Wives of the Flood

by Vaughn Heppner

  On the fifth day on the open sea, Ham checked their water supply before telling Nimrod, “Either we find fresh water in the next few days, or we must turn back.”

  They had gained their sea legs by now, and the sun had bronzed each of them. They often marveled at fat sea cows, laughed at sporting dolphins and shivered when the dark shape of a shark glided under the boat. Hundreds of various fish lived in the Bitter Sea and coral reefs near shore never failed to amaze them.

  The next afternoon, limestone cliffs and dusty, green date palms stood out to sea. They rowed to what Ham called an island, albeit a large one. On a sandy beach, they drew the ship ashore. Unlike the salt marshes and deserts, this island abounded in date palms and lush vegetation.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Nimrod said. “Why is this place different?”

  Gilgamesh found an artesian spring. It bubbled out of clean rocks. The water was cool and created a small stream to the sea.

  When shown, Ham stood transfixed.

  “It’s just like you told us how it used to be in Antediluvian times,” Gilgamesh said. “How fresh water bubbled out of the earth.”

  “I thought the Deluge destroyed such things,” Nimrod said.

  Almost reverently Ham cupped his hands into the water, drinking. “This is the Blessed Land,” he intoned. “I name thee, Dilmun.” He told them about an island in the Old World that had been known for its Eden-like gardens.

  For several days, they trampled through tall flower fields and park-like groves of palm trees. Uruk discovered wild onions better than he’d ever tasted. He filled a sack with them to grow in Babel.

  On a sandy shore, many leagues from the boat, men dug up leathery eggs bigger than two fists pressed together. That night, they ate their fill of eggs.

  Stars shone and logs popped in the fire. The Hunters leaned against rocks or lay on grass, full.

  “What do you suppose laid those eggs?” lean Gilgamesh asked.

  “A giant turtle,” Nimrod said.

  Ham didn’t think so. Some sort of giant sea-beast certainly, but one he hoped they didn’t meet. He pondered on the situation between Gilgamesh and Uruk. He liked Gilgamesh. Uruk bragged too much and laughed coarsely at rude jokes.

  The next day he took aside Gilgamesh, Enlil and Anu. “Gather rocks,” Ham told them, “about this big, and load them into the boat.” When they asked him why, he said as an experiment.

  So as the others marched about the island, the four of them manhandled the ship into the water. By dint of hard rowing and careful use of the sail, they brought it over a coral reef a quarter league from shore.

  “Below lies treasure,” Ham said, “treasure to help Gilgamesh win his bride.”

  The three Hunters glanced at the visible reefs below.

  “Coral is sharp,” Ham said. “A touch can make you bleed. If that happens, we must leave.”

  “Why?” Anu asked, a handsome lad with a quick smile, the best loved among them.

  “Sharks.” Ham grinned at their discomfort and outlined the plan.

  Soon thereafter, each Hunter stripped down to a loincloth, dagger and a goat-hair bag tied around his waist. Each tied a rock to a foot, took a deep breath and slipped overboard. Visibility was excellent as Ham watched them descend ten, twenty, twenty-five feet to the sea floor. There, each drew his dagger and pried and cut oysters free. Each soon slipped his foot from the rock and shot to the surface, gasping.

  An afternoon of it exhausted them. Ham dragged the lads aboard and threw cloaks over each as they shivered.

  “Those are treasure?” Enlil asked dubiously, eyeing the gray shells littering the boat.

  “Perhaps,” Ham said.

  “Only perhaps?” Anu asked.

  Ham took out a dagger and pried open the first oyster, a mollusk. He cut out the meat, throwing it into a clay pot. The rest of the shell he threw overboard.

  “Where’s the treasure?” Gilgamesh asked past chattering teeth.

  “There wasn’t any this time,” Ham explained. He showed them how to open the shell, and oyster after oyster fell to their blades. Each time, they found nothing but meat.

  “You tricked us,” Enlil said later.

  “No,” Ham said. “I remember—”

  “Look at this!” Gilgamesh shouted. “Is this what you’re talking about?” He held up a smooth round gem with a creamy color, a strange luster.

  “Ah,” Ham said, as Enlil and Anu sucked in their breath. “Yes. You’ve found a fish-eye.”

  “A what?” Enlil asked.

