Read Forty Days: Neima's Ark, Book One for Free Online

back of my neck and under my
shift like some insidious crawling thing, and I want to shake both
it and the stares away, but of course I can’t. I swear the only
villagers I don’t catch sight of are Derya and Jorin, and I’m not
sure whether I’m relieved or disappointed. Either way, judging by
the whispers spreading far faster than my mother, my aunt and I can
carry our load, my friends will know what’s going on soon
enough.
    By the time we reach the flat wooden
bridge that spans the river, my arms and shoulders throb as much
from nervous tension as the physical exertion. We guide the carts
carefully across the bridge, and then I’m closer to the ark than
I’ve ever been before, the smell of the still-wet pitch so
overwhelming I’d cover my nose if I had a free hand to do so. Shai
coughs and shakes her head and cries out, “Momma, I can’t live in
there, even if there is a flood. It’s cursed, it’s
cursed!”
    Aunt Zeda just hushes her, so Shai
runs to me, wrapping a small tan hand in my skirt. “It’s all
right,” I whisper, as much for my own comfort as hers. “We won’t
have to live inside it.”
    But my father and Uncle Ham are coming
toward us, circling around the ark’s hulking black side, and it
occurs to me that while we may not be moving in, someone must
deposit the grain inside. We can’t leave it out here for birds and
squirrels to peck at. And despite everything, I’m curious to see
more of this project that’s consumed so much of my father’s and
uncles’ time.
    Father reaches us and lifts the sack
from Mother’s cart, and without asking whether I should wait, I
haul up my own sack—with much less ease than he does—and follow him
to the other side of the ark.
    There is a door—two doors, actually,
one that opens to the left and one the right—both propped open and
both extending higher than the roof of our cottage. I must be
gaping, for finally I realize Father’s been tugging on the sack in
my arms, but my grip still won’t loosen. “I’ll take it, Neima,” he
says. “Go back to your mother.”
    “ No.” I shift the bag
that’s growing heavier by the moment. “I want to see.”
    He sighs as if he’d guessed as much,
and then I follow him, stepping up, for the floor of the ark is
more than a foot’s length above the ground, and through the massive
doors.
    I expected one open, cavernous space,
so I’m disconcerted to find myself in a dim hallway. I blink,
adjusting to the sudden lack of light, and make out openings to
rooms on either side of me; neither appears to stretch to the end
of the ark. A ladder looms ahead of me as well, extending through a
hatch in the ceiling, and Father notices me staring.
    “ It leads to the second
level,” he explains. “There are two floors within the ark itself,
and then the deck house you can see from outside.”
    Two levels? Well, of course—the
ceiling above me is as high as the doorway, but only about half the
height of the entire ark. It’s just, the amount of work this must
have taken…
    And all these rooms… Father has led me
into the one on the left, and two more open doorways lead off from
it, further into the depths of the ark. But what did I expect?
After seven years of work, with all the nomads Noah’s hired, some
returning year after year, I suppose almost anything is
possible.
    If only all that hard work actually
served some purpose.
    “ You can drop that here
for now,” Father says, his voice gruff—I suspect he still feels
guilty after this morning. I think he would do both Mother’s and my
work for us, if he could. Out of nowhere, I have the strange
impulse to wrap myself around him the way I did when I was much
younger, when even on tiptoe I could barely reach his waist. But
I’m far too old for that now, and besides, he’s already turned to
walk back out of the ark, into the midday sun.

    ***

    Though we work as slowly as we can
without rousing Grandfather Noah’s suspicions, over the next days
we cart