Flood

by Brennan McPherson

  Two soldiers in metal shirts opened Adah’s cage and cut her bonds. She tried to jump down but nearly fell with the pain and stiffness in her legs. Soldiers stood clustered here and there.

  Beyond them, open alleyways.

  A woman near Adah threw herself to the ground and rolled under the carts. The soldiers cursed and grabbed for her. Two women ahead wrenched one of the soldier’s weapons away and ran him through.

  The rest saw their opportunity and seized it. The captives and guards struggled against each other, and the two women who managed to seize a weapon were themselves cut down while Adah stood forgotten, staring at those open alleyways.

  Her breath caught, and her face chilled. Where do they lead?

  She glanced back. The two closest soldiers dragged the woman out from under the carts and thrust a knife behind her ribs before leaving to beat the mob into submission.

  Adah bit her cheek, tightened her fists, and readied herself to dash for the open alleyway.

  She froze. She’d forgotten the driver. Her neck hair rose as she turned. The driver stood with a bow in his hand, watching her from afar. Smiling.

  She inhaled and flexed her stomach to ward away sudden nausea. The captives had submitted, and one of the guards noticed Adah and jerked her forward.

  She stepped in line and lost all sensation in her legs. As the driver lit torches, Adah clenched her teeth and grabbed her hand hard enough to hurt.

  Had she thrown away her only chance at freedom? Her father had given his life to protect her, and she had just stood there.

  One of the girls stumbled over a prone body, and as Adah passed, she couldn’t help but stare at her empty, open eyes, wondering if hers would soon look the same.

  The driver guided them toward a cellar door in the tower’s side, unlocked it, and flung it wide. Men in black hoods held flickering torches. The driver greeted them and waved his captives inside.

  The hooded men led them down endless clammy corridors. They turned through a passageway and passed four doors. Then came more staircases, and more turns, until Adah’s mind spun.

  When they stopped, the soldiers pressed them into little rooms with iron bars and slick floors. Adah was second to last. They tried fitting her in with a group of other women, then decided it was too full and placed her and the last woman in a cell all their own.

  Adah’s companion collapsed and became so still Adah thought her dead.

  The soldiers locked the doors and left with torches in hand, submerging the women in darkness as cold and heavy as a mountain lake.

  Adah thought of the smile on the driver’s face. As moisture dripped on her shoulders, she thought of the dead women above whose blood dripped into the soil beneath the cobbles.

  Chapter 4

  Lamech waited two hours in near complete silence until the girl finally decided to follow him. Father once said that silence is a balm for the wounded. Lamech thought it close enough to the truth, for words often erupted from inner violence, but a man calm in silence was a man at peace with the world.

  “Slow down,” she said.

  He turned, and she was farther back than he thought. “Sorry,” he said. Lamech swore his legs had never felt more eager. Several times before they arrived, he turned back to see her too far behind. After they made it, he brought her into his and Father’s second hut, where Lamech had taken to spending his nights.

  He hated to admit that she would soon become an uncomfortable topic.

  “Father won’t be happy,” he said.

  “Why?”

  He paused. “He doesn’t like women.”

  “Then I don’t like him,” she said.

  “Don’t say that until you’ve met him.”

  “Well, any man who can dislike someone he’s never met is a fool. I already know I don’t want to meet him.”

  Lamech shook his head, but no words came. He reached and began pulling her dress back, but she struck his hand away.

  “What are you doing?” Her voice shook, and her eyes burned.

  He frowned and felt his cheeks flush. “Your clothes are wet, and you have frostbite. If you don’t get into dry clothes, your skin will start to decay. I’m sorry. I’m not used to having a woman around. It’s been—” He swallowed. “A long time.”

  She studied him. “I’ll change myself. Look away. Better yet, go out until I tell you I’m ready. Where’s the fresh clothing?”

  “I still have to get it.”

  The silence thickened as she glanced toward the doorway.

