Forty Days: Neima's Ark, Book One (6 page)

“
Hatches,” my trader says
as Japheth disappears behind a cage of mean and unhappy-looking
weasels. “Openings between levels of a ship are called
hatches.”

I can’t stand to watch this much
longer—the animals crying, my father and uncles sweating and
swearing, the villagers grousing and griping—and soon I’m thanking
the trader and heading back across the bridge to the
village.

I’m almost across when a figure comes
running toward me, a familiar bronze-headed blur. He brings back
memories of yesterday afternoon that cause tension to coil in my
stomach, and I walk faster, looking determinedly past
him.

Jorin reaches me just as I’m about to
step off the bridge, and he stands there, trapping me, his breath
fast and ragged. I don’t like this.

“
Neima,” he gasps out
between breaths, “you have to let me…explain…about
yesterday…”

“
No.” I start to push past
him, and his warm brown eyes turn wide, desperate, in a way that
only makes me angrier. Where was that concern yesterday, when I
needed it? “I don’t want to hear it.”

Jorin opens his mouth to
speak, but before he can, I sense a presence approaching us from
behind. I stiffen as a voice calls, “Jorin? Why are you talking
to
her
? Don’t you
have work to do?”

Jorin’s jaw clenches; his muscles
tighten, hands fisting till the veins stand up on his forearms.
“F-father, I—”

Before I can see how Jorin will—or
more likely, won’t—defend me this time, I brush past him and hurry
toward home.

***

On the fifth day, the clouds come
in.

I sense their presence
even before I step outside, for when I wake the house is as dark as
night. Only the chattering of birds and Mother’s grumbling from the
kitchen tell me it’s indeed morning. More than that, though, I
can
feel
the
change in the air even through our thick mud-brick walls: the
atmosphere has become close and heavy, like hot, sweaty fingers
pressing against my skin. It gives me a strange urge to retch,
which I must struggle to shake off.

When I do go outside, the clouds hang
across the sky like a great mass of wool in a vat of blackberry
dye, as though the entire world is in need of dark cloth—perhaps in
preparation for mourning? It’s hotter than ever, though now in a
sticky, oppressive way, and I have to remind myself that once the
first drops of rain break through, relief will come.

My load for the ark is lighter than
usual today, for I’ve stacked my cart full of empty leather water
skins, which I’ll fill at the river and use to water the animals
aboard the ark. If I remember correctly, most of the animals had
wooden water troughs within their cages, but I do steal our pigs’
food trough and clean it out, to hold the elephants’ water. Noah
certainly won’t mind—I think he’d be happy if we starved the pigs.
Ever since he began hearing the Lord God’s voice—or so Mother tells
me, since I wasn’t alive yet to witness it—Noah has showed a great
distaste for swine, and he still refuses to eat their meat. He
won’t even allow Nemzar to bring the flesh of a pig inside their
cottage.

As Mother, Aunt Zeda and I head to the
ark in our usual line, we pass Derya standing outside her cottage,
studying the sky. I lag behind, and the noise of the cart bumping
over the still-dry earth is so loud, I know Derya must hear it. But
she doesn’t look my way. Finally I say, “Derya,” and she turns
slowly toward me. Slowly and…reluctantly? No, I must be imagining
things, though her eyes lack their familiar spark.

Still, seeing her for the
first time since Kenaan and I…since the bird trapping, I’m
overwhelmed by the need to tell someone, to tell
her
, my best friend, the
one who’s never judged me for Noah’s madness, what has happened.
The desire swells inside me like the rain within the clouds above,
and I can barely hold it in for another second. Derya will toss her
head and say Kenaan’s a vain, selfish boy, the same way she says
the villagers are foolish and insufferable, and I’ll feel so much
better.

But I’m not sure how to
begin.

“
I…I haven’t seen you much
the past few days,” I say.

She looks down at my cart with
narrowed eyes. “You’ve been busy.”

