Ark

by J. J. Wilder

“What do you talk about?” Japheth asked, after a moment.

  “We talk about El. She has many questions. And we talk of other things.”

  “Like?”

  “Like why you have abandoned her. Why a god would allow such horrible things to happen, both to her and to you.” Neses did not look up from the clothing she was setting out to dry, but her words stung all the same. “She wonders about the many names of El, and she wonders at the purpose of life, if El is going to wash the earth clean.”

  “And what do you tell her?”

  Neses didn’t answer right away. She finished hanging a robe over the wagon and then stopped, her hands resting on the lip of the basket, her gaze finally lifting to Japheth’s. “I tell her what truths I possess, which are not many.

  “I do not know why you would bring her here and then abandon her so completely, among a people foreign to her. I do not know why El allows pain and horror and violence. I do not know why men kill men.” She paused, swallowing hard, her gaze dropping, along with the volume of her voice. “I do not know why men rape women. Why my Lord Elohim would create such beauty in this world, and yet allow such ugliness. I do not know. I think, sometimes, that I will never know.”

  “I haven’t abandoned her, Neses—” Japheth started.

  She cut him off, quietly yet effectively. “Yes, you have.” She met his eyes once more. “I see it, she sees it—we all see it. It was cruel of you to bring her here, among us, only to leave her alone so you can wallow in your own pain.”

  Anger boiled up inside Japheth. “You do not know what I have endured, Neses! You cannot fathom what horrors keep me awake at night.”

  Her wide brown eyes narrowed, her jaw tightening, her slender body stiffening. “Oh no? You think not?” She leaned forward, her fingers gripping the basket tightly. “You think you alone have lived through nightmares?”

  “Of course I don’t think that, but—”

  She only stared at him, her expression so rife with disgust and contempt that he fell silent. “You have not earned the telling of my truths, Japheth, son of Noah. But hear this: time is short. Your days with Aresia are numbered, and that number is dwindling swiftly. She knows this, and she has accepted this as well as anyone could. But what about you? Will you allow her to spend her remaining days on this earth alone, and in misery? Nephilim she may be, and El alone knows I have no cause to feel compassion for her kind, but all creatures on this earth are deserving of comfort.”

  Japheth felt her words hitting his heart like a hail of arrows. “What do you mean, Neses?”

  She only shook her head. “You know very well what I mean, Japheth. Refuse to believe if you will, but when the floods come you will regret wasting this time.”

  “You truly believe the whole earth will be flooded?” he asked.

  “I do.” Two simple words, but Neses’s quiet voice imbued them with an utter surety that pierced Japheth’s doubts.

  He sighed and had no response. After a moment, it became clear there was nothing else left to say. Neses, the girl he had known all his life, had given him much to think about.

  Japheth turned away, and his feet carried him toward the towering hulk of the ark, its long profile a dark shadow with the sun behind it. Wedges of sunlight speared through gaps in the sides where the work was yet unfinished, laying striped paths of red and gold over the waving green of the grass. Shem’s mallet echoed, as ever—thock-thock-thock-thock . . . thock . . . thock-thock.

  Aresia was sitting in a pool of light, a pile of rushes beside her, which she was plaiting into a basket. Her work was clumsy, the chore unfamiliar to her royal hands, but she was working steadily, her focus so total that Japheth’s presence went unnoticed until he cleared his throat and shuffled a sandal in the grass.

  She glanced up, and her gaze remained cold. “Japheth. Is there something you need?”

  He hesitated, unsure why he was standing in front of her, or what he was going to say. “I—”

  She gazed up at him, waiting. “Speak or leave.”

  “Do you feel I have abandoned you, Aresia?” he asked finally.

  She stared at him, and then returned her gaze to her work, bending a rush into a loop to fit another through it. “To say you abandoned me would suggest a deeper relationship than I think we ever had.” She frowned, realizing her plait was crooked. As she spoke she undid it, straightened the crooked piece, and tried again. “I deceived myself into thinking a bond existed between us. I now realize that was childish dreaming on my part.”

