A JOURNEY DEEP INTO THE DESERT
I hoped for a normal life like those of the wives in my father’s village. Cleaning, cooking, bearing children, gathering with the other wives to talk of . . . I did not know what they talked of, as I had never been near their gatherings. I will know soon enough, I told myself. If I keep my mark hidden, I can be as happy as any woman.
The farther we traveled from the Nile, the more brutal the landscape became. There were no oxen pulling plows, no rivers to drink from, and few trees to provide shade from the sun or block the harsh, sand-filled winds. The land had not received a single raindrop in many moons. Dust swarmed up from the donkey’s hooves, even at the slow pace that seemed to be all the old animal was capable of.
I wondered why anyone would live so far from the Nile, but I knew I would appear bold if I asked. My father had already endured nineteen years of suspicion, which was nineteen years more than most men could have withstood. I would not give Noah any reason to return me to the newly free man. I did not speak unless spoken to.
Noah moved his own tongue only to make demands: “Girl, get me apricots from the saddlebag.” “Girl, pick the burrs from the animal’s tail.” (Noah had never bothered to name the donkey over the hundred years he’d had him, and this did not give me much hope of receiving my own name from him.) “Girl, mend this tear in my tunic.”
I always responded, “Yes, my lord.”
Noah often snorted his approval, but he never looked at me. I was not sure whether this was because I was of little importance to him or because, as he had told my father, he didn’t care about the surfaces of things.
Though his eyes did not take to me, his hands were not the least bit inhibited. As the journey wore on, my hindquarters became ever more raw from the constant plodding of the donkey and from the things Noah did to me at night. The riding blanket was thin folded over on the donkey, and it was even thinner when Noah spread it on the ground and told me to lie down. The first night he got on top of me was as close to torture as I had ever come, and I hoped it would end as quickly as possible. Yet when it was over, I almost missed it. All the next day I felt the soreness and both dreaded and looked forward to the night.
We did not sleep much; Noah had a great hunger for sons. Also, he did not want to be away from his flock for long.
It was on the third day of our journey that we came upon the first field of bodies. Many of the men whose faces I could discern had been branded with the X of the banished. And so I feared that we were near the town of Sorum, Land of Exiles, and wondered why Noah would live within even a few leagues of such a place.
None of the dead men Noah and I had come upon—marked or unmarked—wore sandals, and no weapons lay upon the ground besides part of a copper sword and a couple of broken spears. Gripping one of the spears was a hand with no body. Where some of the men’s mouths lay open, I saw no teeth.
“Thieves have robbed the dead,” Noah said. There were vultures sifting through the remains, but they were not the thieves Noah spoke of.
How I wished that he had come for me on a mule instead of an old donkey, so we could trot through the mess of bodies instead of slowly plodding through as if it did not smell of rotting meat, dried blood, and dung.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a small movement and had the terrible thought that perhaps evil spirits were playing among the dead. When I turned my head to look closer, I realized that the movement I had seen was only the wiggling of countless little worms. They were eating the remaining flesh on what must have been a very large man, considering how many worms were able to make a meal of him.
I spoke my first words to my new husband other than “yes” and “my lord.” “My lord, why have they not been buried or burned? Whose land is this?”
“The devil’s.”
The donkey stopped. I looked around Noah’s shoulder to see why. Not ten cubits ahead were four spears with bloodied heads spiked upon them. Three had X’s on their foreheads, and one looked as if he were smiling. Another spear had not been planted deep enough in the earth, and it lay on the ground in front of us with the head a couple of cubits away.
“Each generation is more wicked than the one before,” Noah said.
As if to prove Noah’s words, a boy no more than ten years old stepped out from behind the spears. He had one intensely green eye and one black and red eye socket.
“I will have your mule,” the boy said. He had a spear in his hand, likely one that had held a head not long before. When he spoke, I saw that he had no front teeth, and his canines had been sanded into sharp points.
Noah said, “This is no mule. It is the donkey that the Lord has given me.”
“I will eat it anyway,” the boy said, “and you too, if you do not dismount and run away as fast as your skinny legs can carry you.” Then he looked at me. His insolent expression did not move a hair’s width in any direction. He did not fear my mark. Surely he is mad, I thought.
“Let us go on foot, my lord husband,” I whispered, “and let the boy have this slow stubborn animal.” It was the first time I had called him husband, and I hoped this would make him consider my wishes more carefully.
Noah ignored me. “The God of Adam will have what is left of your life if you continue your wicked ways,” he told the boy.
The boy laughed and sounded like a boy when he did. An evil boy but a boy nonetheless. He leered at me and said, “Not before I have your wife.” There was something dark on the points of his canines, and I feared it was something of human origin. “Or is she your granddaughter?”
“She is my good and righteous wife. Young, so she will bear many sons.”
This caused the boy to laugh harder. I thought at first that he was laughing because I was not young. Most women had already had and lost more sons than I probably would have a chance to in the few years left me to bear. But then the boy said, “From your limp old twig?”
Noah tensed at the insult.
Please put away your pride, I silently begged my husband, and give this boy your donkey.