  He rubbed his jaw, angry at himself for being so foolish. She was muddling his thoughts. “Please . . .” He almost said trust but realized that word was too thorny for—what did she say her name was? “Be patient with me. I know this is a strange situation for you. It is strange for me as well. No one ever comes here. These mountains are perilous, even for those who know them well. I could hardly believe I found you alive.”

  The wordless pause returned, and she tossed a distrustful glare into it.

  He listened to the scrape of her breath and the thump of his heart until they blended together, forming something greater. Something beautiful that recalled Mother’s matted hair and, for the first time in years, the warmth of her hand on his arm as she whispered of love with a voice ravaged by illness.

  The girl’s clothing rustled, and he looked up. She still stared with green eyes aflame. “If you try to do anything to me,” her voice shook, “I will kill you.”

  He rubbed his chest to warm the frost that spread there. “I would deserve it.” His hands grew clammy. “My name is Lamech.”

  She nodded.

  He opened his mouth. Closed it, nodded, and left to find fresh clothing.

  Just outside the door, Lamech stopped so suddenly that he nearly fell.

  His father, Methuselah, stood with arms crossed and gray eyes glittering beneath thick, speckled brows. “I know what you’re thinking,” Father said, his voice like gnarled brush scraping rock, “but it was a mistake to bring her here.”

  Lamech felt a sudden rush of nausea and said, “I couldn’t—”

  Father stopped him with a raised hand. “I know, son. We’ve lived together too long for me not to. But it’s time we spoke.”

  Lamech followed his father into the brush until they came to that familiar tree stunted by altitude and lack of moisture. It was smaller than he remembered, and today the clouds cleared the peak that jutted like a spear about to tear them open.

  Father crouched, knees popping as he leaned into the branches. Lamech knelt beside him. The last time they’d visited the tree, Father lectured him about what it meant to be a man. But today Lamech had done what any man should. “How have I displeased you?” Lamech said.

  “I still think of your mother,” Father said, and Lamech felt that old fissure throb. “After all these years, I still wonder what she would say to comfort me. How she would speak or sing while doing chores . . .” Father looked down. “I thought I could protect her. Keep her with me. That’s why I brought you up here when she took sick. As I nursed her, I tended the fantasy that somehow I was strong enough to hold on. Still, after all these years, I can’t seem to let go.”

  Lamech looked at the horizon and remembered Mother’s blue eyes had reddened like the sky behind the setting sun. “I heard her voice today,” Lamech said. “Do you ever?”

  Father shook his head. “I’ve been too long in the pain. I remember what she said, but not the quality of how she said it.”

  Lamech stared at the roots of the tree grappling the stones beneath it. “Is it too much to believe we can heal?”

  Father exhaled hard, and his brows bristled. “I’ve seen this day coming since the moment your mother was taken.” His eyes grew wet, and his voice thickened. “You’re the last piece of her left in this world. If I let you go . . .”

  So this was why they came to the tree. Lamech shook his head. “Nothing could take me away.”

  Father observed him long. Gray eyes flitting over
his features. “I’ve not been a good father. Whatever happens before the end, you deserve to hear that.”

  “What has gotten into you?”

  “Change, son. Don’t ask me to explain it. I’ve been feeling something growing these past months. Been having strange dreams. And now the sense is undeniable. That girl brought something with her. Or maybe something brought her. Either way, I believe that it’s time for you to make the very choice I’ve kept you from making all these years.”

  “I’m not going to leave,” Lamech said.

  “You only say that because I’ve never let you know better. I’ve laid bonds on you and called them love. But I knew. I still know. If you stay, I think you will be fighting something greater than yourself. Greater than either of us.”

  Lamech shifted and crossed his legs. He never remembered Father speaking like this before, and he fought to still the shaking in his hands.

