“Watching the animals.”
“These animals? Most of these animals are unclean. What’s to watch?” She comes closer. “Are those two . . . ? They’re mating!”
Nela pulls her cloak tight around herself. “They do it a lot.”
“But Noah said the animals wouldn’t mate in captivity. It isn’t natural for them.”
Nela makes a loud sniff. “It’s natural for these animals. Just these two. You don’t have to worry, though; it doesn’t produce babies.”
Mother Emzara purses her lips. “How could that be?”
Nela shrugs.
“The world has turned nonsensical enough on its own. Don’t you add to it. Come, daughter-in-law. Come back and sleep.”
“Soon.”
“Have you been arguing with Ham?”
Nela gives a slow head shake.
“Don’t think I don’t see what’s going on. But there’s no point in arguing. And it’s foolish to waste energy on things that have no point.”
“We haven’t been arguing.” Nela shakes her head vehemently now. “I just need to watch the animals. You know how I am about animals.”
“Yes. I know.” Mother Emzara tugs on the tips of that twist of hair. Then she shrugs. “Well, then, we’ll find a way for you to watch them in daytime. You can barely see anything now.”
“It’s hardly lighter in the day,” says Nela.
“That will change.”
“What do you mean?”
“The rains can’t last forever. Sun will come out and shine through.”
“Sun through the windows and portholes.” Nela makes a humph. “It’s hard to imagine.”
“Don’t act like that.” Mother Emzara rubs the back of her neck. “We’re all weary of the rain. But don’t act like an ingrate. We are saved. All other life on earth is gone. But we are saved. Give praise for being chosen.”
“I do.”
“Then come.”
Nela goes up the ladder with Mother Emzara right behind her.
The instant they are out of sight, I practically leap to the front of the cage. I work the rocks away and go out the swinging door, feeling around in the dark. There it is, the other half of the bread! I press it to my nose. Lovely aroma. I take a bite and chew slowly. It tastes like home. It tastes like everything I’ve lost. I gobble the rest of it, all but one small bit. I place that bit on my tongue and squish it flat against the roof of my mouth. I let it dissolve there.
Then I remember the other part of the bread—the part Queen tossed away. I’ll go back to our cage and find it and eat it. But first I feel around some more. Here’s Nela’s shift. I pick it up and stand and slip it on.
It feels as though I am still the girl I once was. The girl with a family and a home and daily work chores and hopes of some kind of future. It is so ordinary, so deceptive, I could scream.
But I don’t. There’s no point. There’s no point in anything. I turn around to go back into the cage.
And stumble over Queen. Queen, out here, in the center of the deck!
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Night 37
Come on, Queen, let’s go back in the cage.” I use a soft voice. Mellow. How could I have been so stupid as to let the bread distract me? She’s a wild animal. I chew on my knuckles. Then I let that hand float through the air toward her. What will she do if I take her by the hand? If I try to lead her back? “Come. Come, my friend.”
Queen squats there, looking me up and down. She pulls on the hem of the shift I’m wearing—Nela’s shift. “I’m still me, Queen. I put this on just to feel human. But I’m me.”
Queen gets on all fours and shoulders me aside. She walks along the corridor.
I walk beside her. “Please, Queen. Come with me. Come back. It’s not safe out here.” But my words seem false—or perhaps idiotic. Is it safe anywhere?
Clack!
I jump around. Of course! The Male has come out now too! I am an idiot. Of course, of course, he would follow her. I am so tense, my ears ring.
Queen and The Male walk the deck slowly. They stop in front of cages and peer into the dark. Each time they settle on their haunches, I expect something terrible to happen. But they simply sit there, attentive. Gradually, my body loosens. Maybe this is all they want—just a chance to know what’s around them. Maybe they’re trying to make sense of the absurdity of being locked up. They press shoulder to shoulder as they stare into the cages.
I don’t know how much they can see. I can hardly see anything. It’s an unusually dark night; I don’t even see the eyes of those animals whose eyes typically shine. I feel like I’m walking into nothingness, like the very next step could drop me into an abyss so deep I could never climb out.
