Storm (21 page)

Queen goes hand over hand to the tigers’ cage. The male tiger immediately stands. Alert. How can he be so alert after all that running?

Queen drops onto the floor and grabs the black stick. The door drops shut. There’s silence from the tigers’ cage. Queen dances around the floor, shaking the stick.

I lift our door, but Bash is already past me. He leaps and skids across the deck and shoves the rocks into place.

I hold the door while Queen and The Male and Bash all come back inside our cage.

Bash goes right to our porthole. “Give me a push.”

I want to talk. I want to hold him; I want to celebrate that we’re all still alive. But his head is already outside. I push on his bottom and he’s gone. An instant later his face appears again. “Maybe the tigers don’t need nights out.”

I
’m munching on toasted kelp. In the past three months, I’ve come to love it. Now and then kelp holds little surprises: tiny dried shrimp, crabs, snails, sea stars, worms. And creatures so infinitesimal I can’t tell what they are. But all of them give a little moment of chewing extra hard and then a nice burst of flavor. Sometimes when I find a particularly tasty batch, I save some for Bash. He smiles as he eats it, and that makes me laugh.

I look at my withering garden and I hum. I should be sad, I know, for I have no idea whatsoever of how to solve the problem of dying plants. For months, all through the winter, in fact, I have assiduously buried seeds in dung—all kinds of dung, elephant, rhino, hippo, zebra, dung from every kind of animal on this ark—but nothing works better than anything else. Without sun, the plants are doomed.

But I’m not sad. An optimism wells deep inside me. I feel strong and excited. I feel as though the world still holds so many secrets, and at least some of them have to be good. Some of them have to be fabulous. “Just wait, little seeds still underneath there,” I whisper. “There will be good things ahead if you just wait.”

It’s time for the nightly routine to start—but that routine is much simpler now. Shem and Ham stopped making nightly visits long ago. Only Nela still comes. I’m sitting out in the open, but I’m not terribly worried about Nela taking me by surprise. Screamer is in my lap, and he’s an early warning signal. He leaps away at the slightest noise. So I’ll have time to dive into the straw.

I stuff another kelp leaf into my mouth and crunch away. Is there anything that can substitute for sunlight?

If I were free to walk about the deck in daylight, I could scoop each new seedling up in my hands and hold it to the sunlight for a long while each day. But I’m not free. I can’t bring the plants to the sunlight. So I have to find a way to bring the sunlight to them. To capture it.

There’s still another month to go till spring, I’m sure. I’m confident I’ll find something by the start of growing season. Day by day, things are coming together. I sense it. I am calm. And almost content.

“Ah!”

Screamer goes dashing off into the next cage. There, perched
on a top step of the ladder, is Nela, staring at me openmouthed. “Who are you? You wicked thing!”

I am too stunned to speak. Then she’s gone, shouting as she goes.

My skin tingles all over. They’ll be here in a moment. Maybe all of them. Maybe Noah, spewing his rules like vomit. I have but one choice. I go to the porthole and yank on Bash’s rope till it’s taut. I grab on to it and climb. The rope is ice-cold. Though it’s sunny by day, it’s still really cold, and this night could chill anyone. My wool shift—Nela’s wool shift—protects my torso, but my hands and arms and calves and ankles all rub against that rope. I climb. I have to climb. I have to keep going. I’m dragging myself up that rope, leaving a thin streak of blood from each hand as I go.

And then comes the jerk, jerk, jerk of the rope. Each jerk knocks me against the side of the ark. I look up. Bash is climbing down. Fast. He doesn’t see me. “Hey! Don’t knock me off!”

He looks down. “Sheba? What are you doing?”

“Nela saw me.”

“All right. Stay there. Hold tight.” He comes down moving even faster.

And a jerk of the rope slams me so hard against the side of the ark that the skin on my knuckles splits open. I pull my hand back instinctively, but I can’t hold on with just one hand! I’m slipping. Falling.
Splash!

The cold shocks me. This frigid water smacks like solid
ground. I am broken. I spit blood. I have to find the rope—Bash’s or Queen’s—a rope, any rope. But I’m flailing about and there’s nothing.

Splash!

