Drown

It was almost midnight when Minussa arrived at the village, and the landscape glowed softly in the moonlight. Lanterns hanging over doorways made shimmering dots of light that bounced off the falling raindrops.

As expected, there was pandemonium. People scurried about in the ankle-deep water, making noisy splashes as they carried heavy bundles wrapped in thick cloth and muttering hasty curses when they bumped into each other. Some had given in to despair; they crouched in dimly lit street corners, whimpering quietly as the water slowly but steadily crept upwards.

It had been raining for ten days now–unheard of in the history of her people– and the entire valley was flooding. Just like Atra-Hasis had said it would.

Minussa had a plan, however, and she peered through the crowd at the hills that loomed in the distance. Behind those lazy peaks lay a shallow ravine where the old man had built his boat. She would find her way inside or drown.

The streets she had walked every week of her early life seemed somehow different now; perhaps for the first time, she saw them for what they truly were—fragile and impermanent. Pieces of driftwood and cloth danced in the water around her, and the tangy smell of wet earth permeated everything. The crowd was thicker than expected–perhaps people didn’t want to stay indoors as the certainty of death drew closer.

Adjanys had told her this would happen. After a long stroll through the forest surrounded by towering cypress trees and the heady scent of youth, they would often talk about the future and what it could hold. Minussa always saw a vista of endless possibilities that they would (maybe, hopefully) explore together. He, however, had different ideas.

“The Flood will come,” he would say, with a nod for emphasis. “Father is usually right about such things.”

“There is not enough water in the sky for that,” she would say, pointing upwards. “Or else, it would break. Your father drinks too much wine.”

Then he would laugh, his rich deep rumble filling the forest air and making her heart flutter, and then she would laugh too.

##########

She was close to the village square now, where the farmers used to set up their goods for sale in huge woven baskets and flaxen sacks. The noise grew louder, and she could pick up splinters of conversation from ahead of her.

“...the first day of this damned drizzle…”

“...then I told her ‘No, you mustn’t do that’...”

“...are slippery beasts, you know?”

She turned a corner and the market came into view. Upturned tables and chairs were everywhere, and at least two dozen rowdy men roared in laughter over their drinks as they sat around a large makeshift platform covered by the central roof. Pieces of bread and fruit littered the water (that now covered her feet completely), and young children raced around unbothered by the rain that poured in sheets as their mothers watched without complaint, themselves chatting furiously at the top of their voices. A lively tune filtered out from one of the nearby sheds and lent a gay atmosphere to the scene. Somewhere in a small corner of her mind, she wondered why anyone would throw a party.

The hills were on the other side; she had no choice but to venture closer to the chaos. The men were distracted by drink and talk, and she was almost halfway through the crowd before someone noticed her.

“Hey you!” he yelled in a raspy, irritating voice. “Who are you?”

Minussa didn’t respond, just kept on walking until a hand grabbed her wrist from behind and forced her to stop. She turned to face a tall and heavyset man, whose eyes glowed over his beard as he leered at her. “You’re not bad, no, not bad at all,” he murmured with a wicked smile. Then he bent towards her as if to get a closer look.

She didn’t think twice–she instinctively pushed him away with both hands, with a significant amount of force and disgust. He was drunk and he lost his balance, tumbling backward into one of the last few upright tables and knocking it into another with a considerable racket. He fell into the water with a loud splash.

Just as quickly, he was up again, and Minussa found her arms held back by two pairs of hands that had appeared behind her. The bearded man glowered at her.

She was scared now, and he must have seen it because the edges of his lips rose menacingly. He drew closer once more, and she closed her eyes. Then she heard a faint but stern shout behind her.

“Stop that, Rinid,” said a high-pitched male voice to her left, and her assaulter took a step back. She turned and saw a short man in a deep green tunic, with a tall straw hat covering his face that sprayed water as he stepped gingerly through the water that climbed almost to his knees. He stretched out an arm towards her, and Minussa made the traditional gestures due to the host.

He tilted his hat upwards to smile pleasantly at her, and she saw that it was Namkuzu, the wealthiest man in the village. He was almost as old as Atra-Hasis was, and he owned the large grape plantation on the mountains north of the village. Everything was probably already washed away by the flood, she thought sadly.

“It is my party,” he began, conspicuously ignoring the men who still restrained her, “and I don’t appreciate any sort of violence. Where are you going, after all? The rain is all there is.”

Then he laughed, an exaggerated whiny cackle that betrayed his underlying sorrow. “They say it is raining everywhere; twenty thousand cubits in any direction. The water,” he continued, kicking his foot and sending up a spray of mud, “devours brick and wood alike. All the gold and wine in the world cannot save anyone, much less an old man and his family. There is nothing to do but wait to drown. So I threw a party.”

