THE JOURNEY TO town was uneventful, save for Shem and Ham's bickering about who would sit in the seat at the front of the cart, and who would sit amongst the wood at the back. They settled on switching on the return trip, and I could feel Ham's stirring against my spine as he tried to get comfortable amongst the timber.

"How was growing up in the town?" Ham asked me, once he'd found a suitable spot. He stretched out across the wood, his head behind Shem's back. I only had to look over my shoulder to meet his gaze.

His eyes flickered meaningfully to my bouncing knee. I fought to reign in my impatience, and humoured his willingness to ask questions. It wasn't like Shem was an exactly stimulating conversationalist.

"I enjoyed it, as a young girl." Before worries about marriage had marred the freedom of my youth, I had roamed the streets with the children of my neighbours, teasing stray dogs and playing foolish games that took the edge off of the boredom that festered during the hot months.

I told Ham as much, explaining that once Naamah had been born, Mother had restricted me from going out, preferring I learn the ways of a woman's duties. I had only been ten harvests old.

He looked sympathetic. "I was also ten when we began building the Ark," he explained. So he understood the feeling of being wrenched away from the carefreeness of childhood.

I remembered he and Noah's argument from a few weeks prior. His father had asked him if he needed another decade working on the Ark to learn patience. Was that how long its construction had taken? I didn't doubt it —— the structure was massive, but built with precision that may have taken months, if not years, to execute.

That made Ham twenty harvests old. His eyes were shut in bliss —— his brother's shadow protected him from the glare of the sun —— and that allowed me to freely examine him, for once.

His stubble was growing thicker, but now I recognised signs of youth Shem and Japheth had been lacking. His nose was straight, still to hook like his father's. And his cheeks still looked smooth, not yet roughened by the unkindness of the sun. His hands, resting on the sides of the cart, were the only things that betrayed his laborious work, marred by little white scars.

His eyes opened, and I wasn't quick enough to avert my staring. He raised a quizzical brow, but didn't look annoyed. He ran his fingers over the scarred flesh of his other hand.

"As we were making the second deck," he flexed his digits, his veins rolling with his knuckles, "I fell into a pile of scrapwood. It was a miracle I didn't crack my skull open. But Elohim left me these, to remind me to be more careful." He waggled his hand, then reclined once more.

We otherwise traveled in silence. I didn't mind this time round, compared to when I had journeyed with Shem, but I did wish that the horizon between us and the town would shorten. We were going at a painstakingly slow pace, and I had to bite my tongue to keep from harrying the men once we stopped to refresh ourselves, and I was first back on the cart.

We reached the town by late afternoon, and I eagerly scrambled off of my seat, recognising the familiar dirt roads. Shem split off from Ham and I in the direction of the market where a few stalls were just beginning to pack up, and I guided him along the way to my old stone house, weaving through throngs of people.

I frowned and casted a glance behind me as I escaped the crowd. The stream of dark-eyed men was coming from the street I knew held a brothel and an abandoned home that served as a gambling ring for men with money and idle hands to bet on fighting slaves. Ham followed after me, but moving more slowly. His eyes searched the faces of every stranger, and he stopped at my side, his kēthanoth sleeve almost brushing mine.

"Do you recognise them?" he asked me. His breath stirred my hair.

"No," I said, realising my unfamiliarity was the reason for my discontent. I'd only been away from my home for a month, and yet there were so many strangers pacing the streets that I had once frequented. And they all had dark, glinting eyes that seemed to track Ham and I with malevolence.

My heart tightened. I did recognise the look. The men who had attacked Ada and Sedeqet ——

As if he could read my thoughts, Ham tugged on my sleeve, urging me to move on.

As I turned around to look the way I knew my home was, my eyes slid over a beggar sitting on the side of the street. I paused as he raised his hood, hiding his face as though he was a child caught red-handed in some sort of devious act. There was a familiarity to him I couldn't place, but I cast it aside and hastened to keep up with Ham. I didn't want to be left alone without him under the leering glances of the strange men.

"Here it is," I said, my voice high with cheerfulness. From the outside, the stone house didn't look like much, but inside, I knew, my sister waited. I could feel Ham looking at me as I clasped my hands together; he probably hadn't ever seen me so excited.

