Sinners and the Sea (27 page)

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I
wait until the storm grows wild, until cages fly across the floor and sharp blades of rain divide the darkness into tiny pieces. Flashing lightning, booming thunder. Herai is wrapped in her sleeping blanket, securely tucked in with the manlike beasts. I have taken her tunic. It lies on the ground beside me as I straddle one of the seven ewes. I hold the meat knife out to Ham. Though we have no light, I am certain he knows it is there between us. But he does not take it. “There is no other way,” I say.

The ewe fusses beneath me and begins to cry.

“Quickly, son. It is cruel to hesitate.”

I feel the tip of the blade slide away, through my fingers, as he takes it from me. A mother does not need light to know when her son is quivering. I hope my son’s hand will be firm enough for the task.

I squeeze the ewe between my legs and force her jaw open. “Steady,” I tell Ham.

He grasps the ewe’s tongue with one hand, and with the other, he slices it from her throat. I hear the cleanness of the cut. If Japheth were with us, he would be envious of Ham’s skill.

The ewe thrashes beneath me. I press her jaw together to minimize the blood we will have to clean up. “I will keep hold of her. Do away with her tongue,” I tell him.

Ham’s footsteps move off toward the lion cage. There is scuffling that ends as quickly as it began, then the wet, satisfied sound of chewing.

I wrap Herai’s tunic around the ewe, and Ham and I carry the
struggling animal up to the second level. We do not take the ramp all the way to the deck until lightning has flashed and then left the world dark once again. We need as much time in the dark as possible. When Ham trips over his feet, I summon all of my strength to push him onward.

“Who goes there?” Japheth demands. I see the light of his lantern flickering through the rain. Ham rushes the animal to the side of the ark and throws her into the waves crashing below.

“It is done,” I tell Japheth with what is left of my breath. “The ark is rid of evil.”

Japheth’s lantern moves toward us. “The lightning will show me if you have truly expelled the adulteress.”

“Get Noah,” I tell Ham.

Japheth and I lean against the wall of the deck. I say, “Hopefully, God will leave some righteous girl alive so that she may bear you sons.”

He does not reply. Or maybe the rain cloaks his voice. But then he asks, “And what if He does not?”

Now it is my turn to be silent. If he is feeling remorse, I do not want to lessen it.

“Then I will take Ona for a wife,” he says.

“You cannot take your brother’s wife unless he . . .”

Lightning cuts open the veil of black over the sea. In the frothing water below, Herai’s tunic with a body thrashing wildly inside it is visible for less than a breath. Long enough for Japheth to see it.

“Now the ark is
almost
rid of evil,” he says.

It pains me to think of what an attractive child he was, strong,
with big yellow-flecked eyes. Somehow he never noticed neighbors staring at him. He only noticed them adoring Shem. “Do you want your father to cast you out as Adam did Cain? God has commanded that your father and his
three
sons journey to the new world. He will not take only two.”

When he does not respond, I am overtaken by two urges. I want to smack him, and I want to cradle him to me and ask forgiveness for whatever I have done to make him so hateful. I reach for him.

He knocks my hand away. “Keep your embraces. You have given your other sons all but the smallest crumb of your affection. That is fine, I will take what affection I want myself. I will have Ona.”

“And will you provide for Shem’s children when they are born?”

Again he does not answer. We are silent while we wait for Ham to return with Noah. When they approach, Japheth announces, “The adulteress is gone,” as proudly as if it is he who has gotten rid of her. “One more sinner has been fed to the sea.”

“Now God will bless us once again,” Noah says. He sounds more hopeful than certain.

CHAPTER 42

DAY 41

U
sually, we squat and listen to the rain pounding the deck while we eat. But today there is a new sound coming from above.

“Do you hear that?” Ham asks.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Boy,” Noah says, “keep quiet if you have nothing to say.”

“I hear
nothing
from above. The rain has stopped.”

Shem opens the hatch. First water, then gray light, spills down upon us. Though it hurts my eyes to look at it, I cannot look away; I am afraid it will disappear if I do. I reach my hand into the daylight and try to grab it in my fist.

