Flood Read online

  Advance Acclaim for Flood

  “Flood is a supernatural journey into a world that is only evil all the time and must be saved by God’s merciful judgment. A soul-searching, heart-rending, deeply satisfying story. McPherson taps our imaginations to consider what Noah, his family, and their lives might have been like before the Flood. Many of my questions about Genesis 5–9 now have a place to rest in this well-researched fiction."

  —Mesu Andrews, ECPA Book of the Year award-winning author of Love Amid Ashes

  “A tale as enjoyable as it is immersive. With Flood, Brennan McPherson proves himself worthy of telling a story as old as time in a bold and fresh way.”

  —Billy Coffey, critically acclaimed author of When Mockingbirds Sing

  “How do you take a centuries-old story and put a new spin on it, inviting readers into an evocative world they thought they already knew? Brennan McPherson figured out the way. Flood will entertain you, yes, but also take you deep into your soul and make you ponder both the vastness and the intimacy of God.”

  —James L. Rubart, Christy Book of the Year award-winning author of The Five Times I Met Myself

  Flood

  The Story of Noah and the Family Who Raised Him

  Brennan S. McPherson

  FLOOD

  The Story of Noah and the Family Who Raised Him

  Copyright © 2017 by Brennan S. McPherson

  ISBN: 978-0-692-95353-2 (softcover)

  ASIN: B075RCDZ47

  Published by McPherson Publishing

  Sparta, WI, USA

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Josh Meyer Photography and Design

  Edited by Natalie Hanemann, NatalieHanemannEditing.com

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  I. The Mother and the Father

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  II. The Devil and the Child

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  III. The Woman and the Man

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  IV. The Father and the Son

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  V. Noah

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  VI. Noah and Jade

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  VII. Years Gone By

  Chapter 64

  VIII. The Deep Breath before the Plunge

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  IX. The End of the World

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  X. Mercy as Judgment and Judgment as Mercy

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  The Real Story of Noah

  Want to continue the series and see the origins of the Abomination?

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  The Fall of Man series is a group of stand-alone novels based on the book of Genesis. They are historical fantasies I wrote to explore the deeper themes woven throughout the Bible. This has caused confusion, so I hope the following explanation will help clarify my intent.

  Flood is based on the story of Noah and the worldwide flood that destroyed nearly all life on our planet. Any novel based on such an ancient, true story is necessarily speculative in nature. So, I decided to embrace a more fantastic interpretation to establish distance between the story and our preconceptions, which so often blind us to the message behind the words.

  Some of the preconceptions include the idea that Noah was mocked for his belief in an impending flood, or that it never rained before the Flood, or that Noah and his family were the only ones who labored to build the ark. You won’t find these ideas in the Bible. They’re as much fantasy as the novel in your hands.

  Our knowledge of ancient Israel (or Rome, Egypt, etc.) is bolstered by archaeological, textual, and social studies. However, any evidence of the pre-Flood world would have been destroyed in that catastrophic event. The text of Genesis 5–9 is all we’re left with that remains reliable.

  Many have disbelieved a worldwide flood possible, but modern science has shown many of these doubts ill-founded. I have included a link to an article at the end of this book that details the research used in recounting the cataclysm, along with links to academic essays on how it might have happened.

  Genesis 4 contains some lineage leading up to Noah’s story, and describes how only a few generations away from Adam, mankind invented agriculture, animal husbandry, musical instruments such as the lyre and pipe, bronze and iron forging, and the concept of the city. Based on both this and the Bible’s claim that people in this time period lived to be over nine hundred years old, we can be certain that by the time the Flood took place, an advanced and unique culture had developed, and cities had spread across the face of the earth.

  If you are interested in feeling the depth of emotion these ancient people might have felt, and in having your ideas of this monumental event challenged or deepened, Flood might be the right book for you.

  I’ve come to believe it’s healthful for us to ponder the mysteries of God, yet not to take too seriously our belief of what isn’t explicitly stated.

