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

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

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

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

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

“How are we going to get home?”

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

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

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

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

“Possibly.”

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

“Certainly. That is a possibility.”

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

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

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

“Oh, certainly. Fear not.”

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

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

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

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

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

“So?” Adnarel asked, smiling.

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

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

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

“Do what?”

“Tesser. Take a quantum leap.”

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

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

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

“Why?” Sandy asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s a griffin?”

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

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

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

“What does he look like?”

“She is half lion, half eagle.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sandy looked at her in astonishment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No. That’s my brother Dennys.”

“Oh. Who are you, then?”

“I’m Sandy.”

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

 “What’s your name?” Sandy asked.

“I’m Tiglah. I’m Anah’s sister.”

“Anah?”

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

“No.”

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

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

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

“Hey!” Sandy protested.

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

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

 “What’s that?”

“Teenagers.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Water? Whatever for?” she asked.

“To bathe in.”

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

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

The griffin pushed him into the tent.

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

He said, “Sand dear, you’re late.”

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

Grandfather Lamech asked, suspiciously, “What girl?”

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

“Anah’s sister,” the old man said. “Be careful, Sand.”

“She’s beautiful,” Sandy said. “I mean, she is absolutely gorgeous.”

“That may be,” Grandfather Lamech said. “But it is not enough.”

Sandy thought the subject had better be changed. “I’m thirsty. The soup was great, Grandfather, but is there anything cool to drink? Water?”

The old man shook his head. “I can give you some fruit Juice. Water is too precious to waste it in drinking. You do not have wells where you come from?”

“Sure we do,” Sandy said. “There isn’t any town water where we live, and we have an artesian well.”

“And your water just keeps on coming?”

“Well, in the autumn when it hasn’t rained for a while, we aren’t allowed to take long showers, and our parents warn us not to flush the toilet every time we use it—“

“The what?”

“Sorry,” Sandy apologized. “I keep forgetting.” Grandfather Lamech was tidier about his body’s needs than many of the people on the pathways near his compound.  Sandy had been requested courteously to go to a small grove which drained onto the desert, whenever he needed.  But many people used no special place at all. When Sandy had wandered away from Grandfather Lamech’s, and onto the public path, he had seen that the streets were full of human dung as well as camel dung, goat dung, cow dung.

Perhaps the fierceness of the sun burned away things that would cause disease. He’d have to ask Dennys. Dennys knew more about sanitation and viruses and germs than Sandy did. Although, if he went into environmental law when he grew up, he’d have to learn about such things.

Grandfather Lamech gave him a bowl of still-unfermented grape juice, and Sandy drank it thirstily. He sniffed at the pot sitting in the banked embers of the fire- Grand-father Lamech cooked in the cool of the night, then set the pot in the ashes, where it kept comfortably warm.

“Smells good. Grandfather Lamech. What is it?”

“Pottage,” the old man said.

“What’s that?”

“Lentils, onions, and rice, well seasoned.”

“Hey, I’m going to have to tell my mother how to make that when I get home.” A brief wave of homesickness enveloped him as his mind’s eye saw the lab, and a casserole of pottage cooking over the Bunsen burner.

Higgaion, too, sniffed. He had his own bowl, and he ate the same food as Sandy and the old man.

Grandfather Lamech seemed daily more tottery. If Dennys came to the tent, would it be too much for him?

But now that Noah and Lamech were reconciled, Noah not only came to Lamech’s tent to talk, he brought great kettles of food, skins of wine, bunches of grapes. And the two men laughed and cried, and Noah hugged his father.  “Oh, my father, you must live forever!”

And Lamech did not answer.

In the end, Dennys was to cross the oasis on a camel, a white camel with a long, supercilious nose, sneering rubbery lips, and extraordinary gentian eyes, shaded by long lashes.

Noah had cut his foot on a sharp stone, and Matred forbade him to accompany Dennys. “Now that you and your father are reconciled, do you want to spoil everything with an infected foot? It is healing well, but the public paths are full of filth. You are not to leave the tent until it has healed.”

“Women,” Noah grunted. But he obeyed Matred.

“Our Den will be all right,” she reassured him. “If he is in the care of the seraphim, he will reach Grandfather Lamech safely.”

Alarid, the seraph whose host was the pelican, and who brought water to the tent for Dennys; Alarid, who had warned him not to change anything, came with another seraph. This one had wings of pale blue, and eyes like moonstones, a deeper, brighter blue.

“So,” Alarid said to Dennys, not quite accusingly, “you have already made changes.”

“But I haven’t!” Dennys expostulated.

“You persuaded Noah to go to his father, when he would listen to no one else.”

“I didn’t really say all that much,” Dennys said. “I sort of just listened to the stars. So I wasn’t really the one—“

“I am not here to accuse you,” Alarid said. “We are full of joy that Lamech and Noah are speaking again, and it may well be that it was necessary for your brother to pre-pare the old man for reconciliation.” He indicated the other seraph, who had been standing quietly listening.  “This is Admael.”

The seraph did not extend his hand. Seraphim evidently did not shake hands. Admael bowed, and Dennys returned the bow.

Together, the two seraphim carefully examined Dennys.  “Yalith and Oholibamah have taken excellent care of you,” Aland said.

Admael nodded in quiet approval.

“They’ve been marvelous,” Dennys agreed. “I think I’d be dead it they hadn’t.” The scabs were long gone from his skin. He could run across the desert without tiring. He knew that it was time.

He looked at Alarid. “And you, too. Thank you.” He bowed to the seraph.

“Admael will carry you to Grandfather Lamech’s tent,” Alarid said.

Admaei’s moonstone eyes beamed toward Dennys. “I will wait outside.” With a grave look, the seraph left.

“I should thank everybody.” Dennys hesitated. He was eager to be with Sandy again, yes, and yet he was not at all eager to leave Yalith. And, of course, Oholibamah and Japheth. If he went to Grandfather Lamech’s tent, would he ever see Yalith again? Would her delicate fingers slide confidingly into his hand the way they did when she took him out at night to listen to the stars, or when they danced under the desert sky?

“Fear not,” Alarid said. “I have thanked them for you, all of them, Noah and Matred, Shem and Elisheba, Ham and Anah, Japheth and Oholibamah, and oh, yes, Yalith, too. In any event, you will be seeing them frequently. Now that Grandfather Lamech and Noah are reconciled, there will be much coming and going between the two tents. Are you ready?”

 “Ready.” He would see Yalith again. Surely she would come to Grandfather Lamech’s tent to visit him. Surely he would feel the touch of her delicate fingers.

He followed Alarid out of the tent. Night had fallen, and the sky was crusted with stars. He was getting used to the pattern of early rising, the long afternoon nap, and going late to sleep when the fiery sands had cooled down and the very air had lost its burning quality.

He looked for Admael, but there was no seraph. Instead, a white camel stood in the dim shadow of the tent.

Noah was waiting for him, standing by the camel, leaning on a stick, his foot bound in a clean skin. “This is not goodbye, my son. We are all eager to see you and the Sand together. Then maybe we will believe that you really are two. The seraphim has looked at my foot and says that I will be able to walk on it safely in a couple of days.” He held out his hand, palm up. “Put your foot there, and I will help you up onto the camel’s back. Even for a young giant like you, a camel’s back is a long way up.”

The camel had no real saddle, but heavy skins were spread on its back. Dennys was not at all sure how easy it was going to be for him to stay seated. There was nothing for him to hold on to, no reins, no pommel. But Admael in his camel form seemed to be a real flesh-and-blood camel, not nebulous, like the virtual unicorns. He did not think the camel would lose its tendency to life.

Matred came hurrying out of the tent, carrying a bundle, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Here are your clothes. Perhaps, sometime, you will need them. Goodbye, our dear twin. We will miss you.”

And suddenly he was surrounded by the entire family, weeping, laughing, reaching up to the camel’s flanks to hug Dennys’s feet, which was as close to him as they could reach, even on tiptoe.

Japheth had his arm around Oholibamah, and Yalith was standing with them. They blew him kisses, which he blew back, and then, without warning, the camel took off, and everybody called after them, “Goodbye, twin Den, goodbye, and we’ll see you soon!”

“Goodbyel” he called in return, trying to wave at them without falling off.

The camel turned off the oasis onto the desert as the calls faded into the distance. Dennys clutched the bundle of clothes Matred had given him—what remained of his clothes after he had thrown away the ones fouled in the garbage pit. He could not imagine ever needing winter clothes again. He could not imagine going farther than Lamech’s tent, where he and Sandy would be reunited.

He remembered reading somewhere that to ride a camel was like being on a small ship rolling in rough seas, and that seemed to him to be a very good description. He bent over and clutched the white hair on the camel’s neck, trying to let his body swing with the camel’s odd rhythm. A soft night breeze only faintly gritty with sand touched his cheeks. Above them, the desert stars gave out a cooling light. In the distance the mountain smoked, and the horizon burned red. Dennys was glad the oasis was as far away as it was from the still active volcano.

The camel lurched swiftly across the desert. Dennys found that the more he leaned into the animal’s syncopated rhythm the less tendency he had to slither off. The camel was going with such speed that it would be halfway across the desert before it realized that Dennys had fallen, so he’d better hang on.

