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A sudden snow shower put an end to hockey practice.

“We can’t even see the puck,” Sandy Murry shouted across the wind. “Let’s go home.” He skated over to the side of the frozen pond, sitting on an already snow-covered rock to take off his skates.

There were calls of agreement from the other skaters.  Dennys, Sandy’s twin brother, followed him, snow gathering in his lashes, so that he had to blink in order to see the rock. “Why do we have to live in the highest, coldest, windiest spot in the state?”

Hoots of laughter and shouted goodbyes came from the other boys. “Where else would you want to live?” Dennys was asked.

Snow was sliding icily down the inside of his collar.

“Baki. Fiji. Someplace warm.”

One of the boys knotted his skate laces and slung his skates around his neck. “Would you really? With all those tourists?”

“Yeah, and jet-setters crowding the beach.”

“And beautiful people.”

 “And litterbugs.”

One by one the other boys drifted off, leaving the twins.

“I thought you liked winter,” Sandy said.

“By mid-March, I’m getting tired of it.”

“But you wouldn’t really want to go to some tourists’ paradise, would you?”

“Oh, probably not. Maybe I would have, in the olden days, before the population explosion. I’m famished. Race you home.”

By the time they reached their house, an old white farm-house about a mile from the village, the snow was beginning to let up, though the wind was still strong. They went in through the garage, past their mother’s lab. Pulling off their windbreakers, they threw them at hooks, and burst into the kitchen.

“Where’s everybody?” Sandy called.

Dennys pointed to a piece of paper held by magnets to the refrigerator door. They both went up to it, to read:

DEAR TWINS, AM OFF TO TOWN WITH MEG AND CHARLES WALLACE FOR OUR DENTAL CHECKUPS. YOUR TURN IS NEXT WEEK. DON’T THINK YOU CAN GET OUT OF IT.  YOU’VE BOTH GROWN SO MUCH THIS YEAR THAT IT IS ESSENTIAL YOU HAVE YOUR TEETH CHECKED.

LOVE, MOTHER

Sandy bared his teeth ferociously. “We’ve never had a cavity,”

Dennys made a similar grimace. “But we have grown.  We’re just under six feet.”

“Bet if we were measured today we’d be over.”

Dennys opened the door to the refrigerator. There was half a chicken in an earthenware dish, with a sign:

VERBOTEN. THIS IS FOR DINNER.

Sandy pulled out the meat keeper. “Ham all right?”

“Sure. With cheese.”

“And mustard.”

“And sliced olives.”

“And ketchup.”

“And pickles.”

“No tomatoes here. Bet you Meg made herself a BLT.”

“There’s lots of liverwurst. Mother likes that.”

“Yuck.”

“It’s okay with cream cheese and onion.”

They put their various ingredients on the kitchen counter and cut thick slices of bread fresh from the oven.  Dennys peered in to sniff apples slowly baking. Sandy looked over to the kitchen table, where Meg had spread out her books and papers. “She’s taken more than her fair share of the table.”

“She’s in college,” Dennys depended. “We don’t have as much homework as she does.”

“Yeah, and I’d hate that long commute every day.”

“She likes to drive. And at least she gees home early.”

Dennys plunked his own books down on the big table.

Sandy stood looking at one of Meg’s open notebooks.  “Hey, listen to this. Do you suppose we’ll have this kind of junk when we’re in college? It seems quite evident that there was definite prebiotic existence of protein ancestors of polymers, and that therefore the primary beings were not a-amino adds. I suppose she knows what she’s writing about. I haven’t the foggiest.”

Dennys flipped back a page. “Look at her title. The Million Doller question: the chicken or the egg, amino acids or their polymers. She may be a mathematical genius, but she still can’t spell.”

“You mean, you know what she’s writing about?” Sandy demanded.

“I have a pretty good idea. It’s the kind of thing Mother and Dad argue about at dinner—polymers, virtual particles, quasars, all that stuff.”

Sandy looked at his twin. “You mean, you listen?”

“Sure. Why not? You never know when a little useless knowledge is going to come in handy. Hey, what’s this book? It’s about bubonic plague. I’m the one who wants to be a doctor.”

Sandy glanced over. “It’s history, not medicine, stupe.”

“Hey, why are lawyers never bitten by snakes?” Dennys asked.

“I don’t know. And don’t care.”

“Well, you’re the one who wants to be the lawyer. Come on. Why do lawyers never get bitten by snakes?”

“I give up. Why do lawyers never get bitten by snakes?”

“Professional courtesy.”

Sandy groaned. “Very funny. Ha- Ha.”

Dennys slathered mustard over a thick slice of ham.  “When I think about the amount of schooling still ahead of us, I almost lose my appetite.”

“Almost.”

“Well, not quite.”

Sandy opened the refrigerator door, looking for something else to pile on his sandwich. “We seem to eat more than the rest of the family put together. Charles Wallace eats like a bird. Well, judging by the amount we spend on bird feed, birds are terrible gluttons. But you know what I mean.”

“At least he’s settling down in school, and the other kids aren’t picking on him the way they used to.”

“He still doesn’t look more than six, but half the time I think he knows more than we do. We’re certainly the ordinary, run-of-the-mill ones in the family.”

“The family can do with some ordinary, run-of-the-mill people. And we’re not exactly dumb. If I’m going to be a doctor and you’re going to be a lawyer, we’ve got to be bright enough for all that education. I’m thirsty.”

Sandy opened the cupboard above the kitchen door.  Only a year before, they had been too short to reach it without climbing on a stool. “Where’s the Dutch cocoa?  That’s what I want.” Sandy moved various boxes of lentils, barley, kidney beans, cans of tuna and salmon.

“Bet Mother’s got it out in the lab. Let’s go look.”

Dennys sliced more ham.

Sandy put a large dill pickle in his mouth. “Let’s finish making the sandwiches first.”

“Food first. Fine.”

With sandwiches an inch or more thick in their hands, and full mouths, they went back out to the pantry and turned into the lab. In the early years of the century, when the house had been part of a working dairy farm, the lab had been used to keep milk, butter, eggs, and there was still a large churn in one corner, which now served to hold a lamp. The work counter with the stone sink functioned as well for holding lab equipment as it had for milk and eggs. There was now a formidable-looking microscope, some strange equipment only their mother understood, and an old-fashioned Bunsen burner, over which, on a homemade tripod, a black kettle was simmering.

Sandy sniffed appreciatively. “Stew.”

“I think we’re supposed to call it boeuf bourguignon.” Dennys reached up to the shelf over the sink and pulled down a square red tin. “Here’s the cocoa. Mother and Dad like it at bedtime.”

“When’s Dad coming home?” Dennys wanted to know.

“Tomorrow night, I think Mother said.”

Sandy, his mouth full, held his hands out to the wood stove. “If we had our driver’s licenses, we could go to the airport to meet him.”

“We’re good drivers already,” Dennys agreed.

Sandy stuffed another large bite of sandwich into his mouth, and left the warmth of the stove to wander to the far corner of the lab where there was a not-quite-ordinary-looking computer. “How long has Dad had this gizmo here?”

“He put it in last week. Mother wasn’t particularly pleased.”

“Well, it is supposed to be her lab,” Sandy said.

“What’s he programming?” Dennys asked.

“He’s usually pretty good about explaining. Even though I don’t understand most of it. Tessering and red-shifting and space/time continuum and stuff.” Sandy stared at the keyboard, which had eight rather than the usual four ranks of keys. “Half of these symbols are Greek. I mean, literally Greek.”

Dennys, ramming the last of his sandwich into his mouth, peered over his twin’s shoulder “Well, I more or less get the usual science signs. That looks like Hebrew, there, and that’s Cyrillic. I haven’t the faintest idea what these keys are for.”

Sandy looked down at the lab floor, which consisted of large slabs of stone. There was a thick rug by the sink, and another in front of the shabby leather chair and reading lamp. “I don’t know how Mother stands this place in winter.”

“She dresses like an Eskimo.” Dennys shivered, then put out one finger and tapped on the standard keys of the computer: “TAKE ME SOMEPLACE WARM.”

“Hey, I don’t think we ought to mess with that,” Sandy warned.

“What do you expect? A genie to pop up, like the one in Aladdin and the magic lamp? This is just a computer, for heaven’s sake. It can’t do anything it isn’t programmed to do.

“Okay, then.” Sandy held his fingers over the keyboard.  “A lot of people think computers are alive—I mean, really, sort of like Aladdin’s genie.” He tapped out on the standard keys: “SOMEPLACE WARM AND SPARSELY POPULATED.”

Dennys shouldered him aside, adding: “LOW HUMIDITY.”

Sandy turned away from the odd computer. “Let’s make the cocoa.”

“Sure.” Dennys picked up the red tin, which he had set down on the counter. “Since Mother’s using the Bunsen burner, we’d better go back to the kitchen to make the cocoa.”

“Okay. It’s warmer there, anyhow.”

 “I could do with another sandwich. If they’ve gone all the way into town, supper’ll probably be late.”

They left the lab, closing the door behind them. “Hey.” Sandy pointed. “We didn’t see this.” There was a small note taped to the door: EXPERIMENT IN PROGRESS. PLEASE KEEP OUT.

“Uh-oh. Hope we didn’t upset anything.”

“We’d better tell Mother when she gets back.”

“Why didn’t we see that note?”

“We were busy stuffing our faces.”

Dennys crossed the hall and opened the kitchen door and was met with a blast of heat. “Hey!” He tried to step back, but Sandy was on his heels.

“Fire!” Sandy yelled. “Get the fire extinguisher!”

“Too late! We’d better get out and—“ Dennys heard the kitchen door slam behind them. “We’ve got to get out—“

Sandy yelled, “I can’t find the fire extinguisher!”

“I can’t find the walls—“ Dennys groped through a pervasive mist, his hands touching nothing.

Came a great sonic boom.

Then absolute silence.

Slowly the mist began to clear away, to dissipate.

“Hey!” Sandy’s changing voice cracked and soared.  “What’s going on?”

Dennys’s equally cracking voice followed. “Where on earth ... What’s happened ...”

“What was that explosion?”

“Hey!”

They looked around to see nothing familiar. No kitchen door. No kitchen. No fireplace with its fragrant logs. No table, with its pot of brightly blooming geraniums. No ceiling strung with rows of red peppers and white garlic.  No floor with the colorful, braided rugs. They were standing on sand, burning white sand. Above them, the sun was in a sky so hot that it was no longer blue but had a bronze cast. There was nothing but sand and sky from horizon to horizon.

“Is the house all right?” Sandy’s voice shook.

“I don’t think we went into the house at all...”

“You don’t think it was on fire?”

“No. I think we opened the door and we were here.”

“What about the mist?”

“And the sonic boom?”

“And what about Dad’s computer?”

“Uh-oh. What’re we going to do?” Dennys’s voice started out in the bass, soared, and cracked to a piercing treble.

“Don’t panic,” Sandy warned, but his voice trembled.

Both boys looked around wildly. The brazen sunlight beat down on them. After the cold of snow and ice, the sudden heat was shocking. Small particles of mica in the sand caught the light and blazed up at them. “Hey.” Dennys’s voice cracked again. “What’re we going to do?”

Sandy tried to speak calmly. “We’re the ones who do things, remember?”

“We just did something.” Dennys was bitter. “We just blew ourselves here, wherever here is.”

Sandy agreed. “Stupid. We were stupid, mucking around with an experiment-in-progress.”

“Only we didn’t know it was in progress.”

“We should have stopped to think.”

Dennys looked around at sky and sand, both shimmering with heat. “What do you suppose Dad was up to? If we knew that—“

“Space travel. Tessering. Getting past the speed of light.

You know that.” Anxiety made Dennys sharp.

The sun beat down on Sandy’s head, so that he reached up and wiped sweat from around his eyes. “I wish we’d never thought of that Dutch cocoa.”

Dennys pulled off his heavy cable-knit sweater. Licked his dry lips.  Moaned. “Lemonade.”

Sandy, too, stripped off his sweater. “We got what we asked for, didn’t we? Heat. Low humidity. Sparse population.”

Dennys looked around, squinting against the glare.

“Sparse wasn’t meant to mean nobody.”

Sandy unbuttoned his plaid flannel shirt. “I thought we asked for a beach.”

“Not on Dad’s gizmo we didn’t. Just sparse population.

Do you suppose we’ve blown ourselves onto a dead planet?  One where the sun is going into its red-giant phase before it blows up?”

Despite the intense heat. Sandy shivered, glanced at the sun, then quickly away. “I think the sun in its red-giant phase would be bigger. This sun doesn’t look any larger than our own sun in movies set in deserts.”

“Do you suppose it is our own sun?” Dennys asked hopefully.

Sandy shrugged. “We could be anywhere. Anywhere in the universe. If we were going to play with that doggone keyboard, we should have been more specific. I wish we’d just settled for Baki or Fiji, beautiful people or no.”

 “I’d just as soon see a beautiful person. Right now. I wish we hadn’t done whatever it is we’ve done.” Dennys pulled off his cotton turtleneck, stripping down to his white briefs and tank top.

Sandy stood on one leg to start pulling off his warmly lined pants, glanced again at the fierce sun, then quickly closed his eyes. “They’ll miss us when they get back from the dentist.”

“But they won’t know where to look. Mother has more sense than we have. She’d never mess around with anything of Dad’s unless he was right there.”

“Mother’s not interested in astrophysics. She’s into virtual particles and things tike that.”

“She’ll still miss us.”

 “Dad’ll be home tomorrow,” Sandy said hopefully. He was now stripped to his underclothes.

Dennys picked up his things and made a tidy bundle.  “Unless we find some shade, we’re going to have to put our clothes back on in half an hour, or at least some of them, or we’ll get a vicious sunburn.”

“Shade.” Sandy groaned, and scanned the horizon. “Den!  Do I see a palm tree?”

Dennys held his hand to shade his eyes. “Where?”

“There. All the way over there.”

“Yes. No. Yes.”

“Let’s head toward it.”

“Good. At least it’s something to do.” Dennys trudged off. “If it’s the same time of day it was when we left home—“

“It was winter at home.” Sandy’s eyes were almost closed against the glare. “The sun was already setting.”

Dennys pointed to their shadows, as long and skinny as they were. “The sun’s slightly behind us ... We might be heading east, if it’s our own kind of sun.”

Sandy asked, “Are you scared? I am. We’ve really got ourselves into a mess.”

Dennys made no reply. They trudged along. They had left on their shoes and socks, and Dennys suggested, “It might be easier walking barefooted.”

Sandy bent down and touched the sand with the palm of his hand, then shook his head. “Feel it. It would burn our feet.”

“Do you still see that palm tree?”

“I think so.”

They moved across the sand in silence. After a few minutes it seemed firmer under their feet, and they saw that there was rock under the sand.

“That’s better,” Sandy said.

“Hey!”

The ground seemed to shudder under their feet. Dennys flailed his arms to try to keep his balance, but was flung to the ground. “Is this an earthquake or something?”

Sandy, too, was thrown down. Around them they could hear a noisy grating of rock, and a deep, thunderous roaring beneath them. Then there was silence, abrupt and complete. The rock steadied under them. The earthquake, or whatever it was, had lasted less than a minute, but it had been of sufficient force to push up a large section of rock, making a small cliff about six feet high. It was striated and raw-looking, but it provided a shadow that stretched across the sand.

Both boys climbed to their feet and headed into the welcome shade. Sandy touched the sheared-off rock, and it felt cool. “Maybe we could sit here for a minute . . .”

The sun was still fiercely hot but the slab of rock they sat on was cool. The relief of the shade was so great that for a few minutes they sat in silence. Their bodies were slippery with sweat; it trickled into their eyes. They sat without moving, trying to take every advantage of the shade.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but whatever it is, I’m not likely to be surprised,” Sandy said at last. “Are you sure it was Dad’s experiment we weren’t supposed to interrupt? Couldn’t it have been Mother’s?”

“Mother’s doing something with sub-atomic particles again,” Dennys said. “Last night at dinner, she spent most of the time talking about virtual particles.”

“It sounded crazy to me,” Sandy said. “Particles which have a tendency to life.”

“That’s right.” Dennys nodded- “Virtual particles. Al-most-particles. What you said. Particles which tend to be.”

Sandy shook his head. “Most of Mother’s sub-atomic experiments are so, oh, so sort of infinitesimal, it hasn’t mattered if we’ve come into the lab.”

“But maybe if she’s looking for a virtual particle—“ Dennys sounded hopeful.

“No. It sounds to me more like something of Dad’s. It was just sort of wishful thinking when I asked if it could be something of Mother’s. Why didn’t we see that notice on the door?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“And I wish our parents did ordinary things,” Sandy complained. “If Dad was a plumber or an electrician, and if Mother was somebody’s secretary, it would be a lot easier for us.”

“And we wouldn’t have to be such great athletes and good guys at school,” Dennys agreed. “And—“ He broke off as the earth started to tremble again. It was a brief tremor, with no heaving of stones, but both boys sprang to their feet-

“Hey!” Sandy jumped, almost knocking Dennys over.

From behind the rock cliff came a very small person, perhaps four feet tall. Not a child. He was firmly muscled, darkly tanned, and there was a down of hair across his upper lip and on his chin. He wore a loincloth, with a small pouch at the waist. As he saw them. he reached for the pouch in a swift, alarmed gesture.

“Hey, wait.” Sandy held up his open hands, palm forward.

Dennys repeated the gesture. “We won’t hurt you.”

“Who are you?” Sandy asked.

“Where are we?” Dennys added.

The small man looked at them in mingled curiosity and fear. “Giants!” he cried. He had a man’s voice, a young man’s voice, deeper than Sandy’s or Dennys’s.

Sandy shook his head. “We’re not giants.”

“We’re boys,” Dennys augmented. “Who are you?”

The young man touched himself lightly on the forehead. “Japheth.”

“That’s your name?” Sandy asked.

He touched his forehead again. “Japheth.”

Perhaps this was the custom of the country, wherever in the universe it was. Sandy touched his own forehead.  “Alexander. Sandy.”

Dennys made the same gesture. “Dennys.”

“Giants,” the young man stated.

“No.” Sandy corrected. “Boys.”

The young man rubbed his head where a purplish egg was forming. “Stone hit me. Must be seeing double.”

“Japheth?” Sandy asked.

The young man nodded. “Are you two? Or one?” He rubbed his eyes perplexedly.

“Two,” Sandy said. “We’re twins. I’m Sandy.  He’s Dennys.”

“Twins?” Japheth asked, his fingers once more reaching for the pouch at his side which appeared to be filled with tiny arrows, about two inches long.

Dennys opened his hands wide. “Twins are when”—he had started to give a scientific explanation, stopped him-self—“when a mother has a litter of two babies instead of one.” His voice was soothing.

“You’re animals, then?”

Sandy shook his head. “We’re boys.” He was ready to ask “What are you?” when he noticed a tiny bow near the pouch of arrows.

“No. No.” The young man looked at them doubtfully.  “Only giants are as tall as you. And the seraphim and nephilim. But you have no wings.”

What was this about wings? Dennys asked, “Please, J—Jay—where are we? Where is this place?”

“The desert, about an hour from my oasis. I came out, dowsing for water.” He bent down and picked up a wand of pliable wood. “Gopher wood is the best for dowsing, and I had my grandfather’s—“ He stopped in mid-sentence.

“Higgaion! Hig! Where are you?” he called, as the twins might have called for their dog at home. “Hig!” He looked, wide-eyed, at the twins. “If anything has happened to him, my grandfather will—there are so few of them left—“ He called again urgently, “Higgaion!”

From behind the outcropping of rock came something grey and sinuous which the twins at first thought was a snake. But it was followed by a head with small, bright, black eyes, and great fans of ears, and a chunky body covered with shaggy grey hair, and a thin little rope of a tail.

“Higgaion!” The young man was joyful. “Why didn’t you come when I called you?”

With its supple trunk, the little animal, the size of a small dog or a large cat, indicated the twins.

The young man patted its head. He was so small that he did not have to bend down. “Thank El you’re all right.” He gestured toward the twins. “They seem friendly. They say they aren’t giants, and while they are as tall as seraphim or nephilim, they don’t seem to be of their kind.”

Cautiously, the little animal approached Sandy, who dropped to one knee, holding out his hand for the creature to sniff. Then, tentatively, he began to scratch the hairy chest, as he would have scratched their dog at home. When the little animal relaxed under his touch, he asked Japheth, “What’s seraphim?”

“And nephilim,” Dennys added. If they could find out what these people were who were as tall as they, it might give them some kind of a clue as to where they had landed.

“Oh, very tall,” Japheth said. “Like you, but different.  Great wings. Much long hair. And their bodies—like you, not hairy. The seraphim are golden and the nephilim are white, whiter than sand. Your skin—it is different. Pale, and smooth, and as though you never saw sun.”

“At home, it’s still winter,” Sandy explained. “We get very tan in the summer when we work outdoors.”

“Your little animal,” Dennys questioned, “looks sort of like an elephant, but what is it?”

“It’s a mammoth.” Japheth slapped the creature affectionately.

Sandy withdrew his hand from petting Higgaion. “But mammoths are supposed to be huge!”

Dennys saw in his mind’s eye a picture of a mammoth in a nature book at home, very like Japheth’s animal.  Japheth himself was a miniature version of a strong and handsome young man, not a great deal older than themselves, perhaps as old as their sister’s friend Calvin, who was in graduate school. Perhaps in this place, wherever it was, everything was in miniature.

“There aren’t many mammoths left,” Japheth explained. “I’m a good dowser, but mammoths are very fine for scenting water, and Higgaion is the best of all.” He patted the little animal’s head. “So I borrowed him from Grandfather Lamech, and together we found a good source of water, but I’m afraid it’s too far from the oasis to be much use.”

