The Sinners and the Sea

by Rebecca Kanner

  “What are you doing?” Japheth yelled.

  “We need wives.”

  “Shem, you already have a wife,” I told him. “We must watch for her.”

  He did not seem to hear me. He gazed at a girl trying to claw her way up the ark while dodging the objects hitting the hull. A piece of a clay pot sliced her cheek open. I did not know why this caused my heart to ache. Around us, people were trampling and fighting one another. All of them were going to die. But as the blood gushed from the girl’s cheek, I wished I could bandage her wound.

  Shem struggled to bring the rope to her. He quickly realized it was better to use the wind than to fight it. The rope whipped diagonally against the hull while Shem tried to position it so it would be within the girl’s reach, if the wind did not change. He waited until it hit the girl in the head. “Hold tight!” he called. She had come out of her daze enough to wrap her hands around the rope when a boy knocked her out of the way and took hold of it.

  “Let go of the rope,” Japheth told Shem, “so the sinners below can die, as God has commanded.”

  “I must have a wife, and you must too. Our happiness lies at the end of this rope. We will knock the boy off and send it back for wives.”

  The boy managed to climb up the hull, bloodying the rope where his hands came apart on it. Shem hit him with a plank of wood, and Japheth jabbed his spear at him. The boy screamed and grasped the spear in both hands. He fell to the ground, taking it with him.

  “My spear!” Japheth cried. He swore.

  “I am sure that is what he would say if he could,” Ham said.

  Japheth swung around and struck Ham straight across the face. He had the wind behind him, and Ham was knocked back upon the deck.

  I hurried over to my favorite son. He rolled away from me onto all fours. He was breathing hard. Thank you, gods, I whispered, for not taking his breath. Then I thought of Noah’s God, the God of Adam, Who I finally understood was all-powerful.

  I knew I would never again pray to other gods. If they actually existed, still they did not matter. They were no match for Noah’s God.

  “Mother of Shem and Japheth!” a familiar and welcome voice called from the ground. “I have your daughters!” Javan wore a halter of metal spikes and carried a sword. Pieces of cloth, fur, and blood were on the tips of the spikes. She held a girl by the hair. The girl was huge with child. She was tied with thick leather straps to Herai. Unless Javan untied them, they would not be able to climb the rope ladder.

  “Ona, my love!” Shem cried. He threw down the simple rope he held. I hoped it would be enough.

  Though the girl was small-framed, with a belly large enough to contain three children, she managed to catch it and knot it around the leather straps securing her to Herai. She gripped the rope and yelled for Herai to do the same. Men tried to hold on to the girls, but Javan sliced their legs until someone clubbed her in the face. She fell down and was lost in the crowd.

  Herai started screaming. She let go of the rope. Because it was tied to the leather straps around her and Ona, she did not fall. I silently begged Noah’s God to make sure the straps withstood the panicked weight of the girls. I am sure it took many moons off my life to help Shem and Ham drag them up onto the deck. As soon as we wrestled them over the wall of the ark, I fell to the floor and continued to gasp for air. When I had caught my breath enough to speak, I turned my head toward Herai’s sobs. “Your mother is strong. There is no need to worry,” I lied.

  Japheth stepped over me. To keep him from tossing the girls back over the deck wall, I grabbed his ankle. I did not need to. As he looked at Ona, his strength fled his body like a ghost. His mouth went slack and then fell open. His hands dropped limply to his sides. Even in the gray light, tied to Herai with ropes, and more pregnant than any woman I had ever seen, Ona was beautiful.

  “Oh,” Japheth said.

  He took hold of a saw and put it to the straps that held the two girls together.

  Herai flinched away from the blade. I held her hand tightly in my own. “Careful for your wife, Japheth,” I said. “You are sawing too close to her body.”

  When the rope was cut, I pulled Herai against my breast. She struggled free and went to look over the wall of the deck at the ground below.

  Without even half a breath’s hesitation, Japheth grasped her from behind and hoisted her over the side of the ark. Herai fell into the mob of people trying to climb up the hull and disappeared.