Bash’s arm circles me. He swims with the other. He’s got hold of something now, I know because he’s lifting me higher. “Put your arms around my neck, Sheba. From the front.”

I try. I watch my arms move upward and I can’t even feel them moving. I cling to him. He climbs. Then stops.

“Don’t stop, Bash.”

“Hush.”

And I can hear them above us now. Queen and The Male are screaming in alarm. Shem’s voice comes loud. “If there really was a girl, she’s not here now. So she must have jumped out the porthole. She’s dead.”

“But look at the rope.” It’s Nela. “This is one of the cages with those ropes that held the ark in place as you all built it. She could have gone down the rope.”

“There’s no one there,” says Shem. “Look, if you don’t believe me. Look for yourself.”

“All right, you’re right. I see no one. But the side of the ark curves. Maybe she’s hanging below the bulge. Pull in the rope.”

“What difference does it make?” It’s Ham. “Father will only throw her back into the sea anyway.”

“It makes a difference. You have to see her. She’s wearing my shift, Ham. You have to see it on her.”

“Nela, that was ages ago. I don’t care anymore.”

“I do.”

“Why?”

“You have to know I didn’t lie.”

“I know you didn’t lie.”

“You have to love me again.”

“I love you, Nela.”

“Pull up the rope. Please.”

“I’ll do it,” says Shem. He groans loudly. “It’s heavy!”

“She’s hanging from it. I knew it. She’s there, Ham.”

Bash reaches out a hand, feeling, feeling for the other rope. He’s holding on with one hand now—just one hand with me around his neck. But he’s strong. He can do it. He has to do it.

“Hold tight,” he says into my hair.

And we swing through the air to the other rope.

“It’s not heavy, you weakling!”

The first rope disappears upward.

“Look. Nothing’s there.”

“Something was there,” says Shem. “It was heavy before.”

“Then she fell,” says Ham. “She’s gone. It’s over.”

“I knew those dumb apes couldn’t talk,” says Shem.

“Sure you did,” says Ham.

I hear no more human voices. But Queen and The Male continue making little shrieks.

I bury my head in the hollow of Bash’s throat and think only of hanging on. He climbs. He climbs and climbs and then
he’s standing. I don’t understand. He walks several steps and he stops.

“Look around, Sheba.”

My eyes are clenched tight. We are swaying. We are out in the open. I don’t understand anything. I press my head deeper into him.

“I’ll keep holding you. I promise. I’ll hold you as long as you want me to. But look around.”

I open my eyes. There is nothing above but the heavens. Stars glitter everywhere. So many stars, I could never count them. I could pass my whole life counting and never count them all. Then I look outward. In every direction all I see is water. The world is a vast puddle. Beneath us are wood planks. “Are we on the top of the ark?”

“The very top. Isn’t it wonderful?”

I shiver and nestle against him. “When I asked you where you slept, you said you had a safe place above. I thought you mean some secret spot on the top deck.”

“The roof is better than some rodent hole on the top deck. And it is safe. Sort of. I was lucky to climb onto this roof before the ark floated away. I like it here. Not the kind of accommodation I was used to before, as king. But at least I’m not underwater.”

King? Did I understand him right?

“Your mouth is bleeding. Let me see. Open up.” I obey, like a child. He puts in a finger and pushes around the inside of my
cheeks and lifts my lips away from my gums and pulls on my tongue. “That’s what I thought. Your teeth cut into the inside of your lip. You’ll be fine. Sore for a while, but fine.”

“So are you a healer, too? Quite a combination, king and healer.”

His mouth twists in amusement. “I’m not a healer. And I was a king. And I’ll tell you all about it later. When you’ve recovered some.”

Recovered, oh, yes, I want to recover. “Where’s your compartment?”

“I don’t have one.”

“How did you stay dry during the rains?”

“I didn’t, really.”

“Poor you.”

“It wasn’t that bad. And I’ve made a tent since then. Of sharkskin. It warms up fast in there, just from my body heat.”

“Can we go there?”

“Of course, my Sheba.”

“Let me down.”

Bash puts me down.

I stand on unsteady feet, then stumble against Bash.

He steadies me. “The sway of the ark in the sea is exaggerated the higher up you go. You’ll get used to it.”