And it’s so quiet. Night is always quiet. But not like this. I can’t even hear the sounds of pacing. Come on, night creatures, move. Explore. Come on! But nothing. It’s as though the animals have given up. And why not? What is there to explore? Like Nela said—it’s too long. My arms turn to gooseflesh. I rub them hard. This is an ark of despair.
We make progress step by step all the way to the forward end of the ark. Queen now heads back, lumbering slowly, swinging her head slowly. Maybe she’s hoping to pick up a sound too.
The Male follows her. They walk on their short legs and stop in front of the cages on the other side now. They look around without making even the weakest whistle. When Ham and Shem deliver food, they generally put it at the front edge of the cages. In most of the cages we pass, the food is all gone. But in some it’s just sitting there. Uneaten. Some animals must have stopped finding pleasure even in food. Queen and The Male still love to eat, though. They whistle and whoop when food comes. But now, in front of these cages, The Male never reaches in to steal the food. He has to know it’s there; the odor hangs in the air. But he does nothing. He’s relatively large. And I’ve seen him move fast. And I know he’s strong, because I’ve felt how easily he can haul my weight up through the side hole—the porthole, as Nela says. So if he wanted to steal the food, there’s no doubt he could. But he doesn’t even try.
Why, The Male is actually shy, I realize. He’d never steal. And now I understand. When Queen seemed to greet Nela, The Male did it too, in his own odd way. He does what she does. He’s out here on this deck now because Queen is. That’s all. It’s a matter of loyalty. He won’t leave her to face things alone.
My throat tightens, and for a moment I can’t breathe. I know I couldn’t have stayed on that raft with Aban. He made me promise to live. I’d have died if I stayed with him, and so I would have broken my promise. I had to lunge into the sea after the rope. I had to. Still, a part of me feels I was disloyal.
And now I also feel foolish. What was the point of leaving Aban to die alone, when I will wind up dying on this ark anyway? I have no idea why I am here, why I breathe and eat and walk. I am mindless.
We come to the lion cage. The serpent strips still hang from near the top of the lattice. Our own cage is just opposite, across the deck. I could go back now. I could dive into the straw. If anyone should come down the ladder, they’d catch Queen and The Male, not me. I could save myself.
But I don’t. If they get caught, I will too. Whatever happens to them, it will happen to me, too. In fact, what happens to me will be worse, because I’m a stowaway.
I laugh. Loudly. How silly can I be? Here I am, being loyal to Queen and The Male, when they couldn’t possibly care. Yet I’m proud of myself. I couldn’t do it for Aban, but I can do it for Queen and The Male. I can’t stop laughing.
And my laugh changes everything. Queen lopes to the nearest cage with poles and climbs up it. She swings along the poles, going from cage to cage, leaping like the very definition of free. The Male leaps with her. They are off and away, down to the rear end of the ark. I can’t even see their shadows anymore. But I hear their whistles and whoops. I hear thunk as their weight hits a pole, thlush as their hands let go and grasp and let go and grasp over and over. I clap in joy.
/> I cross the deck to our cage and go to block the swinging door, just in case the aardvarks or the duikers should suddenly become bold and think of venturing forth. But on second thought, I grab the door and lift it up. “Come out,” I call to the aadvarks. “Come out into the world.”
The female is over in the corner, nosing around my nest. The male is bumping along the front poles. They’re both solitary souls. In fact, maybe I’ve never seen them together except when they sleep. Funny that I didn’t realize that till now. She ignores my call. He looks at me, then turns and goes the other way. Cautious creatures.
And the duikers are asleep.
Oh, well. So it’s bonobo playtime only. Well, that’s enough. That’s more than enough.
I hear them coming thunk, thunk toward me. I drop the door, in fear that they’ll hit it by accident, but they scamper around it expertly and go off flying to the forward end of the ark again. Around and around. They make so many circuits of the deck, I lose count.
I sit on the floor in a puddle of envy. I’m puny and earthbound compared to them. I wonder if people could take to the trees. Aban and I lived in a cedar—how long? More than a week? We scampered from limb to limb. But we didn’t swing. We couldn’t use our arms like that.
