Yalith left the tent and slipped away, to the desert, to the rock where the great lion lay. He jumped down from the rock as she approached, and she ran to him, flinging her arms around his great ruffed neck, and sobbing, so that her words were barely coherent. “Grandfather Lamech is dying.” Her tears spotted his fur. When her weeping was spent, the great cat’s tongue gently licked her tears away,  and then they sat. Yalith between the front paws, in silent communion.

The stars moved in their slow dance, dimmed. Neither lion nor girl moved. But Yalith, leaning against the great tawny chest, hearing the thudding of the lion’s heart in time with the soft singing of the stars, moved into peace.

Outside Grandfather Lamech’s tent, Dennys sat on the old root of the fig tree, Higgaion at his feet. Neither moved.  Above them. the stars were quiet.

Within the tent, Noah held his father up so that the old man could breathe.

 “My son,” Lamech whispered. “You have been a blessing to me and to the land ...”

Noah’s tears rolled quietly down his cheeks, into his beard. “I have been stubborn and stupid—“

A faint laugh came from his father. “I did not say that you are not human. But you listen to El?”

“I try. Father. I try.”

“El has told me that through you shall blessing - - -“ The old man’s breath failed.

“Hush, Father. Don’t try to talk “

“It is ... it is our last - .”

“I listen, Father. To you. To El.”

“You will do what—“

“Yes. Father. I will do what El tells me.”

“No matter . - “

“No matter how strange it seems.”

“Yalith—“

Noah’s tears flowed more freely- “Oh, Father, I don’t know.”

“Never fear.” For a moment Lamech’s voice was strong, and he sounded almost like one of the seraphim. Then the strength faded, and he spoke in a thin whisper. “El will take care of ...”

“Father. Father. Don’t go.”

“Don’t hold me back, my son ... my son ...”

Noah’s tears fell like rain.

“Our dear twins—“

“What, Father?”

The old man gasped, and then smiled a surprised smile of joy, so radiant that it seemed to light the darkened tent.

Had lightning flashed to make the smile visible?

“Father!” Noah cried. And then, “Father!” And then his sobs broke like waves across the dry sands of the desert.

The stars did not sing. The sky was silent. Higgaion sat up, ears alert. Dennys raised his head, and it seemed that the stars were holding their light.

And suddenly the bright presence of a seraphim stood before him, and the starlight again fell onto his upturned face.

Japheth and Oholibamah held vigil for Grandfather Lamech in their own way. They went to the desert, to their particular resting rock, and sat quietly, holding hands.

At last Japheth spoke: “Thank El that my father and grandfather are reconciled. It would be much harder to bear this if—“

Oholibamah smiled. “Two stubborn old men. Yes, it is better this way. We have the Den to thank for this.”

“It was a happy day when I first found them in the desert, our young giants. They have taken good care of Grandfather.”

Oholibamah sighed. “We are going to miss him. Yalith, especially; she was the closest to him of us all.”

“True.” Japheth cradled her dark head with his hand.  “But Father says it is best that death has come to get him now. He is too old and frail to stand the trip.”

“What trip?” Oholibamah asked.

Japheth’s eyes were darkly unhappy. “Oh, my dear one, it is what I promised to tell you. Father says that El has told him strange things. And that he has been given very specific instructions.”

“What instructions?”

Japheth sounded uncomfortable- “Oh, my wife, it is very strange indeed. El has told my father to build a boat, an ark.”

Oholibamah, who had been leaning against her husband, sat up abruptly. “An ark? In the middle of the desert?”

“I said it was strange.”

“Could he have made a mistake?”

“El?”

“Not El. Your father. Could he have misunderstood what El was telling him?”

Japheth shook his head. “He sounded very certain. He said that El had also told Grandfather Lamech the things which are to come.”

“An ark.” Oholibamah’s dark brows drew together. “An ark, in a desert land. It makes no sense. Has your father told the others?”

“Not yet.” Japheth pulled Oholibamah back against him. “He says they will laugh.”

“They will,” Oholibamah agreed. But she did not laugh.

“I have never seen him more serious,” Japheth said.

“What’s the ark to be built of?” Oholibamah asked.

“Gopher wood. At least we have plenty of that. And then he is to put pitch inside and outside to make it watertight.”

“From what water?” Japheth was silent. She turned so that she could look at him. “This does not sound like your father.”

Japheth spoke in a low voice. “Nor does it sound like El.”

Oholibamah stroked his face. “We do not know what El does or does not sound like. El is a great mystery.”

Japheth laughed. “So is a big boat in the desert.”

“How big?” Oholibamah asked.

Japheth flung out his hands. “Three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high.”

Oholibamah asked curiously, “El gave these precise measurements?”

“According to Father.”

“I don’t understand,” Oholibamah said. “I wish you’d had a chance to talk to Grandfather.”

Japheth shook his head, wiping the tears from his eyes.

“And our twins.” Oholibamah said. “What will happen to our twins now?”

“It is possible they might go on taking care of Grandfather’s garden and groves. But I’m not sure. Grandfather’s death is the beginning of a big change.”

Oholibamah nodded. “There are dissonances in the song of the stars.”

“Have you heard it?” Japheth asked.

Oholibamah nodded. “The song has changed. Yes, I have heard it. But why should Grandfather Lamech’s death be the beginning of change? He is a very old man.”

Japheth agreed. “It is not at all strange that he should die.”

Oholibamah mused, “Perhaps it is strange that Grandfather Lamech should die just as El gives extraordinary commands to Lamech’s son.”

“Oh, my beloved,” Japheth said. “You are wise. Sometimes I wish you were not quite so wise.”

They twined their arms about each other. Japheth put his lips against hers, and they took comfort in their love.

When it became apparent that Sandy had not returned to Lamech’s tent, nor had he stayed in Noah’s, there was great consternation.

Noah’s sons and their wives had come with Matred across the desert, and stood sadly outside Grandfather Lamech’s tent.

“We haven’t seen him,” Japheth said anxiously to his father. “We thought he was following you.”

Yalith reached for her brother. “We were so busy with our grief, we didn’t even think . . -“

Noah pulled at his beard. “He said he would follow me.”

Ham said, not unkindly, “Whatever’s happened, we can’t look for him now, not with the morning sun rising.”

Shem explained to Dennys, “In our country, in this heat, the dead must be buried quickly.”

Dennys tried to hide his panic at Sandy’s inexplicable absence. Sandy was reliable. If there was a reason for his not having followed Noah to Grandfather Lamech’s tent, he would somehow or other send word.

How? There were no telephones. But wouldn’t he have tried to find one of the seraphim? He wouldn’t just have gone off somewhere, without telling anybody.

Matred put a motherly arm about Dennys. “Now we must anoint Grandfather Lamech’s body and prepare it for burial at sundown. Then we will leave our grief and look for the Sand. There is some reasonable explanation for his absence, I’m sure.”

Anah suggested, “Perhaps he’s somewhere with my sister. I think they’re very taken with each other.”

Dennys shook his head. He did not believe it. Sandy would not go off with Tiglah, knowing that Grandfather Lamech was dying.

Yalith slipped her hand into his and squeezed it comfortingly. She kissed him lightly on the cheek, like a butterfly, and then went with her mother and the other women into the tent. The men stayed outside while Lamech’s body was rubbed with oil and spices and wrapped in clean white skins.

The sun rose high in the sky, beat down on them with the fierceness of a brass gong.

Japheth said, “Do not even think of going off to look for him in this heat. Den. The sun would strike you down, and that would not help your brother.”

Had it not been for Japheth, Dennys would have put on one of Matred’s woven hats and gone to look for Sandy.  But Dennys knew that Japheth was right.

“Surely he’s somewhere in the shade,” Shem said. The palm grove where they were sitting shielded them with its dense shade. “Don’t worry. Den. The Sand is a sensible lad.”

“Yes, but—“ Dennys started. And stopped himself. The people of Noah’s tenthold were grieving for Lamech. Higgaion was in the tent with the women and the old men, and Dennys knew that it was irrational of him to feel abandoned by the mammoth. He was, after all, Lamech’s mammoth.

The tent flap was pushed open slightly and Higgaion trudged out, and toward Dennys, raising his trunk in sorrowful greeting and asking to be picked up, much as a small child will raise its arms to be lifted.

Dennys gathered up the little creature and held it against him, letting his tears drop onto the mammoth’s shaggy head.

At sunset, Noah and his sons carried Grandfather Lamech’s body to a shallow cave not far across the desert. The women followed. Dennys stood between Yalith and Oholibamah, as Noah and Shem, Ham and Japheth dug a grave in the sand just inside the cave. Dennys had offered to help with the difficult digging, not only out of love for the old man, but also to take his mind off his near-terror over Sandy.

Noah told him, gently, that it was the custom that only the sons should do this final art of love, but that Dennys should stay with the women and the sons-in-law, because he had become a child of the family.

The sun slid below the horizon. The sky was a deep crimson. As the sun vanished, there was a faint glow on the far horizon, and the young moon began to peer over the edge of the planet. The moon’s diamond crescent seemed strangely subdued as it rose, and Dennys, standing to one side, thought that he could hear a soft and mournful dirge.  A star trembled into being, then another, and another.

They joined the singing of the moon, singing for Lamech, whose years had been long, whose life had been full, and who, at the end, had been reconciled with his son.

Noah and Matred’s older daughters, Seerah and Hoglah, and their husbands and children, stood in a cluster, wailing loudly. Mahlah stood to one side with her baby. Ugiel, she apologized, was not able to come. She looked curiously at Dennys.

Sandy, Noah told Mahlah in the same words she had used of Ugiel, was not able to come.

“Why?” Mahlah asked. No one answered.

Oholibamah spoke in a low voice, for Japheth, Dennys, and Yalith alone “Mahlah will ask Ugiel about Sandy when she goes back.”

Yalith whispered, “Will he know?”

Oholibamah shook her head. “If he does, he won’t tell. I suspect the nephilim have something to do with this.”

Japheth frowned. “I hope you aren’t right about that.”

Dennys looked at them with fresh fear.

The grave was dug.

As the son and grandsons picked the old man up to place him in the grave, Dennys sensed, rather than heard, presences behind them, and turned to see the golden bodies of seraphim standing in a half circle. Once again, he could hear clearly the singing of the moon and the stars.

Aanel called, “Yalith!”

Startled, she let out a small cry.

Aanel raised arms and wings skyward, and the song increased in intensity. “Sing for Grandfather Lamech.”

Obediently, Yalith raised her head and sang, a wordless melody, achingly lovely Above her, the stars and the moon sang with her, and behind her the seraphim joined in great organ tones of harmony.

Japheth took Oholibamah’s hands and drew her out onto the clear sands, and they began to dance in rhythm with the song. They were joined by Ham and Anah, and the four of them wove patterns under the stars, touching hands, moving apart, twirling, touching, leaping. Shem and Elisheba joined in, then Noah and Matred and the older daughters and their husbands, and then Yalith took Dennys’s hands and drew him into the kaleidoscope of moving bodies, an alleluia of joy and grief and wonder, until Dennys forgot Sandy, forgot that Grandfather Lamech would never be in his tent again, forgot his longing to go home. The crimson flush at the horizon turned a soft ash-rose, then mauve, then blue, as more and more stars brightened, and the harmony of the spheres and the dance of the galaxies interwove in radiance. Slowly the dancers moved apart, stopped. Dennys closed his eyes in a combination of joy and fierce grief, opening them only when the requiem was over. The sky was brilliant with the light of the moon and the stars. The seraphim were gone. Yalith stood beside him, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Noah and his sons tamped down the earth over Grand-father Lamech’s grave.

Sandy opened his eyes and could see nothing. His limbs felt numb. Whatever had pricked him had temporarily paralyzed him. There was a strange tingling in his limbs as feeling began to return. He knew about the tiny darts that Japheth and Yalith and some of the others in Noah’s tent-hold used, and guessed that something similar had been used on him.

Why?

He smelled goat, urine, sweat. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see that he was in a small tent. The smoke hole was covered, so that very little light came through. It was a much smaller tent than Noah’s or Grandfather Lamech’s. He tried to move his arms and found that his hands were tied, bound firmly with thong.  So were his feet.

As sensation returned to him, he wriggled around and finally managed to sit up, his back against the rough skins of the tent, his bound hands in front of him. He raised them and tried to bite at the thongs. The taste made him gag. The thongs had been wound about his wrists so many times that it was futile to try to chew through them, nor could he find a knot to try to bite. He stopped his useless reflexive efforts and tried to think.  He had been kidnapped on his way from Noah’s tent to Lamech’s. Why? When terrorists hijacked a plane, they wanted something. What use would he be to anybody as a hostage? This was a world still without money, without political prisoners. As far as he knew, nobody held anything against Lamech or Noah.