Minussa shook her arms free of the men, who were distracted by Namkuzu’s outburst and had relaxed their grip. She gazed softly on the grape farmer’s wrinkled face, at the debris of the haughty look that he was famously known for, and pitied him. After a moment in thought, she bent towards him.

“I have a plan,” she said, quietly so that only he could hear. “Bring your family—and anyone else you care about—and meet me here.”

##########

Every so often during her childhood, Atra-Hasis would come down from his faraway hill to buy the fresh green grapes that the villagers grew. His three sons would accompany him, carrying empty baskets and pulling the carts. The eldest would bargain for hours at the tables and then when a price was agreed upon and the purchase was made, they would load the heavy bunches of plump fruit into their baskets and place them on the carts. Then they would wait in the shade for their father as he scoured the village, preaching death and destruction as he walked.

A great Flood would come, he shouted. Enlil the evil one would send rains of such fury and duration, all the earth would be covered. Enki had asked him to build a boat to save them, along with all the animals in the world. Anyone outside it would drown.

People didn't believe him; the gods did not speak to mortals. The dense cypress forest he had planted around the base of his hill lent some credence to whatever he was building, though.

Minussa had been a curious child with excessively liberal parents, so she spent a lot of time around the market. She knew Atra-Hasis' children, especially the middle one, Adjanys. He had a mop of curly black hair and his face formed dimples when he smiled. Once, after the grapes were covered and the party was headed for their hills, she approached him.

“Who are you?” he had asked, his eyebrow raised in inquiry. “What do you want?”

She had replied simply. “I want to see what you are building.”

Perhaps he was looking for a friend, or maybe he liked the look of her (as he told her countless times much, much later), but he had agreed. She hid underneath the white flax sheet and bounced with the grapes as Adjanys pushed the cart to his home.

The procession jolted to a stop, and a few minutes later the covers flew upwards as Adjanys harried her behind the house, narrowly escaping the gaze of one of his brothers. She caught glimpses of the moss-covered mudbrick walls as they ran until they stopped, and she saw a sight that took her breath away.

The boat was a marvel beyond comprehension. Colossal planks of dark rich cypress melded seamlessly into a gigantic almost-round structure that stood a hundred cubits above her head. There were two levels of windows, the ones at the top resembling the familiar ones adorning houses–though a lot smaller, while the ones underneath were scarcely more than slits in the wood. Small globules of pitch oozed out from tiny openings, and an equally impressive lattice of reeds poked out from behind the craft.

He must have seen her mouth hanging open in awe because he said “It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

She nodded, too stunned to speak, and finally seeing the truth behind the old man’s words. No mortal man could conceive of such a craft.

“All of life will continue because of it.”

##########

Minussa remembered the path very well, even though she had not visited since she married Gizlam. They had left the rising water gurgling behind them, and Namkuzu along with his wife, his two young sons, and an infant girl climbed slowly after her, being careful not to slip on the wet rock that glimmered in the dying light.

The old man talked as they walked, mainly stories of his early life meant to entertain the children who whimpered when the rain grew cold and thunder boomed above them. He was once a child, she realized, and he told tales of his misadventures and near-deaths, set in a time when the world was young and wild.

His father had been a village chief who was as cruel to his children as he was to his prisoners of war. Namkuzu had run away scarcely out of his teens to seek his fortune elsewhere by any means, eventually settling down in a small farming community at the base of a mountain where he learned to grow the grapes that would make him wealthy in his twilight years.

“I have done my fair share of evil deeds,” he said, so quietly that she could barely hear him. “Many would call me cunning, unkind, even wicked. But I am better than my father was before me. I have a family that loves me. And that,” he continued, turning to stare at the village they had left behind them, “is enough.”

He stopped speaking when she halted, staring at the house that sat on a ledge ahead of them. The rain poured down from the rafters jutting out of the wall, and innumerable rivulets wound down the hill and pooled around her feet. The windows were dark, and only a thin stream of moonlight lit the doorway. Countless bits of reed and cloth littered the floor, and the scene looked like someone had fled in a hurry.

“He's gone,” said Namkuzu, looking around for someone.

Minussa was more concerned with the empty house, and she crept towards the entrance, wary of any small creatures that, like her, sought solace from the rain. The children tiptoed slowly after her, with their father crawling steadily behind them.

There was a sudden noise, a loud piercing screech that sent cold shivers down her spine and made the children shriek. At that moment, the darkness seemed to close in around them, and Minussa felt her heart tremble inside of her. She slowed to a stop in the middle of the hallway.

