To Ham it was like the sun coming out.

  “My name is Na’el,” she said.

  “Na’el.” The word was beautiful. He liked the feel of it in his mouth. “I’m Ham.”

  Abruptly she burst into tears. For a moment Ham was startled, dismayed, and then he realized that she was crying because of his kindness, because he was probably the first stranger who had shown her any affection for a very long time.

  He took a step closer to her. She didn’t flinch.

  “Is it all right if I…” He pointed at the spot beside her.

  She nodded, and he clambered carefully over the stacked corpses until he was close enough to squat beside her. As soon as he did so, she leaned into him, still sobbing.

  He put an arm around her.

  * * *

  The huge square door, which was constructed of long, straight wooden logs that had been lashed and hammered together, and that would cover the Ark’s main hatchway at the top of the ramp, was propped at an angle against several trees at the edge of the clearing. Helped by three Watchers, Noah was working feverishly, coating it with pitch, while occasionally casting anxious glances at the sky.

  Shem ran out of the Ark and down the long entrance ramp, his feet thumping on the boards. He ran across the clearing until he reached Noah, his forehead creased in a frown, his cheeks red with exertion and stress.

  “I’ve searched everywhere, Father,” he said. “They are nowhere to be found.”

  Noah hissed in exasperation and looked into the woods, as if hoping his errant wife and missing children would magically appear.

  “The work is all but done,” he said. “It is almost time to seal ourselves into the Ark.” He hesitated for a moment, looking at the three Watchers who were covering the huge door with pitch at an incredible speed, a brush in each of their six hands. Then he turned back to Shem.

  “Go and find them and bring them back,” he said, nodding toward the trees. “But hurry! We don’t have much time.”

  14

  THE BLESSING

  Frustrated at her inability to find Ham, and fearful of venturing too close to Tubal-cain’s camp, Ila trudged through the forest, heading back toward the Ark. The thought that Ham might even now be with Tubal-cain and his men troubled her so much that she was only vaguely aware of her surroundings, her thoughts turned inward.

  Rounding a familiar rock, she entered a clearing dotted with the stumps of trees whose wood had been used to build the Ark. All at once she halted with a startled gasp. On the other side of the clearing, rooting through a dense patch of brambly undergrowth, was a crouching figure.

  Alerted by her gasp, the figure looked up. It was an old man—a very old man. He had long, white, wispy hair and a hint of a beard.

  Any wariness that Ila might have felt was immediately dispelled when the old man smiled.

  “Don’t be afraid, Granddaughter,” he murmured. “Don’t be afraid.”

  Ila looked at him curiously. She had heard many tales of old Methuselah, the man who lived on top of the mountain, but she had never thought that one day she might actually meet him.

  “Grandfather?” she said. “What are you doing down here?”

  Methuselah gestured vaguely at the bushes behind him. “I’m looking for berries. I had a craving. Come help me look for them. My eyes aren’t as good as they used to be.”

  Much as she hated to refuse the old man, Ila said, “I’m sorry, I have to find Ham.”

  “There is time enough for that,” he said dismissively. “Come here. Come.”

  Still Ila was reluctant, but she didn’t feel she could refuse him a second time. She crossed the clearing and half-heartedly helped him root through the brambles.

  After a minute or so, however, she said, “There’s nothing here, Grandfather. Let me take you to Noah.”

  He waved a hand.

  “No. No need for that. You go now. You go.”

  She half-turned, then hovered, uncertain, loath to leave him.

  “No,” he said, as if a thought had just occurred to him. “Wait, wait.”

  She turned back to him.

  “Ten years you’ve lived with my own family,” he said. “Ten years. And you love them? Shem?”

  She blushed and nodded.

  “And Noah? You love Noah, too?”

  “He saved my life. Raised me.”

  “Yes, he did. And you are now as his own daughter. My own great-granddaughter.” He shook his head as if it was a truly wondrous thing. “Ten years in the shadow of my home. And yet I have never given you my blessing. May I?”

  She nodded, a little puzzled. Methuselah raised his arm and slowly extended his gnarled fingers toward her. The fingers hovered over her belly without quite touching.

  Even so, Ila gave a little gasp. She could feel something inside her, something that tickled, something that felt warm. It was almost painful, and yet deliciously so.

  And then the feeling was gone, and Ila stepped back, panting in short, frantic bursts, trying to catch her breath.

  What was that? What happened? As her heartbeat slowed to its normal rate and her lungs began to work again, she patted her body with fluttering hands as if to make sure she was still intact.

  She was thankful to find that she was. Indeed, all at once she felt elated, even rapturous. She looked around. The world looked new. More alive. Burgeoning with life.

  She could almost hear the pulse of the forest, sense the rush of blood through its veins. Could almost see the glow of Creation in every branch, every leaf, every blade of grass.

  It was as if she had been given new senses. As if the Creator had reached into her body and made her perfect.

