Ark(46)

“But you can’t, can you?” Aresia didn’t answer, and Japheth kept speaking. “Listen, I know how that feels. I mean, I don’t know what you went through, not specifically, and I know there are things you experienced that I haven’t . . . but I do understand.”

“You think so?”

“There are things that keep me awake at night. Memories I can’t escape, no matter how far I go, no matter how much wine I drink.” He fell silent, thinking of the temple whore from Ur, the priest lapping at her blood as it spurted from her throat.

He felt Aresia’s eyes on him, knew she could see his pain.

“Well, you can probably imagine, then, what happened to me, and you would be right.” Aresia shuddered. “Picture the worst, most brutal things one person can do to another, and he did them to me. He forced himself on me, day and night. He sodomized little boys in front of me. He beat me and he tortured me. He did everything but kill me, and that was not for lack of trying.”

“He impregnated you,” Japheth stated, and Aresia only nodded. “And you got rid of it.”

“Of course I did,” she spat, bitterly. “Such a child would have been an abomination. I could not love such a thing. Perhaps that makes me a bad person, but I cannot make myself regret it, even if I do feel Elohim judging me for it. I would not choose otherwise, were I made to choose again.”

“I would not assume Elohim judges you ill for that,” Japheth said. “I do not.”

“You are not Elohim. But I am glad you do not think less of me for it.”

Silence.

“What happened to Irkalla? Neither she nor . . . what was his name . . . the soldier from Larsa who was driving the wagon . . . Uresh? Neither of them would speak of it.”

“Oh, that poor girl. Inanna—I mean . . . Elohim be with her.” Aresia dug at the dirt with her toe. “It was awful. Worse than what happened to me, in some ways. Sin-Iddim had done his worst to me, and Ereshkigal himself could not have devised worse torture. I wanted to die. I had killed the child inside me, and he was torturing me for denying him his heir. He had executed the healer who provided the herbs, and Irkalla couldn’t bear to watch me waste away, I suppose, so she devised a way to get me out.

“She had arranged to make sure one of the gates would be unguarded at a specific hour, but her plan didn’t work as expected. She found Uresh, somehow, and convinced him to carry me out. I don’t know how. I remember nothing from Larsa but pain, and being carried out of the palace in the dead of night. We came to the gate, which I suppose was meant to be unguarded, but it wasn’t. There was a guard there, the gate captain himself. He knew me, and knew what Irkalla was doing. She . . . he made her pay with the only coin she possessed: her body. Right there at the gate, in the dirt, in front of me, and Uresh who was carrying me in his arms.”

“Gods, Aresia. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

He lifted a shoulder. “In some ways . . . it is.”

Aresia did not disagree with him, and there was only silence between them, then.

“This boat of your father’s . . . the flood he speaks of. What do you make of it?” Aresia asked, at long last.

Japheth could only shrug. “I do not know. I have been thinking on that same question myself, and I have no answer.”

Aresia stared at the orange cinders. “I heard the Voice of Elohim, Japheth. I fear your father’s faith is not idle.”

“Why do you fear that?”

She turned her gaze to him. “Because . . . I am Nephilim.”

Japheth had no answer for that, and she clearly did not expect one from him, for she lay down, near Japheth but not cuddled against him, as had once been their wont between moments of passion. Japheth listened to her breathing slow to soft, gentle snores, the quiet sounds mingling with the other snores. He himself lay awake for a long, long time, his mind spinning, turning over the question of what he believed, what it meant, and what he was supposed to do about any of it.





11





The Covenant





“But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you.” Genesis 6:18 (ESV)





Japheth would not touch me. In the weeks since we had been at Noah’s home he had not held my hand. He slept near me at night, but not intimately, not comfortingly. I sensed a change in him, but he would not even speak with me. He left me every day to work on the Ark or to farm the fields, and I remained behind with his mother and sisters-in-law.

I was healing well enough, and I could breathe without pain now. I could lay with him if he would seek me out in such a way, yet he did not. In truth, I did not know if I want him to be that close. I loved him and I knew, in my mind and my heart, that he loved me as well, but . . . the thought of his body against mine brought apprehension and fear, and memories of Sin-Iddim. I tried to imagine what it would be like to feel Japheth above me, looking at me with love, but all I could see was Sin-Iddim’s eyes, hard and angry and brutal.

I knew Japheth was not himself, and a part of me wanted to beg him to love me and wash away the memory of that monster . . . but I could not bring myself to do so. Japheth, too, seemed reluctant. I did not know whether that was on my behalf, knowing what I have suffered, or whether it was due to the presence of that human girl, Neses.