People of the Flood (Ark Chronicles 2) (2 page)

3.

Ham left the next morning with two hounds, a spear and a sack of barley cakes, heading for the plains. Grasses grew there, and flowers, weeds and the shoots of trees. He saw a snake gobbling carrion and, at a low pool of water, a bear flipping a trapped fish. Worldwide, fish were stranded in pools of receding Floodwater.

Ham slapped a mosquito later, wishing they had died out
. It proved once again Japheth’s theory that insects had survived via eggs in the seaweed mats, or maybe the eggs had been borne by the winds. Certainly, a few of the smaller seeds, like thistles and dandelions, could have been airborne the entire time.

No trees rose on the vast plain
yet. Bare rocks, boulders and undulating terrain made up the world. Anything that moved caught the eye.

Perhaps an hour later
, he spotted the horses, grazing on the edge of the horizon, barely discernible as equines. He galloped toward them. The wind rushing past his face felt glorious.

Then the six horses broke into a nervous gallop
. Two wolves loped into view, giving chase.

Ham followed until the tongues lolled in the mouths of his hounds, until his mount stank of sweat and the bottom of his breeches were soaked
. He drew rein, hobbled the blown horse and collapsed onto the ground.

Noah had said to come back before dark, but he couldn
’t give up now. Besides, bringing them in would show up Japheth.

At dusk
, he bedded down with the hounds. No animals bothered them, although cold rain woke him and obliterated the horse tracks.

In the morning
, he headed back, depressed. The sun crawled across the sky and lowered itself for evening.

A
ridge before the Ark, the dogs perked up. Had the horses doubled back ahead of him?

A man bellowed and a mighty bird screeched
. Ham kicked the horse’s flanks and charged onto an amazing scene.

Japheth drew a spear from a dead orn
. Of its mate, there was no sign. The orn, or phororhacos, was a meat-eating monster, kin to the ostrich. Hunters in the Antediluvian World had rated it riskier than a lion but never the equal of a dragon.

Ham reined in near his brother.

Japheth wiped the spearhead on the orn’s feathers before squinting at Ham. “It attacked me.”

It had been speared in the back, Ham noticed, not in the breast
. A nearby, overhanging boulder would have made an ideal ambush site.

“
You know how dangerous orns are,” Japheth said. He stood back, with the spear in his hand, his eyes calculating.

Ham didn
’t know what to say.

“
Of course, we’re all safer now that this orn is dead,” Japheth said.

“
If you kill any more predators,” Ham said, “I’ll be obligated to tell father.”

Japheth turned away.

“I won’t tell him if you give me your word not to destroy more predators,” Ham said.

“
This course is the wisest,” Japheth said. “Surely, even you can realize that.”

“
You know what mother and father think. So either give your word or—”

“
Oh, very well,” Japheth said. “On my word, I won’t hunt the predators. I just hope we don’t all live to regret it.”

4.

The world continued to seethe with change. The tectonic rippling of the planet’s mantle had not yet reached an equilibrium state. Mountains erupted into ash-spewing volcanoes, and would for many years to come. Pollutants remained in the stratosphere from the original breaking of the Old World, and more effluents continued to join them. This helped cool the lower troposphere, as the ashy particles reflected sunlight back into space—not all the light, but enough to cool the immediate post-Flood world. This cooling was more prevalent on land and more pronounced during summer.

Adding to th
e equation was the ongoing effects of the breaking of the great deep. The mantle’s rippling sent hot lava into the new oceans along with hot water. The bleeding of this excess heat took time. It meant the Earth’s oceans were warmer at middle and high latitudes than they would be in years to come. This warmer water evaporated more easily, and great amounts of vapor—in the middle and high latitudes—hung in the air.

Cooler summers and vast amounts of moisture in the air
effected the world in a bizarre way. The two mechanisms caused first snow to fall and then ice to form. In the high and middle latitudes, the ice became sheets. In time, moving ice-mountains ground their way south.

In the mountains of Ararat
, the snow and ice drove them from the Ark and to a nearby northern plain. Japheth named the ice mountains glaciers, and soon the Ark was buried under one.

5.

Driven from the Ark by cold, snow and ice, Ham and the others raised wind-whipped tents on the northern slope region—the so-called plain—and survived off the supplies. Under Noah’s guidance, the sons built stone corrals for the goats, sheep and cattle; and they celebrated the first births of each by offering it as a sacrifice to Jehovah.

Ham built a low stone fence around his tent, creating a yard for a tanning frame, the hounds, some of the goats, an open fireplace and an oven
. He dug a hole, lined the bottom with stones and the sides with dubious clay. For baking flat bread, Rahab stuck the dough to the oven’s sides, lit the wood and closed the top. The surrounding earth provided the insulation for heat.

Gaea said it would be a good idea to start relearning basic crafts.

So she, Rahab and Ruth trekked to the nearest river and, after several days of searching, found prime clay, much better than what Ham had used for the oven. At Rahab’s request, Ham took several donkeys and loaded the woven-basket saddlebags with the clay.

