I close my eyes in gratitude a moment. It’s only Nela I have to deal with, not all of them. I open my eyes and wipe the sweat away. “Why did you come up?”
“To see every which way. Now that the ark has stopped moving, it’s not dangerous—and I couldn’t wait any longer.”
“You can see better in daytime.”
“Daytime’s impossible.” Nela turns in a circle. She turns again. And again. Slower each time. “It’s magnificent. The vastness of it. The sea is like the heavens now—endless. It makes me understand how small I am. That’s what I hoped for.” She gives a sad little laugh. “A different perspective.”
“Who knows you came up?”
She straightens a little. “Don’t think about trying to throw me overboard.”
“I’m not. Really. I’m just trying to figure out who’s going to show up next. Who’s going to come looking for you?”
“Are you joking? If you really listened to us all, you have to know I didn’t tell anyone. Noah won’t let us do anything unless it’s his idea from the start. And he seems to have no ideas unless the Mighty Creator tells him to do something. So I snuck up here. Everyone else is asleep.”
“And you brought a knife.”
“I came ready. But you’re not dangerous.” She laughs. Then she sobers up fast. “It’s not like you said—no one’s going to accept that you have a right to be here simply because you are here. Noah’s the one who tells us what the Mighty Creator wants, not you. You’re in trouble.” Nela puts her left hand to her cheek. Her right hand still holds the knife.
“I know why Queen doesn’t become with child.”
Nela’s eyes widen. “Why?”
“She’s too young. She’s never gone into heat, all these months. I don’t know when she’ll be mature, but I bet she’s got a couple of years to go.”
Nela nods. “I thought so. That was the most likely reason. I just hoped . . . well, you know what I hoped. You listened.” Her voice is an accusation.
“I didn’t mean to. I mean, yes, of course I listened. I had to know what was on your mind. I had to be ready to flee or defend myself all the time. But I didn’t try to know secrets about your life. I wouldn’t do that to you on purpose. I swear, Nela.”
She blinks, then smiles.
“The first time I saw you, you reminded me of someone. A girl I loved. But you’re pretty different from her. You’re strong in lots of ways. You pay attention to things others ignore. I like you. I always used to wish we could talk.”
She gives another little laugh. “So, are we to be friends then?”
“I hope so. Because I need your help.”
Her face goes wary. “How?”
“No one can come up here. Please. If Noah sends someone up, you have to stop them.”
“I can’t. What excuse could I give? But I could warn you if I hear someone’s going to, and you could go down to another deck. Maybe back to the bonobos.”
“How?”
“The same way you got up here.” She raises a brow. “How did you get up here?”
“I can’t tell you. It would only make it harder for you to keep silent about me.”
She looks horrified. “You don’t practice the secret arts, do you? You’re not demonic?”
“No, nothing like that. I’m just a person—like you.”
“Really?” Nela shakes her head. “I couldn’t survive on this roof alone. How do you do it? How do you even get water?”
“I lower the bucket with a rope.”
“But sweet water?”
“I crack fish bones. The spines hold water. So do the eyes.”
“How do you get fish?”
“The same way you do. Please, Nela, believe me. I can’t do anything special. That’s why I need you so much. If you don’t protect me . . . Please. Don’t let them find me.”
Nela looks at me with troubled eyes. “I’ll try.”
“And . . .”
“And?”
“We just made friends, but we can’t see each other again. You can’t come back up here.”
“Why not? I won’t tell anyone.”
“If the women should wake while you’re gone, they might go looking for you.” Good grief—if they went looking for Nela in the night, they might stumble across Bash on a lower deck. I swallow hard. “If they realized you weren’t anywhere to be found, they’d wake the men and someone would think of the roof. And even if no one did, when you showed up again, they’d question you. Or they might even be there when you go down and see where you came from. I’d be lost.”
“Mother Emzara sleeps like the dead. And the other women are like my sisters. I could tell them.”
“Ada, maybe. She understands breaking rules. But could you really tell Leba?”
