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  “And you are old and insane.”

  Enoch laughed. “We’d best remedy your attitude before we get to the more difficult parts of your training.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The Old Way.”

  “Whatever that is, I want nothing to do with it.”

  “Yet you’re still standing here, talking with me.”

  Noah suppressed the urge to slap him.

  “Do your cares supplant God’s will? Who can refuse him?” Enoch swept his hands to indicate the grass and trees and sky and fire.

  “Thank you for the fire, but we’re going now.” Noah motioned for Jade to follow as he turned to continue through the woods.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” the man said, and used his tongue to dab the corner of his mouth.

  Noah glanced at Jade in time to see her gaze locked on the meat in the pan. “Come on,” he whispered, “we need to go.” And he grabbed her hand and pulled.

  “If you leave now,” the man said, “Lamech and Methuselah will die.”

  Noah fought to still the burning that welled up in his chest. He raised a hand to press the flesh that singed, and fought to quell the shiver erupting at the base of his back.

  How did he know those names?

  “All those who would come after you—your future children, your future friends,” Enoch said. “All of them will disappear unless you learn to walk with God. He will fulfill the desires of your heart.”

  Noah’s voice came cold and quiet. “What do you know of my heart?”

  “More than you could imagine.”

  Noah considered Enoch a moment. There was something about the conviction in his eyes. No insanity. Just a clear confidence housed in a rickety frame weathered by age and beaten by the winds of time.

  Enoch took a long breath. “When you lie alone at night and think of the longing in your chest as a burning, you think that the fire would have been quenched had your mother not been taken from you. But you only lie to keep the pain at bay.” Enoch approached, nostrils flaring as his voice softened to a near whisper. “Adah could never quench the flames inside you.”

  The skin of Noah’s face chilled like a stone in snow. “How do you know her name?”

  “It does not matter. Nothing matters but your heart. Don’t you see?”

  “All I see is a man I don’t know who speaks of things he can’t understand.”

  “If your mother had been with you, your longing would have taken another form. She could never heal you, Noah. Neither could your father. Or Jade, for that matter.”

  Jade shifted beside him. “How do you—”

  “Only God can quench the burning in your soul. Drink of his water, and you will thirst for nothing. Come, I know you are hungry. At least stay long enough to eat what I cooked. Perhaps then I can explain myself better.”

  Jade consulted him with caution in her eyes, then inched forward. “What did you make?”

  Noah squeezed her wrist. “No. Don’t eat it.”

  Enoch smiled and said, “I cooked the fattiest portion of venison.”

  Jade’s expression melted, for it had been over a day since either of them had eaten anything.

  Jade crouched beside the pan, where Enoch indicated, and popped little pieces of meat into her mouth, moaning with each bite. She beckoned Noah close, and he approached and sat, taking no food despite the ache in his stomach.

  “You don’t trust me,” Enoch said.

  “Why should I?” Noah said.

  Enoch nodded. “What do you want to know?”

  “How did you find us?”

  Enoch regarded him and said, “Maybe we should start with an easier question.”

  “We start where I want, or I’m leaving.”

  Enoch nodded, bit his cheek, then pointed at the food, “If you aren’t hungry . . .”

  “Go ahead,” Noah said, and dug his nails into his legs.

  Enoch ate nearly a third of what was left in the pan and left the rest for Jade. “How old is your father now?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “It would help me answer your question. Also, do you know where we are?”

  Noah shook his head. Enoch looked questioningly at Jade, who swallowed a bite of the food and shrugged.

  “To be honest,” Enoch said, “I don’t have any idea either. In fact, I don’t know where or when we are.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I seem to have lost track of quite a span of years.”

  Noah didn’t know what that meant, but marked it as another warning.

  “According to my reckoning,” Enoch said, “your father was still young and without a wife. At least, for me, it was yesterday. For you it was a lifetime, and more.”