  She drew in a long breath. Let it out. The air was sweeter and purer than she had ever known it. She felt it rushing through her. Not an invasive presence, this time, but cool and fresh and gentle, life-giving and life-preserving. Perhaps for the first time ever she understood how precisely Creation had been balanced, and how Man, given the choice, had tipped that balance into chaos.

  She rose to her feet. She felt as if she could run forever. She felt as if she could fly.

  Far away in the forest, she heard a voice.

  “Ham?” it called. “Ila?”

  It was Shem. Her beloved Shem.

  Her face lit up with happiness. She looked at Methuselah.

  “You can go now,” he said gently. “Go to him.”

  And so, her feet making barely a sound on the forest floor, feeling truly at one with Creation for the first time in her life, she turned and began to run through the darkening forest.

  * * *

  The door to the Ark was finished, the pitch that coated it already hardening. Noah looked up at it. It was hard to believe that ten years of relentless, backbreaking toil was finally complete.

  A breeze ruffled his hair and flowed through his beard. He looked up. There was a definite coolness to the air, perhaps even a hint of moisture.

  He heard ponderous, measured footsteps. A huge shadow fell ac
ross the ground beside him and slid up the vast hatchway door, spreading across it like a black stain.

  Noah turned his head. Og, his companion and friend for the past ten years, was standing at his side.

  “It is done,” Og said in his rumbling voice. He nodded at the door. “Now there is only that to put in place. And then we wait.”

  As if responding to Og’s words, the Watchers laid aside their tools and moved forward in a fan-like formation, their huge, misshapen shadows preceding them. They took up positions at the edge of the clearing, forming a protective semi-circle around the Ark. Only Og remained by Noah’s side. Once the Watchers had settled, hunkering down shoulder to shoulder like craggy, newly created rock formations, he stepped forward and lifted the huge door as though it weighed nothing at all. Then he clumped toward the Ark and up the ramp, holding the door out in front of him like a shield.

  Noah followed, picking a discarded hammer up off the ground along the way.

  Og held the door over the gaping hatchway while Noah pounded it into place and secured the huge metal hinges. None of the other Watchers moved to help. This final act seemed almost like a ritual.

  Finally the door was secured. Og swung it back and forth a few times to test it. It was snug, but not too tight, against the frame. A perfect fit.

  The breeze which had been ruffling Noah’s hair suddenly increased, turning into a strong wind. He looked up again, tilting his head back, gazing into the heavens.

  He saw thin white wisps of cloud form with remarkable speed in the featureless sky. The wisps coalesced into thick gray clumps, ugly and forbidding. The gray clumps continued to grow and spread and darken, one clump joining with another, until they had formed a boiling, still-expanding chain of cloud. Within seconds the sky became a single, churning, purple-black blanket. It looked angry, full of wrath.

  “It is coming,” Noah muttered.

  * * *

  Shem stumbled to a halt, looking up. The forest had suddenly become very dark.

  Above him he saw thick, gray clouds forming, and then clashing like vast and powerful armies. He saw them darkening, turning into a single purple-black mass, a vast bruise spreading across the heavens.

  Then, in his peripheral vision, he saw a flash of movement. Something racing across the forest floor toward him.

  He barely had time to jerk his head downward or call for help before it was on him, leaping at him. He half-raised his hands to defend himself, but all at once a warm body was pressing itself against him, limbs wrapping themselves around him, kisses raining passionately down on his face.

  He laughed with relief.

  “Ila! Thank the heavens you’re safe,” he said. “But we have to get—”

  She stopped his words with another passionate kiss. It was the sweetest, deepest, hungriest kiss she had ever given him. It made him giddy.

  Even so, he pushed her back.

  “Listen to me,” he said. “We have—”

  She kissed him again. If anything, it was deeper and even more passionate this time.

  Regardless of the darkening skies overhead, he felt himself succumbing to her. How could he not? This was Ila. And she was beautiful. The most beautiful woman in all of Creation.

  Still kissing him, she began to pull at his clothes, at her clothes. He heard material tear.

  She was like an animal. Voracious. She wouldn’t stop. She took his hand, gripped it hard, and pushed it down between her legs. He felt the warmth of her. She was ready for him. He felt himself stirring, becoming aroused. But…

  With an effort he pulled away.

  “Ila?” he said questioningly.

  Her eyes were dancing. Crawling all over him.

  He got the impression that she was employing all of her senses—that she was feeding on him. It was as if she simply couldn’t get enough of his sight, his smell, his touch, his essence.

  She began to kiss him again. Between kisses she put her lips against his ear.

  “It doesn’t hurt anymore,” she whispered.

  “What?” Shem stammered. “Why?”

  But she shushed him with another kiss.

  “It’s a miracle,” she said breathlessly. “A gift. For both of us.”

  And this time when she put his hand where she wanted it to be, he didn’t resist.

  * * *

  Standing on the ramp of the Ark, Og beside him, Noah was still looking up.

