The day arrives when they want to send out the dove again. The water seems low, and new parts of the mountains have been revealed, with green grass and knotted plants that will surely flower soon into great sweeps of purple and yellow.
They don’t cheer this time. They don’t chant their wishes at the bird. The bird flies off and they all watch until it’s out of sight, even Naamah, who can see every animal again. She wonders if it remembers the way to the olive tree, if it will be happy there.
This time, if all goes well, the bird will not return. And while its disappearance could mean a great many things—that the bird has died, for instance—they will have to take the absence as a good sign.
Naamah can’t think of many times in her life when she has greeted an absence with faith. Perhaps the absence of blood when she and Noah were first trying to get pregnant, when she couldn’t say, before then, if she were a fertile woman.
NAAMAH EXPECTS ADATA to start their preparations with purpose, but she keeps to her room.
“What’s wrong?” Naamah asks.
“I made promises to you, Naamah. Promises that were easy to make on the ark and with life on land in the future, some future no one could make out. And I’m worried I can’t keep them. Now that it’s here—all here, all of a sudden.”
“You mean, your life with Japheth?”
Adata nods.
“Have you been happy here with him?”
“I have.”
“Why would being on land change that?”
“I don’t know. On land I could run away.”
Naamah laughs. “Just go one day to the next.”
“There is a safety to the ark.”
“Is there?” Naamah asks. “Listen, Adata, if months from now you are not happy with Japheth, then he will not be happy with you, and the two of you will be unhappy and you will have to find some resolve to that, and it will not be your fault; you will not have betrayed me or this family or God. That is life.”
“That is life.”
“Yes. Now help me figure out what we should eat before we leave and what is worth carrying with us.”
Adata follows her down to the lowest floor of the boat, which still holds a chill. “The tiger is not growling,” Adata says.
“No.”
“Is she dead?”
“No—no, of course not.”
“We have all spoken of the marks on your face, Naamah. But we were afraid to ask. I didn’t think of what could have made them until now. Did you meet the tiger?”
Naamah touches the scab on her cheek with the tip of her middle finger. “Yes.”
“How are you alive, Naamah?”
“I don’t know,” Naamah says.
At the storage room, they lift boxes to see which are the heaviest. They consolidate vegetables that had been stored separately, when there were more of them. They move boxes to the hall, for what they’ll want to eat soon. They don’t remark upon how strange every action feels, in what might be their last days on the boat.
AFTER A WEEK, Noah agrees that it’s safe to say the dove will not return. Noah was the last holdout. And while they all knew he would come to think this, their newfound agreement invites a certainty that surprises everyone.
That night Naamah can’t sleep, but to her surprise, neither can Noah.
“We have so much to do,” he says.
“I know.”
“Should we make a list? Should we assign tasks?”
“We can if you want to,” Naamah says.
“Would you do it?”
“Have Adata do it. She needs something to be in charge of right now.”
“Why? Why do you say it like that?”
“Nothing. She’s just anxious, like you are, wide awake when you should be asleep.”
“I guess we’re all on edge,” Noah says.
“Except Neela. She’s too tired to be on edge.”
“Are we not helping enough?” Noah asks.
“I don’t think it matters what we do. She has to eat and her body has to draw on itself to make milk. Even if she were sleeping perfectly, she’d be exhausted.”
“I remember when you were like that.”
“You do?”
“Yes. You could fall asleep anywhere. We would be down by the river washing clothes, and you’d say, ‘I have to lie down for a second,’ and then you’d be asleep in a patch of grass, a baby next to you on his back, looking at the undersides of leaves and swatting at his own legs.”
Naamah laughs.
Noah kicks off the blanket the way a baby would.
“Noah!” Naamah gasps.
He laughs and grabs the blanket and pulls it up over both of their heads and kisses her on the nose. “Remember the tents we would build with the boys, with ropes and blankets in the branches of tamarisk trees?”
“Yes,” Naamah says. “Now let me out of this thing.” And she pushes the top of the blanket down and tucks it under her arm. “I’m going to sleep,” she says, closing her eyes, but still smiling.
“I’m going to do that with our grandchildren,” he whispers.
She puts her hand on his arm and they both go to sleep.
LATE IN THE NIGHT, Naamah wakes and lies in bed and wonders whether the boat offers safety, as Adata suggested. A sameness. A containedness. Yes. A vessel that demands a certain repetitiveness of the body. When was the last time Naamah jumped to reach something? Or crawled under something? She cannot remember—everything here is so perfectly made for humans, for herself and these seven other humans specifically. They made so many decisions so quickly as they built, or as they were surprised by something they’d forgotten. So many adaptations.
Then Naamah hears a note of some kind, almost giggling, as if something delightful might be expected. Yet as she follows the sound, she cannot guess what the delight might be.