“Come on,” Shem says, hesitating. For half a breath no one moves, and then Japheth hastens up the ramp to the deck. We follow, stumbling blindly into the light and then to the edge of the deck. We look at the sea, the one God has emptied of everything except us.

But the sea isn’t empty at all. Rafts of half-dead bodies, with tiny morsels of life left inside them, float below.

How have they outlived the Nephilim? They could drink rainwater, but what did they eat?

“Hello,” Shem calls to a woman who has lost most of her hair. She lies on a raft holding a blue, motionless baby to where her tunic has fallen away from her breast. “Come closer.”

“Please, you must take my child.”

It is not the child Shem wants, and the woman has no paddle or rudder with which to come closer. Our rope would reach only half the distance between us, and only with a strong wind behind it. And now there is no wind. When Shem leaves to look for more women on the other side of the ark, the woman begins to scream.

My eyes are adjusting to the gray pallor of the new world, and I notice that the birds have lost their color. As if they were bleached by the dullness of the light.

Noah is looking into the sea at the sinners. “They are not gone
. They are not gone.
” He snorts, happy that he is a preacher again. “Behold, children of the God of Adam!” he cries, throwing open his arms. “It is not too late for you. Proclaim your love for the Lord.”

Japheth turns his angry gaze from the sea to Noah. His face is so flushed, it looks swollen. “The sinners have not been destroyed.”

Without taking his eyes off the sea, Noah replies, “God pauses between the rains and the worst of the flooding—the
true
flood. He gives the sinners one last chance.”

This chance looks quite small, unless we are going to throw down the rope.

Noah raises his voice so it rings out over the waters: “Repent!”

“Old man,” Japheth addresses his father, “I must kill these abominations myself, since your God has forgotten them, along with us.”

Noah cheerfully thwacks his staff against the deck near Japheth’s feet. “God has not forgotten us.” He raises his staff heavenward. “The rain stopped, as He promised it would.”

A naked man raises an arm toward us from where he lies on a raft not much wider than he is. I look closer and see that it is a hatch cover. I also see that he is naked not only of any covering but also of the flesh that holds a man’s skin off his bones. “Please help me,” he calls up to us.

“How have you survived, brother?” Ham asks.

“I jumped from my ship.”

“What ship is that?”

“The
God’s Eye
. The captain would have eaten me if I had stayed on board. I would rather be devoured by the sea.”

Noah leans out over the wall of the deck to peer more closely at the man and his raft. “Where did you get the wood?”

“He says he jumped from a ship,” I tell Noah, “because he was going to be eaten. He must have taken the wood with him.”

“You believe him?” Japheth says to me. “Look with your eyes. He is no meal.”

“How long ago was it you jumped?” Noah asks.

“Long enough that I am colder than a man can survive for long.”

“How big is the
God’s Eye
? How many men, and what weapons have they?” Ham asks.

“Let me come aboard, and I will tell you everything you want to know and fight beside you when the
God’s Eye
attacks. I was the fiercest sellsword for leagues in all directions. I have lived all the way until twenty-seven years, and I know I have many more years left with which to serve you.” The man tries to stand but falls forward upon his raft. “I pledge myself to you.”

“It is the God of Adam to whom you must pledge yourself.”

If the man does as Noah commands, perhaps Noah will not stop me from taking him onto the ark.

“I pledge myself to your gods above all the others. I swear my allegiance to them.”

Close enough. I go to retrieve the rope before Japheth can stop me. But when I reach for it, the ark is smacked by a wave. Then we are hurtling along as if we have a rudder and a place to go.

“Where are we going?” I cry. But Noah is not looking at where we are going. He is looking back. I do not know why God should wish to put us in one part of the sea instead of another. Is there any difference? The wave that pushes us is like a giant bull, charging ahead with a fly on its nose. We are the fly.

I search the sea for the man who pledged himself to Noah. He is a spot in the distance behind us, struggling to hold on to his raft in the havoc created by the wave that steers the ark. His struggle is brief.

