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.

"Na'el!" Japheth lifted his hand in greeting, atop a massive felled log, almost as tall as me. "You brought lunch?"

I nodded, worried my voice would still be strangled, and he released a whistle between his fingers. Shem emerged from around the corner of the Ark, shambling towards us, but Ham and Noah were nowhere in sight.

As lithe as a housecat, Japheth leapt from the log. Sweat coated his skin. "More for us," he remarked to Shem, taking the basket from me and setting it down on a tree stump nearby. Shem retrieved a water skin and rinsed first his hands, then his brother's.

Ham appeared from behind the log Japheth had been standing on, leading the mules to the shade. He was shirtless, his kēthanoth tied around his waist. I looked away too late to miss the exposed girdle of of his loincloth, and felt another flush rise in my face.

I wanted to blame it on the anger that had rekindled in my chest at the sight of him —— the one who had gotten rid of Naamah's gift to me —— but I couldn't be sure that it wasn't because his body shone with sweat, or because his tanned shoulders rolled with muscle as he tied the mules to a nearby tree. His build seemed to be exactly between the mountain that was Shem's breadth and the lean sinew of Japheth's height.

His eyes fixed on me, impassively, and then went to the food.

"Step away, Na'el," Japheth waved his hand in front of his face, "the smell of mule's going to knock you out."

Ham elbowed his brother and washed his hands as well. I watched them help themselves, and talk, and joke, and then Noah finally joined, taking a seat alongside me while Japheth and Ham argued over the correct way they could cut the timber from the felled tree. Shem's contribution was enthused chewing.

"If we use the mules to pull the log closer, we can roll it and prevent moisture from trapping," Ham said, gesturing with a carrot in his hand. "Then we can build a ladder from the second deck onto it, and cut downwards, using blocks through the middle, not just on the surface."

Japheth snorted. "The log's already ruined by moisture, little brother. Better to cut our losses and separate the dry side now; damp side's for the wasteheap."

Both Ham and Japheth looked at Noah. The old man gazed thoughtfully at the Ark, and for a moment I wondered if he'd even heard his sons' bickering.

"Japheth's right," Noah said. "The log's been sitting for too long."

Japheth's grin was that of victory, while Ham's nostrils flared. His gaze stayed on his father, his blue eyes cutting, before they traveled to me.

I balled up the fabric of my kēthanoth in my hands. I'd been watching him a bit too closely, trying to figure out how I could ask him where he had thrown my pack of clothes away. I had to at least try and find Naamah's gift; surely Emzara could spare me a sister's farewell present.

Noah collected the men's plates for me to wash, and called Japheth over to enact his son's plan. Shem went to untie the mules. Ham was left behind, rinsing the food from his hands and wetting his mouth and neck. I laid the plates back in the basket and tried not to look at the tautness of his muscled chest and stomach, lightly sprinkled with dark hair.

"You made the food?"

It was the first time Ham had questioned me directly. I blinked and looked up at him. "Yes?"

"It was good. Thank you."

His sudden niceness made my frustration froth over. So he could spare me compliments now, but not spare me the only things I had brought from my home?

Ham was beginning to turn away. My words leapt out, unstoppable, like a sneeze.

"What did you do to my clothes?"

He turned back to face me, and one thick black brow lifted. "The things you brought with you?" His tone was dry and told me he knew exactly what I was talking about.

"Yes." I stepped closer and tilted my chin up. "My sister gave me something, something I could remember her by. It's important to me. It wasn't fair for you to have taken it away."

Ham shook his head, and his curly black hair tumbled around his ears. "I was just listening to my mother," he said slowly. His eyes moved from me to the ground, maybe feeling guilty.

As you should be.

"I hadn't realised the pack was important to you. It all just looked like clothes to me." He shrugged. He was close enough now that I could smell the sweat and wood chips radiating off of his skin, mixing to create a stronger musk I couldn't place.

"Look, my mother can make you new clothes, it shouldn't be that big of a deal ——"

"I'm not talking about the clothes," I ground out between my teeth, "I'm talking about my sister!"

The echoes of a scream filled the air. The hair on my arms prickled as I slapped a hand towards my mouth. I hadn't realised I'd been yelling so loudly ——

Another scream.

Ham's eyes fixed on the forest behind me. Noah and Japheth moved as one to flank him.

Japheth's mouth twisted into a snarl. "It's Ada and Sedeqet."