She climbs down the ladder to the patch of land, which has grown in size, big enough to hold an entire market. She walks out to the edge of it, to the water, closer to the sound, and spots a glimmer farther out. Thinking it might be the angel, Naamah rushes toward it, still in her clothes. When the water reaches her waist and her clothes begin to float up around her, as if she’s begun to blossom, she realizes it is not the angel but the children who have come to see her.
“Hello, children. What are you doing here?”
But she can’t hear them. All she can hear is the same sound she heard from her bed.
She crouches down under the water, feels the film cover her mouth. She knows the angel will be able to tell she’s entered the water again.
“Naamah! Naamah!” the children clamor. “We heard about the tiger.”
“I see the mark on her face.”
“I see a cut behind her ear.”
One child begins to comb through her hair.
She says, “That’s enough, children,” but she still lets the girl comb through her hair for her scabs. “Please tell me how you’ve all been.”
“We’ve been well.”
She turns to one of the boys. “And you, how is your mother?”
He looks down at his feet. “She is fine.”
“Have you all been to the cave? To see the art she has made?”
“No, we haven’t.”
“Well, you must. Don’t you care for the adults down there at all?”
“We care for you, Naamah.”
“I know.”
The children tell her stories of how they’ve explored the world the angel has made. One has brought a crystal with him and shows how he has learned to change its shape himself. He is so proud, as if he might grow up and be an angel one day, if only he learns how.
“Tell me why you have come,” Naamah says. “The angel must not approve.”
“We didn’t tell her,” one shouts.
“We heard about the baby,” says another.
“The baby?”
“Oh yes! And we wanted to know when we would see a baby, and the angel said we might never see one! So we had to come!”
“I see.”
“So can we see the baby, Naamah? Please.”
“I don’t see why not. If you are quiet and unseen.”
The children nod.
“Come with me, then.”
“No,” the children say, stepping back, deeper into the water. “We can’t leave.”
“You’d have me go get the baby and bring her to you?”
The children nod and move closer again.
“Wait here for me,” she says.
Naamah stands again and feels the air rush over her skin, sees the moonlight. She could simply forget the children were there. That’s how discrete their worlds are from one another.
STOPPING IN NEELA and Ham’s doorway, Naamah spots the baby asleep between them, wrapped tightly in a blanket. She goes to the side of the bed where Ham is sleeping, knowing he is less likely to wake, and she lifts Danit from the bed. No one stirs.
On the deck, she wraps Danit to her chest with a swath of cloth, and in this new position the baby snores.
Naamah climbs down the ladder, walks across the new land, and wades into the water. As the water creeps up toward the baby, Naamah unwraps her and tucks the end of the long cloth into her waist belt. It unfurls from her hip. She holds Danit in her arms.
The children motion for Naamah to come closer. She holds the child high and lays her own ear to the water.
“She’s beautiful!” one says.
Another yells out, “Can we touch her?”
All the children pause at that, and then they all repeat it, louder and louder.
Naamah stands up abruptly. She stares down at Danit, still asleep, still swaddled. She doesn’t think the children can hurt her, but she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know if, on her own visits, the angel protects her from the touch of the children. She doesn’t know much about the dead at all.
The night is quiet, the air cold, the children merely a shifting light on the water, as if they reflect the moon more than the surface of the water does. Naamah undoes one corner of the blanket and Danit’s arm falls out. Naamah feels the skin of her arm, softer than any animal on the boat. Danit squirms and her hand reaches out. Naamah thinks just to touch a finger to the water.
As Naamah leans toward the water, the baby’s hand hanging from her body, the undone wrap pouring off her like a song would, if a song were a fabric—it is at this moment that Naamah hears a wild scream, and she stops.
Neela is wailing on the deck, leaning over the railing.
Naamah stands up and walks back toward her. “Neela?” Naamah climbs to her, holding Danit to her chest, letting the wet cloth trail behind them.
When she reaches the deck, Neela bursts into tears and grabs Danit from her.
“Are you okay?” Naamah asks.
“I’m not hurt, Naamah. I’m furious.”
“With me?”
“What were you doing with her?”
“I just—” Naamah tries for an explanation that doesn’t involve dead children. “I was showing her the water before it’s receded.”
“She’s asleep, Naamah. We were all asleep.”
“The water is so different at night.”
Neela shakes her head. “And me waking and not finding her, how did you think I would react?”
“I didn’t think you would wake.”
“Have you taken her like this before?”
“No! No.”
“How can I trust you?”
“Of course you can trust—”
But Neela cuts her off. “There are only so many of us, Naamah!” And she cries harder and shoulders past Naamah, going back below deck.
Naamah goes to the railing and looks to see if there are still shining spots in the water, each the head of a dead child, waiting for her.