He tried to breathe in time with the arhythmic ride. He would be incredibly sore in the morning. This was far harder on the muscles than riding a horse. He noticed a shift in pace, a quickening of rhythm. He clutched at the camel’s neck, barely managing to hold on. Barely. He began to slip to one side, with the skins under him sliding with him.

The white camel was racing across the desert. Suddenly Dennys realized that the sound of camel’s hooves on sand, on stone under sand, was echoed by another sound.

A voice from close behind them roared, “Hungry!” and Dennys felt a breath so hot that it seared. He felt himself slipping farther and farther off the camel, until he was clinging to the side, and then he realized that the camel had turned, so that it was between Dennys and whatever it was that was roaring. He found himself sliding so that he was head down, peering under the camel’s belly.

Something was peering at him from the other side of the camel. A face. Whiskers. A bulbous nose. Bleary eyes.  Horns which curved down, with sharp, wicked points.  Dennys looked for the body that belonged to the face and saw, instead, a lion’s body. Looked along the lion’s body to where the tail should be and saw, instead, a scorpion’s tail, its sting rattling. He had never seen anything like it before. He did not want to see it now. Clutching the camel’s white hair, he tried to struggle up onto its back again.

The camel whickered, and continued to race across the desert.

 “Hungry!” the creature roared.

Dennys felt very small. Very young. Very afraid. “Is it going to eat me?”

The camel glanced back at Dennys, the gentian eyes enigmatic.

“Hey!” he protested. “Aren’t you going to stop it?”

The huge face loomed over the camel’s back. “Hungry!” it roared again. The enormous lips opened, to reveal a double set of ugly, stumpy teeth, which looked as though they had been worn down from gnawing. The purplish lips opened.

Dennys pulled at the camel’s hair. “Hey. Help.” The ugly creature’s breath came closer. The bloodshot eyes were looking directly at Dennys’s grey ones. He tried to stare it down. The tongue, thick but long as a snake’s, flicked toward him. He drew back, shielding himself with the camel, but the man/lion/scorpion bounded over the camel’s back, landing on the sand beside Dennys.

“Camel!” he shouted. “Please be Admael!” He sidestepped away from the monster.

Again the camel agilely placed itself between Dennys and the creature. Gave Dennys a glance. Dennys remembered that seraphim did not like to interfere or change things.

“Hey!” he shouted. “If he eats me, won’t that change the course of things?”

With a flash of lightning almost like the unicorn’s, the camel stretched its whiteness up to the sky, seeming to brush against the stars, to catch blue fire, and then Admael stood beside Dennys. “Go, manticore, go quickly. And don’t go to any of the tents. And don’t even think of eating any of the mammoths. Do your hunting in the desert.”

Tears began to trickle down the manticore’s cheeks, dampening its scraggly beard.

“And don’t try to make me feel sorry for you.” Admael paused. “Though I am sorry for you. You appear to be one of nature’s more peculiar efforts.”

The manticore turned, head drooping, and with its lion’s body it padded across the desert, scorpion sting clacking as it went.

“Wow!” Dennys said. “That was a close call.”

“Not really. Manticore’s courage is as skimpy as its vocabulary.” Admael picked up the skins which had served as saddle. “Let’s go.” Dennys looked at him questioningly.  “It isn’t far. I’ve been running parallel to the oasis. Can you walk a little?”

“Sure.” He’d just as soon walk as be bounced around on the camel’s back. But he asked, curiously, “You’re not going to be a camel?”

Admael had slung the skins over one shoulder. “Not now. It takes considerable energy to transfer. We do not like to waste power when it is not necessary. The manticore is basically a coward, but there may be other dangers in the night desert. It’s best that we keep moving.”

Admael glanced upward, and when Dennys looked skyward, he saw the dark wings of a vulture blotting out the stars in swift circles.

The circle of the nephilim was dark against the desert, a dark shot with flames brighter than those from the mountain as they flickered in and out of their animal hosts in a show of power. They spoke from their nephil forms in bursts of primal energy, reverting in negative lightning to their animal hosts, and bursting with bright wings again in order to speak.

The crocodile opened its enormous jaws, then lifted green wings as it stretched skyward. “What are they doing here?”

“What are they?” Pewter wings faded like smoke and a rat’s tail swished back and forth over the sand.

There was a sulfurous smell as the nephilim flickered in and out, charging the air. “Not true giants.” Red wings and hair flamed in the hot wind and then a mosquito whined shrilly.

“Not one of us.” Purple wings misted and the dragon/ lizard stretched its useless wings.

“Though they speak the ancient tongue.”

“They burn in the sun.”

“They can’t change form.”

“Young. Infants.”

“Almost men, though.”

“They don’t belong here.”

“What to do with them?” Bronze wings dissolved and shrank with a tearing sound as the cockroach lifted its armored wings.

“Do we let them live?” Great garnet wings dimmed the clouds, dropped with a sharp crack, and the red ant’s small body cast a dark shadow in the starlight.

Flicker. Flame. Shadow. In and out in prideful bursts of energy.

 “Ummm,” moaned the nephil who was the cobra. “Maybe we promise them that they will live.”

“Ummm, kkk.” The vulture appeared briefly and clicked its beak. Then dark wings shadowed the stars.  “Power. Put them in our power.”

Yellow wings puffed into sulfur and the flea leapt from the dragon/lizard to the vulture, then raised wings high.  “Power. That’s right.”

“Temptation,” the dragon/lizard nephil suggested.

“Temptation. Good.” And the mosquito droned.

“Lust,” suggested the cobra, and the nephil’s face was whiter than the sand.

“Ummm. Lust,” agreed the vulture. “Kkk. Lust.”

“We’ll sleep tomorrow in the heat of the day.” The reunited Sandy and Dennys sat outside Grandfather Lamech’s tent as the stars wheeled across the sky. The old man had gone in, after having sat outside with them to eat a fresh mess of pottage, and to prepare bowls of fig juice.

Higgaion was curled in the star shade of the tree, his flanks heaving in and out as he slept, occasionally twitching in dreams.

“Noah and Matred have a mammoth called Selah,” Dennys said. “Usually she sleeps by Yalith’s sleeping skins, but sometimes she came into my tent and slept with me.  It was weird being without you.” Dennys wriggled his bare toes in the sand.

“Yeah,” Sandy agreed. “It was weird for me, too. Higgy and Grandfather Lantech have been very good to me.” He wanted to ask about Yalith. But something stayed his tongue. He said, instead, “I love Grandfather Lamech. You will, too “

“He seems okay,” Dennys agreed. “I’m glad Japheth was the first person we saw. Otherwise, I’d suspect everybody of being like those awful people who threw me out of their tent into the town dump.”

“It sounds rough.”

“Well, everybody in Noah’s tenthold was wonderful to me.”

“Dennys.” Sandy was suddenly somber. “Do you remember the story? The story of Noah and the ark?”

Dennys shifted uncomfortably. “The story we got blown into. At first I thought we were in some way-out solar system.”

“It might be easier if we were,” Sandy said. “Grandfather Lamech sent me into town today to trade fruit for lentils. I passed a lot of people. They’re all going to be drowned.”

Dennys looked at the glow of the volcano on the horizon.  “I know. Everybody except Noah and Matred, Shem and Elisheba, Ham and Anah, Japheth and Oholibamah.’

Now Sandy’s voice cracked. “What about Yalith?”

Dennys managed to keep his voice from soaring. “I don’t know. But I don’t think Oholibamah, Elisheba, or Anah are called by name in the story. Matred isn’t, either.” His voice jumped an octave. “Nor Yalith. At least as far as I can remember. I wish we had a Bible.”

“It was a very patriarchal society,” Sandy said. “I do remember that.”

“Meg would call it chauvinistic,” Dennys said. “Who-ever wrote the Bible was a man. Men.”

 “I thought it was supposed to be God. Wasn’t that what we were taught in Sunday school?”

“When we were little maybe. The thing is, the Bible was set down by lots of people over lots of years. Centuries.  It’s supposed to be the Word of God, not written by God.”

“Okay,” Sandy said, “but nobody ever mentioned that there were twins named Sandy and Dennys Murry with Noah and his family.”

“Do you have any idea,” Dennys ventured, “when the rains are supposed to start?”

Sandy shook his head. “No, I don’t. And I don’t know how we’re going to get out of here and go home. Do you?”

“I thought you might have thought of something to do,” Dennys said.

“I don’t have a clue. You pay more attention than I do when everybody goes on at the dinner table about tessering and red shifts and mitochondria and farandolae and stuff.”

“Mitochondria.” Dennys looked at his twin. “Do you remember when something was wrong with Charles Wallace’s mitochondria, and we thought he was going to die?”

“We went out to the vegetable garden,” Sandy said.

“Because we had to do something.”

“Even though we knew it didn’t have anything to do with helping Charles Wallace get well.”

“But it was something to do.”

They were silent for a dark space. Then Sandy said,

“Well, we can do it again, work in a garden. Grandfather Lamech has this huge vegetable garden—I mean, you’ve never seen such gigantic plants. And weeds. I’ve pulled up a mountain of weeds, wait and see, and I’ve hardly made a dent. And then there are his groves to prune and water. There’s plenty to do. Whether it helps anything or not.”

