Forty Days: Neima's Ark, Book One (4 page)

All this we have heard before. But
now, Noah pauses only to take a sip of wine, and goes on. “In just
seven days’ time, God will send rain down for forty days and forty
nights, and the great flood will blot out all life upon the
earth.”

A rush of feeling crashes over me all
at once, as cold and bracing as the river water was this morning,
and for a moment the emotion is too strong to identify. I look
instinctively to Father at Noah’s right, and I see his lips part as
he lets out a long, heavy sigh. And only when I recognize the same
emotion on my father’s face do I understand what I’m feeling:
relief. Finally, after years of enduring the villagers’ taunts and
snubs, after watching my father and uncles and even Kenaan overwork
themselves for Noah’s whims, after watching Arisi forced to choose
between her husband and her family, it’s almost over. In seven
days, when the flood does not come and the world is not destroyed,
Noah will have to give up his madman’s mission. And though the ark
will still stand, perhaps the rest of us can return to some
semblance of a normal life.

But Grandfather Noah is still
speaking, and Father’s mouth has closed, his lips drawn tightly
together.

“—
will bake as much bread
as possible and carry it to the ark, along with grain and barley,
salted meat and fish, dried figs and raisins. We will fill as many
water skins as we can at the river, for when the rain comes we may
not be able to step onto the deck and gather rainwater for several
days.”

By
we,
I realize, Noah means the women.
Including me. And including Arisi, who is—

“
This is madness!” Our
heads turn as one to the far end of the table, where Japheth has
pushed his uneaten food away and is standing, fists clenched. “I
will not allow you to put my wife’s health in danger, not when she
is with child. I’ve sacrificed for you, all these years, but Arisi
will
not
spend
her days hauling food through the village for no reason
but—”

Noah’s face has remained
placid all evening, no matter how strange his words, but now his
eyes narrow and his mouth twists. “You, my
youngest
son, will question my
wisdom? You will question the Lord God’s word?”

So is it your wisdom, or
God’s?
I think but do not say. Japheth
sits again—or rather, he nearly falls back onto the bench—and looks
to my father, his eyes wide, beseeching. We all know that if anyone
can sway Noah, it will be his eldest son. My father opens his
mouth, closes it. Finally he says, “If we listen to all you say,
Father, then will you listen to our concerns as well?”

Noah’s expression tightens further in
disapproval, and his wrinkles deepen into fissures across his skin.
He clears his throat, and then continues as if he was never
interrupted. I suppose this is the closest he’ll come to
agreeing.

“
We must also carry as
many bales of hay as possible to the ark, for we won’t be feeding
only ourselves: God has commanded me to bring two of every animal,
one male and one female, into the ark with us, so that they might
survive the storm.”

A short, biting laugh
echoes from across the table, an expression more of disbelief than
humor. Ham casts a disapproving glare in his son’s direction, and
Kenaan bites his lip and grows silent. I wish I could laugh as
well, could say or do
something
to break the tension tightening throughout the
room as Noah goes on:

“
The kept animals, the
goats and sheep, fowl and cattle and swine, we can take from our
own—”

Noah keeps speaking, but
my mind is already darting ahead to the cages Keenan has been
building, the cages for scorpions and spiders and snakes. Any God
who would ensure that
those
creatures survive while so many humans perish
must be as mad as Noah himself.

Noah says that the men will need to
trap rabbits and mice, foxes and deer, birds of all types, and,
yes, reptiles and insects. Already it seems he has surpassed all
his earlier lunacy in only a few words, but what he says next sends
a ripple of shock through me.

“
The savage animals, the
tigers and lions and other great cats, the bears and wolves and
hyenas, I do not expect you to trap alive. But God commands me to
preserve
all
His
creatures, so I have hired hunters to procure these
animals.”

Shai lets out a whimper. I’d hoped she
hasn’t understood all that Noah has said, but apparently she’s
grasped enough. Zeda places a hand on her daughter’s arm, but my
aunt’s fingers are trembling too much to provide much comfort. At
the far end of the table, Japheth lays a hand on Arisi’s stomach as
if to shield both her and the babe. The rest of us remain rigid,
our bodies tight and taut, as though we are withdrawing into
ourselves to escape some unseen threat.

