Noah (8 page)

“Fire consumes all. Water
cleanses
. It separates the foul from the pure, the wicked from the innocent, and that which sinks from that which rises. He destroys all, but only to start again!”

Methuselah smiled mischievously. “You’re sure?”

“Yes,” Noah said. “The storm cannot be stopped, but it can be survived.”

“Then you may need this.”

The old man held out a small green bag, cinched at the top with a drawstring. Noah took the bag. It was incredibly light. It seemed empty. Was this a trick or a test? He opened it, and turned the bag upside down over his outstretched palm. Something brown and spiky and virtually weightless dropped into his hand.

Noah examined it. It was a seed. The same seed from his vision. His eyes widened. His head jerked up and he looked at Methuselah, to see the old man nodding in response to his unspoken question.

“Yes. It is from the first garden. From Eden.”

Noah didn’t know what to say. A sense of well-being, of achievement, of
hope
, swept through him and he smiled.

“Now go,” Methuselah said. “Take it.”

“And plant it?” Noah asked quietly, but Methuselah merely shrugged. So Noah replaced the seed in the green bag and put it in the pocket of his tunic. He gestured to Shem that it was time to go, and then held out his hand toward Methuselah.

“Come, Grandfather. Come down the mountain with me. Meet my wife, your great-grandchildren. Help us to start a new world.”

But Methuselah remained seated. Slowly but deliberately he shook his head.

“One world was enough for me,” he said almost sadly. “Leave me to walk with my father.” He held up a finger. “But remember this, Noah. He chose you for a reason.”

Noah nodded, and then he and Shem said their goodbyes and left.

* * *

Methuselah watched them go, and an expression of pity appeared on his face.

“It will not be easy,” he murmured when Noah was out of earshot. “In fact, my boy, it will be much harder than you think.”

T
he fever had broken, and though Ila still moved gingerly, holding her side, she was livelier than Naameh had thus far seen her. The girl even had a little color in her cheeks, and now that she was no longer at death’s door it was abundantly clear what a pretty girl she was, and what a beautiful woman she would one day become.

They were eating dinner. Having consumed two bowls of stew and as much bread as Naameh could spare, Ila was now sitting with Ham and Og, playing a game which involved taking turns to etch symbols on a complex grid. Og had scratched the grid into the sandy, baked soil with one of his huge stone fingers.

He was indulging the children, Naameh knew, allowing them to win at least one game out of every three. Observing them from her seat beside the tent, where she had been bouncing Japheth gently on her knee and making him giggle, it was clear what
a bright and lively mind Ila possessed. Ham played Og’s game tentatively, uncertain where to make his marks. But Ila was more confident, instructing and advising him, albeit in a subtle, self-effacing way.

Suddenly Og’s head jerked up, and he pointed at the mountain.

“There!” he called.

Everyone turned to peer in the direction he was indicating. Noah and Shem, looking dusty but—in Noah’s case, at least—invigorated, appeared over the lowest ridge, and came trooping down the path toward them.

“Father!” Ham called, abandoning the game and running across the parched ground to throw himself into Noah’s arms.

His father laughed and swung his son high in the air. Despite the fact that his face was grimy with dirt and sweat, his arms and legs covered in small cuts and bruises from his arduous climb, it was immediately clear to Naameh that the expedition had been a fruitful one.

“What happened?” she asked.

Noah, still holding Ham in the crook of his arm, smiled at her.

“As soon as Shem and I have cleaned ourselves up, I’ll tell you all about it.”

* * *

A little later the family and Ila sat in a circle inside the main tent, waiting for Noah to join them.

He was outside talking to Og, who was a little too large to squeeze into the small space with the rest. Shem was making use of the delay by teaching Ila the rudiments of Cat’s Cradle. Naameh had noticed how
he had been unable to take his eyes off the girl since he had come down from the mountain, and how both Shem and Ila giggled and blushed every time their fingers accidentally touched as they fumbled with the strings.

Eventually Noah entered the tent, and the two of them reluctantly put aside their game to listen to his words.

