Forty Days: Neima's Ark, Book One (12 page)

The elephants have already eaten all
the hay that once lined the floor within their fence, and when I
dump this new bale down and begin pulling it apart to make bedding,
Enise and Bilal immediately grab trunkfuls and stuff them into
their wide mouths. I wish they wouldn’t; I don’t think the wood
floor is good for them. I’m afraid some type of sore, or fungus, is
creeping up from the soles of their feet, between the cracks of
their oddly charming toenails; but I don’t want to look too close,
since I have no way to help them.

Bilal butts my side with
his trunk, offering me some hay. “You’re sweet,” I tell him, “but I
don’t think my stomach can handle—” I break off as I realize he’s
holding not hay, but the block of wood I found the other day. “Not
this again?” I take the wood from his trunk, turn it over in my
hands. “I don’t have the time or energy to—” My words peter out
once more as I examine the wood more closely. Surely the remnant I
found the other day wasn’t quite so large, and it didn’t have that
beautiful reddish-gold whorl near one edge, which would make the
perfect elephant eye. I could carve the trunk right there, where
the side slopes down, and then the floppy ear… But I don’t even
have time to
think
of all this. And more importantly—

Where would Bilal get
a
second
piece of
wood?

***

I’ve put the mystery out of my mind by
the time I climb the ladder to the second floor. Arisi is alone in
the women’s room, and she answers the question in my eyes before I
can voice it: “The others are up in the deck house.”

“
Even Shai?”

Arisi shrugs. “Zeda said the air would
be good for her. She tried to get me to come too.” I slump to the
floor beside Arisi as she continues, “I don’t think they’re letting
Shai out on deck, though.”

I close my eyes and
attempt to shut out the vision of that great mass of water teeming
below the deck, dark and unfathomable as an endless nightmare. An
unsettling scuttling sound forces my eyes open again; I’m relieved
to find it’s just Aliye, shuffling her way toward me, looking very
put out that her wings still refuse to lift her. She bobs her head
forward and back as she moves, letting out an occasional squawk,
like an old woman clucking and scolding her grandchildren. Maybe
she’s not only bothered by her wing—I think she’s annoyed
with
me
for
sitting by Arisi rather than in my usual spot beside her
nest.

“
They’re cooking lentils,”
Arisi says. “And an
egg
,” with such wonder in her voice you’d think eggs were made
of gold. Now that we’re not quite so seasick, Noah has brought out
the hearthstones and cooking pots he asked Grandmother Nemzar to
carry on board, and the deck house has become our makeshift
kitchen. We still don’t have
enough
food—we’re rationing carefully, since we have no
idea how long our supplies must last us—but at least we have a
slightly greater variety now. We even have a bit of milk from our
goat and cow.

“
I think Aliye’s hungry
too,” I say as the dove reaches me and begins to peck around my
hands, where I’m sure she smells the grain I’ve been handling all
day. Arisi produces a hunk of rock-hard bread from what appears to
be her personal stash, and I do my best to break it into pieces for
the bird. Only then do I register what Arisi’s been doing: she has
a long coil of goat-hair rope on her lap and is separating it into
thinner strands. Judging by the number of separate pieces on her
lap, she’s been at it for a while. A flash comes to me of the camel
down below, gnawing at her rope, and I can’t help but
shiver.

Arisi notices my staring and holds up
a few of the strands. “I’m going to knot them together into a
fishing net.” She breaks into a sheepish but sunny grin. “Or at
least I’ll try to.”

Relief rolls through me, warm and
soothing. It will be good for Arisi to have a task, and, as I tell
her aloud, “We could certainly use the fish, if there’s any left
out there.” It’s hard to believe any living creatures could have
survived this destruction, but then fish would find the water a
refuge rather than a death trap.

“
Noah didn’t ask us to
bring live fish on board,” Arisi points out, as though she can read
my thoughts. Sometimes I suspect she really can.

“
How would we even…” I
imagine Kenaan trying to capture all manner of fish in a bucket or
barrel, claiming he’s found one male and one female of each type,
and then scrambling to separate them by kind before the larger ones
eat the smaller. Perhaps I’m just too exhausted and overwrought,
but somehow the idea seems so ridiculous, I can’t stop myself from
laughing out loud.

And once I start laughing, I can’t
seem to stop.

My giggles must be contagious, for
Arisi soon joins in, letting out great, desperate heaves of
laughter that I worry will exhaust her. I assume she’s picturing a
scene similar to the one in my own head. Even Aliye, unwilling to
be left out, gives a few chuckle-like chirrups.

“
You know what I’m really
hungry for?” Arisi gasps out between laughs. She regains control of
herself, holding her breath for a long, dramatic moment before she
lets out… “
Dirt
.”

“
Dirt?” I laugh even
harder.

“
Yes,
dirt
,” she says, in the same
awestruck voice as
egg
. “Just think of it: that rich, earthy,
meaty
scent…”

“…
mmm, yes…” I’d give
anything to smell solid ground right now.

“…
the rough, grainy feel
of it between your hands…” Arisi rubs her fingers together almost
greedily.

“
Oh, yes,” I
say.

“…
the crunch and the
weight of it in your mouth, against your tongue…”

She lost me there.

“
And you know what else?”
she goes on, the pitch of her voice rising higher and higher.
“
Salt
. Oh, I
could eat an entire barrel full of salt. Those beautiful, glorious,
shining white crystals…I’m dizzy with wanting it.”

My stomach sinks, the last of my
laughter dying away all at once, as I realize Arisi’s not joking.
She really does want to eat dirt—and salt. We could have brought
salt onto the ark, if we’d only known, only thought ahead, and then
perhaps Arisi wouldn’t be so sick and miserable now.