Under them the ground trembled slightly, but by now they were both so used to the shifting and sliding of the young planet that they hardly noticed. “Well. That’s good.  The garden, I mean. As long as we don’t get sunstroke again.”

“Oh, we work only in the early morning and the evening. Grandfather Lamech is very careful about that.”

“Good, then.”

“Yes, but none of that gets us home. What do we do now?” Sandy was asking himself, rather than his twin.

“I think,” Dennys spoke slowly, “that we don’t do anything. I mean, this is way outside our experience.”

“Outside anybody’s experience,” Sandy added. “I think you’re right. We wait. With our eyes and ears open.” He looked over to where Higgaion was sleeping. The scarab was not in its usual place on Higgaion’s ear. Therefore, he thought, Adnarel must be somewhere else. Doing what?

“We wait,” Adnarel said. “To do anything is to make changes, to cause a paradox.”

“Does not their very being here in itself constitute a paradox?” Alarid, who was sometimes a pelican, asked.

Admael, who had earned Dennys across the desert, said, “They have already made changes. The boy, Dennys, caused Noah to reconcile with his father, when it seemed that nothing would ever make that come about.”

Adnachiel, his wings as sunny as the hide of his giraffe host, said, “Perhaps the boy Sandy played a part.”

Aalbiel, with wings as white as those of a snow goose, asked, “Could they have been sent for this?”

Aanel, tawny as a lion, said softly, “We do not know. Perhaps they are part of the pattern.”

Abdiel, sometimes a golden bat, spoke equally softly.

“There are many things that even the angels in heaven do not know. And we have chosen—“

“Been chosen,” Abasdarhon, whose host was the golden snake, corrected.

“Accepted being chosen,” Akatriel, whose eyes were as round and wise and fierce as an owl’s, corrected further.

“—to stay with the children of humankind,” Abdiel continued. “Therefore, we have relinquished some of our powers and there is much that we do not know.”

Abuzohar, who was sometimes a white leopard, inclined his head, his face luminous as the moon. “As long as the One knows, there is no need for us to know.”

Achsah, with wings and hair the soft grey velvet of his mouse host, nodded. “They are innocent boys, for the children of men. Likable. And they speak the Old Language.”

Adabiel, orange wings vivid as the tiger, agreed. “Good in their hearts. And they brought out Noah’s goodness-Could that be part of the plan?”

Admael said, “We still have no real idea why they are here, or how they are to be returned to wherever it is they come from.”

Adnachiel, sometimes a giraffe, looked up at the stars. “We willingly gave up some of our powers when we chose to stay on this planet.”

“We do not have to stay.” Abdiel’s seraphim wings were as bright a gold as his bat ones. “We are free to leave at any time and to resume our full powers.”

Adnarel threw off light like the sun flashing against the scarab beetle. “It was our free choice. And now—I would not leave while they—the twins—are still here.”

“We may not be able to save them,” Aland warned.

“Then I will stay with them,” Admael said, for a fraction of a second looking more like a white camel than like a seraphim.

Eleven luminous heads slowly nodded in agreement with Admael.

Mahlah and Tiglah were waiting near Grandfather Lamech’s ancient fig tree. Mahfah’s belly was softly rounded.  Tiglah was round by nature, all soft curves and delicate plumpness that had not yet run to softness, as Anah’s was doing.

The twins came from the garden, where they had weeded two long rows of plants which might have been forebears of tomatoes, and pulled off the suckers. Higgaion was in the tent with Grandfather Lamech. The twins did not see Mahlah and Tiglah until the two girls came to meet them.  Tiglah walked slowly toward Sandy. She tossed her head so that her red hair flew about her face. She lowered the heavy fringes of her lashes. “I’m sorry my father and brother didn’t treat you better when you appeared in our tent that time.” She paused, and added virtuously, “They have to be very careful that strange men don’t take advantage of me.” Then she stopped. “Am I speaking to the right one?”

“No,” Dennys said.

Mahlah fluttered her small hands like birds. Her dark hair concealed her swollen belly. “But which one of you was guest in my father’s tent?”

Sandy stepped forward. “My brother Dennys. You’re Yalith’s sister?”

“Yes. Mahlah. But I am Ugiel’s bride and no longer live in the home tent.”

Sandy looked at her, thinking that although Mahlah was beautiful, it was in an obvious way; she had none of the subtle loveliness he associated with Yalith. Tiglah’s flashy beauty was almost an assault. He still didn’t know what to make other. “Tiglah?”

She giggled, so that dimples came and went on either side of her reddened lips. “Don’t you remember me?”

“You were talking to me the other day, before the griffin came.”

“Yes, and the silly griffin interrupted us. I think she was jealous. But she’s not here now. Would you like to come with us?” She turned from Sandy, to include Dennys in the invitation.

“Where?” Dennys asked suspiciously. His first encounter with Tiglah’s family had made him far more cautious than Sandy had cause to be. He did not trust her, nor, indeed, any of the small people who did not come from Noah’s tenthold.

Mahlah, unlike Tiglah, was not a giggler. She smiled.  “We’d like to get to know you better. My father thinks the world of you. So let’s go for a little walk.”

Dennys looked at the sky, which was already beginning to shimmer with heat. “It’s too hot. Thank you, anyhow.”

Tiglah pushed her fingers through her curls, so that they glinted with gold in the sunlight. She, too, looked at the sky. “It’s not going to be really hot until the sun is above the palm trees.” She turned her dimpled smile toward Sandy. “We’d really love to show you around a little. You haven’t seen much of the oasis.”

Sandy stepped forward. He had not enjoyed his brief excursions onto the public path, but if Tiglah and Mahlah were there to show them where to go, it might be fun. It was time to go farther than Grandfather Lamech’s compound and the nearby shops. “Well—“

“You go, if you like.” Dennys was firm. “I nearly died of sunstroke, and I’m keeping out of the sun.”

Sandy looked at his brother, noticing the still pinkly mottled skin. “I’m sorry. My skin’s all healed. I forgot—“

“You go, if you like,” Dennys repeated.

Sandy shook his head. “No. Grandfather Lamech wanted us to bring him some onions for his stew, and we were too busy weeding. We’d better go pull them before the sun gets too high.”

A great whirring of wings shook tne sky above them, and the griffin landed between the two boys and Mahlah and Tiglah.

“Go away, spoilsport.” Tiglah kicked at the griffin, and her green eyes sparked with resentment.

Dennys backed away in fear. The griffin looked to him as fierce as the manticore.

“It’s all right,” Sandy reassured him. “It’s a griffin, and she’s a friend.”

The griffin spread her eagle wings so that the two girls were screened. Opened her bill and squawked something like”0n-yons.”

“Okay, okay,” Sandy said. “We won’t forget.”

The griffin folded her wings. Her lion’s tail swished back and forth. Tiglah walked cautiously around her, and put her small hand on Sandy’s arm- “Later, then? You would like to come for a walk, wouldn’t you?”

Would he? Tiglah made Sandy feel very peculiar. She was both alluring and unsettling. And she was very different from Yalith, of the bronze hair and eyes and luminous smile. He would go anywhere with Yalith. But Tiglah? “I don’t know,” he said cautiously. “Dennys and I have a lot to talk about.”

Mahlah, too, skirted the griffin, asking, “Are you sure you are two separate people? My husband, Ugiel, can take different forms, yet it is always he.”

“We are twins,” Dennys stated. “Aren’t there any twins around here?”

Tiglah moved her fingers slowly up and down Sandy’s arm, and it prickled, so that the freckles he had acquired in the sun seemed to stand up. “Two look-exactly-alikes?  No. Of course, we can tell you apart right now, because your skin”—her fingers caressed Sandy’s forearm—“is strong, and you are getting quite tanned, and you both have freckles across your nose. Whereas his”—she indicated Dennys—“still looks raw and uncooked.”

“But handsome,” Mahlah purred. “We don’t have any men on the oasis who are as tall and like gods as you are.”

The griffin cried again, “On-yons.”

Sandy had already turned in the direction of the vegetable garden when he noticed Dennys looking past the clump of trees to the public path. Yalith and Oholibamah were coming toward them, carrying a large kettle between them.

Mahlah drew her lips up in what was more a grimace than a smile. “Well, sisters dear, are you pursuing the twin giants?”

Oholibamah’s low voice was pleasant. “Good morning.  Matred sent us with a meal- Grandfather Lamech is too old to cook for so many.”

Unheeding, Yalith looked at the twins, from Dennys to Sandy, and back to Dennys. “It is not just the difference in your skins that tells you apart.” She looked troubled.

“Let’s put the kettle on the fire,” Oholibamah suggested.

“You don’t have to go with them.” Tiglah wrinkled her nose in distaste as Yalith and Oholibamah started into the tent.

“Stay and talk with us,” Mahlah wheedled.

But the twins had turned their backs on the two girls and were looking after Yalith as she disappeared into the tent.

The griffin shrieked with pleasure and flew off, spiraling higher and higher into the sky.

Dennys had picked half a basketful of onions before he began to recount for Sandy, in detail this time, his experience in Tiglah’s tent.

“But it was her father and brother who threw you out, wasn’t it?”

“She was there.”

“But it wasn’t really her fault.”

“She didn’t even try to stop them,” Dennys said. “And even if it wasn’t her fault, I wouldn’t trust anybody who came from that tent.”