So, why?

His stomach growled. How long had the poisoned dart kept him asleep? What time was it? He could not see even a line of light to indicate where the tent flap was. The light from the covered smoke hole was so faint that it might even have come from stars.

There had to be a tent flap. He wriggled around so that his feet touched the tent wall, and kept wriggling, feeling with his toes. Wriggled until he was exhausted and had found no way out. Rested. Wriggled again. Again. At last his feet felt a line of roughness. He pushed, and the flap moved slightly, enough so that he could tell that it was indeed night outside. Stars. A single palm tree silhouetted against them. He had no idea where he was, or even if he was still on his own oasis.

Worn out from his efforts, he fell asleep, his head just out of the tent. Sunlight blazing against his lids woke him, and he managed to slither back into the tent and sat leaning against the taut skins by the entrance. His stomach made loud, hungry noises. What wouldn’t he give for a mess of Grandfather Lamech’s pottage.

Grandfather.

When he got out of this tent and back where he belonged, there would no longer be the tiny, shriveled old man tending the hearth fire.

Come on. Sandy. He’s old. Seven hundred seventy-seven years. And Noah was pushing six hundred years old. It didn’t make any sense. Except, he believed them. And after the flood people weren’t going to live that long. At least, he thought that was how it was going to be.

“Twin!”

It was a girl’s soft voice. His heart leaped. Yalith.

Then smell followed sound. Not Yalith. Tiglah.

“Twin?” she repeated.

“Hello, Tiglah.” He did not sound welcoming. He remembered what Dennys had told him about the people in Tiglah’s tent. So it was they who were the terrorists. Terrorism was not just a twentieth-century phenomenon. It was evidently part of human nature, and it didn’t get wiped out by the flood. There seemed less and less point to the flood.

“You recognized my voice!” she chortled.

No, your smell, you slut, he wanted to say.

She pushed in through the flap and pegged it back to let in the light. She had taken unusual pains with her hair, so that it glistened brightly. Her loincloth was of white goat-skin. “Dennys?” She was tentative.

“Sandy.”

“Oh, I’m so glad it’s you! Dennys doesn’t seem to like me, and I think you do, don’t you?”

“Why would I like anybody who’s kidnapped me and tied me up and starved me?”

“But I didn’t do that!”

“You obviously knew about it.”

“But I didn’t do it! My father and brother did. I wouldn’t hurt you for anything!”

“But you don’t mind if your father or brother hurt me?”

“Oh, beloved Sand, I can’t stop them! I’ve come to bring you food and comfort “

He sniffed. There was a nourishing smell of stew beyond the odor of the tent, as well of Tiglah’s perfumed and unwashed body. If they’d already used some kind of poisoned dart on him, was it safe to eat the stew?

Tiglah said, “I made it myself, so I know it’s alt right, and it’s good, too “

“I can’t eat with my hands tied up.”

She paused. Appeared to be thinking. “I’ll feed you!”

Her dimples came and went with her lavish smile.

“No. I’m not a baby. Untie my hands.” He did not say please. How could he ever have been attracted by this girl?

She paused again. “All right. I’ll untie your hands and stay with you while you eat.”

“My feet, too,” Sandy ordered “I need to go to the bathroom.”

“What?”

“I need to urinate.”

“Oh, for auk’s sakes. Can’t you just do it in the tent?”

“No. You can come with me if you want. I don’t care, but I need to go.”

She knelt by him and began working at the thongs, first on his wrists, then his ankles. When he was freed, he stood up, feeling very wobbly. This tent was not nearly as high as Grandfather Lamech’s or Noah’s, and he bumped his head on the roof skins.

She took his hands and rubbed his wrists where the thongs had chafed them.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Where?”

“I told you. I need to relieve myself.”

“Come along, then.” She pulled him out of the tent and to a small, grassy hummock a few feet away. There was no grove to provide privacy or a modicum of sanitation. “Go ahead.”

“Turn around.”

“You’ll run away.”

He looked about. He did not recognize the part of the oasis where this solitary tent was. A few yards away were some palms, and a rocky field dotted with black-and-white goats grazing under the high brassy sky. He had no idea in which direction to go. “I won’t run. Turn around.”

“Promise?”

 “I promise.” He suspected that his promise meant more than would Tiglah’s. When he was through, he said, “All right.”

She whirled around and caught his hand again. “Now come and have some of my good goat-meat stew.”

They ducked back into the tent, and she brought him a wooden bowl full of meat and vegetables. He had learned to eat with his fingers, if not as delicately as Yalith, at least tidity enough so that he did not slop food on himself.  Tiglah’s concoction was not bad. The goat meat was a little strong, but she had cooked it until it was tender. When he finished, cleaning the bowl with his fingers, he felt better.

“I’ll have to tie you up again.” Tiglah apologized. “They won’t like it that I let you loose at all.”

“Who’re they?”

“Oh, the men of my father’s tent.”

“What’s it all about?”

“What?”

“Kidnapping me. Keeping me tied in this stinking tent.”

She shrugged and giggled. “How would I know? They’re always up to things.”

“And you’re not?”

“I’m only a girl.” She was full of righteous indignation. “I like you! Why would I want to tie you up?”

“Then don’t.”

She had the thongs in her hands. “But I have to.”

“Why?”

“They’d be furious. They’d hit me. They might kill me.”

Would they? He wasn’t sure. But he understood Dennys’s refusal to have anything to do with Tiglah. Never again.

 “How long are they going to keep me here? What do they think they’re going to get out of it?”

“Noah’s vineyards,” she said.

“What!”

“Noah’s vineyards. They’re the best on any oasis.”

“That’s idiotic. Noah wouldn’t give up his vineyards. They’re his livelihood.”

“He’d better give them up,” Tiglah said, “or they’ll kill you.”

Sandy stood up, outraged, hitting his head against the roof skins. “Do they know Grandfather Lamech is dying-is dead?”

“Of course.”

“They’re monstrous.”

“They’re clever. They knew everybody would be paying attention to silly old Lamech and wouldn’t miss you.  They’re very clever.”

“Oh, no, they’re not,” Sandy said. “No one gives in to terrorists. Noah won’t give anybody his vineyards.”

“Then they’ll kill you.”

“And what good will that do? They still won’t have the vineyards, and they’ll have murder on their hands.”

“Oh, Sand. Sit down. This tent wasn’t made for giants. I hate to tie you up again, but I have to. Unless—“

“Unless what?”

“Come with me.”

“What would your family think of that?”

“They’d hate it. But I care more about you than I do about them.”

Sandy did not believe her. There was a trap here. This had something to do with the nephilim, with that mosquito Rofocale. What, he did not know. Tiglah did not love him enough to anger her family. She did not love him at all.  But she would obey Rofocale.

He felt a sharp sting and slapped, but missed the mosquito, who buzzed out of the tent. Furious, he scratched at the bite. “Tie me up and go away.”

She pressed her face close to his. “You won’t come with me?”

“No.”

“You’ll risk being killed?”

His mouth twisted into a half grin. “There are fates worse than death,” and he laughed, because Tiglah did not have the faintest idea what he was talking about.

“I haven’t bound you yet. “ she whispered.

“No.”

“You’re a giant. You could grab me and run off with me, and you could tell them you’ll kill me if they try to capture you again.”

It was tempting. He shook his head, and a great wave of sadness washed over him. Tiglah had never heard o£ the great heroes of lance and spear, of longbow and sword. But this was what she was tempting him to be. What he could be if he wanted to be.

What in him was urging him to reject this attractive role? What was telling him to say no? It was more than his suspicion that all this was some kind of nephil trap.

The sadness washed over him again. Violence was no longer an option. The splitting of the atom had put an end to that, though the world was slow to realize it.

Yes, he could overcome Tiglah with ease. She was inviting him. But even if there was no trick in it, he would not do it. Violence met with violence produced only more violence. His stomach knotted.

“Are you sure?” Tiglah’s voice had a little whine in it.

“Of what?”

“That you won’t come with me.”

He smiled without mirth. There was poison in Tiglah’s offer, of that he was certain. “No, Tiglah, I won’t come with you. Yes, to you I’m a giant. I’m young and strong.  But then what? I couldn’t survive in the desert. I’ve seen bones there, and not all of them are animal.”

She pouted. “I thought you liked me.”

“You’re a delicious dish, Tiglah. Now please bind me again, but perhaps you don’t need to do it as tightly as before.”

She was offended. She tied the thongs as tightly as she could, with vicious little jerks, but Sandy used enough strength so that she did not succeed. Then she flounced out, slapping the tent flap closed behind her.

He didn’t mind the darkness. Enough light came in through the edges of the closed roof hole. He needed to think. He was extremely confused at his own reactions. He and Dennys had had their fair share of fistfights when they were younger, though perhaps not as many as their sister, Meg. They played mostly team games and did not go in for boxing or wrestling. Was he being a coward? He knew that Tiglah’s father and brother would not hesitate to use bow and arrow, stone knives, or spears. He knew they were quite capable of killing him, just as much if he ran away as if he stayed. In fact, he thought he had more chance of surviving if he stayed and figured out some way and route of escape than if he rushed out to the desert, unthinking. He was not so much afraid as outraged. He did not think he was a coward.

So. What to do? Violence was not going to work. Violence was what these little men turned to, and he did not want to be like them.

He wondered if they had gone to Noah with their wild demand for his vineyards. He did not know Noah as well as Dennys did, but he did not think Noah would give in.  Sandy’s rejection of violence had nothing to do with giving in. Anything but.

After Grandfather Lamech was buried in the grave in the small cave, and the singing had died out, and the seraphim were gone, Noah and his family walked slowly toward the big tent. Wherever there was an outcropping or rock or a cave, Japheth, holding his tiny bow and darts, would hurry to look, Dennys on his heels.  “I do not like this,” Noah said.

Dennys and Japheth returned from peering into the deep shadows of a little cave. The starlight was so bright that the shadows seemed to increase in darkness. “Is Sandy lost in the desert?” Dennys’s voice cracked more than usual in his anxiety.

In the distance they heard a howl; “Hungry!”

Yalith reached for Dennys’s hand and squeezed it.  Shem said, “If the manticore is hungry, then he hasn’t found anything to eat.”

Oholibamah said, “Don’t worry about the manticore. Sandy scared it away from Grandfather Lamech’s tent.”

Gould Sandy scare the manticore again, if they met out on the desert? Dennys was not certain, not after his own encounter with the ugly creature.

Elisheba said, “Sandy would never have just wandered off on his own.”

Yalith nodded. “He was following you to Grandfather Lamech’s tent.”

Noah rubbed his beard. “Yes, yes, that’s what we thought.  But when he didn’t come, then we thought he must have stayed in the big tent.”

Anah said, “Well, he didn’t, and that’s that. I think he’s off with my sister, Tiglah, that’s what I think.”

Nobody replied. The stars moved slowly across the sky.  Dennys tried to listen for their singing, but he could hear nothing. After the glorious requiem for Grandfather Lamech, they were silent.

The moon was dipping behind the horizon when they reached Noah’s tents, tired, sorrowful, anxious.

“Now, before anything else, all of us must eat,” Matred said.

Noah said, “She is right. Come, Den.”

Dennys accepted the bowl of broth Matred gave him. He knew that he needed all his strength for whatever lay ahead.

With his strong teeth, Shem pulled the meat off a mutton bone. Elisheba handed him a bowl of broth. “Will you go look for the Sand?” Shem, the hunter, was the one who knew the oasis and the desert best. Japheth and Ham worked in the vineyards, close to home. Shem was the one who should go, and Dennys flashed Elisheba a glance of gratitude. Absently, he patted Selah, who was leaning against him, putting her trunk on his knee.

Shem saw that Dennys had finished his broth, and nodded. He reached for one of the tall spears leaning against the inner wall of the tent. Hefted it. Offered it to Dennys. Dennys took it, though he had never used a spear.  Shem checked his small quiver of blow darts, then reached for a second spear, and nodded at Dennys, not speaking.  The boy followed the short, stocky man out of the tent, feeling a little hope. There was something about Shem that gave him confidence.

Noah said. “Japheth and I will search the paths of the oasis.”

Ham said, “Anah and I will go to the marketplaces.”

Matred spoke too cheerfully,“If the Sand returns to the tent, which seems likely, we will let everybody know.”

Shem and Dennys pushed out of the tent flap. The stars were dimming. Light tinged the eastern horizon. Heat was already beginning to shimmer in watery mirages on the desert. Dennys had on one of Matred’s woven hats and hoped it would be adequate once day broke.

Shem looked at him. “Once the sun is high, you must go back to the tent.”

Dennys nodded. Shem, like Japheth, was right about that. Already his skin was prickling from heat as well as anxiety. He tried to keep himself from imagining what might have happened to his twin. He followed Shem. Followed. The heat bore down. The futile searching seemed interminable. After what must have been several hours he asked, “Where’s Higgaion?”

