Lamech’s spine felt immersed in ice water. “Yes,” he said, “he will be our joy.” Tears blurred his vision and choked his words as he grabbed her trembling, cold hand and kissed it.
“He will be the voice to a world”—she swallowed hard—“filled with violence. A righteous man among those whose thoughts are only evil.”
“Hush,” Lamech said, and kissed her cheek and forehead, then pulled her to his chest. “I love you,” he said. “I love you.” Over and over, he repeated it.
She reached up and laid her hand against his cheek. “I love you too.” She smiled. Her eyes, which had before been so dim, were now clear. “I will always love you.”
“Stay.” The words caught in his throat, and he sobbed and kissed her. “Promise you won’t leave. Promise like you made me promise!”
Now she was crying, too, and she shook her head. “I’m not angry. I was never angry. Not at you. Only them.”
He nodded and kissed her on the lips. “I’ll mend you. We’ll be together.” But that, too, was a lie. And he knew it.
Lamech had promised he would take care of her, but even then he had known he would fail.
He was just like Father.
Noah cooed, clenched his fists, and softly beat Adah’s breast. Adah reached up and placed a shaking finger in his hand. He seized it and wailed, snorting and sucking for breath. Adah breathed sharply and stilled. Noah’s gums gleamed in the dim light as he screamed for comfort, food, sleep.
Lamech lifted Noah off Adah’s motionless chest and let him clutch his finger as he kissed his wife’s tear-soaked eyelids. He rocked Noah to sleep, weeping beside her until at last darkness fell and he slept with Noah in his lap and Adah’s cold hand in his.
But instead of finding empty sleep slumped beside his dead wife with his child in hand, a dark dream penetrated his mind. In the dream, he lay flat on the cold, dusty ground. Above and immeasurably distant hung cold, white stars in a strange arrangement. Like flint, they sparked in him a near manic desire to study them, as if his life depended on his understanding their alignment.
Then came a sweeping darkness that blocked out the stars to the east, and a voice warm at his neck. “We do not have much Time,” said the voice, “for he is near, and my presence disturbs the Waters. You have endured the deepest pain imaginable, and though I wish it were not so, now is the moment when most is asked of you.”
Lamech tried to speak, to move, to do anything in response, but failed.
“I am sorry,” the voice continued, breath tickling Lamech’s neck as if it were behind him, though he knew nothing but dirt pressed his back. “But I could not risk you disturbing the Waters so soon, so I cannot allow you to speak. When some time has passed, I’ll find you again and show you the way you must take. But for now, you must simply flee the mountain and enter the village you grew up in. There you will find a woman to suckle the boy. Be cautious, for the Abomination hunts your child, and it is closer than you—” The voice stopped and the shadow turned. Footsteps approached, and a chill deeper than any Lamech had felt pricked from his head to his toes. Then, as Lamech felt deadly fingers clutch the hem of his garment, he heard the voice cry out, and felt a rush of air pushing him through the darkness into the light.
He awoke gasping, pressed Noah to his chest, and abandoned his dead wife to find his father. For his wife would never now warm their child with tender fingers, nor use her hands to rock him to sleep, nor apply her kisses to the pains of boyhood. And if the dream was true, he must flee as soon as he could. Noah needed food, and Lamech had none to offer. And so, just as the voice suggested, he would need to find someone who could suckle him.
Tears fell down his cheeks and neck. Dear God, how could he so love a child he had only known for moments? But he could let himself think of nothing else. Because he could not bear the thought of her ruddy skin gone pale. Could not think of her blood splattered across the stone. The sound of her spirit riding her final breath. He tugged at the neck of his tunic, but found it already slack.
Father was still in his hut, motionless but alive. This time he awoke when Lamech shook him. And as Lamech told him in tears what happened, Father said roughly, “I am sorry, my son. Alas, the choice is here. The world is burning. I see it with my waking eyes. A wall of flames rolling over us. And that babe stands against it all, the crux upon which the world has been balanced. If he dies, so do we all. Protect him as you tried to protect her.”
Lamech returned to Adah, swaddled Noah and set him down to weep, then went to bury his wife. As the sun rose, there came a clanging and chorus of angry voices. Lamech snatched Noah and gave him his knuckle to suck to quiet his cries, only barely slipping down the mountainside in time.
He turned to look back. A giant of a man stood at the cliff edge, looking toward the horizon, head adorned with yellow horns and yellow eyes, dressed as a soldier, one arm missing. Others bustled behind the giant, and Lamech saw the glow of flames as his home was burned.
Lamech sped down the mountain, for the first time feeling released. Compelled. Never before had he felt love like he felt for Noah. Warm and swaddled in muslin, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone. In Noah, Adah lived. The blood she spilled still pulsing in the infant’s wrists. A final gift. A consuming blaze that drove him down the mountain, through the forest, and into the deserted village destroyed by fire.
Protect him, Father had said. That, he would do. But first, Noah needed to survive his first week without his mother . . . find a woman to suckle the boy, the voice had said.
And so he would.
Part II
The Devil and the Child
“The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.”
