Forty Days: Neima's Ark, Book One (14 page)

“
I—” I have to get this
over with. “I have something to ask you, Father, if I
may.”

His eyes narrow again, this time in
confusion, or perhaps concern. “Yes?”

“
Did you— Were there—” I
take a breath and then let it all out, as quick as I can. “Is it
true people were begging to be let on the ark, and you refused
them?”

His eyes widen for a moment, his body
slumps in a way I instantly recognize as guilt, and then he casts
his gaze back down on the water. He doesn’t have to say anything; I
already know.

His voice rasps like two sticks rubbed
together as he begins, “How did you—” The question falls away
unfinished, barely distinguishable from the rainfall.

I’ve already planned for
this, so I say, “I overheard Ham telling Kenaan.” It seems like
something my uncle would do. I open my mouth again, ready to ask
Father how he could possibly allow this, but the words refuse to
come out. I am not supposed to question my father, just as he is
not supposed to question
his
father. But the entire world is not supposed to
fill with water, either, and our village isn’t supposed to be
destroyed and my best friend isn’t supposed to—

What does
supposed to
matter
anymore?

So I ask,
“
Why?
”, and my
voice comes out higher, more of a whine than I would like, as
though I’m just a child who can’t possibly understand the ways of
men.

I half expect Father to scream at me,
even to slap me, though he’s never done so before. But then I’ve
never questioned him like this before. For a moment, everything
feels so silent that I’d swear even the rain has stopped, that the
whole world is holding its breath.

When Father finally speaks, his voice
is calmer, more resigned than I expected. “We had no choice, Neima.
These were the same people threatening to burn the ark down just
days earlier. What do you think would have happened if we’d let
them all on board?”

“
They—they wouldn’t really
have burned down…” But they might have.
Munzir
might have, and now his son
is on the ark, and I’m the only one who knows.

But that’s not what’s important here,
and my next words come out before I’ve thought them through. “So
you let them die? That makes you as bad as they are!” I clamp my
hand over my mouth, too late. Now I’ve really gone too
far.

Father takes my hand in his rough one
and lowers it back to my side, his grip firm but gentle, without
anger. “You didn’t see them, Neima. They were crowding, pushing,
crushing each other like…” He closes his eyes. “Like animals. I
wish we could have let the children on—that’s what Japheth wanted
to do—but if we had lowered a rope even for a moment, we would have
been swarmed. It would have been chaos. People fighting over food,
space, each other…they’d likely have destroyed the ark, or buried
it under their weight…they might have slaughtered the animals
below…”

My stomach heaves as though, once
again, the ark is tilting beneath me for the first time. I picture
people—people I’ve lived beside my entire life—massing together
like cattle, hovering like a flock of birds, or bats, panicked and
thoughtless. Perhaps we humans really are beasts, monsters, even;
perhaps we really should be destroyed.

Then I turn and look into
my father’s eyes, and what I find there—two dark, heavy pools of
regret—is somehow worse than any horrific image my mind can
conjure. “I understand,” I say, and add silently,
though I wish I didn’t
,
before I retreat to the ladder and descend once more.

***

Before I’ve even stepped
off the ladder, the sound of Shai crying—wailing, really—floods my
ears. Once my feet land on the rough wood floor, and four walls and
a ceiling enclose me once more, I shut my eyes, clench my fists;
I’m not sure I can take this right now. But I can’t ignore the
feeling of Shai tug-tug-tugging at my skirt, my arm, so I open my
eyes to find she’s pulling me toward Aliye in her makeshift nest.
When we reach the bird, Shai holds back a gasp long enough for me
to hear that Aliye is crying and moaning, too, nearly as loud as
Shai herself. “She’s
sick
,” Shai says, “and Momma says we
have to put her back in her cage, because if that bird screams near
her ear one more time, she just might wring its scrawny
little—”

She keeps going, but I block out her
words as I suck in a deep breath. I look around for Shai’s dear
“Momma;” she’s still occupied with her husband and son,
deliberately ignoring the rest of us. I wonder where Grandfather
Noah is right now, and how he would feel about his daughter-in-law
murdering one of his precious animals. Aliye might be one of the
last two doves left in the world, after all.

I could find Noah, tell him… Except I
can’t imagine looking into his face—those hard, dark eyes, that
leathered skin framed by the white hair and beard grown longer and
more tangled than ever—and speaking so many words. I don’t speak to
Grandfather, and he doesn’t listen to me. That’s the way it’s
always been.

