Noah Read online

  Sure enough, it was the freshest, sweetest, purest thing he had ever tasted. He felt it flowing through him, restoring him, curing him of any ailments, his aches and pains. He turned and grinned at his family, water dripping from his chin. Naameh smiled uncertainly in response, but Ila and the boys grinned back at him, enraptured by the spectacle.

  All at once the earth began to rumble. Noah felt a tremor beneath his feet. He wondered what was happening. Was it an earthquake? Was the earth around the fountain about to erupt upward and outward with the force of the water behind it? Was this the beginning of the flood?

  Was it too late to build the Ark, after all?

  He began to back away, wondering whether he had been deceived, or had perhaps misinterpreted the message from the Creator. At any moment he expected a vast column of water to shoot upward, and then to crash down, sweeping them all away.

  Should they head for the mountain, seek refuge in Methuselah’s cave? Would they have time? Would the boys be able to manage the climb? What about Ila, still recovering from her injury?

  He saw that the Watchers were backing away, too, looking to Samyaza as if hoping he would provide them with answers, instruct them what to do. Og, of all the Watchers, was the only one who didn’t back away. Instead he rushed forward, ignoring the trembling of the earth, which was getting worse, causing Noah to stagger as he tried to remain on his feet.

  Og rushed over to Naameh and the children and swept them up in his six arms, holding them protectively to his chest. Despite the situation, Noah was touched by his concern. He staggered again, almost falling this time, as the rumbling beneath his feet grew louder and the ground began to buck and jerk.

  And then, on both sides of the many rivulets now slicing their way through cracks in the parched earth, he was astonished to see green shoots start to push their way up through the soil. Grass, he thought. But then the grass began to grow, to become lush, to evolve into plants, flowers. And some of the shoots grew taller yet, became trees, which raced up into the sky, branches sprouting from their trunks, leaves bursting from the branches.

  The impossibly rapid growth continued. Before the astonished eyes of Noah, his family, and the Watchers, more shoots appeared, more plants, more flowers, more trees. It was a riot of vegetation, a joyous celebration of the Creator’s bounty. Within minutes they were standing, not on an arid plain, but in the depths of a healthy, burgeoning forest, acres and acres of trees stretching in all directions, as far as the eye could see.

  Eventually the rumbling subsided. The shoots ceased pushing up through the now thickly forested floor. The transformation of the landscape was complete.

  For a minute or more no one said anything. They were all too stunned, humans and Watchers alike, their eyes wide with disbelief, their mouths hanging open.

  And then, in barely more than a whisper, Ham spoke, still perched in the crook of Og’s arm.

  “What is this?”

  Noah turned to him, breathing in the rich, verdant scents of the forest, his vision no longer filled with gray soil and black rock, but with the glowing green of the leaves and the vibrant colors of the flowers.

  All at once he understood. “This? This is our Ark,” he said.

  They stood in a forest clearing, surrounded by tall trees, the ground beneath their feet thick with plant life, the still-bubbling fountain at its center. On the far side of the clearing, its base shrouded by tangles of undergrowth, rose Methuselah’s mountain. The tents of their camp now resembled a number of huge brown eggs in nests of thick green grass.

  Og lowered Naameh and the children gently to the floor and stomped across to where Samyaza was still standing, looking around him in wonder. The other Watchers, too, were still looking to Samyaza for guidance.

  “Well?” Og said softly.

  Samyaza reached out a long stone limb and touched a tree. He caressed its bark, stroking it as though it was a frightened animal he was trying to soothe.

  When he turned his head back around to face Og, there were tears glittering in his black eyes.

  Indicating Noah with no more than a twitch of his finger, he said, “We will help this man.”

  GENESIS 6: 19

  And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the Ark, to keep them alive with you.

  9

  THE DOVES

  The world turned.