  Above him, the clouds were still roiling, still churning, still darkening. They were almost as black as night now. Color was draining from the land. The trees, which edged the clearing beyond the crouching and motionless Watchers, had become nothing but a surrounding wall of shadow.

  The wind was howling around Noah. He felt it pulling and plucking at his body, as if attempting to drag him into the maelstrom above. Yet still he stood motionless. He was watching and waiting for the sign. He knew that it would come. And he knew that it would not be long in doing so.

  At last, far, far above, he saw a still point appear in the blackness. A tiny speck of light, like an eye opening within the heavens. He saw it shimmer, glint. And then he saw it grow larger, little by little, as it began to fall.

  He didn’t flinch. He didn’t close his eyes. This was the moment he had been waiting for.

  The raindrop fell. It hurtled toward him until it was close enough to blot out the black sky above it, to fill his world.

  And then…

  Splash!

  It exploded on his forehead, shattering like soft glass. A single raindrop. The first raindrop. It struck Noah’s temple, rolled down across his forehead, traced a path through the curve of bone between the bridge of his nose and his eye socket, and then trickled down his cheek like a tear.

  No. Not a tear. The tear.

  The tear of the Creator.

  The first of many.

  Weeping for the sins of Man.

  15

  THE STORM

  Working in his foundry, covered in sweat and hammering lengths of metal into pikes for his ever-growing army, Tubal-cain saw a raindrop hit the anvil on which he was working. As the water sizzled on the hot metal, the warrior king looked up.

  The sky was churning and boiling above him like a purple sea. It made him think of pure, unadulterated fury—struggling, and failing, to contain itself.

  * * *

  In the Hearth, Naameh and Japheth were lashing bags and barrels together as a seurity precaution against the coming storm.

  At the sound of rain tapping on the wooden roof of the Ark above their heads, they halted briefly and looked at each other.

  The drops came slowly at first, and then faster and faster.

  * * *

  Raindrops began to hit the shrouded corpses in the mass grave, landing in large wet splats. They gave the impression that the grave was home to a ghastly kind of pseudo-life, the gray, soiled winding sheets twitching as if the dead themselves were stirring beneath them.

  Ham looked up at the sky, and at the sides of the pit turning to trickling mud where the rain hit the dirt, and he knew they could wait no longer. He took Na’el’s hand and squeezed it.

  “Come on,” he said, standing up and dragging her with him. “Quickly!”

  She looked at him with wide, frightened eyes. A raindrop hit her cheek. She shook her head.

  “I can’t.”

  “You can. I’ll help you.” He peered into her eyes. “You trust me, don’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, then,” Ham said. “It will be all right. I promise. But we have to go—now!”

  * * *

  The rain falling on the roof of Tubal-cain’s royal tent sounded like a cascade of stones. He was examining a new weapon, one his chief armorer had developed only recently. It was a pipe-gun, comprising a metal tube, wider at one end than the other, into which was packed chunks of tzohar.

  He hefted the weapon in his hands. It felt good, as all weapons did.

  Raising his voice above the clattering of the downpo
ur on canvas, he bellowed, “I am a man made in your image. Why do you not converse with me?”

  And then, invigorated—as always—by the promise of war, he marched outside to confront the rain.

  * * *

  Their naked bodies gleaming with rain, Shem and Ila rose slowly from the forest floor like strange and exotic plants. Despite the doom-laden sky and the increasingly heavy rain, both of them were smiling and happy. Holding hands, facing each other, they kissed once again, passionately, before finally, reluctantly, breaking away.

  They retrieved their torn and sodden clothes and pulled them on, concealing their nakedness as the rain pattered and drummed on the canopy of leaves above and around them. It was as if Creation itself was applauding their love.

  * * *

  The Watchers stood in a defensive circle around the Ark, facing out into the dark line of trees, their bodies chained together. Their shoulders were touching, allowing no gaps in their ranks, their faces set, determined, immobile.

  Rain poured on and around them, hissing and chattering in the undergrowth, turning their pale, stony flesh first piebald and then dark and slick.

  Puddles formed under their feet, yet they remained where they were, silent and uncomplaining.

  “The Creator weeps,” Samyaza muttered.

  Og, who was standing next to him at the base of the ramp, nodded grimly.

  * * *

  All through Tubal-cain’s camp people were running, screaming. The rain had set off an escalating wave of panic. Most of the makeshift shelters had collapsed, and were nothing more than trampled heaps of canvas, wood, and animal skins strewn about the muddy ground. Most of the camp’s occupants, drenched, mud-spattered, starving, and now homeless, had gravitated—as if drawn by some long-buried instinct—toward the compound at its center. Or more specifically, toward the one man who even now they thought might be equipped to protect them.

  They milled about the main gates, calling for Tubal-cain, begging for mercy, even imploring the rain itself to stop falling. There was no aggression this time, no anger. The people were all too weak and frightened for that. The soldiers at the gate watched them dispassionately, weapons drawn in case of trouble. And then finally, as if in response to some command from within, the gates were hauled open and the people streamed into the compound.