“They’re so big!” I say when I’m close enough to realize the larger of the two—the one with the tusks—is nearly as tall as I am, and its four legs appear solid as tree trunks beneath its ample bulk.
The trader beside me begins to laugh, a deep rumble that lasts long enough to concern me.
“What? What is it?” I ask, inching away from the strange beasts.
“It’s just”—he places a hand to his chest, as though he can push the laughter down—“if you think they’re large, I’d love to see your face if you ever catch sight of their mother.”
I still don’t understand.
“These are three years old at the most,” he says, “and still immature. A full-grown elephant looms above any man, and it weighs, I’d say, three or four times as much as these young ones here. The elephant is to other animals as…as this great ark behind us is to the cottages in your village.”
I try to picture such an animal, and a shiver skitters up my arms despite the heat. It sounds as if a full-grown elephant could crush me beneath just one foot.
I’m ready to back away even from these smaller specimens, but the trader places a hand on my arm. “They are gentle giants,” he says. His voice is calmer now, all the laughter expelled. “Plant eaters, peaceful and intelligent.” He releases my arm but beckons me forward, and, though I’m still a bit wary, I follow. “And friendly—look how they’re greeting you.”
Both animals are waving their long snouts in an almost comical manner, reaching them up and down, twisting and curling them, stretching toward—me?
“They’re trying to scent you,” the trader says. “Here—” He reaches for the nearest snout. “Take hold of the trunk and blow into it, like this.”
Trunk? I decide I prefer the term to snout as I follow his lead. The elephant’s skin is as tough as I imagined, but not unpleasant.
“There,” he says. “Now you’ve greeted her, and she’ll remember your scent. Best not leave her brother out.”
“Are they really brother and sister?” I ask as I take the trunk of the small-tusked elephant and blow gently into it.
He shrugs. “They may as well be, now.”
The elephant opens his mouth in a kind of smile and waves his trunk before my face with even greater enthusiasm, brushing against my forehead and nose. The female butts her head against the trader, demanding equal attention, until he pats her trunk. They really are as friendly as he said, and, in their own strange way, lovely. I hate to think of them separated from their parents, whether they’re truly siblings or not.
“You know a lot about animals,” I say.
“I’ve traveled quite a bit.” He glances around as if ensuring we’re alone before continuing in a lower voice. “The word is that your grandfather’s trying to gather two of every animal in the world.” He tilts his voice upward, halfway toward a question but not quite there.
“Um…” I bite my lip. “I think he is, yes.”
“Well,” the trader continues, leaning toward me, about to impart a secret. Perhaps I should be nervous, so close to a man I don’t know, especially after what happened with Kenaan. But I like this man’s gentle treatment of the elephants, and besides, there are plenty of people nearby.
“Well,” he says again, “I’ve seen animals that are not here today, animals I doubt your grandfather has ever heard of. I’ve seen beasts with leathered gray skin and thick bodies like the elephants’, but shorter and squatter and much less pleasant, with a head and horn like a bull’s and a temperament to match. I’ve seen brown-furred creatures that swing from hand to hand in the trees, traveling great distances without touching the ground, and chattering to each other all the while much like humans making conversation. I’ve seen—”
“Please,” I break in, forgetting to keep my voice down. “Don’t tell Noah about these creatures!”
He laughs again. “All right, I won’t. But perhaps you can tell me—what does your grandfather plan to do with all these animals? Why has he built this great, smelly wooden thing that seems almost an animal itself?”
I think of all I could say: Noah is mad; or, A voice in his head commanded him; or, A great flood is coming. Finally, I settle on the truth:
“I have absolutely no idea.”
***
The villagers keep grumbling, led by Jorin’s father, until there’s nothing to do but carry the animals into the ark, where at least they’ll be hidden from prying eyes. My father and uncles have laid a large plank of wood diagonally from the door of the ark to the ground—a “gangplank,” my trader, as I’ve begun to think of him, calls it—and they load the cages onto carts and wheel them in. When Japheth—he looks too young for me to think of him as Uncle Japheth, especially now, with that boyish, ill-humored scowl on his face—comes to retrieve the elephants, something occurs to me.
“They won’t suffocate, will they?” I ask. “If the ark’s doors are closed?”
“Well aren’t you the sweet one,” he says a bit bitterly, “worrying for the welfare of lions and wolves and…these long-nosed things. Don’t worry.” He prods the elephants along, and I want to tell him to be careful with them, but he’s already far enough that he has to call out over the snarling and yowling and whining of many confused, frightened animals. “There are windows in the second level of the ark, and a few openings between the lower and upper levels.”
“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 c
lean 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 shoul
d 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.