“Ada understands breaking rules? How do you know that?”
I shake my head. “I can’t see you again, Nela.”
“Maybe you’re right. But it would be nice to have someone to talk to who isn’t . . . I don’t know . . . who isn’t locked in my world.”
“Also . . .”
She touches her cheek again. “You have more bad news?”
“No, I just wonder. Please, could you give me that knife?”
“A knife’s not like a bucket. They’d notice. Someone would get blamed. Probably Ham. I’m sorry.”
Nela walks toward the rear of the ark.
“Wait.” I get up and walk after her. “Tell Ham you love him.”
“He knows I love him.”
“No, Nela. He thinks he’s unlovable. You might be the only one on this ark who thinks otherwise. Tell him. Say it often. Let it bind you together.”
She nods.
“And stop eating your dress.”
She opens her mouth, then closes it, then opens it again. “How will you deliver your baby all alone?”
“Don’t think about it. Really. Don’t. You can’t come back. No matter how much I wish you would.”
We stare at each other. But only for a moment.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Night 192–Day 200
Bash’s head appears over the edge of the ark. I can’t hold back the words a second more: “Nela was here.”
He comes up and scans the whole roof. The he puts down the bucket he’s holding and comes to where I sit. “Tell me.”
So I tell him everything. He encircles me in his arms and legs and holds me tight. We stay that way till dawn.
With the first light, though, he goes searching around the rear part of the roof, scratching with both hands. He’s looking for that hatch. “Here it is.”
I walk to him, surprisingly alert for not having slept all night. It’s as though we’re both so far beyond exhaustion, sleep has no relevance. I look over his shoulder. “It fits so perfectly, it’s easy to overlook.”
“But we shouldn’t have overlooked it.” Bash turns and sits now. “Or I shouldn’t have. I was up here months before you. I should have inspected every handbreadth.” His face looks sick.
I rest my hand on his shoulder. “We can inspect now.”
So we get on hands and knees and inspect every little part of the roof. But that hatch is it—the only surprise up here.
Bash stands. “I’m going swimming.” He walks to the rope.
“Is it safe?”
“The ark’s stuck fast, so there’s no danger of it floating out of reach while I’m off it.” He disappears over the side. Just like that.
I’m still ajangle from the excitement of Nela’s visit. But now I feel like I’ll jump out of my skin. It’s so cold, that water might numb him. And what if someone should look out one of the portholes and see Bash swimming along? What if . . . no! I put both hands in my hair. No, no, no. He’s in the water. There’s no point in thinking like that. There’s nothing I can do now.
I sit on the edge of the roof and let my legs dangle over. I’ve never done that before. It makes me feel light. Giddy. I grab the roof lip and stare off at Bash, way out there. I
’m not used to being alone in the daytime. I want him back. Beside me. I’m bereft.
His long arms stretch out in front of him in the water and circle out to the sides and come back in again, over and over, so firm, so swift. His grace pierces me. Bash moves lopingly on this roof, awkwardly, like a pole that remains upright against all odds. But in the water, he moves smoothly. His beauty undoes me. For a moment I’m able to let go of worry.
Then I see what he’s after. A whole tree floats out there. Its leaves are long gone, of course, but somehow it has stayed mostly intact. And something is caught in its branches. Something unrecognizable. My whole body goes on alert. I don’t shout, though. He’s too far off to hear me and I don’t want anyone else to hear me, and oh misery, he’s already reached it by the time I realize for sure what it has to be, anyway: a carcass.
I shove a fist into my mouth so I won’t scream. Rotted dead things carry evil; you can get sick from them. Bash has to know that; he knows everything. Please, please, don’t let him touch it. But he touches it. Of course. He struggles with the thing. Whatever still covered those bones seems to slough off in an instant; the early sun glints off a skeleton. Bash yanks free a thick bone. He tucks it under his chin and returns to the ark, swimming on his back.
He climbs the rope, still clutching the bone between chin and neck. He lays it in the center of the ark roof carefully, almost ceremoniously. He kneels over it and shivers.
