The creator of all's Arc

Chapter 8 of 13

The creator kept his eye on Seth's line while the giants ate the low country. Seth grew. Seth had a son, and that son had a son, and the years ran on until a man called Lamech stood in the fields with a bow in his hand. Lamech had a boy of his own by then, a quiet child named Noah. The creator watched Noah more than he watched the father. The father was loud. The boy listened. The giants did not stop. They walked through grain that took a season to grow and finished it in a morning. They carried the thin blades the fallen one had taught men to fold. They broke roofs by leaning on them. The creator counted honest households and found fewer each time he counted. Men who had once prayed now bent over wet clay and wrote lies about their neighbors. Women shut their doors when the shadow of a giant crossed the yard. The creator saw that soon there would be no one left to test. The test would end before it was finished. He kept his eye on the boy. One morning Lamech took Noah into the forest to hunt. Lamech's eyes were poor. He heard a shape moving in the brush and drew the bow. "Stand back," Lamech said. "Something is in there." Noah stood back. The arrow went. The shape in the brush was an old man in a torn robe, thin as a reed, with a mark on his forehead the color of dried blood. Cain had wandered this far. He had wandered everywhere. He fell without a sound and lay in the leaves, picking once at the dirt under his nail before his hand stopped. Lamech pushed through the branches and saw the face. He knew the mark. Every man knew the mark. "I did not see him," Lamech said. He said it again, louder, as if the trees might argue. "I did not see him." The creator felt the old promise come due. He had sworn seven for Cain. He spoke it into Lamech's bones so the man staggered. "Sevenfold," the creator said. "On you. Not on the boy." Lamech dropped the bow. Noah looked at his father, then at the old man in the leaves, then at the sky where the voice had come from. He did not cry. He did not run. He knelt and closed Cain's eyes with two fingers. The creator watched the small hand do the small thing. One honest man. That was what he had been looking for. One. The father's curse would stay with the father. The son would be spared it, and taught, and used. The giants still walked. The forbidden knowledge still spread. But the creator had found the vessel he needed to carry the test forward, and he began, quietly, to plan the water.