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

beasts standing only a few paces from me,
with just a measly set of wood bars to separate us.
    They don’t look vicious, though, at
least not at the moment. One placidly licks a paw while the other
explores its cage with unsure steps. It turns and looks right at
me, letting out another high, lazy yip: the sound seems to be
closer to a yawn than a growl.
    One of the traders notices me looking
and moves closer. “Are you a member of Noah’s family?” he asks. His
accent is so odd, some vowels too clipped and others too long, that
it takes me a moment to decipher his words.
    “ Yes,” I finally answer,
“I’m his granddaughter.”
    The man nods, his expression serious
yet strangely sedate, as though dropping off young lions before a
massive ark outside a small village is an everyday occurrence. “You
should be safe to enter the cage to clean it and to feed the cats,”
he says. “As long as you don’t provoke them, they’re young enough
to remain docile.” To prove his point, he reaches through the bars
and rubs the nearest lion on the head. It doesn’t protest, but I’m
still not eager to follow his lead. “Just use caution and good
sense, and remember: their teeth and claws are sharp, and they grow
stronger and larger with every day.” I’m becoming used to his
accent, but I almost wish I didn’t understand his words. Especially
when he adds, “The same holds true for the cheetah and lynx. The
bears, though, I’d be wary of, even if they are young.”
    He sees me jolt and laughs. “I take it
you haven’t had a chance to look around yet? At least your
grandfather asked for younger animals, where possible. It could be
worse.” Sense within madness, I think. “Although,” the trader adds,
“those wolves look full-grown to me.”
    You’d think I could keep from jolting
again, but I can’t.
    The trader follows me as I weave
through the scattered cages. I think my reactions to the strange
animals amuse him, though if you ask me, I’m taking this all rather
calmly. I’m not sure it’s really sunk in yet. In any case, the
trader certainly knows more about the animals than I do, so I don’t
mind his presence.
    There are hyenas and jackals, two
stump-legged onagers with reddish fur and black stripes straight
down the center of their backs, and bizarre birds that stand on one
long, stick-like leg with the other bent. They have long necks,
too, that curve in one downward loop and one upward one, and beaks
larger than those of any swan or crane. But strangest of all is the
color of their feathers: a soft, blushing pink I’ve seen on no
other animal, though it reminds me of the honey-scented flowers
that grow between tree roots in the spring.
    As we move closer, the birds open
their great beaks and squawk; they spread wings nearly as wide as I
am tall and wobble away from us until they hit the back of their
cage.
    “ They’re skittish
creatures,” the trader says, “and they’re far from home. Your
grandfather will pay dearly for them.”
    Two humpbacked camels, not penned in
but ambling around and chewing on the grass, keep wandering
perilously close to the caged flesh-eaters. At first I think
they’re only the traders’ animals, until I notice Noah inspecting
one of them and haggling with the nearby trader. The camel just
keeps chewing; it has no idea it will soon be trapped within the
walls of a wooden ark.
    A bit farther off, two strange,
solid-looking animals are tethered to a small juniper tree by a
length of rope, though it looks like between the two of them, they
could pull the tree out by its roots if they were determined
enough. As I move nearer, I see that their gray skin is wrinkled
and tough-looking, almost like leather, with reddish hair scattered
across their heads and backs. They have wide, floppy ears and,
oddest of all, each has a long, tubular protrusion where its nose
or snout should be. I think these creatures are elephants, the
source of the huge tusks traders occasionally bring