  One more note before you go—if you want to enrich your reading of Flood, be sure to check out the rest of the series and get a free e-book by visiting cainbook.com.

  Prologue

  At the dawn of Time were Three who were One. Creator, Spirit, and Word.

  As the Spirit hovered over the formless waters, the Creator stretched out his hand, bidding the Word to begin an eternal Music that brought light and form to the universe.

  Empty space shifted and became solid. Matter rose green from the elements, and the Spirit breathed into the green matter life but not awareness, and ordained that it should bear seed and spread across the earth suspended in the darkness amidst countless masses of flame and shadow.

  Afterward the Creator brought forth creatures not bound by root and soil. They held awareness but lacked will. Go
verned by the personalities imbued, they spread and multiplied.

  The lights were divided, as were the waters, and the seasons. The earth crawled with life given dimension amidst light and shadow. Dew condensed and fell, sprinkling the ground with the scent of life. And the Creator saw that it was good.

  But the Creator’s vision was yet incomplete, for the most beautiful themes of the Music still roamed the halls of Timelessness. So the Creator descended and walked the fields, gazing at all he had done in so short a span of Time.

  He dipped, grabbed a handful of soil, and said to the Word and the Spirit, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over all living things.” So the Creator made man and woman in his image, and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, subdue the world and have dominion.”

  But the man and woman were not satisfied with dominion. They wanted to transcend the boundaries the Creator constructed for them.

  They grasped fruit too high for their arms to reach, and ate what they should not have eaten. They became aware of a second Music, of darkness amidst the Light, and they aligned themselves with that second Music, and death entered their forms.

  However, even this faltering of steps was planned in the first Music that would sweep up the faltering into a melody more beautiful than any other. The Creator told the man and woman of this coming theme in the first Music, of a babe to issue from the woman’s womb—of the one who would be the undoing of death.

  The man and woman traveled on and bore two boys. Yet neither was the babe to come, for the elder murdered the younger, and birthed within himself an Abomination bent on twisting humankind to evil purposes.

  The Abomination knew of the babe to come, and sought to prevent its arrival. The Abomination grew and festered, and brought others of its kind into the world, spreading ruin and darkness.

  Hope faltered in the hearts of men, and it seemed for a time that the Light of the first Music might be eclipsed by the darkness of the second.

  But there were other legends. Whispers passed down by those faithful to the Old Way. That before the promised babe would come another child, a foreshadowing of the one to come. A herald of righteousness who would see a burning world quenched.

  And he would be called Noah, for through him God would bring rest to the world.

  Part I

  The Mother and the Father

  “Lamech . . . fathered a son and called his name Noah, saying, “Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.”

  —Genesis 5:28–29

  Chapter 1

  Adah straightened to match her father’s stare. “Tell me why I cannot choose whom I might marry.”

  Father ducked past the central beam that held their farmhouse aloft and stepped near. “Because I will not have you dishonor the family by marrying a fool.” His head tipped like a boulder on cliff shoulders, and Adah waited for what would surely come tumbling out of his mouth.

  “Irad,” Mother warned as she stood against the wall kneading dough on the only table in their living room. Her shadow stretched double in the light of the candles that burned on the opposite side of the room, the flickering silhouette mirroring Adah’s father in size and shape.

  “Lenah,” Father mocked, not looking from Adah. “Don’t say my name like an obscenity. Our daughter is throwing away our lives, the labor of our ancestors. The stress will be the death of me.”

  Mother dusted her hands so the dough wouldn’t stick. “You are fine.” The table’s legs danced on the packed dirt floor as the weight shifted.

  Father’s face darkened as he turned. “I spent the last month lying in bed coughing blood.” He thrust a finger toward Adah. “And what has she done? Learned from that vagabond how to chisel symbols into clay?”

  Adah’s shoulders tensed. “He has a name, if you would only care enough to remember it. I chose to better my future. The furthest you can think is next spring.”

  Father laughed. “Did you drain our wineskins with that mouth of yours? The early frost killed half our crop, and if you would have been anywhere you should have been, we could have saved twice as much from the second frost already descending.”

