Abuzohar, who was sometimes a white leopard, inclined his head, his face luminous as the moon. “As long as the One knows, there is no need for us to know.”
Achsah, with wings and hair the soft grey velvet of his mouse host, nodded. “They are innocent boys, for the children of men. Likable. And they speak the Old Language.”
Adabiel, orange wings vivid as the tiger, agreed. “Good in their hearts. And they brought out Noah’s goodness. Could that be part of the plan?”
Admael said, “We still have no real idea why they are here, or how they are to be returned to wherever it is they come from.”
Adnachiel, sometimes a giraffe, looked up at the stars. “We willingly gave up some of our powers when we chose to stay on this planet.”
“We do not have to stay.” Abdiel’s seraphim wings were as bright a gold as his bat ones. “We are free to leave at any time and to resume our full powers.”
Adnarel threw off light like the sun flashing against the scarab beetle. “It was our free choice. And now—I would not leave while they—the twins—are still here.”
“We may not be able to save them,” Alarid warned.
“Then I will stay with them,” Admael said, for a fraction of a second looking more like a white camel than like a seraphim.
Eleven luminous heads slowly nodded in agreement with Admael.
EIGHT
Oholibamah, Japheth’s wife
Mahlah and Tiglah were waiting near Grandfather Lamech’s ancient fig tree. Mahlah’s belly was softly rounded. Tiglah was round by nature, all soft curves and delicate plumpness that had not yet run to softness, as Anah’s was doing.
The twins came from the garden, where they had weeded two long rows of plants which might have been forebears of tomatoes, and pulled off the suckers. Higgaion was in the tent with Grandfather Lamech. The twins did not see Mahlah and Tiglah until the two girls came to meet them. Tiglah walked slowly toward Sandy. She tossed her head so that her red hair flew about her face. She lowered the heavy fringes of her lashes. “I’m sorry my father and brother didn’t treat you better when you appeared in our tent that time.” She paused, and added virtuously, “They have to be very careful that strange men don’t take advantage of me.” Then she stopped. “Am I speaking to the right one?”
“No,” Dennys said.
Mahlah fluttered her small hands like birds. Her dark hair concealed her swollen belly. “But which one of you was guest in my father’s tent?”
Sandy stepped forward. “My brother Dennys. You’re Yalith’s sister?”
“Yes. Mahlah. But I am Ugiel’s bride and no longer live in the home tent.”
Sandy looked at her, thinking that although Mahlah was beautiful, it was in an obvious way; she had none of the subtle loveliness he associated with Yalith. Tiglah’s flashy beauty was almost an assault. He still didn’t know what to make of her. “Tiglah?”
She giggled, so that dimples came and went on either side of her reddened lips. “Don’t you remember me?”
“You were talking to me the other day, before the griffin came.”
“Yes, and the silly griffin interrupted us. I think she was jealous. But she’s not here now. Would you like to come with us?” She turned from Sandy, to include Dennys in the invitation.
“Where?” Dennys asked suspiciously. His first encounter with Tiglah’s family had made him far more cautious than Sandy had cause to be. He did not trust her, nor, indeed, any of the small people who did not come from Noah’s tenthold.
Mahlah, unlike Tiglah, was not a giggler. She smiled. “We’d like to get to know you better. My father thinks the world of you. So let’s go for a little walk.”
Dennys looked at the sky, which was already beginning to shimmer with heat. “It’s too hot. Thank you, anyhow.”
Tiglah pushed her fingers through her curls, so that they glinted with gold in the sunlight. She, too, looked at the sky. “It’s not going to be really hot until the sun is above the palm trees.” She turned her dimpled smile toward Sandy. “We’d really love to show you around a little. You haven’t seen much of the oasis.”
Sandy stepped forward. He had not enjoyed his brief excursions onto the public path, but if Tiglah and Mahlah were there to show them where to go, it might be fun. It was time to go farther than Grandfather Lamech’s compound and the nearby shops. “Well—”
“You go, if you like.” Dennys was firm. “I nearly died of sunstroke, and I’m keeping out of the sun.”
