“E’Yahavah commanded only one pair!” U’Sumi snapped.
The clan of A’Nu-Ahki descended the trail from Q’Enukki’s Retreat one last time. Nobody seemed to know what to expect now. Tiva figured the argument was just to burn off stress. Still, it made her feel hollow inside.
A’Nu-Ahki and Na’Amiha walked ahead of the pushcart, as if to avoid the bickering, though ‘Miha glanced back now and then.
“‘Sumi, I think Khumi’s right for once,” Iyapeti said, pulling his blond-rope prince’s braid from his sweating face again. “Any shepherd knows that a good herd needs more than a pair to start from.”
U’Sumi shouted, “Don’t any of you get it? We must obey E’Yahavah’s instructions even if we don’t understand them!”
“Will all of you just shut up!” hollered their mother. “Show some respect for the Ancient, will you!”
They continued silently after that, past Henumil and Yargat’s Cave Shrine, until they reached the shipyard’s outer culverts. Tiva noticed how red the sky still was for so late in the morning. A shadowy ripple of deeper color moved in the orange gold. The sun seemed to flicker as if fleet-winged Kherubim passed before it, taking their stations to launch the coming assault.
A’Nu-Ahki halted in the meadow, and looked up. The wispy layers of sky discoloration grew more pronounced.
Sutara stepped forward, and broke the nervous quiet. A breeze swept her walnut hair into her large sad eyes. She said, “My father-in-law; is there time for me to make one last appeal to my father?”
A’Nu-Ahki continued to gaze skyward, as if relaying her request to a higher authority. “Go,” he said finally. “But don’t let Satori keep you. ‘Peti, maybe you should go with her.”
Sutara and her husband ran off toward the Archon’s Quarter.
A’Nu-Ahki looked to Tiva. The quiescent fire in his eyes frightened her. “There’s time to make one last appeal to your parents as well,” he said.
Tiva withered under his offer. In those few magic days after her rescue from Grove Hollow, she had thought that because she no longer felt rage against her family that she had actually forgiven them somehow. Tiva now knew different. She had considered forgiveness a matter of what she could feel or not feel. Suddenly, she realized that there was more to it than that. She had spoken to none of her family, nor them to her, in all the years since Henumil had disowned her.
Sometimes, late at night, she could still feel her older brother Yargat’s violating touch in her dreams. Whatever peace she had was merely the absence of rage, because rage had exhausted itself. She had the serenity of the tomb, and like those inside a tomb, Tiva was sure she could do nothing to make her parents respond to her. If she thought there might have been a chance that they would listen, maybe she would have gone. Maybe. But she knew that it was too late.
A shadow passed through her, as the sky darkened. Tiva gazed one last time at her father’s house. Then she knew that the gaping coldness so near the center of her soul could not warm up by her own will alone.
Tiva clenched her teeth and swallowed hard to choke back her tears. “Let them die,” she answered quietly.
“Tiva!” Na’Amiha said. “They’re still your family!”
Tiva had never found the courage to tell how Yargat had molested her when she was a child, not even to T’Qinna. Henumil had turned a blind eye, and even created conditions to make it easy for Yargat. Tiva remembered trying to forgive them, and became certain that she had failed. Though she might stare them down on the trail, she could not attempt to talk to them. She didn’t know which she feared more, further rejection that would open so many wounds, or the miraculous—albeit unlikely—possibility that they might join her. Nor was she sure which would be worse.
“Judge me as you will, my Mother,” Tiva replied to ‘Miha in an archaic solemnity. “But when the earth is scoured clean of them by the waters of World-end, then maybe my heart will heal.”
The wind slowly moaned, kicking up dust wraiths as aimless souls that wandered over what would soon be a never-ending graveyard.
Na’Amiha’s words haunted Tiva. “Your heart can never have peace as long as you cling to bitterness.”
The air above thickened, casting the world under the shadows of a dying age. The sky took on the color of blood.
Tiva broke down. “I’m trying not to hate them! I’m just not strong enough to talk to them! What could I say to make any difference now?”
‘Miha turned and took her in her arms. “How about, that despite everything, you still care for them? That you want them to live?”
