Ark(51)

I glance up over my shoulder at the colossal structure—the prow jutting at the heavens, the belly spars bulging wide enough to swallow an entire temple. “There are nine people here, Noah. That boat you are building could carry a city.”

“He is wiping out the wicked,” Noah said. “He is washing clean the earth of the stain of sin, and when it is finished, He will begin anew.”

I still didn’t understand. And then Noah glanced out at the small pasture behind the house, in which grazed wandering clumps of oxen, a pair of onagers, a small herd of sheep, a few goats, and a scattering of clucking, pecking chickens.

“Animals,” Noah said finally. “The boat is for animals.”

I felt an urge to laugh, so ridiculous was the notion. “You are going to fill this ark of yours with sheep and goats and chickens?”

Noah must have heard the mirth in my voice, for he frowned at me, the expression like the gathering of thunderheads on the horizon. “A mated pair of every kind of animal that walks upon this earth, and two of every kind that flies over it.”

“You are going to herd lions and bears and rats and eagles onto this ark?”

Noah let out a hissing sigh, as if he had answered this question a thousand times. “He will provide a way. He always provides a way.” It was the only answer he gave, lapsing into irritated silence.

“I do not mean to mock, Noah. I do not know your god. I have heard His Voice, but I do not know Him. I do not know if I believe in Him. I know He is real, but to believe in Him, after all I have experienced? It is too much.” I look to the sky, as if to see this One God, Elohim, in the endless blue. “I do not mock. But neither do I understand.”

Noah gazed at me steadily, for so long I became uncomfortable under his stare. Eventually, he spoke.

“He does not ask us to understand, Aresia. He asks us to have faith.”

“In what?”

“In that which we cannot see, but feel. In that which we hear, but cannot taste. In that which is, and was, and forever will be. In Him, Aresia.”

“I had faith in my gods,” I said.

“Did they speak to you?” Noah demanded. “Did they accept your offerings and answer your many prayers?”

I shook my head. “Never. And thus I do not believe in them any longer.”

“You have prayed to The One God,” Noah said, his gaze refusing to release me from its potency. “You spoke to Him, you begged something of Him, am I correct?”

Slowly, I nodded.

Noah tilted his head to one side. “And what did you ask of Him?”

“‘Save him,’” I whispered. “That is what I prayed. Save him.”

Noah’s gaze shifted beyond me, to the fields whence I came; Japheth was returning, at long last, carrying the basket. “And there he is.”

“Broken.”

Noah nodded. “But what is broken can be fixed. What is shattered can be remade.”

“But not as it was,” I argued.

“You are not as you were at birth, or as a child, or as a young woman. You have changed, all the while. Pain changes us, and so too does pleasure, and all that exists in between. All things change us, for God formed man out of clay, and as clay we are, from birth to death, ever malleable.” As he spoke he stared at Japheth, who was approaching us from a distance. “We are none of us as we were—that is life, Aresia.”

“Your God . . . will He speak to me again, do you think?”

Noah shrugged. “I cannot answer for Him, for He alone knows His will.”

A long silence, but for the hammering of Shem’s mallet and the scrape of Ham’s adze.

And then Noah met my eyes once more, and they were full of a sadness I could not comprehend. “‘You, your sons, your wife, and your son’s wives,’” Noah intoned. “That is what my God told me. When the waters come, we will enter the ark, and we will ride out on the floods which will clean the earth.”

I swallow hard at Noah’s implication. “I see.”

“I cannot change the will of God, Aresia.” He stood up. “I am sorry.”





12





All Life





“‘There must be a male and a female in each pair to ensure that all life will survive on the earth after the flood.’” Genesis 7:3 (NLT)





Japheth bound the final sheaf of wheat, tossed it on the stack, and wiped his brow with his wrist. It was a hot day at the end of the harvest season; he’d plowed the field, planted, weeded, and harvested the entire crop of wheat by himself, and so felt a little burst of pride at the head-high stack of golden wheat. It needed only to be threshed now, and then would be ready for Namus to collect and transport to Bad-Tibira.

After a short rest, Japheth transferred a portion of the sheaves into the back of the wagon, tossed the sickle up onto the driver’s bench, and climbed up. With a click of his tongue and a snap of the reins, the onagers lurched into motion. He was in the farthest field east, just over the rise from the house, and it only took a few minutes to crest the shallow hill, which brought the ark into view.

It was more than half-finished now, with the sides nailed into place from keel to midway up, with many of the interior compartments also in place. The more complete it became, the more staggering the scope of the undertaking became, and the more baffling the whole business was to Japheth. It wasn’t that he doubted the existence of God, or that he doubted the faith of his father, it was just . . . difficult to believe a flood so monstrous would need a boat of this size.