Flood

by Brennan McPherson

“Those men nearly killed him. They nearly killed you!”

  “You think I don’t know that?” She whipped toward him. “I know!” Her face softened, but the calm in her voice seemed forced as she said, “The danger is passed. I will take your child again, and we will continue as before. You may follow, but only from a distance.”

  “You’re not thinking clearly,” Lamech said.

  Her voice smoldered. “Oh, I’m thinking clearly.”

  “You took one step on that wounded ankle and collapsed. You couldn’t make it half a mile in such a state.”

  “I will be more careful,” she said.

  “It won’t help.”

  She tried to stand again, and failed.

  Lamech sighed and stepped toward her.

  “Stay back,” she said. “I’m warning you.”

  “Or what?” He reached down and pulled her up by the arm.

  She yelled and swung at him. His eyes caught the glint of the blade in her hand too late, and he jumped back as the blade sliced through his tunic and nicked his shoulder, drawing blood.

  He stared at her in disbelief, then stepped back, guarding Noah.

  She brandished the dagger and bared her teeth. “Touch me again, and I’ll kill you both.”

  Heat flooded Lamech’s arms, and he kicked her wounded ankle, dashed forward, clutched her wrist and twisted hard, forcing a cry from her throat and the dagger from her hand. As the weapon dropped, he kicked it aside, tossed her back, and said, “Don’t you ever threaten my son again.”

  She screamed and wept, back arching on the ground.

  Lamech felt the blood drain from his face. “What are you—?”

  “Stop, it hurts!” She groaned and convulsed, and Jade rolled off her into the grass, crying again as her mother screeched.

  Lamech swooped in and snatched Jade away before stepping back to observe the woman thrashing, screaming, and groaning.

  After several long moments, she settled to quiet cries, and eventually to sleep. Lamech paced for nearly an hour after she quieted, trying to still the shaking in his limbs and the questions in his mind.

  The woman was insane. He shouldn’t have harmed her, of course, but what right did she have to threaten him?

  He sighed. No more or less reason than he had to hurt her. The only difference—and he continued to believe the difference significant—was that he knew his own reasons, and they made sense, while he could barely come close to inventing a compelling reason for her actions.

  He could not trust her. She was intelligent and articulate, yet struggled with some sickness.

  Could there be a reason more solid than insanity? If not, they were in trouble, because they needed her.

  As the sun settled, exhaustion weighed heavy on his shoulders, and he laid with both children a healthy distance from the woman, thinking of Adah, of her fire and kindness.

  She, too, was intelligent and could be unpredictable, and sometimes piercingly perceptive. How could he not be reminded of her? How could he not think of the time they had spent together? And of how it all ended in the pall of her skin, the warmth of her blood, and the chill of her words in his ears.

  He pressed hot tears from his eyes, feeling contorted emotions smoldering just beneath his skin. He longed to rip his chest open, if only to pour them out.

  But for as long as he lived, he knew he would remember the silence and terrible isolation that washed over him in the wake of her final breath. And after . . .

  The dream. The same dream his father and Adah had dreamt. Only his had been slightly different—the words the shadow spoke meant only for him.

  The dream hadn’t felt like any he’d ever experienced. Instead it seemed as if he had been extracted from his body and placed on the ground of another world.

  Adah and Methuselah had both mentioned the stars in their dreams, as well. Was there something significant about them?

  He stared up at the sky as stars blinked awake in the absence of the sun. The moon rose low and thin, a curved slash in a black tunic.

  Something was happening. Something deeper than a father and mother trying to find a way to survive with their children in the wilderness.

  He felt the layers of reality peeling away, as if revealing something hidden below the surface of the ground beneath and the sky above. Indeed, as exhaustion made drunk his mind, he wondered if the moon peeking through the sky were the slit of a great eye. Could the moon, perhaps, be the shadow watching him from beyond the veil?

  And then he closed his eyes and was there again in that strange land, lying alone. Exposed.

  The stars were wrong, and the shadow hovered just outside the realm of his vision.

  “You’ve done well to find the woman,” the voice said, “but more danger now awaits you. The Abomination found me—I risked too much too soon. It hunts you, and I fear your only choice is to run.”

  “But the woman,” Lamech said, and was surprised at how his voice echoed on and on.

  “Hush,” the voice said, “I know! She is injured, but speak no more. I must go, and much sooner than hoped. But before I go, I warn you to move, and to continue moving. Stay nowhere overlong. Everything depends on it.”

  And then the voice was gone, and the stars melted back to the sky he knew—the same sky he’d studied as a boy in the mountains.

  Chapter 23

  Elina awoke shivering in the middle of the night. She had told herself it would never happen again, and yet it had. Worst of all, the man had seen.

  Surely he would never trust her again. Not after glimpsing her wounds. He had already shown a great propensity for intrusiveness, and she couldn’t keep the truth from him for long.

  Yet I will keep it for as long as I may.

  To let another know what had happened was more shame than she could bear. Yet, despite herself, she felt a distant thankfulness that the man had protected Jade.

  Just . . . why did he have to be a man?