  “Did you really think your dirty whore spawn was good enough for me?” Japheth yelled. Neither Javan nor Herai was visible, but Japheth gathered saliva into the corner of his mouth and spat at the crowd where Herai had vanished. “God will wash you both to death!”

  My eyes moved over the people below. “Herai?” I yelled. “Herai!” No answer. “Javan?”

  The wind howled louder than all the wolves in the world put together. Bits of rain from the clouds that lay less than a league in every direction hit my face. Above us, the sky turned from blue to purple and then to red. It began to bubble like a pot of water left too long on the cookfire.

  I looked at everything—tents flying blindly through the air; people pushing and climbing, fighting and dying; the beauty of the girl who carried my grandchild; the mix of sadness, anger, and courage upon the face of my favorite son. I tried to absorb it all one last time, to memorize it, before the world went black.

  BOOK TWO

  CHAPTER 33

  DARKNESS

  All the fountains of the great deep burst apart,

  And the floodgates of the sky broke open.

  GENESIS 7:11

  Thunder booms and the sea falls from the sky. Out of the bowels of the ark come bleating, braying, and almost human-sounding cries. We are blinded by darkness for a breath before lightning streaks the sky and sea with white fire. Then the whole world is drowned again in black.

  People scream as they fight to keep their heads above the sea. Some scream for help; some scream because they know they are going to die.

  Still, the ark remains fixed upon the earth. All else is chaos. Some of those who haven’t built ships have made rafts of tent poles—more tent poles than one family would have, yet there is not enough room for more than a few people on each. In a lightning flash, I see children throw a woman, maybe their mother, from their raft. In another flash, I see a man using his arms to try to stay afloat near a raft carrying a young woman and a child. When the lightning illuminates the world again, the man is alone on the raft.

  If there is anyone in the world who has a raft while Javan does not, I am certain that fortunes will change. Otherwise, it will be up to me to change them. With Ham’s help. He has brought up planks coated in pitch, and I am ready to throw them into the sea if I spot Javan or Herai below.

  Noah struggles against the wind. He has come up to see the world end. But he watches it with his eyes closed while rain pounds against his eyelids. I am close enough to see his lips move. He is praying to God while God destroys the life He put upon the earth. I hope He has not yet gotten to Herai.

  During the next flash, I will find the rope.

  The sea lifts the ark. I stumble for a breath before the wind—or perhaps the God of Adam—knocks me down. Lightning cracks the sky and illuminates the deck. It seems to me that it lights the rope brighter than all else. The rope is like a small, solid line of sunshine. The God of Adam must have heard my thought and mistaken it for a prayer.

  I start crawling. The last layer of pitch has not fully dried, giving me the tiniest measure of traction. Enough that I am able to make my way, ever so slowly, toward the rope.

  Noah stops praying. “Wife!” he yells at me. “Get below!”

  There are many reasons why I should obey my husband. But then there is Herai. God must want her on the ark. Why would the rope glow brighter with each flash of lightning if not to beckon me closer? I try to dig my nails into the pitch, but the sea throws the ark up in the air, and when we land, someone smacks into me. We hurl agains
t the wall of the deck.

  The ark rights itself, and the body pushes off of me. “Father?” Japheth calls as he stands up. “Father?”

  I rise onto all fours and then onto my feet. The wind is at my back. Lightning flashes, and I run toward the rope faster than my own legs could possibly carry me. The hook attached to the rope is cold and slippery. “Ham!” I call. Though there is no reason he should hear me amid the screaming, the crashing of the sea, and thunder, he does.

  His face turns toward mine. “Herai,” he says.

  “Yes.”

  Together we secure the hook to the inside wall of the ark.

  When lightning flashes, we look into the sea at the multitudes of people on rafts. One of the rafts bursts into flame. I do not know what happens to the people on this raft; I can make out no one amongst the flames. But I can see Herai crouching on the raft nearest to the one that burns. With one hand, Javan grips her daughter’s arm. With her other hand, she tries to hold on to both her sword and the raft.