  Japheth absorbed her statement.

  He sat facing her, set a stack of rushes in his lap, and began plaiting. “You think there was nothing between us? That there is nothing, even now?”

  She kept her gaze on her work. “We shared physical pleasure, Japheth, nothing more. We spoke of nothing real, nothing deep. We never shared anything of our true selves. Our only bond was that our meetings were dangerous, and we paid the price. I was the princess, and you wore a name of the forbidden god. I meant nothing to you, nor you to me.”

  “That is neither true nor fair, Aresia.” He looked at her, but she refused to lift her eyes to his. “It was more than that. It was—it was becoming more than that.”

  “Be honest, Japheth. What we had was infatuation. It was lust. It was nothing.”

  “Then why did you marry Sin-Iddim?”

  Her hands froze. Her entire being went still and stiff, but she still didn’t look at him. “Because Father would only have killed you as a way of punishing me. It was unjust.”

  “If I meant nothing to you—if what we had meant nothing, you wouldn’t have cared what happened to me.” He ducked his head, trying to catch her eye. “And if you meant nothing to me, I wouldn’t have risked my life for you, and I wouldn’t have brought you all the way here.”

  “That may be true, but if you truly cared, you would have done something when I begged you for comfort!” Aresia’s voice snapped like the lash of a whip, hard as stone, cold as ice, sharp as a blade.

  “I should have—” Japheth started, but couldn’t finish. He tried again. “I have faced many hardships, as you know. I have seen the face of Nergal coming to take me to the underworld, and yet I lived.”

  “What is your point, Japheth?”

  “That day in Ur . . . those hours in the hands of Mesh-te, the priest—they were the darkest of my entire life. They . . . he broke me, Aresia.” Japheth’s voice cracked, and he swallowed hard before continuing. What Mesh-te did, how he did it . . . and the fact that it was merely because of the name of God on the necklace . . .”

  “You never told me what happened to you.”

  He shook his head. “I . . .” He shook his head again. “A priest of Ereshkigal took me prisoner in Uruk. He saw that necklace, and decided to punish me just for wearing it. He brought me to his temple and hauled in a prostitute from the temple of Inanna, and he gave me herbs that . . . forced me into an arousal I did not want and could not control. I was bound to a chair, unable to move. He forced that prostitute, who was no more than a girl . . . he forced her to mount me. To show me how one is meant to worship Inanna, he said. And as she . . . performed her duties in front of the priest—he . . .” Japheth stopped, unable to continue.

  Aresia was pale and horrified. “Japheth, I had no idea—”

  Japheth’s face twisted in a grimace. “There is more, but I will not speak of it.” He choked on his breath, on the knot in his throat. “Those are terrible memories that will always be part of me.”

  “Just as a part of me will never leave Sin-Iddim’s bed chamber.”

  Japheth nodded and set aside the basket he’d partially woven. “I didn’t mean to abandon you, Aresia. I am broken far more than I thought—I don’t know how to—”

  “We can comfort each other, Japheth,” Aresia said, her voice soft, quiet, tremulous, hopeful. “Just be near me. It doesn’t have to be . . . that, just—all I need is to know that—to know I’m not—not alone.”

  He shifted s
o he was sitting beside her, the ark behind them blocking out the reddish rays of the setting sun. Wrapped his arm around her, and pulled her close. “You’re not alone, Aresia.”

  She was stiff for a moment, and then she relaxed, shifting downward to rest her head on Japheth’s shoulder. “Thank you.”

  The evening shadows grew long, and they remained thus, clinging to each other as the stars emerged from the darkness in a spray of luminous silver, until Aresia’s head nodded, and she drifted downward onto Japheth’s lap, and he continued to hold her as she slept.

  In the darkness, in the deep drowning blackness of the night, away from the house and the ark both, in the waist-high grass sat a woman. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, her delicate arms wrapped around her shins. Her hair was loose, tangled in long strands around her face. She inhaled deeply, attempting to gain control of her breathing, to tamp down the pain, but the inhalation became a shudder, and a fresh wave of tears seeped from her eyes and onto her chin.

