“What could be worse?” Beor asked.
Noah shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m not the devil. His knowledge is much greater than mine. I would never think to match my wits against his. No. My only hope is to obey Jehovah, to rest on His promises. Let Jehovah war against the devil, for only He is strong enough to defeat him.”
“That makes sense,” Beor said. “But why bring us all the way up here to tell us this?”
Noah grinned.
It reminded Hilda of Ham. In that moment, Noah looked just like his youngest son.
“Come,” Noah said, “I’ll show you.”
6.
Hilda bent her head against the icy wind and struggled after Noah, following his path through the snow. She found it difficult to believe that the Ark had ever landed up here. How could all the animals have been unloaded in this dreadful weather? For that matter, she found it difficult to believe that the Earth had ever been covered with water. Where had all the water gone to then? Why didn’t the water cover all the Earth now? Noah claimed that deep chasms and canyons had been made for the excess water to drain into. In the Old World, the oceans hadn’t been as deep as they were now. Perhaps it was so, yet it seemed unlikely, thought Hilda. How could a ship hold all the world’s animals? The Earth teemed with beasts. It swarmed with sparrows, hawks, crows, bats, locusts, wasps, flies, worms, snakes, rats, jackals and hordes of antelopes, elephants, wolves, cattle, donkeys, cats and dogs. She became breathless just thinking about it. Could a mere one hundred years of breeding cause such an explosion of beasts?
With the wind shrieking in her ears, Hilda followed Noah’s broad back. She hurried, using him to shield her from the worst of the stormy weather. Old Noah seemed invincible up here, where at Festival with his cough and fever, he’d been a shell of a man. She glanced back. Her father’s face was pale with exhaustion, made more so perhaps because of his shaggy black beard. He lifted his peg leg. Like a spear, it sank into a drift. Then he plowed through the drift and repeated the process. She pitied her father and marveled at his determination.
“Oh,” she said, bumping into Noah’s back.
He regarded a wall, one that towered before them. The wall was a part of a mountain.
A few moments later, her father stood with them. With his gloved hand, Beor brushed tiny icicles off his eyebrows.
“You look lost,” Beor wheezed.
Hilda glanced at Noah. Frost iced his eyebrows and beard just as it did her father. Noah seemed like a creature of the snow, a monster that lurked in these dreadful mountains. He seemed perplexed.
“We should keep moving,” Beor shouted.
The wind whistled down the snowy wall. At times, puffs of snow followed, as if the mountain sneezed on them.
Noah lurched suddenly, at the wall, using his gopher-wood staff to wipe at it.
Hilda and her father traded glances.
Noah kept at his task. Then he lumbered back to them. He shouted at Beor. “Do you have your axe?”
“What’s wrong, Noah?”
“Give me your axe.”
With his furry mittens, Beor fumbled at his belt, at last drawing a hatchet.
The icicle-bearded patriarch went back to the wall, chopping at it. It seemed a futile gesture. Steam rose from him. He kept hammering, ice chips flying.
“What’s he doing?” Hilda asked.
Her father shrugged.
“Why doesn’t he bring us to the Ark?” she asked.
Beor frowned, and he glanced at her again. “Where is the Ark?”
“Up here somewhere,” she said.
“Yes, yes, but where? Wouldn’t snow cover it?”
She glanced sharply at Noah. The old patriarch hammered at the…it was an ice wall, a glacier!
Noah peered into the hole he’d chopped. He whirled around. “Hurry! Come here.”
Hilda crunched through snow. Billows of misty breath pumped out of Noah’s mouth. He had thrown his hood back. Steam rose from his head.
“You must squint,” Noah said, “and then peer into the ice. Look where I chopped.”
Hilda hurried there, and she squinted. Excitement stole her breath. Dizziness threatened. Deep in the ice was wood, the planks of a ship.
“It’s the Ark,” her father whispered.
Goosebumps rose over Hilda. The Ark. She had heard the stories all her life. In fact, the giant barge’s voyagers were her great grandparents. She had heard the stories all her life and half disbelieved them, or found them hard to believe. It was such a fantastic tale. Yet here it was. This ship had sailed from the doomed Antediluvian World, carrying in its belly the entire world’s supply of surviving animals.