Shem said, “He will spend the day mourning at Grandfather Lamech’s grave. Then he will come to us. Setah will help lighten his grief.”

“Higgaion scents for water.” Dennys said with sudden hope. “Do you think he could scent for Sandy?”

Shem leaned on his spear, thinking. “Mammoths are strange creatures. They can do strange things. Let us try.”

Shem strode off. He walked at a rapid pace, but Dennys, with his much longer legs, could easily have outstripped him and had to hold himself back. Grandfather Lamech’s burial cave was about halfway between his tent and Noah’s, and the sun was rising by the time they reached it. Higgaion was stretched out on the sand. His fan-like ears lifted at the approaching footsteps.

Dennys hurried to him. “Higgy, do you think you could scent for Sandy, the way you scent for water?”

The mammoth’s little eyes had been shadowed with grief. Now they brightened. Shem dropped to his knees by Higgaion, bending down toward him in intimate communication, speaking softly.

The mammoth raised his trunk in a small, hopeful trumpet.

Dennys’s eyes, too. were hopeful. “Oh, Shem, what could have happened to him?”

Shem’s voice was heavy. “Some people are wicked, and the imagination of their hearts is only to do evil.”

“What about Grandfather?” Dennys asked.

Shem stroked his beard in a gesture much like Noah’s.  “Grandfather knew. There is much wickedness. It, too, smells. You do not smell wicked. Den, nor does the Sand. Grandfather said that there is a great warmth in your hearts, and that is a pleasing smell.” It was the longest speech Shem had ever made.

“Thank you,” Dennys said. Then: “Let’s go.”

Shem shook his head, glancing up at the sun. “I thought we would have found him by now.”

“Come on,” Dennys urged.

“Den, I have hunting to do if we are to eat tonight.”

“But—“

“My sisters and their families ate hugely, did you notice?”

Funeral baked meats, Dennys thought angrily.

 “Den, we must eat if we are to have strength for whatever—“

Dennys turned to Higgaion. “Come on, Higgy.”

“Den. I hunt best alone. But I will continue to search for the Sand. Find Japheth.”

“But he’s—“

“He and Father will be searching near the tent. Do not go off with Higgaion alone. It is not safe.”

Dennys looked at Shem’s anxious face. Not safe. Not safe, because whatever had happened to Sandy might happen to Dennys...

“We will not stop until we find him,” Shem said. “Go find Japheth. You and Higgaion.”

Noah sat in the big tent, cross-legged, his elbows on his knees, his head bent down to his hands. Matred came and sat beside him.

“I don’t know where he is,” Noah said. “Where he could be.”

“Rest, husband,” Matred urged. “He will be found.”

Noah nodded. “My heart is heavy. I grieve for my father.”

“He was an old man, full of years,” Matred consoled him.

“The Sand is not.”

“You think something has happened to him?”

“Why else would he not have joined me at my father’s tent? He is not like the young men of the oasis, thinking of nobody but themselves.”

“He and the Den are not like anybody else,” Matred said. “We do not know that something terrible has happened.”

Noah did not reply, nor did he look at her. “And I must begin to build the ark.”

Matred said, “El has never before asked you to do anything wild.”

“Is it so wild? If the rains cover the earth, as he says they will, it will not be a wild thing to have an ark.”

“The rains had better not cover the earth for a while,” Matred said. “You have to build the ark, find all the animals.”

“I will begin right away.”

“And you will be laughed at. You will be the big Joke of the oasis.”

“I do not find it amusing,” Noah said. “My father is dead. The Sand is El knows where.”

“Why don’t you ask El?”

“I have. El says only that 1 must begin to build the ark. El says nothing about the Sand.”

“Or the Den?”

Noah grunted in agreement.

“Will you bring them onto the ark?”

 “Of people, only you, and our sons, and their wives. No more.”

“Yalith—“ Matred started, but stopped as two men came, unannounced, through the open tent flap.

Tiglah’s father and brother.

Yalith went out into the desert. She was anxious, and anything but sleepy. She wanted to fling herself into Matred’s lap and sob, as though she were still a little girl. She wanted to cry herself to sleep.

But she was no longer a little girl, and her eyes felt dry and burning. She was not used to being out at this time of day. She was not sure what drew her to the desert, because there was no hope that she might see Aariel. He would be in his cave, sleeping.

Nevertheless, she walked in that direction, and as she approached she was amazed to see him lying in the shadows at the mouth of the cave. Although she was certain it was Aariel, she was cautious. She had been certain that it was Aariel when the lion turned into the dragon/lizard Ebtis.

She whispered, “Aariel—“

The lion rose, stretched, yawned, then paced toward her.

“Oh, Aariel!” She flung her arms about the tawny neck, though her tears were spent. “We don’t know where the Sand is! Grandfather Lamech sent him to get my father. The Sand knew that Grandfather was dying, so he gave the camel to my father so that he could get back to Grandfather Lamech in time, and the Sand said that he would walk back. And Grandfather died, and everybody was thinking about him, and we didn’t even notice, at first, that the Sand was not with any of us, and then we had to bury Grandfather, and—oh, oh, Aariel, we don’t know what has happened—“

Aariel let her talk. When her voice faded and she pressed her face once again into his fur, he transformed slowly, gently, until she was enfolded in his wings. “Higgaion has gone to scent for him.”

“He left Grandfather’s grave?”

“For the living, yes. The Den and Japheth will go with him.”

“Oh, that’s good, I’m glad, I’m glad. Higgaion will be sure to find him, and Japheth will know what to do, and the Den, too.”

Aariel drew her into the shade of the entrance to his cave.  “Aariel—my father is going to build a boat, an enormous boat.”

“That is wise,” Aariel said gravely.

“For my brothers and their wives. For animals of every kind.”

“Yes, to preserve the species.”

“But not for my sisters, Seerah and Hoglah and their husbands and children. Not for Mahlah and her nephil baby. Not for—not for me.”

Aariel drew her close. “Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.” His voice was calm, gentle.

“What about the twins?” Again her eyes filled.

The seraph’s arm was strong as it held her. “I do not know.”

“But you know that El told my father to build an ark?”

“Yes. That I know.”

“But you don’t know about the twins?”

“We do not have to know everything.”

“But you could ask—“

“We have asked.”

“Are the stars silent, too?”

“The stars are silent.”

“Aariel, I’m afraid.”

“Fear not. I will hold you,” he promised.

“I am more afraid for the Sand and the Den than I am for myself. I love them.”

“And they love you.”

“I don’t want them to die. Will they die?”

Aariel folded his wings about her. He did not look at her.

“I do not know.”

Sandy slept. He still did not understand his reaction to Tiglah and her proposals for escape, but after a while he stopped questioning himself. When the time came for him to do something, he would know what to do.

Daylight was not a good time for escape. Perhaps in the cover of the night...

“Twin!”

It was Tiglah’s voice, Tiglah’s smell.

She pegged open the flap. “You have a visitor,” she said.

He sat up, instantly alert. So her father and brother had come to kill him.

But it was Rofocale who came into the tent, bowing low to enter, so that his flaming wings dragged in the dust. Like Sandy, he was too tall to stand upright in this small tent.  With swift grace he sat, facing Sandy, staring at him with garnet eyes. His bright hair was tied back, his cheeks white as snow.

He thrust out one hand and touched Sandy on the knee.

The touch was that cold which is so cold that it burns.  Sandy flinched, but did not cry out. “Why are you still here?” Rofocale demanded.

Sandy replied in his calmest voice. “I have been kidnapped and am being held hostage. If I escape and leave this tent, I will be easily seen. There is no way I can lose myself in a crowd. I am as tall as you are. I’d make an easy target.”

“Why have you come?”

“Come? I didn’t come. Tiglah’s father and brother kidnapped me, and I suspect you put them up to it.”

Rofocale said, “I am not asking why you are here, in this tent. I am asking why you and your brother chose to come to this oasis.”

“It was a mistake,” Sandy said, as he had said to Tiglah.  Rofocale again stretched out his hand, again touched Sandy on the knee. Sandy had had frostbite one winter, and this was how it had felt.

“If it was a mistake for you to come, why do you not leave?”

Sandy said, slowly, deliberately, “We will leave when it is time to leave.”

“And how, then, do you plan to leave?”

How, indeed? “We will know that when the time comes.”

 “You do not belong here.”

“No. I belong with Noah and his family.”

Rofocale made a noise like a mosquito shrill. “You do not belong here on this oasis. There are no giants like you in this time and place. Why do you not have wings?”

“We fly in planes and spaceships.”

“What?”

The nephihm did not know everything. Sandy said, “We have machines that fly.”

“Can you leave the planet?”

“We have gone to the moon. We fly among the stars.”

“You?”

“I am too young,” Sandy said. “My father has made several space flights.”

“Did El send you to torment us?”

“What do you think?” Sandy asked.

“You are not of us, the nephilim. Neither are you, I think, of the seraphim.”

“No. We are human beings.”

“Mortals?”

“Yes.”

 “Then why have you come?”

“It was a mistake,” Sandy said again.

“Would you like me to take you out of this place, this little tent?”

“No.”

“They will come and kill you.”

“Perhaps.”

 “Noah is unwilling to give up his vineyards.”

“He is quite right. One does not give in to terrorists.”

“You are foolish. I could give him a message, if you like. If you ask him, I think he will give up the vineyards.”

“I wouldn’t ask him.”

“Then you will die.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Sandy asked. “Perhaps you’d like to kill me yourself?”

“I will leave you. You are insolent.”

“Why don’t you like us, my brother and me?”

“You do not belong to our world. You will cause trouble. I think you have been sent to cause trouble to the nephilim.” Rofocale rose. Energy crackled in the air, so that Sandy’s skin prickled, and a mosquito flew away.

In a few minutes. Tiglah came in. “Did he tell you?” She was giggling. In the light slanting from outside, the dimple in her chin seemed a cleft.

“That your father and brother plan to kill me, yes, he told me.”

“Not that.” She was consumed with laughter.

He saw nothing funny. “What, then?”

“About Noah.”

“He said that Noah is unwilling to give up his vineyards.”

“No, no, not that, either.”

“What, then?” He was irritated at her giggles.

“Noah is building a boat. A boat!” Her laughter peeled out.

Sandy sat up. Asked, carefully, “Why is he building a boat?”

“An ark, he says.” Her laughter was derisive. “The nearest sea or river is moons away.”

“Then why is he doing it?” Sandy asked.

“Who knows.”

“Is he building it by himself?”

“Oh, no, it’s a very big boat. I mean, hugely big. His sons are helping him. He says it is going to rain!” Her laughter jarred against Sandy’s ears. “We have rain only in the spring, and then not much. He is the laughingstock of the oasis.”

Sandy sat, alert, watching her.

“Rofocale thinks he may be building it to get rid of you. A boat where there is no water is silly.”

“I’m hungry,” Sandy said.

“Oh, I’ve brought you more food.”

“Then just leave it with me.”

She pouted. “You don’t want me to sit and talk with you while you eat? I’ll unbind your hands and feet.”

“I’ll manage.” Sandy flexed his muscles so that the thongs looked tight. “I need to think.”

“About the silly ark?”

“About a lot of things.”

“Well ... all right.” She left the tent, returned with a bowl of stew. “You’re sure you don’t want me to stay?”

Sandy was firm. “Quite sure. Give up, Tiglah. Go.”

Pouting, she went.

He sniffed at the stew- Ugh. It was spoiling. He pushed it aside, worked his hands out of the thongs, unbound his feet. If Noah was already building the ark, there was no time to wait. Dangerous or not, as soon as it got dark, Sandy would leave the tent, head for the desert, try to find out where on the oasis he was being held, and head for whichever was nearer, Grandfather Lamech’s tent or Noah’s. Then he lay down to rest and wait for nightfall.

“They have gone too far,” Noah said, “taking our Sand.”

The family was gathered back in the tent, retreating from the heat of the sun.

Ham said, “You’re certainly not going to give them the vineyards!”

Noah shook his head. “I told them that I would not.  But now—I have already turned one of the older vineyards that needed replanting into a lumberyard. What difference will the vineyards make if they are all covered with water?”

Ham said, “We are helping you with this idiocy, Father, because you have asked us to. But surely you don’t believe that there will be that much rain?”

“That is what I have been told.”

Shem had returned from hunting, and was sitting on a pile of skins with Selah next to him. “You’re sure it was the voice of El?”

“I am sure.”

Elisheba suggested, “It couldn’t, maybe, have been the voice of a nephil?”

“I know the voice of El from that of a nephil.”

“They mimic very cleverly.”

“El is El. If one of the nephilim tried to sound like El, then El would tell me that.”