“
Father.” My own father
speaks slowly, deliberately. “I have done my best to be a dutiful
son, to obey and respect you in all things. But this—this I cannot
accept. You can’t bring wild animals into our village. You will
endanger our children, our homes, our entire community.”

“
God will protect us
from—”

I have never seen Father,
have never seen
anyone
interrupt Noah, but he does so now. “If I don’t stop you,” he
says, “the rest of the village will.”

Noah does not explode in anger as I
thought he would, as he did when Japheth spoke. Perhaps he is too
caught up in his own mind, in his strange ideas, to realize just
what my father has done. “God will not allow the people of this
village to disrupt His plan,” he says.

Across the table, Shai is
crying.

“
Nahala,” Father says to
Mother, his voice hard, “take Neima and go home. I need to speak to
Father alone.” Only a moment passes before Ham and Japheth say the
same to their wives. We stand, leaving our untouched plates behind,
and I can’t help thinking that later, Grandmother Nemzar will have
to clean all this up.

***

Outside, the sun has disappeared, but
the moon and stars shine so brightly it might still be day. I’ll
miss these clear nights, when the rainy season begins and the
clouds hang low, though I’ll welcome the drought’s end. Shai is
still sniffling, and I want to comfort her, but Zeda grabs her by
the arm and hurries off. My mother, too, walks ahead, her back
rigid with displeasure. Can she possibly still be upset about me
and Kenaan? Only Arisi and I walk slowly, taking in the open night
air, which has cooled enough to feel like bliss after the stifling,
overstuffed cottage.

“
You know,” Arisi
says—softly, though the village is quiet now, nearly everyone
inside eating or sleeping already—“these animals Noah speaks of may
not arrive. Perhaps he is so confused that he only believes he has
procured them.”

“
Perhaps.” I hope Arisi is
right, but with all his years here, Noah has come to know every
trader who passes through our village. Some of those traders deal
in animal skins, and furs, and even great tusks. If the traders
don’t hunt themselves, they surely know others who do. And Noah
will spare no expense to get what he believes he needs. He’ll
probably even pay with his sons’ food stores and livestock—after
we’ve loaded the ark, of course—and then we’ll all go hungry this
winter, if we aren’t mauled by wild animals first.

That is, if Father can’t talk Noah out
of his madness.

“
It will be all right.”
Arisi’s voice jolts me from my thoughts, and I realize we’re in
front of the small cottage she shares with Japheth. “Somehow,” she
says, “it will be all right. We have to believe that, or else how
can we keep going?”

I think of Mother stomping ahead, of
Zeda yanking Shai away. Anger, or embarrassment, or fear of what
others will think—so many things can keep people motivated, can
drive them forward.

But I like Arisi’s method
better.

“
I’ll see you tomorrow,” I
say, “and hopefully we won’t be baking a year’s worth of flour into
bread we can’t keep.”

She smiles. “Tomorrow.”

When she’s gone, I make my steps even
slower; I’m not eager to return to our cottage and my mother. But
then I hear a voice ahead of me, breathless and
irritated:

“
Come…back…here…you…rascal…of…a… Neima?”

Jorin stops short, panting, but the
goat he’s chasing continues scampering through his fenced
courtyard, bleating and shaking and—well—shivering?

“
See?” he says as he
finally catches up to the goat. “I told you—she shivers at
night.”

“
But it’s not cold.” I
find myself smiling for what seems like the first time in days,
though I know it’s been only a few hours at most. It’s such a
relief to see Jorin acting as if everything’s normal, as if the
world isn’t ending in just seven days. Because it isn’t, of course,
and our little world won’t end either, no matter what my
grandfather says and does. Like Arisi said, everything will be
fine.

Jorin places one broad hand atop the
goat’s back, and she quiets and slows her shaking, though she
doesn’t stop entirely.

“
Poor thing.” I reach one
hand over the fence to stroke the goat’s silky fur. “She’s
nervous.”

Beneath my hand, her trembling slows
further and then, at last, stops. Jorin moves his hand closer,
until the tips of our fingers are touching, and looks up at me. “It
seems she just wanted some comfort,” he says.

“
It seems that way,” I
agree. The moonlight settles against the sharp angles of Jorin’s
face, and I stare a moment too long before I turn away.

“
Jorin?” a rough voice
calls from the door of his cottage. “Have you caught that goat yet?
Who are you—”

The broad silhouette of Jorin’s father
appears in the doorway, shoulders set and face creased with
displeasure.