—Genesis 6:4
Chapter 17
The God-King sat in his hastily cast, iron throne, his hands glistening with sweat, the distant sensation of the fabric he tried to grab hold of still echoing in the skin of his fingers.
After more than a millennium, he had caught his original host interfering again. He was certain, for no one else had ever cast such a disturbance over the Waters.
True, the disturbance had been subtler, and had he not been studying the Waters, perhaps he would have missed it entirely.
But that was the most disturbing part. How long had the fool been moving under his nose? It made him thirsty for a cup of blood.
He stood, walked to the entrance of his tent, and tossed the covering wide. “Eunuch,” he said, and the boyish eunuch slipped out of the shadows, bowing low, subservient. “Fetch Berubbal.”
The eunuch bowed a second time, turned, and disappeared down the corridor. The God-King returned, closed the door, and sat.
A quarter sundial later, the massive general entered and knelt before the throne, a colossus shadowing the iron seat. “For what does the God-King desire my presence?” Berubbal’s voice shook the room like distant thunder.
The God-King noted the giant’s features. Yellow horns above yellow eyes downcast. One arm missing. As tall as three men. Filled with a spirit more bloodthirsty than any of its brothers. Berubbal was one the God-King was glad to have in his service. After all, those with the strongest appetites might be controlled through their addictions.
“Berubbal,” the God-King said. “You begin to enjoy your assignment too much. Should I retract the authority I gave you?”
Those yellow eyes flickered. “I don’t know what you speak about.”
“After I commanded you to find the girl, Adah, you challenged my decision to let her go to begin with.”
Berubbal paused longer than expected. “The God-King spies on me now, as well.”
“I have too much to care for now that you’ve helped me conquer a third of the known world. I would be a fool not to spy on my enemies, even more so not to spy on my friends.”
“You finally found one?”
/> The God-King smiled. “You, of course. That’s why I brought you here to listen to a story. And then, perhaps, to answer a question.”
A nod of ascent, for how could he refuse the God-King?
He paced and said, “Years ago, when the world was still covered in the dew of creation, my Father was there, coiled amidst the branches of Eden, where he brought the first man and woman to the knowledge of good and evil. However, after that initial success, our Enemy made a covenant with the woman.”
“I know,” Berubbal said. “We all do.”
The Abomination smiled. “But there is much you do not know. Yes, you know that the Enemy promised the seed of the woman’s womb would crush my Father’s head. But we also know that Eve’s children failed to do as the Enemy promised. Indeed, in his wisdom, my Father saw fit to use the woman’s firstborn, Cain, as the conduit for my birth. And what a sweet victory that was, though short-lived.”
“Get on with it,” Berubbal said, his voice little more than a growl.
“Are you so incapable of mastering yourself that you cannot endure a minute without speaking?”
Berubbal ground his teeth together.
“The prophecy is about to be fulfilled,” the God-King said.
“You seem sure of yourself,” Berubbal said.
“I am as sure of this as of anything else.”
“How?”
“I am able to see with more than just eyes,” the God-King said. “I can also see the shadows of things that have happened and what yet will come to be. Some are unclear. Others are bright as day.”
“You’ve seen this coming savior?”
“I’ve seen Adah giving birth to a child who holds the weight of our futures on his shoulders,” the God-King said.
“And yet you let her go,” Berubbal said.
The God-King met Berubbal’s yellow gaze. “Are you going to make me deal with you as I did Tubal?”
Another pause. “I am still useful.”
“You were hardly able to find the girl, as commanded,” the God-King said.
“She is dead, and we captured the old man they lived with. He calls himself Methuselah. Apparently, he’s the grandfather of the child you speak of.”
“The little foresight you showed in not killing the old man is the only reason you still breathe. Further prove your usefulness by listening to the rest of my story.”
The God-King waited. Berubbal said nothing.
“Good. Already you learn.” The God-King clasped his hands behind his back. “I not only know what might come to be, but also what impact our decisions could have on the future. I am as attached to my father’s designs as a scarlet thread is woven through a tapestry. Indeed, I cannot be removed without unraveling it altogether—and let that give you pause where it did not Tubal. Though I see only in part, I can follow the tapestry’s course well enough to be certain that at particular intervals certain actions would mean disaster. And this woman—this girl who bore the child who might destroy us—she could not have been killed before birthing that child.”
“How is that possible?” Berubbal said, a grin edging the corner of his mouth.
“The Enemy is a cunning weaver at the loom.” The God-King returned to his throne and sat, leaning to one side and lifting a leg over the opposite armrest.
“So, we must stand idle while this savior crushes us underfoot?”
“Of course not. We could do little to her, and less to her child. But what of their choices? What if they corrupted their own way?”
Berubbal’s eyes flashed.
“Have you never thought of why my father has given you the chance to come live in human skin? It is precisely to help me corrupt the human race so that the true Savior might never come. Men are simple. Pressure them with violence or fear of death and they will destroy themselves. If the potential Savior corrupts his way, the world might be damned, and we may seal our dominance. For if we pervert their seed, no Savior will ever come.”
“But the Savior is here already.”
