People of the Flood (Ark Chronicles 2) by Vaughn Heppner Page B

know?”
    They increased their pace, Ham limping and calling on Canaan to wait for him . He hated being even partly a cripple. He’d thought about constructing a chariot. But they had never recaptured the horses Japheth lost, and their lone one had long ago died. Still, donkeys could draw a chariot.
    “ Ah,” Canaan said. “Grandfather runs to the tent with Gomer.”
    Ham saw that . Noah fairly flew down the hill. Despite being in his mid-six hundreds, Noah was still as vigorous as his offspring.
    “ Hurry,” Ham said, sprinting for the tent, his stomach clenched with fear.
    Noah beat them; he ran with terrible intensity.
    With sweat pouring from him and badly out of breath, Ham, with Canaan, barged into the tent. Noah wept, with Gomer and his wife huddled behind him. On the cot, stretched out, lay Gaea. A blood-clotted gash painted her forehead.
    Wide-eyed and trembling, Ham approached his nephew Gomer . “What happened?”
    Forty-year -old Gomer wiped his eyes, looking at him with sorrow. They seldom spoke, although they each acted more civilly to one another than Japheth and he did. “Grandmother was egg-hunting in the mountains with Aunt Ruth’s girls. She climbed a slippery rock and fell and hit her head.”
    Noah ’s moan, low and pitiful, felt like a dagger in Ham’s gut.
    “ Is she…”
    Gomer turned away as tears streamed down his face . His wife, Io, one of Ham’s daughters, draped herself onto him. “Oh, Father, what are we going to do? Grandmother Gaea is dead.”
     

2.
     
    Noah stood at his wife’s funeral, the wind whipping his long white beard, whipping his white hair and his white linen garments.
    It was a solemn affair . Everyone wept but Noah. He gazed dull-eyed into the distance as Shem spoke. High cumulus clouds raced across the sky, throwing the funeral into cold shadows. They buried Mother near Noah’s altar, Japheth, Shem and Ham placing the tombstone chiseled the day before.
    The grandchildren cried, as did the great-grandchildren . Great-great grandchildren weren’t far behind. Every person on Earth, except for Noah, shed a tear in her honor.
    Noah stayed at the gravesite long after everyone else left.
    “He was married for over six hundred years,” Shem told the others. “Can any of you conceive of that?”
    “ Frankly, no,” Ham said.
    A week later , Noah quietly began to search. High and low, he tramped, often gone for two weeks at a time. His cheeks grew gaunt, and he told stories about the incredible variety of vicious beasts. Behemoths, dragons, great sloths, lions and sabertooths, they all thrived beyond the world of the northern slopes of Ararat and beyond Lake Van. Hounds went with Noah, but many didn’t return.
    Noah snorted whenever his children urged caution . Noah didn’t say it, but Ham told Rahab, “He’s on a quest.”
    Rahab asked, “For what?”
    “ I don’t know,” Ham said. “But you can feel it in him. He’s like he used to be, during the Ark construction days.”
    Shem spoke with Noah most, urging him to relax, to let the grief drain . Noah listened to the entreaties and vanished the next day. He returned sometime later with wild vines in a bag full of dirt.
    As in most things, Noah was the best farmer . He planted stakes and groomed the soil.
    “ Grapes?” Ham asked, checking on his father to see if he planned any more forays.
    “ We need to expand our selection of foods,” Noah said, leaning on his shovel.
    Ham kept his thoughts private . And he didn’t quite dare ask his father where he had found the vines. Surely, Noah didn’t intend to ferment wine. Ham sighed. He wanted too, oh, how he did, but… He shrugged—not as long as Noah ruled.
     

3.
     
    Before Jehovah told Noah to build the Ark, the white-bearded patriarch had been a farmer, one of the best the Antediluvian World had ever known. As a farmer, he also excelled in the New World. His sod root cellars burst with gunnysacks full of onions, beets, sunflower seeds, wheat,