Matred looked up from her stewpot. “When will the rain start?”

“When the ark is ready.”

Shem said, “What about our misters and their husbands and their children?”

Noah wiped his hands across his beard- “I am to make a window in the ark, and set a door in the side, with lower, second, and third stories. El told me that I am to bring in animals of every kind, and my wife, my sons, and their wives.”

Oholibamah’s voice was sharp. “What about Yalith?”

Noah shook his head sorrowfully.

Shem protested, “But it’s going to be a big boat, Father! Surely there’s room for more than just the eight of us.”

“Animals,” Noah repeated, “of every kind, so that, when the flood waters abate, there will be both animal and human beings to repopulate the earth.”

“I don’t believe any of this,” Ham said. “But if it should come to pass, I will give my place on the ark to Yalith.”

Oholibamah looked at him in grateful surprise.

“Nonsense,” Anah said. “When you build this ark, and nothing happens, how are you going to face everybody?”

Noah stroked his beard. “I obey El.”

“And our twins?” Oholibamah asked. “What about them?”

“And where is the Sand?” Elisheba asked.

“Japheth and the Den will surely find him,” Noah said.  Selah raised her trunk and bugled. “And if they do not return with the Sand by sunrise, I will change my mind. I will give them the vineyards. When the flood waters abate, I will plant new vines.”

Ham said, wonderingly, “You really believe that there is going to be a flood! We don’t have enough rain, even in the spring, to be any use. If it weren’t for our wells, there would be no oasis “

Shem asked, “Has our father ever made a fool of himself before?”

“No,” Anah replied. “But there’s always a first time.”

Admael the white camel crossed the length of the oasis to where Sandy was imprisoned. It was at the farthest end of the oasis, as far from Noah’s tent in one direction as was Grandfather Lamech’s in the other. Admael did not go up to the tent, but folded himself down on the ground a few yards away, to wait.

Adnachiel the giraffe grazed on some tender leaves, stretching his long, golden neck. High up in the tree, sleeping during the daylight hours, sat Akatriel the owl, his head hunched into his feathers.

Together they waited.

Japheth and Dennys followed Higgaion, who trotted, zigzagging back and forth, from the outlying edges of the oasis to the desert, scenting, shaking his head so that the heightening sun glinted against his curved tusks, scenting.  Back and forth. Into the oasis. Onto the desert.

“The sun is high,” Japheth said. “You must find shade, Den.”

Dennys shook his head, stubbornly. His body gleamed with sweat.

Japheth looked at him with concern. “We’re not far from Grandfather Lamech’s tent. Perhaps we’ll find Adnarel there, and we could ask him for help.”

Relieved, Dennys panted, “Fine.” Higgaion was staggering with exhaustion. There had been no sign of Sandy.

Higgaion led the way back to the oasis, his energy renewed now that they had a destination. Japheth was untired, jogging along, breathing easily. Dennys was grateful for his own long legs; without them, he would not have been able to keep up.

As they approached Grandfather Lamech’s groves and could see the dark shadow of his tent, Higgaion trumpeted and quickened his pace, so that Japheth was running., When they reached the tent, the heat seemed to intensify and their shadows were dark and squat. Higgaion paused, pointing with his trunk to light flashing off something hall buried in the sand by the tent flap.

“Adnarel!” Dennys cried. “Oh, Adnarel!”

Japheth bent down and lifted the scarab beetle out of the sand, stroked it gently with one finger, and it seemed to burst from his hand, and Adnarel stood before them, blazing gold.

“Oh, Adnarel.” Dennys cried, “Sandy never came home after he gave Noah the camel! We don’t know what’s happened to him!”

Adnarel bowed gravely, listening, saying nothing.

Japheth said, “I worry that he may not have gone whereever it is of his own free will.”

Adnarel turned to Japheth. “Explain what you are thinking.”

“Since he didn’t follow my father to Grandfather’s tent as he said he would do, then I am afraid that perhaps...” His voice trailed off.

Adnarel’s wings glittered. “You are thinking of Tiglah?”

“It was Anah’s suggestion ...”

“No,” Dennys contradicted.

“We know she’s a seductress,” Japheth said.

“No,” Dennys repeated. “Sandy would never have gone off with Tiglah, with Grandfather dying. Never.”

Adnarel nodded. “Of course. He would not have disappeared of his own volition.”

“Then where is he?” Dennys demanded.

Adnarel raised his wings, slowly lowered them. “What are you doing to try to find him?”

Japheth did not know of the visit of Tigiah’s father and brother to Noah’s tenthold. “We are ail searching, but we have found no trace anywhere-“

Adnarel looked at the two young men, eye to eye with Dennys, down for Japheth, small and lean and strong.

Japheth continued: “Sandy cares about Grandfather Lamech. He cares about his brother. It is not in his character to go off at such. a time.”

“Nephilim,” Adnarel said softly.

A ripple of concern rolled across Higgaion’s flanks.  Japheth said, “That’s what we were afraid of. But even they couldn’t make him vanish completely, could they?”

“They are masters of illusion,” Adnarel said. “They can make any part of the oasis look like someplace else. They can disguise odors. That is why Higgaion’s scenting was to no avail.”

“But where do you think he is?” Dennys’s voice soared with anxiety.

“I think the nephilim have used human greed. I suspect that some of the less pleasant people of the oasis, perhaps the men of Tigiah’s tent, have taken him and put him in some little-used tent and are asking some kind of ransom for him. They are acquisitive, but they don’t like to work for what they get, and they would be easy to tempt into doing whatever the nephilim want.”

Dennys raised his head as he heard the strong beating of wings, and a pelican plummeted out of the sky, and then Alarid stood beside them. “The nephilim are afraid of the twins.” His wings shook silver.

“But why?” Japheth asked. “The twins are good.”

Adnarel and Alarid touched wing tips. Adnarel said, “The nephilim fear what they do not understand. Did Higgaion go all the way across the oasis with his scenting?”

Japheth nodded.

“To the far end?” Alarid asked.

“Yes.”

“Try once more. This time, go straight across the length of the oasis and concentrate at the farthest point. They will have taken him as far away from Noah’s tents as possible.”

“And they’re not likely to have gone in the direction of Grandfather Lamech’s tent,” Alarid added.

Higgaion’s stringy little tail flicked.

Japheth said, “The sun is high. The Den cannot cross the oasis at full noon without getting the sun sickness again.”

Both seraphim looked at Dennys, already red and sweating. “You are right. The Den will stay here, in Grandfather Lamech’s tent, for the afternoon rest. One of us will stay with him, in case . . .” Adnarel did not finish.

Alarid said, “And we will see to it that he gets to Noah’s tenthold before sundown. Whether you find the Sand or not, you must be home by then.”

Higgaion raised his trunk in an impatient trumpet.

“We’ll go,” Japheth said. He looked up at the seraphim, asking in a low voice, “Are you worried?”

Gravely they acknowledged the question.

In the dark heat of the prison tent, Sandy slept fitfully, dreaming a confusion of meaningless dreams. Tiglah was tying his thongs tightly and shoving a bowl of spoiled meat at him. His nostrils twitched.

It was not Tiglah’s smell. It was not even the smell of rancid goat meat, He opened his eyes and saw only a small dark shadow, felt something soft nudging him. He reached out: his hand and touched something firm and curved.  Moved his hand along whatever it was, until his fingers felt a roughness. It was a tusk, broken off at the point. His eyes adjusted to the dim light and he saw that he was touching a mammoth, not Higgaion or Selah, both of whom were sleek and well fed, with polished tusks, but an underfed mammoth with stringy hair, and one tusk broken off just at the point, the other slightly farther up. It was nudging him with the tip of its trunk.

What the mammoth wanted of him he was not sure.

But it was apparent that it meant him no harm, and that its overtures were friendly. Sandy began to stroke the shaggy head, then ran his fingers over the ivory tusks. This little beast had obviously been abused, so it was likely that it came from Tiglah’s tent. He was grateful for the company. Perhaps a mammoth, even a mangy mammoth would be helpful when night came, not so much helpful in the actual escape as in finding Noah’s tenthold.

“Now,” he said to the mammoth, fondling the fan-shaped ears, “if 1 only had a unicorn, then I could get out of here.” He stopped. Then: “Hey. I didn’t think of a unicorn before, because basically I still don’t believe in unicorns.”

Dennys, he remembered, had summoned a unicorn after Tiglah’s father and brother had nearly killed him, dumping him into the garbage pit. It wasn’t easy for Dennys to believe in unicorns either, but when he had to, he did.

It Sandy could believe something as outrageous as that he and Dennys had actually landed in the pre-flood desert, and that they had become so close to Noah’s tenthold, especially Yalith, that they were like family, and if he could believe that he was now petting a mammoth, why should it be hard to believe in a unicorn, even if it was what Dennys called a virtual unicorn? His mother believed in virtual particles, and his mother was a scientist who had won the Nobel Prize for discovering particles so small they were scarcely conceivable even with a wild leap of the imagination.

“What’ll I do?” he asked the mammoth, who responded by cuddling closer to him.

It Sandy left the tent on his own, they would be lying in wait for him—Rofocale, if not Tiglah’s father and brother —and they would not hesitate to kill him. Even night would not provide enough cover, with the brilliance of the stars illuminating the oasis.

 “The problem is,” he said to the mammoth, “that I always have to see things to believe in them. But, after all, I have seen unicorns, two of them. I have seen them, there-fore I can believe in them.”

The mammoth reached with its trunk to touch, softly, the boy’s cheek. In his mind’s ear Sandy seemed to hear, “Some things have to be believed to be seen.”

“Unicorn!” he whispered, and the mammoth slipped its trunk into the palm of his hand. “Unicorn, please tend to life. Please tend to be.”

Against the darkness of the tent came a starburst of light, and a unicorn stood, trembling, beside him.

“Oh, you are!” Sandy cried. “Oh, thank you!” He held out his hand. The unicorn came to him with silver steps, folded its delicate legs, and lay down, putting its head in Sandy’s lap, so that the light of the horn flowed over the scraggly little mammoth, who lifted its head gratefully.  Sandy fondled the silvery mane, soft as moonbeams. “Now what?” he asked the two disparate creatures.

The light of the horn glittered, but neither unicorn nor mammoth answered him.

“If I could fall asleep,” Sandy mused, “or stop believing in unicorns, then you would lose your tendency to life and go out, and take me with you, the way you took Dennys.  The problem is that now I believe in you. And as long as I believe in you, you’ll continue to be, won’t you?”

The unicorn nuzzled him, as affectionate as the mammoth.

“As long as I stay with you,” Sandy whispered, “I think I’m safe, because I’m absolutely certain that Tiglah couldn’t come near you, or her father or brother. But if they try to, and you go out of being, will you take the mammoth and me out of being with you? If we don’t take the mammoth, they’ll hurt him again. So will you take us?”

It was a rather intimidating thought. He had asked Dennys how it had felt the two times he had gone out with the unicorn, and Dennys had answered that it hadn’t felt at all. But perhaps, Sandy thought, that might have been because Dennys had sunstroke and a high fever. Then he remembered Grandfather Lamech—or was it Japheth?—telling him that unicorns never lost anybody.

He put one arm about the unicorn, the other about the mammoth, and waited. This was a far better plan than going with Tiglah, or trying to cross the desert alone.

“You see,” he said to the two creatures, who pressed confidingly against him. “When the time came for me to do something, I knew what to do, and I did it.”

He held unicorn and mammoth close.

The nephilim gathered. Proud. Arrogant. Flickering in and out of their hosts as they spoke.

Rofocale the mosquito said, “I have put an illusion around the tent. It is on the edge of the desert at the farthest end of the oasis, but the illusion makes it took as though it is surrounded by flocks and groves.”

Ehlis the dragon/lizard asked. “Are giant twins worth this much trouble?”

Rofocale answered, “I think they know something we do not know. When I questioned the one that Tiglah caught for me, he gave evasive answers.”

Ugiel the cobra said, “There is danger in the air. The stars are drawing back. I am concerned for my baby.”

Naamah the vulture went “Kkk. We chose to be silent with El. We chose never to hear the Voice again, never to speak with the Presence.”

Ertrael the rat said. “We could ask the seraphim.”

“Never,” said Estael the cockroach.

“But they still speak with El,” Ertrael said. “The stars still talk with them.”

“I do not care to listen to the stars,” Eisheth the crocodile pronounced.                                             

“They might tell us,” said Rumjal the red ant, “whether or not we are in danger.”

“How can we be in danger?” Eblis asked. “We are immortal.”

“And the one we caught,” said Rofocale, “told me that he is mortal. If he is to be believed.”

Naamah the vulture clacked his beak. “I smell that there will soon be much for us to eat.”

“HowP” Rofocale demanded. “What is going to happen?”