I kneel to examine Aliye, and let out
a cluck of worry. Shai is right—the bird is thinner, noticeably so,
her neck so scrawny I’m afraid it will snap as she bobs it back and
forth. This doesn’t make sense: we spoil Aliye with bits of our
bread and dried fruit, and while the rest of the animals are
suffering, she should be plump. Her feathers should be thick and
gleaming, not ragged and dull and so suspiciously sparse, I suspect
many of them have fallen off and disappeared in the depths of her
blanket-nest. “Perhaps she does need to go back in her cage,” I
muse. “Perhaps she pines for her mate.” It seems too romantic an
idea to be true, though.

“
No!
” Shai squeals, loud enough to startle me back onto my feet,
Aliye in my cupped hands. Her protest has caught her mother’s
attention as well, and Zeda turns our way with a scowl so fierce I
can feel it from across the room. She starts toward us, but Kenaan
reaches a hand out, pulls her back, whispers something low and
urgent. And then
he’s
the one heading in our direction.

Wonderful. Just wonderful.

I avoid his eyes as he studies the
bird, places a dark, dirt-streaked hand above her wing feathers.
“Have you been feeding it gravel?”

“
Gravel?
” The word is out before I
remember I’m not speaking to Kenaan. Shai repeats my question, and
to my relief, Kenaan responds to her rather than me, kneeling down
to meet her gaze.

“
You have eyes”—he rests
two fingers on her forehead, one above each delicate eyebrow—“two
perfectly capable, perfectly beautiful eyes—”

Shai giggles, and I try not to blame
her for it. She’s only ten, and Kenaan is charming. Insufferably
so. Still, I wish he would get to the point.

By the time he starts talking about
chickens, I’m ready to walk away, dove and all, until I hear, “…and
you’ve never noticed the hens pecking at pebbles behind our house?
The rock pigeons nibbling at sand and silt by the
river?”

I realize that I have observed this;
I’ve just never had reason to think about it before. I don’t
respond, though, and Shai only shrugs, wide-eyed. Kenaan pinches
his sister’s full lower lip between his thumb and forefinger, pulls
it down to expose her small teeth, tweaks it a bit before releasing
it and giving her nose a poke for good measure. I want to be
disgusted, but there’s no malice or lust in his movements; he truly
loves Shai, the way an older brother should love his sister. He
would never hurt her—I can tell by the light in his eyes when they
meet hers.

“
Birds don’t have
beautiful teeth like yours,” he goes on. “In fact, they don’t have
any teeth at all. They swallow gravel so it can grind their food to
tiny pieces in their stomachs. If they can’t find gravel, they get
sick and weak, like your dove here.” He taps three fingers gently,
almost affectionately atop the bird’s head as he rises to his feet
again.

I’m stunned. How could
Kenaan notice something like this, something so subtle and
beautiful about the way the animal world works—
worked
, before it was all
destroyed—when I’ve never even considered it? Wasn’t he too busy
chasing after pretty girls like Derya, or admiring his reflection
in the river?

“
So why aren’t the other
birds starving? Why is the hen below still laying eggs?” Once again
my questions rush out, harsh and suspicious, before I can bite them
down.

Aliye squawks peevishly in my hands as
if in echo, and Kenaan answers nonchalantly, “Because I’ve been
giving them gravel. I brought a big sack of it onto the ark.” He
smiles down at Shai. “I’ll get some for your dove, and she should
perk right up.” He lifts his eyes to mine for a moment, still
smiling but tentatively now, before he turns—

—
turns and leaves me
utterly perplexed, more furious than ever. What right does he have
to be kind and thoughtful now, when I need to hold on to my hatred
of him? I can’t bear all this—living with Kenaan and his parents
and our grandparents, the ark, the animals, the rain, the hunger,
all of it—without the help of that hot, hard anger.

I look down at Aliye as she rests
quietly in my hands, calm and placid and even sweet. Is this the
same bird who was shrieking my head to pieces minutes ago? And is
this Kenaan, the one who’s returning now with a handful of sand and
pebbles, smiling at his sister, the same boy who trapped me in the
dark, pushed me against a wall and forced his lips to
mine?

And while I’m asking
impossible questions… How is my father, the man who held me close
when I was Shai’s age, who promised he’d always keep me safe, the
same person who let innocent children die? And how is Grandfather
Noah, my mad, foolish grandfather Noah, our prophet and
savior?
Is
he our
savior?

I hand the dove over to Shai, walk
away, let her and Kenaan take care of Aliye for now. My mind, even
my body is too full of wanting to hold anything else. Wanting
things to be simple, clear, the way they used to be, when I knew
who was good and who was bad, whom to hate and whom to
love.

Wanting the world to be whole once
again.

