Time Quintet 04-Many Waters (15 page)

“You’re not going to die for a long time yet!” Noah cried. “You will live as long as our forefather Methuselah.”

“No, my son.” Grandfather Lamech’s arm about Noah’s shoulders tightened again. “My time is near.”

“Perhaps El will take you, as he took Grandfather Enoch.”

Grandfather Lamech laughed again. “Oh, my son, I am full of years, and now that; you have come to me, I am ready to die. El does not need to take me in the same way he took Grandfather Enoch.”

Sandy looked at the two small men, hugging and laughing and crying all at the same time. It seemed likely that Grandfather Lamech would die before the flood. How soon? And how soon was the flood? He had come to love Grandfather Lamech, who, with Higgaion, had nursed him so tenderly.

And what about Yalith? He wondered suddenly. He did not remember her name in the story.

And what about us, Sandy and Dennys? What would happen to us if there was a flood?

7  The Seraphim

Sandy slept that night as usual on Adnarel’s cloak. He wondered if Adnarel knew about the coming flood and the destruction of almost all life on earth. His arms tightened about Higgaion, with whom he slept much as, when he was a small boy, he had slept with his arms around a small brown plush triceratops. His fingers moved through Higgaion’s shaggy hair, stroked a great fan of an ear. Felt something hard. The scarab beetle. It gave him a feeling of comfort, although he found it difficult to associate the bronze beetle with the great seraph. Well. Thinking about this could wait till morning.  Dennys was the thinker. Sandy the doer. The gentle tip of Higgaion’s trunk stroked the back of Sandy’s neck, and he relaxed into sleep.

Adnarel came in the morning, in his seraphic form.  Sandy said, “I’ve been thinking.” After all, not only Dennys could think.

Adnarel smiled. “Sometimes that is a good idea. Sometimes not.”

 “Dennys and I are in the middle of the story of Noah and the flood, aren’t we?”

Adnarel’s azure eyes regarded him. “So it would seem.”

“How are we going to get home?”

Adnarel shrugged his golden wings. “The way you arrived, perhaps?”

“Somehow, I don’t chink, that’s going to be possible. In the meanwhile, Dennys is in one of Noah’s tents, halfway across the oasis.”

“That is true. But he is nearly ready to come to you.”

“It’s a long way. Is he strong enough to walk it?”

“Possibly.”

“I was thinking maybe you could call a unicorn for him.”

“Certainly. That is a possibility.”

“But then I thought”—Sandy’s forehead wrinkled anxiously—“when we were riding the unicorns to the oasis, he went out with the unicorn.”

“That is no problem,” Adnarel reassured him. “If we should call a unicorn to bring him from Noah’s tents to Lamech’s, and if, for some reason, they were both to go out, then we would recall the unicorn to Grandfather Lamech’s tent, and Dennys would be here, too.”

Sandy asked curiously, “If Dennys fell off the unicorn right away, and if the unicorn went out of being with him, could you call them to Grandfather Lamech’s tent faster than it would take them in, sort of, the ordinary way.”

“Oh, certainly. Fear not.”

“Wow. Wait till I tell our father. That’s what he’s working on, traveling without the restrictions of time.  Tessering.”

Adnarel nodded. “That is indeed one way of thinking about it. Your father is on the right track.”

Sandy wrinkled his brow in concentration. “Okay, then.  If Dennys and the unicorn went out, and then you called them back into being, and they appeared here, that would be a quantum leap, wouldn’t it?”

“Tell me what you mean.” Adnarel’s azure eyes probed Sandy.

“Well, it’s like, oh, in particle physics—well, you can measure a quantum where it is, but not on its journey from there to here. At least—you can’t measure a quantum in both its speed and its place in space, not at the same time. A quantum can be measured where it is, and then it can be measured where it’s got to. So—“ He paused for breath.

“So?” Adnarel asked, smiling.

“Oh, I wish Dennys was here. He could explain it better than I can. But . . . when you call a unicorn into being, you can see it, maybe measure it. But you can’t measure it when it’s gone out. Not until you call it back into being.  So maybe that’s what space and time travel is going to have to be like. A quantum leap. Or what my father would call a tesseract.”

“You are an intelligent young man,” Adnarel said. “This is not easy to understand.”

Sandy realized that he had closed his eyes, almost stopped breathing, in order better to concentrate. He opened his eyes, took in a deep gulp of air. “Can you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Tesser. Take a quantum leap.”

Adnarel smiled again. “When I am in the scarab beetle, as I have told you, I am limited by what limits the beetle. When I am in my seraphic form, I have fewer limits.”

“Can you get off this planet if you want to?” Sandy asked. “I mean, can you travel to other solar systems or other galaxies?”

