Ark(57)

Did El hear their prayers, if they did not speak or think His name? I think not, if the flood was meant to wipe them all away. If I prayed to Him now, would he hear my prayer? I was a Nephilim. I was that which He was wiping from the earth. Why would He hear me?

Elohim . . . El Shaddai . . . do you hear me? Does my prayer reach your ears? What is my lot in this life? Am I meant to die?

The skies remained silent. The wind blew, and the earth rumbled, but Noah’s God did not speak to me.

I sat on that rock until the sun sank low, and I did not hear the Voice of God.



I was woken by a droplet of cold on my forehead. I stretched and sat up, a rush of dizziness washing over me as I realized I was still perched on the outcropping of rock, a fall of hundreds of cubits below me should I slip . . . I’d fallen asleep. It was just before dawn, yet after the darkest hours of night, the sky just light enough to let me see the mountain behind me, and the fields below and before me, and the shape of the ark in the distance.

Another droplet spattered on my forehead; I looked up and saw darkness, an absence of stars, a total blackness that writhed and moiled. Bright white light flashed beside me, blinding me and searing images of white and black on the backs of my eyelids. Then, a moment later, the heavens cracked apart with a shattering sound, as if the mountain was fracturing beneath me. Another droplet, and another.

I blinked in the darkness. Far to the west, another flash of lightning burst across the sky, a zagging jag of white-purple that illuminated the whole earth for a fragment of a second. In that moment, I saw the ark, as clearly as if it were a bright, clear noontime.

Moving up to the ark, toward the doorway on the far side from where I sat, was a thick dark line. It was hard to make out details from this distance, especially in the pre-dawn dark of a stormy morning, but it was obvious what I was seeing. Animals, making their way onto the ark.

Another flash of lightning illuminated the earth, and I saw a giant animal, tall and wide and gray, with a long nose and flapping, twitching ears, beside it another, identical to it. I heard the roar of a tiger, and the chittering of a monkey. Above the ark, birds flew in a wheeling cloud of spiraling confusion, pairs and pairs and pairs, no two pairs the same, birds of all sizes, from the largest soaring hawks to the smallest frantic sparrows.

A spatter of raindrops pattered on my head, and then more fell, wetting my shoulder. Thunder billowed to the north, a long rolling boil of angry sound. Lightning again, southwest. Then again, northeast. I climbed higher, then, until I could see in all directions. As I pivoted in place, spinning from north to west to south to east, I saw flickers and flashes and spears and jags of lightning in every direction, bolts striking so close they cast shadows on the earth, and others so distant they seemed like the flicker of a candle. Thunder, always thunder, a continuous roll of noise, a wall of sound from every direction, thunder so constant now that it shook my bones, shook the very earth under my feet. The mountain quaked, rocks toppling and jumping and avalanching. And, in intermittent bursts, a cold rain, hints of the deluge to come.

As a girl, I remembered when a storm struck suddenly. I was playing in one of the gardens, my mother nearby. The sun was shining, the sky blue, not a cloud to be seen. And then, with a suddenness that confused my young mind, clouds flew like a flock of ravens to blot out the sun, and the winds kicked up. I felt a drop of rain and then two and then a dozen, and then thousands, too many to count, a wall of rain cascading from the heavens. My mother hurried me into the palace and we stood in the doorway watching the rain, listening to the thunder. The moment right before the rains opened up, that moment was one I remembered vividly. The rain had begun slowly, and then picked up force so swiftly.

I had that same feeling now, standing on the mountaintop, lightning flashing in every direction, thunder all around . . . except magnified a millionfold from that time as a little girl. My heart hammered in my chest, and my blood panicked in my veins.

I did not want to be here, on this mountain, when the rains came.

I did not want to die.

Spare me, Elohim. Spare me, God of Noah.

I heard no voice, only that of thunder.

My feet scrambling on the rock face, I descended the mountain, and when I reached flat ground, I ran, the skirt of my dress caught up around my thighs.

I ran, thunder crashing all around, droplets of rain striking like hail, fat and thick and hard.

I ran through the waist-high grasses, across the fallow fields, into the clearing around the ark, and the forgotten house. I stood some distance away, in the open, awed.

The earth was alive with movement. Creatures of all sizes were gathered in a stomping, snorting, bucking, snarling, hawing, keening mass. The doorway stood open, the ramp down, facing the far southern fields and the open meadow beyond, and in that space, a teeming throng of wildlife.

Every animal was there, jumbled and bumping together, tiny things skittering between legs and darting around hooves, tails whipping, teeth snapping. The air buzzed with life, hummed with the vibrancy of animal energy. I saw cows, aurochs, horses, onagers, long-necked, long-legged spotted things I had no name for, things that crawled on the ground with shaggy squat legs and an impossibly long nose, animals like lions but smaller, and things like the little leaping palace court monkeys except much larger. The noise was cacophonous, a bewildering assault of whinnies and brays and snarls and roars and moans and lows and chitters and chatters, chickens clucking and eagles keening and ravens haw-haw-hawing and goats blatting and so many noises and sounds I could not separate one from the other.