“Well.” Sandy picked up his basket of onions and hefted it to one shoulder. “I can’t say I blame you for feeling the way you do.” He did not add that, nevertheless, Tiglah was still the most absolutely gorgeous girl he had ever seen. Except Yalith. Who wasn’t gorgeous at all. Whatever Yalith had, it was better than gorgeousness.

And were Yalith and Mahlah and Tigiah going to be drowned?

Dennys, picking up at least part of Sandy’s thoughts, said, “Still—I wouldn’t want Tiglah to be drowned. And I guess she’s going to be.”

Sandy felt a chill move over his skin, despite the sun, which was rising higher and hotter. “And Yalith?”

Dennys picked up his basket. “Oholibamah is Japheth’s wife- Ham, Shem, and Japheth, with their wives, go on the ark. That’s the story. Oholibamah loves Yalith. I mean, they’re really friends. I don’t think Oholibamah would let Yalith drown.”

“If she doesn’t have any say about who goes on the ark, can she prevent it?”

Dennys said, “Hey, we’re talking as if that old ark story is true. But Noah doesn’t seem to have any inkling of it, and he talks with this El of theirs.”

“God.” Sandy shifted his basket of onions from one shoulder to the other. “Isn’t there some kind of flood story in all cultures?”

“I think so,” Dennys replied. “I mean, even in our day the planet is still shifting its plates and causing earthquakes. We’ve had an awful lot of weird weather, volcanoes erupting all over the planet, and tornadoes and hurricanes.”

 “Well, about those flood stories,” Sandy continued.  “There must have been some kind of major weather cataclysm.”

“Yeah, but there’ve been wild weather patterns all through history. Ice ages. Whatever it was that finished off the dinosaurs, a comet, or that Nemesis star. Or the earth shifting slightly on its axis and altering climate and seasons. So a big flood isn’t all that impossible.”

Sandy said in a flat voice, “Maybe we’ll get drowned, too. Maybe it would be better than being nuked.”

“More inevitable than nuking. Nothing that hasn’t happened yet has to happen.” Dennys pushed into the tent and wearily set his basket of onions down near Grandfather Lamech’s cooking stones. Sandy followed suit. They looked over to where the old man lay napping on his pile of skins, eyes closed, breathing shallowly. Higgaion was curled at his feet, and little bubbling sounds came rhythmically from his trunk.

Sandy said, thoughtfully, “If we get nuked, it will be because of people. Power and greed and corruption. It wouldn’t be a natural disaster. But a flood is a natural disaster.”

Dennys nodded. “Nuking would be something completely different. Not natural.”

“Yeah, but remember, Dad says it doesn’t have to happen. People can restrain themselves. We’ve had the power for half a century, and we’ve refrained. But if the plates of the earth slide, that can’t be stopped. If a comet should hit us, we couldn’t stop it. And storms and blizzards. Those are inevitable.”

 “When we had the hurricane, and the big oak was ripped out by the roots, nobody could have stopped that. It is different—things that can be stopped, and things that can’t, like tornadoes and earthquakes and—“

“And floods,” Sandy said flatly.

Grandfather Lamech startled them with a loud snore.

“It doesn’t do any good to talk about it,” Dennys said.  “Any of it. If there’s going to be a flood, we can’t do anything about it. But we can work in Grandfather Lamech’s garden.”

The old man snored again.

“Right now, we’d better nap, too,” Sandy suggested.

Dennys dropped onto the clean sleeping skins which had been provided for him. “Hey, it’s good to be back with you again.”

But he missed Yalith’s gentle fingers against his burned skin.

Every day, someone from Noah’s tenthold came to Grandfather Lamech’s tent with the main meal. When Yalith and Oholibamah came, they often stayed to eat with the old man and the twins. Yalith was equally gracious with each of them, but sometimes she sat looking at them in bemusement, letting Oholibamah do the work.  The twins, in their turn, looked at Yalith and did not look at each other.

Occasionally, one of the men brought the meal. Japheth, like his wife and Yalith, would stay to eat, to talk.

Shem, who was the hunter, was cordial, but not chatty.

He would stand, leaning on his spear, until he was certain that Grandfather Lamech had everything he needed. Then he would leave.

Japheth had told the twins that when Shem went hunting, he would always stop to thank the animal he had killed, thank it for giving them the food necessary for life.

“Do all the hunters give thanks?” Sandy asked.

“Not anymore. I think they used to long ago. But now most of the hunters just kill, and often more than they need. Some kill just for the sake of killing.”

Dennys said, “That is true in our time, too. At home, our land is posted against hunters and trappers, but that doesn’t stop the jacklighters.”

“The what?” Japheth asked.

Dennys tried to explain. “Hunters who shine a bright light into the eyes of the deer. It blinds them and they freeze and can’t move, and then the hunters shoot. Jacklighting is illegal, but that doesn’t stop a lot of people.”

“A lot?” Japheth asked.

Dennys stated, “A few can seem like a lot.” Sandy nodded. The twins liked what Japheth had told them about Shem.

One morning Anah and Etisheba came with the food for the day. Anah, Ham’s wife, was obviously Tiglah’s sister, but her hair did not have the brilliance of Tiglah’s, and her eyes were not as rich a green. She was becoming flabby, with dimples all over, in her cheeks, her chin, her elbows, her knees. She was softer than Tiglah.

Elisheba was like Shem, solid, muscled, kind. At home, in the twins’ part of the world, she would have looked comfortable in a flowered housedress, and she would scrub her kitchen floor every day, and shift all the furniture to sweep under it. There was something more familiar about Elisheba than about many of the other women, who had an Oriental strangeness. Anah’s and Tigtah’s eyes were almond-shaped, their cheekbones high.

After the pot had been set on the stones, Anah put her hands on her rounded hips, looking in open admiration at Sandy and Dennys. “Another hundred years and you’ll be the most handsome men on the desert.”

Dennys looked at Grandfather Lamech’s wrinkled face and trembling hands, thinking that the old man, at any rate, was not going to live for another hundred years. And even if the flood held off, he and Sandy did not have the life span of these tiny desert people. But he said nothing.  He did not like Anah; Anah was Tiglah’s sister.

Elisheba picked up the empty pot from the day before, which the twins had scoured clean with sand. “I wonder if they’ll grow wings?” She tended to speak of Sandy and Dennys as though they could not hear.

“I think they’re a new breed,” Anah said. “not seraph or nephil, but a completely different kind of giant.” Her gaze slid from one twin to the other, then back to Elisheba.  “What,” she suggested, “would you think of having two husbands?”

Elisheba laughed. “One is all I can manage.”

“Thank you for the dinner.” Sandy turned away from Anah’s gaze, which was uncomfortably reminiscent of Tiglah’s. “It smells good.”

“And please thank Matred for us.”

Anah put her fingers lightly against Sandy’s wrist.  “You’re welcome to come eat in Noah’s tent at any time, you know that.”

Sandy was glad when she was gone.

The big tent was dark and quiet. Matred poked her elbow against Noah’s ribs. “What about Mahlah?”

“Humph?” Noah mumbled sleepily.

“Husband. It cannot have escaped your notice that Mahlah is with child.”

Noah rolled over. “I have been very busy.”

“Noah.”

“It is time Mahlah brought her young man to our tent,” Noah said. “We will prepare a feast.”

“It is not a young man,” Matred said. “At least, it is not one of our young men, and I don’t think they’re young, I think they are old, far older than any of us, even Grandfather Methuselah.”

“Woman, what—or who—are you talking about?”

“Mahlah,” Matred said impatiently, “and her nephil.”

Noah sat up. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“I am telling you”—Matred kept her voice low—“that Mahlah is with child by a nephil, and that she has had some kind of nephil wedding.” Quickly she put her hand over Noah’s mouth to stifle his roar of outrage.

“This is not how things are done.” He pushed her hand away, but kept his voice under control. “There has been no wedding feast. No nephil has come to our tent.”

“The nephilim do not do things the way we do. Their customs are not our customs.”

 “This is Mahlah’s will? She loves this nephil?”

“So it would seem. She sends messages by Yalith. She does not want to tell us these things herself.”

Noah growled. “It is the way of things to lose a daughter to another man’s tent, but not without the proper formalities.”

“When Mahlah does speak to me”—Matred’s voice was heavy—“she keeps reminding me that times have changed.”

Noah sighed. “It is not what we would have chosen for our daughter, but after all, Oholibamah—“

Macred leaned against her husband, and he put his arm around her. “I would rather have it one of our young giants. At least they are truly young, and I think they are good.”

“They fit in with us,” Noah agreed, “and the nephilim do not. It seems now as though our twins have been with us always.”

“The moons have slipped by,” Matred said. “Seven or eight of them, at least.”

“They have worked wonders in my father’s gardens and groves. It is hard work, and yet they never complain.”

“Perhaps Yalith—“ Matred started, then said, “It is time we asked them to take another evening off and come to our tent. I wish Mahlah had not been lured by the nephilim. They glitter, but I do not think they are loving.”

“I will speak to Mahlah.” Noah pulled Matred down onto the sleeping skins.

“If she will speak with you,” Matred said.

The twins enjoyed their visits to the big tent, the noise and singing and laughter. Once, at the time of the full moon, Noah’s married daughters were there with their husbands and children, and there was dancing and music and loud quarreling and reconciling.