  “Because a man is what I need,” she whispered. Only, what one needed and what one could bear were hardly ever the same. After so long, it was hard to believe anything could bridge the gap.

  What a terrible mystery the soul could be. That one could live for thirty years and still not understand the depths of its complexity, the visceral reactions that erupted from schisms delved by dark memories of nights long passed. Some days the pain throbbed so deep she thought she would burst.

  She only wanted to forget. To watch Jade grow unmarred by the wounds that held she herself chained.

  But she could not leave that precious boy. Noah, his father called him. Beautiful. Innocent. Perfect.

  Everything she wished men could be.

  Why would the father not trust her with the child and leave? Did he not realize his presence was what made her ill?

  Yet even as the stars bowed their lesser crowns to the greater light that issued from beneath the horizon like bloodstained gold, she knew all her thoughts were aimless. The acrimony she aimed at him changed nothing.

  The helplessness she felt to escape the chains that bound her to those two evenings nearly a year and a half ago did not diminish the equally powerful instinct that compelled her to keep the boy alive.

  The man awoke not long after the sky brightened, but said nothing. He only sat and gazed at Noah and Jade, who remained sleeping. All of them were exhausted from the past days. Traveling was hard on such young children. And beyond travel, they had been brutalized.

  When Jade finally woke, the father approached Elina with Jade in his arms as if presenting a peace offering.

  Elina accepted her child and fed her. Then, as she held Jade and rocked her to sleep, she noticed the father holding Noah, trying to calm him as he grew fussy. The father did not act as if he expected her to feed or comfort his child. He merely did what any father could. Which wasn’t much.

  “Give him to me,” Elina said, her voice no longer wooden.

  The father gazed at her long. Brown eyes glowing in the shade of the forest.
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  “He is hungry,” Elina said.

  “You are sure?”

  Elina nodded and waited.

  He lifted Noah, walked to her, and offered him hesitantly.

  Elina avoided his gaze as she took Noah and began nursing him.

  Silent tears fell from Elina’s face, but if the father saw, he ignored them. When at last Noah drank his fill, the father said, “I will be back,” and disappeared into the forest.

  Hours crept by. Elina listened to the winds and watched the sunlight trickle through the sparse canopy. Pure white clouds flecked the sky above and moved slowly from east to west. The infants woke periodically to eat. Afterward she cleaned their bottoms, and both returned to sleep.

  Hunger gnawed at her stomach, and she knew that if she did not find more food soon, she would lose her milk, and the children would be endangered. But with her ankle wounded the way it was, she could do nothing but wait for the man to return. So she waited and breathed the slow rot of undergrowth that she could not eat.

  The father returned as the sky darkened once more. He held a long shaft of wood crudely carved in a strange manner, and he handed it to her and said, “Place the carved portion beneath your shoulder and use the wood in place of your wounded leg. You may walk this way, but I expect you will have trouble using both the wood and holding the children. I will follow behind carrying Noah at what you deem a comfortable distance while you carry Jade.”

  Elina looked into his eyes, and though the unnamable terror remained, she felt a momentary stab of gratefulness. “Thank you,” she said.

  He nodded, took Noah, and returned to where he’d slept the previous night. “We must restart our journey tomorrow.” He built a fire with small twigs and dry underbrush, coaxing the fire large enough to toss warmth across her shoulders.

  She laid and slept fitfully, falling in and out of nightmares. Each time she awoke, she saw the man sitting beside the fire, facing outward toward the darkness. When drowsiness caused her to fail to recognize him, her breath rushed, and she clutched at the clothing across her chest. Then she remembered, and the fear was replaced by another fleeting stab of thankfulness.

  Chapter 24

  Lamech sat before the fire, eyes and ears scanning the night. Nearly an hour earlier, he heard the howling of wolves, but it was impossible to determine how many there were. He could hear paws scraping brush, noses nudging piles of leaves and twigs. Or at least he thought he could.

  Regardless, whatever animals were out there refused to come close enough to be seen. Though Lamech had no more than a dagger, no beast could know that. And so he sat and watched for what he could not see, thinking of the woman, Noah, and Jade mere spans away.

  They had made a silent treatise: he would respect her and she would keep Noah alive. They had come to this understanding without need for explanation. Indeed, silence had once again given him the clarity to find the path to peace.

  That and several hours alone in the forest.

  The reason he hadn’t seen the solution was that it had been too simple. All the woman longed for was safety.

  He had seen the feral fear in her eyes before she cut him. But she was a paradox. Resisting the very man who offered what she most craved.

  How could he have understood it was he she feared? And yet, maddeningly, he had proven to himself that was the only answer. He didn’t understand why, only that it was true. Because he had done the one thing he thought might release the tension, and by doing so risked everything.

  He had entrusted her with Noah, then left long enough for her mind to clear, returning with a gift that offered her the independence she craved. She had accepted both, and the wildness in her eyes had disappeared, leaving only a distant sorrow in its wake.

  He still feared the madness that had overtaken her when he wrenched the knife from her, but he believed the madness overcame her for some knowable reason. He would watch her, and limit the time she spent holding Noah.