“Oh, certainly. We are here because there is need. Our brothers, the nephilim, cannot leave this planet. They have lost some of their freedoms.”

“Why?” Sandy asked.

But Adnarel was examining Sandy’s healed skin, “You are beginning to get a nice protective tan. When your twin comes, each of you must spend a little time, and then a little more, in the sun, until your skin can bear the rays without burning. You must always remember to stay in the tent during the noon hours. Even in the shade, you can burn from the sun’s reflection.”

“I’ve been sunburned before,” Sandy said. “Once when our Scout troop went to the beach for the day, and we all got burned. But it was nothing like this.”

“I think you come from a more northerly part of the planet,” Adnarel said, “and this sun is younger than it is in your time.”

“And not so much pollution now between earth and sun. Does anybody here ever have allergies?”

Adnarel smiled. “Allergies do not come until later.”

“Hey,” Sandy said. “Grandfather Lamech’s granddaughter Yalith, the one with hair the color of you when you’re in the scarab beetle—why has she never come back with the night-light? Why is it always somebody else?”

“Yalith has been busy, taking care of your brother.”

For a moment Sandy was washed over with a sick wave of jealousy. He shook himself. If he and Dennys were not interested in mythical beasts, neither were they interested in girls. They went to the regional school dances, but usually stuck with the other members of the hockey and basketball teams. There was going to be plenty of time for girls later. Sometime after they had their driver’s licenses and weren’t dependent on parents to drive them. Sometime when they met girls who were not silly and giggly and showing off.

But Yalith was not silly or giggly and she did not show off and she was not at all like any of the girls at school.  Even though he had been dizzy with fever that first night in Grandfather Lamech’s tent, his memory of Yalith was as vivid as though she had come with the stone lamp the night before. Her bronze hair had held sunlight even in the dark shadows of the tent. Her body was tiny and perfect. Her eyes, like her hair, held sunlight. Trying to keep his voice level and not succeeding, for it cracked immediately, he said, “Well, I wish Yalith would bring the night-light tonight.”

Adnarel looked at him, and Sandy blushed. He understood why he was feeling the way he was feeling, and at the same time he did not at all understand the way he was feeling, and this conflicting mixture of emotion confused him.

His cheeks were as hot as they had been from fever and Sunburn. He wondered how much Adnaret saw. But the seraph looked at him calmly. “Now I have business elsewhere. You worked very hard in the garden this morning during the dawn hours. Good work. You may stay out for fifteen more minutes. I will send my griffin friend to tell you when it is time to go inside “

“What’s a griffin?”

“Ah, yes, I forget again,” Adnarel said. “A griffin is a mythical beast.”

“Not like the manticore. I hope.” Sandy was not likely to forget the manticore.

“Griffins have a larger vocabulary than the manticore.  Some of them can be fierce, but my friend is as gentle as a lamb.”

“What does he look like?”

“She is half lion, half eagle.”

“Which half is which?” Sandy’s mind for the moment was on Yalith.

“Her front half is that of an eagle, her rear half that of a lion. She can fly like an eagle, and she has the strength of a lion.” Adnarel turned and strode through Grandfather Lamech’s grove of royal palms, date palms, coconut palms, scrub palms, all of which blocked the hot wind and provided such a thick shade that Sandy felt comfortably cool.  He lay back and looked at the vast expanse of sky, then quickly shut his eyes against the glare.

At home the summer sky was blue, and the blue was made brighter by the white cumulus clouds. Except for an occasional grey day, the sky was constantly in motion, protected by the encircling hills. Here the sky stretched naked from horizon to horizon, licked by volcanic flames, burning in the sun.

A shadow deeper than the shadow of the trees fell across his face. He opened his eyes, expecting to see the griffin.

Instead, a young woman was looking down at him. He caught his breath. She was the most spectacularly beautiful girl he had ever seen. Tiny, like all the people of the oasis.  She wore a white goatskin which covered one shoulder.  Her hair was a sunburst of red. Her eyes were almond shaped and as green as the spring grass at home. Her body was perfect, her skin the color of a peach.

“Hello!” she said, looking at him with a radiant smile. “I’m really glad to see you again.”

Sandy looked at her in astonishment.

“You haven’t forgotten me, have you? I’m really sorry for what happened, when my father and brother ...”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sandy could not keep his eyes off her.

“About when you suddenly appeared in our tent, and my father and brother . . .” Again her words trailed off, as though she didn’t want to finish the sentence.

“I’ve never been in your tent.” Sandy was confused. “I’ve only been out of Grandfather Lamech’s tent to work in the garden. —Oh. Maybe you mean my brother.”

She opened her eyes wide. Her lashes were long and dark and beautiful. “Your brother?”