I rub his cold arms as hard and fast as I can. “You’re acting like that bone is a treasure.”
He puts his hand to his mouth and spits into it. Then he holds that fist out to me. “It is. You’ll see. And so are these. My present to you.”
I peel his fingers open. Five pistachio nuts. I smile. “They’re sealed shut. Maybe they’re still good inside.”
He tilts his hand, and the nuts roll onto my palm. He doesn’t say a word about when we’ll crack and eat them. It’s a tacit agreement, as though talking about a future act like that would be courting tragedy.
I squat and rub one hand over the nuts, picking off bits of seaweed. I’ll keep them dry and safe somehow. This is a wonderful present. I look up to thank Bash, and he’s gone. I stand. He’s already at the rope, already climbing down. I am biting my fist again. Right now all I want to do is hold Bash’s hand and just let all my emotions settle and maybe even sleep awhile. Exhaustion has finally hit me. Surely he needs sleep too. But there he goes.
I stand and watch him swim out in the same direction, and the next thing I know, he’s pulling that tree back toward the ark. Is he crazy? It’s full morning now. Chores have begun for sure. If Bash tries to carry that whole tree up here, he’ll bump and clunk and someone will look out a porthole. I have to stop him.
How? I look around for something to throw to get his attention. He’d never feel a pistachio nut. And I don’t dare throw that bone, now that he’s called it a treasure. The only other things we have are our two buckets. And I might hurt him. I might hit him in the head and knock him out.
I tug on the rope and pull it till it’s out of his reach.
He gets to the bottom of the ark and searches around. Then he looks up and sees me. He just stares. I don’t dare call out. I shake my head big. He treads water and keeps looking at me. This is stupid. And dangerous. I don’t know what to do.
He puts one hand to his lips and blows me a kiss.
I don’t know what that means. But I can’t leave him freezing there any longer. I have to trust that he hasn’t lost his senses. There’s no other choice: I lower the rope.
Bash ties the tree to the end of it. Then he climbs up, leaving the tree in the water. As soon as he’s over the edge, I clutch his arm. “You’re not going back down.”
“I wasn’t planning to.” He shakes off like a dog. Then he slicks the water off his chest and arms and legs and now his face. His lips are blue.
“You’re sleeping now.”
“I was planning to.”
“With me.”
“That’s the best way.”
And so we lie down in the center of the roof, and for once I try my best to curl around him, though my belly makes it hard. I breathe hot on his back till his gooseflesh goes smooth. We sleep.
That night Bash hauls the tree up to the roof. He sets it on top of the hatch down to the deck below. It isn’t heavy enough to stop someone strong from pushing up that hatch, but no one could do it silently now—no more surprises.
The thick bone is from the thigh of a hog. A hog is some kind of domesticated boar—Bash tells me all about hogs. He lets the bone dry out for a few days. Then he carries it down into the lowest level of the ark one night. When he comes back up, he’s carrying bone shards. He bashed the bone on the deck floor till it splintered. Now we have knives. Incredibly sharp ones. Tools of survival. Hope quickens my breath.
I use a knife to slit the side seams of my shift at the very middle; it’s gotten tight lately. And I use them to gut fish and to slice fish skin into long, thin strips for the ropes I’m making. Ropes always come in handy, after all. These are not ordinary knives. They’re better. They hold a point; they always stay sharp.
We get better equipped each day, after that hideous windstorm stole everything. Bash is good both at snatching things from the lower decks—we have two more buckets now—and fashioning tools. He swims every day, right before dawn, and gathers all sorts of things that he says might come in handy. He found a large tortoise shell caught in another tree—but left that tree behind, thankfully. And he found big rocks that float. They weigh almost nothing. We don’t know what to do with them, but we saved them.
One morning I’m standing in front of our leafless pistachio tree, the one that blocks the hatch, and looking at a long dried strand that loops everywhere, when Bash comes up behind me. “What’s that?” I ask, pointing.
“Guts. They got tangled in there when I pulled the hide off that hog.”
