Over the next five years they built the lower, second, and third decks. The scaffolding rose higher and higher, until the ark towered above the rest of the village. Many came from foreign places to see, for word of its size had spread. But with fame came another sort of attention.
As winter set on the sixth year, a dozen soldiers arrived led by a one-armed giant with yellow horns and yellow eyes downcast.
When the demon called for Noah with that familiar, booming voice, Noah’s breath was stolen, and he found he could not move.
He remembered as clearly as if he experienced it that very moment, how that same giant had bound and forced him to kneel before Elina, Lamech, and the God-King when he was only a boy.
Jade touched Noah’s arm, and he took a deep breath and faced the giant.
“You have grown,” Berubbal said. “Tell me, do you remember the feel of my fingers on your neck?”
“Why have you come?” Noah said.
“The God-King desires to know for what purpose you labor on such a spectacle.”
“I am building an ark,” Noah said.
“I see. But for what purpose?”
“To save my family when the Almighty destroys the world.”
Berubbal smiled. “If that is the case, then my lord desires an audience with you.”
Noah turned to Jade, who shook her head. “No, don’t go.”
But Noah could not deny that he felt deep resonance in his spirit. The Almighty had led them this far, and the edges of the village had expanded to double the size in six short years. As Noah noticed the shadow of the ark falling over Berubbal, he felt a growing confidence that what Berubbal demanded was something Noah was meant to do. That he should not fear, but rather be resolute.
Noah embraced Jade.
She clutched him tight. “We can’t trust him. Don’t you remember what—?” But she choked on her words.
“I believe that the Almighty wills it. And if he does, then I will return.”
Jade paused and closed her eyes as if praying. After a moment, her face tensed, and she said, “I believe that. But still . . .”
Berubbal stepped forward. “Don’t act as if you have a choice. You, of all people, know how persuasive the God-King can be.” And he took hold of Noah and bound him with ropes before leading him to a cart, where they pushed him into a bamboo cage.
Chapter 67
They journeyed for a full month by cart. At night, Noah lay on a bamboo mat. By day, he knelt with his head pressed to the bars. He relieved himself in a bucket received upon request. They fed him with half-cooked rice and preserved vegetables. Water was rationed, and his lips broke and bled for thirst.
All the while, he prayed, asking the Almighty to reveal his plans.
The only answer he received was, “My grace and mercy are sufficient for you.”
...
As they crested the final hill, the city of the God-King sprawled alight with torches not unlike the flaming world he saw in his dream. Massive braziers had been erected through the streets that wove like arteries toward a black tower at the city’s center. The cart wound its way to the tower, and Noah was released from his cage and dragged up countless flights of stairs to lavish living quarters.
He was placed in a room with purple draperies over wide windows and a low bed with silk sheets. His bonds were cut, and the Others left him with the simple command, “Sleep.”
The door was locked, and the window looked out to a twenty-story fall. Noah stretched his aching bones on the bed, and after shutting his eyes for little more than a moment, he remembered no more until morning.
...
Sunlight stabbed through the window, and slave girls entered his quarters and bathed him. Afterward they dressed him in lavish clothing and applied balm to his scabbed lips. They served him tea, offered fatty meats, which he refused, then breads, which he ate.
Afterward they left him for several hours alone in his room. When they next returned, they reapplied the balm to his lips and offered more tea and breads. He asked, “What is expected of me?”
But the slave girls only looked away, their mouths clamped shut.
...
Finally, after the slave girls left the second time, a knock sounded at the door.
“Yes?” Noah said.
The door opened to black horns that twisted two entire revolutions before ending in spines that pointed upward. Beneath the protrusions lay a face warmed by youth and sensuality, attached to a body as lithe as Noah’s had been three hundred years prior.
The God-King smiled and opened his arms as if in invitation. “My dear Noah. Why don’t you join me?”
...
The God-King’s chamber was surprisingly simple. In the center sat two cushions beside a knee-high table set with goblets and preserved meats. The walls were bare. The windows unadorned by curtains. Two small braziers burned on either side of the table, casting the feast in stark detail, and leaping shadows on the walls.
The God-King sat cross-legged at the table and beckoned Noah to join.
Noah approached and sat, trying to still his erratic breathing and involuntary tremors.
“Are you hungry?” The God-King motioned toward the meat.
“I eat only what the Almighty has given humans for food.”
“A shame that I only prepared meat, then,” he said.
“Why have you brought me here?”
“To remind you who I am,” the God-King said. “I’m only doing the Almighty’s will, you know. Otherwise he would have stopped me long ago.” He drank deep from his goblet before setting the cup down, teeth stained red. “That is, if he actually has the power to stop me. Either way, the meaning remains the same.”
Noah pushed his goblet away.
“You should consider aiding my cause.”
Noah’s fingers clenched his tunic as he prayed for the Almighty to give him strength.