Finally Queen and The Male fly onto the poles of our cage and slide to the floor. I hold the door up and wait. My heart thumps hard. I try not to have expectations. They should do what they want. I shouldn’t even try to influence them.
They go on inside.
I let out a gasp of gratitude. I had no plan if they had decided not to go back inside. Nela said the Mighty Creator gave humans dominion over animals. I don’t know who taught her that, but she’s wrong. At least, she’s wrong about my gods. El himself is a bull, Reshef is a deer, Yam is part dragon and part serpent. I feel no dominion over Queen and The Male. They have as much right to determine their actions as I have to determine mine. I follow them in and pull the rocks back into place.
Queen and The Male curl together. Envy tightens my skin again. I’m alone. But I’m glad they have each other. And I’m glad, so very glad, that Queen seems happy again.
I want to be happy too.
I want everyone to be happy. All the people on this ark. All the animals. I have to find a way to make that happen.
Clunk, clunk. The noise comes from outside our porthole. It rudely disrupts my reveries. I walk to it. The frigid air bites at my eyes and nose. My breath makes a fog in front of me. I peek. There’s that rope again, the one that I saw days ago, when I nearly fell out the window trying to snag it. I wanted to get Queen to notice it, but I couldn’t. There it is.
Someone’s pulling it upward, and it smacks against the side as it goes. It’s close enough to our porthole tonight that I could grab it. I can see the bottom of the rope now. It’s attached to a much thinner rope, a short one, and at the end of that rope a large fish flops. How did that happen? There’s no net. But it’s a sea bass, as sure as I’m alive. Sea bass are delicious. At least grilled over an open fire they are. I quick grab the rope and pull the fish toward me. I wrestle with it, trying to get it free. Something’s caught inside its mouth. I reach in. There’s something sharp in here. I rip the fish free and hold it firmly by the tail in my left hand, while I look at the rope in my right hand. A bone cut into a hook shape dangles at the end of the thin rope. It hooked the fish. I never saw people catch fish with a hook before.
The rope jerks upward, out of my hand. “Ahiii!” That bone hook split open my fingertip!
“Who’s there?” comes the cry from above, as the rope disappears upward.
I step back quickly, pulling my hand inside the porthole. The sea bass wriggles so violently it slips from my hand into the straw.
I hear an angry curse. Whoever is at the end of that rope heard my cry. And now he knows I stole his fish. He knows I’m here.
He’ll come down the ladder. He’ll search through the cages. He’ll find me. He’ll throw me overboard. Like Noah said—the same number of creatures that entered this ark must leave this ark. Alas. It’s finally done.
I don’t even bother to hide.
I hold my finger up to my face. It drips blood down my hand. I suck on it.
The fish flops on my feet. And I’m hungry again. I’m so hungry. I’m always so absurdly hungry. I stomp on the fish. It’s wrong to let an animal suffer. This way death comes faster. Thank you, fish, lovely sea bass. Thank you for your life.
And, oh, yes! I search around and find that piece of bread that Queen rejected. Perfect bread. Perfect accompaniment. I clear the straw off a section of the floor. Then I pop out the fish eyes and set them there: an offering for Screamer. Now I rip open the fish belly with my teeth and set aside half the fish for Queen and The Male. I make a feast of bread and the rest of the raw fish. And I’m lucky; there’s a large roe sack. Not much is better than sea bass eggs. I savor this meal. Every little taste.
For a last supper, this is a good one. An excellent one.
I wait for the fisherman.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Night 38
I wake. Something’s wrong.
The one who owns that rope with the bone hook—has he finally come down to kill me? I wriggle out from my nest, ready to meet him. It’s night again. Last night I waited for him. I expected sandal clacks on the ladder, curses, rough hands, and a hurl through bitter air into a bracing sea, then ice in my mouth as I drowned. Eventually my eyes couldn’t stay open any longer. I slept the whole day in my straw nest, dreaming the worst.
I peer through the dark now. But I see no one except Queen. The fisherman isn’t coming to kill me.