“Do not be frightened,” said Namkuzu in a firm voice as he walked past his wife and up to the head of the column. “I know what it is.”

The sound came again, transposing into an eerie moan emanating from somewhere to their right. The staunch figure of the old man followed its echoes and disappeared into a corridor for a terrifying moment before calling out “Magnificent.”

His wife rushed forward, pulling one child in one hand and cradling the infant with the other, while one trailed behind her. Minussa followed them warily.

The corridor opened into an even greater hallway, dimly lit by rectangles of fading moonlight cut into the roof. The opposite walls were scarcely ten cubits away, but the ends of the room were invisible, hidden by unknown distance. Their footsteps echoed a hundred times louder, and for a few moments, the sound of splashing water and shuffling feet devoured the endless hum of falling rain.

She jumped back and knocked down a terracotta vessel behind her, for just a few paces away in a reed cage mounted atop a mound of mudbrick, was a bird. It paced its prison defiantly; sometimes ruffling its rich mud-colored plumage spasmodically, now swiveling its head—fully and instantly!—to stare menacingly at the group with its bulging black eyes set in a cloud of fluffy white feathers. Its beak flew open, and out came a scream of such intensity, the baby began to cry.

“It’s an owl,” declared Namkuzu, staring at the creature in wonder.

##########

The sky was cloudy and the wind was cold on the day Minussa told Adjanys. It would be a difficult conversation that she could not avoid, so, clad with a thick woolen shawl and a strong sense of moral obligation, she climbed the steep hill for the last time.

She had made a mistake and she knew it. On the night of her coming-of-age festival, she had been dancing in the moonlight with her friends when Gizlam, a handsome rogue youth, had come up to her; himself having done the ceremony two years earlier. He had kissed her with such passion and intensity—to the envy of her peers—that a fire blazed to life inside her and consumed her whole being. The wine and the soft hay bed did the rest.

She had become—just a few hours earlier, in fact—a woman of marriageable age, and tradition stood firm. She was to be wed in three weeks.

He was nailing wooden planks into place on the aft side of the round wooden craft; the world’s greatest boat was still largely incomplete. He stopped when he saw her and smiled broadly before settling down on a stump to drink cool water from a gourd.

She had been direct, as always, and had watched the corners of his lips plummet, watched the soft glow leave his eyes and be replaced by the dark fog of disappointment and sorrow. He did not need to say anything to her; she could see it.

But he spoke, and just for a moment, a light shone through the mist. “The Flood,” he said, a familiar worried tone creeping into his voice. “You will not be with me.”

Minussa hadn’t understood at first, tormented as she was by grief. Then comprehension dawned on her and she could only stare blankly at him, seeing her watery death flash before her eyes.

His last words, before the curtains shut forever to her, were “We shall board on the eleventh day. Come; I will wait for you.”

##########

The owl was a strange creature, unlike any animal she had ever seen before. It had stopped screeching now, and after growing accustomed to the long stares from Namkuzu and his children, the bird stopped pacing and settled down silently into a corner of the cage, where she spied a withering bundle of twigs and leaves it had once called a nest. Perhaps it had a partner once, she mused. Her mind dreamed up a story where one bird was safe and happy, while the other got lost and was left to die alone. Just like she had.

“Owls sleep in the daytime,” the old man was telling his family, and they all seemed to notice the faint beams of morning sunlight creeping in from above them, the shadows of the raindrops flickering on the walls of the room. “They hunt at night and eat small things like insects and rats.”

Minussa watched them for a few moments, then left the room through a small corridor further down the long wall. It led to the back of the house; a clifftop balcony of a sort overlooking a deep ravine.

A newly-formed river now flowed between the scarred mossy rock, tumbling over jagged outcrops and splashing like the rain that formed it, plowing down vegetation and submerging the leafy stems in frothing brown water. It gushed outwards into the valley, which was filled with water as far as she could see.

Adjanys' boat was visible as it coasted towards the horizon; she could see it move as it bobbed in the shallow water, occasionally stalling as it scraped what was once the valley floor. The future of the earth was beautiful, she mused.

She pictured herself descending the steep, slick hill and swimming across a league of turbid water to chase a ship that had long since sailed, and she found that she did not have the heart in her. Adjanys, and whatever life they could have had together, were gone.

Minussa would face her end alone.

So she sat on the rocky ground and stared at the wooden vessel as it reflected the sunlight, growing imperceptibly smaller and fainter each passing moment until its outline disappeared altogether into the rising sun and she was left staring at the orange-yellow morning sky.