But he heard no response. He felt no leading. He sensed no strength in his limbs.
“Before this is over, you will bow to me,” the God-King said.
“I will never bow to you,” Noah said.
“Again, you deny the Almighty’s will,” the God-King raised his brow. “Tell me why you think he delivered you into my hands.”
“To warn you.”
“To warn me?” The God-King laughed. “I’m not so blind as you think. His flood won’t stop me. I’m too powerful, and you humans are too weak to keep me buried.”
Noah blinked, surprised, but attempted to hide it. “You seem quite sure of yourself.”
“I know you’ve been praying. Tell me, has your God spoken since you arrived?”
Noah’s face twitched, and the God-King’s smile widened.
The God-King lowered his voice to a whisper. “Or has he left you alone just like he’s done with all his previous servants? The ones I flayed open?”
“The Almighty would never abandon me,” Noah said, but he couldn’t stop a nagging hollowness from widening in his abdomen.
“He’s very good at making people believe,” the God-King said. “Let me guess . . . he gave you a spectacular vision? Some vivid fantasy followed by an intense rush of joy that brought you to your knees?”
Noah swallowed and spread his fingers to dry his palms.
“Since then, he’s led you along with little tastes, but nothing like that first experience.”
Noah took a deep breath. “You’re a liar. All you do is lie.”
The God-King leaned in close, the silver-clasped emerald dangling from his neck into the goblet of blood. “The only lie is the Almighty’s claims. He’s delivered you into my hands because he doesn’t have the power to stop me. And he’s not speaking to you right now because he can’t. Because I forbid him. Go ahead, request his presence.”
Noah shook his head and pushed his dishes until they clanged against the God-King’s goblet and plate.
The God-King leaned back and smiled. “Still, here we are. You and me, after all these years. V
isiting. It seems like fate, doesn’t it?”
The God-King stood and paced behind one brazier, then the next. He clasped his hands and leaned against one of the windows, staring out across the sprawling hills. “I am the god of this world. I own it along with everyone who lives in it. I bid you to remember the grace I showed you all those years ago when I let you and that girl live.”
Noah stood as the old burning returned for the first time since Kenan was slaughtered. “You murdered Elina. You murdered my mother and countless others. You destroyed families. You stamped out an entire generation.”
“It was a gift, Noah,” the God-King said. “Pain sparks growth, and I have always cared most for you. You were ready to live a boring life as a carpenter. Now look at you. You have a whole community who respects you. You’ve built things no one else ever dreamed of building. Including that ark.”
“What do you want from me?” Noah said.
“Renounce the Almighty and bow to me.”
“Never,” Noah said.
“What would it take, I wonder? Because as much as you’d try to deny it, everyone has their price.” The God-King observed him long, then snapped his fingers. A slave girl entered. “It is time to retrieve the gift I prepared for our guest.”
The slave girl bowed and left.
“I don’t want any of your gifts,” Noah said.
The God-King shrugged. “You don’t have to take it. You are free to leave right now if you so choose.” His smile deepened, and his silver eyes glowed orange in the firelight. “But I know that you will stay, because you cannot imagine what I have prepared for you.”
Noah looked at the entrance. He hadn’t noticed that the door stood ajar the whole time, no guard present.
Could he really be free to go? If so, what was the point of being tied and thrown into a cage for the entire journey here? So that the God-King could have just these few moments to speak with him?
The God-King smiled. “I won’t stop you. Anytime you feel the desire, leave. My servants know you. They will not inhibit you.”
“But?”
The God-King laughed. “But nothing. I place no demands—very unlike the Almighty. However . . .” His voice quieted. “After you finish building the ark, if you meet me in the port town downriver from where you live, I will give you one final gift. A gift far greater than what I offer today.”
Noah said nothing. Only stared into the flames crackling in the brazier and wondered at how the God-King could kindle such hatred. All these years, Noah thought himself rid of the burning, yet here he sat shaking with the desire to murder the God-King.
Everything that the devil did was strange. Noah knew the God-King was evil, and yet the God-King treated him with apparent kindness and gave him the freedom to leave. Perhaps it was true that the God-King could not kill him, but he felt certain of nothing anymore. And the longer he spent in the God-King’s chamber, the warier he grew.
“The reason why I know you will meet me one final time is because after seeing the gift I offer today,” the God-King said, “you will not be able to resist. Because what I show you today will make you certain that I hold something very dear to you. Something you’ve desired your entire life.”
What could the God-King possibly have that Noah would care about? What could he have . . . ?
An image flashed before his eyes—the shadowed figure of the mother he never knew, and his fingers tingled and clenched.
No, that would be impossible. Adah died right after giving birth to him. Father had told him so. He wouldn’t have lied about that.
Would he?
The slave girl returned with a covered dish and set it on the table before them.
“Go ahead,” the God-King said. “Open it, if you dare.”