“Thank you for explaining,” Sandy said, then turned to Dennys. “Do you think we’re dreaming?”

“No. We came home from hockey practice. We made sandwiches. We went into the lab to find the Dutch cocoa.  We messed around with Dad’s experiment-in-progress. We were stupid beyond belief. But it isn’t a dream.”

 “I’m glad to hear you say that,” Japheth said. “I was beginning to wonder, myself. I thought I might be dreaming, because of the stone hitting my head in the earthquake.”

“It was an earthquake?” Sandy asked.

Japheth nodded. “They come quite often. The seraphim tell us that things aren’t settled yet.”

“So maybe this is a young planet.” Dennys sounded hopeful.

Japheth asked, “Where have you come from, and where are you going?”

“Take me to your leader,” Sandy murmured.

Dennys nudged him. “Shut up.”

Sandy said, “We’re from planet Earth, late twentieth century. We got here by accident, and we don’t know where we’re going.”

“We’d like to go home,” Dennys added, “but we don’t know how.”

“Where is home?” Japheth asked.

Sandy sighed. “A long way away, I’m afraid.”

Japheth looked at them “You are flushed. And wet.”

He himself did not seem to fee! the intense heat.

Dennys said, “We’re perspiring. Profusely. I’m afraid we’ll get sunstroke if we don’t find shade soon.”

Japheth nodded. “Grandfather Lamech’s tent is closest.  My wife and I”—he flushed with pleasure as he said my wife—“live halfway across the oasis, by my father’s tent.  And I have to return Higgaion to Grandfather, anyhow.

And he’s very hospitable. I’ll take you to him, if you like.”

“Thank you,” Sandy said.

“We’d like to come with you,” Dennys added.

 “At this point, we don’t have much choice,” Sandy murmured.’

Dennys nudged him, then took his turtleneck from the bundle of clothes and pulled it back on, his head emerging from the rolled cotton neck, which had mussed up his light brown hair so that a tuft stuck out like a parakeet’s.  “We’d better cover ourselves. I think I’m sunburned al-ready.”

“Let’s go, then,” Japheth said. “I’d like to be home before dark.”

 “Hey—“ Sandy said suddenly. “At least we speak the same language. Everything’s been so wild and weird I hadn’t realized it till—“

Japheth looked at him in a puzzled manner. “You sound very strange to me. But I can understand you, if I listen with my under-hearing. You talk a little like the seraphim and the nephilim. You can understand me?”

The twins looked at each other. Sandy said, “I hadn’t really thought about it till now.  If I think about it, you do sound, well, different, but I can understand you. Right, Den?”

“Right,” Dennys agreed. “Except it was easier when we weren’t thinking about it.”

“Come on,” Japheth urged. “Let’s go.” He looked at Sandy. “You’d better cover yourself, too.”

Sandy followed Dennys’s example and pulled on his turtleneck.

Dennys unrolled his flannel shirt and draped it over his head. “Sort of like a burnoose to keep us from getting sunstroke.”

“Good idea.” Sandy did the same.

 “If,” Dennys added morosely, “it isn’t already too late.” Then he said. “Hey, Japh—“ stumbled over the name-“Hey, Jay, what’s that?”

On the horizon to the far left, moving toward them, appeared a creature which shimmered in and out of their vision, silvery in color, as large as a goat or a pony, with light flickering out from its forehead.

Sandy also shortened Japheth’s name. “What’s that, Jay?” The mammoth pushed its head under Sandy’s hand and he began to scratch between the great fan-like ears.

Japheth looked toward the barely visible creature, smiling in recognition. “Oh, that’s a unicorn. They’re very odd. Sometimes they are, and sometimes they aren’t.  If we want one, we call and it’ll usually appear.”

“Did you call on one?” Sandy asked.

“Higgaion may have thought about one, but he didn’t really call it. That’s why it isn’t all the way solid. Unicorns are even better about scenting for water than mammoths, except that you can’t always count on them. But probably Higgaion thought one might be able to confirm where we thought there was a spring.” He smiled ruefully. “Grandfather always knows what Hig is thinking, and I make guesses.”

The twins stopped and looked at each other, but the mammoth had left Sandy and was trotting after Japheth, who was walking toward the oasis again, so they followed.  In the intensity of the desert heat, their limbs felt heavy and uncooperative. When they looked to where the unicorn had been, it was no longer there, though there was left in its place a mirage-like shimmering.

Sandy panted. “I don’t believe this.”

Dennys, jogging beside him, agreed. “We’ve never had very willing suspensions of disbelief. We’re the pragmatists of the family.”

“I still don’t believe it,” Sandy said. “It I blink often enough, we’ll be back in the kitchen at home.”

Dennys took one of the flapping sleeves of his shirt and wiped his eyes. “What I believe right now is that I’m hot.  Hot. Hot.”

Japheth turned his head and looked back. “Giants! Come on. Stop talking.”

With their long legs, it was easy enough for the twins to catch up with Japheth- “We’re not giants,” Dennys reiterated. “My name is Dennys.”

“Dennysim.”

Dennys touched his forehead, as Japheth had done.

“One Dennys. Me.”

Sandy, too, touched his forehead. “I’m Sandy.”

“Sand.” Japheth looked around. “We have plenty of Sand.”

“No, Jay,” Sandy corrected. “It’s short for Alexander.  Sandy.”

Japheth shook his head. “You call me Jay. I call you Sand. Sand is something I understand.”

“Talking of strange names”—Dennys looked at the mammoth, who was again butting at Sandy, to be petted.

“Hig-“

“Hig-gai-on.” Japheth sounded it out.

“Are all mammoths his size? Or are there some really big ones?”

Japheth looked puzzled. “Those that are left are like Higgaion.”

Sandy looked at his brother. “Didn’t horses start out very little, back in pre-history?”

But Dennys was looking at the horizon. “Look. Now you can see that there are lots of palm trees.”

Although they could now see that there were many trees, the oasis was still far away. Despite their much longer legs, the boys began to lag behind Japheth and the mammoth, who were moving across the sand at an easy run.

“I’m not sure I can make it,” Dennys said, grunting.

Sandy’s steps, too, lagged. “I thought we were the great athletes,” he said, panting.

“We’ve never been exposed to heat like this before.”

Japheth, evidently realizing that they were no longer behind him, turned around and jogged back toward them, seemingly cool and unwinded. “What’s the matter? You’re both all red. The same red. You truly are two people?”

“We’re twins.” Sandy’s voice was an exhausted croak.

Dennys panted. “I think—we’re getting—heat—heat prostration.”

Japheth looked at them anxiously. “Sun-sickness can be dangerous.” He reached up and touched Dennys’s cheek.  Shook his head. “You’re cold and clammy. Bad sign.” He put his hand against his forehead. Appeared to be thinking deeply. Then: “What about a unicorn?”

“What about it?” Sandy asked. He felt tired and irritable.

“If we could get a couple of unicorns to become real and solid for us, they could carry you to the oasis.”

The twins looked at each other, each seeing a red, sweating mirror version of himself. “We’ve never gone in for mythical beasts,” Dennys said.

Sandy added, “Meg says unicorns have been ruined by overpopularity.”

Japheth frowned. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

Dennys, too. frowned. Thinking. Then: “Jay’s unicorns sound more like Mother’s virtual particles than like mythical beasts.”

Sandy was exasperated. “Virtual particles aren’t mythical. They’re theoretical.”

Dennys shot back, “If Mother can believe in her way-out theories, we ought to be able to believe in virtual unicorns.”

“What kind of unicorns?” Japheth looked puzzled. “Is it because you’re some strange kind of giant that there’s all this confusion?”              !”

“Unicorns have never been a matter of particular importance before.” Sandy wiped his hands across his face and was surprised to find that the beads of sweat were indeed cold.

“They’re important now.” Dennys groaned. “Mother believes in virtual particles, so there’s no reason there can’t be virtual unicorns.”

“Hig—“Japheth urged.

The mammoth turned and faced the horizon. A faint shimmering glimmered on the sand in front of him. Slowly it took the shape of a unicorn, transparent but recognizable. Beside it, another unicorn began to shimmer.

 “Please, unicorns,” Dennys begged. “Be real.”

Slowly the transparency of both creatures began to solidify, until there were two unicorns standing on the sand, with silvery-grey flanks, silver manes and beards. Silver hooves, and horns of brilliant light. They looked at the twins and docilely folded their legs under to lie down.

“Oh!” Japheth exclaimed. “It’s a good thing you’re both so young. For the moment, I’d forgotten that unicorns will not let themselves be touched by anyone who is not a virgin.”

The twins glanced at each other. “Well, we don’t even have our driver’s licenses yet.” Dennys said.

“Get up on them before they decide they aren’t needed,” Japheth ordered.

The twins climbed each onto the back of one of the silver creatures, both feeling that this was a dream from which they could not wake up. But, without the unicorns, they would never make it to the oasis.

The unicorns flew across the desert, their hooves barely touching the surface. Occasionally, where the sand had been blown clear and there was rock, a silver hoof struck with a clang like a bell, and sparks flew upward. Small desert creatures watched them fly by. Sandy noticed, but did not mention, some scattered bones bleached by sun and wind.

“Hold on!” Japheth cried in warning. “Don’t fall off!”

But there was a sense, in riding the unicorns, of unreality. If this was no stranger than their mother’s world of particle physics, it was at least equally as strange.

“Hold onl” Japheth shouted again.

But Dennys felt himself sliding off the smooth flanks.  He tried to grasp the mane, but it sifted through his fingers like sand. Was the unicorn becoming less real, or was the still-blazing sun affecting him?

“Dennys! Don’t fall off!” Sandy shouted.

But Dennys felt himself slipping. He did not know whether it was himself or the unicorn who kept flickering in and out of being.

Then he felt something solid. Sandy on his unicorn pressing against him. Sandy’s strong arms shoving him back onto the unicorn, the virtual particle suddenly real, not just something in the lab. His head hurt.

Japheth and the mammoth were running beside them, amazingly swift for such small creatures- “Hurry,” Japheth urged the unicorns. “Hurry.”

Sandy, his flannel shirt still draped over his head, was hardly aware that he was supporting his brother. His arms felt as fluid as water. He was breathing in great searing gulps which burned his throat. His head began to swell, to be filled with hot air like a balloon, so that he was afraid he was going to float off into the sky.

The mammoth passed Japheth and the unicorns, leading the way to the oasis, so that his stocky legs were no more than a blur of motion, like hummingbirds’ wings.  Occasionally he would raise his trunk and make a trumpeting noise, urging the unicorns along. Japheth ran along side, beginning to breathe, open-mouthed, with effort.

But they were not fast enough for Dennys, who was slipping into unconsciousness, and as the world blackened before his eyes, his unicorn’s horn became dim and the silver creature began to dissolve as Dennys lost sight and hearing and thought. And Dennys flickered in and out of being with his mount.

Sandy, barely holding on to consciousness, was not aware that the arm he had held Dennys with was now holding nothing. He felt himself drop to the ground. He did not land on searing sand but on soft green. His burning body was shaded and cooled by the great fans of a palm tree.

His unicorn had made it to the oasis.

Sandy slid slowly into consciousness, eyes tightly closed.  No alarm clock jangling, so it must be Saturday. He listened to hear it Dennys was stirring in the upper bunk.  Felt something cool and wet sprayed across his body. It felt good. He did not want to wake up. On Saturday they had heavy chores. They washed the floor of their mother’s lab, or the bathrooms. If it was snowing again, there would be snow to shovel.

“Sand—“

He did not recognize the odd, slightly foreign voice. He did not recognize the smell that surrounded him, pungent and gamy. Again his body was sprayed with cool wetness.

“Sand’”

Slowly, he opened his eyes. In the light which came from directly above him, he saw two brown faces peering anxiously into his. One face was young, barely covered with deep amber down. The other face was crisscrossed with countless wrinkles, a face with ancient, leathered skin and a long beard of curling white.

Unwilling to believe that he was not waking from a dream, he reached up to touch Dennys’s mattress above him. Nothing.  He opened his eyes more widely

He was in a tent, a sizable tent made of goatskins, judging by the smell. Light came in from the roof hole, a rosy, sunset light. A funny little animal crossed the tent to him and sprayed his body with water, and he realized that he was hot with sunburn. The animal was bringing water from a large clay pot and cooling him with it.

“Sand?” the young man asked again. “Are you awake?”

“Jay?” He struggled to sit up, and his burned skin was scratched by the skins on which he was lying.

“Sand, are you all right?” Japheth’s voice trembled with anxiety.

“I’m okay. Just sunburned.”

The old man put his hand against Sandy’s forehead.  “You have much fever. The sun-sickness is hard on those unaccustomed to the desert. Are you from beyond the mountains?”

Sandy looked at the ancient man, who was even smaller than Japheth but had the same brightly blue eyes, startling against the sun-darkened skin. Sandy touched his forehead as Japheth had done. “I’m Sandy.”

“Sand. Yes. Japheth has told me.” The old man touched his forehead, tipped with softly curling white hair. “Lamech. Grandfather Lamech. Japheth carried you to my tent.”

Sandy looked around in alarm. “But Dennys—where’s

Dennys?” He was now fully awake, aware that he was not in the bunk bed at home but in this strange desert place which might be on any planet in any solar system in any galaxy anywhere in the universe. He shuddered. “Dennys?”

“He went out with the unicorn.”

“What!”

“Sand,” Japheth explained patiently, “Dennys must have fainted. I told you about unicorns. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t. When Den fainted, the unicorn went out, and took Den with him.”

“But we’ve got to find him, bring him back!” Sandy tried to struggle to his feet.

Grandfather Lamech pushed him back down onto the skins with amazing strength for so small a person. “Hush, Sand. Do not worry. Your brother will be all right.”

“But—“

“Unicorns are very responsible,” Lamech explained.

“But—“

“It is true that they are unreliable in that we cannot rely on them to be, but they are very responsible.”

“You’re crazy,” Sandy said.

“Hush, Sand,” Grandfather Lamech repeated. “We do not know where the unicorns go when they go out, but when somebody calls the unicorn again and it appears, Den will appear, too.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. I am sure,” the old man said, and for a moment Sandy relaxed at the authority in his voice.

Then: “Well, call a unicorn, call him now!”

The old man and Japheth looked at Higgaion. Higgaion raised his trunk toward the roof hole of the tent. The rosy glow had faded, and the old man and Japheth and Higgaion were barely visible shadows in the tent. There was a sudden fiash, and Sandy could see the shimmering silver body of a unicorn. But no Dennys.

“Dennys!” he cried.

And heard Japheth echo, “Den!”

Higgaion appeared to be consulting with the unicorn.  Then he looked toward Japheth and the old man. Trumpeted.

There was another flash of light, and then a faint glimmering and the unicorn was gone.

Grandfather Lamech said, “It would appear that someone has already called the unicorn on which the Den was riding.”

Sandy jumped to his feet, but was so weak that he sank back onto the skins. “But he could be anywhere, anywhere!” he cried wildly.

“Hush,” the old man repeated. “He is on the oasis. We will find him.”

“How?” Sandy’s voice was a frightened small boy’s squeak.

Japheth said, “I will look for him. When I find him, I will bring him to you.”

“Oh, Jay—I want to come with you.”

“No.” Grandfather Lamech was firm. “You have the sun-sickness.  You must stay here until you are well.” He looked up at the roof hole. The fading sunset was gone, and the moon, not full, but beaming bright, shone down on them. The old man touched Sandy’s arm, his thigh.  “Tomorrow you will be all blisters.”

Sandy’s head felt strangely buzzing and he knew that it was from fever and that Grandfather Lamech was right.

“But Dennys—“

“I will find him and bring him to you,” Japheth promised.

“Oh, Jay, thank you.”

The young man turned to his grandfather. “One of the women—my wife, or one of my sisters—will bring you a night-light. Grandfather.”

The old man looked at the moonlight which brightened the tent. “Thank you, my dear grandson. My grand-children are kind to me, so kind . . .” His voice faltered.  “My son . . .”

Japheth sounded embarrassed. “You know I can’t do anything with Father. I don’t even tell him when I’ve come to your tent.”

“Better that way.” The old man was sorrowful. “Better that way. But one day—“

“Of course, Grandfather. Oneway. I’ll be back with the Den as soon as I can.” He pushed out of the tent. and the flap slapped closed behind him.

Higgaion dribbled cool water from the jar onto the cloth on Sandy’s burning forehead.

“Giant”—the little old man leaned over him—“where do you come from?”

“I’m not a giant,” Sandy said. “Really. I’m just a boy.  Dennys and I are still growing, but we’re not giants, we’re just ordinary tall.”

The old grandfather shook his head. “In our country you are giants. Can you tell me where you come from?”

“Home.” Sandy felt hot and feverish. Home might be galaxies away. “New England. The United States. Planet Earth.”

The wrinkles in the old man’s forehead crisscrossed each other as he frowned. “You don’t come from around here. Nor from Nod. The people there are no taller than we are.” He put his hand on Sandy’s forehead. The hand felt cool, and dry as an autumn leaf crumbling to dust.  “Your fever will go down, but you must stay here, in my tent, out of the sun, until the burning is healed. I will ask one of the seraphim to come tend to you. Seraphim do not burn in the sun. They are better healers than I.” Sandy relaxed into Grandfather Lamech’s kindness.

The mammoth started toward the water jar, then dropped to its haunches, whimpering in terror, as some-thing screeched past the tent like an out-of-control jet plane.  But on this planet, wherever it was, there were no planes.

The old man leaped to his feet with amazing agility and grabbed a wooden staff.

The hideous screech, not bird, not human, came again, closer, and then the tent flap was pushed aside and a large face peered in. It was the largest face Sandy had ever seen, a man’s face with filthy hair and a matted beard, tangled eyebrows over small, suspicious eyes, and a bulbous nose.  From the mat of hair came two horns, curved downward, with sharp points like boar’s teeth. The mouth opened and shouted, “Hungry!”

The rest of the creature pushed into the tent. The head did not belong to a man’s body but to a lion’s, and as it came all the way into the tent. Sandy saw that the lion did not have a lion’s tail but a scorpion’s. Sandy was terrified.

The old man beat at it futilely with his staff. The man / lion / scorpion knocked the staff out of his hand and sent him flying across the tent. Grandfather Lamech fell onto a pile of skins. The mammoth lay flat on the skins by Sandy, trembling.

“Hungry!” The roar made the skins of the tent tremble.

Instinctively, Sandy thrust the mammoth behind him and, exerting the last remnant of his strength, rose, tottering, to his full height and took a step toward the monster.  .  “Giant!” the man’s head screeched. “Giant!” And scorpion’s tail, lion’s body, and man’s head backed out of the tent, so that the flap snapped back into place.

The old man pulled himself out of the corner where he had been flung. “Ridiculous manticore,” he grumbled, “wanting to eat my mammoth.”

Higgaion got unsteadily to his feet, raised his trunk, and trumpeted, but it was more of a whiffle than a call of triumph. He rubbed up against Sandy.

The old man retrieved his staff. “Thank you. You saved my mammoth from being eaten.”

“I didn’t do anything.” Sandy’s legs crumpled under him as he fell back onto the skins. “It’s the first time I’ve ever scared anybody, just by being tall and sunburned.”

 “A gentle giant,” the old man said.

Sandy felt too weak to contradict him. “Anyhow, the manticore is a mythical beast.”

Grandfather Lamech shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

 “Things like manticores are mythical,” Sandy stated.  “They aren’t supposed to be real.”

Grandfather Lamech’s smile crinkled. “You will have to ask the seraphim to explain. In this time many things are real, you see.” He looked around. “Where’s the scarab beetle?”

The mammoth, too, looked around, but they both stopped, and the old man’s face lit up as a soft scratching was heard on the outside of the tent flap. It was obviously some kind of signal, because he called out gladly, “Come in, Granddaughter-“ Then he turned courteously to Sandy.  “Yalith, my youngest granddaughter.”

The tent flap opened enough to let a girl through, a girl about the size of the old man. barely four feet tall. She carried a shallow stone bowl which contained oil and a softly burning wick. By its light, which was brighter than the moonlight, which had moved beyond the roof hole, Sandy could see that the girl, who wore only a loincloth, like Japheth and Grandfather Lemech, was gently curved, with small rosy breasts. Her skin was the color of a ripe apricot. Her softly curling hair was a deep bronze, which glimmered in the lamplight and fell against tier shoulders.  She looked. Sandy thought, about his age, and suddenly his burning skin was not as painful as it had been, and he felt energy returning to his limbs. He got to his knees and stood to greet her, bowing clumsily.

She saw him and almost dropped the stone lamp. “A giant!”

The mammoth reached up with his trunk to Sandy, and Grandfather Lamech said, “He says that he is not a giant, dear Yalith. Japheth carried him here, and they tell me that there is another one just like him, but he went out with a unicorn. Japheth is looking for him. This one”—he beamed at Sandy—“appears to be human, and he just saved Higgaion from the manticore.”

Yalith shuddered. “I heard it screeching and going off with a rat.” She put her stone lamp on a wooden keg. “I’ve brought your night-light, Grandfather Lamech.”

“Thank you, my dear.” There was a deep tenderness in the old man’s voice.

Sandy bowed again. “Hello. My name’s Sandy Murry.”

He could not keep a foolish grin off his face.

She looked at him dubiously, backing away slightly.  “You do not speak like one of us. Are you sure you’re not a giant?”

“I’m a boy. I’m sorry I look so awful. I have a fierce sunburn.”

Now she looked at him without flinching. “Oh, yes, you do. How do we help you?”

Higgaion dipped his trunk into the water pot again and showered Sandy with it.

Grandfather Lamech said, “Higgaion is keeping his skin wet. But I think we ought to get one of the seraphim to look at him.”

“Yes. That would be good. Where did you say you were from, giant—Sand?”