“Grandfather lives,” he said, beaming at them all. “He’s helped me see what we’re here to do.”

“Can we meet him?” Ham asked.

Noah shook his head distractedly. “Men are going to be punished for what they have done to the world. There will be destruction. There will be tragedy. Our family has been chosen for a great task. We have been chosen to save the innocent.”

There was a puzzled silence.

“Who are the innocent?” Shem asked. He had not yet been told of his father’s vision, despite the hours they had spent together descending the mountain.

“The animals,” Noah replied.

Ham frowned. “Why are they innocent?”

It was Ila who answered. “Because they still live as they did in the Garden.”

Noah nodded and smiled, clearly impressed. “We need to save enough of them. Enough of them to start again.”

“But what of us?” Ham asked.

Noah looked surprised at the question, almost as if he hadn’t considered it before. “I guess when all this is gone we start again.” He swept his arm in an expansive gesture to encompass them all. “We start again in a new and better world. But first we have to build.”

“Build?” asked Shem. “Build what?”

Noah indicated that they should all follow him outside. From his tunic he took the green bag that Methuselah had given to him and upended it over his palm. The brown seed dropped out. Holding it delicately between his thumb and forefinger he showed it to his family, and then he used a stick to gouge a small hole in the dry ground.

“A great flood is coming,” Noah told them as he hacked at the earth. “The waters of the heavens will meet the waters of the earth. We build a vessel to survive the storm. We build an Ark.”

He stepped forward and dropped the seed into the hole.

And the Creator said unto Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh; for the World is filled with violence through Man; behold I will destroy them… Make yourself an Ark…”

N
oah jerked awake. What had he heard? Sitting up he looked quickly around the tent. Naameh was sleeping peacefully beside him, and the children, too, seemed undisturbed. Shem and Ila held hands as they slept, as though Shem wished to protect the girl even in her dreams.

All was silent—and yet Noah felt certain he had heard something. A sound that had disturbed his subconscious, that had raised an alarm in his mind. He was on edge. He sensed danger.

But from where?

He rose slowly from his bedroll so as not to wake his sleeping wife. He would take a walk around the camp to settle his nerves, perhaps seek out Og and speak to him. Did the Watcher sleep? Or did he remain forever vigilant, as his name seemed to suggest?

Though no candle burned in the tent, there was enough light by which to see. As he moved toward the
entrance, Noah judged it to be early dawn. Outside it would be cold, the sky streaked with purple and pink and red as the sun rose in the east. He was only a few steps from the entrance flap when he again heard the sound that he was sure had woken him—a dull scraping, as of stone on stone, followed by a scuffle of movement, which made him think of an animal desperate to free itself from a trap.

Quickly he untied the tent flap and ducked outside. In the early dawn light he saw, in the middle distance, Og being dragged away by a group of Watchers.

So the Watchers
had
caught up with them. But Noah did not have time to be alarmed. He began to run toward the group, waving his arms.

“Stop!” he yelled.

The group came to a halt, their heads creaking around to regard the running man. One of them was Samyaza, the leader. He swung around and stomped toward Noah like a crude but gargantuan statue given life, his thundering footsteps sending a tremor through the earth.

“Og is not your concern!” he roared, his voice echoing back from the black mountain.

Noah stopped and spread his hands in appeal.

“There is much work to be done. The Creator’s work. Help us.”

Samyaza’s face crunched into an expression of fury. He marched across to Noah in two great, thundering strides.

“Help you?” he bellowed. “We tried to help your kind once. We lost
everything
because of you!”

He raised a massive arm to pulverize Noah where he stood. Noah did not try to resist or run away.
He simply waited, looking up into Samyaza’s face, bracing himself for the killing blow.

Which did not come.

Samyaza froze, his great arm hanging in mid-air, his attention suddenly focused elsewhere. He had heard a sound—a sound that Noah also heard. The reason it had had such an effect on the Watcher was because it was a sound that had not been heard on this black and barren plain for a long time. It was an impossible sound. A sound of hope and celebration.