Noah gripped the lid and stared at the polished metal reflecting his face. A sickness churned his abdomen at the thought of what might be inside. Should he open it?
Or should he leave and forget he’d seen anything?
He swallowed hard and thought of the Almighty’s silence. Of all Noah wished he himself had done—the inaction he regretted.
If I leave now, I will never know. It will just be one more unanswered question. One more mystery in my past.
He was done with unanswered questions.
His fingers tightened on the lid, and he lifted it, revealing a severed human head, shrunken and slanted, its skin like tanned leather.
“I thought you would want to see your father one last time,” the God-King said.
Noah’s vision narrowed and blackened at the edges. “What?” His chest heaved, and he looked at the distorted head.
“I know how much you loved him.” The God-King knelt and caressed the severed skull, his voice falling to a whisper. “He died five years ago, so I had him preserved just for you.”
Noah fell back. “No. That’s a lie. You’re lying.”
The God-King smiled, those silver eyes nearly red in the flickering glow. “I would have preferred your father to remain alive. But my final gift to you is not proof of death, but proof of life. It is for this reason I know you will come see me—if only to see someone you’ve longed for all your life.”
Noah stood, seeing the distinct markers in the preserved flesh. The shape of the cheekbones, the thinness of his father’s lips, now twisted and compressed.
“Aren’t you going to thank me?”
Noah passed a hand over his face and turned away, stumbling out into the hallway, down staircase after staircase until he burst into the open city.
He passed servants and Others with horns just like the ones who had murdered Elina all those years ago. The ones who had stolen his family away and destroyed his life. They watched him, but none touched him.
“What?” he yelled, spinning from one to another.
They stepped away from him as he approached.
His pulse sped, and ice flowed down his wrists and ankles. He observed the sky to gain his bearings, then ran off down the streets to escape the city and make his long journey home.
Part IX
The End of the World
“And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.”
—Genesis 7:5
Chapter 68
Weeks later, still miles from home, smoke rose like a pillar in the sky, and Noah forced himself to look away, to keep his eyes on the path so that he still had time to deny what he already knew. That the village his children had been born and raised in, the same one they’d lived in for centuries and had helped grow from a small community to a bustling town, was burning.
He kept on, and after breaking through the trees to see the ark in the valley raised on scaffolding and awaiting God’s judgment, the little buildings beside it smoked, and the streets lay painted in crimson slashes.
Blood. Blood was everywhere.
“Jade?” Noah’s voice scraped his throat. “Jade!”
He sprinted down the hillside, slipping in the dew-covered grass, sending him tumbling to his hands and knees, then back to his feet.
He whipped through the streets, coughing with the acrid smoke that churned through doorways and out windows. He covered his mouth with his tunic and breathed, calling for his wife, his children, though none answered.
Bodies lay strewn in the marketplace. Limbs separated from torsos piled across faces grim with death. Familiar eyes motionless and dimmed of life.
His friends and coworkers. People he’d known so long they’d become family. Murdered.
He fell to his knees and threw himself over them as the burning he’d thought culled all those centuries ago flared. A smoldering rage beneath the skin of his chest that rattled his ribs like a bamboo prison.
Amidst the bodies, he found Barak’s motionless form. He pressed his hand into his good friend’s one final time, and closed his open eyelids.
How could any of what he saw be true? How could this have happened after all this time?
Must he suffer the loss of everything?
“Ev
erything . . .” He turned his face to the sky, closing his eyes in a bitter plea. “They’ve taken everything. What more, God?”
But God did not answer.
Noah stumbled to his feet and threw a slab of rubble, sending it skittering through the dust. “Don’t stay silent. Not now.” He shook his head. “Not anymore.”
A smoldering pile of rubble shifted, and stones skipped and scattered, sending a small plume of smoke and dust billowing. Noah stood and shuffled through the village toward the ark. Even from where he stood, it towered above the village. He knew the construction should have been finished while he traveled those many leagues, and from afar it seemed it had endured no damage.
As he approached, he heard what sounded like a distant birdcall. He looked up to see a figure on the scaffolding. The figure called his name, and Noah’s eyes widened at the familiar hair blowing in the breeze, the long dress and slender figure of . . . “Jade?”
Jade fumbled with something, then set it down and descended the scaffolding quickly, dangerously, her feet slipping.
Noah sprinted underneath her. “Careful! Don’t fall!”
But she made it safely and fell into his arms.
Noah kissed her forehead, cheeks, and lips. Oh, how he’d missed her and longed for her touch.
She pulled back and wiped her face, pulling the strands of hair out of her mouth.
“What happened?” Noah said, breathless.
“The Others came while you were gone. They watched as we finished building the ark, and after it was finished, they killed everyone and burned the village.”
“Our children?” he said, and grabbed her shoulders. “Did they take our children?”
“No, thank the Almighty. The villagers pushed our children and their wives into the ark and commanded them to stay with the animals. They fought valiantly to protect us.”
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