The Sinners and the Sea

by Rebecca Kanner

  “What stills your knife only now?” Noah says. He has given Japheth the task of stabbing the female’s flanks so she moves away from him, over the deck wall. “Already, their blood, and the blood of all the generations of great mammoths who would have come after them, is upon you. You have taken one of God’s creatures from the world.”

  I cannot watch, and I do not want to hear any sound that comes from this sad task. I go to the second level. But even from there I hear the breaking of the deck wall and a huge, horrible splash.

  • • •

  Zilpha often prays or appears to be praying. She sits with her little legs crossed, palms open on her knees, eyes closed, eyelashes fluttering. Once she caught me bending down in order to see if her eyes were really closed, and that answered my question. Or perhaps she heard me come near because of the creaking in my bones.

  When she is on deck, Ham is always ready to lift her so she can gaze at the sea. He holds her there, at a respectful distance from himself, until his arms start to shake. I cannot understand what has happened to him.

  Then one day, I realize: He has fallen in love with Zilpha. I would rather he had fallen into the sea. A place from which I could rescue him.

  Now that Zilpha comes on deck sometimes, all the wings Japheth did not clip have started to flap again. Birds soar overhead and try to follow Zilpha back down the hatch when she leaves. Sometimes she sings to them. Her lips move, and though none of us can hear her, the birds start to chirp and caw.

  I hope God can hear them. If He does, maybe He will remember us.

  • • •

  One day I notice: “The sky is coming closer.”

  “No, Mother,” Zilpha says. “The sea is rising.”

  “But the rain has stopped.”

  “The rain has stopped, and now begins the flood.”

  Begins?

  I go to the gathering place. “When will God be done with this madness?”

  Noah does not open his eyes or get up from where he is kneeling. But he flinches.

  “Is there no other way to destroy all life on earth?” I ask.

  “Would you rather have nostrils filled with the smell of burning flesh?”

  “I would rather the destruction were over.”

  “When it is over, it will be truly over. We will not bounce around upon the sea ever again.”

  “What will we do instead?”

  “Tend our flocks—”

  “How many of us will it take to tend a few litters of goats, a few of sheep—”

  “They will flourish in the new world. When I pray, I feel the words flowing out of me once again, as though they are being pulled into God’s ear.”

  Suddenly, I am laughing. “Do you notice, husband, how we pass hope back and forth between us so that we never have it at the same time?”

  He opens his eyes partway. “Not only the herds but our children too will flourish.”

  I am glad for his words. I drop down beside him on his blankets. “I am tired.”

  “We must escort our children to the new world.” His eyes do not open all the way anymore. His hands tremble. “Then all of our work will be done.”

  “You are tired too, husband.”

  “Between the day Shem was born and the first day of the rains, I aged a hundred years.”

  I do not know how this could be true, but I believe him. “I am sorry,” I say, “that I did not notice.”

  “God does not age me so rapidly anymore. He will not let me go. Not until—”

  “—our work is done.”

  • • •

  “Mother,” Zilpha says one day when I come back from Noah’s sleeping blankets, “do not worry for him. God will keep him for at least three hundred more years.”

  “If so, He is crueler than I thought.”

  “He will not keep you so long.”

  It is strange to be so miserable and yet so deeply pained at the mention of my own death. Just so long as He first bestows a name upon me.

  I walk past Zilpha up onto the deck. I will escort her to the new world. Then I do not wish to see her again.

  CHAPTER 46

  THE GOD’S EYE

  No matter how big the world is, it is always too small for us and the things we fear. We are trapped between the sky, the ship in the distance, and the unknown. The unknown is the worst of these three. It looms larger as the ship nears.

  Did Zilpha remember this ship when she predicted Noah’s long life?

  I no longer wonder what Noah will have us do if the people on board are friendly. The ship is not even a quarter so large as ours, but it has a sail of many hides sewn together. Some are the color of human flesh.

  Japheth’s eyes narrow. “It is closer than it was yesterday.”

  “And yesterday it was closer than the day before.”