She swallowed a lump down her throat.
That meant Jehovah had destroyed a world with water. The Flood had happened. She had always known that, but to see the Ark… Lamech and his children—Jabal, Jubal, Tubal-Cain and Naamah—had changed a world through a new civilization. They had lifted man from the Stone Age and into the Bronze and Iron Age. Strange melodies and songs had fired the imaginations of men, played on instruments never heard before that moment. The songs, wild, passionate and oh so enjoyable, had plowed the minds of men, preparing them for a world infested with demonic invaders. Because they had plenty to eat, leisure time and boredom, they had turned to nefarious deeds. They had brought on themselves the judgment of All Mighty Jehovah.
“We must stop them from building the Tower,” Beor shouted.
“You must warn them,” Noah said, “or at least speak to those who will listen.”
“That’s what I’ve been doing,” Beor shouted. “It got me kicked out of Japheth Land.”
“No,” Noah said. “You’ve warned people against Nimrod. As a warrior, you’ve stood against another warrior. With the power of hatred, you’ve gone as a messenger. What I’m saying is that you go in the love of Jehovah. You must go as a prophet, a preacher of righteousness. You must warn people of a coming doom not brought about by Nimrod, but by the old Serpent, the devil.”
Beor peered into the hole. He shook his head. “I’ve never been a preacher of righteousness. I’m just an angry man, as you’ve said, plotting for revenge.”
“It’s time to be a prophet,” Noah said, “a preacher of righteousness.”
Hilda and her father looked at the Ark again.
Finally, Noah shouted, “We have to head back.” He pointed at dark clouds. “There’s going to be a blizzard. We have to leave before we’re buried with the Ark.”
The three of them turned from the glacier, turned from Mount Ararat, and began the long trek back to Noah’s house on the northern slope region.
7.
A month later, Beor and the others, in lumbering oxcarts, trundled up and down denuded hills—forests reduced to a thousand stumps. Beor in his odd gait led them, with serenity on his face.
Hilda stared at the sun. It burned. And she cried out in surprise as the nearest oxcart creaked over a stone, causing the overburdened cart to lurch, making the pots, pans and pottery implements on top clatter and clank and threaten to fly out. One of the pulling oxen peered over his shoulder at the noise. Then it returned to trudging one plodding step at a time.
Calmed by the beast, Hilda stayed her switch, yawning soon, wishing it wasn’t so unseasonably hot.
Later, while shaking his head, Yorba sidled next to her. “I don’t understand him anymore. He talks like someone I no longer know.”
Yorba meant her father. Beor had absorbed something elemental from Noah. At first, she had approved because her father seemed happier, no longer brooding. Then he seemed almost monomaniacal about talking about Jehovah, as if nothing else interested him.
“I used to know what we were about,” Yorba said, lifting his bow. “Gaining vengeance against Nimrod. Now your father talks about the devil, about defeating the evil one’s plan.” Yorba glanced at her. “At first I thought it was a clever idea, a disguise for his real motive. Now I think your father is serious.”
�
�He is serious.”
“But it’s Nimrod who is the problem. He cheated the sons of Canaan. Are we to forget that?”
Hilda shrugged.
Soon, with his sleeve, Yorba wiped his brow and moved on.
In time, they came to a long wall of logs seven cubits high. A horn pealed, and a gate creaked on bronze hinges, swinging inward.
They had reached Shem’s Valley. The houses were scattered randomly, log cabins plastered with reddish-colored mud and surrounded by low stone fences and milling sheep and goats. A higher stone fence cordoned off the valley center. There, booths and stalls orbited a huge log building with small windows on the second floor and a tiny door at ground level. Eber, their guide, called it Elder Hall.
They unpacked, and before Hilda knew it, her father had stepped onto an overturned tub in the marketplace. There, he launched into a sermon. In a voice once used to command hunters, Beor spoke about King Lamech of Nod, how he had sought to build a civilization without Jehovah. A crowd gathered. Some young men arrived, men who after Festival had visited Babel. They jeered when Beor tried to explain that the Tower builders were just like Lamech’s sons.