Sandy looked at his brother, noticing the still pinkly mottled skin. “I’m sorry. My skin’s all healed. I forgot—”
“You go, if you like,” Dennys repeated.
Sandy shook his head. “No. Grandfather Lamech wanted us to bring him some onions for his stew, and we were too busy weeding. We’d better go pull them before the sun gets too high.”
A great whirring of wings shook the sky above them, and the griffin landed between the two boys and Mahlah and Tiglah.
“Go away, spoilsport.” Tiglah kicked at the griffin, and her green eyes sparked with resentment.
Dennys backed away in fear. The griffin looked to him as fierce as the manticore.
“It’s all right,” Sandy reassured him. “It’s a griffin, and she’s a friend.”
The griffin spread her eagle wings so that the two girls were screened. Opened her bill and squawked something like “On-yons.”
“Okay, okay,” Sandy said. “We won’t forget.”
The griffin folded her wings. Her lion’s tail swished back and forth. Tiglah walked cautiously around her, and put her small hand on Sandy’s arm. “Later, then? You would like to come for a walk, wouldn’t you?”
Would he? Tiglah made Sandy feel very peculiar. She was both alluring and unsettling. And she was very different from Yalith, of the bronze hair and eyes and luminous smile. He would go anywhere with Yalith. But Tiglah? “I don’t know,” he said cautiously. “Dennys and I have a lot to talk about.”
Mahlah, too, skirted the griffin, asking, “Are you sure you are two separate people? My husband, Ugiel, can take different forms, yet it is always he.”
“We are twins,” Dennys stated. “Aren’t there any twins around here?”
Tiglah moved her fingers slowly up and down Sandy’s arm, and it prickled, so that the freckles he had acquired in the sun seemed to stand up. “Two look-exactly-alikes? No. Of course, we can tell you apart right now, because your skin”—her fingers caressed Sandy’s forearm—“is strong, and you are getting quite tanned, and you both have freckles across your nose. Whereas his”—she indicated Dennys—“still looks raw and uncooked.”
“But handsome,” Mahlah purred. “We don’t have any men on the oasis who are as tall and like gods as you are.”
The griffin cried again, “On-yons.”
Sandy had already turned in the direction of the vegetable garden when he noticed Dennys looking past the clump of trees to the public path. Yalith and Oholibamah were coming toward them, carrying a large kettle between them.
Mahlah drew her lips up in what was more a grimace than a smile. “Well, sisters dear, are you pursuing the twin giants?”
Oholibamah’s low voice was pleasant. “Good morning. Matred sent us with a meal. Grandfather Lamech is too old to cook for so many.”
Unheeding, Yalith looked at the twins, from Dennys to Sandy, and back to Dennys. “It is not just the difference in your skins that tells you apart.” She looked troubled.
“Let’s put the kettle on the fire,” Oholibamah suggested.
“You don’t have to go with them.” Tiglah wrinkled her nose in distaste as Yalith and Oholibamah started into the tent.
“Stay and talk with us,” Mahlah wheedled.
But the twins had turned their backs on the two girls and were looking after Yalith as she disappeared into the tent.
The griffin shrieked with pleasure and flew off, spiraling higher and higher into the sky.
* * *
Dennys had picked half a
basketful of onions before he began to recount for Sandy, in detail this time, his experience in Tiglah’s tent.
“But it was her father and brother who threw you out, wasn’t it?”
“She was there.”
“But it wasn’t really her fault.”
“She didn’t even try to stop them,” Dennys said. “And even if it wasn’t her fault, I wouldn’t trust anybody who came from that tent.”
“Well.” Sandy picked up his basket of onions and hefted it to one shoulder. “I can’t say I blame you for feeling the way you do.” He did not add that, nevertheless, Tiglah was still the most absolutely gorgeous girl he had ever seen. Except Yalith. Who wasn’t gorgeous at all. Whatever Yalith had, it was better than gorgeousness.
And were Yalith and Mahlah and Tiglah going to be drowned?
Dennys, picking up at least part of Sandy’s thoughts, said, “Still—I wouldn’t want Tiglah to be drowned. And I guess she’s going to be.”