  Far beyond the forest, the water rivulets continued to flow outward in all directions, restoring life to the dead, cracked earth. Beyond a vast desert a single rivulet cut a channel through a dried-up ocean bed, passing the rotted, rib-like timbers of ships grounded centuries before, and the bleached bones of long-dead marine creatures. The stream split into two and then branched off again in a multitude of directions, its individual threads stretching out like nerve endings, setting in motion a slow but unstoppable resurrection.

  More rivulets moved along salt flats and up steep, rocky hills, through deserts and plains, defying the laws of nature. Days passed, then seasons, then years, and still the streams kept moving, each one dividing and dividing again, until eventually there were millions of them, encompassing the world, stretching across and around it like a vast net of life.

  In a dusty field a single dove, skinny and mangy, mere days from death, pecked at the ground, searching desperately for sustenance. So preoccupied was it with its own survival that it didn’t see the water rushing toward it until the very last moment. With a weary but indignant cry it took to the air as the rivulet flowed past beneath its feet. It circled for a moment, confused, trying to get its bearings, trying to decide whether this new thing, this invader, was a threat or not. And then it was enticed by the smell of fresh, clean water, and it circled back down to the ground.

  It alighted next to the rivulet, examined it for a moment, and pecked at the surface. Then it leaned forward and took a long drink, and as it did so there was a flap of wings and a second dove landed beside the first.

  The two doves acknowledged each other, shuffled toward each other, gently rubbed their heads together. Then they both bent forward to drink from the flow of fresh, clean, life-giving water. Once they had drunk their fill, they raised their heads and then, in unspoken agreement, they took to the air, following the flow of water back to its source. Theirs was an instinctive reaction. It was as if, from many, many miles away, they had heard or sensed or otherwise detected a summons that they could not ignore.

  They flew across barren landscapes scarred and devastated by Man, with not a sign of life to be seen below. They flew for days, weeks, until—in contrast to the dead and barren world to which they had become accustomed—they came to the edge of a vast, lush forest.

  But the forest was not their final destination. What they were really aiming for was within the forest, at its center. They soared above the trees until finally, far below them, they came to a clearing.

  They descended toward the clearing, circling lower and lower in great swooping curves.

  Finally they alighted on the roof of the Ark.

  And they knew that they were home.

  * * *

  The girl ran through the forest, her long brown hair, streaked with sunlight, flying behind her. She was around eighteen, golden-limbed, beautiful, and she was laughing with joy as she ran. She rushed past trees and ducked under branches, as sure-footed as any forest creature. It was clear that she was completely at home here, that this was her environment.

  Suddenly, with a crash of displaced foliage, the bushes on her right exploded outward. She shrieked as a young man, broad-shouldered and dark-haired, leaped upon her and dragged her to the ground. For several moments the two of them rolled and wrestled on the sun-dappled ground, the girl yelping, though not in terror.

  “No,” she gasped between giggles, “please, no.”

  The young man growled playfully and pretended to bite her neck, making her shriek again.

  Finally they stopped wrestling and became still. The girl, lying on her back, looke
d up into the young man’s eyes. They were gray and gentle. “You have carpenter’s hands, and a poet’s eyes,” she often told him.

  He dipped his head and kissed her lips. She responded, her hand curling around the back of his neck to pull him closer. They kissed again, more deeply. When they broke apart she kissed his ears and his neck, and when she stretched her head back he responded by kissing her throat and the dimple above her collarbone.

  Their breathing quickened. His hands fluttered over her body, he stroked her breasts, her belly. He lifted the hem of the loose woven shirt that she wore, moving downward so that he could kiss her belly.

  She half-heartedly tried to resist, but he murmured, “It’s all right.”

  Across her belly, stretching from one side to the other, was a thick scar, the flesh white and puckered on her otherwise smooth, tanned skin.

  “It’s ugly,” she said.

  He shook his head. “I love it.”

  “How can you love it?”

  He tilted his head to look into her eyes. “I love it because it’s part of you.”