  Noah stared blankly, fighting the urge to topple the pan and claim the man insane. “That’s impossible,” he said.

  “With God, all things are possible. In time, you will come to believe this too.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “God.”

  “That means you don’t know how you ended up here, yet you believe you have somehow appeared in a foreign land many years after the time when you were alive. Correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “Then how did you know I was in need?”

  “Why else would God bring me here?”

  Noah rubbed his head.

  Enoch chuckled. “The Almighty is quite a mystery, isn’t he?”

  “You have lost your mind. You’re insane. You’re making everything up.”

  “Then how do I know your entire family?”

  Noah took a deep breath to settle the shaking, and judged how close the nearest jagged stone sat.

  Enoch looked at Jade, a slight smirk curving his mouth. “If I were one of the devils, I would have killed you already. The food would have been poisoned, and yet I ate it myself. More than that, I certainly wouldn’t tell you about the Old Way.”

  “Why not? The Others let us go. They didn’t try to kill me even though they had the chance. Why should I believe that you would behave differently? Whatever they have planned, you could be helping them.”

  “The Others? Is that what you call them?” Enoch nodded. “An appropriate name. But I was speaking to Jade. Of course they would never kill you. But that is only because they seek to damage you worse than death.” Enoch’s neck reddened and his eyebrows crouched over gray eyes flashing like spears. “Make no mistake, the God-King desires nothing more than to be worshipped. His goal is to purge the Old Way from the minds of men. To make them forget who and what they are. To turn humanity into a race of animals—beasts chained and pitted against one another until all their thoughts dissolve into madness. Before God took me, my fellow followers of the Old Way had been working to resist him.”

  “Why would he want that, though?”

  “Some say he himself is only a tool—an instrument played by a master Musician. For what purpose, only God and the Enemy know in full detail. And they will not say. Some mysteries are not for men to take hold of. But I have thought long and think I know enough to define our danger.”

  Jade had stopped eating, and Noah noticed the forest seemed to have hushed as if to hear Enoch’s words.

  “From the beginning, the Enemy has envied our birthright,” Enoch said.

  “The Enemy?”

  “He was once a mighty servant of God. Neither man nor beast. Something Other—again, a good description. Then, like a bolt of lightning, he was cast from the heavens, and his form was forever marred by the descent so violent.” Enoch gazed at the sky as if he could see the scene before his eyes. “Some say that he stumbled over humankind. That it was for lust of us that he fell.”

  “I don’t understand,” Noah said, and glanced at Jade in time to see her mouth a small circle beneath half-moon eyes.

  “God created us to master the physical world,” Enoch said. “To mirror the Almighty’s glory in the world he created. Before he formed us, the Enemy held the highest
position of honor among the Almighty’s servants. Afterward, he and his brethren were commanded to bow to us. But they were not given the ability to experience the world we so freely enjoyed. And so, as the tale goes, the Enemy lusted after our bodies, and determined in his heart that he would steal them and usurp our position. For he wanted to be like God, as we were like God, and to gain ever more servants.”

  Noah’s hands clenched his knees.

  “How could he do that?” Jade said.

  “If humankind were to willingly give up their position, the Enemy might take it. And so he has bent every thought toward that end—toward perverting humanity with the intention to destroy us from the inside out. So that he might steal our very bodies and walk in the skin of men, ruling the world as he sees fit. For if he could not rule us from without, he might do so from within. That is what he has been trying to do. But he cannot kill you, Noah. If he could, you would never have been born, for he can sense you as a predator smells his prey, and there is no place on earth that you could go to escape him.”

  “The Others,” Noah said, “the men with horns. They are servants of the Enemy?”

  “Indeed. But they have grown more powerful, more sophisticated. A millennium ago, when the first man and woman still walked the earth, their firstborn son did something terrible. Something that had never been done before.”