  And he would do everything in his power to avoid triggering the madness again.

  He was thankful for her service. Enduring his presence obviously strained her, and that made her offer to care for Noah seem noble.

  At the same time, he did not like that she was hiding something from him. And did motherly instinct drive her, or was it something else? Something dark?

  He feared for Noah, and dared trust the woman only so far as he must. He had enough to worry about with the dreams. He distrusted them, as well, but mostly he distrusted stagnation.

  And so he was caught. He must move, but to move meant to obey the shadow in his dreams. The voice had wanted him with the woman, but as soon as Noah was old enough, he planned to part ways with her and move into the deep wilderness.

  Until then, they were bound to each other. She could not survive alone in the wilderness. She was wounded, and madmen were laying traps, and wolves roved the countryside, likely emboldened by the recent destruction of local villages.

  Noah would not survive without a woman to feed him, not for his first year, at least. Indeed, even if Lamech did find another woman who might care for Noah, trusting the next might prove a greater risk than staying with the woman whose fears he’d at least partially begun to understand.

  The woman inhaled, and her clothing rustled as she twisted to look at him. She had done so five times already. The first two times, he had looked into her eyes and seen that same animal fear. Then, as lucidity dawned, the fear waned, and she closed her eyes and returned to sleep.

  He wondered how long she had been wandering the wilderness alone, caring for Jade, who was old enough to hold her head up without aid. That meant that Jade was nearly two seasons older than Noah.

  Could she have survived the wilderness for so long? Doubtful. Especially after seeing the traps those men had laid. The woman was intelligent, and no stranger to violence. But the dangers one encountered in the wilderness were beyond what intelligence could overcome.

  She was likely savvy at foraging for food, but a nursing mother could spend her whole existence in the wilderness just trying to gather enough to support her and her child. Then what of protection? Shelter? Clothing? Illness?

  No, it seemed more likely she had become a shadow in local villages, stealing food, taking shelter and sleeping where she could, always moving, always searching. To walk the wilderness alone was a death wish. To walk the wilderness alone with an infant was insanity.

  And yet here they rested with two infants.

  Lamech gazed up at the stars, just barely visible through the sparse canopy, and wondered what Adah might say if she were still alive. Would she urge him to live in a nearby village and hope for safety?

  He opened his mouth and whispered the words she might say, “Those men were the same who attacked my village. I grew up on the far side of the mountains, and they had come from even farther away. If they attacked villages on this side of the mountains, they have only grown more powerful.”

  “Yes,” he would respond, “but how might I diminish the risk?”

  “Travel as far south as you can,” she would say, “the woman was right in attempting that. But you will not make it far. You will soon need shelter. You will need to find a village.”

  “We could make it many miles.”

  “Where will you find water? Food? Shelter to weather storms and the change of seasons? Noah is too small to handle so much. Find a village, bide your time, raise him to be strong.”

  “Too much risk.”

  “You and I both know there’s more risk in loneliness.”

  “That doesn’t take away the risk of remaining static.”

  “Never stay too long in one village. Gather word of danger, of the machinations of war. Collect supplies. Work if you must. When you retrieve what you need, move before any become too familiar with you.”

  “You speak with a harder voice than before.”

  “That is because there is no breath left in these lungs. I am hard earth tossed through the refiner’s fire and beaten
to a deadly gleam. War will make weapons of us all—yes, even little Noah, if you are not careful. You love who I was, but I am her no longer.”

  Tears trailed down Lamech’s face into the corners of his mouth. He was gasping for air, clutching the dagger so hard his knuckles ached. “Then who are you?”

  “A ghost of your memory.”

  “I love you,” he whispered. “I miss you. And I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  Chapter 25

  Elina woke to nearly inaudible footsteps and lifted her head to scan the wooded thicket for what caused the sound.

  There, not five paces away, a dwarf deer stared through wedge-shaped pupils. The animal seemed statuesque until it flicked its ear and flared velvet nostrils.

  Elina lay back, and the deer moved on, foraging, letting her drink the distant birdsong and countless leaves clashing like cymbals. In the glow of restfulness, she imagined the swirling colors, sounds, and smells as part of some great Music whose roots stretched down to the center of all things, to the Beginning. The thought put her in a mind to hold Jade, to look at her, to see the freshness of new life once more.

  She turned to reach for her, but did not find her. Glancing around, she found the boy and the father were gone. The remnants of the previous night’s fire had been extinguished, and the smell of burning wood lingered acrid and sharp.

  Sudden, quick breaths scraped her throat. She pressed her lips to her teeth and hurled herself up, scaring the deer away. She forgot she’d harmed her leg, and as she stepped down, pain threw her to her knees and bade her clutch the skin above her ankle. She bit her lip and closed her eyes.

  Recovering, she looked for her dagger, but that, too, was gone.

  Of course, how could she have forgotten the way he wrenched it from her? She glared at the red marks still pressed into her flesh and clenched her hands into fists, coughing at the pricking sensation in her throat.

  She would kill him. She would stalk him in the night and . . .

  Sobs overwhelmed her. She gritted her teeth and screamed, striking the ground.