Eblis the dragon/lizard asked, “Will someone tell me what Noah is building?”

“A good question,” said Rumael the slug.

Rofocale gave his screeching laugh. “A boat! That is what my Tiglah tells me. He is building a boat!”

“A boat?” Eisheth the crocodile demanded. “Why on earth would he build a boat?”

Rugziel the worm asked, “Could the twin giants have told him something that we do not know?”

Rofocale said, “We need to get rid of the twin giants. Everything has been different since they came.”

“Noah reconciled with his father. Kkk,” said Naamah the vulture.

“And Lamech has died,” Estael the cockroach agreed.

“My lovely Yalith prefers the young giants to me,” Eblis said “They must have some strange power, to make her turn from me to such soft-skinned, wingless creatures “

“And Noah is building a boat,” Rofocale added.

“And Matred weeps,” said Rumjal the red ant.

“We should find out,” Ugiel suggested, “whether or not they—the young giants—are truly mortal or not.”

Rofocale screeched again. “Tiglah’s father and brother will find that out for us.”

Higgaion finally found the tent where Sandy was imprisoned, because the unicorn was there. Rofocale’s power of illusion had indeed made the tent seem to be in the middle of the oasis, had indeed altered Sandy’s scent. But the unicorn had come to the tent after the illusion was set.  Higgaion sniffed. He smelled silver, and he smelled light.

He nudged Japheth excitedly.

Tentatively, Japheth pushed open the tent flap. Enough of the late-afternoon light came through the tent hole so that he could see Sandy and the unicorn, their heads together in affection. The abused mammoth was only a dark shadow under Sandy’s arm.

“Sand!”

Sandy opened his eyes. “Jay!”

The young man started to rush forward to embrace him, then stopped short as though held by some invisible barrier. The unicorn’s light brightened.

Higgaion followed Japheth into the tent, sitting back on his haunches in surprise as he saw the mammoth who pressed closely against Sandy, blinking fearfully.

Sandy’s protective arm tightened. “It’s all right. Nobody’s going to hurt you.” Then: “Jay, how did you find me?”

“Are you all right?” Japheth asked anxiously.

“Oh, I’m fine, but Tiglah’s father and brother want to kill me ...”

“No.” Japheth touched his fingers to his tiny bow. “No, Sand.”

“And look what they’ve done to their mammoth,” Sandy said indignantly. “They’ve nearly starved him, and they’ve broken his tusks.”

“All right,” Japheth said hurriedly. “We’ll take him with us. But we’d better get out of here before they come back.”

“I think I’m safe as long as I’m with the unicorn,” Sandy said, “because they won’t be able to come near.”

Japheth smiled. “I can’t, either.” He stared at boy and unicorn. “Sand. Do you remember when I first met you and the Den in the desert, and we called unicorns. and the Den went out?”

“Of course I remember.”

“Can’t you go out with the unicorn now?”

Sandy sighed. “The problem is, Jay, that I believe in the unicorn.”

The mangy mammoth suddenly pricked up its ears and started to whimper. Higgaion pushed himself up onto his feet, and Japheth swung around to see the tent flap open violently. Two small, chunky men came in, carrying spears.  Tiglah’s father and brother.

“Auk! What have we here?” the older man demanded.

“A unicorn,” the younger man exclaimed. “And one of Noah’s sons. Well, well.” He moved toward Sandy and the unicorn, then drew back with a sharp intake of breath.“You, young giant!” he shouted. “Come along! We want you.”

“Sorry,” Sandy said. “You can’t have me.” He looked at Japheth and the two men from Tiglah’s tent and wondered anew at how small they were. Tiglah’s father was made even shorter by his bowed legs. No wonder they had used the poisoned dart on him. In a fair struggle, they would never have captured him.

Japheth’s pleasant features were distorted by anger.

“You’ve done enough harm. Get out of here.”

The tent was so small that the three little men were close together, with Sandy, his arms still about unicorn and mammoth, near enough to draw back at the odor of the men from Tiglah’s tent.

“Auk’s nuts to you,” Tiglah’s brother said.

Japheth glanced swiftly at Sandy, then in a reflex so swift it hardly seemed motion, he drew one of the darts from his quiver and jabbed it into Sandy’s arm.

The two men from Tiglah’s tent shouted in surprise and anger. Tiglah’s father roared, “What happened?”

Where Sandy and the unicorn and mammoth had been there was only a pile of filthy skins.

Japheth replied calmly, “They went out with the unicorn.”

Both men roared in frustration. “Call him back,” the bowlegged man said.

“Or we’ll kill you,” the younger man threatened.

“And what good will that do you?” Japheth demanded. “You’ll never get the Sand back without me.”

Tiglah’s brother snarled, deep in his throat, and lunged at Japheth with his spear, but Higgaion jumped between them, tripping the red-bearded man so that he sprawled on the floor of the tent. He snarled up at his father, “Why didn’t you stop him?”

“Me? What could I do?”

“You let him go out with the unicorn, and our mammoth, too.”

Tiglah’s brother scrambled clumsily to his feet, hefting his spear. “Give us your father’s vineyards, then.”

“No,” Japheth said, and reached for his darts.

But the older man swooped on him with the spear, and despite Japheth’s quick reflex, the spear cut across his ribs, and a trickle of blood slid down his side.

Higgaion lunged at the man, trumpeting in outrage.

But the two men with their spears were too much for Japheth and the mammoth. Japheth clutched his wounded side as the mammoth lunged again and was viciously kicked by Tiglah’s brother.

Suddenly a roar burst over them- “Hungry!” And the manticore stuck his hideous face into the tent. “Hungry!”

“Go away,” Tiglah’s father yelled.

In terror, Higgaion backed up, hitting the skins of the tent, which gave slightly. Japheth, trying to reach for the mammoth, saw that the skins were not pegged securely to the ground. Not many people bothered to set up their tents as well as Noah and Grandfather Lamech.

“Run, Hig, run!” Japheth commanded, and Higgaion backed out of the tent.

“Hungry!” The manticore’s ugly face was followed by his lion’s body and scorpion’s tail.

Japheth was the farthest of the three men from the tent flap. He reached for a dart and his tiny bow, and let a dart fly, to strike the manticore in the forehead.

“Hung—“ the manticore started, and fell, unconscious on Tiglah’s father and brother.

Swiftly, Japheth dropped to his knees and pushed out the opening in the rear of the tent through which Higgaion had left.

The mammoth was waiting outside, whimpering in terror but not willing to leave Japheth completely.

“Run!” Japheth shouted as he stood upright; and they ran. Ran without looking behind them. Onto the desert. And then the illusion that Rofocale had set was broken and Japheth knew exactly where they were. They were at the far end of the oasis, the opposite end from Grandfather Lamech’s tenthold. He hardly realized that blood was streaming down his side as he hurried toward home.

Admaei the camel, Adnachiel the giraffe, and Akatriel the owl left their posts and followed Japheth and the mammoth into the desert.

Japheth, running faster than he had ever run before, suddenly felt dizzy. Everything paled. He slumped slowly onto the sand. Higgaion pushed his feet against rock to slow himself down.

Akatnel flew down to the sand beside the young man, and resumed his seraph form. “He has lost much blood.  He is still bleeding.”

Adnachiel the giraffe bent his neck to look at Japheth’s wound, then lowered himself so that he could reach the torn skin with his tongue. Carefully, thoroughly, he licked the wound.

Admael the camel galloped off.

Higgaion hunkered down beside Japheth and the giraffe whimpering. Adnachiel continued to lick, cleaning the jagged cut the spear had made.

When it was clean, Admael returned with a furry-looking, cactus-type leaf, which he gently pressed against the wound, holding it until the bleeding slowed and stopped.

Japheth, quivering, opened his eyes, to see the seraphim reaching up out of their hosts and into their seraphic forms.

Akatriel, with eyes as wise as those of the owl he had just left, affirmed, “You are all right. You have lost much blood, and that spearhead cannot have been too clean. But Adnachiel has washed the wound and Admaet has stopped the bleeding.”

“And you ran much too quickly.” Adnachiel nodded.

“Hig-“

Higgaion touched Japheth’s hand gently with his trunk tip.

 “Sand?”

Adnachiel asked, “What happened?”

“I sent him out with the unicorn,” Japheth said, struggling to sit up.

Admael nodded approval. “That was good.”

“Should we call the Sand back?” Japheth asked.

“Better,” Adnachiel said.

Admael asked courteously of the mammoth, “Will you? Or shall I?”

“Both.” Adnachiel was peremptory.

With a light briefly bright as the sun. making them all blink, the unicorn appeared. Sandy’s arm slid from around its neck and he slipped onto the sand. A mangy mammoth tumbled beside him.

Japheth explained, “I used one of my darts on him, but it’s a very short-lasting—“

Sandy’s eyes blinked open, and he sat up.

The three seraphim stood looking at Japheth, Sandy, and the two mammoths.

“Thank you,” Sandy gasped. “Oh, Jay, thank you.”

Embarrassed, Japheth shrugged.

“What’s happened to you?” Sandy demanded. “You’re hurt.”

“I’ll be all right,” Japheth reassured him. “The seraphim have cleaned my wound.”

“Go home,” Admael ordered. “Sandy, you can help Japheth. He is weaker than he realizes.”

“But what happened?” Sandy demanded.

Japheth laughed. “I never thought I’d be grateful to a manticore, but I am now. They’d have kilted me if a manticore hadn’t pushed his way into the tent and stopped them.”

The mangy little mammoth pressed against Sandy. “It’s all right,” Sandy reassured. “We’ll never send you back.  What happened to them?”

Japheth shrugged.

“Nothing, I suspect,” Akatriel said. “I saw the manticore running away, weeping, a dart falling from his forehead, calling out that he was hungry.”

Japheth laughed again. “I could almost feel sorry for the manticore.”

“Go, now,” Admael urged. “Japheth needs food and rest.”

“Unicorn?” Sandy asked. “What about you?”

As he looked, the unicorn began to flicker, to fade.

Japheth said, “The unicorn knows we don’t need it anymore.”

Where the unicorn had been, there was only a shimmer in the air, and the scent of moonbeams and silver.

They were united m the big tent that evening. Japheth, hovered over by Matred, lay on a pile of soft skins, pale but smiling, and sipped at the strengthening broth Matred kept offering him.

The starved mammoth had been fed and lay curled up with Higgaion and Selah.

Sandy and Dennys kept grinning at each other in relief, with Sandy repeating over and over his praise of Japheth and Higgaion. “It was a wonderful idea to have Higgy scent for me. I don’t know what would have happened, otherwise.”

Anah looked subdued. “I am so ashamed. That my father and my brother—that my sister should have tried—I thought she liked the Sand—I don’t know what got into any of them! Can you forgive me?”

“It was not your doing, daughter,” Noah said gently.

“But to think they tried to force you to give up your vineyards! To threaten to kill the Sand and Japheth—“

“Don’t dwell on it,” Matred said, rubbing ointment Oholibamah had given her onto the healing wound on Japheth’s side.

“Is it over?” Elisheba asked. “Or will they try something else? I don’t mean your father and brother, Anah. The nephilim.”

Nobody answered.

Sandy held his bowl out for a refill. “It is so much better than what Tiglah cooked for me—I wonder how I could eat the other stuff, even when it was fresh.” Then he said, “Rofocale the nephil used Tiglah and her father and brother. They are not nice people—sorry, Anah—but I don’t think they’d ever have thought of kidnapping me on their own. If the nephilim are after Dennys and me, they’ll try something else.”

“But why are they after you?” Japheth demanded.

Sandy finished licking his bowl clean. “They know we don’t belong here.”

Noah’s fingers moved against, his beard. “But you do.  Both of you. The Den made me see that being stubborn was not brave.”

Matred added, “And you both made Grandfather Lamech’s last moons happy ones.”

Noah had tears in his eyes. “You were to him as his own grandsons. He could not have stayed in his own tent without your help. You have become our beloved twins.”

Matred wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “And yet, husband, you have said that there is no room for them in the ark.”

Dennys said quickly, “Don’t worry. We know we don’t belong on the ark. The nephilim aren’t entirely wrong about us.”

Sandy said, “But we’ll be glad to help you build it. We would like to do at least that much for you, because you’ve been very kind to us.”                             \

Yalith and Oholibamah sat close together, hands clasped.  Oholibamah said, “We still have time to be together. It will take at least two moons before the ark is finished and ready to stock. And because we have known each other, we can never be entirely separated.”

Japheth said, “As we can never be completely separated from Grandfather Lamech.”

Yalith nodded. Pushed back tears. Sandy was safely back with them. Japheth was wounded, but was going to be all right. This was no time for tears.