“Besides,” the boy said, “this woman is demon-marked, and the demon will dwell in anything that slithers forth from her belly.”
I tried to gaze at him as steadily as I had at the men in my father’s village. But he lunged closer, and I flinched. His laughter brought blood to my cheeks.
Satisfied, he turned to consider Noah. “You are the oldest man I have ever seen.” Now his voice seemed to hold as much awe as enmity. I hoped Noah would say something such as, “Yes, my child, I have lived many years. If you will let us pass, I will bestow a blessing of long life upon you.”
“I am older by more than four hundred years than anyone you have seen or will see again,” Noah replied.
Four hundred years? Certainly he exaggerates.
His words sounded like the same threat he had already issued, that the God of Adam would not leave the boy on earth much longer. Surely the boy would show us no mercy now.
Noah hit his heels against the donkey, and to my surprise, the animal began to plod forward, though even more slowly than before. When the donkey tried to steer a path around the boy and the speared heads, Noah yanked the rope attached to the animal’s muzzle so that he was forced to go straight.
The boy began laughing again, but this time there was a cry in his laugh. Not a sad cry but the cry of a boy gleefully summoning the worst of his spirit. He pointed the spear at us. I could see that the end came to a sharp, bloody point. “Tell your God of Adam that Jank sent you.”
I had not come across any weapons in the saddlebags when I’d opened them to pull out the provisions my father had given Noah. But I checked anyway. My hands shook as I sifted through some bread, dried fruit, and goat meat. Unlike all other men, Noah carried no weapon.
Yet he did not try to steer us around the boy. We continued straight toward him. I pulled my head back from where I peeked around Noah’s shoulder. My husband’s ancient form was not a very good shelter, but it was all that
I had.
Jank’s laugh turned to a wild scream as he ran at us. The spear hit Noah in the chest, and he was knocked back against me.
“Husband!” I cried. I did not yet love him, but surely I would not survive without him in this land of barbarians.
Noah’s voice came as loud and clear as before, so I knew he had not been penetrated by the spear. “The God of Adam is watching you, boy, with a spear much larger than yours.”
Now Jank’s cry was angry. He drew his spear back and again stabbed at Noah’s chest. Noah fell against me once more. He did not move his hands up to defend himself. The spear glanced off his chest, careening to one side with enough force that Jank stumbled after it.
“You will tire before I do,” Noah told Jank.
The boy came back and jabbed harder, but still the spear did not enter Noah’s flesh.
Jank began to cry big, body-twitching tears of frustration and disbelief. I would not have been surprised if he had screamed for his mother. He stomped his foot, pulled the spear back, and came at us once more. The spear glanced off Noah’s shoulder, so that the boy fell against the donkey. There the boy bit Noah’s bare leg. Still Noah did nothing to defend himself. When the boy brought up a knife from his belt, I moved to block his attack, and his blade opened my palm.
I screamed so loudly that all the gods must have heard me.
Noah kicked the boy with no great force, and the boy flew backward, landing heavily upon his hindquarters. As the boy rose to his feet, he looked at Noah with a wide, incredulous eye. “I will warn all the world of your wife’s demon mark. I will see her burned alive.”
He turned and ran across the flat, sun-scorched earth so quickly that he sent up a cloud of dust. It seemed to pursue him as he got smaller and smaller and eventually disappeared into it. I hoped this was the last we had seen of him, but somehow I knew it was not.
Bright, bitter-smelling blood flowed from my hand. “There must be an unbloodied swath of lambskin on one of these bodies,” I said, trying to keep the pain from my voice.
“No,” Noah said. “We will not steal, even from the dead. God will give us all we need if we fear Him righteously.”
Noah dismounted. He tore a swath from the hem of his tunic and wrapped it around my hand. The agony in my flesh dulled slightly. I noticed there were only light markings where the boy had bitten Noah and no blood. Though Noah was not looking at me, he must have known I was staring. “God will allow me to be beaten, perhaps bruised, but He will not let me die.”
I was shocked to see that what he said was true. I had never believed that the gods fully watched over anyone, for despite the many animals sacrificed in their names, they were rarely satisfied. My father’s own little finger had not been enough to summon them to his cause. Yet before me stood a man who went unscathed by a sharp spear. But me? I wondered.
Noah put his hand on my stomach. “Nor will He let my son die.”
My belly felt no different than it had a few days before. How could I know if I were with child? My mother had not stayed with us long enough to tell me. Though, after all the laboring Noah had done trying to make a son, I supposed that perhaps I was already carrying a child or even two. But whether or not I was with child, I would do nothing to dissuade him of his belief that I was. I put my hand upon my belly as if I were holding whatever was inside.
Noah looked at it and then directly up into my eyes. “Nor you, my wife,” he said. I held my breath, waiting for him to flinch at such a plain view of the stain. Instead, he nearly smiled. Then he climbed back up onto the donkey, inadvertently kicking my leg and not troubling himself to apologize.
Not more than half a league later, I worked up the courage to ask, “My lord, why have you chosen the desert as your home?”
“God is in the desert.”
I waited for him to say more, but he was silent.