It was the bubbling of water.

Samyaza’s great stone jaw dropped open. He turned to see water bubbling up from the spot where Noah had planted Methuselah’s seed the night before. As if it had been waiting for their attention, the water suddenly erupted upward, bursting exuberantly from the dry earth, a geyser that caused the Watchers to cry out in surprise like gleeful children. As if content with the impact it had made, the geyser settled down to become a gently gurgling fountain.

While the earth around the fountain cracked apart, and the water rushed into the cracks to form rivulets, which began to expand outward in all directions, Noah saw Naameh, Ila, and the boys emerge slowly from the tent. They looked first in terror at the Watchers, and then in wonder at the fountain.

The Watchers, who had now released Og, stepped backward, out of the way of the ever-expanding rivulets which first crept toward them, and then streamed past them, as though on a mission to revive and replenish the entire desert. Noah glanced up at Samyaza, who was still standing beside him. The Watcher’s arm had fallen back to his side, his murderous intentions forgotten.

Unhurriedly Noah walked toward the fountain, taking care not to obstruct the flow. Once he was standing over it, he bent down, cupped his hands and thrust them into the bubbling water.

It was remarkably clear, remarkably cold. He raised his cupped hands to his mouth. But even before the water touched his lips he knew how it would taste.

Sure enough, it was the freshest, sweetest, purest thing he had ever tasted. He felt it flowing through him, restoring him, curing him of any ailments, his aches and pains. He turned and grinned at his family, water dripping from his chin. Naameh smiled uncertainly in response, but Ila and the boys grinned back at him, enraptured by the spectacle.

All at once the earth began to rumble. Noah felt a tremor beneath his feet. He wondered what was happening. Was it an earthquake? Was the earth around the fountain about to erupt upward and outward with the force of the water behind it? Was this the beginning of the flood?

Was it too late to build the Ark, after all?

He began to back away, wondering whether he had been deceived, or had perhaps misinterpreted the message from the Creator. At any moment he expected a vast column of water to shoot upward, and then to crash down, sweeping them all away.

Should they head for the mountain, seek refuge in Methuselah’s cave? Would they have time? Would the boys be able to manage the climb? What about Ila, still recovering from her injury?

He saw that the Watchers were backing away, too, looking to Samyaza as if hoping he would provide them with answers, instruct them what to do. Og, of all
the Watchers, was the only one who
didn’t
back away. Instead he rushed forward, ignoring the trembling of the earth, which was getting worse, causing Noah to stagger as he tried to remain on his feet.

Og rushed over to Naameh and the children and swept them up in his six arms, holding them protectively to his chest. Despite the situation, Noah was touched by his concern. He staggered again, almost falling this time, as the rumbling beneath his feet grew louder and the ground began to buck and jerk.

And then, on both sides of the many rivulets now slicing their way through cracks in the parched earth, he was astonished to see green shoots start to push their way up through the soil. Grass, he thought. But then the grass began to grow, to become lush, to evolve into plants, flowers. And some of the shoots grew taller yet, became trees, which raced up into the sky, branches sprouting from their trunks, leaves bursting from the branches.

The impossibly rapid growth continued. Before the astonished eyes of Noah, his family, and the Watchers, more shoots appeared, more plants, more flowers, more trees. It was a riot of vegetation, a joyous celebration of the Creator’s bounty. Within minutes they were standing, not on an arid plain, but in the depths of a healthy, burgeoning forest, acres and acres of trees stretching in all directions, as far as the eye could see.

Eventually the rumbling subsided. The shoots ceased pushing up through the now thickly forested floor. The transformation of the landscape was complete.

For a minute or more no one said anything. They were all too stunned, humans and Watchers
alike, their eyes wide with disbelief, their mouths hanging open.

And then, in barely more than a whisper, Ham spoke, still perched in the crook of Og’s arm.

“What is this?”

Noah turned to him, breathing in the rich, verdant scents of the forest, his vision no longer filled with gray soil and black rock, but with the glowing green of the leaves and the vibrant colors of the flowers.