Not Wanted on the Voyage

Hannah becomes increasingly troubled by the idea that she has traded too much of herself to gain security and social standing. What she has won from her efforts, she wishes she had gained in better company. She retreats to her room, locking her door against Shem, Noah, and Japeth, and crying for the first time that she can remember.

Japeth grows increasingly violent and confident in his skills. When Mrs. Noyes tries to stop him from harming the calves, he throws her into a wall and stands over her with a sword. Japeth is stared down by Lucy, whom he does not recognize in her new form. After killing four calves and taking their heads as trophies, he threatens to kill his mother if she “comes at him” again. His name soon becomes “synonymous with violent death” (293).

While Noah ruminates on sacrifice and assures himself that Yaweh cannot possibly be dead, the unicorn’s mate, the Lady, starves herself to death. Lucy plans a revolt. She uses demons to burn holes in the wooden door at the top of the stairs, so that she can unbolt it. They escape, intending to ambush a sleeping Japeth in the middle of the night, but he appears behind them, fully armed. They are taken to the Armoury and bound. The revolt, Lucy tells her co-conspirators that the attempted revolt is only the first of however many are needed, and should not be thought of as a failure. Noah is unable to recognize any of them and insists that Lucy is a man—a pirate who has boarded the ark with the strangers. Japeth hurls the demons over the side of the ark, infuriating Lucy. She burns through her ropes to attack Japeth, laying a curse on him that he would “never know a moment’s peace from his flesh as long as he lived” (308). As retribution for killing the demons, none of his wounds from that moment will ever heal, and he will smell of every death he inflicts.

Hannah indulgently leads the confused-yet-insistent Noah away as he mutters about non-existent attacks by non-existent boarding parties. Japeth takes the lambs and candles from the lower decks, telling his mother and her group to starve in the darkness. Shem says he’s sorry, then leaves. They bar the doors with boards and chains. Meanwhile, Emma is silent and starving herself in seclusion on the upper deck.

Noah insists that the ship’s shaking is a greeting from Yaweh, a declaration Hannah humors. Abraham brings in the corpse of Mottyl’s missing grey kitten, Silver. Noah declares him to be God’s kitten and a miracle since the only female cat he knows to be on board, Sarah, had not been pregnant. 

When Mottyl, now 23 and riddled with disease and injury, calls for Crowe to help her get up, Crowe releases several animals to help. Lucy is entranced by the beehives, fixated on them and speaking in two voices—one hers and one not. In the trance, the low voice speaks through her and announces that they need someone on the other side of the door to let them through, in the way Crowe had freed the animals. After commiserating over all her failed revolts and her failing powers, Lucy decides that Emma will be their Crowe, freeing them from the lower decks. Towards that end, they rip out a gutter, sending Crowe to fetch Emma to undo the boards and chains on the door.

Emma soon arrives as Noah sacrifices the dead kitten to the absent Yaweh and Hannah’s labor begins. Just as Emma is about to pull the chains off the door, Japeth appears and attacks her. The icy surface of the deck and the raging storm make it difficult to defeat her. In a critical moment, Crowe attacks him, but he kills her. Crowe’s sacrifice buys the necessary time for Emma to remove the chains from the door and use them to strike her husband, knocking him across the ship and nearly into the water. She opens the doors and frees “the only people in the world that she loved” (327).

Ham and Lucy save Japeth from drowning and lock him in the Armoury. Mrs. Noyes, ever the mix of empathy and practicality, takes just enough time to bring Crowe’s corpse to Mottyl and promises to return. She also offers Emma the chance to stay behind in the relative safety of the lower decks while the rest finish the job of overtaking the ark. Despite her fears, Emma chooses to go with Mrs. Noyes. Lucy soon wins the skirmish by bolting Noah and Hannah in the Chapel, but Shem has disappeared.

Mottyl, after hearing of her friend’s and son’s deaths, is abandoned and begins singing her death song. However, she recovers slightly after Lucy brings her broth.

Mrs. Noyes listens to Emma and waits for her to sleep before leaving. Savoring the lights after so long in darkness, she spreads the joy by telling the animals that Lucy will bring them light and then they will all have a special feeding. She puts the ailing Mottyl into a sling and brings her out to the deck, to smell the air and look at the sky. She is shocked to see a star and the moon, both of which have been absent for the length of the voyage.

Hannah is in labor in the Chapel. Noah insists that she cannot have any help until he sees the child, whether it is dead or not. She gives birth to a dead Lotte-child. Dr. Noyes knows that this is a fault of his own bloodline, but blames Hannah anyway. Having heard Hannah’s cries of pain, Ham bursts in and sees Noah wrapping up the baby’s corpse. Taking the advantage of Ham’s shock, Shem reappears without seeing the babe and knocks Ham down, freeing his father and wife. Hannah takes the baby while Noah prays.

Lucy, having changed her appearance again, brings the bees onto the deck. They swarm her happily as Hannah appears, bids an affectionate farewell to her dead baby, then throws it overboard. She returns to the rooms of the ark without a word. Mrs. Noyes brings the sheep and lambs up onto the deck to sing. She tries to teach the young lamb to sing, but all it does is baa. Horrified, she turns to the older sheep and rams, but they, too, only baa in response.

The revolt is ultimately considered a draw, as Japeth is locked away by intricate knots only Ham can remove. Afraid that Ham will say something about the Lotte-child he saw, Noah devotes his efforts to reinforcing the infallibility of the Edict.

A dove appears and everyone waits to see what message it might bring from Yaweh. There is no message. In private, Noah finally accepts that Silver was not a miracle and that God is, in fact, dead. He burns the icon of the angry Yaweh on the altar and prepares to solidify his position through lying about the non-existent message from the dead God. He claims that Yaweh has given the promise never to flood the world again, the order that they should go forth and multiply, and the assurance that the whole earth was delivered into their hands. The paper rainbow, Noah tells them, is the sign of the promise. Noah lets Japeth out and sends a raven and several doves out in search of a sign the flood is over. The last dove returns with an olive branch in its beak, which some may take as a sign that the waters will recede. Mrs. Noyes notes that it is the same olive branch upon which it used to sit when Emma fed it in its cage.

Mrs. Noyes realizes that when the flood is over, Noah will have learned nothing and been given a new world to ruin, with new cats to blind. She prays to the sky for rain.