If we’d only known, if we’d only
thought ahead… So many things might be different. Derya and Jorin
might be sitting here beside me, instead of… Instead of…

I close my eyes again, desperate to
push back the weight of everything I can’t change. Arisi continues
to rhapsodize about salt—salt on bread, salt on goat cheese, salt
by the handful—until her words become a tuneless lullaby, a
nonsense song for children. I focus on the subtle shifting of the
ark beneath me, a motion I’m so used to I barely notice it anymore,
and I tell myself it’s no more than the gentle rocking of a baby’s
cradle.

***

After my encounter with the camel, I
thought I’d be able to relax a bit, but by the afternoon of the
eighth day I’m on edge again. I just can’t shake the sense that
some creature is following me—a creature with two legs, not
four—and I swear I feel eyes boring through me. Sentient,
self-aware eyes that see me as more than a source of grain or dried
meat. I search the space around me as I move through the room, but
the ark is so dim, so full of shadowy corners and narrow spaces
between cages, so alive with bursts of animal movement, that my
efforts seem pointless.

To add to my unease, I
keep finding wood remnants near the cages, remnants I would swear
weren’t there the day before. I suppose the workers left many
scraps behind while building the ark—after all, they never believed
anyone would use it—and that these scraps would shift with the
movement of the water beneath us. Still, there are so many, and
they seem so deliberately placed in my path, that I find it hard to
believe it’s all coincidence. There’s one next to the flower
birds—whose feathers are no longer the color of my favorite
flowers, but have faded to a dull, tired white—one
inside
the baby lions’
cage, and another piece by the shrews that’s so large I trip over
it and nearly—

Wait. What was that? There
it is again: a flicker of movement, a blur of what looks like
cloth. As soon as I turn toward the motion, it stops—which only
makes me more suspicious. The familiar signs of panic rise up—my
breath quickens, my heart flutters like flapping wings—and I
quickly force them down. I will
not
let Kenaan get the best of me.

I take a step forward, in the
direction of the movement, and I see yet another flicker, this one
farther to the right. I turn to follow, my steps surer now, for I
have the advantage here, where he can’t go much farther before
ramming into the ark wall. And my knife is still tucked safely in
the belt I’ve refused to take off, though the cloth is now more
gray-brown than blue. Come to think of it, the transformation of my
clothing reminds me of the bit of flower-birds’
feathers.

I’m distracting myself—yes, that’s
good. Already my heartbeat has returned to a steady, determined
boom in my chest. I take another step forward, then another; the
elephants see me and trumpet, but I’m tracking the movement away
from their corner, into that dark mass of cages…

“
You might as well come
out, Kenaan,” I call. My voice sounds surer than I feel, and it
gives me new courage. “I know you’re there,” I go on. “We need to
talk. We’re going to be on this ark together for a while,
and—”

A figure steps slowly forward from
between two cages, still in shadow so all I can see is a hint of
his ripped, once-white tunic and, above it…a flash of gold? It must
be a trick of the light. I take a deep breath, step forward again
just as the figure moves closer, and—

Gold. Golden bronze hair above a face
grown thinner, lined with streaks of dirt but still unbearably
familiar and it can’t be, he’s dead but—

I take in the torn clothing, the
leaner frame that seems to waver, not quite substantial, the silent
footfalls, and I know:

It’s Jorin’s ghost. I’m not sure if
he’s real, or just a vision conjured up by my own guilt and
longing, but either way the urge to scream rises from my gut, all
the way to my throat, choking me—

—
he comes closer, closer,
till I can hold my cries of alarm back no longer, and
then—

“
Shh,
shh
,” the spirit speaks, placing two heavy
hands on my arms—

—
how could a ghost’s hands
hold such warmth and weight?—

“
Neima.
It’s me, Jorin.” That voice… Those
hands…

I run my own hands over his arms, his
chest, cup his cheeks between my palms, trying to convince myself
he’s truly here, flesh and blood. “Is it really you?” I say aloud.
My hands make their way back down his body, searching for a
heartbeat.

“
Neima, I’ve never known
you to be so forward. I’ll have to suffer through near-death by
drowning more often.” His face, though dirty and ravaged, breaks
into that familiar impish grin.

And then I know it’s really him, and,
improper though it may be, I throw my arms around him. “How did
you…” I speak into his shoulder.

“
I followed you into the
ark,” he says as I pull back to examine him again, still overcome
with the miracle of it. “I had to talk to you, and you just
wouldn’t listen.” His words tumble out, fast and jumbled, as though
now he’s begun speaking he can’t stop. “And then Noah closed the
doors, and the rain was so strong, and I couldn’t get out… And then
the floor started to rise…”

“
Neima!” A sharp female
voice rings through the ark. My mother. Instantly Jorin disappears
into the shadows as she calls, “Are you all right? I thought I
heard you cry out.”

I turn toward Mother where she hovers
in the doorway. “Fine,” I call back. “I only tripped and startled
myself.”

Though I can’t see her clearly, I know
her eyes are narrowed, lips pursed as she regards me. “Well, hurry
and finish up,” she says at last. “I don’t want you down here by
yourself.” And then she turns and walks away.

I can’t force myself to wait more than
a breath before I run back to Jorin. “Why haven’t you revealed
yourself?” I ask. “We could use another set of hands, and you must
be absolutely miserable, stuck down here with the stench and the
stale air—”

Jorin grabs my wrist, hard. “Neima,
you can’t tell them.”

“
Why not?”

“
I’ve overheard your
grandfather—he believes your family is special, set apart, that
only you were meant to survive this disaster. What will he do if he
thinks I’ve destroyed his plan?”

I consider that for a moment. “Noah’s
not a monster. Perhaps he’ll think his God has placed you
here—”

The grip on my wrist
tightens. “Neima,
no
. You must promise to tell no one.”