Dennys looked at Japheth and nodded. “The night that Grandfather Lamech died—how long ago it seems—Higgaion and I sat out under the stars while Noah was in the tent, waiting for Sandy.” He hesitated, then plunged on.  “At the moment that Grandfather Lamech died, the stars held their breaths. And so I knew. And then, because he understood Higgaion and I needed him, Adnarel was with us, saying Fear not, and then he was back in the scarab beetle, on Higgaion’s ear, instead of off with the other seraphim, as he’s been so often lately.”

There was a moment of silence. Then Noah opened a fresh skin of wine. “My love for all of you is too deep for words. Dear twins, we are glad that you have come to us.  And now it is time for you to leave, isn’t it?”

Sandy said, firmly, “Not until we’ve helped you build the ark.”

Sandy and Dennys stayed in the big tent, having been given sleeping skins and a place to themselves across from Noah and Matred. Higgaion and Selah slept with the little mammoth, whose ribs were beginning to fill out, and whose coat was beginning to shine.

Dennys woke up and the darkness of the tent was heavy.  Around him he heard gentle snores, and the night sounds of the desert. He nudged Sandy. “Are you awake?”

“Almost.”

“Now what?”

Sandy wriggled into a more comfortable position. “We’ll keep on helping Noah with the ark.”

“And then?”

Fully awake now, Sandy moved so that he could whisper directly into Dennys’s ear. “We’ll take a quantum leap.”

“And how will we manage that?”

“It came to me when the mammoth and I called the unicorn to be in that nasty little tent where I was in prison.  The nephilim cannot leave this earth. But the seraphim can.”

“More to the point,” Dennys asked, “can we? Or, rather, can we leave this time and get back to our own? I wouldn’t want to miscalculate and land in the Middle Ages, or the year 3003.”

 “I’ll have to speak to Adnarel about it again.”

“You already have?”

“Some. When we first got here. What I think would work for us would be to call unicorns, and ride them, and for Adnarel, or any of the seraphim, to go forward to our time, and then call for the unicorns to come back.”

“Wild.” Dennys whistled.

“Yes, but it worked when the three seraphim called me back onto the desert sands after Japheth and Higgaion came to rescue me.”

“That was space, not time, and a small distance in space, at that,” Dennys pointed out.

“True. But experiments with photons, for instance, seem to show that they can communicate with each other instantaneously, and that means faster than the speed of light. And distance doesn’t seem to be a problem for them.”

“But it’s time we have to worry about,” Dennys whispered. Noah snored a very loud snore, and they could hear him turn over on his skins. Dennys continued, “If I understand Mother’s experiments, an observer is essential in the world of quantum mechanics. I mean, an observer seems to be necessary to make quanta real.”

Sandy moved impatiently. “I don’t understand it. But Mother seems to, and so do a lot of other particle physicists. That’s enough for me. I’ll talk to Adnarel.”

There was a heavy silence. Then Dennys said, “Anything seems to be possible. I hope this is.”

Another silence. Then Sandy asked, “Do you think we could take Yalith with us?”

Dennys did not answer for a while. Then: “No. I don’t think so. We’re not supposed to change history.”

“But she’ll drown.”

“I know. I love her, too.” At last. It had been said.

“But if we love her—“

Dennys’s voice was bleak. “I don’t think we can take her with us.”

Sandy reached for his twin’s hand and grasped it. “A lot of people are going to drown. Would you mind changing history if it would save Yalith?”

Dennys said, “I wouldn’t mind. I’d be willing to try. To try absolutely anything. But I have a feeling that we can’t.”

“I hate it!”

“Shh. I hate it, too.”

Sandy whispered, “It’s going to be dangerous, taking a quantum leap.”

“Dad obviously thinks such things are possible. After all, wasn’t he programming some kind of quantum leap, or tesser, when we messed around with his experiment?”

“So, if he believes in it, it’s not that wild.”

“Sure it’s that wild. It’s got to be that wild in order to work.”

Sandy gave a slightly hysterical laugh. “Our father was not programming unicorns into his experiment.”

Higgaion jerked in a sleeping dream, whimpered. Selah made little murmuring noises, and Tiglah’s mammoth moved closer to the others.

Sandy asked, “What about the mammoths?”

Dennys stretched his arm out so that he could touch, gently, Higgaion’s shaggy fur. “I wonder if they can swim?”

 “It wouldn’t do any good. Not for forty days and forty nights.”

Dennys closed his eyes. Listened. Heard the wind high in the sky above the tent, but the words would not come clear. He whispered, “Does—does Yalith know she’s not going on the ark?”

“I think so. I think Noah has told her.”

“I understand that floods and other disasters happen. But if this flood is really being sent by El—“

Sandy said, “If it’s being sent by El, then I don’t like El, not if Yalith is going to drown.”

The wind murmured. “We aren’t sure yet, are we?” Dennys asked. “I mean, it hasn’t happened yet. Yalith isn’t in the story, so we don’t know what happened to her.  Grandfather Lamech truly loved his El. So we can’t be sure. Grandfather loved Yalith. She was his very favorite.”

“Grandfather is dead,” Sandy said flatly. “If we’re going to be any use building the ark, we’d better sleep now.”

The wind wrapped itself about the tent. Sandy slipped quickly into sleep. Dennys lay on his back, listening, listening. The wind’s song was gentle, unalarming. Although he could not make out the words, he felt the wind calming him. Slept.

“Stupid. Stupid,” Ugiel, husband of Mahlah, hissed. Rofocale’s contempt came out with a mosquito shrill.

“The idiots almost let the manticore get them.”

“Tiglah would have done better by herself,” said Eblis, who wanted Yalith.

Ertrael, sometimes a rat, demanded, “What do we do now?”

The nephilim were gathered in the darkness of the desert, for once conserving their energies. Naamah, still sounding like a vulture, went, “Kkk. Tiglah did not, in fact, do better than her father or her brother. She got no answers. The young giant did not listen to her.”

Elisheth, of the crocodile-green wings, shimmered them in the starlight. “She tried. I would have thought the Sand would find her irresistible. Why did he reject her?”

“Yalith.” Eblis’s beautiful red lips lifted in a sneer.

Ugiel wove his neck in a rhythmic dance, as much cobra as nephil. “You are right. Because of Yalith.”

“But she has no experience,” Rofocale shrilled. “She is still a child. Whereas Tiglah—“

“No,” Eblis contradicted, purple eyes glittering. “Yalith is not a child any longer.” He wrapped purple wings about himself.

“Could we have used her?” Estael, sometimes a cock-roach, asked doubtfully.

“If Ugiel hadn’t married her, we might have been able to use Mahlah, Yalith’s sister,” said Ezequen, whose host was the skink.

Ugiel hissed, “We all know she’s Yalith’s sister. And my wife. And the mother of my child.”

Eblis wrapped himself in wings the color of the sunset.

“It is time for us to act. Us. Ourselves.”

Rugziel agreed. “It is time we stopped using deputies.”

Rumjal grimaced. “What do you suggest?”

Naamah stretched his neck, naked as a vulture’s, and raised his wings to their full span, standing in whiteness of skin, darkness of wing, his feathers the indigo of the bird who was his host. “The circle of extinction. Whoever we completely surround we control. Kkk. Let us surround the twin giants.”

Ugiel hissed in agreement.

Rofocale shrilled in anticipation.

Eblis suggested, “And let us surround Yalith, since she has foiled our plans.”

“Kkk,” Naamah reproved. “The giants first.”

Yalith slept at the tar end of the tent from the twins, but she heard them whispering, and when they stopped, she could hear the mammoths’ triple snores. And she was wide awake.

She slipped out of bed and went to the desert. She saw neither lion nor dragon/lizard masquerading as lion, on the great rock. She chose a smaller rock and sat, wrapping her arms about her knees. She raised her face to the stars.

She heard them chiming, and there was no anxiety in their song.

Nevertheless, she shivered. She believed her father, believed that the rains were going to come. She was willing to die, if that was truly what El wanted.

But what about the twins?

What was going to happen?

The crystal chime of stars sang in her ears, “Fear not, Yalith.”

The stars never gave false comfort.

She was less afraid.

They worked on the ark all day, taking time out in the heat to sleep. Then they worked again until it was too dark to see.  Every evening Matred prepared a festive meal. Therefore, Shem was often out hunting, rather than busy with the ark. Sandy and Dennys worked along with Noah, Ham, and Japheth. There were no hammers or nails or any of  the modern tools to which they were accustomed. The boards had to be joined and pegged. At nighty they were tired and hungry, ate well, slept well. They were building an ark, but they did not talk of the rain.

Dennys looked at Elisheba, Anah, and Oholibamah.  They were in the story, even if not by name. They would go with Noah and Matred and all the animals onto the ark.  He looked at Yalith, her hair amber in the lamplight. He slipped out of the tent, feeling a little strange. He was the follower. Sandy the leader. And now he was off, without even consulting his twin.

He walked swiftly toward Noah’s well. His skin prickled as he saw the vulture, huddled on the tall trunk of a long-dead palm, then looking up as Dennys approached, peering this way and chat, stretching its naked neck, staring at Dennys with hooded, suspicious eyes.

At first, Dennys saw only the dark bird. Then his eye caught a glimpse of white, and on a young fig tree near the well sat a pelican, its head tucked under its wing, so that it seemed no more than a bundle of white. Dennys heaved a sigh of relief. He had left the big tent to find one of the seraphim, and it didn’t really matter which one, but he was more familiar with Alarid than with many of the others. He went up to the sleeping bird. “Hsst.”

The pelican did not move.

“Alarid!” Dennys shouted. “I need to talk to you!”

The feathers quivered as the bird shoved its head farther under its wing.

“Alarid!”

The feathers ruffled, hunched, indicating, “Go away. I have nothing to say.”

“But I have to speak to you. About Yalith.”

At last the head emerged from the fluff of feathers, and the dark bead of eye blinked.

“Please.” Dennys indicated the vulture. “Please, Alarid.”

The white bird hopped down from its perch, clumsy and cumbersome.

The vulture was an ink blob of immobile darkness.

“Please.” Dennys pleaded.

The pelican stretched its wings up, up, until the seraph appeared. Without speaking, Alarid turned from the well and walked toward the desert. Dennys followed. When they had left the oasis far enough behind so that the vulture was no longer visible, Alarid turned to the boy. “What is it?”

“You can’t let Yalith drown in the flood.”

“Why not?”

“Yalith is good. I mean, she is really good.”

Alarid bowed his head. “Goodness has never been a guarantee of safety.”

“But you can’t let her drown.”

“I have nothing to say in the matter.”

“I should have spoken to Aariel,” Dennys said in frustration. “Aariel loves her.”

“He has no more say than I.” The seraph turned his head away.                               /

Dennys realized that he had hurt Alarid, bun he plunged ahead. “You’re seraphim. You have powers.”

“True. But, as I told you, it is dangerous to change things. We do not meddle with the pattern.”

“But Yalith isn’t in the pattern.” Dennys’s voice rose and cracked. “There’s no Yalith in the story. Only Noah and his wife and his sons and their wives.”

Alarid’s wings quivered slightly.

“So, since she isn’t in the story, it won’t change anything if you prevent her from being drowned in the flood.”

“What do you want me to do?” Alarid asked.

“You aren’t going to be drowned, are you?” Dennys demanded. “You, and the other seraphim?”

“No.”

“Then take her wherever it is you’re going to escape the flood.”

“We cannot do that,” Alarid said sadly.

“Why not?”

“We cannot.” Again, the seraph turned his face away.

“Where are you going, then?”

Alarid turned back to Dennys and smiled, but not in amusement. “We go to the sun.”

No. Yalith could not go to the sun. Nor to the moon, which Dennys had been about to suggest. Yalith could not live where there was no atmosphere. But surely there was something to be done! He made a strangled noise of outrage. “We’re not in the story, either, Sandy and I. But we’re here. And Yalith is here.”

“That is so.”

“And if we drown, that is, if Sandy and I drown, that’s going to change the story, isn’t it? I mean, we’re not going to be born in our own time if we get drowned now, and even if that makes only a tiny difference, it will make a difference to our family. If Sandy and I don’t get born, maybe Charles Wallace won’t get born. Maybe Meg will be an only child.”

“Who?”

“Our older sister and our little brother. I mean, the story would be changed.”

Alarid said, “You must go back to your own time.”

“That’s easier said than done. Anyhow, what I wanted to talk to you about is Yalith. Listen, it’s a stupid story.  Only the males have names. It’s a chauvinist story. I mean, Matred has a name. She’s a mother. And Elisheba and Anah and Oholibamah. They’re real people, with names.”

“That is true,” Alarid agreed.

“The nephilim,” Dennys went on. “They’re like whoever wrote the silly ark story, seeing things only from their own point of view, using people. They don’t give a hoot for Tiglah or Mahlah, for instance. They’re just women, so they don’t matter. They don’t care if Yalith gets drowned. But you ought to care!”

