He waved and hallooed as he neared them. Those farthest away stood up and looked at him, those in deeper water swam for the shallows. They all knew something was up.
He was too breathless to say anything when he finally stood up in front of them. He stood pointing through the trees as he tried to catch his breath.
“A ship,” he managed to say at last. “A ship. In the forest. In there.”
They looked at him in amazement.
“There’s an enormous ship right over there,” he said. “I know it sounds unbelievable, but it’s true. It’s a hundred yards long at least. Probably longer. Fifty feet high.”
“What are you talking about?” said Omak. “Wouldn’t we have seen it if there were a hundred-yard-long ship over there?”
“It’s lying right across a meadow. Right by a rock wall. It’s almost impossible to see it before you’re right on top of it. It looks like part of the forest.”
If this was a joke, it was an idiotic one, so they realized that he really had seen something there, and they went up onshore to dress and take a closer look.
Suddenly they heard a dull thud behind them. It was as if it emanated from the depths of the ocean. They turned.
The sound came again, but louder this time. Booming, it echoed out across the sea.
“Look at the water,” one of them whispered.
They looked.
The water was lifting toward them.
Another boom arose from the depths.
“We must move upward. And quickly, too,” said Omak.
“The ship,” said Ophir. “We’ve got to go in that direction anyway. Come on.”
They all followed him. They took a diagonal route up through the forest. After a few minutes they halted. Only fifty yards distant, between the trees a little below them, there it lay. Ophir hadn’t been exaggerating. On the contrary, it was larger than he’d described. It must have been at least a hundred and fifty yards long. Perhaps even more.
“Who could have built something like this?” said Omak.
They approached slowly. It smelled of pitch, new-cut timber, wet forest.
Another boom sounded below them. As they turned they saw the water welling upward. It was rising many feet a minute now.
“Look,” said Ophir.
The water had reached the edge of the meadow and was creeping slowly on. For a while the ship remained lying just as firmly on the ground. But the water rose relentlessly up its sides, and when half the hull was submerged, it began to glide forward slowly. It glided between the trees, huge and dark. There wasn’t a sign of life aboard.
“A ship in the forest,” whispered Omak. “What sort of being could have made it?”
“It’s a death ship,” whispered Ophir.
Then it was out of the forest. The water was only a few feet below them now, and they began to run upward.
When finally they reached the mountainside, they saw that, with the exception of the two highest pieces of ground, the forest of the entire plateau was underwater. At the mountain farm above them, Javan and Anna stood looking out.
They had heard the booms, they’d seen the sea rise up, they had watched the forest below them vanish in the course of half an hour.
When they finally caught sight of the twins, running up the mountainside, they hurried indoors to load up the packs. Food was what they needed to take with them, as much food as they could carry.
First Anna went up to the loft to fetch Rachel and Jerak. She found them sitting on the bed with the baby between them. He lay on his back and looked up, waving his arms happily in the air. Rachel smiled down at him, tickled him gently on his naked stomach.
It was as if nothing that was happening outside was real, thought Anna. The quiet peacefulness here is how things really are.
“We’ve got to go,” she said.
Both of them looked up at her. For a few frightful moments she was sure that they’d say they wouldn’t. That they’d given up.
Below them, Omak and Ophir came charging in through the door. They were shouting excitedly at the same time. In short order Javan told them to be quiet, fill their packs with food, and get ready.
Then Jerak rose, and Rachel began to swaddle the baby. Perhaps she was a little rough, because just then he began to cry. Or perhaps he had sensed the mood that prevailed among them.
Anna packed two sacks, one to carry on her back and one on her front, filled two string bags to bursting with food, and saw that Javan was doing the same. The atmosphere was febrile, simultaneously distraught and dreamlike. The twins had each filled their packs and stood as if rooted to the spot, looking at them.
“You two can carry more than that!” Anna shouted to them.
Above her, Rachel came climbing down the ladder backward. The baby was no longer crying. There was a special calmness about them, Anna had time to think. Everything that happened just seemed to wash over them. Then she noticed that Omak and Ophir had got out the stretcher from the floor behind the ladder, and were moving toward Lamech.
She stopped them.
“We can’t take him with us. We’ve got to carry as much food as we can manage. We’ll need all the hands we’ve got.”
“Are we going to leave him here?” said Omak. “Then he’ll die.”
“He is dead,” said Anna. “He won’t feel anything.”
Javan stood rigid at her side. But he didn’t speak. He knew that she was right.
They got themselves ready in silence.
“Don’t look back,” said Anna as they were on their way out. “Don’t look at him. He’s perfectly all right.”
They did as she said, walked out of the hut one by one. But when it came to her, she turned.
Lamech lay on his back in the bed, staring at the ceiling.
“Good-bye,” she whispered.
Then she went out, shut the door behind her, and began to walk up the mountainside.
They didn’t stop until they’d gained the summit of the mountain ridge above the waterfall. It was the highest part of the country. By the time they’d got up it was dark. Several others from the valley had followed, and they now spread out. There were no trees or bushes up there, and no rock ledges or caves nearby that could offer shelter. They sat down in a small grass-covered dip. The baby lay well swaddled on a blanket, with an extra raincoat over him, and slept. Anna’s heart beat faster every time she thought of him. And Rachel. She’d never have believed she could be so calm and confident.
After they’d had something to eat, they went to sleep. Anna lay close to Javan, Rachel close to Jerak, Ophir close to Omak.
Faintly they heard the voices of the others on the mountain. The sound of the raindrops on the packs, on the coats, on the mountain, on the grass.
Anna was awoken several times by the booming of the sea beneath them. Every time, she thought of her father. Of how the water had first come seeping in across the floor, before gradually filling the room, until it reached him. Perhaps he’d drowned then, she thought, or perhaps the bed had floated right up to the ceiling before he drowned.
Whichever way, he was dead.
He couldn’t have understood what was happening, he must just have tried to breathe normally, maybe given a start when the water poured down his windpipe and into his lungs, without knowing why he struggled, or against what.
It was a good way for him to die.
But not for the baby. The notion that his death throes would be exactly the same was terrible. He wouldn’t understand what was happening either, nor know what he was struggling against.
Ohhh, she wailed then, quietly so that no one would hear her.
They’d have to make sure his final hours were as happy as possible.
When they awoke the next morning, it was to find the sea on every side. It lay perhaps sixty feet below them. But they could make out little more than the waves that swished against the green mountainside. Beyond them, the mist was as impenetrable as a wall.