Ark(38)

Boredom set in quickly as league after league, hour after hour, passed in total silence.

We turned off the main road near sundown, breaking away to head due west. The smaller side road was narrow and very rugged, sending lances of pain through me at every turn of the wheels. I ground my teeth against it for as long as I could, but eventually a cry broke loose, and then I could no longer contain the whimpers.

The sound of my tears brought Japheth up from his torpor, and he turned to glance at me with concern.

“It is not far now. The farm is just over that rise,” he said, pointing ahead.

I lifted up, gasping at the effort, to look ahead. The land drew itself up into a steep hill, cutting off our view of the land beyond the horizon. I settled back down and closed my eyes, willing the throb of my knitting bones to ease. After a while I felt the wagon tilt as we began the upward journey. Japheth called encouragement to the onagers as they struggled with the steep upward grade. I felt myself sliding downward, gripping the sides of the wagon to hold myself in place.

It should have been a simple thing, holding myself in place as we traveled up the hill, but it took every shred of my strength. I pinched my eyes shut, my teeth grating at the effort, my heart pounding.

At long last the hill leveled out and the wagon pulled to a stop. I heard Japheth climb out of the wagon and whisper praise to the onagers.

Then I heard a soft curse of surprise from him, followed by a word breathed in awe.

I struggled to turn around, but couldn’t. I was slumped against the back of the wagon, fighting tears of pain.

“Japheth? What . . . what is it?” I managed.

He didn’t answer. He simply turned and lifted me from wagon, holding me in his arms to show me the view of his father’s farm.

What I saw took my breath away.

What I saw appeared to be a boat of some kind, massive enough to plow the starry waves of the very heavens. It was a skeleton only, a spare shape of struts and spars and curving ribs, but the scope of it, the size of it even from this distance of many miles was enough to stun me into breathless silence.

We stared for many minutes, awed.

“What in all the names of God is my father building?” Japheth whispered, more to himself than to me.





9





Favor Found





“But Noah found favor with the Lord.” Genesis 6:8





Noah, son of Lamech, son of Methuselah, was a frightening man. His beard was long and black, shot with streaks of gray, the tip brushing his belly. His curly black hair, so like Japheth’s but long and unkempt, was tossed in the ever-present breeze, brushing across his eyes as he stood before the mountain-sized construction, a mallet in one hand and a thick, gnarled staff in the other. He wore a short knee-length, sleeveless tunic belted with a thick strap of leather. He was burly and tall, towering nearly half a cubit above Japheth, his shoulders as wide and heavy as an ox’s, his arms thick and hairy, his chest as broad and round as a barrel of wine; he could wrestle an aurochs and win. Noah was an imposing man, even to me, a Nephilim. His eyes were as blue as Japheth’s but immeasurably older and sparking with wisdom. They pierced me like hurled spears.

He did not have to speak a word for me to know he hated me.

I could see this even as we approached. I sat next to Japheth in the wagon’s seat, holding myself erect through sheer force of will. Noah’s eyes narrowed as we neared him, until they were slits of blue that flashed with sparks. I refused to cower underneath his gaze, but I wanted to. Even Japheth kept rolling his shoulders back and straightening his spine, as if he too felt the weight of Noah’s disapproval.

“Your father is . . . fearsome,” I whispered, as we approached.

Japheth sighed. “Yes,” he agreed.

Japheth’s mouth was pressed into a thin line. I was quickly realizing the enmity between him and his father went deeper than he had let on. He wasn’t merely tense—he was afraid. I had seen him face my father’s men without blinking, and I had seen him kill men without so much as flinching, and he prophesied my father’s death without fear, but now, at the prospect of seeing his own father, Japheth seemed to be nothing so much as terrified.

Japheth tugged on the reins and the onagers slowed to a stop in front of Noah. Two other men stood behind Noah, one with a stack of planed and sanded boards in his arms, the other with a bucket of pitch. Both of these men shared Noah’s black curls and blue eyes, making them Japheth’s brothers, I assumed. They paused mid-motion as we approached, shock on their faces.

Stepping down from the wagon, Japheth squared his shoulders and faced his father; neither man spoke for long, tense minutes.

“Father,” Japheth began. “It’s been . . . a long time.”

Noah remained silent, twisting the staff in his fist so the tip dug into the grass. “Japheth.”

It was odd, Noah’s greeting. It was not a welcome, not a greeting, and not a question. It seemed like nothing so much as an empty statement, a bare, spare acknowledgement of his son’s presence.

“I . . . I know there’s much we have to discuss, and I don’t expect an eager welcome, but . . .” Japheth trailed off, ducking his head and toying with the ear of the onager munching grass next to him. “I hope . . . I was hoping we can . . . stay here, for at least a few days. Aresia, she’s hurt . . . she needs time to recuperate.”