Read Online Forty Days: Neima's Ark, Book One by Stephanie Parent - Free Book Online

between me and
my—former?—friend. Sweat beads and drips down my own forehead, and
I struggle to inhale the stale, soggy air. Derya’s just upset, and this weather has us all on our last
nerve. Noah and Uncle Ham and Aunt Zeda, Mother and Father and
Kenaan, none of us are behaving as we ought—
    And why am I always making excuses for
everyone else?
    I don’t think about any of this for
long, though, because when I reach the far side of the river, there
is a tiger. And it is not a cub.
    The animal paces behind the thick
wooden bars of its cage, its orange and black and white body
immense, its muscles rippling beneath its fur in a way that reminds
me of molten bronze: liquid and white hot and very, very dangerous.
Every once in a while it draws its lips up and back in a snarl,
revealing fangs that, even from a distance, I can tell are longer
than my longest finger. Behind the tiger, another, smaller
orange-and-black shape lies curled in the corner of the
cage.
    No other cages or free-roaming animals
crowd the grass today; it’s as if the tiger’s owner arrived late on
purpose, to avoid upstaging the other creatures with this great
cat’s magnificence. And its ferocity
    The same group of disgruntled
villagers is here again, too, keeping well away from the cage. They
protest in much lower tones than they did the day before, as though
they’re afraid to let the tiger know it’s displeasing
them.
    Well, I’m afraid as well. As soon as I
can fill these water skins I’m heading to the ark, and for once
I’ll be glad to step inside—
    “ Are you one of Noah’s
daughters?”
    The man who approaches me must be the
tiger’s owner, for he certainly isn’t from our village or anywhere
nearby. His accent is even more inscrutable than yesterday’s
trader’s, though it’s completely different, a drawl that stirs his
words together into a thick, soupy mass. He wears a strange outfit
made entirely of leather, and a long, thick scar runs the length of
one arm like a mark of honor, or bravery. Or perhaps just
stupidity. Some wild creatures, I think, should simply be left
alone.
    He’s still awaiting my answer, and
I’ve begun to shake my head no when he gestures to my cart and the
full water bladder in my hands. “You take care of the animals,
yes?”
    “ Uh…”
    “ I’ll show you how to feed
the tiger.”
    I nearly spill water all over my
skirt. “Oh! No! I’m sure my uncle…,” I don’t really want to
sentence anyone to this fate, but I settle on, “…Ham will be happy
to learn. I’ll go find him right—”
    “ I showed the men already,
but you should know as well.”
    I look around for my father or uncles
or even Mother, knowing any one of them would put a stop to this,
but they must all be inside the ark or back in the village. And the
trader—no, hunter—is just standing there, so I reluctantly follow
him closer to the tiger, aware of the villagers’ eyes on me all the
while.
    Soon I’m close enough to see the
tiger’s amber eyes that catch the sun in their corners, its long
and incongruously delicate whiskers, the burnished tint of its fur.
It takes my breath away. Behind it, the cub raises its head to look
at me, a perfect miniature. “Are they…are they mother or father
and…”
    “ Mother and son, yes.” The
hunter is right beside the cage now, and when he pulls free a wide
panel of wood, my heart lurches: it looks like he’s removed the
entire back of the cage. He hasn’t really—it’s only an extra piece
of wood propped against the back—but my nerves prompt me to
ask:
    “ Couldn’t it—she—chew
through those bars if she wanted?”
    The hunter gives me a mischievous,
gap-toothed smile. “She might try, if she’s bored or angry enough,
but I doubt she’ll get far. These are thick, strong bars of cedar
wood”—he strikes his hand against the front of the cage, making me
jump back, though the tiger barely seems to notice—“and she’d have
to break through quite a few to