Ark(53)

“What do you talk about?” Japheth asked, after a moment.

“We talk about El. She has many questions. And we talk of other things.”

“Like?”

“Like why you have abandoned her. Why a god would allow such horrible things to happen, both to her and to you.” Neses did not look up from the clothing she was setting out to dry, but her words stung all the same. “She wonders about the many names of El, and she wonders at the purpose of life, if El is going to wash the earth clean.”

“And what do you tell her?”

Neses didn’t answer right away. She finished hanging a robe over the wagon and then stopped, her hands resting on the lip of the basket, her gaze finally lifting to Japheth’s. “I tell her what truths I possess, which are not many.

“I do not know why you would bring her here and then abandon her so completely, among a people foreign to her. I do not know why El allows pain and horror and violence. I do not know why men kill men.” She paused, swallowing hard, her gaze dropping, along with the volume of her voice. “I do not know why men rape women. Why my Lord Elohim would create such beauty in this world, and yet allow such ugliness. I do not know. I think, sometimes, that I will never know.”

“I haven’t abandoned her, Neses—” Japheth started.

She cut him off, quietly yet effectively. “Yes, you have.” She met his eyes once more. “I see it, she sees it—we all see it. It was cruel of you to bring her here, among us, only to leave her alone so you can wallow in your own pain.”

Anger boiled up inside Japheth. “You do not know what I have endured, Neses! You cannot fathom what horrors keep me awake at night.”

Her wide brown eyes narrowed, her jaw tightening, her slender body stiffening. “Oh no? You think not?” She leaned forward, her fingers gripping the basket tightly. “You think you alone have lived through nightmares?”

“Of course I don’t think that, but—”

She only stared at him, her expression so rife with disgust and contempt that he fell silent. “You have not earned the telling of my truths, Japheth, son of Noah. But hear this: time is short. Your days with Aresia are numbered, and that number is dwindling swiftly. She knows this, and she has accepted this as well as anyone could. But what about you? Will you allow her to spend her remaining days on this earth alone, and in misery? Nephilim she may be, and El alone knows I have no cause to feel compassion for her kind, but all creatures on this earth are deserving of comfort.”

Japheth felt her words hitting his heart like a hail of arrows. “What do you mean, Neses?”

She only shook her head. “You know very well what I mean, Japheth. Refuse to believe if you will, but when the floods come you will regret wasting this time.”

“You truly believe the whole earth will be flooded?” he asked.

“I do.” Two simple words, but Neses’s quiet voice imbued them with an utter surety that pierced Japheth’s doubts.

He sighed and had no response. After a moment, it became clear there was nothing else left to say. Neses, the girl he had known all his life, had given him much to think about.

Japheth turned away, and his feet carried him toward the towering hulk of the ark, its long profile a dark shadow with the sun behind it. Wedges of sunlight speared through gaps in the sides where the work was yet unfinished, laying striped paths of red and gold over the waving green of the grass. Shem’s mallet echoed, as ever—thock-thock-thock-thock . . . thock . . . thock-thock.

Aresia was sitting in a pool of light, a pile of rushes beside her, which she was plaiting into a basket. Her work was clumsy, the chore unfamiliar to her royal hands, but she was working steadily, her focus so total that Japheth’s presence went unnoticed until he cleared his throat and shuffled a sandal in the grass.

She glanced up, and her gaze remained cold. “Japheth. Is there something you need?”

He hesitated, unsure why he was standing in front of her, or what he was going to say. “I—”

She gazed up at him, waiting. “Speak or leave.”

“Do you feel I have abandoned you, Aresia?” he asked finally.

She stared at him, and then returned her gaze to her work, bending a rush into a loop to fit another through it. “To say you abandoned me would suggest a deeper relationship than I think we ever had.” She frowned, realizing her plait was crooked. As she spoke she undid it, straightened the crooked piece, and tried again. “I deceived myself into thinking a bond existed between us. I now realize that was childish dreaming on my part.”

Japheth absorbed her statement.

He sat facing her, set a stack of rushes in his lap, and began plaiting. “You think there was nothing between us? That there is nothing, even now?”

She kept her gaze on her work. “We shared physical pleasure, Japheth, nothing more. We spoke of nothing real, nothing deep. We never shared anything of our true selves. Our only bond was that our meetings were dangerous, and we paid the price. I was the princess, and you wore a name of the forbidden god. I meant nothing to you, nor you to me.”

“That is neither true nor fair, Aresia.” He looked at her, but she refused to lift her eyes to his. “It was more than that. It was—it was becoming more than that.”

“Be honest, Japheth. What we had was infatuation. It was lust. It was nothing.”