Ark(50)

Noah nodded, eyes narrowed and pinning me in place. “YHWH.”

He pronounced this yo-VEH, and when he spoke it, his eyes cast up to the heavens, and his chest filled with a great breath. The way he said it, the careful, precise enunciation of each sound . . . he rendered the simple syllables holy, somehow.

“That is not a name of my God, but the name.” Noah’s gaze glittered and shone as if the light of the sun itself roared behind his pupils, and his presence expanded, as if the presence of his God was somehow filling him, breathing through him. “He is El, The One God. He is Elohim, and He is El Shaddai, and He is Eloah, and He is Elohai. He is not a god, Aresia, daughter of Emmen, he is THE God.”

Fear bolted through me. Noah’s voice, as he spoke the names of God echoed, and reverberated, shuddering through the very earth as if the plates of the mountains were quaking at the sound. When Noah spoke those names, he ceased speaking as a mortal man, and spoke as the mouthpiece of the very God whose names he recited. The skies, once blue as Japheth’s eyes, roiled with dark clouds black as Japheth’s curls, lightning leaping in blinding bolts from cloud to cloud, and the thunder was Noah’s voice. And when the juddering echoes of the names of God faded, the skies were blue once more, and I felt in the deepest pit of my belly a truth, a knowing—that Noah’s Elohim was real . . . very, very real.

A profound quiet descended, then, and Noah’s gaze pierced me.

“You know Him,” Noah stated.

“I told you.” I stared up at Noah. “I heard Him.”

Noah let out a breath, setting down the bucket of pitch, and leaned a shoulder against a spar, thick arms crossed over his chest. “The necklace Zara gave Japheth . . . what about it?”

“It marked him. Had Japheth been any other human, a worshipper of Inanna and Enlil, Father perhaps would not been so angry. But the necklace marked him as a worshipper of Elohim, The One God, and my father hates them more than anyone else on this earth. But for me, my Father would have given Japheth a death longer, more painful, and more protracted than words can describe, for he was not merely a worshipper the forbidden god, but he had dared defile me, the daughter of the king. No matter that I had sought him, that I was as complicit as Japheth in our foolish affair. Have you heard the tales of what my father does to worshippers of Elohim?”

Noah nodded, his expression tight. “I have seen it.”

“Compound the violence of that hatred by a thousandfold, and you might understand the fate that awaited Japheth.”

“Was it worth it?” Noah asked, his voice bitter, the words dropping from his lips as if he was unable to stop them.

“Ask me that after I have finished telling you the rest,” I said. “Neither of us were innocent of blame, but I knew—I knew I could not let Japheth suffer for my sake. So I gave my father the one thing I had which would sway him: my hand in marriage to Sin-Iddim, King of Larsa.”

“His is a reign of blood and terror,” Noah said.

I could only stare unseeing, barely breathing. “Any stories and rumors you may have heard . . . none of them approach the truth. You cannot fathom the horror of that place, Noah. You simply cannot.”

Noah frowned, as if hearing what I wasn’t able to communicate in words. “You were wed to Sin-Iddim?”

I nodded. “In exchange for Japheth’s life.”

Noah was silent awhile, considering me. “You love my son.” It was not a question, but a statement.

I shrug one shoulder, a miserable gesture. “I do not know. I thought I did.” I cast a glance up at Noah. “I do not belong here. And, as you have said, Japheth’s spirit has been broken.”

“But not yours?” Noah’s voice was strangely soft, for so wild and gruff a man.

I blink hard against the tears—even now I found it hard to let anyone, let alone a human, see me weep.

“No. Not mine,” I said.

Noah’s laugh was not unkind. “Nephilim you may be—princess, queen, and descended from angels . . . but you are a poor liar, Aresia, daughter of Emmen.”

I blinked up at him again. “You see through me so easily?” I wiped at my eyes. “Is this some power given you by your god, to see a person’s secrets?”

“My God has granted me no power but faith, Aresia. What I see, I see because I, too, have been broken. I, too, am subject to the human condition which afflicts us all.”

“What condition is that, Noah?” I asked.

He smiled, as if it should be obvious. “The fruit of the serpent, gift of Adam and Eve.” He paused for effect. “Sin, Aresia.”

I frowned; I’d heard the legends and tales Elohim’s followers claimed as truth—creation of all things by the word of The One God, a garden, a serpent, the first man and first woman. Legends, hearsay, tales to tell in the night, nothing more. But the more I encounter this God, this Elohim, the more I wonder if all I’d heard was true.

A scrap of white cloud crossed the sun, casting a brief shadow over us, and it reminded me of the structure behind me, and my many questions.

“Why the boat, Noah?”

“You have heard what my God has told me. I have spoken of it often enough.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want the same story you repeat by the fire, but the truth.”

He tugged at his beard, raking his fingers through the snarls. “It is the truth. He spoke to me, and he told me that the earth is filled with wickedness. It cannot be redeemed, cannot be saved. He bade me build this ark, because he is going to destroy the earth and everyone upon it.”