Storm (16 page)

“All right, Nela. I don’t know what you have and haven’t done. But the Mighty Creator does. So I’ll leave it to him. He wreaks justice far better than I could.”

His Mighty Creator or one of mine? His sounds far too cold.

Ham’s footsteps clack slowly, going away. Then they stop
and come back, louder, faster. “Yes. That’s what I’ll do. But . . .” He stomps around again. “It’s so much worse that you chose Shem to test me with. Shem, that self-righteous prig! Japheth I could laugh at, but Shem! It hurts. You can’t guess how bad it hurts. I won’t put up with any more humiliation. You’ve tested me, Nela.” He stops and shakes his head. “So you need a test too. Let’s see what becomes of you. Let’s see if this knowledge of animals you are so proud of can help you now.”

I hear him walk away again. I dare to turn my head and watch him leave.

He passes the lion cage. He stoops and pulls the rocks out of the gullies there.

I see what he does. I see it and I know this is death. I have to scream. I have to make him know who I am. It’s better to be flung into the freezing seas and drown than to be eaten alive. I have to scream, but no voice comes. I choke on my own fear.

He pulls the door up just high enough to rest on a rock and races for the ladder. “Wake up, beasts!” he shouts. He disappears up the ladder and slams the hatch shut.

I
feel along the floor for the rocks that block the door to the cage in front of me. The creature within it nipped me. That’s nothing compared to what a lion will do. There are other creatures in this cage too, I’m sure. But there’s no lattice here. No lattice is good.

Noise comes from behind me. I struggle with the second rock. My fingers can’t get under it. The noise comes closer now. The skin above my nails is scraped away. The rock finally comes out of the gully. I lift the swinging door and go inside. It swings shut.

I spin around. There’s nothing behind me. Nothing peering in through the poles. What did I hear?

I look around this cage, but I keep glancing back at the lion cage. There’s no activity over there. There’s not much here,
either. The sounds of sleep come from several animals nearby, but I can’t make them out. They aren’t large, anyway. They form mounds here and there.

I look back at the lion cage. Still nothing.

The only ones awake in this cage are a pair of mongooses. One comes toward me. I prepare to kick. He stops and stares. Then he bites his own leg. There’s hardly any hair left there. He gnaws at himself. He’s the nipper, for sure. The other mongoose paces in a tight circle. That one’s missing patches of hair too. The poor things—they’re a mess.

I look back at the lions. Nothing, nothing.

The mongooses keep doing what they’re doing. Mindlessly. I like mongooses, actually. Where I live—where I lived—mongooses simply roamed free. We didn’t use them as guards against cobras, like travelers told us some people do. But we liked them anyway. They seemed eager and smart. And cheerful, in a way. They were always poking around energetically, hopeful, as though food was just about to appear.

These mongooses are anything but. They are pathetic. But at least I don’t sense them as an imminent danger. I’m not a snake.

Maybe my single arm reaching in through the poles before seemed snakelike. I pull my knees against my chest and wrap my arms around them. I am a roundish mass, nothing like a snake. I watch the lion cage. It is so very silent.

Queen and The Male go flying past. Then Queen comes
back. She looks through the poles inquisitively. I didn’t think about those two before. But they’ll be all right. No lion could leap high enough to get them.

Besides, they can always go back in our cage.

That’s where I want to be. In my nest. Safe.

I wait, my eyes on the lion cage. The night is passing.

I could move from cage to cage till I make it back. It’s a thought.

A stupid thought.

But no other thought comes.

I wait. I don’t know how long I wait, but the lions don’t do anything, and I can’t stand this waiting. If I’m still here in the morning, Ham and Shem will find me for sure and that means the end. So it makes no sense to stay here.

Besides, I don’t think the male mongoose can put up with me much longer. My presence clearly worries him. He’s chewing on his foot so hard, it bleeds now. It’s all I can do to keep from hitting him on the nose, telling him to stop. Being behind poles has taken a toll on him.

I lift the swinging door and go out onto the deck. And I shiver.

I push the rocks into place. After all, if the lions were loose and the mongooses stumbled out, I’d be responsible for their deaths.