I leave the rope on the deck floor and join my boys at the bow.

“The sinners are not dead yet, and the sea will not go still until it has them,” Japheth says.

My stomach burns and rises toward my throat. I know he is right. The God of Adam kept me from throwing down the rope. I fear He has displayed them one last time before He drowns them, as a warning to us.

“After He has dealt with these sinners,” Japheth continues, “the sea will return to its place north of the desert, and we will be back on our land.”

“Then where is it we are going?” Ham asks.

“Yes, why would God put us back where He found us when the whole world is free for our use?” Zilpha says. I was so busy looking into the sea that I did not notice her.

“You would not understand no matter how carefully I explained it,” Japheth replies.

“
I
am the daughter of a prophet.
You,
on the other hand . . .” She looks at Noah.

He is still gazing back at the sea where the sinners floated. Now no life is visible for as far we can see in all directions, yet the sea screams. It screams with the voices of those it has taken. A tear rolls down Noah’s cheek.

I go to him, and put my lips against his cold, bony ear. “Husband, do not lose what is left of your command.” But he hears only the cries of the drowned sinners.

Zilpha turns her gaze back to Japheth. “Your father thought God meant to give people a chance to repent. Mine would have known better.”

Still, Noah says nothing, which causes me to hate him a little. I want to cry too, and to yell or break something. But I don’t. We cannot give up what little order remains.

I take a step toward Zilpha. She is the only one I am not forced to look up at. “Kesh is dead. You would be an orphan but for Noah—a drowned one.”

Japheth rarely laughs, but he does so now. Zilpha does not argue. She stares expressionlessly at me just long enough to make it seem my words have not affected her. Then she moves with much more haste than usual to the wall of the deck. She stands on her toes and tries to peer over. This causes Japheth to laugh even harder. Though Ham and Zilpha have said little and have never touched, she calls to him now, “Husband, can you help me?”

I hope my favorite son knows better than to do as she asks. She has insulted all of us by disrespecting Noah. “
Ham,
” I say forcefully. But he gets behind her, puts his hands on her little waist, and lifts her so she can gaze over the deck wall.

I feel as though someone has turned my weak stomach into a tight fist and set my skull on a cookfire.

Japheth laughs harder still. I think he is laughing at me as well now. “And you are worse than she is,” I say. “You dare call Noah ‘old man’ in front of your mother and the God of all living creatures.”

“Now that God has gotten rid of the prideful child’s own father, Noah is
her
father too,” Japheth says, “and her words were far worse than mine. Do not waste your nattering on
me.
”

It is only because of his injury that I do not slap him. “If you do
not respect your father
and your mother,
you are a sinner, and you belong in the sea with the rest of your kind.”

I have never spoken so sharply to him. His eyes bulge, and I think I have wounded him. But I will not take back my words or the feeling behind them. I turn away from him.

Behind us, where the sinners were, the God of Adam has turned the sea into a swirling blade. The remaining sinners are drawn under. Though they scream, surely they must also feel some relief.

CHAPTER 43

MANOSH

H
ave mercy upon us.

During the night, the wave broke apart, rushing away to either side of us. Now the sea rests. Is it digesting all it has consumed, or is God pausing while He decides what to do next?

Noah’s crying roils my stomach. He is not crying out to God, he is just crying.

Dry up the fountains of my husband’s eyes. Do not show us the fate of any more sinners. Please.

But God is choosy when He sifts through our prayers. Or perhaps the man who approaches through the gray light is not a sinner. Even hunched, with his back to us, he looks huge. He floats on bodies even larger than his. Bodies swollen with death gas.

As he comes closer, I see that he has tied planks to his arms with lengths of tunic. He is trying to row with both arms, but only the left plank moves with any force through the sea. I do not know what ties his
right arm to his torso other than skin. It hangs lifelessly over the bodies of his raft, the plank dipping only a hand’s length into the sea. His raft moves in curves as his left arm rudders and rows, rudders and rows.