“The United States,” Sandy said, though he knew it would mean nothing to this beautiful, strange girl.

The girl smiled at Sandy, and the warmth of her smile enveloped him.

 “The United States is—are—a place,” he tried to explain. “You might say that my brother and I are representatives.” —Even if inadvertent ones.

“And you have a brother, who is out with a unicorn?”

Her question made it sound as though Dennys and the unicorn had gone off cavorting someplace together.

“My brother Dennys. We’re twins. Identical twins.  We do look a lot alike to people who don’t know us well. Your brother Japheth is trying to find him.”

“Well, he will find him, then. Do you need anything more, Grandfather Lamech?”

“No, my dear Yalith.”

“I’d better go home, then. My brothers’ wives are all there, and our mother likes to have me around to help keep everybody from fighting.”

She smiled, turning from the old man to Sandy, who was dizzy with fever, but also with Yalith. He gazed at her as she said good night to them. For the first time in his life. Sandy had a flash of gratitude that Dennys was not with him.

Then anxiety surfaced. “Dennys—“

“Japheth will find him,” the old man said. “Meanwhile Higgaion, see if you can find our scarab friend.”

Higgaion trumpeted softly and left the tent.

After Yalith and Higgaion had gone, Sandy was assailed by a wave of feverish sleep. It was dark now, with no moonlight coming through the tent’s roof hole, and the oil lamp burned low. He closed his eyes, curled on his side to sleep and felt an emptiness.

Dennys. He was just as happy that Dennys had not seen Yalith. Nevertheless, he had never before gone to sleep without Dennys. At home he could just reach up and punch the mattress above his to get his twin’s attention.  At Scout camp they had always been in the same cabin.  Despite their parents’ efforts to allow the twins to develop as individuals, never dressing them alike, the fact remained that they were twins.  He did not know what it was like to go to sleep without Dennys.

Higgaion came in and went to Grandfather Lamech, plucking something from his ear with his trunk and holding it out to the old man. Grandfather Lamech took it on his palm, a scarab beetle, glinting bronze in the lamplight.  The old man stroked it gently with a trembling forefinger, and closed his palm.

Then came a vivid flash of light, similar to that of the unicorn’s horn, and a tall presence stood in the tent, smiling at the old man, then looking quietly at Sandy.  The personage had skin the same glowing apricot color as Yalith’s. Hair the color of wheat with the sun on it, brightly gold, long, and tied back, falling so that it almost concealed tightly furled wings, the light-filled gold of the hair. The eyes were an incredibly bright blue, like the sea with sunlight touching the waves.

Lamech greeted him respectfully. “Adnarel, we thank you.” Then he said to Sandy, “The seraph will be able to help you. Seraphim know much about healing.”

So this was a seraph. Tall, even taller than the twins.  But the only resemblance was in height. Otherwise, it was totally different, beautiful, but alien. The seraph turned to Lamech. “What have we here?”

Lamech bowed, seeming more than ever like a small brown nut in comparison with the great winged one. If all the ordinary people in this strange place were as little as Japheth and Lamech and Yalith, it was small wonder that Sandy and Dennys were confused with giants. Lamech said, “We have with us a stranger—“

Adnarel touched Sandy’s shoulder, pressing him back down on the skins as he started to struggle to his feet.

Lamech continued, “He is, as you can see, almost as tall as you are, but not as—not as completely formed.”

“He is very young.” Adnarel the seraph said, “barely hatched, as it were. But you are correct. He is not one of us. Nor of the nephilim.”

“Nor of us,” Lamech said. “But we think he is not to be feared.”

Adnarel reached out to touch Sandy gently on the back, the long fingers delicately exploring the shoulder blades.  “No wings, not even rudimentary ones.”

Higgaion approached the seraph, butting him to get his attention, then indicated the water pitcher.

Adnarel reached down to scratch between the mammoth’s ears. “Call the pelican,” he ordered.

Higgaion left the tent. Lamech looked up, up, to meet Adnarel’s startling blue eyes. “Are we doing the right thing, keeping him cool and wet to bring down the fever and heal the burning?”

Adnarel nodded, as the tent flap opened and Higgaion returned, followed by a pelican, large and white and surprising. It waddled over to the clay water pitcher, opened its great beak, and filled the pitcher.

Lamech asked anxiously, “The pelican will see to it that we have plenty of water? It will take many trips to the well, too many for me now that I am old and—“

“Fear not. Alarid will see to it,” Adnarel reassured.

“A pelican in the desert?” Sandy asked, feeling that the great bird was part of a fevered dream.

“A pelican in the wilderness,” Adnarel agreed. He dropped to one knee and put his hand against Sandy’s reddened cheeks. Through the fingers flowed a healing warmth, a warmth which had nothing to do with the stifling heat in the tent. Sandy had almost grown accustomed to the strong, gamy smell of the skins, but the seraph seemed to bring a lightness and a freshness to the air.

“Where, young one are you fromP” Adnarel asked.

Sandy sighed. “Planet Earth, where I hope I still am?”

The seraph smiled again, not answering the question.  He touched Sandy’s forehead gently, and the touch helped him to clarify his thoughts, which seemed to lose their focus- “And from where on planet Earth do you come?”

“From the United States. The Northeast. New England.”

“How did you get here?”

“I’m not sure, uh, sir.” There was something about Adnarel’s presence which brought out the old-fashioned forms of respect. “Our father is working with a theory about the fifth dimension and the tesseract . . .”

“Ah.” Adnarel nodded. “Did he send you?”

“No, uh, no, we—“

“We?”

“Dennys. my twin brother, and I. It was our fault. I mean, we have never before done anything so incredibly stupid as to mess with anything of Dad’s when an experiment was in progress, except we didn’t realize that an experiment was in progress.”

“Where is Dennys?”

“Oh, please—“ Sandy implored.

Grandfather Lamech explained, “The brother, the Dennys, went out with a unicorn, and has evidently been called back elsewhere. Japheth is looking for him.”

The seraph listened gravely, nodding at what Sandy felt was an insufficient and unclear explanation. “Fear not,” Adnarel said to Sandy. “Your brother will be returned.  Meanwhile, Grandfather Lamech and Higgaion are doing the best thing for you, in keeping your skin moistened.” From a pocket deep in his gown he took out what looked like a handful of herbs and dropped them into the water jar. “This will help the healing.” He smiled. “It is good that you have at least some knowledge of the Old Language.”

“But I don’t—“ Sandy started.

“You have been able to understand, and talk with, first Japheth, and now Grandfather Lamech, have you not?”

“Well. Yes. I guess so “

“Perhaps the gift has been awakened because you have not had time to think.” The seraph’s smile illumined the tent. Adnarel turned from Sandy to Lamech. “When the cool of night comes, wrap him in this.” And the seraph took off his own creamy robe. His wings were visible now, as golden and shining as his long hair. He gave an effect of sunniness in the dark tent, lit only by the oil lamp. “The animal skins are too rough for his burned flesh. I wilt come by in the morning to see how he is doing. Meanwhile, I will check on Japheth and see if he has found the brother.”

As Adnarel talked, Sandy felt his eyes dose. Japheth was looking for Dennys. Adnarel was going to help him. Sureiy, if the seraph was involved, then everything would be all right.

His thoughts drifted off into soft darkness.

When Yalith left her grandfather’s tent, she hurried toward home, near the center of the oasis. At her side she had a small pouch of darts, similar to Japheth’s, but instead of the miniature bow she carried a small blowpipe. The arrows were tipped with a solution which would temporarily stun but not kill a predator, even one as large as the manticore. The manticores were strong and bad-tempered, but not intelligent or brave. She feared the manticores less than she feared some of the young men in the town, and she kept a dart in her hand in case she needed it.

After leaving the grazing grounds around Lamech’s tent, she walked through one of his groves that led her onto the desert of white sand lapping against brown grasses.  Wherever there were not enough wells to provide for irrigation, the desert took over. But she preferred walking across the desert to the dusty, dirty paths of the oasis. Stars were bright against the velvet black of sky. At her feet, a late beetle hustled to burrow itself under the sand until morning. To her right, high in the trees of Lamech’s groves, the baboons were chittering sleepily.

She looked toward the horizon, and on an outcropping of rock similar to the one the earthquake had made when Sandy and Dennys met Japheth and the mammoth Higgaion, she saw the shadow of a supine form. She looked to make sure it was a lion, then called softly, “Aariel!”

The creature rose slowly, languidly, and then leapt down from the rock and loped toward her, and she saw that she had been deceived in the starlight, for it was not a lion but one of the great desert lizards, called dragons by most people, although its wings were atrophied and it could not fly.

She stood frozen with anxiety on the starlit sand, her hand holding one of the tiny arrows. As the lizard neared her, it rose straight upward to a height of at least six feet, and suddenly arms were outstretched above the head; the tail forked into two legs, and a man came running toward her, a man of extraordinary beauty, with alabaster-white skin and wings of brilliant purple. His long hair was black with purple glints, and his eyes were the color of amethysts.

“You called me, lovely one?” He bent down toward her tenderly, a questioning smile on his lips, which were deeply rosy in his white face.

“No, no,” she stammered. “Not you. I thought—I thought you were Aariel.”

“No. I am Eblis, not Aariel. And you called, and here I am,” his voice soothed, “at your service. Is there anything you want?”

“Oh, no, thank you, no.”

“No baubles for your ears, your lovely little neck?”

“Oh, no, thank you, no,” she repeated. Her sisters would think her stupid for refusing his offer. The nephilim were generous. This nephil could give her everything he had offered, and more.

“And all of a sudden you have changed,” he said. “You were a child, and now you are not a child any longer.”

Instinctively, she folded her hands across her breasts, stammering. “B-but, I am a child. I’m not nearly a hundred years old yet. . .”

He reached out one long, pale hand and softly pushed her starlit hair back from her forehead. “Do not be afraid of growing up. There are many pleasures ahead for you to taste, and I would help you to enjoy them all.”

“You?” She looked, startled, at the glorious creature by her, light shimmering like water from the purple wings. 

“I, sweet little one, I, Eblis, of the nephilim.” No nephil had paid attention to her before. She was too young. Then she saw, in her mind’s eye, the strange young giant in her grandfather’s tent. She was no longer a child.  She did not react to the young giant as a child.

“There are many changes to come,” Eblis said, “and you will need help.”

Her eyes widened. “Changes? What kind of changes?”

“People are living too long. El is going to cut the life span back. How old is your father?”

“He must be, oh, close to six hundred years. Middle-aged.” She looked at her fingers. Ten. That was really as far as she could count accurately-

“And your Grandfather Lamech?”

“Let’s see. He was very young when he had my father, not quite two hundred years old. He, too, has lived for very long. His father, Methuselah, my great-grandfather, lived for nine hundred and sixty-nine years- And his father was Enoch, who walked with El, and lived three hundred and sixty and five years, and then El took him—“ Involved in the great chronologies of her fathers, she was not prepared for him to unfurl his great wings and gather her in, enveloping her in great swirls of purple touched with brilliance as with stars. She gasped in surprise.

He laughed softly. “Oh, little one, little innocent one, how much you have to learn, about men’s ways, and about El’s ways, which are not men’s ways. Will you let me teach you?”

To be taught by a nephil was an honor she had never expected. She was not sure why she was hesitant.  She breathed in the strange odor of his wings, smelling of stone, of the cold, dark winds which came during the few brief weeks of winter.

Enveloped in Eblis’s wings, she did not hear the rhythmic thud as a great lion galloped toward them across the desert, roaring as it neared them. Then both Yalith and Eblis turned and saw the lion rising to its hind legs, as the lizard had done, leaping up into the sky, a great, tawny body with creamy wings, gilt-tipped, unfurling and stretching to a vast span. The great amber eyes blazed.

Eblis removed his wings from around Yalith, hunched them behind his back. “Why this untoward interruption, Aariel?”

“I ask you to leave Yalith alone.”

“What’s it to you? The daughters of men mean nothing to the seraphim.” Eblis smiled down at Yalith, stroking his long fingers delicately across her burnished hair.

 “No?” Aariel’s voice was low.

“No, seraph. A nephil may go to a daughter of man. A nephil understands pleasure.” He touched a fingertip to Yalith’s lips. “I would teach you, sweeting. I think you would like what I can give you. I will leave you now to Aariel’s tender ministries. But I will see you again.” He turned away from them, toward the desert, and his nephil form dropped into that of the great dragon/lizard. He loped away into the shadows.

Yalith said, “Aariel, I don’t understand. I thought I saw you on the rock. I was sure it was you, and I called, and then it wasn’t you, it was Eblis.”

“The nephilim are masters of mimicry. He wanted you to think it was I. I beg you, little one, be cautious.”

Her eyes were troubled. “He was very kind to me.”

Aariel put his hand under her chin and looked into her eyes, clear and still childlike. “Who would not be kind to you? Are you on your way somewhere?”

“Home. I took Grandfather Lamech his night-light. But, oh, Aariel, there is a strange young giant in Grandfather Lamech’s tent. Japheth carried him there. He has a terrible sunburn. He can’t be from anywhere around here.  He says he is not a giant, and I have never seen anyone like him. He is as tall as you are, and his body is not hairy, it is smooth like yours, like the nephilim, and his skin, where it wasn’t burned red, was pale.  Not white, like the skin of the nephilim, but pale and tender, like a baby’s.”

“You seem to have observed him carefully,” Aariel said.

“There’s never been anyone like him on the oasis before.” She flushed, turned slightly away.

Aariel asked, “What is being done for his burn? Does he have fever?”

“Yes. Higgaion is keeping him sprayed with cool water, and they are going to ask a seraph what to do for him.”

“Adnarel?”

“Yes. The scarab beetle.”

“Good.”

“He is not one of you, this young giant, and he is not one of the nephilim. Their skin burns white and whiter in the sun, like white ash when the fire has burned fiercely in the winter weeks.”

The creamy wings trembled, the golden tips shimmering in the starlight. “If his skin burns, he is not of the nephilim.”

“Nor of you.”

“Does he have wings?”

“No. In that, he is like a human. He seemed very young, though he is as long as you, and thin.”

“Did you observe his eyes?”

She did not notice the twinkle in his own. “Grey. Nice eyes, Aariel. Steady. Not burning, like—not giving out light, like yours. More like human eyes, mine, and my parents’ and brothers’ and sisters’.”

Aariel touched her gently on the shoulder. “Go on home, child. Do not fear to cross the oasis. I will see that you are not harmed.”

“You and Eblis. Thank you.” Like a child, she held her face up for a kiss, and Aariel leaned down and pressed his lips gently against hers. “You will not be a child much longer.”

 “I know ...”

He touched her lips again, lightly, and a moment later a large lion was running lightly across the desert.

Yalith turned onto a sandy path through a field of barley. At the end of the path was a stone road cutting through white buildings of sun-baked clay, low buildings, built to withstand the frequent earth tremors. Some of these low buildings contained small shops for baked goods, for stone lamps, for oil; there were shops with hanging meat, shops with bows and arrows, shops with spears of gopher wood. Some entryways were curtained with strands of bright beads, which tinkled in the evening breeze.

Out of one of these came a nephil, his arm around a young woman who was gazing up at him adoringly, leaning against him so that her rosy breasts touched his pale flesh. Her glossy black hair fell down her back, past her hips; and the eyes with which she regarded him were the deep blue of lapis lazuli.

Yalith stopped in her cracks. The girl was Mahlah, Yalith’s sister, the only girl besides Yalich to be in the home tent. Their two older sisters were married and lived in another part of the oasis with their husbands. Mahlah had been away from the home tent a great deal lately. Now Yalith knew where she had been.

Mahlah saw her younger sister and smiled.

The nephil smiled, too, graciously acknowledging Yalith.

Before they came out of the shadows, Yalith thought he was Eblis, with a sense of shock and betrayal. But in the full starlight she could see that his wings were much lighter, a delicate lavender. She could not tell what color his long hair was, but it, coo, was lighter, and seemed to have an orange glow. He had a sinuous, snake-like curve to his neck, and hooded eyes. He smiled again, tenderly. “Mahlah will stay with me this night. You will let your mother know.”

Yalith blurted out, “Oh, but she will worry. We are not allowed to stay out at night...”

Mahlah laughed joyously. “Ugiel has chosen me! I am his betrothed!”

Yalith gasped. “But does Mother know?”

“Not yet. You tell her, little sister.”

“But shouldn’t you tell her yourself? You and—“

“Ugiel.”

“But shouldn’t you—“

Mahlah’s laugh pealed again, like little bells. “The old ways are changing, little sister. This night I meet Ugiel’s brethren.”

The nephil stretched a soft wing about Mahlah. “Yes, little sister. The old ways are changing. Go and tell your mother.”

Yalith turned, and they watched her go, fingers waving at her in farewell. At the end of the street she heard foot-steps and turned to see a young man following her. She reached for a dart and put it in her blowpipe, but he disappeared around the corner of a building.

The low white buildings gave way to tents, each tent surrounded by the land of the dweller, at first the small plots of the shopkeepers, then groves and fields, sometimes many acres. Along the path she saw sheep, goats, camels grazing. Grapes were ripe on the vines.

Her father’s tent was a large one, flanked by several smaller tents. She hurried into the main tent, calling out to her mother.

It was the smell that brought Dennys back to consciousness. His nostrils twitched. His stomach heaved. There was a smell of cooking, smoky, rancid. A smell worse than the rotten-cheese smell of silage which clung to the farm-hands near home. A smell far stronger than that of the manure spread on the fields in the spring; that was a fresh, growing smell. This was old manure, rotting. A smell that made the urinals in the lavatories at school seem sweet-And over it all, but not covering it, a cloying smell of per-fume and sweat, body sweat which had never been near a shower.

He opened his eyes.

He was in an enclosed space, lit by the moonlight pouring in through a hole in what seemed to be some kind of curved roof, and by the equally brilliant light which poured from a unicorn’s horn. The silver creature looked around, sniffing, pawing the dirty earthen floor. At its feet, a mammoth cringed.

Dennys almost cried out, “Higgaion!” But this mammoth was not the one who had accompanied Japheth. This mammoth had matted fur on its flanks, and it was so thin that the skeleton showed through. Its eyes were dulled  and it seemed to be apologizing to the unicorn.

Staring at the unicorn, still unaware of Dennys, were several small people. But, just as the mammoth was unlike Higgaion, so these people were unlike Japheth. They smelled. The men’s bodies were hairy, giving them a simian look. Their goatskin loincloths were not clean.  There were two full-bearded men, and two women, naked except for the loincloths. Both the women had red hair, and the younger woman’s hair was so vivid it almost seemed like flame, and some care had been taken with it.  The older woman was wrinkled and discontented-looking.

The unicorn’s light flashed against the younger woman’s green eyes, making them sparkle like emeralds. “You see!” she cried triumphantly. “I knew our mammoth could call us a unicorn!”

The light in the horn dimmed.

The younger of the two men, who had matted brown hair and a red beard unkempt and spotted with food, snarled at the girl. “And now, dear sister Tiglah, that we have a unicorn in the tent, what do you want of it?”

The girl approached the unicorn, her hand held out as though to pet it. The horn blazed with blinding brilliance, and then the tent was dark so suddenly that it took several seconds for Dennys’s eyes to adjust to the moonlight coming through the hole in the roof.

The men roared with laughter. “Ho, Tiglah, you thought you could fool us, didn’t you?”

Even the older woman was laughing. Then she saw Dennys, who was struggling to his knees. “Great auk, what have we here?”

The redheaded girl gasped. “A giant!”

The older, bowlegged man approached Dennys. He held a spear, and Dennys, gagging from the stench in the tent, felt an overriding surge of fear. The man nudged him with the spear, so that he fell back onto a pile of filthy skins.

The man flipped him over, using the spear, which scratched but did not cut him. He felt the tip of the spear as it was drawn lightly along his shoulder blades.

“Is this one yours, Tiglah?” the younger man asked. “I thought you were seeing a nephil.”

Tiglah looked curiously at Dennys. “He’s no nephil.”

The older woman stared. “If he’s a giant, he’s a baby giant. He can’t hurt us.”

“What will we do with him?” Tiglah asked.

The brown, hairy man withdrew his spear “Throw him out.” His voice held no particular malice. Dennys was just a thing, to be disposed of. He felt two pairs of hands lifting him, as the younger man helped his father. The mammoth whimpered, and the older woman kicked at him.  Certainly, Dennys thought, anything would be better than this horrible-smelling place full of horrible little people.

There was a brief whiff of fresh air. A glimpse of a night sky crusted with stars. A smoky redness on the horizon, like the light from some enormous industrial city. Then he felt himself being flung, thrown, like offal. He felt him-self rolling down a steep incline. He gagged. Vomited. He had been thrown into what was evidently a garbage dump.  It was even worse than wherever he had been before.

He managed to pull himself up onto his knees. He was in some kind of pit. There was an overwhelming stench of feces, of rotting flesh. He did not know what else was in the pit with him, and he did not want to know. Frantically he scrambled up the side, climbing, slipping on bones, on ooze, on decaying filth, sliding back, climbing, sliding, slipping, scrabbling, until at last he pulled himself out and up onto his feet and stood there tottering, filthy and terrified.

There was no sign of Sandy. No sign of the unicorn. Or of Japheth and Higgaion. He had no idea where he was.  He looked around. He was standing on a dirt path which bordered the pit. Beside it was his rolled-up bundle o£ clothes. On the other side of the path were a number of tents. He had seen pictures of bedouin tents in his social-studies books at school. These were similar, though they seemed smaller and more closely clustered. It was probably from one of these tents that he had been thrown.  Beyond the tents were palm trees, and he staggered toward these.

He needed to shower. Did he ever need to shower! He carried with him the smell of the pit. He ran, barely keeping himself upright, to the grove of palms. Beyond these he could see white. White sand. The desert. If he could only reach the desert, he could roll in the moon-washed sand and get clean.