  Father placed a hand on Lamech’s shoulder. “Whatever happens, choose without regard for my loneliness. My heart tells me some profound sorrow is coming. Only remember when the day comes that the right decision can sometimes be more difficult than death.” His gray eyes flashed. “Don’t misunderstand me—I still don’t believe in your grandfather’s God. Not after he broke our family. But lately I’ve been feeling something growing. Some heartbeat, some rhythm in the fluttering of birds’ wings and the scurrying of insects. It seems to me like some great Music, and more and more I find myself wondering if maybe there are forces in the world that we do not understand. Things we’ve never imagined. Now, after that girl’s arrival and the shifting of the world beneath these old feet, I wonder if you’ll be given the chance to rise and meet them.”

  Father squeezed Lamech’s shoulder, struggled to stand, and braced his bad leg to make it up the rough path. He paused a moment, as if listening, then said, “I’ve long watched you tend to any life that comes your way. But now I wonder if maybe it’s deeper than that. Maybe it’s just who you are. A protector. And that’s what I most fear.”

  Lamech felt his father’s words slip behind his ribs and strike at his heart. Though he’d never explicitly thought it before, his father’s words resonated with the very marrow of his bones.

  But as he opened his mouth to tell his father, “Yes! That’s exactly right! That’s who I am,” the sound dried in his throat.

  Because if what his father said was true, maybe the comfortable life he’d known all these years really would be brought to an end by the arrival of the girl and the destiny she brought.

  Chapter 5

  It could have been days or weeks before the eunuchs visited Adah’s prison, for the endless dark shifted her thoughts like shadows in a forest. The light of their torches burned Adah’s eyes, and she heard them toss balls of rice on the stone floor of the cell and ladle water into her bowl. She was shaking so badly she didn’t trust herself to lift the bowl, so instead she dipped and sucked up the liquid, then vomited and lay on the floor.

  Her companion still hadn’t moved, and that made her hate the men who had imprisoned them even more. She envisioned them standing against the darkness of her cell, an army of faceless soldiers with black eyes and horns.

  When the eunuchs came a second time with more food and water, they removed her companion’s body. Adah was able to eat this time, but her stomach pained her.

  “Please,” Adah said. “Put me with the others.”

  The eunuchs didn’t answer. She pressed her face against the bars and said, “Let me out.”

  A fat eunuch turned and lowered his torch, a set of keys jangling at his waist. “You think you deserve freedom?” The corner of his mouth lifted, mocking, and his voice was high and rough like that of an old woman too many years over an open fire.

  “Help me,” she said, keeping her thoughts on the keys and her eyes on the eunuch.

  “Why? You’re nothing but a tool. And we will use you until no use is left. Then you, too, will burn on the pyres, and nothing will be left save ashes and the scent of death on the wind.” The eunuch leaned close until his fat, smiling face pressed against the bars. Sweat dripped off his cheeks down the iron, and the crackling heat of flames carried his stench into her face. “You’re nothing. Naked, pathetic, weak. Perhaps I should bring a mirror so you can see how disgusting you’ve become. Stripped of niceties. How does it feel?”

  He cackled, shooting spittle onto her face and sending a burning down the length of her arms. Her fingers curled to claws, and as he turned away, she clutched the ring of keys on his garment and pulled him against the bars. He cried out, dropped his torch, slapped her hands, and said, “Let go of me, whore!”

  She held on, trying to rip the keys from his garment. He shoved his hand through the bars and grabbed her throat. She coughed as his hand tightened and she released the keys, grabbed his arm with both of hers, and threw her full weight against it in the wrong direction, snapping his elbow against the bar.

  The eunuch screamed as the others fumbled with their keys. “Get her!” The eunuch wept. “My arm—it’s broken!”

  A key sunk home and rolled tumblers. The eunuchs swung the door wide, threw aside their cloaks, and withdrew bamboo rods. The back of Adah’s ears burned with anticipation as she spun. Moments later came the first blow to the side of her head. She cried out and guarded her head with her arms.

