Forty Days: Neima's Ark, Book One (9 page)

When I’ve managed another trip to the
bucket in the corner and collapsed on my blanket, I decide I won’t
make the mistake of moving again.

I’ve been enclosed within
these four cedar-wood walls for an eternity. A lifetime. Lifetimes.
I think what’s worst of all is being able to hear and feel what’s
going on outside, but not to see it, not to
know
. It’s like walking around with
a thick, itchy wool cloth pressed tight against my eyes. Except I’m
still not doing much walking.

I’d swear my ears have grown more
sensitive, though, and out of the cacophony of birdcalls from the
room beside us, one in particular seems to pierce though me. It’s a
low cooing, smooth and hollow and somehow unbearably sad, that
sounds a bit like the reed pipes Derya’s father used to play. Even
through the higher, more demanding chirps and squeals, I recognize
that call: a dove’s song.

Kenaan’s been feeding the birds since
he recovered a bit from his sickness, and I’ve been staying away as
much to avoid him as the reptiles. But right now Kenaan is with his
parents, grumbling about his stomach again, and I decide I must
find that dove. I can’t ignore its cries of distress any
longer.

I rise slowly, painfully, with one
hand against the wall to brace myself, and as I move toward the
bird room I keep my hand on the wood. If I let go I would surely
fall, for the floor still tips in all directions. It’s mainly just
a slight rocking, but every few steps I take, an alarming lurch
threatens to send me sprawling across the ark. Then I have to stop,
leaning both hands against the wall, as I wait for my spinning head
and stomach to recover.

It seems to take hours, but at last
I’m close enough to the bird room to make out a new sound: a dull,
repetitive thud that echoes inside me, as if my bones are knocking
against each other. I force myself to move faster, but then I hear
a shrill voice call, “Slow down!”

I turn my head to find Shai following
behind me. “Wait for me,” she cries, trailing one hand against the
wall like I’ve been doing as she tiptoes forward. I’m tempted to
tell her walking on her toes will only make her feel worse, but her
brow is furrowed in such intense concentration, I don’t want to
distract her. She looks almost like a phantom, her limbs twig-like
and bony, face pale and bloodless and nearly yellow; her hair is
half plaited, half just a bird’s nest of knots, and her shift is
dirty and torn. The sight of her makes something wrench inside me,
but I know I look much the same. We all do.

We head together into the bird room,
where I’m relieved to see the reptile cages are all against one
wall and easily avoided. Clearly Noah hasn’t visited here, or we’d
have heard his grumblings: I doubt Kenaan’s rounded up every type
of snake and lizard in our village, much less in the world. And I
count very few insects among the paltry row of cages. No
butterflies, of course, for how could Kenaan catch a creature so
delicate? I have a sudden longing to see one of those beautiful,
pale blue butterflies that flock around the red azalea bushes in
the spring. It would flit through the ark, graceful and sure and
free of the sickness that plagues us earthbound creatures, its
wings the color of a cloudless summer sky—

But I’m forgetting why I’m
here. And the
thud, thud
that accompanies the dove’s cooing grows ever
more insistent. The birdcages are scattered through the room in a
jumbled mess, most of them far from any wall that might keep them
from slipping and sliding with the pitch of the ark. No wonder the
birds are so frightened.

Shai and I have to let go of the wall
ourselves to pick through the cages—no hawks or eagles, I notice,
despite Kenaan’s bragging that he’d trap one—until we reach the
source of all the racket, and I suck in a sharp breath. One of the
doves is flinging itself against the bars of its cage, over and
over, though its left wing droops at an awkward angle and it must
be in terrible pain. Its mate sits at the back of the cage, head
tucked to its breast, seemingly indifferent.

I kneel and open the cage, but when I
reach inside the dove’s frenzy increases. She—I have no way of
knowing, but it seems like a she—does her best to flee my hand,
scooting backward and trying to lift herself on her injured wing.
She only makes it a hand’s breadth from the ground before falling
again. I take a deep breath before grabbing the bird around her
middle and pulling her from the cage. I’m shocked by the warmth of
her body and the strength of her rabid heartbeat, hitting against
the barrier of her bones again and again the same way she threw her
entire body against the bars.