“Sandy!” he called, but there was no Sandy. “Jay! Jay!” But no small, kind young man appeared. “Higgaion!” He shuddered. If he never saw any human being again, he would not go back to the tent where he had been poked at with a spear, and from which he had been thrown, like garbage.

Racing, he was suddenly out of the grove of palms and sliding in sand. He fell down, rolled and rolled, then picked up handsful of sand and rubbed it over himself, wiping off the slime and filth of the pit. He pulled off his turtleneck and flung it away. Rolled again in sand. His underclothes were filthy from the pit and he tore them off, flinging them after the turtleneck. He did not even realize that he was scraping off his own sunburned skin, so eager was he to get clean. The sand was cool under the daisy field of stars, and he took off his sneakers and socks, flinging them after his clothes. They would never be clean again. He rubbed more sand on his feet, his ankles, his legs, not even realizing that he was sobbing like a small child.

After a while, from sheer exhaustion, he calmed down.  Began to assess his situation. He was badly sunburned. He had made it worse by scouring himself with sand. He was shivering, but it was not from cold; it was from fever.

He sat there, naked as Adam, on the white desert, his back to the oasis. The not yet full moon was sliding down Coward the horizon. Above him, there were more stars than he had ever seen before. Ahead of him was that strange reddish glow, and then he saw that it came from a mountain, the tallest in a range of mountains on the far horizon. Of course. If he and Sandy had somehow or other blown themselves onto a young planet in some galaxy or other, naturally volcanoes would still be active.

How active? He hoped he wouldn’t find out.  At home the hills were low; old hills, worn down by wind and rain, by the passing of the glaciers, by eons of time. Home. He began to sob again.

With a great effort, he calmed himself. He and Sandy were the practical ones of the family, the ones who found solutions to problems. They could do minor repairs when the plumbing misbehaved. They could rewire an old lamp and make it work again. Their mother’s reading lamp in the lab was one they had bought at a church bazaar and made over for her. Their large vegetable garden in the summer was their pride and joy, and they sold enough of their produce to augment their allowances considerably.  They could do anything. Anything.

Even believe in unicorns. He thought of the unicorn.  The unicorn he had come to think of as a virtual unicorn, and who had, somehow or other, brought him to that tent of horrible, primitive little people who had thrown him into the pit. The sad, undernourished mammoth evidently had called the unicorn, and Dennys had been called back into being, too. But the unicorn had gone out in a blaze of light. A unicorn, even a virtual one, evidently could not stand the smell.

All right. If he thought that a unicorn couldn’t stand the ugliness of the smell, it must mean that he believed in unicorns. Virtually.

Of course there were no unicorns. But neither was it possible that he and Sandy, tapping into their father’s partly programmed experiment, could have been flung to wherever in the universe they were, on a backward planet of primitive life forms. Again he looked around. The stars were so clear that he seemed to hear a chiming of crystal.  From the mountain came a wisp of smoke, a small tongue of fire.

“Oh, virtual unicorn!” he cried. “I want to believe in you, and if you don’t come, I will die.” He felt something cool and soft nudging his bare body, and there was the scraggly little mammoth, touching him tentatively with the pink tip of its long grey trunk And then a burst of silver blazed in front of him, and was reduced to a shimmer. A unicorn knell before him on the sand. Dennys did not have the strength to mount the unicorn and sit astride. He gave the mammoth a look of mute gratitude, then draped himself over the unicorn’s back. He closed his eyes. He was burning with fever. He would burn the unicorn. He felt that they were exploding like the volcano.

Mahlah, Yalith’s sister, betrothed to Ugiel the nephil, lay on a small rock ledge, ten minutes’ walk into the desert. Her heart beat rapidly with excitement Ugiel had brought her to the rock, covered her with kisses, and then told her to wait until he returned with his brethren to seal their betrothal

She heard the beating of wings and looked up, catching her breath. Above her a pelican, white against the night sky, flew in circles which grew smaller as it descended It touched the ground and raised its great wings until they seemed to brush the stars, and there was no longer a pelican in front of Mahlah but a seraph, with wings and hair streaming silver in the desert wind, and eyes as bright as stars.

Mahlah scrambled to her feet, letting her long black hair swirl about her. “Aland—“

The seraph took her hand, looking down into her eyes “Are we really losing you?”

She withdrew her hands, dropping her gaze, laughing a small, self-conscious laugh “Losing me? What do you mean?”

 “Is it true that you and Ugiel—“

“Yes, it is true,” she said proudly “Be happy for me, Aland. Ugiel is still your brother, is he not?”

Aland dropped to one knee, so that he no longer towered over her ‘Yes, we are still brothers, though we have chosen very different ways “

“And you’re sure yours is the better way?” There was scorn in Mahlah’s voice.

Aland shook his head sadly “We do not judge. The seraphim have chosen to stay close to the Presence.”

“But you’re too close to be able to see it.  The nephihm have distance and objectivity.”  He looked at her, and her glance wavered for a moment “Yes. Ugiel told me that”

Aland rose slowly to his full height. With one silver wing he drew her briefly to him, and she smelled starlight.  Then he let her go “You will not forget us?”

“How could I forget you’ ‘ she exclaimed “You have been my friend since Yalith took me out to greet the dawn and I met you and Aanel “

“You have not greeted the dawn lately.”

“Oh—I am learning about the night “

Aland bent down and kissed the top of her dark head. Then he walked slowly across the desert. Tears fell silently onto the sand.

Mahlah looked down. When she raised her head, she saw a pelican flying up, up, to be lost among the stars.

Yalith hurried into her family tent “Mahlah is betrothed to one of the nephihm1”

No one heeded her. Her parents, brothers, and sisters-in-law were lying around on goatskins, eating, and drinking wine her father had made from the early grapes.  Several stone lamps lit the tent with a warm glow; too warm, Yalith thought. Almost no breeze came through the open tent flap, or the roof hole. The moon was descending, and only stars were visible. She looked around for Japheth, her favorite brother, but did not see him. Probably he was still out looking for the brother of the young giant in her grandfather’s tent.

Her mother was stirring something in a wooden bowl, intent on what she was doing. A mammoth, well fed, with lustrous long hair on its flanks, lay sleeping at her feet.

Someone had been sick, probably Ham, who had a weak stomach, and the smell of Ham’s sickness mingled with the smell of wine, of meat from the stewpot, of the skins of the tent. Yalith was accustomed to all these odors, and noticed only that Ham was lying back on a pile of skins, looking pale. Ham was, in any event, the lightest-skinned in the family, and the smallest, having been, according to Matred, born a full moon early. Anah, his red-haired wife, knelt by him, offering him wine. Languidly he pushed it away, then pulled Anah down to him, kissing her full, sensual mouth.

Yalith went up to Matred, her mother. Repeated:

“Mahlah is betrothed.”

Matred looked up briefly. “She’s not old enough.”

“Oh, Mother, of course she is. And she is.”

“Old enough?” Matred was preoccupied with what she was doing.

 “Betrothed.”

“Who is it this time?”

“It’s not one of us. It’s one of the nephilim.”

Matred shivered, but went on stirring, without focus.  “Mahlah has changed. She is no longer my merry little girl who was satisfied to see a butterfly, or a drop of dew on a spider’s web. She is no longer satisfied to be with us in the home tent.” A tear dropped into the bowl.

Yalith patted her mother’s arm. “She’s grown up, Mother.”

“So have you. But you don’t go chasing about the oasis at night. You don’t run after nephihm.”

“Maybe the nephil ran after her?”

“She’s pretty enough. But it is not right for me to hear something like this at secondhand. That is not how things are done. That is not how my daughter behaves.”

“I’m sorry,” Yalith said uncomfortably. “I was walking home from Grandfather Lamech’s, and I saw them, Mahlah and a nephil. His name is Ugiel. He asked me to tell you, so that you would not be worried.”

“Worried!” Maned exclaimed- “Just don’t tell your father, that’s all.  What’s to prevent this L’gh—“

“Ugiel.”

“This nephil from coming himself, with Mahlah, to tell me and your father, according to the custom.”

Yalith frowned worriedly. “He said that times are changing.” Eblis had said that, too. She felt a jolt of insecurity in the pit of her stomach. She did not tell her mother about Eblis.

Matred put down her wooden spoon with a bang. “There are many who think it an honor to be noticed by a nephil and accept their ways. Anah”—Matred looked across at her son Ham’s wife, redheaded, still luscious, but beginning to be overblown—“Anah tells me that her younger sister, Tiglah, is being singled out by a nephil for marriage.  Anah is thrilled.”

“But you’re not.”

“Tiglah is not my daughter. Mahlah is.” Matred turned away. “Child, I am not star-dazzled by the nephilim. They are very different from us.”

“They are beautiful—“

“Beautiful, yes. But they will make changes, and not all changes are good.”

I don’t want things to change, Yalith thought- And then, in her mind’s eye, she saw again the young giant who had bowed to her in Grandfather Lamech’s tent, and who was unlike anybody she had ever seen.

Matred continued: “Change is, I suppose, inevitable, and sometimes it brings good things.” She looked across the tent to her oldest son, Shem, who was sitting with his wife, Elisheba, eating some of the grapes from the vineyard which were not pressed for wine but kept for the table. Shem was pulling one grape at a time from the bunch, and throwing it to Elisheba. She would catch each grape in her open mouth and they would both laugh with pleasure at this simple, sensual game. It seemed amazingly young and romantic for this stocky, solid couple. “Elisheba is a great help to me. And then, Japheth’s wife—“

Yalith looked to where a young woman with softly curling black hair against creamy skin was scouring a wooden bowl with sand. The young woman looked up and waved in greeting. Matred said, “She comes to us from another oasis, and with a strange name.”

“0-holi-bamah.” Yalith sounded it out.

“Look at her,” Matred commanded.

Yalith looked again at her sister-in-law. Oholibamah was fairer of complexion than Yalith or the other women, even fairer than Ham. Her hair and brows were blacker than the night sky, a rippling, purply black. When Ohotibamah stood, she was nearly a head taller than the other women.  And beautiful. She always seemed lit by moonlight, Yalith thought. “What about her?” she asked her mother.

“Look at her, child. Look at her.”

Yalith was shocked. “You mean you think she—“

Matred shrugged slightly. “She is the youngest daughter of a very old man.” She held up the fingers of both hands.  “More than ten years younger than her brothers and sisters. I love Oholibamah as though she were my own. And if Oholibamah was indeed sired by a nephil, then great good has been brought into our lives.”

Yalith looked at Oholibamah as though seeing her for the first time. After Yalith and Mahlah, Oholibamah was the youngest woman in the tent, younger by several years than Elisheba, Shem’s wife, or Anah, Ham’s wife. All three of Yalith’s brothers had married at unusually young ages, and all three had grumbled at having to take on domestic duties so soon. Shem had protested, “But we are too young to marry. I’m the oldest, and I’ve barely reached my first hundred years.”

His father had replied, “There is a certain urgency, my son.”

“Why? And how will you find wives for us when we are so young?”

“You are fine-looking men,” the patriarch assured him.

Ham had joined in. “But why the rush, Father? What is this urgency you speak of?”

The patriarch pulled at his long beard, which was beginning to show white. “Yesterday, when I was working in the vineyard, the Voice spoke to me. El told me that I must find wives for you.”

“But why?” Ham protested. “We’re young, and we need time.”

“There are changes, great changes coming,” the patriarch said.

“Is the volcano going to erupt?” Shem asked.

“If the volcano erupts,” Ham said, “wives won’t do us any good.”

Their father told them only that the word of El had come to him in the vineyard, and that El had given no explanation.

Elisheba and Anah were easily found for Shem and Ham. The patriarch had a reputation as an honest man.  He had the largest and best vineyards on the oasis, and fine flocks of goats and sheep. The fame of his wine had spread to many other oases round about. Matred was a woman of unquestionable virtue and beauty, and her girth attested to her skills as a cook. It was a privilege to marry into her tent.

Japheth was young enough so that no one stepped forward. His face was still smooth and beardless. His body hair was no more than soft down. His eyes were friendly and guileless. But he was on the threshold of manhood.  His father went off on his camel one day, and came back with Oholibamah.

Japheth had been at the well, getting water for the animals, when he saw a young girl on a white camel, a young girl of fair complexion, with dark hair tumbling richly against her ivory shoulders. His eyes met Oholibamah’s eyes, dark as the night sky between stars, and his knees became fluid. She slid off the white camel’s back and came toward him, slender hands outstretched. Their love was a bright flower, youthful, and radiantly beautiful.

Oholibamah. 0-holy-bamah. A name as strange as her moonlit beauty. But soon it flowed easily from their lips.

Oholibamah was Yalith’s first real friend. They were not far apart in age, both of them barely out of childhood and into womanhood. They were alike, too, in their un-likeness to the others. They saw and rejoiced in what most people of the oasis never noticed. Both liked to leave the tent at first dawn to watch and wait for the sun to rise over the desert, delighting in the calling of the stars just before daylight. It was during one of her dawn walks that Yalith had met the great lion who was the seraph Aariel, and on another walk, when she had persuaded Mahlah to join her, that she had introduced Aariel and Alarid the pelican to her sister. But once Oholibamah came, Mahlah preferred to sleep in the morning.

So Yalith and her youngest sister-in-law would slip out quietly. When the great red disk of day pulled above the white sand, and the stars dimmed and their songs faded out, scarab beetles who had slept under the sand during the hours of the dark came scuttling up into the light. At the edge of the oasis, the baboons leapt from the trees, clapping their hands and shrieking for joy at the rising of the sun. Behind them on the oasis the cock crowed, and in the desert the lions roared their early-morning roar before retreating to their caves to sleep during the heat of the day. Yalith and Oholibamah shared a silent and joyful companionship.

Now, in the warm and noisy tent, Oholibamah beckoned to Yalith. “Have you eaten?”

“No.” Yalith shook her head. “I meant to eat with Grandfather, but 1 forgot all about food because there was a strange young—“

Ham interrupted her, calling out from the pile of skins on which he was reclining. “I have a headache, Oholi. I need you.”

Oholibamah said sharply, “Let Anah rub your head. She is your wife.”

“Her fingers do not have the touch that yours do.” And, indeed, Oholibamah had a reputation for having healing in her fingers.

She was still sharp. “If you don’t want a headache, don’t eat and drink too much.” She turned away and went to the cook pot, ladled some stew into a wooden bowl, and handed it to Yalith. The mammoth left Matred and came and nudged Yalith’s knee.

“No, Selah,” Yalith scolded. “You know I won’t give you anything more to eat. You’re getting fat.” She deftly picked pieces of meat and vegetable from the bowl and ate them, then raised it to her lips to drink the broth. It tasted wonderful, and she realized that she was very hungry.

Beside her, Oholibamah sighed.

“What’s the matter?” Yalith asked.

The mammoth moved to the older girl, who scratched its grey head. “I was walking through the town this morning. We needed some provisions. One of the nephilim came out of one of the bathhouses, smelling of oil and spices, and stood in my path.” She paused.

“And?” Yalith prodded.

“He said that I was one of them, one of their daughters.”

Yalith glanced at her mother, then back at Oholibamah.  Thought of Eblis and his glorious purple wings. “Would that be so terrible?”

“It is absurd. I love my parents. I love my father.”

Yalith had never seen Oholibamah’s parents. And how would she herself feel if someone suggested that her father was not, in fact, her father? But now that Matred had put the thought in her mind, it was easy to believe that Oholibamah had been sired by a nephil. She had gifts of healing. Ham was right about that. Her voice when she sang was beautiful as a bird’s. She saw things no one else saw.

But then, Yalith reminded herself, she, too, was different, the seventh child of her parents, and she knew quite well who her parents were, and that they had been disappointed when they had had a fourth daughter instead of a fourth son.

“Did you hear me saying that Mahlah is betrothed to a nephil?” she asked Oholibamah.

“Yes, I heard. Mahlah likes pretty things. The wives of the nephilim live in houses of stone and clay, not in tents.  I’m sure Mahlah feels proud to have been chosen.”

“What do you think about it?” Yalith asked.

“I’m not sure. I’m not sure what I think about the nephilim. Especially if—“ She broke off.

“And the seraphim?” Yalith asked.

“I’m not sure what I think about them, either.” Oholibamah pressed her fingers against her ears as Ham started to shout.

For a small man, he had a powerful voice. “Selah, come here! If Oholibamah won’t help me, then I need a unicorn!”

Anah said crossly, “You know a unicorn can’t come near you.”

“It doesn’t have to come near,” Ham grunted. “They can cast their light from any distance. It’s only the light I need.”

Anah muttered, “You need more than that.”

“Yalith! You can call a unicorn. Or Selah! Call me a unicorn!”

A sudden flash of light made them all blink. It was as though lightning had somehow managed to get inside the heavy hides of the tent, perhaps flashing down through the roof hole.

“Getaway!” Ham cried. “Who are you!”

He was not referring to the unicorn, which stood glimmering in the tent. On the skins right by Ham lay a very young man, with raw, sunburned skin, and eyes glazed with fever.

Matred peered down at the boy. “How did he get here? Ham, is he a friend of yours?”

Ham looked totally bewildered. “I’ve never seen him before.”

“What is he?” Shem demanded.

The patriarch, who had been chewing on a mutton bone, looked at the boy. “Another kind of giant,” he said disgustedly.

Oholibamah said, “Whoever he is, give him air. Don’t crowd around. Look, he has sun fever. Oh my, he looks terrible.”

Elisheba, Shem’s wife, peered at the boy. “If he’s a giant, he’s a very young one.”

Yalith managed to push between Matred and Oholibamah so that she could see. She shrieked, “It’s my young giant!”

“What’s that, daughter?” Matred asked. “You’ve seen him before?”

“In Grandfather’s tent, when I took him his night-light.”                         ‘-

The patriarch scowled. “If my father, Lamech, doesn’t want a giant in his tent, why should I have him in mine?”

“Oh, please. Father,” Yalith begged.

“You’ve really seen him before?” Oholibamah asked.

“When I brought Grandfather Lamech his night-light,” Yalith repeated, “there was this young, sunburned giant in his tent.” She looked at the fevered young man. “I’m not sure this is ... Where’s Japheth?”

The tent flap was pushed aside, and Japheth came in.

“Why, here I am, looking for a unicorn and—“

Selah raised her trunk and trumpeted.

“Why!” Japheth exclaimed. “I’ve been looking all over the oasis and there’s one right here! And—so is the Den, the one I’ve been looking fort” He dropped to his knees.

“Great auk. Is he alive?”

Oholibamah ordered, “Move back, all of you.” She put her hand against Dennys’s bare chest. “He’s alive, but he’s burning with fever.”

Anah moved back slightly, pushing her red hair away from her face with a dirty hand. “Is he a seraph or a nephil?”

Yalith shook her head. “He doesn’t have wings. Oh. Japheth, I’m glad you’re back. He is the other one, isn’t he, the one you were looking for?”

“Yes,” Japheth said. “But he looks burned nearly to death.”

Oholibamah pressed her hand against the reddened forehead, wincing at the heat of it, turning to look for the unicorn, who had almost dimmed out of being. “Unicorn, can you help?”

The unicorn’s outline sharpened, and it bent toward the flushed boy, and light flowed from its forehead, cooling the burning skin.

Ham pushed up from his pelts and blundered toward the unicorn. “Me. I need help. I feel sick. Help me.” His fair hair was stringy with sweat. The even lighter hair on his chest held drops of moisture.

Again there was a flash of light, and when they could see again, the unicorn had disappeared.

“Idiot.” Anah’s green eyes sparked. “You know you can’t get near a unicorn.”

“Meanwhile,” the patriarch said, “how are we going to get rid of this half-baked giant?”

 “My dear,” Matred protested, “surely we should show him some hospitality.”

“My good father, Lamech, evidently threw him out of his tent,” her husband retorted.

“No, Father!” Yalith protested. “You don’t understand!  There are two giants, and Grandfather has the other one in his tent and is taking care of him.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” her father said. “How can there be two of these peculiar giants?”

“Oh, Father, if only you’d go to see Grandfather Lamech!”

“I will have nothing to do with coddling the old man.  Or his strange giants. We have enough troubles without sick giants being added to them.”

Yalich knelt beside Oholibamah and looked at the boy, who lay breathing shallowly, eyelids twitching slightly.  Yalith reached out a tentative finger and touched the boy’s flushed cheek. “You’re not Sand? You’re his brother?”

The reddened eyelids opened slightly. “Dennys.  Dennys.” Then the boy flung his arm over his face, as though to ward off a blow. His limbs began to shake convulsively.

“What’s happened?” Japheth demanded. “Somebody’s hurt him. And he doesn’t recognize me.”

“He’s afraid!” Elisheba’s voice was shocked.

Shem protested. “Surely Grandfather Lamech couldn’t have hit him!”

“Never,” Japheth defended swiftly.

“Not Grandfather!” Yalith spoke at the same time.

“El! His skin is rubbed raw!” Oholibamah exclaimed.

 “Someone between Grandfather Lamech’s tent and here has hurt him.”

Matred bent close, asking softly, “Who could have done this? Even to a deformed giant?”

Japheth asked, “Dennys?”

“Dennys,” the boy moaned.

“Where have you been? Did someone call you and the unicorn back into being? Who was it?”

Oholibamah touched her husband’s hand. “Selah called a unicorn, and suddenly this wounded giant was here.”

“But he’s been somewhere else on the oasis.” Japheth took his wife’s hand and pressed it against his cheek. “And he has been abused. He’s barely conscious. This is terrible.”

Anah peered over Yalith’s shoulder. “Are you sure he’s human?”

Japheth frowned. “They said they are twins, but I think twins is human.”

The patriarch murmured, “What with the winged creatures around, sleeping with the daughters of men, it is hard to know anymore who is human and who is not.” He looked at Oholibamah, but not unkindly.