I move as quickly and silently as I can to the next cage. Should I stop and go in or should I keep going to the next one?
I can’t think straight. I keep going. I pass another cage. And another. I’m close to mine now. It can’t be but a few more ahead.

A noise comes. A scraping noise. I crawl along the floor fast, feeling, feeling. A rock. I pull it out of its gully.
Screech.
My fingers scrabble around the other one. Where did that noise come from? What made it? I am about to lift the swinging door to go inside when I find myself facing shining eyes, a blunt nose, rounded ears. No! I quick block the door with a rock. The hyena leaps at me. I fall backward. His snout sticks out partway between the poles. The door shakes. His rotted-fish breath sullies the air. I shove the other rock into place. Fear has scrambled my thoughts—the hyenas should have been on my mind all along! The hyena puts his head down now and yowls his frustration. It’s a rolling yowl. Loud and hideous. He paces, yowling ever louder, back and forth. The female joins him now, yowling together.

The racket fills my head. I can’t hear anything else.

Until I do: A roar answers them. I stand and turn. The male lion is in the middle of the deck. He lifts his huge head and opens his mouth. A buzz starts inside my head. It replaces the yowls and the roar. It grows louder. It fills me. I am nothing but a buzz.

“You’re doing good. Don’t run. No matter what. Just face him. Stay calm.”

The lion looks toward the source of those words.

I know without looking that it’s the Head. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. Talk to him. Say things. Anything. In a firm, steady voice.”

“Hello, lion,” I say. “Please don’t kill me. Stay there.”

The lion swings his head toward me again. He roars, but it comes out strained, almost like a croak.

I’m close to my cage. I can see the tortoise shells. Mine is just the next cage beyond it. I’m so close.

But the lion is closer.

“Put your hands over your head so you look bigger. Don’t run, no matter what. Just face him and talk.”

My arms are lead. I can’t lift them.

“Do it! Clap your hands over your head. Confuse him. And talk. Talk!”

I open my mouth.

The lion opens his at the same time, so wide my whole head could fit inside it. Teeth like white knives. He coughs. He tosses his head as though he’s trying to rid himself of something. He crouches and rubs the front of his throat against a forepaw. Twisted like that, all his ribs show.

For this one moment he’s not looking at me.

I can’t. I can’t stay here. I bolt for my cage. I’m lifting the swinging door. I hear his claws skid. He’s coming at me. I’m inside, but the door doesn’t fall behind me. It thuds on something! He’s here, in my cage!

The porthole! It beckons. I swipe a coil of rope with one hand and dive out. I drop through a blast of cold. The rope
reaches its length in an instant and jerks me to a stop. I slam against the side of the ark, and it feels like my shoulder is coming undone from the rest of me. But I’m still holding on!

The lion looks down at me. A noise like crackling comes from his gaping mouth. A claw slaps at me.

“Easy now, pussy.” It’s the Head. On the longest, fairest body I’ve ever seen. He hangs beside the hole, holding on to a rope from up high. Oh! It’s that rope—that fishing rope. He makes a club of a fist and punches the lion on the top of the head. The lion’s head collapses on his neck. The beast slips inside the ark.

The huge man reaches for me.

I shake my head.

“You don’t want to go back inside?”

“The lion.”

“He’s passed out cold. Or dead.”

I shake my head.

“He’ll be out for a long time. You can drag him back to his cage.”

“You can drag him. I can’t drag a lion.”

“You have to. You’re shivering. You can’t stay out here much longer.” He takes my arm and lifts me with his free hand.

I crawl in through the hole and land on the limp lion. I scramble off him. But now what? I’m shaking so hard, I’m useless. And the female lion—where is she?

“Grab him by the tail and pull him.”

He’s out of his mind. Even emaciated, that lion is massive. “You do it.”

“If I force myself in, you have to help me get out again.”

“You know I will.”

“Yes. It’s twice now I’ve saved you. You better keep me around.” The huge one puts one leg, then the other, through the hole. He slides in feetfirst till he hits his shoulders. Then he wriggles and wriggles. “Pull on me, little woman.”

I have to straddle the lion to do it. But there’s no other choice. I grasp the huge man around the waist and yank as hard as I can.