“I wish Mahlah were here,” Matred said.

Less than a moon later, Anah and Elisheba, bringing a big pot of vegetable stew to Grandfather Lamech’s tent, again invited the twins to the big tent. “But you should feel free to come more often,” Anah said. “You don’t have to wait for an invitation.”

Sandy felt her eyes inviting him. He turned away. “We don’t like to leave Grandfather Lamech too often.”

Higgaion, lying stretched out by the embers, swished his stringy little tail, raised his head, and put it back down with a thump.

Again Anah lavished her smile on Sandy. “You’re getting nearly as brown as one of us, and you have freckles all across your nose.”

“The Den, too.” Elisheba’s smile was friendly. “I never believed he’d make it. Matred thought he was going to die.  But Oholibamah is a healer. And Yalith was marvelous with him.”

Sandy felt a sharp twinge of jealousy. When Yalith came with the night-light or with the evening meal, she was careful, overcareful, he thought, to smile no more at one twin than at the other. “All that was a long time ago.” He was surprised at how cross his voice sounded. “We’ve both been well for months now.”

 “For what?”

“Oh. Many moons.” Moon and month did come from the same root, after all. but the people of the oasis thought of time in moons and crops and the movement of the stars.

“Yalith will be looking for a husband one of these years.” Anah’s voice was suggestive.

Elisheba was brusque. “Yalith will make a good wife. But not yet.”

Anah’s eyes strayed from twin to twin. “Hmm.” She pursed her lips.

Elisheba jiggled Anah’s arm. “We’d better be getting back, or Matred will be after us.”

“She doesn’t scare me,” Anah said.

“Who said anything about being scared? There’s a lot of work to do, and she’s getting too old to do it all herself.”

“Too fat,” Anah muttered.

“Who’s talking?”

Still bickering, the two women left, taking the empty pot with them.

The twins went out to the vegetable garden, putting on Matred’s straw-woven hats. The sun was not yet high, the shadows still long. “We’ll stay just a little while,” Sandy said.

They worked hard. The weeds, it seemed, grew up as fast as they could clear them. Weeding was a never-ending Job. They did not mention Yalith. They had more than enough to do to keep them busy.

Grandfather Lamech no longer came out to the garden with them, but spent most of the day in the tent, drowsing.

After the long afternoon sleep he would sometimes accompany them to the well, where they drew water, filling large clay jars, one for use in the tent. The others were for the garden, which Higgaion helped them water, spraying with his trunk, which was almost as good as a hose.

“It’s good to be working in a garden,” Sandy said, “even if it’s not the garden at home.”

“Who do you suppose is tending to the garden at home?”

Dennys asked. “It’s got to be at least harvest time by now. That is, if time there is passing like time here.”

“Everything is different here,” Sandy said. “People living longer, for instance.”

“So maybe time is different, too. At home we had alarm clocks and those electronic bells at school, and here time just slides by and I hardly even notice it.”

“I don’t want to think about it, about time,” Sandy said.  He looked at his twin. “We’re browner than we ever got at home. Anah’s right about that.”

“And our hair is bleached. At least, if mine is like yours, it is.”

Sandy looked at his twin. “Well, your hair is lots lighter than it used to be.”

“I wonder what it would feel like to wear clothes again?” They were used to wearing loincloths. They were even used to no showers, no water for bathing. The smells of the tent were hardly noticeable.

With a strong green vine, Sandy was tying up tall, green-leafed bushes, giant versions of the basil they planted between the tomatoes in the garden at home. Grandfather Lamech often chopped up the leaves to season his stews.  “I’m not homesick anymore. At least, I’m not homesick.”

“I try not to think about it too often,” Dennys said,  “except to remind myself that since I didn’t die of sun-stroke, then somehow or other we ought to be able to get home.”

“We won’t be the same,” Sandy said.

Sandy made a face. “Hey, I don’t like the way Tiglah keeps coming around. I don’t think I’m ready for Tiglah.”

“Tiglah,” Dennys said, “is what the kids at school would call an easy lay.”

“Except,” Sandy said, “there isn’t anybody remotely like Tiglah at school.”

“She’s older.” Still, neither of them mentioned Yalith.

“Yeah,” Sandy said.

“The thing is—“ Dennys paused. “Something’s happened. We’re not just kids anymore.”

“I know.” Sandy bent over one of the plants.

Dennys pulled up a resisting weed with such force that he sat down. “We haven’t seen Adnarel lately. Or any of the other seraphim.”

Sandy finished tying the plant to a bamboo stalk. Images of scarab beetle and pelican, camel and lion, flashed before him. He always felt better if Adnarel was with them.  When the seraph was in his scarab-beetle form, he was usually near Grandfather Lamech’s sleeping skins, or on Higgaion’s ear. He gave Sandy a sense of security. “I think the seraphim like us.”

“But the others don’t,” Dennys said. “I mean, the other ones, the nephilim. I’ve seen them looking at us when they thought we weren’t noticing. And a mosquito kept buzzing around me the other day after Tiglah had been around. I don’t think it was just a mosquito.”

 “Rofocale,” Sandy said. “I heard her call one of the nephilim Rofocale.”

“They don’t like us,” Dennys said.

When supplies were needed, the twins left Grandfather Lamech’s and went to the nearby shops, carrying figs, dates, and the produce of their garden to barter for rice or lentils.  On the dusty paths they passed many of the people of the oasis, who always paused to look up at Sandy and Dennys, surreptitiously if not openly.

When they passed nephilim, with whom they could look eye-to-eye, brilliant wings quivered, but the nephilim did not acknowledge their presence, except in sudden reversion to the animal host, so that a tall, bright-winged man would vanish, and there would be a skink scuttling across the path, or a red ant, or a slug leaving its slimy trail.

The women, at least the young ones, let Sandy and Dennys know that they were admired. Small hands reached up to touch them. They were bathed in lavish smiles.  Tiglah seemed to know when they needed rice or beans or lentils, and would be waiting at whichever stall they were headed for.

The men and the older women were different. Sometimes the twins were cursed at, spat at. They did not tell Grandfather Lamech, who would have been distressed.  They learned to go to the few venders who treated them kindly and did not try to cheat.

Dennys said, one day, “Hey, Sand. If you want to go for a walk with Tiglah, don’t let me stop you.”

“I don’t want to.” Sandy turned his gaze from the side of the path, where a vulture was picking the flesh from a small carcass.

“I mean, just because it was her father and brother who threw me into the garbage pit—I mean, I’m not stopping you, or anything.“

“No problem,” Sandy agreed.

They were careful with each other as they had never been careful before.

And still they did not mention Yalith.

Yalith and Oholibamah were helping Matred to clean the big tent when they were disturbed by the flap being pushed open, and a lavender-winged nephil came in. He spoke without greeting. “It is nearly Mahlah’s time. She will need you to help with the birthing of the baby.”

Matred held the broken palm branch which she was using as a broom. “Do you not have one of your own kind to help?”

Ugiel looked at Oholibamah with hooded eyes. Flicked a long finger in her direction. “She will be of use. And Mahlah will need her mother and sister.”

Oholibamah took a step away from the nephil. “How will we know when to come?”

“Tonight. At the time of the moonrise. I, Ugiel of the nephilim, tell you so.”

“We will come,” Matred pronounced. “I will not have my daughter labor alone.”

“Good. I will expect you.”

“We will come,” Matred repeated, “but you will wait outside.”

Ugiei shrugged. “Have it your own way. It is a woman’s job to see to all the blood and mess of a birth.” He started out, then turned his burning gaze on Yalith.

She did not drop her eyes. Biting her lower lip, she met his stare.

“You cannot have them both, you know,” Ugiel said.

Then he was gone.

Yalith and Oholibamah spread skins over some low scrub palms. Some skins they would discard, if they were too soiled. Others they would scrape and beat clean.

“What did he mean?” Oholibamah asked.

“Who?”

“Ugiel.”

“About what?”

“About not having them both.”

Yalith picked up a skin foul with spills and put it in the dump pile. “Who ever knows what a nephil means?”

“You do, and I do,” Oholibamah said. “He meant our young twins.”

Yalith picked up another skin, appearing to examine it closely. “The Sand was the first one I met. The Den is the one we saved from the sun death.”

“And they are two people, not one,” Ohoiibamah reminded her.

“I know. Oh, yes, Oholi. I know that. They are very different when you get to know them.”

“And you do not love one more than the other?”

Yalith shook her head. “Anyhow, they are too young.”

“Are they that young in their own time?”

“We don’t know anything about their own time.”

Oholibamah sat on a stump, a pile of cleaned skins across her knees. “I love my Japheth. I am very happy with him. I wane you to be happy, too.”

Yalith shivered. “Mahlah seems to be happy, married to a nephil.”

“Our twins are not nephilim.”

“But they are different. They are not like us.”

“And you love them.”

“Yes.”

“You love them both.”

Yalith picked up a pile of skins to be discarded. “I’m going to throw these away. Then we’d better stop. The sun’s getting high and it’s too hot for this kind of work.”

Matred said to Elisheba, “You have not been to the women’s tent for two moons.”

Elisheba nodded, put her hands to flushed cheeks in an unwontedly girlish gesture.