I lower myself all the way to the
floor and sit with crossed legs, placing the dove on my lap, and
she calms a bit—until I try to examine her injured wing. Then her
cries become higher and even more panicked, her entire body shakes,
and she tries to flee me again. “We have to bind her wing,” I tell
Shai, “or it will never heal, with the way she keeps struggling.
Can you get me some cloth—a blanket, maybe?”

Shai nods, wide eyed, and hurries off
as though the rocking floor no longer bothers her. I realize I too
have forgotten my own tender stomach, now that I’m focused on the
dove. Still, it seems far too long before Shai returns, clutching a
drooping wool blanket and breathing hard. I hand Shai the bird and
she sits, stroking the dove’s white and brown-dappled feathers, as
I set to tearing strips off the blanket. But my arms are weak—I’ve
barely eaten these past few days, after all—and the fabric is
unyielding. Well, what else could I have expected from a blanket
Zeda wove?

I glance around to make sure no one
else has wandered in, and then I pull my carving knife from beneath
my now very bedraggled blue cloth belt, where I’ve kept it since I
first stepped onto the ark. I couldn’t exactly tuck it under my
blanket at night, after all, unless I wanted to risk it sliding its
way across the ark.

Shai gasps when she catches sight of
the bronze blade, gleaming even in this dull, muted light. “Where
did you—”

“
Shh,” I shush her, “don’t
tell your parents, all right?”

“
I won’t.” She bites her
lip and looks down at the dove again, her dark eyes serious and
tender.

With the help of my sharp blade, the
fabric parts easily as a fallen leaf in a child’s hand. Strangely,
I have the urge to dig the knife into something harder, to form the
dove’s shape out of wood and see if I can capture the soft slope of
her feathers. Surely there could not be a worse time or place to
practice my carving, and besides, I’ve given up that pointless
habit. But my thoughts are not so sensible.

My thoughts don’t rule my
actions, though, and I set aside my foolish desire as I focus on
tearing the blanket into even strips. I take the dove from Shai and
wrap the cloth gently but firmly around her injured wing, hoping it
will hold the fragile bones in place. “
Shh, shh,
” I soothe her, trying to
convince myself as well as the bird that I know what I’m doing.
When I lift my hands for a moment, I see she can still move the
muscles where her wing connects to her body—in fact, she’s
frantically twitching there, trying to lift the wing and fly. So I
wrap another strip of cloth over the wing and then under the dove’s
belly, over her back, twice, three times, till I’ve reached the end
of the strip and tied it to the other pieces of cloth. Now she’s
not able to move that wing at all, and her shrill coos have dulled
to a whimper. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, and hesitate before adding,
“I’m sorry,
Aliye
.” The name means “high one,” and I mean it as a promise, or
at least a hope, that one day she’ll fly high again.

I ask Shai to open the cage door so I
can return Aliye, but as soon as I’ve closed the door behind her,
the bird lets out the most woeful, pitiful, pathetic cry of a coo
you could ever imagine. “She wants out!” Shai says. “She wants to
be held!”

“
She didn’t seem so happy
to be held before,” I grumble. “I think she’s just too smart, and
she knows now she has a name she can demand special
treatment.”

Even before I’ve finished speaking,
Aliye has begun throwing her body against the bars once more. She
may not be able to move her wing any longer, but it will never heal
if she keeps abusing it like that. “Too smart,” I mutter again. I
reach for the dove once more, and she quiets. Already she seems to
be growing used to my arms—or perhaps she just prefers them to the
cage.

Still, navigating the ark proves much
more difficult while holding an injured bird, and I’d swear the
floor’s swaying has grown even stronger. By the time I’ve made it
back to my blanket, I’m so dizzy and exhausted that I nearly
collapse onto the floor.

***

I wake from a dream of
blue butterflies and white birds to my father’s gruff voice.
“Daughter,” he says, “has your stomach settled?” I open my eyes to
find him peering down at me, his own eyes wide with hope even as
his mouth closes tight, the taut curve of it grim and worried and
perhaps even resentful. As I wake fully I realize my mother’s
sitting upright beside me, her own expression stern.
Please your father,
that
look says.