  “By a hair’s width, Mother,” Ham says. “We will all die of old age before it arrives.”

  No more than a few days after Ham says this, my sons, Zilpha, and I are on deck when the wind roars out of the heavens. The sail of hides swells and begins to bring the ship toward us through the sea.

  I have questions I do not ask aloud: Whose side will God be on when our ships meet? Does He know yet? Are we supposed to fight or wait for Him to decide? I do not need the answers to these questions. I will have no choice but to fight. I do not want to die without a name.

  Zilpha cannot see over the deck wall. “Husband,” she says.

  As Ham picks her up to stare out at the sea, I seal my lips to keep from telling him to save his strength for the ship that is now only a hundred cubits away. He might scowl at my words and like me less.

  “It comes toward us as if it is not touching the sea,” Zilpha observes, “as if it is not pulled by the waters the way we are.”

  When the ship is not more than eighty cubits away, we see, drawn in blood upon the sail, an eye. No one mentions going below to alert Noah.

  “So that is what God’s eye looks like,” Ham says. “I would have thought it would be bigger and not so red.”

  “Do not call that abomination God’s eye,” Japheth snaps. “And it must be shut for good before God will allow us into the new world.”

  “What he says is true,” Zilpha says.

  Japheth snorts and hurries below to get several creations from his collection. When he returns, he holds the weapons he has made over his head. “God is bringing the sinners’ throats to these swords.”

  “Is that what these are?” Ham asks.

  Japheth sets the weapons down, all except a sword, which he tries to hand Ham.

  Ham looks at it but continues to hold Zilpha up to gaze at the sea and the ship that is now only sixty cubits away.

  When did you become such a fool? Put the child down and take up your weapon.

  “Enough, husband,” Zilpha says.

  Ham sets her down and takes the sword. Japheth watches as Ham turns it over in his hands. “What happened to your dagger?” he asks.

  “I left it somewhere.”

  “Well, I mean to keep all of these.” Next Japheth holds up a dagger he has made with a small backward hook near the base of the blade. “See,” he says proudly, slicing his finger on the hook that faces him as the blade points to our enemies, “it will do as much damage coming out as it does going in.”

  “I will take that one,” Shem says.

  “No.” Japheth licks the blood from his finger. “This one is mine.” He has also brought a club into which he has whittled teeth. “Here is yours, Shem. Hold as tightly to this as you do to your mother’s teat.”

  It is a cruel-looking weapon. I cannot gaze at the wooden spikes without imagining how they would strip the flesh from a man’s face. I step forward and run my fingers lightly over the teeth. They are dull. I press harder. Still nothing.

  “It is for our enemies’ eyes, not their flesh,” Japheth says, yanking it away from my hand. “Fear is more efficient than any blade.”

  Color flares in Shem’s cheeks. “I th
ought you wanted to kill me yourself, brother.”

  “Do not risk all of our lives with your foolishness,” I tell Japheth.

  Japheth kicks the handle of a sword so that it spins toward Shem. Shem jumps back, then quickly reaches down to grasp it.

  Now all of my sons hold weapons, and they wish to turn their backs to one another even less than they want to turn them to the other ship that is no more than fifty cubits in the distance. “You cannot fight each other and the rest of the world at the same time. You must choose. And quickly,” I say.

  Shem looks with great unease at the seared flesh where Japheth’s ear used to be. His hand is tightly clenched around his new sword. “Do not worry,” Japheth says. “We will not have our own battle until all of the others are done.”

  Still, Shem waits for Japheth to turn back to the other ship before he too takes his gaze off his brother and returns it to the sea.

  Though we look with the full strength of our sight, we cannot see our enemy. The back of the ship is hidden by the sail, and the front of the ship is covered in the sail’s shadow. All but the prow, which carries only gray light.

  The ship comes within forty cubits, and still we cannot see the people aboard. Even Japheth steps back from the deck wall. If the ship does not slow down, it will crash into the ark’s hull. After that, whoever is on board will not have far to climb to reach us. Especially if we start to sink.