Queen shoves dried fruits toward me. A large quantity—surely more than my share. The spine of the sea bass lies in the middle of the cage, stripped bare. I look in Queen’s eyes and I’m almost sure she’s offering the extra fruit in gratitude—a trade of sorts. She thinks last night’s fish came from me. And it did, sort of. But it was really the fisherman’s, whoever he is.
I don’t waste time over niceties; I simply eat the fruit. All of it. I’m always a glutton when I wake in early evening. The food makes my blood rush strong again. I feel consoled. Peaceful. The fisherman really isn’t coming to kill me.
Thunder rolls. I stand and look out our porthole, legs splayed, hands on the lip. The rain seems harsher than usual. The sky goes bright now and then, but violently, brutally, as though the lightning is a sword. The weather is completely at odds with how I’m feeling right now.
Clump, clump.
I drop to the floor.
Noah stands at the foot of the ladder. He’s not looking this way.
I scrabble under the straw. Please, please. I press myself prostrate to the floor. I don’t even know if I’m fully covered, but I’m afraid to risk the noise of moving more.
Clump, clump, clump. Silence. Clump, clump, clump.
I dare to turn my head. I can see through the lumpy straw. Lightning flashes, and for a moment Noah is illuminated. His arms are folded over his chest and his head is bent down. He beats his chest with one fist. But now he lifts his face upward and holds his hands out to the sides, palms up. He walks forward three steps. Clump, clump, clump. He walks backward three steps. Clump, clump, clump. “Holy,” he says. “Holy, holy, holy.” His head bobs up and down. He takes three steps forward, three steps backward. “With a whole heart, I have done what has been asked of me. I give praise. I give thanks.” Forward, backward. “Man is but a weak runt. Take pity.” Forward, backward. “We are trying so hard. So hard. Turn us back from the pit, so that your light might shine upon us.” Forward, backward. “Teach me wisdom. Holy, holy, holy.”
The ark sways. I hear waves slap against the sides so loud, Noah’s voice is drowned out.
“Father!” Shem comes down the ladder with Japheth and Ham behind him. “What are you doing?”
“Don’t interrupt,” says Japheth. “He’s praying.”
“Father,” says Shem, “forgive me, but we hav
e to shut the hatches on the portholes below before water comes in.”
Noah’s head still bobs. He doesn’t look at his sons.
“You’re wasting precious time!” shouts Ham.
Noah jerks his head toward them. “Never let me hear you say that again! Go! Do your job! The Mighty Creator helps the worthy. And those who help themselves are worthy. Shut the hatches.”
They clack down the ladder at the other end of the ark, deep down into the bowels of the ark, Noah, too. Shouts and bellows from below compete with the thunder.
The animals on this deck keep calm, though. We are safe, and somehow we all know it. Maybe the animals on the bottom deck are getting splashed, maybe even soaked, but we aren’t. I lie in the straw, rocking hard, completely dry with a full belly, and all at once I realize something: It’s stupid to be sad. That’s the sum of it. I have to find something good to do. Something that brings me hope. That’s the secret now—the secret to surviving on the ark. Maybe it’s the secret to surviving anywhere. I don’t believe in Noah’s god, but I do believe what Noah said. We must all do what we can.
The ark soon stops rocking; the worst of the storm is over. The men clamber upstairs. And I have arrived at two clear plans. One is about plants; one is about animals. And maybe, through the combination of them, I’ll wind up helping these people, too.
Queen is exploring a knothole in the floorboard. She wipes around it with one long, blunt finger, then brings the finger to her nose, holds it in front of her eyes, puts it in her mouth. Such a thorough examination. I’m almost surprised she didn’t hold it to an ear, too. And I laugh. I have come to love Queen’s ways.
Queen quick turns her head toward me, as though my laughter is a signal. The Male comes alert too. He bounces on his haunches. Well, good. I hadn’t meant to announce my intentions in that way, but indeed, they are right. Why not start tonight, right away? It can be as though the storm marked the beginning of a new way of life.
Storm Page 10