So I sit up and answer, “Yes, Father,
I am much better,” though my gut sends up a wave of protest at the
lie.

“
Good.” He sighs, his gaze
straying to the dove perched in her own nest of a blanket beside
me. I know he sees the bird, but he makes no comment, saying only,
“Nahala, my wife, and Neima, my daughter”—Why is he being so
formal? He’s procrastinating, I decide, putting off what he doesn’t
want to say—“I know you are—have been—ill, and I hate to ask this
of you. But we need your help. There are too many animals to care
for, and the smell below has become unbearable. If we could just
clean up some of that animal waste—”

“
Of course, Father,” I
say, with a twinge of guilt that I’ve been neglecting my duties
and, if I hadn’t been prodded, would have continued to do
so.

But Father shakes his head, puts a
hand up to stop me, and goes on, “I never thought I’d have to ask
my wife and daughter to work when you’re unwell, but—”

I sigh. He is so
good
, and it only makes
me feel worse.

“—
but your uncles and
grandfather and I must spend our time working on the ark itself,
checking the walls and shoring up the weak spots. Even the smallest
leak could be devastating. I’m sorry—”

Now I’m perplexed. “Surely we could
deal with one little leak. And how can there be weak spots, with
all the work you’ve done?” Father’s face turns harder, and,
unaccountably, my heart beats faster. “In any case, in a few days
the waters will recede, right?” I’m rambling, but I can’t stop.
“And we’ll be able to leave—”

“
Neima!” my mother says
sharply, “don’t question your father.”

I barely hear her, though, for
Father’s face has gone harder still, and paler, till it resembles a
weathered stone: he’s realized he’s said too much. My body feels
heavy, as though the ark really has sprung a leak and it’s sinking,
fast, and pulling me down with it. Without a word, I stand and head
for the room next door, for the ladder to the deck house, fighting
to keep my steps sure and steady.

“
Neima, what are you—”
Mother calls at the same moment as Father says, “I don’t think
that’s a good id—”

But then Arisi and Shai, both of whom
have been listening to our entire exchange, rise to follow me, and
chaos erupts. “Arisi, you can’t!” Japheth calls, while Aunt Zeda
flies in like a whirlwind from the far corner of the room and yanks
Shai back.

“
I want to see!” Shai
whines, and I turn back toward her. As Zeda hangs impatiently above
us, I kneel so my eyes are level with Shai and whisper so only she
can hear me:

“
I need you to stay here
and watch Aliye, all right? She’ll be scared if we both leave.”
Shai narrows her eyes almost shrewdly—she knows I’m putting her
off. But after chewing her lip for a moment, she turns back toward
the dove.

Arisi and Japheth are still bickering
as we near the ladder, and my earlier guilt and fear is turning to
frustration. What are the men keeping from us, and what makes them
think they have the right to do so? “You would treat your wife like
a child,” I ask Japheth, “when she is carrying your own babe even
now?”

“
I’m only trying to keep
her safe!” Japheth says as Arisi pushes past both of us.

“
You don’t have to talk
about me like I’m not here,” she snaps, grabbing the ladder with
tightly clenched hands.

“
Shem,” Japheth asks my
father, “will you allow this?”

“
They’ll have to know
eventually.” Father’s voice is defeated, but I refuse to look at
him. He’s right: I have to know.

Japheth shoots me a glare as he helps
Arisi up the ladder and I follow behind. “Well,” I mutter under my
breath, “it’s not like one trip up a ladder will make her lose the
baby.”

I’m relieved that neither Mother nor
Father climbs the ladder, but I’m equally relieved—though I won’t
let Japheth know so—that I’m not up here alone. Inside the deck
house, the windows are still too high for me to see much, so I
throw open the door and step out into the rain and the wind. The
sudden chill rolls through me, refreshing at first, but as I draw
closer to the edge of the deck the drop in temperature feels
increasingly sinister.