Forty Days: Neima's Ark, Book One (11 page)

I swivel back around and find Bilal
holding the wood piece in his trunk, offering it to me. I shake my
head. “You keep it.” His eyes turn down in what looks like
disappointment, and I give him another pat on the head as well.
“But thank you,” I add under my breath as I finally walk
away.

On my way back to the
ladder, I catch sight of two more scraps of wood: one by an open
doorway, with a long, slender shape that reminds me of the
flower-birds; then a thicker, more solid, somehow
muscular
piece by the
tigers’ cage. Odd, but I’m too exhausted by this point to think
much of it.

***

Back on the second level, I return to
the women’s room to see twin spots of flame piercing through the
darkness, an echo of the tiger’s eyes below. Zeda has lit two of
her oil lamps—

—
and she’s drawn Noah in
here to fuss with her. “You’ll set the ark aflame!” he protests,
whirling so the ends of his long robe fly out. If anything catches
fire, it will be his trailing garment. I’ve always hated that robe,
with the musty scent that clings to it even through the driest
months.

“
We’re going to be here
awhile,” Zeda snaps back, “and you can’t expect us to go on when we
can’t see our own hands before our faces!” So she knows what’s
happening outside as well. And while she may have the strongest
stomach of all of us, it appears her mind is not so sturdy: she
must be truly distraught, if she dares to challenge Noah. She’s
spent so many years flattering her father-in-law, and now she risks
undoing all her work in one moment. If Ham finds out what she’s
done, he’ll be furious.

“
Husband.” Nemzar speaks
softly, soothingly, as she approaches and places a hand on Noah’s
arm. We’re all beyond bedraggled, but she still looks somehow
beautiful in the low lamplight, the hints of red in her hair
flickering along with the flame. “We’ll be careful. We could all
use a little light.”

Noah just harrumphs, but
he walks away without insisting Aunt Zeda extinguish the flames. He
stops in the corner where Japheth and Arisi are tucked together,
whispering, and clears his throat. “Your wife may be unable to
work,” Noah grouses, “but
you
, Japheth, have no excuse for
lazing about. We need you on deck.” Then, without waiting for a
response, he storms off, his robe fluttering behind him.

I’m still standing near the doorway,
and Noah brushes right past me on his way out of the room, so close
I can hear him grumbling under his breath, can see the slight
tremors in his hands that he does his best to hide. Yet he doesn’t
acknowledge my presence; I’m not sure he sees me at all.

Aliye the dove, on the
other hand, certainly does recognize my presence—and she’s not
quiet about it. As I approach she coos so frantically, you’d think
she was trapped in a cage again, and she hops up and down on her
crumpled blanket as if she just can’t understand why her wings no
longer hold her aloft. “
Shh,
” I scold her as I drop down
onto my own blanket. Luckily Zeda and Nemzar are too deep in
conversation to notice; Mother does, but she just shakes her head
and looks away, leaning against the ark wall.

Aliye quiets when I place a finger on
her sleek but trembling head, and we sit for a moment in silence—or
rather what feels like silence, for the drum of rain on the roof
and the echo of animal noises from below have become so familiar, I
no longer hear them. I watch Grandmother and Zeda attempting to
scrounge up some food for us, with Shai hanging behind them.
Japheth finally stands to leave, but he’s taking his time about it,
like a sullen child reluctant to obey his father’s orders. And then
my mother speaks.

“
What—what was it like out
there?”

I’m surprised. It’s not like Mother to
rely on others when she can do something herself, and surely Father
wouldn’t object to her going on deck after the rest of us have.
“Why don’t you go up and see?” I ask.

She reaches for a nearby blanket,
grips it in two tight fists, and closes her eyes. “I’m not as brave
as you are.”

Now I’m not just
surprised, but shocked. Has my mother actually
complimented
me? “I’m not— It’s
just—” As I stammer, it occurs to me that perhaps Mother’s comment
is more criticism than praise. I did defy Father, after all. “I’m
only curious,” I finish, my voice fading to a mumble.

“
Just tell me,” she says,
eyes still closed, tension rising in taut lines from her fists up
her arms. “I don’t want to see, but I need to know.”

So I do. But as I speak, I look away
from her squeezed-shut eyelids, toward the dove with her wide-open
eyes. I study them—two flame-colored rings around black pupils—till
they eclipse all visions of the world outside. When I’m done,
Mother says nothing, and I realize I have a question for her as
well. “Do you know how long we’ve been here?”