“If I wet them down, I bet they’d make good rope.”
“Brilliant! But I have a better idea for them.”
“What?”
He smiles and holds up the tortoise shell. My heart thrums.
We wet down the guts till they’re supple again, and I patiently untangle them. Then I cut a long thin strand, while Bash carves notches on the sides of the tortoise shell. He winds the gut strand round and round the shell, securing it in the notches.
“Not too tight,” I say. “The sound has to be quiet.”
“Right. But at least now if they throw us off the ark, the tree can be our raft.”
Inside my head, I see Aban on our cedar branch raft. The pain of that sudden memory nearly blinds me. But I get hold of myself, and when Bash finishes stringing the shell and looks at me, I try to smile.
I play our odd zither and we whisper-sing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Day 263
A large hump moves across my belly from one side to the other. It’s been a couple of moons since I slit the sides of Nela’s shift. It’s snug again. Too snug. That means every major move the child within me makes not only presses on my innards but is visible to anyone watching my belly. I’m watching my belly now. I wonder if Bash is. He sits beside me, very still. His large hands rest on the floor, fingers spread.
I have the urge to touch this man. Just his fingertips. But I don’t. Bash and I don’t touch each other without reason. I watch the moving hump of my belly; it is a reminder of Aban. He’s the one I could touch anytime I wanted.
Screamer sleeps in front of us. He’s dreaming, loudly. He makes chirping noises, his paws twitch, his whiskers flutter. I hope it’s a good dream. And I smile.
I’m so very glad to have Screamer around again. If he wasn’t out of reach, I’d pet him now. I pet him intermittently all day long, even though he sleeps most of the time. I tap his ears with a finger and watch him bat at it, still asleep. He seems kittylike when he does that—endearing. Sometimes I pick him up and crush him into a fluff ball and stuff him under my chin,
like in the days when he was small. But Screamer’s with me only a few times a week, and only during the day. Bash has trouble catching him. And when he does, he has to carry the kit in his teeth by the scruff of the neck as he brings him up the rope and later back down the rope, because Screamer won’t ride on Bash like he rides on me. They aren’t friends.
Queen and The Male are absent. After the windstorm they never came back. It must have terrified them.
It hurts not to see them. But I tell myself it’s better this way. Safer for all of us. And I try not to be greedy. I have Bash and Screamer.
I’m hot. It’s barely dawn, but we’re awake because it’s too hot to sleep. After that cold spring, summer came with a snap of the fingers. The air smothers us. And this shift is hot too. I should cut the seams even farther. Or just take it off altogether. Maybe Bash can leave it in Queen and The Male’s cage, so someone can discover it and it winds up back in Nela’s hands.
I haven’t seen Nela since that night she climbed the ladder up here. I hope she’s getting on better with Ham. I hope all of them are getting on better. I have no idea. Noises come from the top deck now and then. Shutters still cover the windows there—how else could they keep the birds in—but now that the ark’s grounded and not crashing about in the seas anymore, I can catch the stray muffled voice. I can’t make out what they’re saying, though. Sometimes I know it’s an argument and sometimes I know it’s not. But that’s all. What we can catch is singing, and they sing most evenings. Someone plays a horn. Someone clashes cymbals.
Bash and I join them in our own way. We play our tortoise-shell zither and whisper-sing, huddled together. I wish we could join them really, be part of a group of people sitting around a fire singing.
And I wish I could send Nela a message.
Oh. I just realized that if Bash put Nela’s shift in Queen and The Male’s cage, she might think something awful had happened to me. She might come up here to check. No. I’ll keep this shift. Someday I’ll need it again, I’m sure.
All at once I’m full of wishes for things I may never have. I have to stop this. I don’t want to think about sad things now. Now I’m letting myself be happy. Yesterday I spotted a group of huge brown rays gliding through the water far below. They moved slow and lazy, like the world was good and nothing could ever go wrong. I want to hold on to that feeling. I gaze around. “Look!” I point with my toes.
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