“I’m not really sure that’s true! I’m not even sure it would be good!”
“Of course it would, dear. You’re not as cold as you think.”
Tiva glared at her. “You don’t know! I might be that, and worse! Or it might have nothing to do with coldness!”
‘Miha brushed a black curl from Tiva’s eye. “Whatever you are, Tiva, E’Yahavah has chosen you for this voyage. Is it more than hatred? Would they endanger the ship if they came?”
“Yes, I think they would—especially my father and brother!”
“You don’t have to go,” A’Nu-Ahki said. “I just wanted you to know that I would not withhold this from you. Knowing your father, I agree. Even if they came, they would probably mutiny once their initial terror passed.”
The wind whipped up, while the sky grew still darker.
Tiva looked up through her tears, and watched the strange heavenly discoloration sink into thickening purple clouds.
“We’d better get to the ship!” A’Nu-Ahki yelled over the wind.
Tiva huddled under ‘Miha’s arm against the air’s violence, and to shelter herself from the livid stares of the Lit villagers. These had emerged from their houses to watch the strange weather, but when they saw A’Nu-Ahki’s family, coals of hatred kindled in their eyes as if fanned by the gale. They stood in doorways; pride and terror seared onto silent faces reduced to hollow shells. Lightning flashed, and in that instant of flickering glare, Tiva saw them as they were; grinning, scowling corpses walking, their eyes ablaze with a mockery of holy fire, on faces that sagged with the reeking decay of the living dead. She knew now that they could never change, that any appeal to either fear or conscience would only have the same hardening effect, no matter what she said.
A drop of icy water struck her forehead.
Satori regarded his dripping daughter and son-in-law with a certain relief when they entered his antechamber. He was glad to hear that A’Nu-Ahki’s invitation remained open, although he did not intend to take it.
Sutara cried, “Pahpa, you’ve seen the sky and the wind! Have you ever seen it rain like that before? Why won’t you and Petara come with us?”
Satori shook his head. “The strange weather is understandable given the passage of those two heavenly rocks. But no sacred astronomer—including A’Nu-Ahki—believes they will strike the Earth. An E’Yahavah-influence rehabilitates! I won’t believe in an E’Yahavah that destroys!”
Iyapeti replied, “Those core fragments don’t have to strike Earth. You assume that the world can still be rehabilitated.”
Satori gazed at the storm outside through a narrow glass window. “How cynical you are for one so young. But I’ve seen a few centuries. The cosmos is eternal. The world will keep going as it always has. It must.”
“Come on, Sutara,” Iyapeti said, tugging at his wife.
“Please Pahpa!”
Her father laid a hand on her shoulder. “If the storm gets worse, I’ll get Petara and we’ll come out for the extra shelter, okay?”
“Don’t wait too long,” Iyapeti said, as he pulled Suta outside.
Tiva was relieved to leave the village behind. As they approached the culvert bridges, large drops of water from the tormented sky became roaring sheets. The windstorm tore through the meadow and shipyard, impeding their progress, until they reached the shelter of the ship’s hull.
Sutara and Iyapeti raced across
the field to join them. Then they all circled to the ramp on the ship’s starboard side. Tiva glanced up at the bronze hieroglyphs emblazoned on the upper bow, which read, Barque of Aeons. She now wished she’d had the strength to face her family again.
The remainder of A’Nu-Ahki’s livestock huddled against the downpour beneath the ramp supports. Khumi had dismantled most of the scaffolding long ago, but a few sections were left for some last-minute work on the starboard waste scuppers. Tiva felt sorry for the animals there. They reminded her of her father’s followers.
Thunderbolts slammed the turbid air. Much wilder than the soft flickers of mountain heat lightning that she had always known at a distance, these white-hot arcs shot from horizon to horizon, shaking the ground under Tiva’s feet and rattling her bone marrow. She screamed, stumbling for the ramp, as the skies kept exploding, and falling water bludgeoned her face.
Then she saw him between her rapid eye blinks to keep the rain out.
Not even the havoc in the sky could so thoroughly terrify her as the white-clad man who suddenly stood atop the gangplank. Immovable, his dark, soaked hair whipped in the wind, though his eyes stayed wide-open, looking straight through her, as though immune to the icy water darts.