Matred embraced her. “Is it true?”

“Yes. You will have yet another grandchild.” Hugging each other, they danced with joy.

Eblis the dragon/lizard was waiting for Yalith when she went to the well for water. He was not in his animal host, but was leaning against the trunk of a royal palm, purple wings wrapped around him, so that he was almost lost in shadows-When he stepped forward, Yalith was so startled that she almost dropped the clay pitcher which she carried on one shoulder.

Eblis rescued the pitcher and put it down. “Every day you grow lovelier.” He touched her gently on one cheek.

Yalith blushed and reached for the pitcher.

“Let me help you,” Eblis said. When the pitcher was full, he touched her again, tracing her brows with one pale finger. “Ugiel is right, you know.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, yes, you do, my sweet one, yes, you do. And I am the only answer to your problem.”

She looked at him questioningly.

“I want you, lovely little one. You know that I want you.  I can give you all that Ugiel gives your sister Mahlah, and you know how happy she is.”

“I know ...”

“Those stupid young giants who dazzle you with their youth can give you nothing except grief. You cannot choose between them, and if you should choose one, what would happen to the other?”

“They have not asked me—“ She faltered.

“But I have. I do. I want you.”

He bent toward her, and suddenly she felt nothing but fear. It was as he said: he wanted her. He did not love her.  She picked up the water pitcher and fled, heedless of the water splashing on the ground.

The afternoon was the hottest the twins had ever experienced. Sandy woke from unpleasant dreams of erupting volcanoes, to see Dennys sitting up on his sleeping skins, shiny with sweat.

Higgaion spent the midday sleeping hours with Lamech.  At night he dutifully took turns with the twins, but Sandy suspected that the past few nights had been spent at Grandfather Lamech’s feet. The old man’s extremities tended to get cold from lack of circulation.

“Is anything wrong?” Sandy asked.

“It’s terribly hot.”

Thunder rumbled in the distance.

“That might mean rain,” Sandy said. For the moment he had forgotten that rain might mean flood.

So had Dennys. “Oh, good, for the orchards and the garden. Even with all our watering—“

The thunder came again, with a crackling, electrical sound.

Higgaion padded over to them, whimpering, looking across the tent to Grandfather Lamech.

The two boys hurried to the old man. The flap had been pegged open to let in as much breeze as possible, and the air outside was sulfurous, the sky a greenish-yellow.

Sandy squatted at one side of Grandfather Lamech, Dennys at the other. The old man was propped high on folded skins. Dennys took one of his hands and was shocked at how cold it was. He began to massage it, trying to get some circulation into the withered fingers.

Lamech opened his eyes and smiled, first at one twin, then the other. When he spoke, his voice was so faint that they had to strain to hear. “In your time and place—over the mountain—is it better?”

Sandy and Dennys looked at each other.

Sandy said, “It’s very different.”

“How?” the voice whispered.

“Well. People are taller. And we don’t live as long “

“How long?”

Dennys answered in words which seemed to him an echo of something long lost. “Threescore years and ten.”

“Sometimes fourscore,” Dennys amended.

Dennys looked at Sandy, at his tan, healthy skin, muscled arms and legs, clear eyes. “We have big hospitals—places to take care of sick people. But I’m not sure I’d have had any better care for my sunstroke there than I got from Yalith and Oholibamah.”

Sandy said, “We have showers and washing machines. And radios and rockets and television. And jet planes.”

Dennys smiled. “But I came to your tent on a white camel. Almost all the way.”

Lamech whispered, and both boys bent down to hear.

“People’s hearts—are they kinder?”

Sandy thought of the first vender who had tried to give him half the amount of lentils Grandfather Lamech had requested, and who had snarled and cursed when Sandy protested.

Dennys wondered how much real difference there was between terrorists who hijacked a plane and Tiglah’s father and brother, who had thrown him into the garbage pit.

“People are people—“ Sandy started.

Simultaneously, Dennys said. “I guess human nature is human nature.”

Lamech reached out a trembling hand to each boy. “But you have been to me as my own.”

Dennys gently squeezed the cold hand.

Sandy mumbled, “We love you, Grandfather Lamech.”

“And I you, my sons.”

“El’s words are strange words. I don’t understand,” Lamech said. “I don’t understand the thoughts of El.”

Neither did the twins.

Lightning and thunder came simultaneously. Light splashed through the roof hole and the open tent flap. The walls of the tent shook from the violence of the thunder and a long earth tremor.

But no rain fell.

The twins sat on the root bench to watch the stars come out. Higgaion stayed in the tent with Grandfather Lamech. The sky still had a yellow tinge, though there was no further lightning or thunder. Tongues of flame licked up from the volcano. High in the trees, the baboons chittered nervously.

Sandy curled his toes on the soft moss under the tree root. “We’ve never been to a deathbed.”

“No.”

“I thought that was going to be one, this afternoon with Grandfather Lamech.”

Dennys shook his head. “I think he wanted to ask us those questions.”

“Does he know there’s going to be a great flood?”

“I think his El that he talks to has told him.”

Sandy picked up a fallen frond of palm and looked at it in the last light. “But the flood was a natural phenomenon.”

Dennys shook his head slightly. “Primitive peoples have always tended to believe that what we call natural disasters are sent by an angry god. Or gods.”

“What do you think?” Sandy asked.

Again Dennys shook his head. “I don’t know. I know a lot less than I did before we came to the oasis.”

“Anyhow”—Sandy’s voice was flat—“it didn’t work.”

“What didn’t work?”

“The flood. Wiping out all those people, and then starting alt over again. People are taller, and we do even worse things to one another because we know more.”

Dennys took the palm frond out of Sandy’s hand. “I wouldn’t choose Ham and Anah to repopulate the world, if I were doing the choosing.”

“Oh, they’re not that bad,” Sandy said. “And Shem and Elisheba are all right. Not terribly exciting. But solid. And Japheth and Oholibamah are terrific.”

“Well. What you said. It didn’t work.”

“Maybe nobody should’ve been saved.” Sandy’s voice was hoarse.

Yet again, Dennis shook his head. “Human beings—people have done terrible things, but we’re not all that bad, not all of us.”

“Like who?”

“There’ve been people like—oh, Euclid and Pasteur and Tycho Brahe.”

Sandy nodded. His voice came out more normally. “I like the way Tycho Brahe was so in awe of the maker of the heavens that he put on his court robes before going to his telescope.”

“Who told you that?”

“Meg.”

“I like that, I really do. Hey, and I think Meg would like us to mention Maria Mitchell. Wasn’t she the first famous woman astronomer?”

“I miss Meg. And Charles Wallace. And our parents.”

But Dennys was still involved in his list. “And the wise men who followed the star. They were astronomers. Hey!”

“What?”

“If the flood had drowned everybody, if the earth hadn’t been repopulated, then Jesus would never have been born.”

Sandy, his nostrils assailed by a now familiar but still disturbing odor, hardly heard. “Shh.”

“What?”

“Look.”

A small, shadowy form left the public path and came toward them. “Tiglah.”

“She doesn’t give up,” Dennys mumbled.

Tiglah had learned that Dennys was not to be touched, not by her fingers, at any rate. She approached the twins demurely, eyes cast down, giving her eyelashes the full benefit of their lustrous length. She reached out and put her hand lightly against Sandy, as though to steady herself.  “It’s a fine evening, after all,” she said.

Dennys pulled back from the mingled odor of sweat and perfume.

“It’s okay.” Sandy looked dubiously at the yellow light pulsing on the horizon.

Tiglah said, “I thought you might like to know that Mahlah is going to have her baby tonight.”

“How do you know?” Dennys demanded.

“Rofocale told me.”

“How does he know?” Sandy asked.

“He and Ugiel are friends. Yalith and Oholibamah are going to help.”

The twins had seen kittens and puppies being born, and once a calf, and they had played with baby lambs and pig-lets on a neighboring farm. They looked at each other.  “I’ll bet Oholibamah’s a good midwife,” Dennys said.

Tiglah continued, “They tell me that Oholihamah’s mother had a hard time birthing her. Nephil babies tend to be large.” She sounded anxious.

Dennys looked at her sharply. “Does that worry you?”

“It might, one day. I hope it won’t be too hard on Mahlah. She’s such a little thing. Like me.”

“Well,” Dennys said. “Thanks for telling us.” His tone was dismissive.

“It’s going to be a beautiful night.” Tiglah’s fingers strayed toward Sandy’s arm.

Dennys turned his face away and looked toward the tent.  The flap was still pegged open. Higgaion was sitting in the opening, waving his trunk slightly, as though to catch the breeze.

Sandy looked at Tiglah, hesitated.

Swiftly, Tiglah coaxed. “It’s such a nice night for a walk. After Mahlah’s baby is born, Yalith and Ohoiibamah will be walking home and we might meet them . . .”

Sandy rose to the bait. “Well . . . but not far ... or for long . . .”

“Of course not,” Tiglah reassured. “Just a little walk.”

Sandy became aware of Dennys carefully not looking at him. “Are you coming?”

“No.”

“Do you mind if I go?”

“Of course not.”

“I won’t be long.”

“Feel free.”

They were not communicating. Sandy did not like the feeling. But he stood. Tiglah reached up and put her small hand in his much larger one. When they reached the public path, he looked back. Higgaion had left the tent and was standing by Dennys.