In the cargo hold of the Ark had been
several socket-and-pivot potter’s wheels. Gaea gathered the pregnant girls around her—everyone treated Rahab carefully—and prepared the clay by mixing it with sand and water. Then she proceeded to make a pot. It was uneven, producing laughter.

Gaea let each of them try
. Ruth proved dismal. Rahab seemed to have the knack, while Europa’s indifference proved middling effective.

They had no kiln as of yet, but there was a crude way to fire the pots
. To save the young saplings, Gaea had them gather reeds, which they dried and tied in tight bundles and piled in a circle of stones, placing their clay handiwork among them. The open firing was uneven and threatened to mar the pots, but harden them, it did.

“
What do you think?” Gaea asked, handing a bowl to Rahab.

“
Good enough.”

“
Yes. Good enough until we acquire more skill.”

That winter
, the first children entered the world screaming. Gaea acted as midwife. To Japheth and Europa was born red-haired Gomer, a strapping baby boy. Ruth bore twins, a boy and girl, named Elam and Deborah. It meant that Shem’s tribe was the most populated, or so he liked to joke. Kush, a dark-skinned boy, was born to Rahab.

Kush interrupted Ham
’s evenings, so he no longer slept the entire night through. Rahab spent most of her time with the baby, and the women loved to let the children play together. Noah beamed whenever he sat one of them on his knee. They tugged at his long white beard and Noah laughed, making them cry. He seemed to love Deborah best, cradling her in the crook of his burly arm as he strode about camp. Although he was over six hundred years old, Noah was still the strongest and, therefore, the mightiest man on Earth.

Spring came
, and the real work began. Ham and his brothers hitched the oxen and plowed, and they crossed their fingers each time it rained. Too much, and the fields might be swept clean. Too little, and their crops might wither before they could grow. In the Old World, they didn’t have this worry. The dense fog simply rose from the ground each night to water the crops. But that perfect world had vanished.

Ham, noticing how fibrous the ground had become with roots, built a sod house with a leather roof
. He debated moving into it. Then an earthquake knocked it down. If Rahab or the baby had been in there…

They continued to live in tents, using the rebuilt sod house as a storage-shed.

The second and third year swept by with more pregnancies, babies and fields to till. Sometimes, Ham spotted gophers or squirrels, or larks flittering from the growing birches. In the fourth year, early one morning, big brown grasshoppers swarmed in a rustling cloud and onto a millet field. They chewed green stalks down to the dirt.

“
We’re ruined,” whispered Ham.

Noah, who had joined him at the edge of the field, ran back into his tent
. He reappeared with his gopher-wood staff, a gourd of water and a sack of bread. With them, Noah raced to his hilltop altar, his robe flapping around his legs. Ham called everyone else. They waded through the fields, stomping grasshoppers or as some said locusts, crushing them with their fingers, causing the insects to spit gooey black ichor.

That night
, Ham slumped exhausted into his whicker chair.

Pregnant Rahab sat cross-legged on a cushion as she regarded her husband
. Her chores left her little time to help in the fields. She had the regular daily task of wool to card and spin, and baskets to weave, and needlework to do, and children to look after and butter to churn—an endless succession of things. Presently, she sat before her floor loom, which had been brought across from Antediluvian times. It was a frame of wood with warp threads attached to the top and bottom pieces. Upon the warp threads, she wove weft threads, using a twill weave, meaning that each weft thread crossed three warp threads at a time, creating extra width than if she had used a plain weave. This width helped the fabric to hold its shape, even after repeated wear, and was more decorative. Rahab preferred weaving with the floor loom because she used treadles, or foot pedals, to raise and lower the harness. This freed her hands to pass the shuttle rhythmically through the sheds and sped the work, as compared to a handloom, where for every row she would have had to put down the shuttle and move the harness by hand.

Rahab sipped water from a clay cup
. “Don’t despair, husband. Jehovah listens to Noah.”

Ham laughed harshly.

Rahab studied his wan features, the thousand-yard stare. She seemed ready to speak again, then bent over the loom and continued weaving in silence, the only sound the harness as it rose and lowered.

“
Why didn’t grandfather help us kill locusts?” chirped four-year-old Kush. He lay under his woolen covers in the corner on a reed mat.

“
He was praying to Jehovah, dear,” Rahab said. “Asking for help.”

Kush rubbed his nose
. “Is Jehovah hiding?”

“
Hiding?” she asked.

“
I never see Him.”

Rahab glanced at Ham, who continued to stare
. “We can’t see Jehovah because He is invisible. He’s a spirit.”

Kush scrunched his face in thought.

Rahab glanced again at Ham. “Maybe Jehovah will take pity on us if we all fall before Him.”

Ham stirred
. “It’s foolish to climb the prayer hill in the dark.”

“
Noah prays in his tent.”

“
Please, Rahab, it is bad enough we’re going to starve. But to be nagged to death by my wife is more than I can bear.”

Their second child began to wail
. Rahab picked Mari out of the crib, avoiding looking at Ham.