“
Oh, it’s been awful. So
much work for no reason at all.” Once I start talking, the words
come faster and faster. “Did you see the animals? And now we have
to water and feed those dangerous beasts…”

“
It hasn’t been all work,
though, has it?” Derya’s voice is sharp, slicing right through my
words.

“
What do you mean?” I have
no idea what she’s talking about.

She looks away, hesitating for a
moment…and then she turns those green eyes right on me. “You and
Kenaan. He’s telling everyone how you kissed him in the
woods.”

My cheeks smart as though I’ve been
slapped in the face.

“
Oh, don’t look so
shocked,” Derya goes on. “Did you really think he’d keep quiet?”
She sucks in a heavy breath. “How
could
you, Neima? You know how much
I’ve always cared for him, and you’ve never liked him at
all.”

I don’t know what hits me harder: the
fact that Kenaan’s telling people I kissed him, or that Derya
believes him. I glance around to make sure no one’s watching, and
then I grab Derya’s hand. “No,” I say, “that’s not what happened at
all. Kenaan…he…I pushed him away, but he tried to force—” The words
are impossible to get out, no matter how badly I want to release
them.

Derya snatches her hand away. “Now
you’re lying too? Kenaan would never do something like
that.”

Panic swells suddenly inside me, like
clouds invading my chest and throat. “Please”—I glance around
again, afraid Kenaan’s going to materialize out of the sweltering
air—“can we just go somewhere private, so I can explain? I’ve
wanted to tell you so much—”

Derya’s eyes harden into little green
gems. Drops of sweat appear on her creased forehead. “No,” she
says. “I never want to speak to you again.”

***

She didn’t mean it,
I tell myself as I yank the cart forward, nearly
tripping in my effort to put distance between me and
my—former?—friend. Sweat beads and drips down my own forehead, and
I struggle to inhale the stale, soggy air.
Derya’s just upset, and this weather has us all on our last
nerve. Noah and Uncle Ham and Aunt Zeda, Mother and Father and
Kenaan, none of us are behaving as we ought—

And why am I always making excuses for
everyone else?

I don’t think about any of this for
long, though, because when I reach the far side of the river, there
is a tiger. And it is not a cub.

The animal paces behind the thick
wooden bars of its cage, its orange and black and white body
immense, its muscles rippling beneath its fur in a way that reminds
me of molten bronze: liquid and white hot and very, very dangerous.
Every once in a while it draws its lips up and back in a snarl,
revealing fangs that, even from a distance, I can tell are longer
than my longest finger. Behind the tiger, another, smaller
orange-and-black shape lies curled in the corner of the
cage.

No other cages or free-roaming animals
crowd the grass today; it’s as if the tiger’s owner arrived late on
purpose, to avoid upstaging the other creatures with this great
cat’s magnificence. And its ferocity

The same group of disgruntled
villagers is here again, too, keeping well away from the cage. They
protest in much lower tones than they did the day before, as though
they’re afraid to let the tiger know it’s displeasing
them.

Well, I’m afraid as well. As soon as I
can fill these water skins I’m heading to the ark, and for once
I’ll be glad to step inside—

“
Are you one of Noah’s
daughters?”

The man who approaches me must be the
tiger’s owner, for he certainly isn’t from our village or anywhere
nearby. His accent is even more inscrutable than yesterday’s
trader’s, though it’s completely different, a drawl that stirs his
words together into a thick, soupy mass. He wears a strange outfit
made entirely of leather, and a long, thick scar runs the length of
one arm like a mark of honor, or bravery. Or perhaps just
stupidity. Some wild creatures, I think, should simply be left
alone.

He’s still awaiting my answer, and
I’ve begun to shake my head no when he gestures to my cart and the
full water bladder in my hands. “You take care of the animals,
yes?”

“
Uh…”

“
I’ll show you how to feed
the tiger.”