  “Brace yourselves,” Japheth says. If a ship of cannibals were not hurtling toward us, I would be overjoyed that my middle son has shown some care for his brothers and me.

  A man on the approaching ship moves out of the sail’s shadow and stands upon the prow. I recognize him. His eye socket is covered with a cloth tied at a steep angle around his head. He holds a long sword in one hand, a club in the other. His legs are spread, his back is straight, and his head is held high.

  “Demon woman, how ever have you been?”

  Though Jank insults me, he has also shown me respect by addressing me instead of my sons. There is no one besides him on the prow to address, so I show him the same respect. “God does not mistake you for a great man because you yourself do.”

  Even from thirty cubits away, I can see that his smile is forced. “I do not claim to be great—only hungry.”

  I am certain he hungers for more than meat. He is fatter than he was before the flood, yet he tries to talk his way onto the ark—the very last human creation worthy of envy left in the world.

  Behind him, men are yelling at one another as they labor to turn the sail a quarter of a rotation, so that it drops the wind. The shadow over the front of the ship narrows down to one lean line, and mercifully, the ship slows. There are rope ladders, planks, hooks, and axes scattered on the prow. They have prepared for this meeting. Four men come to stand with Jank, while two others remain with the sail’s ropes. Jank is well fed, but the six men around him are skeletal. A few of them are naked. From twenty cubits away, I can count their ribs.

  “Grandmother,” Jank tries again, “you have a whole ark full of meat. All we ask is our share. Let us come aboard and take of your lamb and goat.”

  Men on either side of Jank shout in agreement as the God’s Eye coasts closer: “Give it to us or we will take it.” “Our share!”

  “If you knew what your share was,” I call to the hungry skeletons, “you would not starve with so much meat next to you.” I look long at Jank.

  They do not follow my gaze. They study my sons and me, and two of them look at my mark. But they do not seem afraid. At least not of us. What has kept them from ripping the fat off Jank? Nothing I want to imagine. As they near, I can see they are sallow-skinned and have not five teeth among them. There is not any amount of meat in the world that will satisfy them; their hunger has grown so large, it has entered their hearts.

  A man whose scalp is a quilt of oozing sores opens his mouth to speak. Instead of sound, drops of blood fall from his lips. While perhaps this should be reassuring, as surely this man will not be as much of a threat as a healthy man, I would rather not see something so gruesome before the battle has even begun.

  “There are seven of us and seven of them,” Zilpha says. “Once we kill one of them, there will no longer be a lucky number of them, and the forces that watch over all things seven will no longer be able to see them.”

  I would love to tell her that she is wrong: There are actually eight of us. I would ask whether she is willing to jump overboard and make a lucky seven of us. But for Herai’s sake, I keep my tongue still.

  “There are seven of them coming to fight three men, a tired, creaky-kneed woman, and a little girl,” I correct her. “But they are weak, and we are slightly less weak.”

  “Grandmother, your welcome leaves something to be desired,” Jank calls up to me. “It is almost too late for you to graciously invite us on board. Soon we will make our way onto the ark, and you will wish you had not thought so little of us. The weak have not survived. Only the strong are left.”

  The prow of the God’s Eye is not more than ten cubits from the ark’s hull.

  Japheth holds out wooden spears to his brothers. The tips are still hot from the sharpening stone. They each take one, leaving him with two. “Do not lose these,” he says.

  Jank squints up at me. “You are almost out of time, marked one.”

  “My mammoths would have given these raiders pause,” Zilpha says.

  And then the ark is rocked by the God’s Eye.

  I am slammed against the deck wall, and then backward onto my hindquarters. This time no one tells me to get below.

  Metal hooks soar over the side of the ark and catch on the wall, except one that soars past it. I roll onto my belly The hook makes a different sound than the hooks that catch the wall—a sound like my knife used to make when I cut fresh goat meat. I do not want to know who the hook has fallen upon, and I do not want to know how badly he is injured. Would I sacrifice Japheth to know Shem is unharmed, Shem to know Ham is unharmed?