  “Stop shaming her.” Mother rested one hand on the table, the other on her hip. “You know as well as I do you refused her offer to help harvest weeks ago.”

  Father slapped the beam. “I didn’t need her help weeks ago!”

  “If you would have but told me,” Adah said and remembered finding Father when he first caught sick—clawing his throat and wheezing. Since childhood, she had thought him indomitable, but seeing him too weak to breathe had opened her eyes to a new reality. Even now, months later, he could handle only half the workload as before.

  “Look what you’ve done,” Mother said. “Her face is pale. And she’s shaking, the poor thing.”

  Father sat on a stool beside the candles and rubbed his face with a callused hand. “I trust Jubal. Jubal is a good man. I just want my daughter to be with a good man.”

  “I know.” Mother crossed to him and rubbed his shoulders, dusting his tunic with flour. “She knows.”

  Adah’s fingernails bit her palms like clutched cinders. “Good is not enough.”

  “She wants to be free”—Father glanced up—“like some wild animal in the forest. But she is no deer. She cannot run off with every charismatic foreigner who wafts through our village. My heart tells me that vagrant she’s fallen for is a coward. And what will they say?” He flicked his hands as if to cleanse them. “She must marry a man like Jubal and stop this foolishness before she throws away our dignity.”

  “I hate him,” Adah said, and her insides shook.

  Mother squeezed her arm. “Now, dear, you don’t hate Jubal.”

  “I will care for the farm,” Adah said. “You claim I’m more knowledgeable about farming than any man you’ve met. Yet now I’m not enough?” Cold breath burned Adah’s nostrils.

  Father frowned. “A woman may do a man’s work for a day, but not a lifetime. Do you not think of shame?”

  Embers spread through Adah’s chest. “You’ve taught me nothing else.”

  Father glanced at Mother, who shook her head, crossed to the table, and squashed the dough with renewed vigor.

  “The farm may thrive under your ownership,” Father said. “But when you die, all your labor will be choked by weeds. You need children, and to have children you need a man. How many times must I say it?”

  “Explain to me how choosing my own husband is anything but fair,” Adah said.

  “I do not ask you to understand. Only to obey. Do you really think I would let you marry that fool? His hands have known as much work as an infant’s.”

  “What she asks is fair,” Mother said.

  Father’s brow creased like freshly plowed fields. “Our daughter is fiery enough without you tossing her kindling.”

  “You can afford to give her what she asks for,” Mother continued.

  “And you can afford to keep silent.”

  “This isn’t about—”

  Adah skirted them to the door, threw it wide, and exited the house. The air was crisp and opaque. Shadows bled from the fog rolling over the tilled farmland toward the forest rearing like a host of spears, ice-tipped and glittering. The mountains loomed beyond, crowned white to match their weaponry.

  Adah found a hatchet lodged in a stump and heard Father’s voice rising against Mother’s. She took up the hatchet, returned, and set her back to the door as they noticed what she held.

  “Hand it over,” Father said.

  “You taught me I could be anything I wanted.”

  “Give me the tool.” He stepped forward, but Mother stopped him by the arm. He glanced back. Set his jaw.

  “If I were a boy,” Adah continued, “our struggle would be over. So why not let me be what you always wanted?”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying,” Mother said.
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  “I’m no fool,” Adah said. “I hear the intent behind your words louder than what you speak.” She chilled her voice until it was colder than the iron in her hands. “You’re ashamed I wasn’t born a boy, that you have no heir, no legacy. So you wish to trade me to gain one.” She smiled humorlessly. “Barter the worth of my womanhood for the benefit of your pride.”

  Father’s eyes flashed like glowing sickles, and Mother spoke before Father could. “You’re upset. We understand.”

  But they didn’t. They couldn’t. Not unless she showed them. Before they could say anything more, she grasped her hair into a thick tail and, as Mother cried out, sliced it through, letting it fall to the ground.