“
I should go,” I whisper.
Needless words—I’m already backing away.

“
Good night, Neima,” I
hear Jorin’s hushed voice from behind me as I continue
home.

***

Inside, the cottage is dark and Mother
lies on her pallet, her eyes closed. I doubt she’s asleep; more
likely she just doesn’t want to speak to me, or to Father when he
arrives home. I quickly shrug off this miserable woolen dress and
slip into one of my linen shifts, and then I grab the wood remnant
and my carving knife where I’ve stashed them under my own straw
pallet. In the kitchen, I stoke the fire just enough to see by and
sit cross-legged before it.

I gaze at the wood, turning it over
and over in my palm, trying to clear my mind of everything else:
Grandfather Noah, the ark, floods and wild animals. I’m still not
sure what shape lies within it, but I brace the wood against one
hand and pull my knife toward me, following the grain of the wood,
until a small pile of cedar shavings litters the floor around me.
My heartbeat and breath slow, matching the careful rhythm of my
movements, until I’ve pulled the curve of a head and slope of
shoulders from the wood. I continue, molding a vague silhouette
that no one else could identify, but I know who is taking shape
from the wood: someone who’s no longer a boy, but not quite a man,
with hair the same shade as the knife I use to carve his
form.

My parents’ urgent whispers, coming
from the kitchen, wrench me from sleep. I stretch my arms and legs
on my pallet, working out the stiffness in my limbs; I can tell by
the sunlight and birdcalls streaming through the small window that
morning has come. I don’t remember Father coming in last night…has
he slept at all? Have he and my mother been talking all
night?

“…
he would not take our
side!” I hear from my father.

More low mumbles—Mother is better at
keeping her voice down.

“
Of course I spoke to Ham
alone,” Father breaks in, louder still. “He would not be
moved!”

More from Mother, as I creep closer to
the kitchen.

“
No,” Father says, “I
don’t think Ham truly believes in this God, or that the flood is
coming. None of us do. But he thinks he can gain some special favor
from Noah, and— Neima.” I jolt a little, but his voice softens. “I
know you’re awake. You may as well come speak with us.”

I move into the kitchen, and Mother
swiftly turns her back on me to tend the fire—though only after
throwing a look of disapproval my father’s way.

“
She’s not a child,
Nahala,” Father says. He looks at me, his face sagging with
sleeplessness, his hair rumpled as though he’s been running his
fingers through it, over and over. “We can trust you not to repeat
what you’ve heard, right, daughter?”

I nod. “So…” I swallow, suddenly aware
of the dryness in my throat. “Uncle Ham would not support
you?”

My mother rakes the bronze poker over
the hearth with a sharp, metallic sound. “No, he’d rather let his
wife and young daughter cart food to the ark for no purpose, let
his son waste his time wandering the woods and trapping animals,
let the rest of the village gawk and gossip and—”

I realize Mother is
speaking against her own husband as well. Father does not look
angry, though, only exhausted and somehow desperate, his wide
shoulders drooping beneath the cloth of his tunic. I remember what
he said to me so many years ago, when I first heard about the flood
and the ark and ran to him in fear:
I
promise that if you, if any member of our family is ever in danger,
I’ll do everything I can to protect you.
But Noah and Ham are as much a part of our family as Mother
and I are, so how can Father act against them?

Still, a small, petulant
voice within me whispers:
Shouldn’t he
care for Mother, for
me
, most of all?

Now, Father clears his throat,
interrupting my mother’s complaints: “It is only seven days. We
will comply with Noah’s demands, but we will draw out each task,
doing as little as possible, so we’ll have less to undo when the
flood doesn’t come.” As he speaks, my father seems to grow taller,
his stance broadening and his voice deepening. His brown eyes
tighten in determination rather than defeat, and I realize it helps
him to have a plan, to reclaim what control he can.

It should help me too, but I can’t
help thinking of—

“
And what of the tigers
and lions and wolves?” Mother voices my own concerns, brandishing
the poker as if to fend off an imagined beast.

Father sighs. “We will
deal with the animals when—
if
—they arrive.”

And, I suppose, that’s really all we
can do.