“Nimrod builds the Tower to the glory of Jehovah,” a youth shouted. “He sacrifices every morning.”
“Yes,” Beor said. “He sacrifices to the angel of the sun, not to Jehovah.”
“It’s the same thing,” a different youth shouted. “You just hate Nimrod because he beat you.”
“Yes,” a third youth said. “He beats you every time you compete against him.”
Beor tried to explain otherwise, but they continued to mock him.
Hilda grew worried as she recognized the old signs of anger and resentment. Her father lost his serenity. His eyes hardened and his beard bristled. Several youths produced rotten vegetables, pelting her father. Beor roared, with green mush staining his forehead. He leapt off the tub and felled a youth with his fist. The rest scattered.
That evening Beor found himself summoned to Elder Hall.
“Let me go with you,” Hilda said.
Beor shook his head, leaving her with Yorba at the hall’s small door.
Time passed. Yorba grew bored and wandered away.
Hilda waited and waited. What was going on in there?
“He should be out soon.”
Hilda whirled around, and she bowed.
Shem smiled at her as he rubbed his chin. “The elders like to make speeches, and I’m certain the idea of a Hamite preaching to Shemites grates on them. Ah. Look. Here he comes now.”
Beor squeezed through the small door. He looked angry. The sight of Shem surprised him.
Shem inquired on the proceedings as Beor apologized for causing trouble.
The patriarch waved that aside and pulled Beor down a lane, toward a modest log cabin. “I want the two of you to join us for dinner.”
“After what I did?” Beor asked.
“I want to hear what you have to say about King Lamech of Nod,” Shem said.
“Why?” Beor asked. “You surely know more about him than I do.”
The smaller, older man studied Beor. “You’re a preacher, and I’ve been having a strange dream.” Shem smiled, a troubled thing. “Will you join us?”
Beor nodded, and Hilda could tell that he was bewildered.
For supper, Ruth served lentils and beef. Afterward they sat around, speaking pleasantries. Finally, Shem said, “The dream is why I wanted to speak with you.”
Beor sat up, expectant.
“My dream is of a strange bird that lives in a faraway land, a desert. Why, I don’t know, but I realize that it’s lived for five hundred years. This bird, a most beautiful creature—its plumage is partly golden and partly red and shaped and sized like an eagle—dies, consumed by fire. I see then that it has died by fire in Babel. Then I’m touching the ashes, and the bird, a phoenix, arises, new and well, living once again.”
Beor sipped water, waiting. “And then?”
“That’s it,” Shem said. “I wake up. Can you tell me what it means?”
“Me?” Beor asked. “How should I know?”
“Does the bird represent sin?” Ruth asked. “Is it sin consumed by the Flood and now reborn in Babel?”
“Or does it mean that I’m to go to Babel,” Shem asked, “and there revive something that is being or has been slain?”
Beor stroked his beard. “Which do you think most likely?”
Shem shook his head.
“I told him he should go to Babel and find out,” Ruth said.
“But if I go, I’m afraid that in my absence my sons will decide to move out of the valley,” Shem said. “Those who went to Babel after Festival were deeply moved by what they saw. They yearn to help lift us out of primitivism and back into civilization.”
“They want to move to Babel?” Beor asked.
“Either that or start a sister city beside the Tigris River,” Shem said.
Beor brooded, shrugging in the end. “I wish I understood. But your dream befuddles me.”
Shem seemed downcast, dispirited.
“Ask him,” Ruth said.
Shem scowled, shaking his head.
“Ask me what?” Beor said.
Shem seemed embarrassed, but Ruth nudged him. Finally, he said, “I need someone I can trust to go with me to Babel.”
Hilda saw the unease in her father.
“That Noah walked alone into danger I’m well aware of,” Shem said. “But I’m not Noah. So I’ve pleaded for Jehovah to send help. Who better to help me than a preacher of righteousness?”
Beor swallowed, causing Hilda to wonder how he’d get out of this, and to wonder why Shem didn’t simply take one of his sons. Then her father surprised her by saying, “I’d be honored to go.”