Oholibamah touched Dennys’s forehead again, and he opened his eyes and flinched. “Shh. I will not hurt you.” She looked at Yalith and Japheth. “The unicorn’s horn has taken away some of his fever, but he is still very hot.  Was it this bad when you saw him, Japheth?”

Japheth shook his head. “He was sun-sick, worse than the Sand, but not like this.”

The patriarch asked, “You say there are two of these giants?”

 “Two. Exactly alike. I left the one called Sand in Grandfather Lamech’s tent”—he looked rather defensively at his father—“to go look for this one. And then, to my surprise, when I’d given up for the night, he was here, right in our own home tent.”

Ham suggested, “We’ve never seen two look-alikes. We should send someone to Grandfather Lamech’s tent to make sure there’s another one.”

“You doubt me?” Japheth demanded.

“Just want to make sure,” Ham said.

Less hotly, Japheth said, “I found it difficult to believe at first, myself.”

Cutting across their conversation, Oholibamah said, “We should bathe him with water, to try to keep him cool and moist.”

“Water!” Matred exclaimed. “Even the mammoths are having difficulty scenting for water. But there is plenty of wine.”

“Not my wine!” the patriarch roared. “Woman! You have no idea how hard I work in the vineyard.”

“I do,” Japheth commented mildly. “I work with you.”

Oholibamah frowned slightly. “I don’t think wine will do.”

Japheth said, “Higgaion sprayed water from Grandfather Lamech’s water pot on the Sand, and I think it helped.” He looked toward Selah, who again was at Matred’s feet.

Anah glanced out of the corner of her green eyes at pasty Ham, then at Dennys’s recumbent form. “If his skin didn’t look like raw meat, he’d be quite gorgeous.”

Elisheba, Shem’s wife, stocky and sensible-looking, with thickly curling black hair and dark, placid eyes, snorted.  “Keep away from him, Anah. You saw that the unicorn went right to him. For all his giant’s size, he’s barely more than a baby. And he’s trembling. He’s frightened.”

Matred said fiercely, “Whatever, he shall not be ill-treated again.”

Yalith looked gratefully at her mother.

Her father snorted. “Women. I’m always being bullied by women and their good works. Matred feeds any lazy beggar who comes to the tent, and Elisheba helps her keep the soup pot full.”

“People do not choose to be poor and hungry,” Matred said calmly. “We have enough, and to spare. Husband, I will not have this young giant abused.”

“Do what you want with him,” the patriarch said. “It makes no difference to me, as long as I’m not bothered about it.”

Oholibamah looked at her husband. “We shouldn’t leave him here. It’s too hot and crowded. He was near death when the unicorn’s light touched him, and I think he’s still very ill.”

“Listen to Oholi,” Ham said. “She knows what she’s talking about.”

For Yalith, no matter what Japheth had said, Dennys was the same young man she had seen in her grandfather’s tent. She had been afraid of him when she had first seen him, and now, this time, it was the young giant who seemed terrified. “Where can we take him?”

“He’s just a child,” Oholibamah suggested. “What about the women’s tent?”

In Yalith’s eyes, Sandy/Dennys was not a child.  Elisheba asked, “How near to the time of the moon is it for any of us?”

Matred, who was the one to keep track of such things, drew her brows together in thought, and touched her fingers, counting. “Not for a while. Soon he will be well enough to sleep here in the big tent. Or he will be dead.”

Yalith shuddered. “Don’t say that. He is our guest. We don’t let our guests die.”

“My dear,” Matred said. “He is badly burned. His skin is raw, as though someone has been scraping him, like a carrot.”

“Perhaps we should call on one of the seraphim?”

Japheth suggested.

His mother nodded. Looked at Yalith. “Your friend Aariel would come, would he not?”

“I think so, yes.” If she had to call Aariel, Yalith would make very certain that it was Aariel, not Eblis, though she was not sure why she felt that making sick calls was not part of the business of the nephilim.

“Elisheba,” Matred continued, “if you will look into the chest by my sleeping skins, you will find some soft linen for him to lie on. The animal skins are too rough.”

Anah simpered, “Mother always knows best, eh, Ham?” and moved away.

“I will crush some figs and make juice for him to drink.”

Matred always felt better when there was something to do.

Oholibaniah pressed her palm against Dennys’s forehead again. “He is so hot.” She frowned, as he flinched and moaned, eyes tightly closed.

The patriarch said, “If he’s going to die on us, get him out of the tent, quickly.”

Yalith protested, “Father!”

Japheth reached comfortingly for her hand.

The patriarch said, “You will have to learn, daughter, that you cannot nurse every broken-winged bird or wounded salamander back to health.”

“I can try!”

“Perhaps you make them suffer more that way,” her father suggested, “than if you let them die?”

“Oh, Father—“

“Now.” Matred bustled back. “Enough talk. Japheth will help us carry our strange little giant to the women’s tent. Quick, now!”

When Dennys opened his eyes and found himself surrounded by little brown people, he was terrified. How had he got back into that terrible tent? Surely the unicorn wouldn’t have returned him to the people who had tossed him out into the dung heap. Where was the unicorn?

Brilliant light flared against his closed eyelids, then darkness. He began to shiver, uncontrollably, and he felt a hand against his forehead. Cool. Gentle. It might almost have been his mother’s hand. When he had had flu, only his mother’s touch could cool him. “Mother,” he moaned.  Then, like a small child, “Mommy . . .”

A small woman leaned over him, looked at him with twinkly eyes surrounded by a crisscrossing of wrinkles. She did not look as though she would throw him into a garbage pit.

She moved away, and then two pairs of younger eyes were looking at him. One pair was a deep amber, with golden flecks, and belonged to a girl with hair as amber as the eyes. Beautiful eyes. Pure. The other girl’s eyes were black, but a black which held light, and wisdom. Wherever he was, it could not be the tent from which he had been thrown by the men while the girl with flaming-red hair looked on.

Men. He looked around fearfully. There were men there. Spears were stacked against the side of the tent. One of the men held a wineskin. They did not seem to be threatening.

Then one of the small men came over to him, and smiled down at him, and he felt a great wave of relief. It was Japheth.

“Jay—“ he whispered through parched lips.

“Den!” Japheth exclaimed gladly. “Oholi, he’s coming back to consciousness!”

“Jay—“ Dennys’s teeth were chattering.

“Who’s hurt you?” Japheth asked. “Can you tell us?”

Dennys closed his eyes again.

“Don’t bother him with questions now,” Oholibamah said.

“Don’t be afraid. Den,” Japheth encouraged. “We’re not going to let anybody hurt you.” Japheth bent down to him. “I’m going to carry you to some place where it’s cool and quiet. Don’t be afraid.” Japheth picked Dennys up as carefully as possible and slung him over his shoulder.

Japheth was the tallest man in the tent; even so, he was so much smaller than Dennys that the boy’s feet dragged on the ground, and he curled his fingers to keep them from scraping, too. No wonder in this place he and Sandy were thought of as giants. Dennys had a feverish vision of a trip his class had taken to a museum, where everybody had been amazed at the exhibition of knights’ armor. How small those knights must have been! The people on this planet where he and Sandy had been flung were even smaller than the medieval knights.

His thoughts misted off, as tenuous as the virtual unicorns. The remembrance of the field trip to the museum was no more of a dream than his being carried by Japheth, who was amazingly strong for so small a man, a short young shepherd carrying a lamb. A very small shepherd. Dennys’s toes scraped over a rock, and he cried out. If he could wake up, if he could shake off the heat of this feverish dream, he and Sandy would be in their bunk bed at home.

He opened his eyes, and the stars were brilliant, and he took a gulp of fresh air. Then his head brushed against a tent flap, and he felt himself being lowered onto something soft but so delicate that he could feel the rough skins underneath. He licked his cracked lips and realized that he had a raging thirst. “Water, Jay,” he managed to croak, but could not summon the energy to add, please.

The black-eyed girl bent over him and held a wineskin to his lips, and he tasted something bitter and sweet at the same time. It stung his throat as he swallowed, but at least it was wet.

The black-eyed girl withdrew the skin. “We shouldn’t give him too much wine.”

“I forgot the fig juice,” the plump, nut-like woman exclaimed. “I’ll be right back.”

Dennys heard the pad of bare feet, and the thud of a leather tent flap falling.

“He recognizes me now.” Japheth’s voice was troubled.

 “I don’t think he’s afraid of us anymore,” the younger girl said, the one with amber eyes.

“Water—“ Dennys begged.

The amber-eyed girl said, wistfully, “Grandfather Lamech’s wells still have water to spare.”

The other girl agreed. “I wouldn’t mind going to get a pitcherful, but I wish Grandfather Lamech did not live at the bottom of the oasis.”

Japheth put his arm lovingly about the girl. “I’ll take one of the camels and go. I don’t want either of you crossing the oasis at this time of night. Every moon, there are more bandits and thieves.”

“Oh, but be careful,” the younger girl begged.

“Take my camel, love,” the black-haired woman offered. “She’s the swiftest, and you’ll be safe on her.”

“Thank you, Oholibamah, my wife.” Japheth leaned to her and kissed her on the lips. Dennys, watching through the confusion of headache and fever, thought that it was a nice kiss. It was the kind of kiss he had seen his father give his mother. A real kiss. If he lived through this, he would like to kiss someone like that.

He heard Japheth leave, and closed his eyes, sliding into a fevered sleep. Like his virtual unicorn, he seemed to flicker in and out of being. He retreated deep within him-self in order to retreat from the flaming pain of his scraped skin. He did not know how long he had been unconscious before he became aware of the two women speaking softly.

“Why won’t my father reconcile with Grandfather Lamech?” the lighter voice asked. “I had to beg him for the oil for Grandfather’s night-light.”

The older girl, the one Japheth had kissed, with an odd name, Oholi something, had a voice like velvet. “Your father was hurt when Grandfather Lamech insisted on staying in his own tent.”

“But as long as Grandfather can care for himself—“

“It’s complicated,” the dark voice said. “People don’t revere old people the way they used to. They don’t want to listen to their stories.”

“I love Grandfather’s stories!”

“I, too, Yalith.”

Yalith, that was the name of the amber-eyed one. Yalith and Oholi. Dennys was vaguely aware of something cool touching his skin, something that numbed the pain.

The one called Oholi continued. “I always enjoy it when it’s my turn to take him the night-light. And at least your mother feels as we do. She’ll always manage to get the oil for us to take to him.”

“When did it change?” Yalith asked. “People need to sit at the feet of the old people and listen. But now—I heard Anah say that her grandfather was put out in the desert to die, and his bones were picked clean by vultures.”

“Oh, El, what are we coming to!”

At the trouble in the dark voice, Dennys opened his eyes.

“He is still so hot, so hot,” Oholi said. “I wish we knew who had hurt him.”

“But what could we do?” Yalith asked. “What in El’s name could we do? People are ugly to one another today.  Were we this cruel before the nephilim and the seraphim came?”

 “I don’t know.”

“And who came first?”

“I don’t know,” the dark-eyed one repeated. “There is much we don’t know. Where did this young wounded giant come from, for instance?”

“The other one,” Yalith said, “the one in Grandfather Lamech’s tent, said that they came from some kind of Nighted Place.”

“United States,” Dennys corrected automatically. Then Yalith’s words registered. “Where is my brother?”

 “Oh, good, he’s coming to!” Yalith cried. Then said, kindly, to Dennys. “He’s in my Grandfather Lamech’s tent, being cared for by Grandfather and Higgaion. He’s sun-struck, too, but not nearly as badly as you are.”

The words began to buzz into meaninglessness as Dennys slid back into unconsciousness. He knew that the combination of too much sun, of being thrown into the pit, of scraping himself with sand, had made him ill. Very ill, indeed. This was far worse than when he had flu and a temperature of over 105°. Then he had antibiotics to fight the fever. Heaven knew what had been in that garbage pit. Heaven knew what horrible infection might follow. He thought that he was probably dying from overexposure to the sun, and he didn’t much mind, except that he wished he was at home, on his own planet, rather than here, wherever in the universe here was, with these strange small people. He wished he was young enough to call out and wake his mother, so that she would come in to him and she would wake him from the nightmare and take off the knight’s helmet that was pinching his skull and giving him a terrible headache.

He drifted into darkness.

For the first few days in Grandfather Lamech’s tent, Sandy was miserable. His reddened skin bubbled into blisters. Where he didn’t sting, he itched. But as his fever abated he began to look for Yalith in the evening. She did not come, and he felt only a weary indifference to the older women who brought the light, often staying to chat with the old man so that they would have an excuse to stare at Sandy.

He knew now that Dennys was safe in a tent near Japheth’s, and that he was being well cared for. He knew that he and Dennys were objects of intense curiosity to the women who came each evening.

“I’ve never seen anything like it!” the oldest one called Matred, exclaimed. “Except that our giant is burned so much more badly, I would not believe that they are two.”

Anah and Elisheba took their turns taking the night-light to Grandfather Lamech, whispering over Sandy and his likeness to their own twin, still burning with fever in the women’s tent. But they shyly held back from talking with Sandy, speaking softly so that he could not hear what they were saying.

Adnarel came each day, at least long enough to drip fresh herbs or powders into the water with which Higgaion continued to bathe the bumed skin. The pelican kept the water jar filled, and when Grandfather Lamech thanked the great bird. He treated it as more than a pelican, causing Sandy to wonder. The old man spent hours cooking concoctions to tempt Sandy’s appetite, and the ones that tasted best were the ones which reminded him of his mother’s bunsen-burner stews. Sandy wanted to ask the old man about the women who came in the evening and, most importantly, to ask him why Yalith was not one of them, but he was embarrassed and held his peace. And slept, and slept, healing.

On the first night when it was apparent that Sandy’s fever had left him and he was weak but recuperating, Lamech suggested that they go out of the tent and sit under the stars. “Their light cannot harm your healing skin. Your skin is so fair, so fair. No wonder you had the sun fever.” He held out his hand and Sandy took it, letting the old man pull him to his feet. His legs felt weak and unused. Lamech pushed through the tent flap, holding it aside for Sandy, who had to bend over to go through. Not far from the tent was a large and ancient fig tree, too old to bear fruit any longer. One root had pulled up from the ground and formed a low seat, before it dipped down into the earth again. Lamech sat on it, and beckoned to Sandy to sit beside him.

“Look.” Lamech pointed to the sky.

Sandy had already been staggered by the glory of the night sky on his nocturnal visits to the grove which served as outhouse. He had tried to question the old man as to where he was, what planet, what galaxy. But Lamech had been bewildered. Sun, moon, and stars revolved around the oasis and the desert, put there by El for their benefit. So Sandy still had no idea where he and Dennys had ended up with their foolishness.

Now he simply looked up at the sky in awe. At home, even in winter when the air was clearest, even deep in the countryside where they lived, the stars were not like these desert stars. It seemed that he could almost see the arms of spiral galaxies moving in their great circular dance. Between the radiance of the stars, the blackness of the firmament was deeper and darker than velvet.

Except at the far horizon. “Hey.” Sandy asked. “Why is it so light over there? Is there a big city or something?”

“It is the mountain,” Lamech said.

Sandy squinted and could just make out a range of mountains against the sky, with one peak higher than the others, a long way off, much farther off than the palm tree which had led them to Japheth and Higgaion and the oasis. “A volcano?” he asked.

Lamech nodded.

“Does it erupt often?”

Lamech shrugged. “Perhaps once in every man’s life-time. It is far away. When it goes off, we do not get the fire, but we get a rain of black dust that kills our crops.”

The light tingeing the horizon was indeed so far away that it did not even dim the magnificence of the stars.  Sandy asked, “Is it always this clear?”

“Except during a sandstorm. Do you have sandstorms on the other side of the mountain?” Lamech had set it in his mind that the twins came from beyond the mountains.  That was as far away as he understood.

 “No. We’re nowhere near a desert. Everything is green where we live, except in winter, when the trees lose their leaves and the ground has a good cover of snow.”

“Snow?”

Sandy reached down and picked up a handful of the clean white sand. “It is even whiter than this, and it is softer, and it—in winter it falls from the sky and covers the ground, and it’s called poor man’s fertilizer, and we need it to make sure we’ll have good crops in summer. Dennys and I have a big vegetable garden.”

The old man’s face brightened. “When you are better and can go out in the daylight, I will show you my garden.  What do you grow in yours?”

“Oh, tomatoes and sweet corn and broccoli and brussels sprouts and carrots and onions and beans, and almost anything you want to eat. We eat what we can, and what we can’t, we can.” Then he realized that the old joke would mean nothing to Lamech. He amended, “We can some of our produce, or freeze it.”

“Can? Freeze?”

“Well, uh, putting by food that we’ve grown in the summer so that we’ll have it to eat in the winter.”

“Do you grow rice?” Lamech asked.

“No.”

“You don’t have good enough wells for it?”

“We have wells,” Sandy said, “but I don’t think we have the right kind of growing conditions for rice.” He was going to have to look up rice cultivation when they got home.

“Lentils?” Lamech pursued.

 “No.”

“Dates?”

“It’s too cold where we live for palm trees.”

“I’ve never been on the other side of the mountains. It must be a very strange place.”

Sandy did not know how to correct him. “Well, where we live, it’s very different.”

The old man murmured. “You are the beginning of change. We are living in end times. It can be very lonely.”

Sandy, looking at the stars, did not hear. “Grandfather Lamech, is my brother really getting better?”

“Yes. That is what I am told.”

“Who tells you?”

“The women, when they bring the night-light.”

“Do the men never come? I haven’t seen your son.”

“It is only the women who care.” Lantech’s voice was bitter.

“Japheth—“

“Ah, Japheth. Japheth comes when he can, my youngest grandson, my dear boy.” He sighed, wearily. “When my son, my only son, was born, I predicted that he would bring us relief from our work, from the hard labor that has come upon us because of the curse upon the ground.”

Sandy felt an uncomfortable prickling. “What curse?”

“When our forebears had to leave the Garden, they were told, Accursed shall the ground be on your account.  It will grow thorns and thistles for you. You shall gain your bread by the sweat of your brow.” He sighed again, then all his many wrinkles wreathed upward in a smile.

“It is as I predicted. My son has brought us relief. The vines flourish. The herds and flocks increase. But he has grown proud in his prosperity. I am lonely in my old age.  I am glad that you have come.”

The mammoth came out of the tent and came to them, putting his head on Lamech’s knee. “The women keep telling me that I am welcome in my son’s tent. But I will stay here, where my son was born, where his mother died.  That is no reason for my son to refuse to come see me, because I choose to remain in my own tent. He is stiff-necked. What will he do in his turn when his sons want his tent?”

“Does he want your tent?”

“I have the deepest and best wells on the oasis. I have always given him all the water he needs for his vineyards, but he complains about having to fetch it. Too bad. I will stay in my own tent.”

“Maybe,” Sandy suggested, “your son is stubborn because his father is stubborn?”

The old man smiled reluctantly. “It could be so.”

“If he doesn’t come to see you, why don’t you go see him?”

“It is too far for an old man to walk. I have given my camels and all my animals to my son. I keep only my groves and garden.” Lamech reached out and patted Sandy’s knee with his gnarled hand. “I hope you won’t be wanting to leave right away, now that you are getting well. It is pleasurable having someone to share my tent.”

Higgaion nudged the old man.

Lamech laughed. “You’re a mammoth, my dear Higgaion. And while I have deep devotion for you, I am feeling the need of a human companion, especially during my last days.”

“Your last days?” Sandy asked. “What do you mean?”

“I am not as old as my father, Methuselah, but I am older than his father, Enoch. Now, there was a strange man.  my grandfather. He walked with El and then he was not.  And he was younger than I. El has told me to number my days.”

Sandy felt distinctly uncomfortable. “How many numbers?”

Lamech laughed. “Dear young giant, you know that numbers are merely many or few. The voice of El said few.  Few can mean one turn of the moon, or several.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Sandy said. “Grandfather Lamech. are you telling me that someone said you’re going to die?”

Lamech nodded. “El.”

“El what?”

“El. These are troubled times. Men’s hearts are turning to evil. It is good that I will be able to go quietly. My years are seven hundred and seventy and seven—“

“Hey! Wait!” Sandy said. “Nobody lives that long. Where I come from.”

Lamech pursed his lips. “We have not used our long years well.”

Suddenly the starlight seemed cold. Sandy shivered. Lamech’s fingers again touched his knee. “Don’t worry. I won’t leave you until you are all well, and reunited with your brother, and are both able to take care of yourselves and return home.”

 “Home,” Sandy said wistfully, looking up at the stars. “I don’t even know where home is, from here. I’m not sure how we got here, and I’m a lot less sure about how we’re going to get home.”

Higgaion raised his trunk to touch his ear, and Sandy noticed that the scarab beetle was there, bright as an earring. Sandy understood that the glorious seraph Adnarel sometimes took the form of a scarab beetle—but of course that was impossible. Now he looked at the bronze glitter, suddenly wondering.

Lamech mused, “Japheth asked me where I would go when I die.” He smiled. Even in the starlight, the skin of his skull showed through the thin wisps of hair. “I thought my Grandfather Enoch might come back, or send some kind of message. I hope my son will put aside his stubbornness long enough to come and plant me in the ground.”

Higgaion nudged him again, and the old man laughed.  “Who knows? Perhaps I will come up again in the spring, like the desert flowers. Perhaps not. Very little is known about such things. After living for so many hundreds of years, I look forward to a rest.”

The mammoth moved over to Sandy, standing on his stocky hind legs and putting his big forepaws on Sandy’s knees, like a dog. Sandy picked him up, holding him tightly for comfort, and the pink tip of the trunk delicately patted his cheek. “Grandfather Lamech, I think I’d better go back to the tent. I’m cold.”