  “A fish-eye,” Ham said, “one of the most precious of gems.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Gilgamesh whispered.

  Anu shook his head. “Gems are rocks. So what is this doing in an oyster? How did it get there?”

  “Fish-eyes are formed when dew drops filled with moonlight fall into the sea and are swallowed by the oyster,” Ham said.

  Anu looked at him, openmouthed.

  Ham laughed, patting him on the back. “I don’t really know how they get there, but isn’t my explanation as good as any?”

  For an answer, the three young men resumed prying open oysters.

  7.

  They ate oysters that night, Ham first promising an ivory figurine to Enlil and Anu for their help. Both took an oath to keep secret the fish-eyes in Gilgamesh’s possession. The lean Hunter wrapped them in a cloth, stuffing the cloth in a leather pouch tied by thong to his throat.

  “If you’re wise, you’ll keep the pouch under your tunic until the end of the trip,” Ham said. “Wait until you’re back in Babel to gloat.”

  As Ham ladled oysters out of a boiling pot, Nimrod asked how they’d found all this meat.

  Enlil, Anu and Gilgamesh burst out laughing.

  Covering for them, Ham explained the rock-to-foot procedure for diving.

  The next day, Uruk wished to see where they had dove. Everyone clumped to the boat and Anu pointed out to sea.

  “I envy you the experience,” Nimrod said.

  “Look!” Enlil cried. “What is that?”

  Everyone stared at a dreadful monster. It had a long, sinuous neck and a wedge-shaped head filled with gleaming teeth. It was gray-colored and sleek like a seal. The creature roared. It had a bulky body with flippers to the sides.

  “A sea-dragon,” Nimrod whispered.

  “The neck must be twenty feet long,” Gilgamesh said.

  The monster hissed as it swam toward them.

  “Back!” shouted Ham. “Run upslope, away from the leviathan.”

  They scrambled out of the sand, over grass and behind scattered rocks.

  The beast stopped before reaching shore, hissing, swiveling a head that had to be as large as a donkey. Abruptly, the monster headed out to sea. It submerged, disappearing beneath the waves.

  The Hunters glanced at one another in dread.

  Nimrod asked Ham, “What did you call it?”

  “A leviathan,” Ham said, “a monster of the sea.” Ham scratched at his beard. “We probably ate its eggs. I suggest we drag the Odyssey higher ashore.”

  “Do you think it will hump onto the beach and destroy our ship?” Nimrod asked.

  “Why take the chance?” Ham asked.

  Nimrod grinned. “Let’s bait it. The leviathan will be easier to kill while floundering on its belly than if we meet it at sea.”

  “Even better,” Ham said, “is if we avoid it altogether.”

  The others agreed.

  Once the boat was secure, they spent the rest of the day watching the sea. Neither that day nor the next did the leviathan reappear.

  “We should risk launching for home,” Ham said. “If it takes as long returning as it did getting here, we’ll have been gone a month. More than that, and your mothers will start getting worried.”

  “Let’s watch one more day,” a nervous Enlil said. “Just to make certain it’s safe.”

  “And make ourselves even sicker with fear?” Ham asked. “No. We should leave now.”
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br />   Nimrod agreed.

  So the wary crew loaded up, pushed the boat into the cool waters and scanned the deeps as they rowed past the surf. Nimrod stood with Ham on the deck between the outriggers. Both held bows, with arrows notched, scanning the placid waters.

  “Just like old times,” Nimrod whispered, “when we faced the dragon.”

  The sea remained calm as they hoisted sail.

  “Rest oars,” Ham said.

  The sail billowed with a snap and they glided, the twin hulls thumping across the water. Everyone gripped javelins or bows, silent, waiting, terrified. A quarter of a league from shore and there was still no sign of the leviathan.

  “It must have left the area,” Uruk said.

  The crew began to relax. Later, on the mainland shore, the men whooped as they drew onto a lonely beach.

  “We made it,” Anu said.

  “Thank the angel Bel,” Nimrod said.

  Ham frowned. “It’s Jehovah I thank.”

  The next day, spirits improved, although the wind blew the wrong way. By oar-power alone, they crawled along the ocher shore.

  “At this rate it may take more than two weeks to get back to Babel,” Ham told Nimrod.

  They floated several leagues away from a stony beach. The rowers rested, exhausted.