Later that evening, while everyone’s
preoccupied with dinner and various minor crises, I gather another
sack of supplies for Jorin. A peace offering. I mean to take it to
him that night, but though I try to sit up till the snores all
around me echo against the rainfall, I can’t keep my eyes open.
Soon I find myself tumbling deeper and deeper into dark, drowning
dreams of Derya. I face her, both of us floating underwater; her
hair twists and coils and knots like tangles of river weeds, hiding
her face, arms, chest behind its shadowy mass. Black locks thread
through my fingers, tickle my wrists, wrap around my arms and up to
my neck—Derya’s hair was never this long or this strong, this
alive, like a nest of snakes—pulling tighter, tighter till I’m
gasping for breath, trying to propel myself back to the surface, to
wakefulness.

By the time I force my eyes open, the
dim light that passes for morning has crept its way into the
corners of the ark, and my mother and aunts are already stirring.
So I go about my day as usual, wait for a quiet moment to smuggle
the supplies down to Jorin, and leave them by the elephants’ pen.
He’ll understand what I mean by offering them, and he’ll know to
expect me tonight.

The rest of the day passes without
incident. Arisi has nearly finished knotting together her fishing
net, and I hope it does its task and finds a fish or two to satisfy
her. She still whispers of her strange cravings for salt and dirt
and gravel, and I’m more concerned than ever. On the other hand, a
diet of gravel seems to have done Aliye some good: our dove is
roaming cheerfully again, begging for scraps, hopping and
attempting to take flight despite her bound wing. In just a few
days it will be time to remove her splint. Once more I have the
urge to find a scrap of wood, attempt to carve the bird’s sleek
form and the feathered slope of her wing, before we have to return
her to her cage. But I’m too exhausted, and even with Zeda’s lamps,
the night is far too dark. When I etch the tenth mark on the ark
wall—ten days we’ve been trapped here, now—I can barely see it at
all.

It’s darker still when I wake from a
few hours’ restless, though this time dreamless, sleep. I rise and
creep carefully between the sleeping forms of my family, down the
first rungs of the ladder. I’ve barely descended when two thin but
strong, muscle-taut arms wrap around me, and a rough hand against
my mouth muffles my cry.

“
It’s me, Neima.” Jorin’s
lips rest against my ear so that I feel more than hear his words.
He lowers his hand and I whirl on him, grabbing his wrist to pull
him away from the ladder, from any listening ears, but he lets me
lead him only a few feet before he locks in place. Though I tug and
tug, he refuses to go any farther. I hesitate and then press my
lips to his ear, just as he did to mine, and speak as softly as I
can:

“
Are you mad? They might
hear us.”

“
I’m going on deck,
Neima.” His words rush together, faster and faster. “Just for a
minute. I know it’s a risk but I swear if I spend one more night
breathing this foul—”

As he speaks his voice rises, still a
whisper, but frantic enough that I clamp my hand over his mouth. He
does sound half-mad, and it makes me shiver. His head shakes back
and forth behind my hand, and then he breaks away from me, moving
toward the ladder. I can’t stop him. I have no choice but to
follow.

The
ba-room, ba-room
of my heart, the
shaking of my limbs, the landing of each footfall on the ladder,
all seem loud enough to wake even the tigers and elephants below.
But when I surface behind Jorin, we’re alone, with no noise or
presence to greet us beyond the steady drumbeat of the rainfall.
Jorin stands with his hands outstretched, head tilted back, mouth
wide open to drink in the rain. I want to take in every detail of
him—the curve of muscle along his arms, the gleam of his hair—but
something seems strange. Off.

I squeeze my eyes shut and
open them again before I realize: I can
see
him. The moon has accomplished
what the sun hasn’t, these past ten days; it has pierced its way
through the ever-present clouds, bringing us light, if only a
little. Its muted beams wrap themselves around Jorin’s form as he
heads for the railing and leans over the edge, breathing hard. The
look on his face, an expression of longing and terror at once—head
still raised, lips parted, eyes desperately searching the sky—seems
to touch me the way the moon touches him. It lands on the top of my
head and slides down my spine like cold liquid, like another
raindrop, but this one is inside my body and it makes me shiver to
my bones. I’m pulled to his side, where I place my hand atop
his.

“
It’s not real.” It takes
me a moment to realize he’s spoken aloud. He turns his face to
mine, his eyes sparking in the moonlight. “It’s a dream. A
nightmare. It isn’t real. Tell me it isn’t real.”

“
I…” The rain swirls
around me, inside me, turning my mind in circles till I don’t know
what to say. But the words come out. “Why did you want to come up
here, then? Don’t you see it’s as bad here as it is down below?
There’s no escape, nothing left, we’re all doom—”

Jorin’s warm, insistent lips close
over mine, chasing away the rest of my words, my thoughts. I gasp
and he takes my breath into him, his lips forcing mine open,
pulling me deeper and deeper until…

I push away. “Jorin, what are you
doing?”