  His hands caressed her knees, her thighs, then they moved higher.

  Ila, her head back and her eyes closed, moaned and trembled. And then she winced.

  “Shem, wait.”

  Shem paused, clearly frustrated, but concerned for Ila. She tugged on the shoulder of his shirt and he inched up until they were face to face again. She kissed him deeply, fiercely. Her voice was breathless, urgent.

  “Please. I want to. I do. But I can’t. You know.”

  Her eyes flickered away from his.

  “It still hurts?” he asked gently.

  She gave a quick nod and her eyes filled with tears. “Naameh says it always will,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  Shem looked at her for a moment and then pulled her to him, holding her tight.

  “It’s all right,” he whispered. “It’s all right.”

  But it wasn’t, and she knew it.

  All at once a branch broke with a sharp crack nearby. In an instant Shem leaped to his feet and whirled round. A dozen steps away he saw a face peering at him out of a clump of bushes… a face whose eyes widened as it realized it had been discovered.

  “Ham!” Shem roared, and his anger startled her. “You little spy! Come back here!” He charged at his brother’s hiding place, but fifteen-year-old Ham was already gone, his slim body a dark blur in the trees.

  Shem swung back to Ila, scowling. “That little…”

  Ila crossed to him, and placed a hand on his chest to calm him. “He’s only curious. He has no one to…”

  But then her voice broke off. Abruptly the sky had turned dark overhead. And the darkness was accompanied by a rushing, squalling sound that made Ila think of the cries of drowning men in a raging, storm-lashed sea.

  Fearfully they both looked up—and their eyes widened with amazement. Above them were birds, thousands of birds, a moving sea of birds, their countless wings blotting out the sun.

  It was a breathtaking sight. Ila and Shem stood in the shadow-darkened forest and watched the birds flowing by overhead. The dark, undulating sea went on and on. It looked as though it was never going to stop.

  At last Ila reached out and gripped Shem’s hand. He tore his gaze away from the still-flowing sea of motion and looked at her. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes shining, her lips stretched wide in a grin.

  He grinned back at her, and then laughed in sheer joy.

  The two of them ran hand in hand through the forest. Toward the clearing.

  Toward the Ark.

  * * *

  It was ten-year-old Japheth who first spotted the doves. He was watching his father and the Watchers, working on the vast rectangular Ark, just as he had watched them every day for as long as he could remember. They swarmed over its wooden surface, hammering and planing and sawing and fixing the wood into place, while in the forest other Watchers chopped down trees and cut and trimmed the wood and treated it with sticky, brown, smelly stuff that his father had warned him to keep away from.

  That was when he saw a fluttering burst of white erupt from the deck, high, high above him, as high as a hundred houses. He watched, entranced, as the doves took to the air, circled the clearing in several loops, as though simply enjoying the freedom of doing so, and then spiraled to the ground, where they landed gracefully on the lush grass close to the bubbling fountain.

  With a gleeful yell, Japheth ran across to the birds, but before he could reach them they took fright and ascended once again. A little disappointed, he watched them, circling and swooping, until they disappeared over the top of the Ark. When they failed to reappear he could only conclude that they had again landed on the uppermost deck, where they wouldn’t be disturbed. He ran across the clearing to his father, who was at that moment descending one of the many wooden ladders that were propped up against the side of the vessel.

  “Father!” he yelled. “Father!”

  Noah reached the bottom of the ladder, set his feet on the ground and turned toward his son.

  “Yes, Japheth.”

  In the decade since the fountain had first burst from the ground, creating the forest which would provide Noah with the raw materials he needed to build his great Ark, he had changed from a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders to one who was animated by purpose. Although he was a little grayer now, his hair cut very short, his beard longer and fuller, he was also leaner and fitter, his back straight, his eyes filled not only with calmness, but also with a steely determination. He knew that the task the Creator had set him was vital and necessary, yet he knew also that it was one that required a great deal of resolve. When the time came, he would have to be wholly committed to it.