Lamech looked first at Sandy, then at the mammoth.

“Yes. This is enough for a first excursion.”

Sandy went gratefully to his sleeping skins, and Higgaion lay down at Sandy’s feet. Sandy tried not to scratch.  The pink skin under the paper-like flakes was tender. He closed his eyes. He wanted to see Yalith. He wanted to talk to Dennys. How were they going to be able to get home from this strange desert land into which they had been cast and which was heaven knew where in all the countless solar systems in all the countless galaxies?

Dennys was sleeping fitfully when he heard the tent flap move. He opened his eyes and could see only the small light of a stone lamp coming toward him. He called out in alarm. “Who is it?” Yalith or Oholibamah would not have needed the light.

He felt a gentle pressure, something soft touching his arm, and realized that it was a mammoth. He vaguely remembered seeing a mammoth when he had been in the big tent.

A bearded man squatted beside him. “We thought you might like Selah, our mammoth, for company, now that you are getting better.”

“Thank you,” Dennys said. “Who are you?”

“Yalith’s father, Noah.”

It was not always easy for Dennys to remember where he was. When his fever rose, he thought he was at home, and dreaming. When the fever dropped, he understood dimly that somehow or other he and Sandy had precipitated themselves into a primitive desert world inhabited by small brown people. He remembered Yalith, the beautiful, tiny person with amber hair and eyes who tended him gently. He remembered the slightly older person, and at least part of her name, Oholi, who poured first water and then unguents and oils onto his skin, and who seemed to know what to do to make him feel better. He remembered Japheth, Oholi’s husband, who, like a shepherd, had carried Dennys to this tent, which he thought of as a strange kind of hospital.

He had not seen Yalith’s father since he had been taken, half dead, from the big smelly tent to this smaller, quieter one. The piece of linen he had been given to lie on helped protect his raw, healing skin. Even so, it hurt to move. He shifted position carefully. “My brother Sandy, how is he?”

“Almost all well, I am told.” Noah’s deep voice was kind. The name had a familiar ring in this unfamiliar world, but Dennys could not place it in his fever-muddled mind. The man continued, “The women tell me he has made new skin. You, too, will be well soon.”

Dennys sighed. That was still hard to believe, with the remains of his skin coming off in painful patches, leaving oozing misery until dark scabs formed. “When can I see my brother?”

“As soon as you are well. Not long.”

“Where is he?”

“As you have been told. In my father Lamech’s tent.”

“I keep forgetting.”

“That is from the sun fever.”

“Yes. Brain fever, I think it used to be called in India.”

“India?”

 “Oh. Well. That’s a place on our planet where the British—people with skin like mine—used to go to, oh, muck around with white men’s burdens and stuff, and built an enormous empire. Anyhow, they couldn’t take the sun.  And their empire’s gone. Thank you for taking such good care of me. How did you know the right things to do for burns?”

“It was mostly common sense,” the man said. “Oholibamah can tell with her fingers how much fever you have, and we try to cool you accordingly. And she consulted with the seraphim about the use of herbs.”

“Who are the seraphim?” Dennys asked.

The stocky, brown man smiled. “You are better. This is the first time you have asked questions.”

“You have been to see me before?”

“Several times.”

Selah snuggled up against him, and he put his arm around her, and his skin was healed enough so that her fur did not scratch and hurt. “And seraphim?”

“They are sons of El. We do not know where they came from, or why they are here.”

“Are they angels?”

“You have angels where you come from?”

“No,” Dennys said. “But we don’t have mammoths or virtual unicorns, either. I am not as much of a skeptic as I used to be.”

“Skeptic?”

“Someone who doesn’t believe in anything that can’t be seen and touched and proved one hundred percent. Someone who has to have laboratory proof.”

 “Lab what?”

“Oh. Well. I guess you can’t prove virtual particles any more easily than you can prove virtual unicorns.”

“What kind of unicorns?”

“Oh. Just what I call them.”

The man interrupted. “Are you feverish again?”

“No.” Dennys touched the back of his hand to his cheek, which felt quite cool. “Sorry. Your name is—what?”

“Noah. How many times do I have to tell you?”

Noah. Noah and the flood. So they were on their own earth after all, and not in some far-flung galaxy. Somehow or other, he and Sandy had been flung through time into the pre-flood desert. That was a lot better than being in some unknown corner of the universe. Or was it? “I wish I had a Bible,” he said.

“A— Perhaps you need a drink of something cool?”

“I’m all right. I’m sorry.” There would not have been a Bible in Noah’s time. Probably not even a written language. Not yet. Neither Dennys nor Sandy had given much of their concentration to Sunday school. They didn’t go in for stories.

No? He remembered their mother reading to them every night until too much homework got in the way. What did she read? Stories. Greek and Roman myths. Indian tales, Chinese tales, African tales. Fairy tales. Bible stories.

Who was Noah? Noah and the flood. Noah built an ark and took his wife, and their sons and their sons’ wives, and many animals, onto the ark. What about Yalith? He couldn’t remember anything about Yalith- Or Oholi—

Oholibamah. Japheth. Maybe that had a familiar ring.

Shem. Yes. Maybe. But not Elisheba. Elisheba was all right. She had rubbed ointment all over him one day, matter-of-factly, when something had taken Yalith and Oholi away, not flinching at the suppurating sores, the crusting scabs She had talked through, at, and around him the day she had attended him in the hospital tent, and he remembered her muttering something about it being a shame to leave the old grandfather all alone in his tent with only a mammoth to take care of him.

Selah snuggled against Dennys’s shoulder. He continued to try to think. There was Shem. And there was Ham. He barely remembered a small, pale man and a redheaded woman in the big tent that first night “Is Higgaion all right?” he asked suddenly.

“Higgaion?” Noah sounded surprised. “He’s helping take care of your brother “

“Are there many mammoths around?” Dennys asked.

“Very few. Many have been eaten by manticores, and most of the rest have fled to where they feel safer “ Noah shook his head “It is a hard time for mammoths. Hard times are coming for us all. El has told me that.”

Dennis frowned. This pre-flood world was weird. Mammoths. Manticores Virtual unicorns. Seraphim and—

“Who are the nephihm?” he asked.

Noah pulled at his beard. “Who knows? They are tall, and they have wings, though we seldom see them fly. They tell us that they come from El, and that they wish us well.  We do not know. There is a rumor that they are like falling stars, that they may be falling stars, flung out of heaven.”

“Seraphim, too?”

 “We do not know. We do not know how it is that their skin is young and not yet shriveled from the sun, though they are ageless, it would seem—older, even, than my Grandfather Methuselah.”

Old as Methuselah. It had a familiar ring. Vaguely.

Dennys shifted on Matred’s linen cloth. The remnant of his bundle of clothes had been found, and taken by Japheth and Oholibamah, to be aired and put away. In this hot land he would not need flannel shirts or cable-knit sweaters. He had been given a soft kid loincloth, and Yalith had told him that Sandy had been given one, too.

In this tent where he was recovering, the stench was less disturbing than in the big tent. Yalith had bathed him with water scented with herbs and flowers. Oholibamah had rubbed him with fragrant ointment. Both young women were reticent about where they came by the perfumes, and Dennys thought he had heard Yalith saying something about Anah and Mahlah. Anah: Ham’s redheaded wife, he reminded himself. Mahlah was Yalith’s sister, who, it appeared, seldom came home. Who were all these people he did not remember as being part of the story? He needed Sandy. Sandy might be able to suggest some way for them to get home before the flood. How much had this El told Noah?

Noah said, “El has told me that these are end times for us all. Perhaps we will have a great earthquake.”

“An earthquake?”

Noah shrugged. “The mind of El is a great mystery.”

“Is he good, this El?”

“Good and kind. Slow to anger, quick to turn again and forgive.”

 “But you still think he’s going to nuke everybody?”

“What’s that?”

“You think he’s going to send some big disaster and wipe everybody out?”

Noah shook his head. “It is true, as El says, that people’s hearts are turned to wickedness.”

“Yalith’s isn’t,” Dennys said. “Oholibamah’s and Japheth’s aren’t. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for them.”

“And for my wife, Matred,” Noah added. “I might not have let you stay in my tents had it not been for Matred.” He looked thoughtfully at Dennys. “Sometimes I have wondered why I let the women insist on keeping you. But I think you mean us no harm.”

“I don’t. We don’t. Listen, what about my brother? When can I see Sandy?”

“As you have been told, he is in my father’s tent.” Noah’s voice indicated that the subject was now closed.

“Have you seen him? Sandy?” Dennys asked.

“I do not go to my father’s tent.”

“Why not?”

“He is a stiff-necked old man, insisting on staying alone in his own tent, with his wells, the best in the oasis.”

“But why don’t you go see him?” Dennys was baffled.

“He is old. It is nearly time for him to die. He can no longer tend to his crops.”

“But don’t you help him?”

“I have all I can do, taking care of my herds and my vineyards.”

“But he’s your father!”

“He should not be so stubborn.”

“Listen, he’s taking care of Sandy all by himself. He doesn’t have Yalith or Oholibamah to do the nursing. Only the mammoth.”

“One of the women takes him a light every night.”

“But he’s your father,” Dennys protested. “Wouldn’t he appreciate it if you took him the night-light?”

Before Noah’s growl became audible, the tent flap shifted and a pelican waddled in, followed by Yalith. A pelican seemed a strange creature to appear in this desert place. The bird approached Dennys, then opened its enormous bill. and from it flowed a stream of cool, fresh water, filling the large bowl from which the women bathed him.

Dennys asked, “Hey, you’ve been here before, haven’t you?”

Yalith spoke delightedly. “He is truly better! He’s remembering things.”

The water felt healing as Yalith dipped a cloth in it and cooled his skin. She knelt beside him and with the cloth touched some of the loosened scabs. “They will soon be off.”

Dennys regarded the pelican. “Where did the water come from?”

“From Grandfather Lamech’s. And the pelican has been kind enough to bring it to us, flying across the oasis.”

The pelican nodded gravely to Dennys.

“Do you have a name?”

The pelican blinked.

Yalith said, “When he is a pelican, we usually call him pelican.”

“When he is a pelican! What else is he?”

“Don’t confuse the young giant,” Noah said.

“I can’t be much more confused than I am,” Dennys expostulated. It was a relief to know that he was still on his own planet; even so, he felt lost, and far from anything familiar.

The pelican stretched its angled wings toward the roof hole, raised its beak, seemed to thin out and stretch up-ward, and suddenly a tall and radiant personage was looking down at Dennys.

“What—“ he gasped.

“A seraph,” Yalith said.

The glowing skin of the seraph was the color of Yalith’s, and there were great silvery wings, and hair the color of the wings. Was it a man? A woman? Did it matter? Yet, with Yalith and Oholibamah, and even more with Anah, Dennys was very well aware that he was male and they were female.

The seraph raised its wings, then dropped them loosely.  “Fear not. I am Aland, and I have been helping with your healing. At last you are getting better. No. Don’t try to stand. You are still too weak.” Strong arms enfolded Dennys, and he was taken out of the tent and lowered onto a soft bed of moss. In the starlight, the moss shimmered like water.

“There,” the seraph said. “So. I am Alarid. And you are the Den.”

“Dennys.”

“Den is simpler.”

“And your name is Alarid? And what about Oholibamah?”

Alarid smiled gravely. “I take your point, Dennys. Forgive me. Now, I have conferred with my companion, Adnarel, who has been helping to take care of the Sand.”

 “Sandy. Alexander.”

“Alexander? Is there not an Alexander who wants to conquer the world?”

“Not in our time,” Dennys said. “Way back in history. Not as far back as now. But back.”

“Ah,” Alarid said. “I tend to see time in pleats. Now, Dennys, there seems to be considerable confusion over who and what you are, and why you are here.”

In his weakness, Dennys could not hold back the tears which sprang to his eyes. “We are fifteen-year-old boys who come from a long time away.”

“You come from a far time, and yet you speak the Old Language?”

 “The whatP”

“The Old Language, the language of creation, of the time when the stars were made, and the heavens and the waters and all creatures. It was the language which was spoken in the Garden—“

“What garden?”

“The Garden of Eden, before the story was bent. It is the language which is still, and will be, spoken by all the stars which carry the light.”

“Then,” Dennys said flatly, “I don’t know why I speak it.”

“And speak it with ease,” Aland said.

“Does Sandy speak it, too?” Dennys asked.

Alarid nodded. “You were both speaking it when you met Japheth and Higgaion in the desert, were you not?”

“We certainly didn’t realize it,” Dennys said. “We thought we were speaking our own language.”

Alarid smiled. “It is your own language, so perhaps it is best that you didn’t realize it. Do others of your time and place speak the Old Language?”

“I don’t know. Sandy and I aren’t any good at languages.”

“How can you say that,” Alarid demanded, “when you have the gift of the original tongue?”

“Hey. I don’t know. Sandy and I are the squares of the family. Our older sister and our little brother are the special ones. We’re just the ordinary—“

Alarid interrupted him. “Because that is how you are, or because that is how you choose to be?”

Dennys looked at the seraph, his eyes widening. “What happened to the Old Language?”

“It was broken at Babel.”

“Babel?”

“The tower of human pride and arrogance. It has not happened yet, in this time you are in now. You do not know the story?”

Dennys blinked. “I think I remember something. People built a big tower, and for some reason they all began to speak in different languages, and couldn’t understand each other anymore. It was in, oh, pre-history, and it’s a story to sort of, explain why there are so many different languages in the world.”

“But underneath them all,” Alarid said. “is the original language, the old tongue, still in communion with the ancient harmonies. It is a privilege to meet one who still has the under-hearing.”

“Hey,” Dennys said. “Listen. I guess because we got here so unexpectedly and everything was so strange, and we didn’t have time to think, and when we met Japheth it just seemed natural to speak to him—“

“It is a special gift,” Alarid told him.

“We’re not special, neither Sandy nor I. We’re just the sort of ordinary kid who gets along without making waves.”

“Where in the future,” Alarid asked him abruptly, “do you come from?”

“A long, long way,” Dennys said. “We live at the end of the twentieth century.”

Alarid closed his eyes. “A time of many wars.”

“Yes.”

“And the heart of the atom has been revealed.”

“Yes.”

“You have soiled your waters and your air.”

“Yes.”

“Because you speak the Old Language there must be some reason for you to be here. But for the future to touch the past can be dangerous. It could cause a paradox. How did you get here?”

“I’m not sure.” Dennys frowned, then added, “Our father is a physicist who specializes in space travel, in the tesseract.”

“Ah, yes. But space travel is supposed to deal with space, not time.”

Dennys said, “But you can’t separate space and time. I mean, space/time is a continuum, “and . . .”

Yalith and Noah came out of the tent, and Yalith put her hand lightly against Alarid’s. “Look, he is very pale.  You are tiring him.”

“Be careful of our young giant,” Noah warned.

Aland regarded Dennys. “You are right. This is enough for tonight.” The seraph’s eyes were compassionate, and their silver-green seemed to darken. “I am glad that you are better, and that you are coming back to yourself. Please, be very careful what you say, what you do. Be careful that you do not change anything.”

“Listen,” Dennys said. “All I want is to go home. To my own time. I’m just grateful to be on my own planet, and I’m not a bit interested in rewriting the Bible.” Did Alarid know that there was going to be a Bible? That there was going to be a flood? He looked at the seraph, whose face, serene and severe at the same time, did not change expression. Dennys was willing to accept that Alarid and the pelican who brought the water were some-how one and the same, but he was not willing to accept that his presence in this time and place might have an effect on anyone except himself. And, of course. Sandy.

“Sleep well, Dennys,” Alarid said. “Yalith and Oholibamah will continue to take good care of you.”

Yalith, Dennys thought. For Yalith he might be willing to change history.

Sandy could not sleep. Not only was the tent hot, but Higgaion was snoring. Grandfather Lamech was not.  Grandfather Lamech was tossing. Turning. Grunting.

Sighing.

At last. Sandy could not stand it any longer. He crawled over to Grandfather Lamech’s sleeping skins. “Grandfather, are you awake?”

“Urn.”

 “What’s the matter?”

The old man grunted.

Sandy spoke to him as he would have to Dennys. “Come on. I know something’s bothering you. What is it?”

“El spoke to me.”

Sandy tried to peer at him through the dark. Did this mean that the old man was about to die? Right then? That night?

But the old man said, “Great troubles are coming after I die. Terrible things are going to happen.”

“What kind of terrible things?”

Lamech moved restlessly. “El did not say. Only that men’s hearts are evil and hard, and it repents El that he has made human creatures.”

“So what’s he going to do about it?”

“I don’t know,” Lamech said. “But I fear for my son and his family. El plans to spare no one. I fear for Yalith.  I fear for you. Sand, so far from your home.”

“Oh, I can take care of myself,” Sandy said automatically. But his words sounded hollow.

Yalith and Oholibamah came to Dennys in the deep dark just before dawn.

“You need to get out of the tent into some air,” Oholibamah told him. “You need to exercise. You will not recover until you walk about under the sky.”

“Starlight is healing.” Yalith’s voice was as gentle, he thought, as a small brook. But there were no brooks in this arid land.

He followed them out of the tent. Each took one of his hands, and their hands were small as children’s. They walked past the grove which served as outhouse, which was as far from the tents as he had ventured. Beyond them, the large tent was a dark shadow, with the smaller tents clustered about it.

His bare feet were still tender, and he walked gingerly.  The girls guided him to the smoothest ways, until the sharp dry grasses and pebbles gave way to sand, and they were in the desert. The sand felt cool to the burning soles of his feet.

They paused at a low slab of white rock, which cast a silvery shadow on the sand. “Japheth and I agreed that this is as far as you should go,” Oholibamah said. “Let’s sit here and rest for a while. We’ll take you back to the tent before dawn.”

He sat between them on the rock, leaning back on his elbows so that he could look up at the sky. “I’ve never seen so many stars.”

“You don’t have stars where you come from?” Yalith asked.

“Oh, yes, we have stars. But our atmosphere is not as clear as yours, and not nearly as many stars are visible.”

Yalith clasped Dennys’s arm tightly. “It is frightening when the stars are hidden by the swirling sand. Their song is distorted, and I can’t hear what they say.”

“What the stars say?” Dennys asked.

“Listen,” Yalith suggested. “Alarid says you are able to understand.”

At first, Dennys heard only the desert silence. Then, in the distance, he heard the roar of a lion. Behind them, on the oasis, the birds chirred sleepily, not yet ready for their dawn concert. A few baboons called back and forth. He listened, listened, focusing on one bright pattern of stars.  Closed his eyes. Listened. Seemed to hear a delicate, crystal chiming. Words. Hush. Heal. Rest. Make peace. Fear not.  He laughed in excitement. Opened his eyes to twinkling diamonds.

Yalith laughed, too. “What did they say?”

“They told me—I think—to get well, and—and to make peace. And not to be afraid. At least, I think I heard them, and I don’t think it was just my imagination.” Suddenly he was glad that Sandy was not there. Sandy was pragmatic.  Sandy would likely think Dennys was hallucinating from sunstroke. At school, if Dennys got lost in a daydream, Sandy always managed to cover for him.

“Yes, that is what the stars told you.” Yalith turned toward him with a delighted smile, very visible in the starlight. “You see!” she said to Oholibamah. “It is not everybody who can listen to the night. If the stars told you to make peace. Den, perhaps you will be the one to make peace between my father and my grandfather.”

“A big perhaps,” Oholibamah said.

“But maybe, maybe he can.” She turned back to Dennys.

“What else do you hear?”

Dennys listened again. Heard the wind rattling the palm leaves like sheafs of paper. There seemed to be words in the wind, but he could not make any sense out of them. “I can’t understand anything clearly—“

Yalith withdrew her fingers and clasped her hands together. Shook her head. Opened her eyes. “The wind seems to be talking of a time when she will blow very hard, over the water. That’s strange. The nearest water is many days away from here. I cannot understand what she is trying to say.”

“The wind blows where she wills,” Oholibamah said.  “Sometimes she is gentle and cooling. Sometimes she is fierce and blows in our eyes and stings our skin like insects and we have to hide in the tents until she is at peace again.  It is good, dear Den, that you have not come at a time when the wind blows hot against the sand. You will heal better now, at the time when she is more gentle, and the grapes and gardens grow.”

They were silent then, listening to the dawn noises becoming louder, as birds and baboons began to get ready to greet the day. Tentatively. Dennys reached for Yalith’s hand. She gave his fingers a little squeeze, then freed herself and jumped up. “It is time we took you back to the tent. This is more than enough for a first excursion. How do you feel?”

“Wonderful.” Then, acknowledging: “A little tired.” It would be good to lie down on the soft linen spread over the skins. To sleep a little. To have something cool to drink. He stifled a yawn.

“Come.” Oholibamah held out her strong hands. To his surprise, he needed her help in getting up.

When Yalith and Oholibamah needed ointments and unguents for Dennys’s burned skin, Anah, or Mahlah, if she happened to be home, would take them across the oasis to the close cluster of houses and shops to meet Tiglah, Anah’s sister.

 “I don’t like it,” Japheth said to his wife. “I don’t like your going to such places.”

She bent toward him to kiss him. “We don’t go in. I wouldn’t take Yalith into such a place even if Mahlah—“

Japheth gave a shout of anger and anguish. “What has happened to Mahlah!”

Oholibamah said, softly, “We all have choices to make, dear one, and we do not all choose the same way.”

“Why can’t I get what you need for you?”

“Oh, love, it is a house for women. You would not be welcome.”

“I have seen men coming out. And nephilim.”

“Japheth. My own. Please don’t argue. We’ll be all right. Anah is tough.”

“And Mahlah?”

Oholibamah put her arms around her husband, pressed her cheek against his. Did not answer.