Sandy felt a chill move over his skin, despite the sun, which was rising higher and hotter. “And Yalith?”
Dennys picked up his basket. “Oholibamah is Japheth’s wife. Ham, Shem, and Japheth, with their wives, go on the ark. That’s the story. Oholibamah loves Yalith. I mean, they’re really friends. I don’t think Oholibamah would let Yalith drown.”
“If she doesn’t have any say about who goes on the ark, can she prevent it?”
Dennys said, “Hey, we’re talking as if that old ark story is true. But Noah doesn’t seem to have any inkling of it, and he talks with this El of theirs.”
“God.” Sandy shifted his basket of onions from one shoulder to the other. “Isn’t there some kind of flood story in all cultures?”
“I think so,” Dennys replied. “I mean, even in our day the planet is still shifting its plates and causing earthquakes. We’ve had an awful lot of weird weather, volcanoes erupting all over the planet, and tornadoes and hurricanes.”
“Well, about those flood stories,” Sandy continued. “There must have been some kind of major weather cataclysm.”
“Yeah, but there’ve been wild weather patterns all through history. Ice ages. Whatever it was that finished off the dinosaurs, a comet, or that Nemesis star. Or the earth shifting slightly on its axis and altering climate and seasons. So a big flood isn’t all that impossible.”
Sandy said in a flat voice, “Maybe we’ll get drowned, too. Maybe it would be better than being nuked.”
“More inevitable than nuking. Nothing that hasn’t happened yet has to happen.” Dennys pushed into the tent and wearily set his basket of onions down near Grandfather Lamech’s cooking stones. Sandy followed suit. They looked over to where the old man lay napping on his pile of skins, eyes closed, breathing shallowly. Higgaion was curled at his feet, and little bubbling sounds came rhythmically from his trunk.
Sandy said, thoughtfully, “If we get nuked, it will be because of people. Power and greed and corruption. It wouldn’t be a natural disaster. But a flood is a natural disaster.”
Dennys nodded. “Nuking would be something completely different. Not natural.”
“Yeah, but remember, Dad says it doesn’t have to happen. People can restrain themselves. We’ve had the power for half a century, and we’ve refrained. But if the plates of the earth slide, that can’t be stopped. If a comet should hit us, we couldn’t stop it. And storms and blizzards. Those are inevitable.”
“When we had the hurricane, and the big oak was ripped out by the roots, nobody could have stopped that. It is different—things that can be stopped and things that can’t, like tornadoes and earthquakes and—”
“And floods,” Sandy said flatly.
Grandfather Lamech startled them with a loud snore.
“It doesn’t do any good to talk about it,” Dennys said. “Any of it. If there’s going to be a flood, we can’t do anything about it. But we can work in Grandfather Lamech’s garden.”
The old man snored again.
“Right now, we’d better nap, too,” Sandy suggested.
Dennys dropped onto the clean sleeping skins which had been provided for him. “Hey, it’s good to be back with you again.”
But he missed Yalith’s gentle fingers against his burned skin.
* * *
Every day, someone from Noah’s tenthold came to Grandfather Lamech’s tent with the main meal. When Yalith and Oholibamah came, they often stayed to eat with the old man and the twins. Yalith was equally gracious with each of them, but sometimes she sat looking at them in bemusement, letting Oholibamah do the work. The twins, in their turn, looked at Yalith and did not look at each other.
Occasionally, one of the men brought the meal. Japheth, like his wife and Yalith, would stay to eat, to talk.
Shem, who was the hunter, was cordial, but not chatty. He would stand, leaning on his spear, until he was certain that Grandfather Lamech had everything he needed. Then he would leave.
Japheth had told the twins that when Shem went hunting, he would always stop to thank the animal he had killed, thank it for giving them the food necessary for life.
“Do all the hunters give thanks?” Sandy asked.
“Not anymore. I think they used to, long ago. But now most of the hunters just kill, and often more than they need. Some kill just for the sake of killing.”
Dennys said, “That is true in our time, too. At home, our land is posted against hunters and trappers, but that doesn’t stop the jacklighters.”
“The what?” Japheth asked.