Tiva felt naked and cold—as she knew Atum-Ra and Ish’Hakka must have felt when confronted by this same being, on the day of their banishment from Aeden. It reminded her of when her father had walked in on her and Khumi after they had made love in the forest—although with one huge difference. Here she felt some reassurance. She could still feel shame and remorse. Her father and his people clearly could no longer do so.
The man on the ramp spoke louder than the wind, yet he did not need to scream to do so. “Come into the vessel with your household, A’Nu-Ahki, for I have seen your integrity before me in this generation.”
Drenched, Tiva’s father-in-law led the family up the plank to the Visitor. Tiva still huddled under Na’Amiha’s arm, tears flowing wild as the rain. Even now, she involuntarily clutched against a silent call to surrender her anger. She wanted to, but felt emotionally paralyzed, unable to eject the pain and bitterness. She cried, barely restraining them from dominating her. An assurance from deep within told her that this was enough for the moment.
They paused at the hatch, where E’Yahavah’s Word-speaker gave A’Nu-Ahki further instructions: “Of every livestock beast you need to take seven pairs, male and female. Wild beasts must be taken by twos…”
U’Sumi crumpled with his head in his hands. She expected her husband to gloat, but found him also on the planks, face buried.
“Also, there are fowl to be taken in sevens, male and female—the purpose is to keep seed alive on the Earth’s surface. For in seven more days, I will cause it to rain on the Earth forty days and forty nights. Every living substance I have made I will now wipe from the face of the land.”
Tiva shuddered. Seven days—the same time he took to create the world—remains for us to mourn it.
To Tiva’s surprised relief, the rain suddenly stopped and the overcast broke. The wind died instantly to an ominous, steamy calm.
The Visitor had vanished, allowing them all to board the ship.
Soon after, Tiva watched U’Sumi and Khumi return outside, arm in arm, to choose the remaining six pairs of livestock. She wondered at her husband’s sudden humility, but more over how long it would last.
She brooded on this continually as evening and morning marked the first day.
The re’em (a fabulous legendary animal of gigantic proportions) did not enter the ark; only his whelps did.
—Rabbi Judah
an ancient Midrash
5
Week
The day after the storm, Nestrigati gazed out of his ziggurat suite window at the strangely dull sunlight that bathed the pyramid-roofed ridge crest homes of Floodhaven. It somehow made them appear sickly—like his translucent reflection in the glass. Purple bags hung under his eyes in a raccoonish bandit’s mask. His wavy auburn hair had gotten unkempt and stringy.
The former student of A’Nu-Ahki could feel the shadow that had fallen over his community. People spoke only in terse whispers—at least whenever he was around. A rift had formed among his elders, and Nestrigati did not know what to do about it yet.
Everything seemed ready—Floodhaven’s channels had drained the rainwater, with no erosion under the kapar stone ducts. Even so, Nestrigati’s children clutched at his heels, and whined at the least thing. His wife spoke only in snips and jabs. The Zaqen, Farguti—progenitor of the crossroads town and Nestrigati’s chief financial backer—kept trying to barge past the ziggurat acolytes to see him. The troublesome elder still fussed about the storehouse’s location, and over the fact that they had made only one. Which family does he expect me to turn out into the storm to correct the problem?
The most alarming news had arrived that morning, with what Nestrigati had decided would be his last runner to go down the slopes. He had sent the young man to gather information after yesterday’s strange weather had disappeared so abruptly. Unexpectedly, on the way back from the village orb, the lad had swung by A’Nu-Ahki’s ship to ask about the condition of the Ancient. The runner had learned that Muhet’Usalaq had passed on to his fathers yesterday, and that E’Yahavah had visited A’Nu-Ahki one more time. According to his report, six days now remained before World-end would be unleashed. Why aren’t my visions so clear and precise?