***

We begin by baking bread, moving
between Grandmother Nemzar’s kitchen and the courtyard outside her
cottage, where we slide the loaves into the round clay oven. We
make the loaves flatter than usual and bake them for longer, hoping
they’ll last and our flour won’t be wasted, though our teeth will
surely suffer from the hard loaves. Noah has already sent Japheth
and Kenaan out into the hills above the village to set traps; Ham
and my father are at the ark, making any last adjustments my
grandfather deems necessary. Noah himself, however, is still here,
puttering around the cottage and watching us and grumbling, until
I’m ready to cart supplies to the ark just to get away from him.
And to escape the heat belching from the outdoor oven.

Aunt Zeda has brought a wooden cart
over from her own cottage, as have Mother and I, so together with
Grandfather Noah’s cart we have three. We fill three cloth sacks
with grain from the clay bin in Noah’s courtyard, load them into
the carts, and then Aunt Zeda, Mother and I each take one cart by
the handle. We leave Grandmother and Arisi behind to tend the oven
and grind more grain into flour, while Shai scampers after
us.

I’m immediately jealous of Shai as she
skips and twirls in circles, relishing her freedom from the
courtyard, until her twin braids fly out at the sides of her head
and wisps of dark hair escape. This cart is heavy and cumbersome
and leaves me feeling anything but free. The river and the ark look
impossibly far away, especially when the cart’s creaky wooden
wheels jar over every stick and stone in my path, and I have to
jerk on the handle till my shoulder aches.

It gets worse, though: it seems
everyone in the village is outside, feeding animals or baking bread
in their own courtyard ovens or patching their roofs before the
rains come. And it seems every single person stops his or her task
to look at us, until their gazes feel warmer than the sun bearing
down above us. Sweat trickles down the back of my neck and under my
shift like some insidious crawling thing, and I want to shake both
it and the stares away, but of course I can’t. I swear the only
villagers I don’t catch sight of are Derya and Jorin, and I’m not
sure whether I’m relieved or disappointed. Either way, judging by
the whispers spreading far faster than my mother, my aunt and I can
carry our load, my friends will know what’s going on soon
enough.

By the time we reach the flat wooden
bridge that spans the river, my arms and shoulders throb as much
from nervous tension as the physical exertion. We guide the carts
carefully across the bridge, and then I’m closer to the ark than
I’ve ever been before, the smell of the still-wet pitch so
overwhelming I’d cover my nose if I had a free hand to do so. Shai
coughs and shakes her head and cries out, “Momma, I can’t live in
there, even if there is a flood. It’s cursed, it’s
cursed!”

Aunt Zeda just hushes her, so Shai
runs to me, wrapping a small tan hand in my skirt. “It’s all
right,” I whisper, as much for my own comfort as hers. “We won’t
have to live inside it.”

But my father and Uncle Ham are coming
toward us, circling around the ark’s hulking black side, and it
occurs to me that while we may not be moving in, someone must
deposit the grain inside. We can’t leave it out here for birds and
squirrels to peck at. And despite everything, I’m curious to see
more of this project that’s consumed so much of my father’s and
uncles’ time.

Father reaches us and lifts the sack
from Mother’s cart, and without asking whether I should wait, I
haul up my own sack—with much less ease than he does—and follow him
to the other side of the ark.

There is a door—two doors, actually,
one that opens to the left and one the right—both propped open and
both extending higher than the roof of our cottage. I must be
gaping, for finally I realize Father’s been tugging on the sack in
my arms, but my grip still won’t loosen. “I’ll take it, Neima,” he
says. “Go back to your mother.”

“
No.” I shift the bag
that’s growing heavier by the moment. “I want to see.”

He sighs as if he’d guessed as much,
and then I follow him, stepping up, for the floor of the ark is
more than a foot’s length above the ground, and through the massive
doors.

I expected one open, cavernous space,
so I’m disconcerted to find myself in a dim hallway. I blink,
adjusting to the sudden lack of light, and make out openings to
rooms on either side of me; neither appears to stretch to the end
of the ark. A ladder looms ahead of me as well, extending through a
hatch in the ceiling, and Father notices me staring.

“
It leads to the second
level,” he explains. “There are two floors within the ark itself,
and then the deck house you can see from outside.”

Two levels? Well, of course—the
ceiling above me is as high as the doorway, but only about half the
height of the entire ark. It’s just, the amount of work this must
have taken…

And all these rooms… Father has led me
into the one on the left, and two more open doorways lead off from
it, further into the depths of the ark. But what did I expect?
After seven years of work, with all the nomads Noah’s hired, some
returning year after year, I suppose almost anything is
possible.