In some ways it feels like years have
passed since we stepped onto the ark, and in others it seems that
only moments ago I stood on parched earth, dreaming of
rain.

“
This is the fifth day,”
Mother says, in a voice as cracked and dry as the earth I remember
with something like longing.

I glance around me; Nemzar, Zeda and
Shai are still occupied with our dismal supply of food, while Arisi
sits and stares blankly into a corner. No one’s paying me any
attention, so I turn to face the ark wall and pull my carving knife
from my belt. Mother lets out the first hint of a protest but
quickly stifles it.

I dig the knife into the wood much
deeper than necessary, once, twice, again and again and again,
until five jagged lines march their way across the wall. One for
each day since the world ended.

Derya and I are seven years old,
collecting fleece with the other children as the entire village
shears sheep. A tuft of wool flies out of nowhere, landing atop
Derya’s gleaming black hair, and I can’t help but laugh—then
another tuft sails right into my open mouth. Derya’s eyes turn a
bright, piercing green as she searches out our tormentors. My own
gaze darts toward Kenaan and Jorin, but both are straight-faced,
focused on their task. We stare at the boys, and a moment later,
Jorin’s mouth tugs toward a satisfied smile…and we tear small hunks
of wool from the nearest clump of fleece and pelt them at the boys.
They counter our attack, and the world dissolves into a soft white
rain…

…
the air darkens, cools,
and Derya and I are leaning against the wall of her hut as evening
falls, listening to her father play his pipes. The melody dips and
rises like a bird’s wings buoyed on the wind, lulling us toward
sleep, and Derya leans her head on my shoulder. I close my
eyes…

…
and we are fourteen.
Derya laughs and spins so her skirts fly around her and her black
braid swings. She is so beautiful, already several young men of the
village have spoken to her father, but she wants Kenaan. That’s why
she’s spinning in circles now, laughing at nothing in the middle of
the day, in the middle of our chores—she’s caught sight of Kenaan
passing by, and she hopes to lure him closer. I just stand there,
watching her till my own head spins…

…
spins and spins and
spins, the whole world spinning in a blur of blues and greens so
vivid I can taste them…

…
and out of the whirlpool
of color comes Derya, sixteen now, looking just as she did only
days ago, by the river. Her long, slender arms reach for me, her
mouth open in a wide smile. She speaks, but her words are lost to
the wind that whips tendrils of black hair before her face,
obscuring her eyes and plastering dark strands to her cheeks.
Behind her hair, her features begin to twist, distort; I blink my
eyes to clear my vision, but still her face—no, her entire body
now—wavers as though I’m seeing her through water. She comes
closer, and her beautiful hands are expanding, bloating, her
fingers transforming into grotesque and slimy things as she
clutches my wrist. “You let me go,” she says, her words suddenly
clear and hard. “You let me—”

“
Neima!” The voice turns
softer, younger, and the grip on my wrist slackens as I open my
eyes to find Shai peering at me through the darkness. “You were
dreaming,” she says. “You were shaking and—”

“
Did I wake the others?” I
whisper, casting a worried glance around the room. It’s too dark to
make out more than huddled shapes against the walls.

“
No,” Shai answers softly,
“I was already awake. I came over here to see Aliye—”

We both look down at the dove in her
blanket-nest. The white of her feathers gleams against the dark,
and I can see the outline of her head tucked against her breast.
Sleeping standing up—I’ll never understand how birds do
that.

“—
because I couldn’t
sleep,” Shai finishes. “Is it—is it true that the whole world is
covered with water? That we will be trapped in here
forever?”

“
Oh, no,” I say
automatically, reaching my arms toward her. She falls into me, and
I hold her warm body close against mine—but I can’t help thinking
of Derya’s arms reaching, of her cold, wet dream-hands.

“
Are we”—Shai’s whisper is
muffled now—“are we going to die?”

“
No,” I say again; I
picture Derya’s dream-face contorting as she accuses me of lying.
Shai’s fingers press into my arms, as if she’s asking me for
something more, but I’m not sure what to give her. Our
grandfather—and perhaps, by this point, Shai’s parents as
well—would say that Noah’s one God will protect us, that he has
chosen us to survive. But whether those words are true or not, they
don’t seem very comforting to me. So instead I say, “You’re with
the people who love you most, and we’ll do everything we can to
keep you safe.”