  Enoch paused, scooted the coals with a stick, and removed the pan. “His name was Cain, and he murdered his younger brother. In doing so, some say he birthed a terrible evil that the Enemy used to gain a greater foothold in our world. They say the Enemy named it the Abomination, and now that Abomination walks about in a body of its own creation.” Enoch turned toward Noah and whispered, “And, if I am not mistaken, you have met it.”

  Noah leaned back, eyes widening. “What?”

  “It calls itself the God-King.”

  “The God-King is the tool the Enemy plans on using to fulfill his plan?”

  Enoch nodded. “Have you not noticed the God-King’s obsession with you? How he has followed your every step, and yet never killed you?”

  Noah squinted, thinking back. Jade’s fingers slipped into his, cold and slick.

  “He has followed you since you were a babe, and feared you before you were born.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are the Almighty’s chosen one. Destined to destroy the Abomination.”

  Noah paused a moment, thinking. “You tell wilder stories than my father did to get me to sleep.”

  “Truth can be exceedingly strange.”

  “What does the Almighty expect of me?”

  Enoch narrows his eyes. “That is not for me to say. He will demand much of you. But he will never demand more than you can give. And in giving, he offers greater reward than you could imagine.”

  “Reward such as what?”

  “Fulfillment. Peace.” A pause. “Forgiveness.”

  The image of Elina falling to the ground, neck gushing red, stabbed his eyes, and he closed and rubbed them to push the images away.

  No. Elina’s death was not his fault. He refused to believe it.

  “He wants to set the world free,” Enoch said, “but humankind is enslaved to their lusts. The children of Adam have become nothing more than instruments of the Enemy, incessantly braying like donkeys in heat. Masochistic beasts who forget their own reflection. Tell me, could you abandon them? Could you let them perish in willful ignorance?”

  Noah took a deep breath, feeling an invisible weightiness on his shoulders, straightening against it and hardening his expression. “What right do you have to place such demands on me?”

  “You sit at a crucible of Time. For no fault of theirs, or yours, or mine. You have been chosen. Not by me, and not by some mystical force. You have been chosen by your very Creator.”

  “I didn’t ask to be chosen,” Noah said.

  “No one asks to be born. Neither do they ask to die. And yet all must live and meet their end.”

  “Stop speaking in riddles.”

  “What I say only seems a riddle because you do not yet understand. But that is your call—to hear the truth and to make your choice. Stay with me and rise to meet your destiny, or leave and abandon yourself and all you hold dear to destruction.”

  A silence descended, broken only by their soft breaths and the gentle crackle of flames. Noah stared at the coals slowly pulsating, thinking they looked like a beating heart, wondering if his own chest would look the same could he peel back the skin and steal a look.

  But he knew he would see nothing but the hue of Elina’s throat.

  He passed a hand over his eyes, longing to sever himself from the world, to find privacy. All the more because he believed Enoch’s words and feared the truth of them.

  That I will never be free. Never be alone. Never be able to step out from underneath the weight for fear that one misstep might shatter everything.

  In that moment, he believed himself special. That few human beings would ever carry such a burden—even fewer at so young an age.

  All his life, both loss and lies had primed him for pain and truth. He had been set apart. A tool. And he hated himself for it.

  He gritted his teeth, removed his hand, and said, “I’m hungry.”

  Enoch nodded and retrieved a bag. “I have some extra meat. I will cook it for you.”

  As Enoch worked, Noah tried to feel nothing, to become nothing. For he knew it might just be the last time he would ever be able to.

  Enoch touched his arm, and Noah met his gaze.

  “Thank you,” Enoch said. “For bearing this burden. God will reward you.”

  Noah tried not to notice how Jade looked at him with wonder.

  He had never felt more alone.

  Chapter 48

  Noah no longer wanted to speak. Thankfully, neither Jade nor Enoch seemed to mind, for Enoch ignored him while Jade stared at the flames, her face drawn in dark lines pointing downward. As night drew close, Enoch rose and tended the fire, building it to a considerable blaze before laying facedown with his palms stretched upward.