  Anu was at the prow, opening a watertight compartment, taking out a clay jar. Ham turned that way, and his eyes grew wide as he began to tremble.

  Out of the sea appeared that wicked, wedge-shaped head with teeth like a dragon. The water-dripping head rose higher and higher. Attached to the head was a long, sinuous neck. Ham tried to work his frozen mouth.

  As the shadow fell across him, Anu looked up.

  A man bellowed, “Leviathan!”

  The creature hissed.

  “Duck, Anu!” Ham roared.

  Teeth, numberless teeth swung down and bit onto Anu’s shoulder with a sickening crunch. Anu screamed and thrashed. The leviathan lifted him off the boat.

  “Shoot it! It has Anu!”

  An arrow sank into the beast’s rubbery side.

  Ham swiveled his head as if in slow motion. Nimrod stood in the other dugout, drawing a second arrow out of his case. While everyone else stood frozen, the Mighty Hunter fitted the arrow to the string. The leviathan hissed with its teeth yet clamped to Anu’s shoulder. The youth flailed for his dagger. Another arrow flashed, this one sinking into the monster’s long neck. The leviathan recoiled and dove with Anu still clenched between its teeth. The massive main body followed. The waters stirred and then grew strangely calm.

  Others now picked up their bows and shouted Anu’s name.

  Ham rushed to the side and peered into the murky depths.

  They never saw Anu again, nor did the leviathan return. Weeks later, they docked at Babel, bearing a sad tale.

  Nimrod’s fame, however, grew.

  And Gilgamesh, alone at last, drew the pouch from under his tunic, opening the sinews and pulling out the cloth. This he unfolded carefully, revealing three ordinary and worthless pebbles. Someone had stolen his pearls.

  8.

  Enlil swore he had told no one. Ham suggested Uruk had something to do with it. That seemed impossible to Gilgamesh. And yet…he stole near Opis one day as she worked in her father’s barley fields.

  Gilgamesh crouched behind thick blades of barley, hissing as Opis drew near. She was bent over, chopping weeds with a hoe. She glanced about before smiling, working beside him.

  “Has Uruk seen your father lately?”

  “Yes,” Opis said. “How did you know?”

  Gilgamesh swallowed in a tight throat, his rage mounting.

  Then Opis’s mother called, and Gilgamesh was left to brood.

  Gilgamesh paced in the wilds several days later. Uruk had seen Lud. They might have struck a deal, Uruk trading stolen fish-eyes. How Uruk had gotten the fish-eyes, Gilgamesh had no idea. The thought of it consumed him, and at that moment, a fever seemed to come over Gilgamesh.

  “I must change the game,” he whispered, knowing that was what what Nimrod would do.

  For the next two weeks, Gilgamesh schemed. He tracked Lud and discovered the means to a plan.

  At a certain place on a bank of the Euphrates lay prime clay, perhaps the best anywhere. Greedy, proud of his skills, Lud had told no one about the clay. Instead, on the sly, with a sack over his shoulder, he slipped there on his own. It took him out of the canals and the cultivated land. Gilgamesh studied the reed-infested area and discovered Lud’s faint path. For several days more, Gilgamesh reconnoitered. By the spoor and tracks, he found that a wild-dog pack passed through the territory.

  He fretted over the plan for days, at last talking himself into it. He built a deadfall, an animal trap, skillfully covering it with palm leaves and dirt. He made the path over it look just like Lud’s faint path. Then he waited one day, two and three. He slew a hare that fell into his deadfall and reset it. Four days, five, and finally, on the sixth day, Lud slipped out of Babel with an empty sack over his shoulder.

  Gilgamesh trailed at a distance, gripping his black elm lance. His heart pounded murder-lust and his conscience screamed, “Cain! Murderer!” He kept shaking his head, wondering if this was really the way to win Opis.

  The man-tall reeds turned into whispering grasses. A heron winged overhead, and he heard the yip of a wild dog.

  Gilgamesh’s eyes narrowed as he wiped sweat from his brow. Lud’s greed was the problem. Then Gilgamesh’s countenance fell, and so did he, to his knees. He cried out in anguish, in guilt, wanting to stop this murder but unable. He loved Opis and could never let Uruk have her.