Mahlah went with Oholibamah and Yalith less and less frequently, because she was less and less often in the home tent. And when she was there, she came in late, after everybody else was asleep, then slept late herself, and managed to avoid confrontation with Matred.

Matred. herself, allowed Mahlah to avoid her. She was waiting for her daughter to come to her and her husband with Ugiel, according to custom, but Ugiel did not come, and Mahlah did not speak, and Matred said nothing to Noah of Mahlah’s betrothal to a nephil. Until the betrothal was made formal, and recognized by Mahlah’s family, there would be no talk of marriage.

Marriages were often casual affairs, no more than an agreement between the two sets of parents, with the bride’s mother and father bringing her to the tent of the groom.  Matred liked to have things done properly, not overdone, but well done. Yalith and Mahlah’s two older sisters, Seerah and Hoglah, had been taken to their husbands’ tents after Matred and Noah had prepared a feast, with plenty of Noah’s good wine.

Elisheba, Shem’s wife, had come quietly to Noah’s compound and Shem’s tent, accompanied by her widowed father, and bearing several gold rings, and her teraphim.  the small figures of her household gods. Anah, Matred said, had had a vulgar wedding, with crowds of people, many uninvited. There were musicians, dancers, and far too much wine, inferior, at that—who would dare compete with Noah’s wine?—for far too many days. Such excesses were not only unnecessary, they were unseemly.

Cleaning out the big tent with Yalith’s help, Matred said, “I do not understand Mahlah.”

Yalith shook out a sleeping skin. “Neither do I. I wish she would come speak to you and Father, instead of avoiding you.”

Matred fiercely beat the dust out of one of the floor skins. “If your father knew what she’s up to, he’d be furious. There’s something on his mind, something he’s not telling me about, or he’d have noticed her strange behavior. You think that this Ugh—“

“Ugiel.”

“That nephil—you think he means to marry her?”

“I don’t know.” Yalith scrubbed out one of the stone lamps with sand. “Mahlah thinks so.”

“Speak to her,” Matred begged, “Try to make her see reason. All she needs is to come to us with her nephil and tell us that they are betrothed, and we will make all the arrangements for a wedding feast.”

“I’ll try,” Yalith said, “but I’m not sure she’ll listen.” Mahlah had always been closer to and more like the older sisters than Yalith, the youngest, the different one. “I’ll try,” she reassured her mother.

The next day she went with Oholibamah and Anah to get a fresh supply of the ointment that softened Dennys’s scabs. Perhaps Mahlah would be with the redheaded Tiglah, and Yalith could talk with her then.

Anah walked slowly, with her usual undulating of hips.

Yalith and Oholibamah walked on ahead.

“Tiglah frightens me,” Yalith whispered to Oholibamah. “I know she’s Anah’s sister, and she is probably the most beautiful woman on the oasis, but—“

“Her beauty is for sale,” Oholibamah stated flatly. “But there is no reason to be afraid of her.”

They turned onto the narrow path which ran between low white stone buildings. “I don’t like coming here,” Yalith murmured.

“I don’t like it, either,” Oholibamah said, “but there is no other way to get the salves for the Den. The last of his scabs will be off in a few days. Then we can forget the ointment. The herbal water the pelican brings will be enough.”

“Den is getting better,” Yalith said. “That’s one good thing.”

“Only one?” Oholibamah laughed.

Yalith shuddered. “Everything seems to be changing. Mahlah avoids our parents. And my father keeps hearing the Voice in the vineyards, and whatever it says is upsetting him, but he won’t tell us what El says.”

“What El says is good.” Ohoiibamah smiled. “El said that Japheth was to marry. That is why I am here.”

“You wouldn’t rather have waited?”

“I love Japheth.” Oholibamah’s voice was tender. “I know we were both very young and unready for marriage.  But we love each other. When the time comes, we will have children together.”

Yalith sighed. “I would like to love someone the way you love Japheth.”

“Be patient, little sister. Your time will come.”

They had reached the white house with the brightly beaded curtains at the entry, the house where Tiglah got the ointments they needed, and they stopped to wait for Anah, who made it very clear that she was doing them a great favor in being the go-between- The beads glittered and jangled, and Tiglah came out, followed by Mahlah—

Tiglah with her head of radiant red hair, Mahlah with her cascade of black hair, the two girls startling foils for each other.

“Where’s Anah?” Tiglah asked.

“She’s coming.” Oholibamah looked balk down the path to where Anah was slowly following them.

“Mahlah!” Yalith exclaimed. “I’m glad to see you. I need to talk to you.”

Mahlah raised her hands and pushed back a thick fall of black hair. “That’s funny. I want to talk to you, too.  Shall we go inside?”

 “No.” Yaltth drew back. “Please—“

“I could have your hair brushed,” Mahlah coaxed, “the way Tiglah’s and mine is, so it would look more beautiful.”

“No,” Yalith repeated.

Mahlah shrugged. “We can sit over here then, while Anah and Oholibamah go with Tiglah to get the ointment.” She led Yalith a little way down the path to a low wall. Yalith, with sudden and unexpected shock, saw that Mahlah’s usually flat belly was softly rounding.

“Mahlah,” she urged. “Please, please, you and Ugiel please come to our parents and tell them that you’re betrothed.”

Mahlah’s little hands proudly touched the small roundness. “And will be married soon.”

“Then please come and tell them. Mother will need time to prepare a wedding feast.”

“No, she won’t,” Mahlah said. “That is not how things are done with the nephilim. I will have a nephil wedding.”

“But Mother—“

Again Mahlah’s little hands stroked her stomach. “I’m sorry, really, I’m sorry. But she had it her own way with our sisters. She’ll probably have it her own way with you.  So she’ll just have to let me do it my way.”

“But why? Isn’t the old way good enough for you?”

Mahlah laughed. “Customs change. We have to move with the times.” There was a slight hiss to her speech which Yalith had never heard before. She sounded more like Ugiel than like Mahlah. The sisters sat side by side on the wall, the silence between them becoming more and more uncomfortable, until at last Yalith broke it.

 “What did you want to see me about?”

“Can’t you guess?”

No.”

 “Eblis.”

Yalith looked at her in surprise. “But why—“

“He likes you,” Mahlah said. “He says he has offered to teach you.”

“No—“

“Why not?”

 “I’m taking care of the Den. That’s why we’re here, to get salve for him.”

Again Mahlah sounded more like Ugiel than like Yalith’s sister. “That’s all very noble. But it needn’t stop you from going out with Eblis. Don’t you realize what an honor that is, to have Eblis interested in you?” She sounded strangely sibilant.

“I know he does me much honor.” Yalith’s voice was low.

“What’s wrong, then?”

“I have to stay with the Den,” Yalith whispered.

“I know you’re taking good care of him. But Oholi is there, too, isn’t she?”

“She—she is Japheth’s wife. She has to be in her own tent. She tells me what to do, but—“

“Little sister,” Mahlah said. “Don’t be foolish.”

Yalith looked down at her long, straight toes. Blurted out, “I don’t care about Eblis as much as I do about the Den and the Sand.”

“What!” Mahlah was scandalized.

“You heard me.”

“But we don’t know if they’re even human!”

 “We know that the nephilim are not,” Yalith retorted.

“They’re more than human,” Mahlah said proudly. “The two—what are they? twins?—they seem subhuman.”

“No,” Yalith protested. “They’re human, I know they are.”

“Giants human?”

“Yes.”

“And you think if you start going out with giants, human or no, our parents wouldn’t be upset?”

“Everybody loves them ...”

“Yes? Anyhow, they’re too young, much too young.”

“I know that.” Yalith hung her head even lower. “But I think that, where they come from, years are counted differently than here. And I would be willing to wait.”

“For which one?” Mahlah demanded.

A slow flush spread across Yalith’s cheeks. She still thought of the twins as one person divided into two places.  “I saw the Sand first, in Grandfather Lamech’s tent. and I have helped bring the Den back to life when he was nearly dead.”

“That is not enough reason for this stupidity. Eblis can give you anything you want.”

“Even if I want the twins?”

”Don’t be a fool,” Mahlah snapped, and jumped down from the wall as Anah and Ohoiibamah came toward them, Ohoiibamah carrying a small jar.

“Well, Mahlah.” Anah looked at her pointedly. “Are you getting ready to move into your own tent?”

Mahlah smiled a secret smile and tossed her head so that the dark hair glinted in the light. “I will not have a tent. I will have a house, a house of white stones.” She drew back as a snake uncoiled at her feet, spreading a jeweled hood. “Ugiel—“ she gasped-

For a moment of mirage, the snake seemed to uncoil upward, to raise great lavender wings, to quiver with white skin and amethyst eyes. Then the mirage was gone and the snake undulated across the path and disappeared into a clump of scrubby palmettos-

Yalith reached for Oholibamah’s hand.

Anah gave Mahlah a malicious smiie. “Is he playing tricks with you?”

Mahlah raised her head proudly. “Ugiel comes to me only when I am alone.” She turned back to Yalith, asking in such a low voice that she excluded the others. “If it were not for the young giants, would you go with Eblis?”

“I don’t know,” Yalith said. “I don’t know.”

Mahlah spoke in a louder voice. “Tell our parents I’ll be sure to let them know when I’m married.”

“Couldn’t you bring yourself to tell them, beforehand?” Yalith begged.

Mahlah shrugged. “We’ll see. I have to go now.” And she turned back to the low white house and shouldered her way through the tinkling curtain of beads.

“Let’s go,” Anah said. “I have other things to do.” And instead of dawdling as she had done on the way in, she strode off impatiently.

Oholibamah spoke calmly. “It’s really very good of Anah, and of Tiglah, too, to get the ointments for us.”

“They aren’t doing it for nothing,” Yalith said. “I gave them all my share of the figs, and the crop was good this year. And you gave them all your almonds.”

Oholibamah stated a known fact. “Anah and Tiglah don’t know how to do something for nothing. That’s how they are.”

“But Mahlah wasn’t like that,” Yalith protested. “She’s changed. I don’t know her anymore.”

She jumped as a rat scuttled across her toes. Again there was a flickering of height, of wings and brilliant eyes, and then there was only the sleek body of the rat. Yalith thought of the dragon/lizard Eblis, who could offer her more than she could dream. And then she thought of the twins, of Sandy bowing to her in her grandfather’s tent, of Dennys sitting with her at night—Dennys, who was able to understand the language of the stars.

And she knew she would never go with Eblis.

She turned, to see tears in Oholibamah’s eyes. “Oholi,” she started in surprise.

Oholibamah reached up to wipe away her tears, smiled her quick smile. “This morning I saw my face reflected in the water jar. Oh, Yalith, little Yalith, I love my father, and now I don’t know it he is my father, after all.”

Yalith took her sister-in-law’s hand. “If you love him, he is your father, no matter what.”

Oholibamah nodded gratefully. “Thank you, little sister. I needed to hear that.”

“You are my brother’s wife,” Yalith continued, “and my friend. And if—well, if the nephilim are related to the seraphim, which my father believes, then you are like the seraphim.”

“Hurry up,” Anah called, and beckoned to them imperiously.

 “We’re coming,” Oholibamah said. And they hurried toward the central section of the oasis, where Noah’s vineyards were, and his grazing grounds, and his tents. And where Dennys was waiting for them.

The moon set, its path whiter than the desert sands dwindling into shadow. The stars moved in their joyous dance across the sky. The horizon was dark with that deep darkness which comes just before the dawn.

A vulture flew down, seemingly out of nowhere, stretching its naked neck, settling its dark feathers.

Vultures are underestimated. Without us, disease would wipe out all life. We clean up garbage, feces, dead bodies of man and beast. We are not appreciated.

No sound was heard and yet the words seemed scratched upon the air.

A scarab beetle burrowed up out of the sand and blinked at the vulture. —It is true. You help keep the world clean. I appreciate you.

And it disappeared beneath the sand.

A crocodile crawled across the desert, lumbering along clumsily, far from its native waters. It was followed by the dragon/lizard, who stretched his leather wings, showing off. A dark, hooded snake slithered past them both.

A small, brown, armored creature, not much bigger than the scarab beetle, skittered along beside the snake. —We are invulnerable. We have survived the fire of the volcanoes, the earthquakes that pushed the continents apart and raised the mountain ranges. We are immortal. We cover the planet.

A bat, brighter than gold, swooped low over the cockroach. —You are proud, and you can survive fire and ice, but I could eat you if I had to. I hope I never have to.

And the golden bat soared high, a bright flash against the dark.

A tiny mimicry of a crocodile, with a blunt nose, a skink scrabbled along beside the crocodile and the dragon/lizard.

I am small, and swift, and my flesh is not edible and causes damage to the brain. I am the way that I am. That is how I am made.

On the skink’s back, a flea tried to dig through the armored flesh. —I, too, am the way that I am.

A shrill whine cut across the clear air. A mosquito droned. —I, too. I, too. I will feast on your blood.

A small, slimy worm wriggled across the sand, leaving a thin trail. A slug’s viscous path followed. —I am not like the snail, needing a house. I am sufficient unto myself.

A red ant crawled along the dragon/lizard’s wing, and held tight as it tried to shake the biting insect off. A rat, sleek and well filled, wriggled its nose and whiskers and looked at the vulture’s naked neck. —I, too, eat the filth off the streets. I eat flesh. I prefer living flesh, but I will take what I can get. I, too, help keep the world clean.

No sound was heard. Like negative light, the words cracked the desert night.

The twelve oddly assorted creatures began to position themselves into a circle.

The nephilim.

Oholibamah lay in Japheth’s arms on a large, flat stone a short walk into the desert. So intent were they in each other that they did not notice the lion pacing past them, the pelican flying high in the sky, the scarab beetle coming out of the sand.

“My beloved,” Japheth whispered into the pearly shell of Oholibamah’s ear. “My mother spoke to me about it long ago. If you have nephil blood, it explains some of your healing power.”

“But I don’t know—it isn’t certain—“

Japheth covered her mouth with his. Then pulled back just enough to say, “You are my wife, and we are one, and that is all that matters.”

And they were one. And it was good.

Yalith left the tent and went outside to wait for dawn.  She had spent over an hour working at Dennys’s scabs, carefully pulling off those which were loose enough. Most of the oozing sores had healed. More and more of Dennys’s care was given over to her, as Oholibamah could trust her to do what the boy needed. Oholibamah, after all, had duties in her own tent.

Matred prepared meals for the boy, soups, and mashed fruits which were soft enough for him to swallow.

“But what do we do with him when he is well?” Noah asked his wife.

“He is our guest,” Matred said. “We ask him what we can do to help him.”

“He wants to go home,” Yalith said.

“Yes, but where is home?” her mother asked.

Now Yalith crossed one of her father’s vineyards, went to the small grove that the women used. and relieved herself, then walked on until she came to where the desert lapped whitely against the oasis. She picked up a handful of the fine sand and rubbed it against her palms, between her fingers, to clean them.

The moon had set, and the dawn stars were low on the horizon. She would take a long nap the next day during the heat of the sun. Often, the best sleeping was done then.

In the coolness just before morning she liked to go sit on one of the great exposed rocks and rest, and listen to the slow song of the setting stars. Lamech, her grandfather, had taught her how to listen to the stars. Only Yalith and Japheth, of Noah and Matred’s children, could understand the celestial language.

Matred tended to think it a waste of time. “I have too much to do, keeping tent. How else would I keep the soup pot full for the poor who come to us for food? Who would keep the manticore from eating Selah if I didn’t have boiling wine to throw in its ugly face? Who would see to it that the great auk’s eggs aren’t stolen? Who else dares to speak to the gorgons and griffins? And what with everybody’s appetite, I never have a chance to get away from the hearth.”

Yalith did her fair share of the work, and now she was doing most of Mahlah’s, too, but she needed time to herself, to listen to what the stars might have to say. Her father heard a Voice in the vineyards, but it seemed to Yalith that in the quiet dawn there were voices all around her, waiting to speak, waiting for her to hear. When the birds woke and started their orchestra, the other voices would be quiet. She was filled with a vague sense of foreboding, but she had to come and listen.

When she was not listening for whatever it was that was going to be spoken, she found her mind sliding to thoughts of the twins. As she spent more time with Dennys, nursing him through the chills and fever of his delirium, she saw that the twins might look alike but they were definitely not one boy in two skins.

The twins were often the topic of conversation in the big tent in the evenings—how they were alike, and how they were different. It was generally accepted that they must be some strange breed of giant, from the other side of the mountains. Although they were immensely tall, they were also unbelievably young.

“Fifteen, he told me,” Matred said one evening when it was she who had taken the lamp to Grandfather Lamech, and some of her special broth to Sandy. “Fifteen,” she re-peated to the others in the big tent. “At fifteen, our men are still children. The Sand and the Den are not babies. I simply do not understand.”

“The Den is certainly not a baby,” Yalith replied. “Now that he is getting better, he is full of questions. He wants to know what the herbs are that the pelican puts in the water, and what the salves are made of.”

“The Sand,” Elisheba said, “wants to know where the salves come from. They are certainly full of questions.” She laughed her hearty laugh and told them that Sandy had wanted to know who ran the oasis. Was there a mayor?  Or a selectman?

The words had no meaning. Elisheba had told Sandy that those who sought power were greedy, wanting gifts, and bribes, and willing to steal from the poor. “Shem hunts for us all, and I help with the winemaking,” she said contentedly. “That is enough for us. We have plenty to eat, and to give to those in need. Matred is a good mother to us all, with her fine sons and daughters.”

“Mahlah and Yalith are not married yet,” Matred prodded.

“They are still young,” Noah said.

“I thought the Voice told you—“

“Not about Mahlah and Yalith. They should have time to grow up.”

“I think,” Matred said pointedly, “that Mahlah is grown up.”

Yalith sat on the cool, starlit stone, the echoes of the evening’s conversation still in her ears. She wondered if Matred had noticed the swelling of Mahlah’s belly—

Mahlah, whose betrothal to the nephil was not yet acknowledged by her mother.

Yalith was so deep in thought that the stars had to hiss at her to get her attention.

Yalith looked up and saw a circle of strange animals. In the center of the circle stood Mahlah, looking pale and frightened. Her dark hair covered her breasts, her body.  Yalith started to cry out, to leap up and go to her sister, but it seemed that a firm hand came across her mouth, held her down on the rock.

The cobra uncoiled, hood spreading, swaying as though to unheard music, then stretched up and up into the loveliness of lavender wings, and amethyst eyes that reflected the starlight. “I, Ugiel, call my brothers. Naamah!”

The vulture stretched its naked neck, until great black wings and coal-black eyes in a white face were revealed.

“Rofocale!”

A shrill drone, a mosquito whine, and then there stood on the desert a nephil with wings of flaming red and eyes like garnets.

“Eisheth!”

The crocodile opened its mouth, showing its terrible teeth. It appeared to swallow itself, and vomit forth a tall, green-winged, emerald-eyed nephil.

Yalith trembled as she saw the dragon/lizard.

“Eblis!”

He burst from his scales, beautiful; awe-inspiring.

“Estael!”

The cockroach scuttled a few inches and then burst open and dust rose, and dissipated to reveal another of the nephilim.

“Ezequen!” The skink.

“Negarsanel!” The flea.

“Rugziel!” The worm.

“Rumael!” The slug.

“Rumjal!” The red ant.

“Ertrael!” The rat.

One by one, the creatures transformed themselves into the nephilim with their white skin and brilliant, multi-colored wings.

Ugiel raised his arms- “I, Ugiel, in the presence of my brother nephilim, take to wife . Mahlah, penultimate daughter of Noah and Matred.”

Mahlah slowly moved toward him, was folded in the great wings.

Yalith fought for breath. Her chest felt constricted, and she gasped for air.

Then she saw that there was another circle, outside the circle of the nephilim.

The pelican who daily brought water for her pitcher stretched himself into the tall, bright personage with silvery hairand wings- “Alarid!”

Light seemed to flash against the bronze shell of the scarab beetle, who rose up in a rush of golden wings and burnished skin. “Adnarel!”

A tawny lion with a great ruff of fur about its neck rose on its hind legs and stretched into its seraphic form.  “Aariel!” The golden tips of his wings glimmered in the starlight.

A golden snake, as large as the cobra, but as bright as the cobra was dark, called out as it was transformed, “Abasdarhon!”

One by one, the seraphim called out their names as they changed form. A golden bat shot up into the air. “Abdiel!”

A ruffled white owl widened its round silver eyes, and the eyes were suddenly the silver eyes in a seraphim’s face, and moon-blue wings seemed to touch the sky. “Akatriel!”

A white leopard, swift as the wind, called, “Abuzohar!”

A soft, furred mouse rose, crying, “Achsah!.” By the mouse a tiger moved, stood, stretched. “Adabietl” A white camel and a giraffe rose moments apart.  “Admael!”

“Adnachiel!”

Lastly, a white goose flew skyward, its wings changing to snow-white. “Aalbiel!”

There seemed a healing in the calling of their names.

Although the circle of seraphim was outside that of the nephilim, when they spread their great wings to the fullest span the wing tips touched.

Likewise, the nephilim raised their wings, turning so that they faced the seraphim, and the glory of their wings brushed.

“Brothers,” Alarid said. “You are still our brothers.”

Ugiel touched his lavender wings to Alarid’s silver ones.

“No. We have renounced you and all that you stand for. This planet is ours. Its people are ours. We do not know why you stay.”

Aiarid replied firmly, “Because, no matter how loudly you renounce us, we are still brothers, and that can never be changed.”

For a fragment of a second, Ugiel seemed more cobra than nephil. Yalith choked back a scream. Mahlah, small and frail, still stood in the center of the circle, protected only by her dark hair.

Eblis, shimmering in and out of his dragon/lizard form, touched wings with Aariel. “We have made our choice.  We have forsworn heaven.”

“Then the earth will never be yours.” Aariel was once more a lion, and with a great roar he galloped away, vanishing into the far horizon.