If only all that hard work actually
served some purpose.

“
You can drop that here
for now,” Father says, his voice gruff—I suspect he still feels
guilty after this morning. I think he would do both Mother’s and my
work for us, if he could. Out of nowhere, I have the strange
impulse to wrap myself around him the way I did when I was much
younger, when even on tiptoe I could barely reach his waist. But
I’m far too old for that now, and besides, he’s already turned to
walk back out of the ark, into the midday sun.

***

Though we work as slowly as we can
without rousing Grandfather Noah’s suspicions, over the next days
we cart dozens of sacks of grain, barrels of dried fruit and salted
meat, and bales of hay to the ark. Even Arisi and Grandmother help,
when we have no more flour to bake with and little grain left to
grind. I’m not sure which is worse: the glares and whispers and
even laughter that grow bolder each time we pass through the
village, or the knowledge that in just a few more days, we’ll have
to carry everything back again—and through rain and over mud, most
likely.

Kenaan doesn’t help much, either, as
he runs up several times a day to show Shai and me his latest
catch. Once it’s a pair of skittering green things that dash
frantically from one side of their cage to the other, making my
heart leap in a strange way. I wish he could let them out, could
answer their desperate call for release—but not too near me or my
cottage. Another time his cage holds a long, slithering brown snake
like a coil of clay come to life. “Still have to find a female,” he
says, “so let me know if you step on one.”

“
Do you even know if that
one’s male?” I ask, already knowing the answer. Kenaan just looks
away. I think half the time, he hasn’t even managed to catch two of
the same kind, much less one male and one female. He just trusts
that no one will look too closely—because who would?

On the afternoon of the third day
after Noah’s announcement, Kenaan tells me he’s done with reptiles,
and now he’s going to trap birds. He waits till Shai is on the
other side of the courtyard, eating raisins out of the jar her
mother is loading, before he asks, “Want to come with me? Maybe you
can sing to attract them.”

“
Huh.” Kenaan knows I
can’t sing, and I think his entire invitation is a joke, until he
goes on:

“
Please, Neima. I’m
so
bored
, and
you’re the only one who can know what I’m doing.”

I look down at my hands,
red and blistered from so many trips with the cart, and then over
at Mother, who is doing a poor job of pretending not to eavesdrop.
“Oh, just
go
,”
she says as she loads another sack with loaves of over-baked,
nearly inedible bread. I know she’s only agreeing because she wants
Kenaan for a son-in-law, but right now, I’ll take any opportunity
to escape.

On the way out of the village, we run
into Jorin, who narrows his eyes in exaggerated suspicion. “Let me
guess”—he crosses his arms over his chest—“Noah’s finally taken
things too far, so you two are running away to the woods to live
together. I thought you’d at least take Shai with you.”

“
Very funny,” I say, but
Jorin’s looking at Kenaan—or, rather, he’s looking at the
box-shaped twig traps Kenaan’s carrying.

“
Are you hunting?” he
asks.

“
In a manner of speaking.”
Kenaan smiles. “And your earlier guess is partly right as well:
Noah has grown stranger still, and he’s sent us into the hills to
capture all manner of birds.”

I guess Kenaan’s not so concerned with
keeping our family’s secrets after all, at least not from
Jorin.

Jorin frowns. “To eat, or—”

“
He wants us to trap them
alive and uninjured,” Kenaan jumps in. “Beyond that, I’m not sure.”
So it appears he’s not willing to share all our secrets.

Jorin shrugs and then,
accepting as always, breaks into a grin that reaches all the way to
his eyes. “Well, I’ll come with you. I’d do anything to escape this
blasted sun and my father’s endless commands. I’d even put up
with
your
company.” He nudges my shoulder as we head further into the
delicious shade of the tree cover, up the first slight slope of the
hillside.

“
I don’t know,” I say,
“you might scare all the birds away.”

“
Truly, Jorin”—Kenaan’s
shoulders grow rigid, and a new edge creeps into his voice—“our
task will be easier without you clomping around making
noise.”

“
Oh.” Jorin stops walking,
his own shoulders slumping, and looks from me to Kenaan and back
again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize—” He shrugs again and then,
without another word, turns and heads back down the
hillside.