Oomph
. He falls on me and the lion—we are a frightful pile.

The man takes the lion by the tail, drags him out of our cage and across the deck to his. His footsteps make loud thumps. He lifts the swinging lattice door and shoves the lion inside. The lioness watches, crouched at one side. The man secures the rocks.

The lioness screams, a ragged choking scream. She must think her mate is dead.

The man comes back inside our cage. “I told you not to run.”

“I couldn’t help it.”

“Anyone can help it. You acted stupid.” He looks at me, but his eyes change.

I am small. And I am suddenly so very aware that he is man and I am woman. The chill goes from me. I’m burning up.

He walks past me and puts his arms and head out the
porthole. He wriggles again. I push on his bottom. And he comes unstuck. He twists his body so that he’s sitting on the lip of the porthole for a minute, his legs inside. Then he eases himself out.

He’s gone.

I rush to the porthole. And my face smacks against his mouth.

He smiles and rubs his lips. “I didn’t know you cared.” He laughs.

“Who are you?”

“Og. Who are you?”

“Sebah.”

“I’ll call you Sheba.”

“That’s not my name.”

“It is now. I like it better.”

“Then I’ll call you Bash. It’s what you did to the lion.”

“Ha! I like that. It fits me.”

J
ust moments after Bash leaves, Queen and The Male return to our cage. They don’t pull the rocks back into place. So I show them. I talk as I do it, to keep their focus. I’m still half-crazy from the lion, but I force myself to talk with authority. “You have to replace the rocks. See? Look how I do it. See? Do like this.” But they pay no attention. They curl up together and fall into a deep sleep.

They’re idiots. I should punch them. I went through a terrible scare and all I want to do is hide away, and still I took the time to try to teach them—for my good, yes, but for theirs, too; we all benefit from the freedom of walking the deck, after all—and they ignore me. Worse is that I know they are smart enough to learn this. I’ve seen them take a fright and go flying back to our cage when the door was propped on a rock and shove the
rock away fast so the door dropped closed behind them and they were safe inside. If they can figure that out, then surely they can learn to pull the stones back into place so the humans will never know they were out. In frustration, I reach out and give Queen’s long hair a yank. She opens her eyes, seems to make a quick assessment of the cage, then closes them again.

Well, all right. I rub my own shoulders to soothe myself. I have no right to expect them to behave like I want them to behave. Anger makes no sense. I have to try to teach them—but another time.

Prickles dance up through my spine, around my skull. Queen and The Male can go anywhere on this ark. They could open other cages. Good grief, I’ve made them vulnerable to awful things.

But they must have some kind of judgment. They kept out of the way this whole evening—during the encounter with Shem and Ham, and the whole scuffle with the lion. And then with Bash.
Please let them stay out of harm’s way.

I have to get busy doing something or I’ll go crazy, worrying like this. My shift—Nela’s shift—stinks of pee. But it’s dirty with other things too. It’s rank, in fact. I take it off and hold it out the porthole in the rain to wash it. Then I wring it as hard as I can and I spread it out flat under a thin layer of straw.

Now I squat and rock on my heels. It’s dark, that deepest dark of the middle of the night. For a long time now I’ve been far more active at night than in the day. I’m surprised, in fact,
at how easily I’ve adapted to a nocturnal way of life, especially given that it’s so hard for me to see at night. But Queen and The Male are still really diurnal. They like to go out of the cage at the start of the evening—but they come back the instant I do and they quickly fall sleep, while I, instead, pace our cage and gaze out the porthole a long while, then settle down to mash the feces I’ve gathered, using my fingers to search for seeds. I’m surprised, too, at how quickly my fingertips became sensitive—I find many more seeds now than I did only yesterday.

I watch Queen and The Male sleep now. I’d like to curl up with them. I am dead tired. That I managed to wash my shift amazes me. I can’t do anything else. I can’t search through the feces for seeds. My mind won’t behave. It’s blank. I feel stupid.

The night passes far too slowly. But I have to stay awake. I have to.

At long last Shem comes down the ladder. Simply
clack, clack, clack
, like any other day.

That’s what I was waiting to find out.