landlost | ONC 2024

four.

THE DAYS PASSED quickly, and I soon learnt the routine of Noah's camp. The men would leave for the Ark in the mornings, Ada and Sedeqet for the crops a little later, and Ezmara would sit to grind dyes for her fabrics at the firepit.

I was like a child ordered to sit at its mother's feet. I had to tend to lunch and unspool the fibres of bulrushes found on the banks of the river to create Ezmara's thread. The firepit and the clothing line were the extent of where I could venture.

Eventually, it grew tiresome. After tripping on the hem of Ada's kēthanoth for the umpteenth time trying to stand and stir the stew resting over the fire, my patience wore thinner than the strands of bulrush stuck around my nails.

"Can I not just wear my old clothes?" I asked Emzara. "I am sure Ada's growing tired of me borrowing her things——"

"Adataneses doesn't mind," Emzara said, her eyes on her wooden mortar and pestle. Her hands moved methodically, nimble and strong to crush together the ingredients of her next yellow dye.

I sat down again, trying to focus on making more thread through the haze of frustration that made my fingers numb to their task. I tugged harder than I meant to on a strip of the bulrush's stem, and the entire thing split down the middle, the softer fibres I needed all snapped.

Emzara's mortar and pestle clanked together as she observed me. I was frozen still as stone by my incompetence. Mother would have hit me for my wastage, or tugged on my plait to ensure my head was still screwed on right.

Emzara only watched me.

"Your old clothes have been disposed of," she said measuredly. I bit my lip and kept my eyes on the grass beneath me. "It was for the best. We did it with all the girls; it may make things ... Easier."

Rage bubbled hotter than smouldering coal on my tongue.

Naamah.

"How could you?" My plea was low and strangled. I finally looked at Emzara, hoping she could see the pain in my eyes, since it seemed to have clogged up my throat.

"We can't have you bringing idols into our camp," Emzara continued, still suspiciously calm. My mother's fury was always plain to see and then be felt. I didn't know how to read anything else.

"The town is filled with corruption and disease. I will make you new clothes. Just be patient." And then, she fell silent. She returned to her dyes like I wasn't staring daggers at her form, like it didn't even matter. Like she had been through this before.

Disease. My jaw almost cracked with the amount of force I was grinding my teeth together with. Did they think I was dirty? That I was a liability in the camp? All signs pointed towards that being true. Why else would Noah not tell me what the Ark truly was for, or why I couldn't marry Ham immediately and fulfil my father's purposes for me?

I thought of Naamah, and her how sickness had run bone-deep. It had festered in her too long to infect anybody else. It only wanted her. Now I wished that it would take me, too.

"Take the men their food," Ezmara said. It was a carefully-disguised order. "And cool off."

I scrambled to escape her, filling the men's lunch basket with stewed vegetables that smelled of spice. I focused on carrying the woven basket without dropping it or spilling anything, and for a few minutes, that took my mind off of the anger I could feel stirring in my chest.

The walk to the Ark was quick, my footsteps lit by the confrontation between Ezmara and myself. I had never dared to argue with Mother or Father, unless it was about Naamah, and I felt the cool dripping of guilt dampen the flames in my chest. I had fought with Noah's wife. My future mother-in-law in the family that had been welcoming to me.