The two circles broke up with a great flurry of brilliant wings. Yalith blinked, and when she opened her eyes, she saw only a tall, lavender-winged nephil, with his arm tenderly about Mahlah—Mahlah, who was no smaller than any other woman of the oasis, but who came barely to Ugiel’s waist.

Yalith sat on the rock, as though frozen into motionlessness. Ugiel’s wings spread, wrapped gracefully, protectingly, about Mahlah. Yalith thought she caught a whiff of stone. Then there was a flash, not bright like the unicorns’, but a flash of darkness even darker than the night, and then the desert in front of her was empty. Mahlah and Ugiel were gone.

She cried out in fear.

 “Little one,” a gentle voice spoke behind her. “Why are you afraid?”

She turned to see Eblis, his purple wings lifted so that they seemed to mingle with the night sky.

“Mahlah—“ she said. “I am afraid for Mahlah.”

“Why fear, my precious? Ugiel will take care of her. As I will take care of you. There are rumors on the oasis of fearful things to come, the volcano erupting, the mountain falling, earthquakes such as have never been felt before, terrible heavings unlike the silly little tremors you hardly notice.”

She nodded. “I think my father is afraid. But what can we do? If the volcano is going to erupt, there is no way we can stop it.”

“No. Nor can you run from it. But I will protect you.”

“How?”

“Nephilim have powers. If you will come with me, I will keep you safe.”

“Come with you? Where?”

“I will make a home for you full of lovely things. You will no longer have to steep on rough skins, still smelling of animals. I will give you food and wine such as you have never tasted. Come, my lovely little jewel, come with me.”

“When—“ She faltered.

“Now. Tonight.”

She thought of the two circles, the seraphim and the nephilim. It was Eblis who was offering her protection, not Aariel. Mahlah had gone with Ugie., not with Alarid.

“What about my family?” she asked. “What about my twins?”

 “Only you,” Eblis said. “That is as far as my powers I extend.”

She looked up at the stars. Shook her head. “Twin Den still needs me.”

“Love is patient,” Eblis said. “I will wait. But I think, that in the end you will come to me.” His hand soothed her soft, burnished hair, and there was pleasure in his touch.

She blinked, looked at the brilliant pattern of stars, and it seemed that she could see Sandy bowing to her in her grandfather’s tent, could see Dennys holding her hand as the pain of his burns made him cry out.

Eblis touched her hair again. “I will wait.”

Japheth came to visit Dennys, examined him carefully, touching the remaining scabs, gently pulling off a flaking strip of paper-thin skin. “You are better.”

“Much better.” Dennys smiled at him, and the smile no longer seemed to crack the burned skin of his face. “1 go out at night with Yalith and Oholibamah, and we listen to the stars.”

“It is good that you can hear the stars.” Japheth sat beside Dennys on a pile of skins, putting his hands, stained purple from winemaking, on his brown knees.

Dennys looked troubled. “They keep telling me to make peace. At least, I think that is what I hear the stars saying to me.”

Japheth nodded. “Oholi told me. Peace between my father and grandfather. Have you talked to my father about his quarrel with Grandfather Lamech?”

 “Yes, once when he came to visit me. But I didn’t really understand what their quarrel is about.”

“Water,” Japheth said flatly. “That is what most quarrels on the oasis are about Grandfather has the best and deepest wells on the oasis, and he’s letting his own gardens and groves go to seed in his old age.”

“But he lets you take all the water you need from his wells, doesn’t he?”

Japheth sighed, then laughed. “Oh, Den, the quarrel is so old and stupid I think that both my father and grandfather have forgotten what it is about. They are both stiff-necked and stubborn.”

“Your grandfather—what is he like? I mean, if he’s so old, is he able to take proper care of Sandy?”

“Oh, I’m sure he is. Grandfather Lamech is as hospitable as our mother, and kind, and gentle. It was he who taught.  Yalith and me to listen to the stars, and to understand the wind, and to love El.” He sighed again. “Oh, Den, I’m sorry to involve you in our family quarrel.”

Dennys sighed, too He did not reply. He looked up at the brazen sky, behind which were the stars. And they had already involved him.

He shivered.

Grandfather Lamech and Higgaion began taking Sandy out in the daylight, not into the direct and brutal sunlight, but in the shade of a thick grove. Like Dennys, Sandy wore only a loinskin. His underclothes were folded with the rest of his things, in case they were ever needed again. The loinskin, unlike his own clothes, could be scrubbed clean with sand and eventually discarded and replaced. He liked the freedom of the loinskin, liked the way his own skin had healed and was slowly turning a rosy tan.

Adnarel came by Grandfather Lamech’s tent almost every day, and as Sandy grew stronger and more willing to accept that he was not going to wake up in his own bed at home, he grew more aware of his surroundings and of the tender care given him by the tiny ancient man.

“Hey, Grandfather Lamech,” he said one morning after breakfast, “now that I’m better, it’s time I stopped free-loading.”

The old man looked at him questioningly. “What’s that?”

“What can I do to help?” Sandy asked. “I’ve never done any cooking, but isn’t there stuff outdoors I could do to be useful? At home, Dennys and I chop wood and mow the lawn and we have this huge vegetable-garden.”

At the mention of the garden, Lamech’s eyes brightened. “I have a vegetable garden, and lately I have much neglected it. Higgaion helps with the watering, but I am too old for the long hours of work, and now there are great weeds choking the plants.”

“Let me at it!” Sandy cried. “Dennys and I are terrific gardeners.”

Grandfather Lamech’s face creased into a broad smile.  “Not so fast, my son. The time for work in the garden is in the earliest morning, and just as the sun is setting in the evening.”

“Oh.”

The old man laughed. “Truly, you do not want to go out in the garden during the day, or you will be felled by the sun all over again. But as soon as the sun drops behind the palms I will show you the garden. I thank you, dear my Sand. You have been sent to me by El—this I believe.”

“Hey, it’s the least I can do,” Sandy protested.

In the late afternoon, when the sun’s rays were slanted, Lamech and Higgaion led him past a small grove to the garden, which was indeed in need of helping hands. Great weeds of varieties Sandy had never before seen grew higher than many of the vegetables. This was going to be a full-time job. The weeds had deep roots, he discovered as he tried to pull one up. He found a sharp stone and would have started digging had Lamech not stopped him.

“You are not quite ready for such hard work, and it is still hot. Tomorrow morning you can try coming out for an hour.”

“All right. It’ll make me feel at home, working in a garden again.” Sandy knew that he did not have to win Grandfather Lamech’s approval, but he had a deep sense of happiness that he could do something for the old man who had been so kind to him. Despite the profusion of weeds, the garden was lush with more vegetables than he had ever seen before. —Too bad there was no way to can or freeze them.

“We sun-dry some of these.” Lamech pointed to a long row of red ovals on tall, leafy stalks, and another of something purple that looked like eggplant but was twice the height of the plants at home. If these people of the desert were smaller than anyone Sandy had ever seen, their plants were larger. “That way,” the old man continued, “we can eat them in the winter in soups and stews. I have groves of fruit trees, too, that need pruning and harvesting. Japheth and Oholibamah come when they can, to help me out, but they have more than enough to do in my son’s vineyards.  It must have been ordered in the stars that you should come just as I have to accept that I can no longer manage on my own.” His face was joyful.

Sandy felt bathed in the old man’s joy. There was certainly going to be no time for boredom. And if there was plenty to do, there would be less time in which to worry about getting home.

One morning Adnaret said, “The Den is much improved.”

Sandy nodded. “Good. But why do you call us the Sand and the Den, as though Sands and Dens were some kind of rare species?”

Adnarel’s bright laugh pealed. “We picked it up from Japheth. And to Japheth the Sand and the Den are indeed rare species, of a kind never before seen on the oasis, or indeed on any oasis roundabout. It is good that your head is covered.” Adnarel nodded approvingly at the woven straw hat Matred had brought over one night with the night-light. “Lamech tells me you are doing valiant work in the garden.”

Sandy pulled the hat firmly down on his head. “Theweeds are something else. We have weeds at home, but not like these. But I’m getting rid of them, little by little. Hey-Does your name, Adnarel, mean anything?”

“That I am in the service of the Maker of the Universe.”

“Why are you sometimes Adnarel, the way you are now, and sometimes you seem to be a scarab beetle?” Sandy started to scratch his shoulder where skin still flaked, stopped himself.

“I am not sure you will understand,” Adnarel said. “The scarab beetle is my earthly host.”

“What on earth do you need an earthly host for?”

Adnarel sighed. “I said you might not understand.”

“Hey.” Sandy was indignant. “Dennys and I may not be the geniuses of the family, but we’re nobody’s idiots.”

“True,” Adnarel agreed. “And I suspect that you also understand that energy and matter are interchangeable.”

“Well, sure. Our parents are scientists.”

“On the other hand, you live in a time and place where those like myself are either forgotten or denied. It was not easy to get you to believe in a unicorn until the need was desperate.”

Unthinkingly, Sandy scratched his forearm, and shreds of skin blew across the ground. “When you’re in the scarab beetle, can you understand everything we say?”

“Certainly.”

“Then why do you bother to come out?”

“When I am in the scarab beetle, I must accept its limitations.”

Sandy grunted. “I think better when I have Dennys around to bounce ideas off. When am I going to be able to see him again?”

 “As soon as he is able to be moved. Grandfather Lamech has offered his hospitality. It is less noisy and crowded here than in the big tent.”

Sandy sighed. “People have been very kind to us. You, too.”

Adnarel smiled a smile so grave that it was not far from a frown. “We do not yet know why you are here. There must be a purpose to your presence. But we do not know what it is.” His eyes seemed to shoot golden sparks at Sandy. “Do you?”

“I wish I did,” Sandy said. “It all seems to have been some kind of silly accident.”

“I doubt that,” Adnarel said.

Noah came again to visit Dennys. “I am told that you are nearly well.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Oholibamah says that you will soon be ready to be moved.”

Dennys felt a surge of panic. “Moved? Where?”

“To my father Lamech’s tent. To be reunited with your brother.”

The panic subsided. “I would like that. Is it far?”

“Half the oasis.”

The tent flap had been pegged open, and through it and through the roof hole Dennys could hear the stars. Could hear their chiming at him. “Will you take me?”

Noah pulled at his beard. “I do not go to my father’s tent.”

“I don’t understand.”

 “It is his place to come to me.”

“Why? Aren’t you the son?”

“He is old. He cannot care for his land as it should be cared for.”

“I’m sorry, Father Noah. but I still don’t see why you won’t help him.”

“I told you.” Noah’s voice was gruff. “I work long hours in the vineyard. There is not time for coddling the old man.”                                                       |-

“Is speaking to your father coddling, or whatever you call it? Sandy and I get mad at our father. He pays more attention to our sister and our little brother than he to us, because they’re the geniuses and we’re only—but  even when we’re mad at him, he’s still our father.”

“So?”

“When we get home, we’re going to have a lot of explaining to do to our father. He will probably be very angry with us.”

“Why?”

“Well, we sort of got in the middle of something he was working on.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Noah said.

“Neither do I, exactly,” Dennys admitted. “The thing is, we’re going to have to talk to our father when we get home. It would be a stupid thing if we tried to avoid him.”

“So why are you telling me this?”

“Well— really do think you should talk with your father.”

“Umph.”

“I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but it sounds to me as though all this argument about wells and stuff has gone on for so long it doesn’t make sense anymore. And he’s an old man, and you’re much younger, and you should be strong enough to back down.”

“Backing down is being strong?”

“It takes a lot of courage to say ‘I’m sorry.’ That’s what Sandy and I are going to have to say to our father when we get home.”

“Then why say it?” Noah growled.

“Because things won’t be right between us till we do.”

“You’re too young to be telling me what to do.” Noah was testy. “You would not even be alive now if we hadn’t taken you in.”

“That’s true, and I am more grateful than words can say.” The stars chimed at him again. “Father Noah, please go see your father, and make peace with him before he dies.”

Noah grunted. Rose. Walked out of the tent.

Dennys looked at the patch of velvet sky he could see through the open flap. The stars were brilliant. And silent.

Tiglah, the red-haired, rubbed the juice of some red berries on her lips, over her cheekbones. Took a stick of wood which she had shredded at one end to make a brush, and used it on her abundant curls. She had taken the worst of the tangles out with her fingers, and the brush was only to add sheen.

I am beautiful, truly beautiful, she thought. —My hair is as red as my nephit’s wings. We are beautiful together.

A mosquito shrilled near her ear, lit on her neck, and bit.

“Ouch!” she protested. “Why did you do that?”

The mosquito was gone, and a nephil, with wings like name, stood before her. “Because you are indeed truly beautiful. You are so beautiful I could eat you up.”

She burst into tears. “Rofocale, don’t bite me!”

The nephil laughed. “It was just a tiny bite. Tell me, little Tiglah, have you seen again the young giant your father and brother threw out of your tent?”

“No. I think the women from Noah’s tent are nursing him.”

“Your sister?”

Tiglah laughed. “I wouldn’t want to depend on Anah if I needed nursing. The younger ones. Oholibamah and Yalith. Anah is helpful when they need ointments, and—“

“How did he get into your tent in the first place?”

She pouted. “How would I know? I called for a unicorn, and suddenly this pate young giant was there, too. I was sorry they threw him out. I’d like to have had a chance to talk with him.”

“Tiglah, my beauty, you’ll do anything I ask, won’t you?”

“As long as you don’t ask me to do anything I don’t want to do.”

“I want you to get to know this young giant. Find out where he comes from, why he is here. Wilt you do that for me?”

“With pleasure.”

“Not too much pleasure,” Rofocale chided. “I want him to be attracted to you. I do not want you to be attracted to him. You are mine. Are you not?”

She raised her lips to his. His lips were as red as hers, although no berry juice had been rubbed on them.

“Mine,” Rotocale purred. “Mine, mine, mine.”

In the cool of the evening. Sandy sat on the low bench made by the root of the old fig tree. Higgaion was curled up at his feet, making little bubbles as he slept and dreamed.

A man with a full brown beard flecked with white, and with springing brown hair, strode toward him, turning in from the public path and toward Grandfather Lamech’s tent. He went up to boy and mammoth. Stared. “You are the Sand.”

“I am Sandy. Yes.”

“They told me that you look like one boy in two bodies. Now I believe them.”

“Who are you?” Sandy asked curiously.

“I am Noah. Your brother is in one of my tents, and my wife and daughters are taking good care of him.”

“Thank you,” Sandy said. “We’re very grateful.”

Noah continued to stare at him. “If I did not know that the Den is in one of my tents, I would think that you were he. How can this be?”

“We’re twins,” Sandy explained wearily.

“Twins. We have known nothing of twins before.” He paused and looked at Sandy, then at the tent. “Is my father in his tent?”

Sandy nodded. “He’s resting.” Then he added. “But I know he’d be happy to see you.” He wished he felt as certain as he sounded. Grandfather Lamech struck him as being a very stubborn person, with his natural stubbornness augmented by age.

Without speaking further, Noah went into the tent.

Noah!

Suddenly the name registered. Sandy had not heard Noah called by name. Lamech referred to him, when he spoke of him, as ‘my son.’ The women who came with the night-light called him Father.

Noah.

The galaxies seemed to swirl. Sandy had been convinced that he and Dennys had blown themselves somewhere far from home, at least out of their own solar system, and probably out of their own galaxy. If this Noah was the Noah of the story of Noah and the flood, they were still on their own planet. They had blown themselves in time, rather than in space. And to get home from time might be far more difficult than getting home from space, no matter how distant.

But it seemed to fit. Desert people. Nomads, with tents.  Cattle. Camels. People used to be smaller than end-of-twentieth-century people. Way back in pre-flood days it was logical that they would be a great deal smaller. Higgaion was small for a mammoth.

He put his head in his hands, suddenly dizzy.

Dennys sat with Japheth and Oholibamah, and with Yalith, on one of the desert rocks. The sky was still flushed with light. The first stars were trembling into being,

Japheth looked at Dennys in the last light. “You talked with my father.”

“Yes.”

“Oh, I’m so glad!” Yalith cried.

“Father has gone off somewhere,” Japheth said. “In the direction of Grandfather Lamech’s tent.”

Oholibamah looked up at the sky. “He will be happier now. All of us will be happier. Where there is an unreconciled quarrel, everybody suffers.”

Dennys looked troubled. “I’m not sure he really listened to me.”

“But you heard the stars,” Oholibamah said, “and you were obedient to their command.”

Japheth added, “That is all anybody can do. Now it is in El’s hands.”

Briefly, Dennys closed his eyes. —I hope Sandy doesn’t think I’m crazy. I hope I don’t think I’m crazy. Obeying stars, yet.

“I feel like running,” Oholibamah said, and jumped down and ran fleetly across the desert, Japheth following her.

“Come!” Yalith called, and leapt from the rock. Dennys, with his long legs, caught up with them easily, and suddenly he was holding hands with Yalith and Oholibamah, and the four of them twirled in a joyous dance. Moonlight and starlight bathed them. Dennys, leaping in the night, felt more alive than he had ever felt before.

Sandy and Higgaion sat up, startled, as they heard a roar from the tent. At first it seemed to be a roar of anger. Then laughter. Then there was absolute silence. Sandy could feel his heart beating faster. Higgaion’s ears were lifted in alarm. He raised his trunk.

“They wouldn’t hurt each other, would they—“ Sandy spoke aloud. Higgaion stared at him out of bright, beady eyes.

Then the tent flap was shoved aside, and Lamech and Noah pushed through with difficulty, because they had their arms about each other, and tears were streaming down their cheeks.

Lamech’s voice was so choked with emotion that the words were muffled. “This my son was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found.”

Noah hugged the old man roughly. “This is my father, my stubborn old father. We are two peas in a pod for stubbornness.” He looked at Sandy. “As you and the Den are two peas in a pod.”

“Hey,” Sandy said, “I’m glad you two have made up.”

“It was the Den,” Noah said. “He just kept at me and at me.”

Sandy looked surprised. At home, at school, Dennys seldom talked first. He followed Sandy’s lead, but seldom initiated anything. “Well. That’s good.”

“He is nearly healed now, too. Soon he will be able to come to you. My father—“ He paused. “I would be happy to have the Den stay, but my tent is crowded, and noisy.  And my father has invited you to stay with him.”

“That’s terrific,” Sandy said. “Thanks, Grandfather, thanks a lot. And Dennys can help me with the garden.”

“So we should celebrate,” Noah said, and handed his father a small wineskin. “There is not much of this, but it is my very best.”

“A little will suffice.” The old man held the wineskin to his lips, then smacked them in appreciation. “Indeed, your very best.” He handed the skin to Sandy, who took a small sip, barely managed to swallow it without making a face.

“El has talked with you, too?” Lamech asked his son.

“He has. When El spoke, I used to understand what was being said. Now it is all confusion. What does El say to you?”

Grandfather Lamech put his arm about his son’s shoulders. “El tells me these are end days.”

“End of what?” Noah asked.

“Of all that we know, I think,” the old man said. “It is not just a question of moving our tents to where there is more water and better pasture for your beasts. Sometimes I, too, feel that the words are all confusion. El talks of many waters, but there is no water anywhere around, except in the wells.”

Sandy, sitting next to the old man, with the mammoth lying nearby, shuddered. Grandfather Lamech, if he did not die first, and Noah and his family, and a good many animals, would be the only ones to escape drowning in the great flood.

I already know the story, he thought, and was glad that the night hid his deep flush of embarrassment. It did not seem right that he should know something that Grand-father Lamech and Noah did not know.

But what did he know? Vague memories of Sunday school. God, angry at the wickedness of the world, and sending a flood, but telling Noah to build an ark and bring the animals on. And then there were terrible rains, and finally a dove brought Noah a sprig of green, and the ark landed on Mount Ararat. Not much of a story unless you were part of it.

Was Grandfather Lamech in the story? He did not remember. Grandfather patted Sandy gently, his usual way of expressing affection, and went on talking. In his concern about the flood. Sandy lost track of the conversation. He heard Grandfather Lamech saying, “My grandfather, Enoch, was three hundred and sixty-five years, and then he was not.”

Sandy’s ears pricked up. “What do you mean, he was not?”

Grandfather Lamech said, “He walked with El. He was a man of warm heart. And El took him.”

It was a weird story. “El took him? How?”

“I was only a boy,” Grandfather Lamech said. “He—my Grandfather Enoch was walking through the lemon grove—the same lemon grove I will show you tomorrow—he was walking through the lemon grove with El—and then they were not there.”

If this was part of the story of Noah and the flood. Sandy did not remember it. “Is it customary,” he asked, “for someone just to be not?”

Grandfather Lamech laughed. “Oh, dear, not at all customary. But my Grandfather Enoch was not an ordinary man. He went away from us to be with El at a very young age. He was only three hundred and sixty-five years old.”

“That’s exactly a solar year,” Sandy said.

“A what?”

“A solar year. For starters, it takes our planet three hundred and sixty-five days to go around the sun.”

“Nonsense,” Noah said. “We don’t go around the sun. It goes around us.”

“Oh,” Sandy said. “Well. Never mind.”

Grandfather Lamech patted his knee. “It is all right.  Things may be different where you come from. Do you know El?”

“Well, yes, sort of, though we say God.”

Grandfather Lamech appeared not to have heard. “My Grandfather Enoch—how I do miss him. El talks with me, and sometimes I am able to understand, but I have never been able to walk with El in the cool of the evening, like two friends.”

“What do you think happened to him, then, to Grandfather Enoch?”

Lamech nodded and nodded, as though answering.  Finally he said, “El took him, and that is all I need to know.”

“Father,” Noah said. “you talk with El more than anyone I know.”

“Because my years are long, my son. It was not always so. I am glad indeed that you have come to me before I die.”

“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?