  He would have to be ruthless, pitiless even.

  “Did you see them, Father?” Japheth cried, pointing excitedly up at the sky.

  Noah followed his youngest son’s pointing finger—and just at that moment the two of them heard an approaching clamor. A rustling, a flapping, a squawking, which grew louder with each passing second.

  Then there came a sudden darkness in the sky, an inky, restless, seething darkness that caused Japheth to hunch his shoulders in terror. What was happening? Was the Creator angry with them? Was the world coming to an end? He looked up at his father, and was astonished to see that his gray-bearded face was rapturous with joy. His father held out his arms.

  “It begins, Japheth,” he cried. “It begins!”

  All at once Japheth realized what the darkness was. Birds! Thousands of them. Millions of them. They were coming from all directions, a vast flock, descending upon the Ark.

  And they were all different! In preparation for this day, both his father and his mother had taught him all about the birds and animals upon the earth, had taught him how to recognize them, how to handle them, how to love them and not to fear them. And Japheth had known that when the day came, the animals would come in pairs, a male and a female from each species, so that once the world had been re-made, they could propagate and flourish and become many again.

  Although he had believed his parents when they had told him that the animals would one day come, there was a part of Japheth that had not been able to comprehend the spectacle—part of him that had even thought what his parents had told him was just a wonderful story.

  And yet here they were. The birds. Just as his father had promised. As they swooped and circled toward the Ark in a riot of patterns and colors and designs, Japheth recognized songbirds and sea birds and birds of prey. And there were many birds that he didn’t recognize. Exotic, brightly plumed ones from far, far away. So far that perhaps even his mother and father hadn’t heard of them.

  They swirled in the sky, they spun, they swooped and blotted out the light of the sun with their wings, casting constantly moving shadows upon the ground. And yet their colors—evident despite the dimness of the light—were incredible. They filled the sky with every color that Japheth had ever seen, and some that he had not.<
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  At last this tornado of color, this thunderous, deafening storm of flapping wings and exotic cries, descended upon the Ark. Japheth held his breath. Vast as the ship was, he wondered how it would contain all of these birds. He watched them descend in pairs, and then saw them pour in through the entrance at the front, which yawned like a great black mouth at the top of a wide, sloping ramp.

  Japheth himself had been inside the Ark many times. He slept in it every night; he knew every hold, every deck, every nook and cranny. He imagined the great sea of birds flowing through it, filling its cavernous interior, swooping up and around and along its thousands of walkways and ladders, which connected every part of the ship to every other part. He knew that there was a deck that had been especially reserved for the birds—the “avian deck,” his parents called it.

  Raising his voice above the tumult of wings, he shouted, “Will they know where to go, Father?”

  Noah was still grinning, and he held his arms out straight. A pair of ravens landed there, a male raven on his right arm, a female on his left. He laughed and they took off again, heading toward the Ark. Eyes shining, he looked down at Japheth.

  “Yes, son,” he said. “They will know.”

  “How?”

  “Because the Creator has spoken to them.”

  * * *

  Hours later, when the stream of birds had finally thinned, and then stopped coming, when they had installed themselves in the Ark and all was silent again, Japheth climbed the ramp into the ship and navigated its many corridors and its many levels, to see if his father had been right.

  And his father was right. Following their instructions, or their instincts, or perhaps both, the birds had jammed themselves into the avian deck. They had filled the massive honeycomb of nest-boxes, which stretched up and up as far as the eye could see. They had set up home on platforms and shelves designed to resemble the branches of trees.

  The birds were calm and quiet now, though their feathery rustling still echoed within the vast chamber, and their dry, musky odor filled Japheth’s nostrils. He stood and watched them for a while, astounded by their sheer numbers and their seemingly endless variety, and then he turned away and headed back through the ship, toward the Hearth.