I pull away from him. It takes all my effort not to land on my knees. “Listen to me, Bash. I hurt everywhere. My hands and mouth bleed. And I am now banished from the home that
I made on this ark, miserable that it was. I need you now. I need your help, your friendship. You know that. But you need to know as well: I am not your Sheba.”

“Where is he?”

“Who?”

“Your husband.”

“How did you know I have a husband?”

“That’s how women get with child.”

My hands go to my belly. It’s rounded. I knew there was a child in there. I never really let myself think about it, but I knew it. What else could it be? There isn’t enough food on this ark to make me fat. And this feeling of elation I’ve had the past few days. I knew it.

A child. I am with child.

B
ash picks up the bucket. It is full of ice from frozen seawater. He turns it upside down and sets it on the floor—the ark roof. Then he takes off his loincloth, hands it to me, and sits bare-bottomed on the upside-down bucket. I wince watching him. He does this every morning, so I’m used to it, but I can’t help wincing. Warming the bucket just enough to make the ice inside it melt a little is probably the most important chore of the day, and the most unpleasant. I should take turns with him. But he won’t let me. He says my bottom needs protection. Then he laughs and says his is warmer anyway.

My bottom needs protection. I don’t know if he’s talking about the child within me or about me. But I accept his words as a gift.

I take the loincloth now, and while he sits on the bucket, I hold it inside my shift, between my thighs. At least this way, when he gets off the bucket, his loincloth will be warmed up.

After a while he stands, and I give it back to him. “Thank you, your Sheba,” he says as he winds it around himself. That’s what he calls me, now that I told him I wasn’t his Sheba. But he doesn’t say it mean. I can’t really tell what he thinks when he says it; his tone doesn’t give him away. But his thoughts aren’t mean, I’m sure of that.

I bend and hold the bucket in place while he kicks it. The ice detaches from the bucket bottom and sides and slips—
clunk
—onto the ark roof. He removes the bucket and we smile at each other across the glistening ice, but I’m praying inside my head—just as I’m sure Bash is doing—that no one on the deck below has heard.

Bash picks the ice up and drops it. It breaks easily. Too easily. Just ten days ago, when I first came up here, it took several drops to break the ice. Now one does it. The ice from all around the sides and top and bottom of the bucket is clear. We put these splintered pieces back in the bucket. The ice from the center is cloudy. And today it isn’t even really ice, more just slush. That’s where the salt from the seawater concentrates, so we throw away that part. It takes greater cold to freeze salt water, which means the salt gets concentrated at the center of the bucket. I pick up the bucket of clear ice and carry it to our tent. The ice will slowly melt, and we’ll have sweet water all day.

I didn’t know how to do any of this before. Freezing temperatures were rare where I lived. If I were alone on this ark roof, I’m sure I’d be dead by now simply from lack of sweet water. I’m good at figuring things out—I know my strengths. But Bash is better at some things. He’s traveled, by land and by sea. He’s not afraid of anything much, so far as I can tell.

I walk back to Bash and sit beside him. He’s holding on to the rope that has a bone hook on the other end of it.

“The ice cracked easily,” says Bash.

“I thought the same thing. Spring is coming. The days and nights are almost equal in length again. Soon the weather won’t help us get water anymore.”

He looks up at the sky. The sun blinds today. It blinds every day. “Cloudless, again. No chance of rain anytime soon.”

I laugh. “There was a time when I couldn’t imagine wanting it to rain ever again.”

Bash coils the rope as he pulls it up now.

“How do you do that?” I ask in frustration.

“What?”

“How do you know when there’s a fish caught down there? The rope is so heavy and so long, how can you feel a little fish struggling?”

“Stop it, Sheba.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop what you always do.”

“What do I always do?”

“You go off thinking I know everything. Want to know a secret?” He leans toward me. “I pull in the rope when I’m hungry. If there’s no fish there, I drop it again. It’s as simple as that.”

“I could pull in the rope.”

“It’s my job.”

“But it could be my job. I’m capable of pulling in a rope, Bash.”

“Sure. But like you said, it’s heavy. For me, it’s easy. For you, in your condition, it might even be dangerous.”

“You don’t let me do anything anymore.”

He blinks at me. Then he shrugs. “What do you want to do?”

“I want to let the animals go free at night.”