Forty Days: Neima's Ark, Book One by Stephanie Parent

The
blood inside me lurches. My bones lurch. And then I realize the movement’s not
inside me at all. The floor is lurching, tipping, angling to one side just
the smallest bit. I’m not even sure how I know this, as I huddle in
this pitch darkness, unmoving, unseeing, though not unhearing—no,
the pounding of the rain is relentless. But somehow my body senses
the change around me. My mind and my useless eyes and ears and all
my limbs scramble to find a new equilibrium, but all that frenzy
inside me just leaves me even dizzier. And then there’s the ba-rum, ba-rum of my
heartbeat, so forceful it’s almost painful. It’s fear that makes my
heart so strong and so heavy—fear of what that tilting floor might
mean. I wish I could tell whether the others were awake, could ask
Arisi what she’s thinking. I almost wish the lightning would
return, if it meant I could see what’s going on, even for an
instant.
    Another lurch. If someone
screamed, would I hear it? If I screamed, would I hear it?
    There’s nothing to do but wait. I
clench my jaw, my shoulders, my fists, focus on the sensation of my
fingernails digging into my palms, and wait…
    And wait…
    And wait…

    A body smacking into mine wrenches me
out of half sleep. It must be morning; just enough light leaks in
for me to make out Arisi’s delicate features beside me. Her eyes
are stretched wide, one hand clutching my arm and the other on her
stomach, as we slide farther and hit Mother on my other side. I
hear her cry of shock—it’s a loud cry, but still, the rain must
have abated a little—and then we’re shifting back, in the opposite
direction, and Aunt Zeda gives a shrill protest as Arisi knocks
against her. It’s all so strange and ridiculous, I’m not sure
whether to scream or laugh. Or pinch myself and hope that I wake up
safe at home, that this is all a mad dream brought on by Noah’s
ravings.
    But my stomach is sloshing around
inside me as though it’s being tugged in three—no, four—directions
at once, and I realize that in addition to the sideways lurching,
the floor is rocking forward and backward a bit. And I know this is
no dream, for no dream could force such bile to my throat and leave
me whirling, dizzy and faint, untethered from the ground yet held
in place by the discomfort inside me.
    And then it gets worse: my stomach is
rising now, forcing itself up through my chest, toward my throat,
blocking my airway as I try to breathe through the nearly
unbearable sensation…
    … a moment of nothingness,
of pure, weightless relief…
    … and my stomach slams back
down, hard, with an explosion of pain like stars. I try to rise, to
make it to the bucket in the corner but I’m stumbling, tripping
over myself and it makes me feel even worse, and then the sounds
and smells around me tell me the others aren’t making it to the
bucket either, and then I give up.

    ***

    Somehow we trek the impossible
distance across the floor that shifts in all directions beneath us,
through the open doorway, back to the room with the ladders, where
the men slept. They’re awake too. And as sick as we are.

    ***

    That rising-falling feeling happens
again and again, both inside and outside our bodies, as we sit
or—in most cases—lie flat on the floor against the wall. After
Father manages the climb to the deck house and back down again, he
confirms what we already know: it’s the sensation of water lifting
us, lifting the ark off the ground. I’d refuse to believe him if I
could, but the ark won’t let me—it won’t stop rocking and rolling
backward and forward, to one side and the other, buffeted by the
wind above and the water below.
    Is there any dry land left at all? I
glance to the windows above me, but even lifting my head makes the
room spin around me, and rising to my feet seems out of the
question. Besides, the windows are so high I’d barely be able to
see out even if I stood on tiptoe, and Father says all you can see
from that angle is clouds