He threw himself onto the sleeping-mat, covered his head with a pillow and fell into troubled slumber
. In the morning, he awoke to Rahab poking her head into the tent.

“
They’re gone.”

“
What?” Ham asked. “Who is?”

“
Come quickly, husband.”

He hitched up his breeches, stepped outside and gaped
. Yesterday, locusts had swarmed the fields in buzzing, seething sheets. Today, he couldn’t see one.

Kush tugged his pant leg
. “Did Jehovah do that?”

“
Yes, dear,” Rahab said, as she twined her arms around Ham. “Jehovah listens to Grandfather Noah. I’m sure He listens to anyone who takes the time to pray.”

Kush squinted at his grandfather
’s tent. Then he looked at Ham. Maybe he was thinking about the difference between Noah and his father. “Doesn’t Jehovah listen to you, Daddy? Is that why you don’t pray?”

Ham mumbled an answer, when Noah strode toward them.

“Everyone, onto your knees,” Noah shouted. “We must give thanks to Jehovah for saving us.”

“
What if the locusts return?” Ham asked.

“
You must have faith that Jehovah loves us and therefore will protect us.”

The clan knelt in a circle, Noah praying aloud.

The grasshoppers didn’t return, although as spring changed into summer, big brown beetles by the thousands appeared in the wheat fields.

“
Where are they all coming from?” Ham wailed.

Again
, Noah went up to the mountain. Again, the insects moved on after a long day of devastation.

“
Is the Earth exploding with insects?” Japheth asked.

“
Why don’t they fear us?” Ham said.

“
They fear Noah’s prayers,” said Shem.

That year
, three different forms of insect came, clouds of them, swarms, in numbers they had never conceived of. Each time, Noah drove them away by prayer, although the last took two days of it and fasting. Unsurprisingly, the fourth year harvest proved the leanest.

The next year
, the insects returned, but not in mind-numbing numbers. Robins, blue jays and ducks nested in the trees or the reeds and gorged themselves on grasshoppers, beetles and flies. In the sixth year, rabbits, gophers and squirrels seemed to overrun the Earth.

“
Where did they all come from?” Ham asked. “And if we survive this, in several years, will wolves and lions show up in the same number?”

Gaea made a sweeping gesture
. They stood in a wheat field, panting from chasing rabbits. “The rodents come from everywhere, from the same place as the grasshoppers.”

“
Why now?” Ham asked.

“
How many lions or foxes have you seen?” Gaea asked.

“
None.”

“
So who eats the rabbits?”

Ham scanned the field
. “Foxes and lions don’t breed as fast as rabbits and rats. So the world must swarm with rodents.” He pitched a rock, and a rabbit sprang for cover. “Noah can’t pray away these creatures, it seems. So are we to be eaten out of existence?”

“
We must release our hounds,” Gaea said. “Let them eat the rodents.”

“
The dogs will tear up the fields giving chase, and we’ll be just as ruined,” Ham said.

Gaea mopped her neck, shrugging as Ham waited for another answer.

That spring, day or night, they prowled the fields chasing rabbits and rats and shooing away crows.

“
At least these creatures fear us,” Ham said, walking in the moonlight with Japheth, each of them with a pouch of stones.

“
Eh?”

“
The rodents fear us,” Ham said. “Not like the insects, which only prayer could move.”

Japheth
’s eyes widened as he clutched Ham by the arm. “Fear! That’s it.”

“
What are you babbling about?”

The next day Japheth chopped down a tree and fashioned a crude image of a man, planting it in the middle of a field.

As Japheth went to make more of them, Europa watched that field.

“
The crows don’t like it,” she said later.

Japheth grinned.

“So what do you call it?”

Japheth mulled it over, the grin soon returning
. “A scarecrow,” he said.

Despite all the hard labor and ingenuity, the lean harvest threatened them with disaster, until Noah unlocked the answer.

Early one day, Noah dug a pit a hundred feet from his tent and splintered a log into firewood. He built a frame with the biggest branches and dragged a protesting hog to the pit. With an axe, he brained it, cut its throat, hooked the carcass to the frame and drained the blood. Then he built a fire and spitted the hog, rotating the carcass over the fire. At suppertime, he called everyone near, with a big leather mat thrown onto the ground. From the charred carcass, he cut a slab of pork and slapped it onto a wooden platter. First saying a prayer, Noah salted the hot meat, cut slices and set them onto their plates. They stared at the meat, none of them ever having eaten any.

“
Observe,” Noah said, picking up a fork and knife.

“
Wait.” Japheth’s face was shiny with sweat. “If it was wrong before the Flood to eat meat, why is it all right now?”

“
Remember?” Noah asked. “At the altar that first day after exiting the Ark, Jehovah said we could eat meat.”

Japheth glanced at Europa
. She stared at her plate. Japheth wiped his brow. “Father, back then, only the wicked ate meat.”

Noah stabbed his slab, cut a piece and popped it into his mouth
. Everyone watched as he chewed. He swallowed, nodding.

Japheth cut a piece and put it in his mouth
—he blanched, turned and spit it out. Several of the children laughed, until scolded into silence by their parents.