  Time passed. He rose. Leaden steps took him toward the deadfall. Perhaps Lud hadn’t stepped on it. Maybe…he shook the black, elm lance. He was a Hunter. He knew how to set traps.

  Gilgamesh stepped out of the grasses and saw the riverbank decked with date palms rising above him. Around the bend lay—

  “Help…” drifted on the breeze. “Oh, somebody please help me.” The cries became desperate. “Help! Help! Somebody save me!”

  The urgency of the cries caused Gilgamesh to sprint. He turned a corner. Wild dogs milled around the deadfall, peering into it, growling. Some looked ready to jump in.

  “Stay away from me!” the unseen Lud shouted.

  The hounds beside Gilgamesh gave voice, and so did he.

  The wild dogs looked up, with their lips drawn back. Hackles rose, and it seemed they might stand their ground. Gilgamesh roared a battle cry. The wild dogs retreated, soon breaking into a run.

  Gilgamesh, flushed from the victory, skidded to the lip of the deadfall.

  “Oh, Gilgamesh,” Lud wept, who sat in the bottom of the hole and on his rump, with one of his legs tucked under him at an odd angle. “I’m saved.”

  For a dreadful instant, Gilgamesh envisioned driving the lance into the loathsome man, the man who refused him his daughter. Then he realized he wasn’t a cold-blooded killer. He jumped into the pit.

  “I had no idea anyone came out here,” Gilgamesh cried. “I was trying to trap wild dogs.”

  “Yes,” panted Lud, sweaty from pain. “It’s my own stupid fault. I won’t ever be so stupid again.” He yelled, because Gilgamesh dragged him out of the deadfall.

  Halfway back to Babel, as Lud hopped on one leg and rested his arm on Gilgamesh’s shoulders, the older man stopped the younger. “You’ve won the contest, Gilgamesh. Opis is yours.”

  Gilgamesh stared at Lud. “I have very little to give you in way of payment.”

  “Ha! Very little, you say. You saved my life. I think that’s a lot. You’ve won, Gilgamesh, believe me.”

  Gilgamesh nodded, feeling wretched, but deciding to say no more.

  9.

  Spring slipped upon them, the third year at Babel. Instead of a steady rising of the Euphrates, the water boiled into a raging floodtide. The canals burst, and the people toiled first to save themselves, then the city and finally to build anew. The Hunters provided
mounds of venison, and caught eels, carp, ducks and heron from the new-made swamps.

  Kush prayed daily at the altar, sacrificing to the angel of the sun, imploring aid.

  “Instead of persuading the angel,” Deborah said, “you should urge more people into migrating to Babel. Many hands lighten a load.”

  They considered options. There were Canaan’s children in the Zagros Mountains and Ashkenaz the son of Gomer, who in a fit of pique had taken his clan far from Japheth Land. Kush wondered if it was time to unleash the Hunters.

  “No, no,” Deborah said. “With cunning you will gain volunteers, who will work harder than slaves.”

  Kush distrusted bringing in a clan of Japhethites, but Deborah proved persuasive and suggested how it could be done.

  Ham, Nimrod and all the Hunters found the wayward clan several weeks later in the upper reaches of the Tigris River. Ashkenaz son of Gomer welcomed them. He was a tall man with an incredibly long, red beard. In lieu of many smaller homes, the clan had built a huge log cabin to house all the families, their hounds and cats. To add space they had dug down the floor a half-level. Woven reed mats took the place of chairs and leather sacks instead of the more normal wooden chests. In the middle of the long house, logs burned in a fire-pit. The smoke curled to a hole in the ceiling. The flames illuminated the crowded throng of old and young, male and female. Ashkenaz sat beside Ham, Delilah, his oldest daughter, beside Nimrod. Young maidens refilled the Hunters’ bowls of beer, while Helga, Ashkenaz’s wife, strummed a harp.

  Ashkenaz held up his hand. The harp playing ceased. The maidens poured their last pitcher of beer. Ham cleared his throat, and to a packed and intent house, he spun his tales. Ham spoke on many things, including Nimrod’s vision of the angel. The people of Ashkenaz noted Nimrod’s lion cloak with its black mane hood, the dragon-leather shields of his Hunters and the dragon teeth dangling from many of their throats. The throng nodded when Ham spoke about the explosion of predators, how the entire world seemed full of lions, wolves and bears. What humanity needed was a zone of safety, of protection.