  Noah tried to ignore the man, but something about the way he laid there nagged at him. He stood and said, “What are you doing?”

  “Praying,” Enoch said.

  “To your God?”

  “Who else?” Enoch said. “A leaf?”

  “What do you pray for?”

  “I’ve asked the Almighty to provide us a home. He desires your well-being, so I am confident he will supply it. If not, he will provide some other way.”

  Noah suppressed the urge to scoff at the convenient escape left in the event that a home didn’t grow before their eyes. As much as Enoch’s ignorance bothered Noah, if the old man thought praying could make a home appear, Noah would let him.

  The sun set, and cold crept close, beating the fire with bitter gusts. Noah touched Jade’s shoulder, but she shrugged away.

  “Jade,” Noah said, “I—”

  “I don’t want to talk.”

  “I wasn’t trying to talk. I only wanted—”

  “Just leave me alone.”

  He stared at Jade’s profile, then stood, kicked dust into the fire, and walked into the cave to sit with his knees to his chest.

  Enoch was still praying, his mumbling just soft enough to remain indistinct beneath the crackle of flames. Jade rested her forehead on her arm, face hidden, sniffing tears.

  He scoffed, hoping it was loud enough for her to hear. If she didn’t want his comfort, she shouldn’t cry about it.

  Then again, even as he stoked his anger, he knew he hadn’t been trying to help. Only trying to comfort himself.

  He recalled her hair slipping between his fingers and felt a rush of desire so strong he nearly returned to her. He imagined her pressed against him again. The smell of her, the feel of her breath on his neck.

  A gust of chill wind slapped his cheek, and he cleared his throat, refusing to acknowledge the rush of warmth to his neck.

  How c
ould he forget her misery for his own desire?

  And since when had he ever desired her?

  Enoch rose and turned toward the brush, and Noah was surprised to see a man with dark skin emerge from deeper in the forest. The newcomer stopped and nodded at Enoch, who returned the nod before urging Jade and Noah close.

  Noah stood, dusted off the backs of his legs, and approached. The man was thin and careworn, but his smile was kind.

  “Hello,” the newcomer said.

  “Hello,” Noah said.

  The man bowed to Enoch. “The Almighty told me I would find some of his children in need.”

  Enoch’s gray eyes grew grave. “We are indeed in great need.”

  Noah scoffed and smirked at Enoch. “You think we’re fools?”

  The newcomer ignored Noah and continued speaking to Enoch. “My home is not far. But there are wolves about. Come, stay with me this night, and I will give you food and drink.”

  Noah folded his arms.

  Enoch grabbed up his pack, kicked sand onto the fire, and asked the man to lead them. The path was dark, but the man knew his way and warned them of dangerous footing.

  Even in the dark, Noah could tell something was wrong with Jade. She walked as if dreaming awake, head hung, shoulders slumped, each step dragged through the brush. When Noah tried to touch her, she jerked as if his touch burned. Frustrated, he tried to focus on the quiet words Enoch and the newcomer exchanged.

  “My name is Barak,” the newcomer said. “Tell me where you come from, and where you are traveling?”

  “I come from foreign lands and distant times,” Enoch said. “My goal is to teach the boy to continue in the Old Way beyond us.”

  “Beyond?” Barak glanced back and, when Noah met his gaze, looked away and quieted so that Noah couldn’t hear what he said next.

  Enoch chuckled, glanced back at Noah, and nodded. “Indeed.”

  “A darkness has been growing,” Barak said. “The Enemy grows furious at some unforeseen twist.”

  “I have sensed it, too, but could not tell how recently it had grown.”

  “It’s grown for many years. Yesterday, it reached its pitch. Birds fled. Squirrels and rabbits hid themselves. I found two deer slaughtered by one of the cats native to this region, yet the beast did not eat them.” Barak caught Enoch by the arm as the old man stumbled. “Watch for those. Their roots grow above ground.”