  In the distance, she could see the profile of the ark outlined by the starlight. Between the wavering stalks of grass, a flame flickered. It was but a small candle, its light casting a dull orange glow easily seen against the vast infinity of the dark sky. Yet the feeble illumination was sufficient to cast shadows upon the side of the ark, like cave paintings come to life. The shadows twisted upon the walls of the ark, telling a story.

  The woman, utterly alone in the wide emptiness of the fourth watch of the night, could not look away from the story unfolding on the walls of the heaven-sized vessel. She could not look away but, equally, she could not stand the pain watching.

  On the wall of the ark, a hand reached up, fingers trembling. Another hand, larger and masculine, joined the first, and the fingers tangled together. A spine arched, and a knee bent. A moan quavered, long and high and then muffled, as if lips were pressed against a shoulder. A shoulder lifted, and then the shadows rolled, coiled, and shifted, and now a pair of profiles were cast upon the wall, male shoulders and a spine and hips, flexing, and beneath him long, feminine legs lifted, wrapped around those hard hips. A hand reached up, and another moan echoed, joined soon after by a low rumble. All this, told in the flickering and jumping of shadows.

  Neses watched, unable to stop herself.

  Elohim, she prayed, the plea clanging in her mind like a scream, take this from me. Take this love away. Strip it from my heart, so I no longer feel this pain. Have I not suffered enough, my Lord? Have I not yet endured enough, El Shaddai?

  She heard no voice, felt no answer. The heavens were silent, and the cracks in her heart widened, deepened, and her tears ran like a river.

  After a time, she could take no more, and stood, fleeing back to the house. She rolled into her pallet of blankets near the cook fire, but as dawn leavened the darkness with gray and pink, sleep continued to elude her.

  As it always had, especially since Japheth had returned, the grip he’d always had on her foolish heart had never left.

  13

  The Seventh Day

  “‘Seven days from now I will make the rains pour down on the earth . . .’” Genesis 7: 4 (NLT)

  The ark was nearly complete. The outer and inner surfaces had been painted with several coats of thick black pitch, until every crack and nail hole was filled and sealed against the waters. Inside, the three levels had been finished and divided into stalls and spaces, with a massive door in the side.

  I marvelled anew every single day. I watched them all working together to complete construction; Zara, Sedele, Ne’eletama, and Neses all helped as well, most domestic work abandoned now. There was a sense of feverish urgency, propelled in part by the wall of black clouds gathering in the east. The men attended to the construction, while the women worked on the finer details; the men building the door and framing out the stalls and hauling in baskets and barrels of supplies while the women prepared the living space inside the ark. The more urgent the work became, the more alone I became . . . during the day, at least. At night, Japheth spent his time with me under the belly of the ark. He held me, and made love to me, and comforted me, and I soothed him to sleep and we found at least a measure of peace in each other.

  I felt Neses out there, however. I knew she was watching us—but I was unsure whether Japheth was aware of her scrutiny.

  During the day, Neses avoided me now, our temporary alliance formed out of my loneliness broken when Japheth came to me that night.

  Storms gathered in the east, lightning flashing miles distant, echoed much later by grumbling peals of thunder. Those storms approached, and swiftly. Wind blew, now, all the time, night and day, a hard hot breath-stealing presence. The wind was alive, I sometimes thought, as I watched Noah and his family scurry about like mice. The wind blew grit in stinging curtains, crunching between my molars and gathering in the valley between my breasts and sticking in the hollows of my ears and crusting in my nostrils. The wind bent the grass flat against the soil, and in the forests to the north I heard trees crack and shatter and topple which was, I now believed, the breath of Noah’s God, The One God, El.

  I heard rumbling, too. Not thunder, but something else. A shuddering under my feet, as if the very earth itself was shifting, as if there was some mighty pressure gathering in the depths of the rock. Over my head, the sky was blue, always blue, cloudless and clear, but the eye was ever drawn to the east, where the thunderheads gathered in mountainous black ranges, obscuring the sky. There in the east, if I peered and squinted, I could see drifting, draping, twisting, wind-blown curtains of rain, like a wall marching ever westward toward this place.