“Only a foreshadowing. And if he fails, we will have succeeded. The rules are subtle—and clearly beyond you—but my father is certain he understands them, as am I. You forget that my father was closest in the Enemy’s company before taking up the second Music.”
“No,” Berubbal said, “I have not forgotten.”
“Then your body clouds your judgment. I have the ability to twist humanity beyond recognition, to give you a receptacle by corrupting humanity so far that no Savior might be born from a human womb. But it might only be done if we first convince them to corrupt their way. If we can succeed in this task, we might have the earth as birthright, as should have been in the beginning.”
Berubbal nodded.
The God-King waved his hand in annoyance. “It didn’t work on the woman. She was supposed to let the others die. Instead, she sacrificed herself to save them. But hope is not gone, for the seeds of bitterness are sown in loss, and we must patiently tend those seeds until the roots grow strong through the child.” The God-King thought of Cain, that infernal interferer who first brought him life, for that man also had been a tender of root and soil. “So, Berubbal. What do you choose?”
Berubbal studied his own fingernails covered with dried blood. “I choose patience. For now.”
Chapter 18
Noah slept in Lamech’s arms during the journey down the mountainside. Several times Lamech slipped and nearly fell, and Noah jerked awake and cried until Lamech pacified him.
Noah had eaten nothing and already seemed to be losing weight. Each time he awoke, he cried longer and harder, until his voice was hoarse.
They were running out of time, and Lamech knew to do nothing but search the village for help. As he approached, his breath quieted and his gaze rolled side to side. Sweat stuck his clothes to his body despite the chill of the wind, and his muscles twitched and ached.
Buildings slumped like burnt bodies, and the smell of ash and singed hair hung like a fog. Half-destroyed goods stuck out of piles of rubble in the marketplace. Tattered pieces of clothing blew across the roads while linens flittered, caught in collapsed windows.
From the way the men climbing the mountain spoke, it seemed there had been survivors. What if some of the enemy soldiers were still here, waiting for stragglers to return to search the rubble for lost loved ones and possessions?
Noah cooed and stretched in Lamech’s arms. His eyes fluttering open. His lower lip jutted, and he began wailing, eyes pouring tears.
“Hush!” Lamech said, sticking his knuckle in Noah’s mouth. “You’re all right.”
But Noah would not take his knuckle. He continued crying, tears soaking Lamech’s tunic.
Lamech searched the rubble for a place to hide, then dashed to the edge and ducked under an arch of a partially collapsed bathhouse.
As Noah stopped wailing and began sucking loudly at his finger, there came footsteps. Lamech held his breath and turned Noah into him to muffle his noises.
Stealthy and quick, a small figure rushed by the entrance, then peeked inside. It was a woman with hair cut short like a man’s, and a bundle oddly strapped to her chest. She must not have seen them in the shadows, for she squinted and slipped farther in.
“Are you alone?” Lamech said.
The woman cursed, turned, and ran.
“Wait!” he said and took off after her, feet slipping on the loose rubble. He followed the sound of her footsteps through the alleys until he lost track.
Stopping, he listened to his pulse pounding louder than her feet. He willed the wind and his heart and the fluttering leaves to stop so that he could figure out in which direction the woman ran.
But Noah was wailing again from being jarred on the way, and for the first time since Adah died, Lamech realized the full weight of all he had lost. His limbs felt leaden, and the knowledge of the days that lay ahead stretched like an endless road, bleak and desolate.
How could he keep Noah alive without Adah? How could he ever be who
le?
He kissed Noah’s forehead. “It’s okay. It’s okay. You don’t need to cry anymore. Everything’s going to be all right.” But the more he spoke, the tighter his throat became, until he could speak no more, and his body shook.
A formidable-sized shadow slid into view, and Lamech jumped and readied himself to dash away. But it was the woman.
They stood watching each other. Gauging.
She adjusted the bundle on her chest, and a tiny hand shot out from the fabric, followed by a coo.
Excitement spread down his forearms and his fingers twitched. “You,” he said, “you have a baby?”
She lifted a hand to block her child from view, but already Lamech wondered of all that had brought him to this moment. His grandfather’s prophecies. The sickness that struck his family. Their flight to the mountain. Mother’s death. Adah’s arrival. A love grown softly, swiftly. Father’s dreams, then his own. And the attack in the mountains, Adah’s death, and the words she and Father spoke over Noah while hovering with eyes to see beyond death’s doorstep and life still enough to speak of what they found.
Whether Lamech’s unshakeable trust in that moment was foolish or not, what could he do but believe that the woman in front of him had been born to meet Noah’s needs?
“My son,” he said. “He was just born in the mountains. My wife, she . . . didn’t make it. I . . .” But the rest was lost in an ache so deep he thought he would be torn apart.
“He needs food?” the woman said, voice hesitant.
“We were attacked by men . . . with horns.”
“Why should I trust you?” She looked around, gazing down alleys that he still remembered, however dimly.
“I grew up here. My father took me into the mountains after my mother became ill. We lost her. We’ve lived in the mountains all these years.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Please,” he said, “I don’t know how to convince you.” He looked at Noah, who cooed in his arms, eyes red and puffy from crying. “He needs help I can’t offer.”
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