8.
Changes had taken place in Babel and changes troubled Ham. All winter long, he’d been exiled with a team of youngsters, working, digging, making a reservoir for an extended canal system.
Because of what Nimrod had done at Festival, the people followed him as War Chief. High Priest Kush strived against him for his old authority. Yet even with Deborah’s wisdom, Kush fell behind.
The War Chief had an advantage due to the constant influx of immigrants, who looked to him for leadership. Some came from Japheth Land. The ex-Scouts of Beor joined the Hunters, having an affinity for that kind of service. Others moved from Shem’s Valley.
Kush’s failure, his loss of nerve and the drubbing from Noah proved choice items of gossip. What gave Nimrod even more power were the Hunters who followed him with greater allegiance, even backing him against their own kin. New bronze armor—patterned off Beor’s fish-scale—gave the leaders among them a regal appearance. They seemed like heroes, men of renown, while Nimrod outshone them all. His lists of feats seemed legendary: wrestler supreme, dragon slayer, lion killer and leviathan hunter. No one had a better record than the Mighty Hunter.
Thinking about Nimrod, Ham sighed as he thrust a shovel into a bank of mud. His back ached and he shivered from a chill wind.
No one called his time here exile. Nimrod was too crafty for that. The War Chief said the youngsters needed a guiding hand, someone with proven ability, someone they admired. All winter long, Ham and Odin endured wind, rain and cold. They also guarded against hyenas and wild dogs. Odin rotated the duty, showing the lads how to hurl javelins and twirl slings. Ham guided the actual project.
The workers shoveled clay until the wooden pails brimmed. A lad put a carrying pole over his shoulders and staggered up a ramp, dumping the mud and occasional stones onto the rim of the growing embankment. Nimrod wanted the grand Babel Reservoir, as he had named it, to be the town’s storage lake. In times of drought, they would tap the reservoir for water. It was a good plan but grueling work.
It meant Ham was fitter now than at any time in the last twenty years. The work also hardened the lads, which was part of the idea. As spring approached, the lads eagerly awaited the floodwaters to boil into the reservoir
. They pestered Ham to give them a celebration. They also suggested that Odin return to the city. He should beg Nimrod to dedicate the reservoir to the angel of the sun. They wanted a party and they wanted to see the Singers.
Ham straightened, thrust his shovel into the mud and stretched his back. The youngsters kept working, the sound of their shovels striking earth a constant sound. Ham coughed. He’d picked up a cold. For the last few days, he’d lain in his hut, resting. He still felt achy today and decided to call it quits.
He trudged up the creaking ramp and limped along a path strewn with swaying reeds. Several leagues later, he neared the Euphrates with its high banks and obligatory date palms. There, he came to an open area with a wall of thorns. It was the protection against hyenas and wild dogs. He limped to a cluster of reed huts, weaving around piles of pottery shards, bones and sniffing guard dogs. The huts were crude, although they kept out the wind and rain. He untied his sandals, crawled onto a reed mat and fell into a troubled slumber.
Barking dogs woke him later.
His throat hurt worse than before, but he tied on his sandals and threw a cloak over his shoulders. He ducked outside just in time to see the gate open and a chariot pull in. Ham whistled at the dogs, calling them. Then he noticed the fancy charioteer. It was Canaan, who had come alone.
Canaan wore a soft square hat of leopard-skin, a scarlet robe, a golden belt and tiny sliver bells on his boots. Canaan hurried to him, the bells tinkling all the way. A black piece of obsidian, polished so it shone and circled by copper, dangled from his son’s throat. Ham didn’t know if it was an amulet, talisman or a new badge of office.
“Canaan,” Ham whispered in way of greeting. His throat hurt too badly for him to talk any louder.
Canaan clasped his hands. As he did, tears leaked from his son’s eyes. “You must come quickly, Father.”
“What’s wrong?” Ham whispered.
“Mother has swooned. It happened three or four days ago.”
“What? You only came now?”
“Everyone thought she would revive. She has before.”
Wives of the Flood Page 73