I nearly spill water all over my
skirt. “Oh! No! I’m sure my uncle…,” I don’t really want to
sentence anyone to this fate, but I settle on, “…Ham will be happy
to learn. I’ll go find him right—”

“
I showed the men already,
but you should know as well.”

I look around for my father or uncles
or even Mother, knowing any one of them would put a stop to this,
but they must all be inside the ark or back in the village. And the
trader—no, hunter—is just standing there, so I reluctantly follow
him closer to the tiger, aware of the villagers’ eyes on me all the
while.

Soon I’m close enough to see the
tiger’s amber eyes that catch the sun in their corners, its long
and incongruously delicate whiskers, the burnished tint of its fur.
It takes my breath away. Behind it, the cub raises its head to look
at me, a perfect miniature. “Are they…are they mother or father
and…”

“
Mother and son, yes.” The
hunter is right beside the cage now, and when he pulls free a wide
panel of wood, my heart lurches: it looks like he’s removed the
entire back of the cage. He hasn’t really—it’s only an extra piece
of wood propped against the back—but my nerves prompt me to
ask:

“
Couldn’t it—she—chew
through those bars if she wanted?”

The hunter gives me a mischievous,
gap-toothed smile. “She might try, if she’s bored or angry enough,
but I doubt she’ll get far. These are thick, strong bars of cedar
wood”—he strikes his hand against the front of the cage, making me
jump back, though the tiger barely seems to notice—“and she’d have
to break through quite a few to make an opening large enough for
her body.”

I hope he’s right.

He slips the wood panel through the
bars in the side of the cage, just in front of the pacing tiger,
and pushes it along until it extends out the other side. “Now, you
can open the front of the cage to clean it and bring in food and
water.”

Wonderful. That makes me feel so much
safer.

Tiger or no tiger, there’s still an
ark full of animals to feed, so I take my leave of the hunter and
head back to the river to collect my cart.

***

I thought fresh pitch on a hot day
might be the worst odor in the world, but I was wrong. The worst
odor in the world is the urine and dung and sweat and fear
emanating from dozens of caged, confused animals, all cramped
together in a wooden structure on a muggy afternoon. When I first
enter, the smell nearly knocks me over. I should probably clean out
some of that dung, but I decide I’d rather put up with it and get
out of here faster.

It’s dark in here, too, and with all
the cages that weren’t here yesterday, I find myself stumbling as
my eyes adjust. Gradually I make out my mother and Aunt Zeda,
Father and Uncle Ham and Japheth, all running around carting sacks
of grain and barrels of salted meat, looking nearly as frantic as
the animals themselves. This is a huge job, and I’m sure the
presence of a tiger outside doesn’t help.

Mother sees me and grabs me by the
arm. “Don’t go near the meat-eaters,” she tells me. “The men will
handle them.” I’m happy enough to obey her, but there are still so
many animals left—in addition to the ones that arrived yesterday,
Japheth has been trapping all week. He’s brought in two
knock-kneed, trembling young deer he’s fenced into a corner;
porcupines and hedgehogs that appear permanently curled into
prickly balls; rabbits and squirrels and even mice, though I
suspect quite a few of those are already hidden in the dark
recesses of the ark. Or perhaps the cats have frightened all the
wild mice away, even from within their cages.

Some of the animals are so far outside
my realm of experience, it’s hard to know what to feed them. When I
reach the large, stick-legged birds I’ve decided to call
flower-birds for their pink, petal-like wings, I sprinkle grain on
the floor of their cage. They peck disconsolately at it for a
moment and then turn away. I can almost feel their homesickness
through the bars between us, and it makes my chest ache.

“
Fish,” a high voice calls
just behind me, and I turn to see Shai. I didn’t even realize she
was here. “Feed them fish.”

“
I don’t
think…”

She’s already run off, and she returns
a minute later with a handful of salt-cured fish. I frown down at
it.

“
They live near the sea,”
she insists, breaking the fish into small pieces and throwing it
right into the birds’ full water trough.