He grabs my wrists, his
fingers tight and surprisingly hot around my bones. “Don’t
you
see?” Though he
mirrors my words from a moment ago, his voice has a lightness, a
giddiness to it that frightens me. “Nothing matters now. We can do
whatever we want. What we
need
.”

I look into his eyes again, and I do
see need there. I feel it in his burning grasp, and I
know…

Jorin cares for me. Has always cared
for me. He didn’t kiss me simply because I’m here for the taking,
as Kenaan did. I’ve always understood, deep inside, that the light
in Jorin’s eyes when he looks my way is more than friendship.
Perhaps he even loves me—

—
and I love him too, but
as a friend. Only as a friend. Right? For me to return his advances
now… it wouldn’t be fair to him. He needs
me
, and I need…a friend. A human
presence. A hand to hold mine, a pair of lips to press against my
own…

If I kiss Jorin again, I’ll be making
a promise. A promise I’m not sure I’m prepared to offer, much less
keep. I turn my head away…

…
and the want, the need
rises inside me again, forcing aside all thoughts of being fair and
reasonable. Just as before, when Father made his terrible
confession, when Kenaan helped heal our dove, I’m overcome with the
thought that everything is wrong, upside down, broken. The wanting
consumes me, until I would do anything,
anything
to turn things right once
again. Only now—now I know how to make the world whole, if only for
a moment.

In one swift movement, I pivot back
toward Jorin and press my lips to his.

I’d swear the rain grows stronger as
our mouths open, tongues meet, hands roam and clutch at each
other’s arms and shoulders and necks. Water whirls around us, slams
into us from all sides, forcing us closer and closer together until
our edges dissolve and we become one thing, one seeking, reaching,
desiring being. The rain can go on forever, can pelt us like
stones, break us to pieces. I don’t care, so long as I can stay
like this.

The drumming of the rain rises to a
roar, the heat of Jorin’s hands and lips pulls an answering fire
from inside me, and out of the rush of noise and emotion comes the
voice:

“
So there’s an extra rat
on board, I see. A large one.”

In one instant, the sounds and
sensations and warmth fall away. I don’t want to turn toward the
voice, but my body moves as if jerked by a string.

Standing before us, the moonlight
illuminating his face so we can make out every curve of his
sneering smile, is my cousin. Kenaan.

***

I stare at the oil lamp in my father’s
hands. I focus on the quivering flame and try my best not to look
up at Father’s drawn, exhausted face, cast alternately in shadow
and light. As for the other faces, the figures standing in
shadow—Noah and Ham, Japheth and Kenaan all gathered near Father,
Jorin facing the men with as much distance as he can get between
them, Mother with a stern arm on my shoulder and the other women
behind her—I can’t make out their features at all. Voices come out
of blackness, making the words even more frightening:

“
Believe me,” from Jorin,
“I never meant to deceive you all.” He sounds as steady and
confident as I’ve ever heard him, his words betraying no hint of
the terror he must feel inside. That’s good; if he acts like he
deserves to be here, perhaps he will convince the others as well.
But before he can go on, Ham’s harsher voice cuts in:

“
Of course he meant to
trick us, and now he will try to destroy us.” A pause, and then,
“He is Munzir’s son.”

“
Munzir’s
son
,” Noah nearly
growls, and my every muscle tenses. Why did Ham have to remind him?
My gaze darts toward Kenaan’s dark form; if he reveals just what
Jorin and I were doing on deck, then all, all will be lost. The
next voice, though, is not Kenaan’s but my father’s:

“
Father,” he speaks
directly to Noah, “it is late, and we’ve all had quite a shock. We
should wait till morning, clear our heads and—”

“
We do not need to wait,”
Noah breaks in. “We
cannot
wait. Munzir has already attempted to destroy the
ark once, and we stood against him. I believe—” He stops, seems to
falter, and my breath catches; but then he continues, his voice
even stronger than before. “I believe that Munzir’s attack was a
test, sent by God so we could prove our faith to Him. We passed
that test, and now the Lord has sent us another.” Noah pauses to
swallow, a thick, clogging sound that I can almost feel in my own
throat. “Munzir’s son cannot remain on this ark. He is not pure, as
we are. We must cast him over the side, and let God decide his
fate.”

“
No!
” The word is out before I can stop it, and Mother gasps and
smacks her hand against my mouth. It seems even darker, now, than
it was a moment ago, certainly much too dark to see, but somehow I
know Grandfather’s eyes are on me as he says,

“
It must be done.
Tonight.”