Nestrigati and A’Nu-Ahki went a long way back together—to the Seer Clan exodus through the Haunted Lands over three hundred years ago, when A’Nu-Ahki had slain the Great Wurm as a sign. Nestrigati had then been a ‘tweenaged acolyte under A’Nu-Ahki’s command, assigned to guard the sarcophagus of Atum-Ra. Later, A’Nu-Ahki had shared his astronomic interpretations with him. Both had concluded from the Comet—days before the ‘official’ Apocalypse—that a World-end of water was coming.
I supported his claim to be the Comforter from A’Nu. It’s a shame A’Nu-Ahki got so out-of-touch in his old age—even after I rescued his father and son in the war! Nestrigati still hoped for reconciliation, though he feared it must wait until after World-end beat the pig-headedness out of his former mentor.
The runner’s message posed a dilemma. If A’Nu-Ahki was right—and he usually was—it could bolster Nestrigati’s standing to publicly agree with him, and keep Farguti and his sons in their place. But if I’m wrong, it might be used as a pretext to undermine me further, and more believably. It would mean chaos!
Nestrigati chose.
He poked his head through to the pyramid’s administrative upper core chamber, and had his chief acolyte sound the meeting bell.
The quickfire-enhanced gong echoed over the small precipice city, calling out the inhabitants from their homes and shops to converge in the meeting hall bunkered deep inside the ziggurat’s base. A darker variety of late afternoon red filled the sky before everybody finally arrived. Nestrigati descended his private inner staircase to the podium, last to enter the hall.
The crowd’s apprehensive murmuring settled.
“I have received news today that affects our work here,” Nestrigati said. “Muhet’Usalaq, the Prime Zaqen of Akh’Uzan and son of Q’Enukki the Seer, is dead. E’Yahavah revealed to me that in six more days a World-end of water commences. I suggest you all make final preparations. If you must return to the valley for any last minute business, I urge you to do so tomorrow, and do not dare spend the night there.
“We don’t know if there will be any more preparatory storms like we saw yesterday. If there are, then travel up and down the mountain may become treacherous, despite our reinforcements to the road. At this time I would like us all to stand together in sacred silence for Muhet’Usalaq, who served the Work all his long life, and without whom everything would have fallen apart long before many of us were even born.”
The hall stood still for over a minute. Some of the people Nestrigati saw in the crowd were old enough to remember the sack of Salaam-Surupag and the
Haunted Lands passage, and if not, then the Century War and Samyaza’s Firefall Raids. Some of the men had fought alongside Nestrigati and A’Nu-Ahki at the Battle of Balimar Straits. Still others had arrived by different routes—moving in from Sa-utar or Khavilakki to escape urban crime. Nestrigati prided himself that he had taught them to honor A’Nu-Ahki and his grandfather. I haven’t denied A’Nu’s Comforter!
After the moment of silence, Nestrigati continued his speech. “I have taken the high road in the Work. I’ve not focused on supposed disputes with A’Nu-Ahki the Shipwright. My rumored differences with A’Nu’s Comforter are in reality part of a redundant safety plan. If one survival community should suffer loss during the cataclysm, the other will be there to help it back to its feet when the waters end. A’Nu-Ahki’s ship focuses on preservation of animals, while our Floodhaven stresses humanity, with only a moderate selection of animals in our storehouse barn.
“Now, I know many of you suspect that a feud exists between A’Nu-Ahki and me. The truth is, our efforts work together for a common goal of survival. I ask that we put away any harsh speculations…”
There, Nestrigati thought, as he continued the “impromptu” speech he had long rehearsed for the day World-end began; I’m committed to the six-day scenario. Now I must speak E’Yahavah’s words into the decision.
When the speech finished, the citizens of Floodhaven slowly filed out of the chamber. After the last one departed, Nestrigati climbed his spiral stair to the ziggurat’s apex, and stood on the platform outside the observatory telescope booth.
The sun blushed far earlier than normal on the valley below.
The leader of Floodhaven paced around the apex, and recalled A’Nu-Ahki’s final attempt to convince him to abandon the mountains and to help him build his ship.
Thoughts Nestrigati had long suppressed screamed to the surface. He suddenly recalled his own last words to his mentor: “So it’s all about you! Is that it? Leave my haven, before I start to think of you as a false Comforter!”
The Tides of Nemesis (The Windows of Heaven Book 4) Page 12