“My twin brother,” Sandy said. “We do look very much alike.”

“You haven’t been staying in one of Noah’s tents?”

“No. That’s my brother Dennys.”

“Oh. Who are you, then?”

“I’m Sandy.”

“Well, then. Sandy, I’m very happy to meet you, and I’m glad you’re being nicely cared for.”

 “What’s your name?” Sandy asked.

“I’m Tiglah. I’m Anah’s sister.”

“Anah?”

“Ham’s wife. Noah’s daughter-in-law. And I’m Mahlah’s friend. Do you know Mahlah?”

“No.”

“Mahlah is Noah’s daughter, the next-to-the-youngest.Yalith is the youngest. Mahlah is the beauty of that family.  We’ve been giving Yalith and Oholibamah salves to help heal your brother. Oh, dear, this is confusing. I mean, I was really startled to find you here, instead of at Noah’s, and then you aren’t you at all, I mean you’re not the one who appeared in my father’s tent that night and who . . - Giants who look alike! And have no wings . . .”

Sandy sighed. “In our time and place we’re not anywhere near as tall as giants. We’re just tall, and we probably haven’t even finished growing.”

“You aren’t as white of skin as the nephilim, and you don’t have wings, but you’re as tall as they are. And as handsome, in a different sort of way.” She reached out and stroked his face. Then she bent closer, and he was half-fascinated, half-repelled by the strong odor of perspiration mingled with heavy perfume. She had rubbed something red onto her lips and over her cheekbones. It looked like the juice of some kind of berry. She bent closer and brushed her lips against his.

“Hey!” Sandy protested.

“You’re sweet, you know,” she said. “You’re really sweet. You’re young, aren’t you?”

Sandy said, stiffly, “We’re adolescents.”

 “What’s that?”

“Teenagers.”

She shook her head. “The nephilim don’t have any age at all. They just are. But they’ve been around. There isn’t anything they don’t know.”

Sandy sighed. “Well, I’m not like the nephilim.”

Her lips touched his again, warm and fruit-smelling.

A bird’s scream cut across the sky. Above them was the shadow of two dark, flapping wings, then a thud, and a nailing of a long, ropy tail, as the griffin landed. Out of the beak came a negative squawk which was quite evidently “No, no, no.” And another squawk which sounded very like “Tiglah.”

Tiglah leaned against the trunk of a tall palm, stretching her arm up to reveal her figure to perfection. “Go away, griffin. I like this young giant, and I think he likes me.”

The griffin cried an eagle cry and pushed herself b-tween Tiglah and Sandy. Her beak opened. “Go, go, go.”

“No, no, no,” Tiglah mimicked. “He’s just fine right here with me to tend him. The other one that looks like him has Yalith and all those other women hovering over him. It’s only fair that he should have some female care, too, isn’t it. Sandy?”

Before he could answer, the griffin had gently but firmly pushed Tiglah toward the path.

“You’d better not hurt me!” she shouted indignantly. “Rofocale is my friend.”

From the griffin’s beak came a sound very much like a mosquito shrilling. Tiglah kicked at it, hitting just where eagle and lion joined. Her toenails were long and sharp.  The lion’s tail flicked back and forth in irritation. Then the griffin pushed at Sandy, urging him toward the tent.

“I don’t want to go in yet.” Sandy looked at Tiglah’s smiling green eyes.

Tiglah’s voice was cajoling. “Wouldn’t you like to come with me to one of the bathhouses?”

“Bathhouses with water?” Sandy asked eagerly. Dirt from the garden was deep in his nails, and he could not clean it all off with sand.

“Water? Whatever for?” she asked.

“To bathe in.”

“Goodness no!” She sounded shocked. “What an unhealthy idea! We bathe by being rubbed with oil, and we have lovely perfumes that cover all the bad smells.” She giggled. “Whoever heard of bathing with water?”

Sandy felt himself being propelled toward the tent by the griffin. He was not sure how he felt about bathhouses with no water, and where perfume covered the bad smells, any more than he was sure about Tiglah. There was nobody remotely like her in school or in the village. She gave him a pleasurable prickly feeling. And, as she had pointed out, Dennys was being tended by Yalith.

The griffin pushed him into the tent.

Grandfather Lamech was waiting for him with a bowl of soup. He looked smaller than ever, and incredibly ancient. His hand, holding the bowl. shook slightly. Sandy looked at him anxiously.

He said, “Sand dear, you’re late.”

“Sorry. Grandfather Lamech. I was talking to a girl.”

Grandfather Lamech asked, suspiciously, “What girl?”

“Her name is Tiglah, and she’s the sister of one of Noah’s daughters-in-law.”