Dennys tried to explain. “Hunters who shine a bright light into the eyes of the deer. It blinds them and they freeze and can’t move, and then the hunters shoot. Jack-lighting is illegal, but that doesn’t stop a lot of people.”
“A lot?” Japheth asked.
Dennys stated, “A few can seem like a lot.”
Sandy nodded. The twins liked what Japheth had told them about Shem.
* * *
One morning Anah and Elisheba came with the food for the day. Anah, Ham’s wife, was obviously Tiglah’s sister, but her hair did not have the brilliance of Tiglah’s, and her eyes were not as rich a green. She was becoming flabby, with dimples all over, in her cheeks, her chin, her elbows, her knees. She was softer than Tiglah.
Elisheba was like Shem, solid, muscled, kind. At home, in the twins’ part of the world, she would have looked comfortable in a flowered housedress, and she would scrub her kitchen floor every day, and shift all the furniture to sweep under it. There was something more familiar about Elisheba than about many of the other women, who had an Oriental strangeness. Anah’s and Tiglah’s eyes were almond-shaped, their cheekbones high.
After the pot had been set on the stones, Anah put her hands on her rounded hips, looking in open admiration at Sandy and Dennys. “Another hundred years and you’ll be the most handsome men on the desert.”
Dennys looked at Grandfather Lamech’s wrinkled face and trembling hands, thinking that the old man, at any rate, was not going to live for another hundred years. And even if the flood held off, he and Sandy did not have the life span of these tiny desert people. But he said nothing. He did not like Anah; Anah was Tiglah’s sister.
Elisheba picked up the empty pot from the day before, which the twins had scoured clean with sand. “I wonder if they’ll grow wings?” She tended to speak of Sandy and Dennys as though they could not hear.
“I think they’re a new breed,” Anah said, “not seraph or nephil, but a completely different kind of giant.” Her gaze slid from one twin to the other, then back to Elisheba. “What,” she suggested, “would you think of having two husbands?”
Elisheba laughed. “One is all I can manage.”
“Thank you for the dinner.” Sandy turned away from Anah’s gaze, which was uncomfortably reminiscent of Tiglah’s. “It smells good.”
“And please thank Matred for us.”
Anah put her fingers lightly against Sandy’s wrist. “You’re welcome to come eat in Noah’s tent at any time, yo
u know that.”
Sandy was glad when she was gone.
* * *
The big tent was dark and quiet. Matred poked her elbow against Noah’s ribs. “What about Mahlah?”
“Humph?” Noah mumbled sleepily.
“Husband. It cannot have escaped your notice that Mahlah is with child.”
Noah rolled over. “I have been very busy.”
“Noah.”
“It is time Mahlah brought her young man to our tent,” Noah said. “We will prepare a feast.”
“It is not a young man,” Matred said. “At least, it is not one of our young men, and I don’t think they’re young, I think they are old, far older than any of us, even Grandfather Methuselah.”
“Woman, what—or who—are you talking about?”
“Mahlah,” Matred said impatiently, “and her nephil.”
Noah sat up. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“I am telling you”—Matred kept her voice low—“that Mahlah is with child by a nephil, and that she has had some kind of nephil wedding.” Quickly she put her hand over Noah’s mouth to stifle his roar of outrage.
“This is not how things are done.” He pushed her hand away, but kept his voice under control. “There has been no wedding feast. No nephil has come to our tent.”
“The nephilim do not do things the way we do. Their customs are not our customs.”
“This is Mahlah’s will? She loves this nephil?”
“So it would seem. She sends messages by Yalith. She does not want to tell us these things herself.”
Noah growled. “It is the way of things to lose a daughter to another man’s tent, but not without the proper formalities.”
“When Mahlah does speak to me”—Matred’s voice was heavy—“she keeps reminding me that times have changed.”
Noah sighed. “It is not what we would have chosen for our daughter, but after all, Oholibamah—”
Matred leaned against her husband, and he put his arm around her. “I would rather have it one of our young giants. At least they are truly young, and I think they are good.”
“They fit in with us,” Noah agreed, “and the nephilim do not. It seems now as though our twins have been with us always.”
A Wrinkle in Time Quintet Page 67