  The knots keeping the sail of the God’s Eye back give way, and the sail spins sideways, hitting the hull. It looms over me. I remember the heads on stakes so many years ago when Noah first brought me to his tent. These hides with a bloody eye upon them that menace me now are as gruesome as those heads, but I do not wish to turn back in the direction from which I came. Jank is the last person left in the world who calls me “demon woman.” I am ready to be rid of him. I stand.

  The trouble with starving men is that they are such small targets. My sons dislodge the old hooks from the ark, but this does little good. The men are easily able to boost one another onto the hull. From there they do not have far to climb. Though Japheth and Shem stab with all their might, they do not do so carefully enough to injure Jank’s men. The men fall less than ten cubits, onto the deck of the God’s Eye, and get back up. A few men are bleeding, but they do not seem to notice. These men must have endured far worse than spears. Something has taken their souls from their bodies.

  Shem draws back his spear and aims it at a man climbing up the hull. The man’s eyes take up most of his face. His pupils are too large for me to see what color his eyes are, and there is only red where his whites must once have been. It is like looking at black circles in little boats of blood.

  I have kept my knife with me since Shem used it to cut off Japheth’s ear. I unsheath it now. “Do not send this man back to the God’s Eye,” I tell Shem. “Hold the point of your spear to his head so that his hand can reach the top of the deck but he can go no farther.”

  Shem does as I have instructed. A set of bony fingers grasps the top of the deck wall. With his other hand, his left one, the man brings an ax soaring toward us. We jump back, and the man’s arm hits hard against the edge of the deck wall. The impact jerks the ax from his grip and he withdraws his left arm. I raise my knife over my head and bring it down with the force of all the anguish that has built up over this long dark journey into the sea. I do not shudder when my knife cuts through sinew and the
tiny bones of his right hand, staking the man to the ark.

  The man reaches his free hand onto the hilt of the knife. I do not let go, and his fingers wrap around mine.

  “Shem,” I say.

  The point of Shem’s spear is no longer sharp. It is impossible that human flesh has dulled it so quickly. Yet there is no other explanation.

  Shem stabs at the man’s torso. It is like trying to drive one stick into another. Shem stabs him again, this time in the chest. Yet the man’s hand remains tightly wrapped around mine.

  Despite the fury in Japheth’s thrusts, the other men have not given in to my sons’ spears either. They are strong, instead of weak, with hunger. Unless the situation is even worse. Perhaps they are already dead, and that is why they cannot be killed.

  The hand over mine squeezes harder. What little flesh remains to me does not cushion my bones from his.

  “I do not want to lose the ability of my hand, Shem. Use your sword.”

  But Shem is using it already to fight another man who is hoisting himself over the deck wall.

  I have only one weapon that the man whose hand is crushing mine does not have. I sink my teeth into the veins above his knuckles. His left hand releases mine. I try to pull my knife out of the ark, back through his right hand. I cannot leave it here. But I cannot dislodge it either.

  Someone presses up against my back and uses a dagger on one side of my knife to stab at the man’s hand. He slides back down onto the God’s Eye.

  “Grawdmwahfah,” Herai says before turning to fight a man who has just come over the side of the deck wall. She has ripped holes for her neck and arms in the blanket I gave her when I took her tunic.

  I do not see Zilpha or Ham. I pray my son will not lose his life defending Zilpha’s.

  The other person I do not see on deck is Jank. Some men lead their followers, but he is not one of them. He has waited safely below, but now climbs up the hull to the section of the deck I have been left to defend.

  “Coming to fight an old woman?” I call down to him. “Your valor underwhelms me.”

  “God wants me to live, Grandmother, so this is the path He has put me on.” I can see the green of his eye. It is bright even in the dull gray light. When his meaty fingers wrap around the top of the deck wall, I stab at his hand. He easily grabs my knife with his other hand and hurls it to the side. There is a small clunk as it hits the deck of the God’s Eye.