We traveled until the sun went down. “My lord, let us not stop for long,” I said. Surely the God of Adam could not watch over us every second, and I would hate for a band of barbarians to come upon us when He blinked.
And so we only stopped for a short while. If Noah thought I was already carrying a son, you would not have known it. I wondered how many of his numerous years he had gone without a woman.
After our son-making, as we lay in the moonlight, he turned to me. Again he did not flinch at the sight of the mark. “The God of Adam has not made you unfair to look upon.” He quickly added, “Not that I care about such things.”
Perhaps his sight was not good. But maybe it was. I could not help feeling compassion for this man who found me desirable despite the mark upon me. A man who had outlived all those he might have cared for once, only to find each new generation more wicked than the one that came before it. Why would he allow himself to care for anyone again? Yet for at least a moment that day, he had put aside any bitterness in order to tear off a piece from his own cloak to bandage the wound of a marked woman. I had not really expected any man to care for me, and I had begun to understand that this one would outlive me, in which case would it not be easier for him if he never loved me?
“My lord, will you bestow a name upon me?”
“I already have. Come now, wife, onward to Sorum. My flock awaits.”
CHAPTER 5
SORUM
. . . all flesh had corrupted its ways on earth.
GENESIS 6:12
As we came within a league’s journey from what would be my new home, my heart lurched around in my chest like the heart of a prisoner who had just been sentenced to death. My mark had made me unmarriageable in my father’s village and perhaps in any place except the one where we were going—Sorum, the very last town in the world that I would have chosen to live in. Had my father known where Noah would take me? If he had, he must have thought sending me away was the only way for me to escape death, or surely he would not have agreed to it.
Still, I felt like I had been exiled. I was not going to have what I wanted most—an ordinary life.
This was all the more evident as the fields of bodies grew more plentiful. In the light of the full moon, I could see that little else decorated the barren land. No vegetation sprouted from the earth, other than some forlorn-looking scrub brush.
“The God of Adam has withheld tears of joy from the crops of the sinners and taken the succor from their fruit,” Noah said. He seemed to sense that I did not know what he meant. “There is a drought,” he said.
There was also no shortage of heads on sticks. I soon lost count. Where there were heads on the ground, I assumed someone had taken a spear and left the remains. Over a distant hill, though not as distant as I would have liked, I heard copper swords clashing. Worse than these sounds were the battle cries. I had never heard joy and anguish combined so terrifyingly into one voice. These cries were more savage than any animal’s.
I could no longer remain silent. “My lord, do men battle for land?”
“They are sellswords. They battle much for very little.”
This was no comfort to me. I tried to keep my voice steady. “For Sorum?”
“Girl, did you not hear me say there is a drought? No one battles for Sorum.”
“How do you survive, my lord?”
“The God of Adam provides.”
Again I wondered if I would be included in the blessings Noah’s God bestowed upon him. Had I somehow found favor with the God of Adam, despite the mark upon my brow? Perhaps He would make me welcome in Noah’s town. I doubted the women of Sorum could be as vile as Arrat said they were. “How are the women and children of your town?” I asked. “Are they more righteous than their men?”
“They are mostly prostitutes,” Noah said.
We rode on for a few more cubits before I asked, “And the children, my lord?” My voice trembled.
“I was speaking of them too.”
This cannot be, I thought. My husband must have gone a bit mad at some point during his many years. But how mad? And was his god also mad?
As the sun rose, we came within sight of the tents. I pulled my head scarf over my brow. While the scarf would have done me no good in my father’s village, where everyone knew of the mark as soon as the midwife left my father’s side to wag her tongue, in my new town I vowed that no one should see it.
A woman caught sight of us and then disappeared amongst a cluster of tents. Soon a horde of neighbors gathered to greet us. “My flock is up so soon after the sun. Perhaps they have not yet retired to their sleeping blankets,” Noah said with irritation.
Instead of walking to either side of the crowd already gathered, people pushed one another to get to the front. Even from a hundred cubits away, I could see two women pulling each other’s hair and hear them screaming things that would have made me blush had I not been so frightened that my blood had come to a standstill in my veins.
The horde was made up of women and children in tunics cinched at the waist with ropes. I was surprised that a few of their tunics had very large neckholes—so large that I could see where their breasts began to divide from their chests.
When we were about fifty cubits away, a woman who had a bald patch on one side of her head yelled, “Make way for the world’s oldest virgin!”
Noah did not speak; nor did his body tense, as it had at Jank’s remark about his “limp old twig.” He leaned slightly forward, as if eager to be among the people gathered before us. I was holding on to him and could not help but lean with him.
Many of the women and girls were quite pretty, but few were without injury. One girl had a leg made of wood. As everyone fought to get a better look at us, a child easily kicked the girl’s leg out from under her, sending her sideways into the hard-baked dirt.
“What have you got on the back of your donkey?” someone cried. This caused the others to stop what they were doing and stare at me. I cowered behind my new husband, afraid that somehow they could see through my scarf. But they hurled only common insults at me.
“I have never seen anything like it,” said a tangle-haired girl with a black eye. “It looks as though the old man impregnated his donkey some years ago and only now brings the product of this coupling out into the light of day.”
The Sinners and the Sea Page 4