Shai doesn’t respond, and
soon I feel her body grow heavier against mine as she falls back
into sleep. But I can’t shut out Derya’s voice telling me,
You let me go. You let me…
Because it’s true: I did let her go. I could have worked
harder to make her believe me, during that last fight. I could have
looked for her the morning of the storm. I could have dragged her
into the ark with us, just as a precaution, even though we didn’t
know what would happen…

And another question
needles at me, adding extra pinpricks of guilt: Why didn’t I dream
of Jorin? Yes, there was that brief glimpse of him at the sheep
shearing, but I didn’t see him pleading with me in those days
before the storm, didn’t see our parting at the ark doors, didn’t
see him drowning,
dying
—

I don’t even want to think it. Perhaps
I didn’t dream of Jorin because we left each other with kind words
rather than anger. Yes—that must be it.

I’m afraid to fall back into sleep, to
risk another nightmare, but my exhaustion is bone deep and my
eyelids grow heavier and heavier, until finally I can fight their
weight no longer.

I sleep, with Shai in my lap and Aliye
the dove beside me.

I wake to another dim morning, and to
relief—relief edged with guilt. For no more dreams have troubled my
sleep.

***

Three more days pass—one, two, three
slashes on the ark wall behind the spot where I sleep—and we
develop a routine of sorts. Since I’m the youngest and strongest of
the women save Shai, I spend the morning filling water buckets on
deck and hauling them down to the lower level, over and over till
my arms ache. My mother, Nemzar, Zeda, and even Shai stay on the
lower level, where they alternate watering the animals with the
full buckets I bring them, and filling empty waste buckets with
animal refuse. They leave the waste by the ladder for me to carry
up and toss overboard. In three days I’ve perfected the art of
flinging the foul-smelling stuff as far from the ark as possible,
without once looking down at the churning waves and whatever
horrors they might toss my way.

Japheth sometimes joins me on my trips
up and down the ladder, though he’s not much help—he’s merely
searching for an excuse to check on Arisi. Unlike the rest of us,
Arisi hasn’t recovered from her sickness; every few hours it seems
she suffers a spell of nausea so severe she can’t stand, or even
sit up straight. We’re all worried, but Japheth most of all.
Unfortunately, whenever he manages to sneak a few minutes with his
wife, Noah soon notices his absence and calls him back to whatever
task is keeping the men busy.

Father tells me the men’s
work is never-ending, for any damage to the ark from floating
debris, rotting wood or even woodworms must be repaired
immediately, lest we all end up beneath the waves. And they’re
checking and repairing the animal cages as well, after all the
jostling they took during the storm. A tiger or jackal running
loose through the ark would be as disastrous as a leak, and Noah is
equally concerned with the cages of rabbits and hedgehogs, moles
and shrews: he reminds us that one lost creature would mean the
death of all animals of that kind, and God has entrusted them all
to our care. Again my mind turns to the trader and his tales of
exotic creatures—creatures we certainly
aren’t
caring for—but I know better
than to speak of those stories, or even to think them too
loudly.

Kenaan’s supposed to be feeding and
cleaning up after the flesh-eaters in addition to helping the men,
and occasionally I see him meandering through the cages, tossing
bits of meat through the bars. Whenever we cross paths, he gives me
that lopsided smile Derya once found so charming, as though nothing
has changed between us. That smile makes my stomach feel worse than
the foul odors and the rocking of the ship combined, but I don’t
feel ready to confront him, so I merely cast my eyes away from him
and hurry to clean another cage.

Kenaan himself certainly isn’t doing
much cleaning: the tigers’ and wolves’ cages are littered with
droppings old and new, and I imagine I can smell an extra sharpness
amid the general stench every time I near them. I feel terrible for
the tigers, and perhaps if I can work up the courage, I’ll clean
their cage myself one day soon. Somehow, though, I can’t bring
myself to suffer much pity for the wolves and jackals. Their
shrewd, vicious eyes remind me a bit of Munzir’s, and their snarls
seem to grow in proportion to the shrinking of their
bellies.

I hope Kenaan is still tending to his
birds and reptiles on the second level at least, for no one else
is. But I’m not going to ask him.