  The fire beside them is starting to smoke. It will be out soon, and Herai and Javan will be cloaked in darkness.

  “Javan!” I call. She does not hear me.

  Ham is yelling her name too. “Together,” I tell him. We call her name, and she looks up at us.

  Ham casts the rope into the sea beside them. Though it is at most five cubits away, the water is too rough for Javan to reach it or to go into the water to retrieve it. We pull the rope back up, and Ham casts it again. It lands a few cubits from the raft. The fire is giving way to smoke. Dimly, we watch Javan let go of her sword, jump in, and grasp the rope. She swims back to the raft and beckons to Herai.

  The fire dies.

  Below us, caged and uncaged animals crash from wall to wall. But now I hear thuds not just below but sounding across the deck toward us. I fear some animal has escaped and is coming to punish the human flesh that caged him. Zilpha’s voice reaches out from the darkness. “Here,” she says, though no one can see anything in the dark, “tie the rope around his chest.”

  Flash.

  I see Zilpha on the back of one of the mammoths. Ham and Shem rush toward it. After a breath, the beast’s heavy footsteps sound slowly across the ark. I pray to the God of Adam that the beast is pulling Javan and Herai closer to safety.

  Flash.

  Japheth is beside me. “Sinners!” he cries.

  “Let them on,” Shem says. Even without seeing his eyes, I know he is looking at Herai.

  “Father,” Japheth yells. “Come stop this wickedness!”

  Ham and I pull Javan and Herai over the side of the ark as they choke on swallowed pieces of the sea. The sea inside them has made them as heavy as men. I get behind Herai, and though my joints ache and my arms are shaking, I press upon her stomach until I feel her lean forward and give up the contents of her stomach. The darkness and the rain fall over us like a tent that has collapsed wetly down upon our heads. Javan is alternating between choking and speaking in short, panicked bursts. I cannot understand her. I have never known her to be scared.

  Flash.

  Japheth and Javan are wrestling. I try to run to them, but the ark is tossing, and my feet slip out from under me. I drop to my hands and knees and crawl toward them through the dark.

  Ham yells, “You rotting goat’s cock!”

  Flash.

  Javan is nowhere in sight. I look over the side of the ark, and she is there, bouncing on the sea. In the distance, I see a large ark-shaped piece of darkness—a ship—that there is no time to worry about now.

  “The rope!” I cry.

  “I have made it so she cannot grasp a rope,” Japheth says. When the next flash comes, he holds a thumb out to me. “She can only die, as she is meant to.”

  “I’ll cut off your thumbs,” Ham yells at Japheth. “Even the little one between your legs.”

  The world goes black again. I should not have let go of Herai.

  “God commands,” Japheth announces from somewhere nearby, “that I throw this sinner’s spawn over too.”

  Noah’s voice twists out of the darkness, enraged. “God does not waste His time speaking to you. The girl will stay. She is your wife.”

  “Praise You, God of Adam,” I whisper.

  CHAPTER 34

  THE GIANT VERSUS THE SEA

  I do not know if it is day or night, or if day and night exist anymore. I do know I am dreaming, because I am surrounded by grandchildren who have not yet been born. I tell them of the flood and the tragedy I witnessed after Herai boarded the ark. I tell them of the nephil. I say nothing of the people who tried to climb up the side of the ark and what Japheth did to them.

  “God was drowning all the beings of the world from weakest to strongest. First pregnant women, and infants and toddlers who had been separated from their mothers, were knocked down by the sea. It covered the ground and rose so quickly that you would have thought countless days of unbroken downpour had passed between the flashes of lightning. People were swallowed whole. When the tenth flash of lightning lit the world, all the pregnant women and motherless infants and toddlers were gone.

  “The next people taken by the sea were those who fought each other for the trees and clung to them like lovers. Men and women alike were layered upon their bark, holding on to each other’s hair, backs, and legs, their feet not more than a few cubits off the ground. The water came for them: injured mercenaries, whores, and children just like you, who were probably strong enough to have climbed higher, if only there had been time.