The night was heavier than usual. The stars looked blurred, and almost close enough to touch. The rainless storm had increased rather than decreased the heat. The mountain smoked.

“Let’s go by the desert,” Tiglah suggested, “and watch the moonrise.”

To step off the oasis onto the desert was like stepping off a ship onto the sea. The desert sand felt cool to Sandy’s feet, which were now accustomed to the hot sands by day, to walking on stones, on sharp, dry grasses.

Tiglah led the way to a ledge of rock. “Let’s sit.”

Moonrise over this early desert was very different from moonrise at home. At home, as the moon lifted above the horizon, it was a deep yellow, sometimes almost red. Here, in a time when the sea of air above the planet was still clear and clean, the moon rose with a great blaze of diamonds.

Sandy’s eyes were focused on the brilliant light of the rising moon, and he was not prepared to have the light suddenly darkened by Tiglah’s face as she pressed her lips against his. She was up on her knees in order to reach him, and her lips smelled of berries. Then he was surrounded by her particular odor of scented oils and her own un-washed body.

He knew what she wanted, and he wanted it, too; he was ready, but not, despite her gorgeousness, with Tiglah.  Tiglah was not worth losing his ability to touch a unicorn.

But Yalith—

He knew that he and Dennys should do nothing to change the story, to alter history. Even with Yalith . . .

He was getting ahead of himself. Yalith was not Tiglah.

Yalith smiled on both of them with equal loveliness.

Tiglah’s red hair, turned silver-gold in the moonlight, tumbled about his face, drowning him in its scent. She massaged the back of his head, his neck. Her breathing mingled with his. He knew that if he did not break this off, he would not be able to. With a deep inward sigh, he pulled away. Stood.

Tiglah scrambled to her feet, stared up at him reproachfully. “Don’t you like it? Don’t you like what I was doing?”

“Yes, I like it.” His voice was hoarse. “I like it too much.”

“Too much? How can anything be too much? What is there in life except pleasure, and the more the better! How can you talk of too much?”

“You’re too much.” He tried to laugh. “I think I’d better go now. Grandfather Lamech isn’t well.”

“He’s dying,” Tiglah said bluntly “Rofocale told me.”

“Rofocale doesn’t know everything.”

“He knows more than we do, more than any mortal.”

Sandy stood still. He thought he heard the shrill whine of a mosquito. Then silence. He turned and started walking back to the oasis. Tiglah slid down from the rock, ran to catch up with him, and reached for his hand.

“You, too,” she said. “You must be of the same breed as Rofocale, so tall, so strong. You could pick me up, and throw me over your shoulder. Where do you come from?”

He was tired of answering the old questions. “Another part of the planet. Another time.”

“Why have you come?”

“It was a mistake,” he said shortly.

“But why was it a mistake to come? It’s wonderful that you’re here! How long are you going to stay?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you do have plans? What are you going to do?”

“Take care of Grandfather Lamech’s garden and groves.”

“Is that all? You didn’t come all this way just for that! You must have come for some reason.”

“No,” he said. He removed his arm from her hand.

“No.” Tiglah said. “I didn’t find out anything. I asked him all the questions you told me to, but he didn’t tell me anything “

Rofocale towered over her, his wings flaming like the sun even in the moonlight. “He must have said something.”

“He said he came from far away, and that it was a mistake to come.”

“Mistake?” Rofocale queried. The garnet pool of his eyes looked opaque. “Could El have made another mistake?”

“You think your El sent them?”

“Who else? They are certainly not native. They may be as much of a threat to us as the seraphim. At least the seraphim are careful not to manipulate or change things.”

“You think the young giants will?”

“Who knows? And you couldn’t gee anything out of him?”

The dimple in Tiglah’s chin deepened. “At least he came with me this time.”

“So he did. And did you kiss him?”

She nodded. “He tasted so young. Young as the morning.”

 “Did he like it?”

“He liked it. But just as I thought he was ready to go further, he pulled back. But give me time, Rofocale. This is, after all, the first time he’s been willing to go with me.”

Rofocale in a movement of swift grace knelt so that their eyes were level. “You must work fast, my little Tiglah.”

“Why? What’s the hurry?”

Rofocate rubbed the back of his hand against his fore-head. “Some of our powers have been weakened. We can no longer tell—but Noah knows something. His sons married abnormally young, and hurriedly. Noah still speaks with the One on whom I have turned my back. There may not be another hundred years.”

“But why do you want me to—to seduce him?”

“Wouldn’t that put him in your—and my—power?” He drew her to him. “What you do with the naked giant will not make you any less mine, little lovely one. I like my women to be experienced in the ways of lust.”

“Will I make a baby for you?”

He spread his wings so that she was wrapped in a cloud of flame. “Soon.”

“Soon,” Oholibamah said. “Soon. Press down, Mahlah, press down. Hard.”

“Soon,” Yalith echoed reassuringly. “It will come soon.”

Matred said nothing.

Mahlah, lying on her back on a pile of skins, screamed.  Her hands groped frantically, and Matred took them in a firm grasp, while Mahlah clutched.

“It’s gone on so long,” Yalith whispered, “How much more can she take?”

“Get up,” Matred ordered Mahlah.

Mahlah wailed, “I can’t. I can’t. Oh, let it come, let it come soon—“

“Get up,” Matred repeated. “Squat.”

“I did, I did, until I was so tired I couldn’t—“

“You’ve rested enough “ Matred’s voice was rough. “Help her up,” she ordered Yalith and Oholibamah.

The two girls had to use all their strength to pull the resisting Mahlah off the skins.

“Squat,” Matred said. “Bear down. Now. Now. Push.”

“The moon is setting,” Yalith said.

Oholibamah looked at Matred. “My mother went through this. She is still alive.”

“Yes, my dear,” Matred said. “Thank you.” It was Oholibamah’s first open acknowledgment that she had been sired by one of the nephilim, and Matred pressed her shoulder in gratitude.

The moon set. The sun rose. It was stifling in the small while clay house. The four women streamed sweat. Mihlah’s hair was as wet as though it had been dipped in the water jar. Her eyes were wide open in agony. She moaned. screamed, shrieked. Occasionally, between contractions, her mouth would fall open laxly and her lids would droop shut as she dropped into an exhausted sleep, only to be wakened as she was assailed by a fresh pain

The sun slid low in the sky.

“Squat,” Matred ordered. “You must squat again.”

Three nights and three days. Squatting, lying, screaming.

She will die, Yalith thought. —This cannot go on.

“Soon.” Oholibamah continued to reassure the tortured Mahlah. “It will come soon. Press down. Harder.”

Matred’s voice was sharp with anxiety. “Work, Mahlah, work. We cannot have this baby for you. Work. Push.”

For the fourth night, the moon rose.

“Push,” Matred commanded.

A long, grunting groan came from Mahlah, more terrible than her screams.

“Now. Now”

The groan seemed as though it would tear Mahlah apart.

“Now.” And at last Matred reached between Mahlah’s legs to help draw the baby out of her body. The baby’s head was so large that Yalith could hear Mahlah’s flesh rip as the child came out. Matred shook it, patted its buttocks, and the air rushed into its lungs and it howled.

While Sandy was with Tiglah, Dennys went in to Grandfather Lamech, uneasy about him. He walked to where the old man was lying.

“Son?”

“It’s Dennys, Grandfather.”

An old hand groped for his. Dennys held it, and it was cold, deathly cold. “Can I do something for you, Grandfather?”

A serene smile wreathed the old man’s face. “El has spoken.”

Dennys wailed.

The old man seemed to be trying to suck in enough air to speak. Finally he said, “All will not be lost. Oh, my son, Den, El has repented. While you were in the garden, El spoke to me here in the tent. I have never heard him here before. Oh, my son, Den, my son, my son, Noah will be spared. Noah and his family. El has spoken.”

“From what, Grandfather Lamech?”

“Eh?”

“From what will they be spared?”

The old fingers trembled in Dennys’s hand. “El spoke of many waters. This I do not understand. But no matter.  What is of concern is that my son will be spared.” The fingers pressed against Dennys’s. “But you, my son? What will happen to you? I do not know.”

“I don’t know either. Grandfather.” Dennys massaged the withered old hand until a little warmth returned.

Ugiel stood looking down at the baby lying between Mahlah’s breasts. The young mother looked pale and exhausted, but radiant.

The three women who had shared her labor were nearly as exhausted as Mahlah. Oholibamah had deep circles under her eyes, and her cheeks were ashen. It was she who had somehow or other stanched the blood that poured out, nearly taking Mahlah’s life with it; she who had brought the afterbirth out safely. Her hands and arms were stained red from holding Mahlah’s torn flesh together until the rush of blood slowed to a trickle and the danger of hemorrhaging was over.

Ugiel paid no attention to the others. He gazed at his baby. It had a full head of hair, black, like Mahlah’s. He flipped it over and fingered the soft down outlining the shoulder blades. “I am pleased,” he said.

Matred was sharp. “And well you might be. It almost killed her. Without Oholibamah, it would have.” She turned away from Ugiel and fed Mahlah some of the strengthening broth Elisheba had sent over.

“Go home,” she said to Yalith and Oholibamah. “Go and get something to eat, and rest. I will stay with Mahlah.  Elisheba will be by later.”