Alarid asked gently. “Do you think I don’t care?”

Dennys sighed. “Okay. I know you care. But are you just going to stand by and do nothing and then fly off to the sun?”

Again Alarid’s wings quivered. “Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind.”

Dennys felt chastened. He had not paused to listen, not for days. “They don’t tell you anything?”

“To continue to listen.”

The breeze lifted, washed over Dennys in a wave of sadness. “I don’t like this story,” he said. “I don’t like it at all.”

He left Alarid. Before he reached the oasis he paused, sat on a small rock. Tried to quiet himself so that he could listen. To the wind. How could he unscramble the words of the wind which came to him in overlapping wavelets?

He closed his eyes. Visioned stars exploding into life. Planets being birthed. Yalith had spoken of the violence of Mahlah’s baby’s birth. The birth of planets was no gentler. Violent swirlings of winds and waters. Land masses as fluid as water. Volcanoes spouting flame so high that it seemed to meet the outward flaming of the sun.

The earth was still in the process of being created. The stability of rock was no more than an illusion. Earthquake, hurricane, volcano, flood, all part of the continuing creation of the cosmos, groaning in travail.

The song of the wind softened, gentled. Behind the violence of the birthing of galaxies and stars and planets came a quiet and tender melody, a gentle love song. All the raging of creation, the continuing hydrogen explosions on the countless suns, the heaving of planetary bodies, all was enfolded in a patient, waiting love.

Dennys opened his eyes as the wind dropped, was silent.

He raised his face to the stars, and their light fell against his cheeks like dew. They chimed at him softly. Do not seek to comprehend. All shall be well. Wait. Patience.

Wait. You do not always have to do something. Wait.

Dennys put his head down on his knees, and a strange quiet flowed through him.

Above his head, the white wings of a pelican beat gently through the flowing streams of stars.

Work on the ark progressed slowly. In the heat of the sun, his body glistening with sweat, Dennys found it hard to remember his vision of understanding and hope. But it was still there, waiting for him, surfacing during the after-noon rest time, or at night when the sun set and the stars blossomed.

Hammer. Peg. Measure for stress.

Noah insisted on following exactly the directions which were given him.

“This El,” Sandy said to Dennys, “I don’t understand.”

“El knows about shipbuilding,” Dennys said. “The instructions and measurements are pretty much the basic proportions for modern ships. The ark’s not designed for speed, but then, that’s not the purpose.”

“All those animals—Noah’s surely going to have to shovel out a load of manure.”

“I bet nobody around here has ever seen a boat this big. Maybe they’ve never even seen a boat.”

Sandy sought out Yalith, feeling a little disloyal to be going to find her without Dennys, but going, nevertheless.  Dennys had vetoed it when Sandy had suggested taking Yalith with them.

He waited for her, not far from the tentholds, in the quiet that precedes dawn. Saw her coming, pale and wraith-like, from the direction of the desert.

“Yalith.”

She stopped, startled, head up.

“Yalith, it’s Sandy.”

“Oh. Twin Sand.” Relief was in her voice. “What is it?”

He took her hand. “Yalith, what are you going to do?”

“When?”

“When the floods come.”

She spoke in a low voice. “We don’t know for sure that the floods are going to come. It is only what my father says.”

“Yes, but what do you think? Do you believe your father?”

She was barely audible. “Yes.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“Nothing. This has already given my father and mother much grief. My mother doesn’t understand why El has not called me to be in the ark with the others.”

“I don’t understand it either,” Dennys said flatly.

“But the stars have told me not to be afraid.”

“And you believe the stars?”

“Yes.”

“Well, somebody’s wrong, either your father or the stars.”

“I trust my father. And I trust the stars.”

“Well. Somebody has to do something. I mean, we can’t just sit back and let you get drowned. Would you consider coming home with us?”

She looked at him, startled. “But where is your home?

Is it on the other side of the mountains?”

“On the other side of time,” Sandy said.

Her fingers tightened in his. “You and the Den are leaving?” She answered her own question. “Of course. You have to.  As soon as the ark is built. As soon as the rains start.”

“Will you come with us?”

“With you both?”

“Well—yes.” He would love to go off to the end of the world, alone with Yalith. But he knew that he would not try to leave her world without Dennys.

“Is it many days of travel?”

“We got here sort of instantaneously. I have an idea how we might be able to get home, but first I want to know if you’ll come with us.”

“Oh, twin Sand.” She sighed, long and deeply. “Everything is so strange. Ever since you came, nothing has been the same. Grandfather Lamech is dead. The ark is being built. I don’t want to drown, but—is it very different, where you come from?”

Sandy acknowledged, “Very different. It isn’t nearly as hot, and we have lots of water, so that we can take showers, and drink as much as we want. What I wouldn’t give for a long glass of cold water when we’re hammering away on the ark! And we wear different kinds of clothes.” He looked at Yalith’s small and perfect body, barely covered by the loincloth, her breasts delicate and rosy, and had a moment’s absurd vision of her in one of the classrooms at the regional high school. But wouldn’t anything be better than drowning? “You’ll consider it, won’t you? Coming with us?”

She was solemn. “Of course. It is very hard for me to imagine what it would be like without you and the Den. You are part of me. Both of you.”

Sandy slipped back into the tent, Dennys was awake, waiting for him.

“Where have you been?”

“I asked Yalith to come home with us.”

There was a heavy silence. At last Dennys said. “No. No, Sandy. We can’t take her back with us. I mean, even if we could, we can’t.”

“Why not?”

“She doesn’t have any immunities. Haven’t you noticed, there aren’t any diseases here? Don’t you remember that all the natives at the bottom part of South America got killed by German measles, because they didn’t have any immunities?”

“Couldn’t we give her vaccinations?”

“Not for everything. Even if she caught a cold, an ordinary head cold, it would probably kill her. She doesn’t have any protective antibodies. She couldn’t adjust to our climate. It’s too cold, too damp, It would be murder to try to take her back with us.”

“Then what’s going to happen?”

“I don’t know.”

“If she stays here, she’ll drown. Wouldn’t it be worth the risk to try to take her home with us?”

Dennys shook his head. “How do you think she’d get on with the kids at school?”

“She wouldn’t have to go to school. She’s nearly a hundred years old.”

“And she doesn’t look any older than we do. How would we prove her age to the school authorities? And i£ she is a hundred years old, and we bring her back to our time, what would happen? Would she shrivel all up and be ancient and die of old age?”

“Why are you thinking of all the bad things that could happen?”

“We have to think of them. If we love Yalith.”

“Maybe it would be all right.”

“And maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe what we should do is stay here with Yalith and wait for the flood.”

“I’m not willing to give up that easily.”

“It’s not easily.”

“But we have to do something!”

Maybe, for once, we don’t, Dennys thought. “There’s time yet,” he said. “Maybe something will come to us, but it will have to be something real.”

 “Hey,” Sandy said. “I’m not sure anymore what’s real and what isn’t. I mean, nephilim and seraphim!”

“I believe in a lot more than I used to,” Dennys said. “Even i£ we’re not supposed to change the story, we’re changed, you and I.”

“We are, oh, we are. And what about Yalith?”

“Wait,” Dennys said. He did not tell Sandy about his talk with Alarid. Or what the wind had shown him. Or that the stars had told him to have patience, and wait. Wait.

The new moon was once again a crescent in the sky-Ripened, filled out to a sphere. Dwindled and diminished.  Was born again.

Noah sent Japheth and Oholibamah to warn the people of the oasis of the impending flood.

Ham asked, “What’s the point? They ail know you’re building this big boat. They all know you’re expecting rain out of season.”

Noah was stubborn. “They have a right to be warned. To prepare. And who knows—if they repent, then perhaps El will not send the flood.”

“If there’s no flood,” Ham said, “people will laugh at us even more than they’re laughing now.”

Anah looked troubled. “I do not think the people of my tent will repent, They are very angry.”

Noah said, “They must be given the chance,”

When Japheth and Oholibamah returned from their trip about the oasis, they had been laughed at, spat at. Japheth had an ugly bruise on his cheek where an angrily thrown stone had hit him.

Even Noah and Matred’s older daughters and their husbands had met them with scorn. They laughed at Japheth’s earnest warning, and complained of being made to look like fools because of Noah’s folly. Seerah had thrown a bowl of mash at them and screamed at Oholibamah to leave her alone. “And don’t you come near my babies, you nephil woman.”

Japheth had put his arm protectingly about his wife and taken her away.

Hoglah’s husband had threatened to strangle them if they kept on spreading stories of flood and doom throughout the oasis. “It reflects on us,” he said. “Don’t you see how you’re making us look with this idiocy? Can’t you just keep quiet about Noah’s delusions?”

Japheth and Oholibamah left the oasis, to go home by the desert. Oholibamah began weeping, strangely, quietly.

Japheth stopped, putting his arms around her. “My wife. What is it?”

Oholibamah struggled to stifle her silent tears. Said, “If it is all true, what El has told your father, if there is to be a great flood, then our baby will be born after—“ She choked on her tears.

Japheth’s face lit with delight. “Our—“

Oholibamah leaned her head against his strong shoulder.  “Our baby. Japheth.” Suddenly her tears turned to laughter. “Our baby!”

The result of the attempt to warn the people of the oasis was that now they gathered about the perimeter of Noah’s land.

The desert wind rose hotly. Noah’s eyes were fixed on the ark. He tried to ignore the catcalls and hoots of the mob.

Grimly, Matred heated wine to the boiling point. “I prefer to use it on manticores, but if they try to hurt my husband, I will make them sorry.”

Ham slunk into the tent.

“What are you doing here?” his mother demanded.

“I’m tired of being laughed at.”

Matred spoke fiercely. “You go right back out and help your father.”

“He’s insane.”

“Whatever he is, it’s your place to be with him. And with your wife. She’s not too proud to work, and carrying your child, too.” Matred smiled. There would be three babies coming. She brimmed with joy.

“Can’t you stop him, Mother? He’s a wild man, his eyes blazing, his beard whipped by the wind, his— Can’t you speak to him.”

“I have spoken,” Matred said. “Go out to him. Now.” Reluctantly, Ham went out into the glaring sunlight, the burning wind. The muttering, jeering crowd was larger, as the people of the oasis gathered to stare.

Noah’s hands were black with the pitch with which he was coating the ark.

A stone was thrown. It missed its mark and glanced harmlessly against the dark wood. Sandy and Dennys left the ark and walked with deliberate steps toward the mob of little people. Dennys did not put down the plank he was sanding. Sandy still held the stone he used for a hammer. Neither boy threatened in any way; nevertheless, the people drew back slightly. Sandy spoke in a commanding voice. “No stone throwing.”

Dennys stood as tall as possible, looming over the small men in the foreground of the crowd. “Go home. Back to your tents. Now.” His voice was a deep, man’s voice.

There were advantages in being taken for giants. Slowly, the crowd dispersed.

Yalith sat on her favorite starlit rock, huddled over as though for warmth. She was not aware that Oholibamah had joined her until the other woman put her arm about Yalith’s shoulders.

Tears sprang to Yalith’s eyes. “Twin Sand and twin Den—“ Her voice trailed off-

Oholibamah finished for her. “As soon as the ark is built, they will have to leave. To go to wherever it is they came from.”

Yalith choked down a sob. “Twin Sand has asked me to go with them.”

Oholibamah drew back in surprise. Said, “It is a solution I had not thought of.”

“Then—what do you think?”

Oholibamah looked at the sky, intently, listening. Then she shook her head.

Yalith, too, looked heavenward. “The stars have never told me wrong.”

Oholibamah spoke thoughtfully. “I do not know why it is not the right solution for you to go with our twins. I know only that I hear the stars, and I agree. There is some-thing here that we do not understand. But do you hear the stars? They are telling you not to be afraid.”

A soft wind brushed past their cheeks, murmuring, “Fear not. Fear not. The pattern will be perfected.”

“I wish—“ Yalith whispered. “I wish Grandfather Lamech was still alive. I wish that El had not told my father to build an ark, or that the rains were going to come.”

“And—our twins?”

Tears slid down Yalith’s cheeks. “I cannot wish that they had never come to us- Or that I had not become a woman.”

Oholibamah held Yalith, rocking her like a child. “I, too, am afraid, little sister. I am carrying my Japheth’s child, and I am afraid for the future. I am afraid of the terrible flood, and all the death and anguish it will bring.  Sometimes I am even afraid of Noah, he seems so wild. But I trust Japheth. I trust the stars. I trust El. I trust that all this will be for good.”

As the stars slid slowly toward the horizon, the sky paled, flushed with soft colors. A burst of joyous birdsong filled the air around them, and the baboons began to clap their hands.

The ark was nearly finished.

