There wasn’t much point in looking for shelter for the next night, Anna thought. There would be no next night.
She took out a little food from her bag. The mist seemed to muffle all sounds from farther away, while at the same time intensifying those nearby. It was as if the whole mountain echoed with voices.
She broke the loaf in two and handed the pieces to the twins, who began to chew silently. With tousled hair and narrowed eyes, they sat staring ahead of them as their jaws worked slowly up and down.
They made Anna smile.
A ship in the forest. Who’d ever heard of that?
They’d seen something, she knew that. Possibly a tangled mass of intertwined trees blown down in the storm, floating on the water through the forest. Perhaps a house washed away by the sea. It had happened before, she had been told of it, how entire houses had been lifted off the ground in the great flood all those years ago.
Not that she had heard of any houses down there, but still.
She broke a second loaf in two, offered one piece to Javan, and took the other herself.
There was a thundering sound far off, down in the depths. She pushed her hair away from her forehead, but it was wet and fell back, and she leaned forward and took a clip from the outer pocket of her bag.
Rachel was still asleep. The baby lay on his stomach under the raincoat. I hope he isn’t cold, she thought, and moved over a little so that she could see him better.
He was sleeping, too.
She put her head up close, and could just feel the breath from his nostrils tickle her cheek.
Only then was she aware that Rachel had opened her eyes and was looking at her.
“He’s sleeping,” said Anna.
Rachel nodded and yawned.
Javan got up.
“I’m off for a little walk,” he said. “Are you coming?”
Anna shook her head.
They hadn’t much time left, and she wanted to spend as much of it as possible close to Rachel and the baby.
“But you go.”
He walked inland, the twins a couple of steps behind him. The voices across the mountain seemed to be grouped. Even though it was tricky to judge distance and direction, it wasn’t hard to tell which group they belonged to, and now they heard Javan’s voice join one of them.
When, a moment later, they began laughing, Anna could picture him in her mind, standing there with his hands in his pockets, leaning back a little, watching the people he was talking to. The way he would occasionally turn his head and spit. And look up again with smiling eyes.
Again there was laughter. Something like envy ran through her. She didn’t know what they were laughing at, but suspected it had to do with the events of the past few days. How, bent double under their loads, they had dragged themselves up the mountainside like goats, no, like insects, they had crawled upward like ants, higher and higher, with the sea always at their heels. Lamech lying back there in the mountain hut. The rain that just fell and fell. The valley that disappeared. Mountains that turned into islands. A sea that would eventually rule over the earth alone, cold and shining under the stars.
That was what they were laughing at. That there was nothing they could do. That this was just something that was happening.
A light wind had begun to blow off the water. Beneath them the waves splashed against the mountain. She rose and saw that the mist had just begun to drift away. Here and there the sea opened out. Rachel had put the baby to her breast. Jerak sat beside her, looking over his shoulder at the sea behind him.
He had been sitting like that for a long while, she realized.
“What are you looking at?” she asked, sitting down beside him.
“There’s something out there,” he said. “I’ve seen it several times. I’m not certain, but it looks like some sort of ship.”
“It’s probably just clouds,” said Anna. She could see that the twins’ story had made an impression on him. Now he was looking out with that in his thoughts, and his thoughts were influencing what he saw.
“Maybe,” he said.
Rachel lifted the baby gently from her breast, covered him with the coat again and held him out in front of her with her arms under his back.
“Come and look, Mom,” she said. “Isn’t that a smile? Isn’t he lying there smiling?”
Anna bent over them. If this was just a chance grimace, she wouldn’t be the one to say so.
But it was a smile. The child’s eyes shone under his mother’s gaze.
Anna laughed, stroked his cheek with her forefinger.
“That’s rare,” she said. “You didn’t smile until you were almost a month old. What a dear little rascal you’ve got.”
“There it is again,” said Jerak.
Anna turned. This time she saw it too.
An enormous ship, so dark it was almost black, was gliding through the mist out there. It disappeared, came into view, and disappeared again.
“It looks as if it’s just drifting with the current,” said Jerak.
“Which way is it going?” asked Anna. “From where did you see it last?”
“It’s coming toward us.”
By dinnertime the mist had lifted completely. The sea was only thirty feet below them. And the ship, which everyone was aware of by now, lay looming in the swell just off the island.
It was vast. Perhaps fifty feet high, a hundred wide, and almost six hundred and fifty in length. And as black as night.
They had stared at it for several hours, but as yet had seen no sign of life aboard. The deck was enclosed so it could be that the crew was simply keeping out of sight, but it didn’t look as if anyone was steering it, so they assumed it was deserted. The aura of death that clung to it strengthened the assumption.
The ship was their last hope. In just a few hours’ time the sea would cover this mountain too. They thought the ship had been sent by God. The flood had been an ordeal he had put them through, the rising sea had been sent to test them, and they had not succumbed, they had crawled up to this foothold, and stood here now, only hours away from their end. Then a ship arrived. What else could it mean but that they had overcome their trials and were God’s chosen among men?
But if the ship had been sent to them by God, why was it so black, so impassive, so hostile and dead?
There was death in God, there was hostility in God, there was darkness in God.
God was as blind as the sea, as scorching as the sun, as black as the darkest night.
And now he’d sent his ship to save them.
Crowded together they stood watching the ship move closer. When the moment they had been waiting for arrived, and the keel nudged at the mountain just below them, all they did at first was stand and watch.
How were they to climb up? The hull was fifty feet high and completely smooth, there were no handholds or footholds anywhere.
“Hello?” someone called after a while. “Is anyone there?”
Another went down to the water’s edge and thumped on the hull with his fist.
Nothing happened.
Only when the ship slowly turned, and they saw that there was an external rudder post all the way down the stern, did their hesitancy leave them.
Anna stood in the background, a few yards higher up the mountain with Rachel and the baby and Jerak.
She was frightened. She looked at this ship, and it frightened her.
But it was their final hope.
Down below two men had begun to clamber up the post. It was round and clearly very slippery. For every two yards they managed to gain, they slipped a yard back.
Everyone’s eyes were on them. Some called out pieces of advice.