  “By the twentieth flash of lightning, the sea had eaten the tree trunks and all those who clung to them.

  “A few people made it to the very tops of the trees. Their fate was cruelest of all. They could climb no higher; they could only wait. Wind pruned them from the treetops until just the strongest remained. They heard people below screaming, and then they heard the crashing of the sea. Worse than hearing the people scream was listening as their screams were abruptly silenced. With each flash of lightning, those in the tops of the trees saw the horrible power of the sea. And yet they may have welcomed the lightning. More terrifying than watching death come for you is knowing it is coming and having to wait for it in darkness. The sea reached up from the earth and consumed the trees and all of the people without rafts.

  “Rain continued hurtling down from the heavens. It hit us so hard, it felt as if it were being thrown. I never knew how sharp water could be. When the lightning came, we opened our eyes to see what was left of the world, and the rain slashed us nearly blind. On deck, the sea mounted our ankles and rose to our knees. Yet the ark remained on the ground even as people on rafts floated past.

  “Soon though, the sea started to come not just from the sky but from the center of the earth as well.

  “Children, the ark was huge, three hundred by fifty cubits. Can you think of anything heavy enough to lift that much gopher wood, filled with all the species of the world, off the ground? No number of men or beasts could have raised the ark from the earth. Yet as easily as a strong wind lifts a feather, the sea lifted it.

  “The wind and the dark carried us we knew not where but far. Our eyes were of no use in the darkness, even when we dared to open them against the blades of rain. Everything was black, even us. I did not believe that we would ever emerge.

  “But then flashes of lightning started coming closer together, one flash quickly mounting another. I risked my sight in order to open my eyes. The lightning was unlike any you should ever hope to see. From unbearable darkness, we had entered into unbearable light.

  “That was when I saw one of the Nephilim. His torso was larger than twenty men across and ten high. It looked as if he were wearing a skirt of thrashing water. His eyes were black with rage as he smacked at it. The sea turned a few of his nails backward and ripped them from his body. But still he slapped at it, bloodying it with his leaking fingers. Turning it pink and then red.

  “How must this grandson of God have felt, dying at his grandfather’s hands?
I doubt he had ever encountered anything he could not smack away, anything he could not hurt or kill. There is no sound sadder than a giant crying. We are used to babies and women and sometimes men crying. But when a descendant of God cries, the world cries with him. The clouds shook from the strength of his sobs. His tears were added to the water that sought to drown him.

  “Would it drown him before he could pull the ark into the sea or punch a hole in the hull to drown us? Our ark had no sail, no rudder. We thought we were taking our last breaths as the wind began to hurl us toward him. Uncle Ham was yelling at me to join Shem, Ona, Herai, and Zilpha belowdecks, but I could not take my eyes off the giant.

  “ ‘Take up your weapons!’ Uncle Japheth yelled.

  “Your grandfather knew there was no use in trying to fight one of the giants with weapons, so he prayed. He prayed for our lives and the nephil’s death. I prayed for all of our lives. ‘Two of every creature,’ I cried up at the God of Adam. Perhaps He did not hear me over the pounding of the rain.

  “As we came within thirty cubits of the giant, I could sometimes see his face through the rain. It looked like separate pieces of clay slapped together. His nostrils flared five cubits in either direction, and each of his eyes held enough fury to win a war. But maybe not this war. The sea he was smacking away fought against the sea that carried us toward him.

  “Waters clashed beneath the ark, raising us as high into the sky as the top of the tallest mountain. The goat meat in my stomach rose into my throat. For an instant, we were perfectly balanced on the wave.

  “Then the giant started losing; the sea he was smacking away could not hold back the sea that rushed toward him.

  “ ‘Hold on!’ Uncle Ham cried.

  “I still remember the blink of an eye in which I was suspended in air before we started to fall. It was the feeling I’d had in my head since Grandpa Noah started speaking of the flood, and finally, it had spread to my body.