  I wondered what the locals in the nearby village thought of the wall of storms, what the cities that blackness had already engulfed were experiencing . . .

  I did not doubt Noah. I did not doubt Elohim any longer. I did not doubt the coming of the flood.

  But now—as I sat in the back of the wagon, watching Noah work, watching Japheth hauling basket after basket of grain, bale after bale of hay, and endless haunches of slaughtered mutton, watching Shem and Ham settle the massive door into place at the top of the ramp leading up to the middle deck, watching the women gather bundles of clothing and baskets of candles—I heard in repeating echoes Noah’s words: you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives . . .

  There was no doubt as to the implication—there is no place on that ark for a Nephilim. I am not Japheth’s wife—neither is Neses, but they were betrothed, and have been since childhood, and Neses is a human.

  Zara’s eyes went to me, now and again, filled with sadness.

  Japheth—I did not know what he thought, for he worked as feverishly as the rest of his family, only stopping to collapse in my arms long after sunset. He avoided my eyes, even when he moved above me.

  He knew what the future held.

  Later, when the day’s work was done and Noah and the others slept in the house, Japheth emerged from the darkness, a candle in his hand, its light adding to that shed by the candle at my feet. He moved slowly, stiffly, as he lay down beside me. He reached for me, but for the first time, I denied him, turning my face away from his lips.

  “What is it, Aresia?” he demanded.

  “What will happen to me, when the flood comes?” I asked.

  He rolled away from me, staring up at the stars, his arm over his eyes. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you not?” My tone was sharper than I had intended, but I do nothing to soften it.

  He sighed. “No.”

  “There are not so many possibilities, Japheth.” I sat up, placing my back to the wood of the ark’s outer wall. “When the flood comes, you and your family will enter the ark, and either I will be with you, or I will not.”

  He sat up too, and I gazed at him. His jaw flexed, tensed, shifting as he ground his molars together, and his thick bicep twitched as he passed a hand through his curls. “I don’t know, Aresia.”

  “You do,” I snapped, my voice a whisper. “You do know. Perhaps you refuse to admit it
to yourself, but you know.”

  “My father has not spoken of it, yet.”

  “Look to the east, Japheth!” I shouted, suddenly angry. “The storm gathers! Have you not felt the earth shaking under your feet? You feel it, do you not? The coming of the rains? The approach of a storm such as this earth has never seen . . . I feel it, Japheth. You feel it too, or you would not work at so driving a pace.”

  “Yes, I see it. I feel it.”

  “And do you believe the flood will come?” I demanded.

  He sighed. “Yes, I do.”

  “Then surely you must wonder at my place in all of this. ‘You, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives.’ Those are the words your father spoke to me, the words Elohim spoke to him.”

  I rose to my knees, reaching for Japheth, anger turning to fear, to terror, to desperation. “Am I your wife? Do I have a place on this ark? Or am I fated to drown when the waters come?”

  He growled, backing away from me, his fingers raking through his hair yet again. “I—do—not—know, gods damn it!” he shouted. “What do you want me to say, Aresia? You want to hear that my father will deny you a place? That Shem has told me as much? That Sedele and Ne’eletama whisper of it at night? Is that the truth you wish to know? What am I supposed to say? We are just now learning how to love each other, and I—I cannot stop this. I feel the truth of it—of course I do! The storms in the east, they are no normal storms. The rumbling in the earth, the rains that approach? They are from El Shaddai, and I cannot stop them. What am I to do? I don’t know—I don’t know!”

  “Make an offering to El, then, on my behalf. Pray to Him. Ask your father.” I reached for Japheth, and this time he allowed me to grab hold of his arms. “I do not want to die, Japheth. I want to live. I want . . . I want to love you.”

  He exhaled wearily, lying back onto the grass. “I will speak to my father in the morning.”

  I lay down beside him, my heart beating wildly.