Around midday, or as close as we can
get—time is fuzzy here, without the sun to guide us—we return to
the second level for a short while, where we attempt to recover
from the suffocating odor and closeness down below. Those of us who
can manage it choke down a bit of bread, and we all gulp down
rainwater, the one supply we have more than enough of. It’s not as
sweet as our river water, but with our parched throats, it will do.
Then it’s back below to feed the animals. We’ve decided that if we
feed them later in the day, they’ll be less likely to cry out with
hunger in the night, disturbing our own slumber.

There are so many creatures to tend
that we’d waste time by working together, so we each take one of
the ark’s vast rooms. Even Shai works on her own, caring for some
of the farm animals on the left side of the ark. I’ve claimed the
room farthest to the right, where the elephants are
penned.

It would seem impossible, what with
the animal life teeming through the ark and the family I know are
only a wall or two away, but somehow the space around me becomes
lonesome, even desolate, on these long afternoons. The animal
noises fade into a dull, eerie hum, and my body braces as if
expecting an ill-intentioned intruder to ambush me at any moment. I
imagine Derya’s ghost rising from the waves, flowing like mist
through the walls of the ark, and wrapping those cold, dripping-wet
arms around me…

But I’m deceiving myself,
for I fear I
am
sensing a prowler in the darkness, someone much more
substantial—and potentially dangerous—than a ghost:

Kenaan. We’ve avoided each other since
we set foot on the ark, and even before that, since that awful
afternoon in the forest. Eventually something will have to give.
And if he thought he had some right to me before, then now, when I
might as well be the only unmarried woman in the world save his
sister…

I’d rather think about Derya’s
ghost.

On the seventh afternoon, my worries
finally get the best of me. I’m pouring grain for the animals
nearest the left wall—porcupines and squirrels, hares and
voles—when I hear a plodding footstep on the other side of the
wall. I freeze; the footstep stops. I move on, shaking my head,
telling myself to calm down; the footsteps continue, two, three,
four, almost in time with my own. My heartbeat becomes faster,
lighter, mirroring the frenzied scrabble of the squirrels’ claws as
I approach their cage.

Of course you hear
footsteps,
I tell myself.
It’s Mother or Aunt Zeda, feeding animals on the
other side of the wall.
I listen a moment
longer, shake my head again, almost as though I’m arguing with
myself—these footsteps are much too heavy to belong to a
woman.
So it’s Father or Ham.
But why would they be walking along the interior
wall, so slowly and deliberately, stopping when I stop and moving
when I move?
You’re just imagining
that.

Finally I can take it no longer; if
Kenaan is on the other side of that wall, I’d rather confront him
head-on. Or so I tell myself, though the pulse threatening to fly
out my throat seems to say otherwise. I lower my sack of grain to
the floor and creep along the wall, toward the doorway, hoping I
can peek around the corner and discover the prowler before he knows
I’m coming. I'm almost there—three steps, two steps, one—and I hold
my breath, bite hard on my lip to stop any sound from escaping as I
poke my head through the doorway—

—
to find myself a hand’s
breadth from the fleshy, smelly open mouth of a camel. My heart
gives one heavy
thud
in my chest, a combination of shock and relief, before it
begins to slow again. “What are you doing all the way over here?” I
ask the beast. We’ve tied the camels on the left side of the ark,
near the farm animals. I inspect the goat-hair rope hanging from
this one’s neck to find that he—or she—has chewed through it.
“Surely someone should have seen you wandering through and taken
you back?” I’m talking to…her, I’ll settle on her…as though she can
understand me, more for my sake than hers, trying to convince
myself everything’s normal. Or as normal as it can be, under the
circumstances.

I grab the end of the rope lead,
inspecting the tooth-gnawed edges. Looks like it took some work to
chew all the way through, so if I tie her up again, maybe she’ll
stay put for at least a day.

When I tug on the rope and step
forward across the ark, the camel follows docilely enough. “What
did you want over here, then?” I ask her, expecting Mother or Aunt
Zeda to dart out at any moment and grumble about my talking to the
air. But I make it all the way to the other end of the ark without
a single interruption. They must all be upstairs already, then, and
it must be later than I thought. Still, I feel a bit safer now that
my menacing intruder revealed herself as a placid camel, and after
I’ve tied her back to her post, I decide to bring some extra hay
back to the elephants.