Oholibamah, also ignoring Ugiel, looked at mother and child. “She will need much care for the next several days.  Be sure to call me if the bleeding starts again.”

“I will.” Matred promised.

Ugiel bent over Mahlah and with one long finger touched the baby on its eyelids, its nose. “I am pleased,” Ugiel said again.

Oholibamah sat in the big tent, letting Elisheba feed them lentil soup.

Oholibamah said, “He didn’t care whether she lived or not, as long as she had the baby.”

Yalich paused in the act of raising her bowl to her lips.

“Do you really think that?”

“You heard him, didn’t you? ‘Why doesn’t she get on with it?’ he said. ‘Why is it taking so long?” And then he would go away and not come back for hours and hours.”

“Mother said she didn’t want him around—“ Then Yalith stopped. Matred had been with her older daughters when they gave birth, shooing their husbands away but giving a running account of the delivery. Nor had the husbands gone far away. They had. in fact, been maddeningly underfoot. They had not simply vanished, like Ugiel, leaving everything to the women. She finished her soup in silence.

Oholibamah, too, drank. Her dark brows drew together.  Her raven-black hair had come loose from its thong and fallen about her shoulders.

“Oholibamah—“ Yalith said softly.

“What is it?”

“The nephiliro marry our women, give them babies. But the seraphim—“

“They do not marry. Or give babies.”

“But in many ways they are like the nephilim.”

Oholibamah pushed her dark hair back in a weary gesture. “No. I think that once the nephilim were like the seraphim.”

“What happened to change them?”

“I don’t know.”

Yalith thought of Aariel, with the bright amber eyes and leonine grace, and then of Eblis, and she was glad she had run from the purple-winged nephil. She wanted nothing to do with Eblis, if he was like Ugiel, who did not care whether his wife lived or died. Could Ugiel once have been like Aariel? Could Eblis?

Oholibamah said, “I think that the seraphim are free to leave us for the stars at any time if they want to. I don’t think the nephilim can. Not anymore. They stay with us, not because they have chosen to, but because they have to.”

Noah and Japheth came into the tent, their arms and hands as stained with grape juice as Oholibamah’s had been with blood. Japheth embraced his wife. Yalith ran to her father. “Mahlah has had her baby! It is all right!”

Noah put his arms around his youngest child, but he seemed strangely disinterested.

“Did you hear, Father?” Yalith demanded. “Mahlah’s long travail is over at last!”

“That is good to hear,” Noah said heavily. “We were worried.”

“What is it?” Oholibamah asked. “Is something wrong?”

Japheth’s arm tightened about his wife.

Noah drew Yalith close. “El has spoken. Strange words.”

“Good words?” Yalith asked.

Oholibamah looked at Japheth questioningly, but he shook his head.

“Strange words.” Noah repeated. “I do not know what to make of them.”

“Be happy for Mahlah, Father,” Yalith said. “It was such a hard birth, so long. If it had not been for Oholi—“

“Mahlah will be all right,” Oholibamah said. “She is young and strong and will heal quickly.”

“It is a big baby. Father,” Yalith continued. “It is the biggest baby I have ever seen, with dark hair, like Mahlah’s, and a button of a nose.”

“At least it is a baby.” Noah’s voice was bitter.

“You are upset,” Oholibamah said.

“Yes, I suppose I am upset. El has asked me to do strange things. I do not understand. Great changes are coming.  Terrible changes.”

“Japheth—“ Oholibaroah whispered.

“Hush. Later.”

Within the comfort of her father’s arms, Yalith shivered.  “But now we can rejoice, Father, because Mahlah has had a safe delivery.”

Noah continued to hold his daughter, pressing his lips against her bright hair. “We did not have a wedding feast for Mahlah. That hurt Matred. I had hoped that we could have a wedding feast for you.”

“Oh, but I hope you will!” Yalith exclaimed. She thought of Mahlah’s strange wedding, and she did not want one like that, isolated from her family and friends. Then she thought of the twins. In their own way, they were as alien as the nephilim and the seraphim, and yet they were human, totally human. And she loved them. She pressed her cheek against her father’s chest, so that she did not see the expression on his face.

Oholibamah did, but before she could speak, Japheth had pulled her to him again in a loving embrace.

A soft whimpering woke the twins. Higgaion had come over to their sleeping skins to summon them.

Sandy opened his eyes. “Higgy, what’s the matter?”

Dennys sat up, abruptly wide awake. “Is it Grandfather Lamech?” He looked at Higgaion, asking, “Should we get NoahP”

“Is Grandfather—“ Sandy could not finish the sentence.

The two boys scrambled across the tent to the old man’s sleeping skins. Grandfather Lamech was breathing in strange, shallow pants. Dennys reached to touch him, and saw the scarab beetle. He felt a surge of relief. Spoke urgently. “Adnarel, we need Admael. If he could be his camel self. he could carry one of us to Noah’s tent far more quickly than either Sandy or I could run.” Dennys gently touched the bronze armor of the scarab beetle, which thinned out and disappeared under his finger, so that he was touching only a corner of the old man’s sleeping skin.  Adnarel stood by them, a golden glimmer in the gloom of the tent. “I will get Admael. Wait with Grandfather Lamech.” With one of his swift, graceful gestures, he bowed and went out.

Sandy and Dennys each took one of Grandfather Lamech’s hands, which felt as cold and lifeless as marble.  Sandy said, “Adnarel is calling Admael for us. We’ll get Noah for you, as quickly as we can.”

The old man breathed softly. “My good boys.”

Dennys watched Grandfather Lamech’s straining effort to breathe. Gently he put his arm under the small, frail body, easing it into a sitting position. The old man leaned against the boy, and his breathing lightened. “I’ll stay with you. Grandfather.” Dennys looked at Sandy and nodded.

Sandy nodded back.

“I can wait,” the old roan whispered, “until the last star goes out.”

Adnarel returned. He knelt by Grandfather Lamech, examining him gently. He turned to the twins. “Admael is waiting outside. You don’t need to rush. Sand. There will be time.”

Grandfather Lamech gasped. “Until the baboons—“

Adnarel smiled. “Until the baboons clap their hands and shout for joy to welcome the dawn.”

Dennys said, “I’ll stay with Grandfather.”

Adnarel nodded, touching Dennys’s shoulder lightly.  “Good. I will be here if you need me.” His bright form misted, swirled softly like fog, and the scarab beetle shone against Higgaion’s ear.

When Dennys had ridden the white camel across the desert, coming from Noah’s tent, he had still been weak from his sunstroke. Sandy was well and strong, and had little difficulty keeping his seat, his body quickly becoming accustomed to the erratically rolling rhythm. They crossed the desert without trouble. On a high outcropping of white rock, a lion stood majestically to watch their progress.

There was no sound around Noah’s tenthold beyond contented snores. Sandy pulled back the flap to the big tent, calling, “Noah!”

It was Matred’s sleepy voice that answered, “Who is it?”

“It’s Sandy. Grandfather Lamech sent me to get Noah.”

“El.” Noah’s voice was deep. “I’ll be right out.”

Sandy stood outside, listening to the sound of night insects mingling with snores from Ham and Elisheba’s tent.  He looked up at the sky and the low, blurred stars seemed to be calling him, but he could not understand what they were trying to say.

Noah came out, wearing a fresh loincloth.

“Dennys is with Grandfather,” Sandy said, “and Higgaion.”

Noah nodded.

“Adnarel said there would be time, but you’ll get there faster if you ride the camel alone. I’ll walk back.”

Again Noah nodded, accepting the offer. The camel’s legs were folded under it so that Noah could climb up easily.  He sat astride, his work-gnarled fingers gripping the hair at the camel’s neck. The white beast rose slowly, leaned its head on the long, arched neck low enough so that it could nuzzle Sandy softly, then took off, heading for the desert.

Sandy followed slowly. He knew that as soon as Noah reached the tent, Dennys would leave Grandfather Lamech, to allow the old man his last minutes with his son. Dennys would be waiting for him, probably sitting out on the root bench, perhaps with Higgaion to wait with him. But Sandy could not make his feet hurry. He jumped down onto the desert, and sand lapped at his feet. He let it run like water through his toes.

When Grandfather Lamech died, what then? Would it be near time for the flood? Would Sandy and Dennys be allowed to stay in the old man’s tent and take care of his garden and groves?

Asking these questions of the silent stars did nothing to ease the lump of sorrow in his throat. He moved slowly over the sand, stubbed his toe on a hidden rock. Said “Ouch” in a loud voice. Walked on.

On his rock, the lion now lay still, watchful, its ears pricking as Sandy plodded by.

The horizon was touched with a faint rose color. The stars were dimming. The birds were waking in the trees.  He thought he heard a sleepy jabbering from the baboons.  He turned in toward the oasis. He could not delay his return any longer.

His head was down; he was looking at his feet moving across the sand. He did not notice sounds behind him.  Suddenly something noxious was thrown over his head, blinding him. He was picked up roughly, his feet jerked out from under him. Two people were carrying him. The foul-smelling skin over his head was pressed hard against his mouth so that he could not scream. He tried to wriggle out of the clutch of whoever was carrying him, and a fist crashed into his belly, winding him, and something sharp pricked his arm.