  The fat eunuch wept. “She ruined it. Kill her!”

  They beat and kicked her, and she screamed and cursed and tried to strike back, but a boot smashed her side, and she felt bone snap. The pain stole her breath and sent her to the floor. They continued beating her until the violence faded to weary breaths and desperate swallows. Seemingly satisfied with what they had done, the eunuchs left, taking their wounded companion with them.

  Tears wetted Adah’s face. “Let me out,” she whispered, but the effort sent pain. She lay still, breathing as shallow as possible. But the burning in her chest made it hard not to weep. “Let me out.”

  The darkness returned heavy, and in the prolonged absence of light, finding any anchor for her thoughts became increasingly difficult. All sensations—from the throbbing in her torso to the bitter burn of anger—coiled inside until she thought she might burst.

  She closed her eyes and let the darkness recede to dreams, but even there she found no rest. Black horns glistened in the light of her burning home. She could not rise for the netting thrown across her, and she kicked at the devil forms and managed to push them into the flames. Their bodies caught fire, and their screams rose like sparks to the sky until she saw their white silhouettes smoldering in her eyelids.

  She awoke, shuddering with the chilled-sweat feel of her underground prison, and shut her eyes on the darkness to see their burning figures again—the only light in a hole under the earth. She would escape this pit and find the men who crushed her family and destroyed her home, and throw them on their own pyres.

  Chapter 6

  Father went to milk the goats while Lamech retrieved two spare tunics and returned to the hut where he’d left the girl. She sat shivering, and her voice was sharp as he entered. “You said you would be right back.”

  He tossed her one of the tunics and hung the other on a peg in the wall. “Father wanted to talk.”

  She fingered the fabric. “Will he let me stay?”

  “Do you want to?”

  She pursed her lips and cleared her throat. “Can you step out while I change?”

  Lamech exited and leaned against the outer wall of the hut. After she groaned and sucked air through her teeth, he said, “Are you well?”

  “Do I sound well?”

  “I can help,” he said.

  “If you step foot in here, you will never walk again. Owe!”

  Lamech suppressed a chuckle.

  “Very well, I’m finished. But I’m thirsty. Do you have any water?”

  Lamech rubbed his eyes. “I was on my way to grab some when I found you.”

  “So that means you don’t?”

 
; “That means I don’t,” he said.

  A pause. “Can you get some? I don’t think I’m in any shape to walk right now.”

  “It will take a while. Is there anything else you need before I leave?”

  “Do you have any food?”

  “No. We mountain dwellers eat only air and dirt.”

  Silence.

  He cleared his throat. “We should have some cheese. I’ll grab it before I retrieve water.” He brought her freshly strained goat cheese in a clay bowl, but as he entered and saw her dressed in that simple tunic, he stopped. He hadn’t expected her to look so vibrant, her green eyes like emeralds amidst tendrils of black hair dusty and wind tossed.

  “What?” she said.

  “Nothing.” He handed her the bowl, and she stared at the wet white lumps. “It’s freshly strained. Go ahead. It’s good.”

  She placed a small piece in her mouth. Her eyes widened and she shoved more in until her cheeks bulged.

  “Slow down, you’ll make yourself sick.”

  “Water,” she said through a mouthful and waved him off.

  “All right, but slow down.”

  She grunted and took another mouthful.

  Lamech grabbed an empty pail and walked the pathway to the stream. He had made this trip nearly every day for years and stopped at the crest to gaze down the mountainside. But this time all he could think of was the girl’s severe, disapproving expression, and the momentary tenderness she had displayed when he found her in the mountain pass.

  What sorrow had Father foreseen in her? What could she have brought with her besides the thrill in his chest and the memories of his mother that he’d thought lost?

  He arrived at the stream, scooped the water, and began waddling home. When he returned, he found her waiting with her hands folded in her lap and the bowl set by the doorway, seemingly licked clean.