I scrambled towards the front entrance, leaving him standing at the edge of the street. "Naamah!" I called into the emptiness of the front room. The early evening light had shrouded my old home in darkness, and I frowned, wondering whether Mother and Father were home.

"Father?" I called down the hall, rounding familiar corners. I traced my hand along the wall in the absence of lit torches, but I could have found Naamah and I's shared room blind, deaf, and dumb, I was sure.

"Naamah! Naamah?" I stepped into the room I had left her in a month ago, and froze mid-waving the cow pelt out of the way.

The room was empty, even devoid of our scratchy old flax bed.

I took in a deep breath. And then another. The room only barely smelled of dry plums, and I slowly made my way to my parents' room, a deeper and darker hole fixing itself at the bottom of my stomach with every step.

"Na'el?" I heard Ham yell from the entrance. I felt like I was in the belly of some sort of beast, utterly disconnected from him and shrouded in darkness. All I could do was walk forward and huff air that no longer smelled of incense, and only of desolation.

"Mother?"

There were no statues in my parents' room, and no bed, either. It was like they had never existed; all traces of them vanished, except the blood that rushed through my veins with every painful heartbeat.

"Na'el!" Ham was closer now, and I stumbled out of my parents' room. I couldn't regain my balance, my earth had shifted so under my feet, and Ham caught me, his touch a shock to the skin that felt icy cold under my kēthanoth.

"Na'el," he said, more gently.

He leant me against his knee as my legs crumpled beneath me, and then lowered himself into a crouch. His fingers pressed into my shoulders and my side, careful not to touch my bare skin.

"What's happened, Ham?" I whispered through a throat that felt thick with swelling grief. I could feel the burden of it already heavy on my eyelashes. The shame I would have felt for crying in front of Ham was swept away in a current of anguish.

"A man told me outside. A neighbour." His hand rubbed up and down my sleeve, trying to warm me. "He said your father lost the house. He must have been confident in his earnings from your bride price, and gone gambling. Too confident."

Father. My wretched, foolish, lying father. Too busy to be a beggar, too comfortable with his brother's earnings to contend himself on being a businessman. Until my uncle had died, and I was given to Ham.

"And Naamah?" I wasn't even sure Ham had heard me. I already knew what had become of her, even before he released a suffocated sigh; by the shifting underneath my spine, he despised being the harbinger of bad news.

"I'm sorry, Na'el," he spoke into my hair. And he genuinely did sound sorry. I squeezed my eyes shut, but hot tears still ran down my cheeks. "The man told me she died not long after you left."

|||

The trip back to Noah's camp was hell.

My vision was smudged by my weeping, and I was too crooked and broken by my grief to possibly ride alongside Shem, so Ham grimly anchored me against him in the back of the cart. Every stone and snag in the dirt made pain blaze through my neck. My weeping never ceased.

Naamah. Naamah. NaamahNamaahNamaah.

My poor little sister, as sweet as the plums she could never get enough of. Dead before she'd even gotten a chance at life. Dead before I'd gotten to say a proper goodbye.

Lit torches differentiated Noah's camp from any other dark, blurry patch of forest, and strong arms swept me up to carry me down from the cart. Shem must have traveled at breakneck pace to return before morning, I thought distantly.

"What's happened to her?"

"Will she be alright? What can we do ——?"

Ham offered them no response other than curt barks to get out of his way.

He laid me down in an unfamiliar tent filled with furs that smelled like him, and bent down low to try and wipe away my tears. His efforts were futile, but his bedding absorbed the pool I could feel growing against my cheek.

"I'm sorry, Na'el," he whispered, his voice low and raw, like it was him who'd been weeping for hours, and not me. "I'm so sorry."

I shut my eyes and willed the darkness to swallow me whole. I wanted to be with my sister. Nothing else made sense without her. Father had married me off to pay for her medicine after my uncle had died, hadn't he? Had it all been for nothing?

Before the sweet release of sleep wrenched me from the clutches of my pain, I felt Ham's presence retreat. In the absence of his heated hold, I wrapped the blankets around me, and shivered my way into a dreamless slumber.