The twins talked at night in the tent, whispering in the dark. During the day they were never alone, and not everybody slept at the same time in the afternoon.

“We haven’t seen any of the seraphim,” Sandy said. “Not for days.”

“Nor the nephilim,” Dennys added.

“I’d just as soon not see the nephilim. Particularly Rofocale.”

Dennys said, “Every once in a while I think I see one. Or at any rate, when I see an ant, or a worm, I get flickers of color behind my eyes, reds and oranges and blues and purples. But they don’t materialize.”

“I need to see one of the seraphim,” Sandy said. “I need to see Adnarel. I thought maybe the scarab beetle would come with Higgaion, but I haven’t seen him.”

Dennys said thoughtfully, “I don’t think it means that he’s stayed at Grandfather Lamech’s. The only time I’ve seen a seraph when there were a lot of people around was when Grandfather was buried, and they all came Otherwise, it’s been only when there are one or two people. And what with building the ark, and staying in Noah’s tent we’re always with a gang. Maybe somehow we should slip away for a little while tomorrow and go out to the desert, just the two of us.”

“Good thinking,” Sandy said. “But why wait for tomorrow? We don’t want to go in the heat of the day, and we’d be missed any other time. Noah and Matred are always checking on us. They’re afraid one of us might be kidnapped again. So why not go now?”

“Right now?”

“Why not? We’re both awake.”

“Let’s go.”

“Don’t wake Higgaion.”

“Or Selah.”

“Or—“

“Shh.”

They slipped out quietly.

But not so quietly that Yalith did not hear them. She felt a vague disquiet. Rose from her sleeping skins and followed them.

“Kkk. They come.”

“Hsss. This is what we’ve been waiting for.”

“Szzz. At last.”

The nephilim slid out of their animal hosts, raising wings turned dark by night, so that the stars were hidden.

The little mammoth woke with a jerk from a dream of  being beaten by Tiglah’s brother. Nudged Selah, who nudged Higgaion, who reached toward the twins, and felt only sleeping skins. Snorting in alarm, he padded across the tent toward Yalith’s sleeping skins. She, too, was gone. He glanced toward Noah and Matred, both sleeping quietly.

Selah trumpeted, softly, so that only the mammoths heard, and pointed her trunk toward Higgaion’s ear. The scarab beetle was there, a small, bright jewel against the grey earflap.

“What should we do?” Higgaion’s eyes queried. Cocked his head as though listening. Then he gestured to the other two mammoths with his trunk, and they followed him as he hurried out of the tent and ran toward the desert.

The twins were nearly surrounded before they realized what was happening. The circle of nephilim was closing in on them, slowly, deliberately. The sharp odor of stone and cold filled their nostrils.

Sandy felt as though a hand was pressing hard on his chest. He shouted at Dennys, “Quick!” and flung himself out of the not-quite-closed circle.

Dennys followed, pushing through purple-dark wings that nearly stifled him. “Run!”

The twins’ reflexes were swift, but the nephilim were swifter.

Again the circle started to form around them, and it was as though the breath was being squeezed out of them.  Sandy ran, head down, like a battering ram, between Rofocale and LIgiel. Dennys rammed Eblis.

But the twins were only two, and the nephilim were many, and sure enough of their powers to proceed with deliberation and without haste. In their rush to get free of the circle, the twins had run in the opposite direction from the oasis. Now they were too far away to think of making a dash back to Noah’s tenthold.

The circle of nephilim drew closer.

Yalith saw.

“Aariel!” she screamed. “Aariel!”

The golden lion bounded across the sand, past Yalith, until it was between two of the nephilim, keeping the circle from closing completely.

Came a strange pounding, and then Admael the camel galloped white as moonlight across the desert, inserting himself into the circle. A flutter of wings overhead became visible as a pelican, diving down, broke the circle again.

And three small grey bodies hurtled into the circle, blowing sand and water into the faces of the nephilim, who burst out of their formation in a rush of brilliant wings.

The lion, camel, pelican, with an upward leaping of light, became the radiant beauty of seraphim.

Sandy and Dennys ran to them, ran faster than they had ever run before. Alarid caught Sandy, and Admael held Dennys.

The nephilim sprang angrily into the sky, saw Yalith.

“Her!” Eblis cried. “I want her!”

But Aariel reached her before the nephil. Swift as Eblis was, the seraph was swifter. He enfolded Yalith in gilded wings.

The three mammoths, trumpeting joyfully, bounded around them.

Bronze flashed against Higgaion’s ear, and then Adnarel stood before them. “Go!” he commanded the nephilim in a bugling voice.

“Kkk. You have no right to take them from us,” Naamah said.

“And you have no right to them whatsoever.” Adnarel was fierce. “Go.”

From the four corners of the desert the other seraphim came, to stand with Adnarel, Alarid, Admael, and Aariel.

Then Ertrael, whose host was the rat, whined, “Tell us what is about to happen.”

“Do you not know?” Alarid asked.

“I assume,” Ugiel hissed, “that since Noah is building a boat, he must be planning to find some water.”

“Your assumption is correct.” Admael had his arm lightly across Dennys’s shoulder.

“Kkk. And then what?” Naamah asked.

“Rain,” Alarid said. “Much rain.” The seraph raised his hand skyward, seeming to touch a bright star. A flash of lightning split the sky, bolted to earth with a great crash of thunder.

“Now,” Alarid ordered the nephilim.

As the nephilim slipped, one by one, into their animal hosts, Sandy felt a drop of rain.

The seraphim gravely led the twins and Yalith deeper into the desert, not explaining where they were going.  Sandy started to ask, “Where—“ then closed his mouth.

When they reached a single monolith of silvery rock, the seraphim encircled it. Aariel drew Yalith into the center of the circle.

Adnarel took Sandy by the hand, and Admael reached for Dennys, so that they were part of the circle around the monolith, Aariel, and Yalith, who looked at the seraph questioningly but without fear.

Alarid said, “Yalith, child, you did not know your Great-great-grandrather Enoch.”

Mutely, she shook her head.

“But you know of him?” Aariel asked.

“I know that he did not die like ordinary men. He walked with El, and then, according to Grandfather Lamech, he was not. That is, he was not with the people of the oasis. He was with El.”

With a rush of hope, Sandy remembered his conversation with Noah and Grandfather Lamech and their recounting of this strange happening.

Aariel smiled down on Yalith. “El has told us to bring you, and in the same way.”

She shrank back. “I don’t understand.”

Dennys moved as though to go to her, but Higgaion nudged him to stay still.

Aariel said, “There is no need to understand, little one. I will take you, and it will be all right. Do not fear.”

She looked very small, very young. She asked, timidly,

“Will it hurt?”

“No, little one. I think you will find it a rapturous experience.”

She looked up at him, trustingly.

“Enoch, your forebear, will explain everything you need to know.”

Adnarel’s fingers held Sandy back. “You will tell Noah and Matred?”

“I will tell them,” Sandy said. “I think they will be very happy.”

Dennys, who had not heard the extraordinary story of Enoch, looked confused but hopeful. If Aariel was taking Yalith somewhere, she would not be drowned after all.  The seraphim were to be trusted. He was certain of that.  Aariel would not take Yalith to the sun, or to the moon, or anywhere that was not possible for her with her human limitations.

Aariel said, “It is time.”

Yalith remembered the words Aariel had said to her when she had gone out to the desert in the heat of the day. “Many waters cannot quench love,” she whispered. “Neither can the floods drown it. Oh, twins, dear twins, I love you.”

Sandy and Dennys spoke together, their voices cracking.

“Yalith. Oh, Yalith. I love you.”

“Will you go back now, to where you came from?”

The twins glanced at each other.

“We will try,” Sandy said.

“We think the seraphim will help us,” Dennys added.

“If we had been older—“ Sandy started.

Dennys laughed. “If we had been older, it would have been very complicated, wouldn’t it?”

Yalith, too, laughed. “Oh, I love you both! I love you both!”

Aariel urged, gently, “Come, Yalith.”

“I can’t say goodbye to my parents? To japheth and Oholibamah?”

“It is best this way,” Aariel said, “without goodbyes, as it was for your forebear Enoch.”

Yalith nodded, then reached up to Sandy and kissed him on the lips. Then Dennys. Full, long kisses.

Aariel wrapped her in his creamy wings, glittering with gold at their tips. Then he held her only with his arms, lifted and spread the wings, beat with them softly, and then rose into the air, up, up.

They watched until all they saw was a speck of light in the sky, as though from a new star.

Sandy spoke to Noah, “Do you remember the night when you and Grandfather Lamech were talking and I was there?”

“I remember,” Noah said.

“And Grandfather Lamech talked about dying.”

“I remember.”

“And about his Grandfather Enoch, who walked with El and then he was not, for El took him?”

“I remember that, too. Why?”

“Yalith is not.”

“What are you saying?” Noah’s eyes widened.

Matred put her hand to her mouth, focusing intently.

Sandy continued, “Aariel, the seraph who loves Yalith, said that she was to be taken up, like her forebear Enoch.  And he held her and flew straight up into the sky. We watched.”

Dennys nodded.

A light of great joy came into Noah’s eyes.

Matred burst into tears.

“I felt a drop of rain,” Sandy said.

Noah turned away. “The ark will be finished tomorrow.”

That night, the twins sat outside the big tent. The three mammoths curled up together, near them. The rest of the family was within, asleep. Except for Yalith. Yalith’s sleeping skins had been folded and put away.

“I didn’t have a chance to talk with Adnarel about getting home,” Sandy said.

“But Yalith is all right. At the moment, that’s all that matters.” A drop of rain fell on Dennys’s nose.

“The rain is beginning.” Sandy reached down to pet Higgaion, who was pressing against his feet. “What was it that she said about many waters?”

“Many waters cannot quench love. I think that’s what she said.”

Higgaion reached up with his trunk to touch Sandy’s arm. “It’s time for us to be going home, Higgy. I have to speak to Adnarel.”

Higgaion reached with his trunk to touch his ear. The scarab beetle was not there.

Another drop of rain fell. It was a quiet, beginning rain, with occasional droplets. No thunder or lightning.

Sandy asked the sky, “Is God really doing this? Causing a flood to wipe everybody out?”

Dennys raised his face to the sky. The stars were not visible, hidden by thick veils of clouds, but it seemed that he could still hear their chiming, dim but reassuring.

“Whenever there’s an earthquake, or a terrible fire, or a typhoon, or whatever, everybody gets it. Good people get killed as well as bad.”

Sandy was wriggling his toes against Higgaion’s shaggy grey flank. “Well. Everybody dies. Sooner or later.”

“Even stars die,” Dennys added.

“I don’t like entropy,” Sandy said. “The universe winding down.”

“I don’t think it is winding down,” Dennys contradicted. “I think it’s still being birthed. Even the flood is part of the birthing.”

“I don’t understand.” Sandy’s voice was flat. “Everybody knows that entropy—“

“Everybody doesn’t. And entropy is in question, anyhow. Remember, we had that in science last year. There’s no such thing as an unbreakable scientific rule, because, sooner or later, they all seem to get broken. Or to change.”

“Grandfather Lamech said that these are last days.” The occasional slow drops of rain made Sandy on edge, and argumentative.

Another splash of rain touched Dennys’s face, muting the stars. “There have been many times of last days,” he said, “and they mark not only endings but beginnings.”

“Is there a pattern to it all?” Sandy demanded. “Or is it all chaos and chance?”

“What do you think?” Dennys asked.

Selah had come to lie beside Higgaion, and Sandy reached to scratch her with the toes of his other foot. “Did we come here, to Yalith, to Noah, by chance?”

Dennys wiped his face with the palm of his hand. “No. I don’t think so.”

Sandy said, “The ark is finished. Yalith is with Grandfather Enoch. And perhaps with Grandfather Lamech.  What was it Grandfather said? We know little about such things .. .”

There was a radiance in the air, and Adnarel stood before them.

“Oh, Adnarel.” Sandy leapt up. “I need to talk to you about particle physics and quantum leaps.”

Adnarel sat beside them, listening.

“So,” Sandy concluded, “if you could go to our time and place and call the unicorns to you there, you could tesser us home.”

“It does not sound impossible,” Adnarel said. “It is consistent with our knowledge of energy and matter. I will talk with the other seraphim.” As he turned to go, he said, “Do not stray far from the tent.”

“The nephilim,” Dennys agreed. Then, in a louder voice, “We will not stray. It is just that somehow we are not sleepy.”

Adnarel paused. “Your love for Yalith, and hers for you, is, and therefore it always will be.” And then he was gone.

They smelled Tiglah before they saw her. Quickly they sprang to their feet and ran to the tent flap, which was half open.

“Oh, don’t go, please don’t go!” Tiglah cried. “I’m alone, I promise you.”

Tiglah’s promises meant little. They stood warily by the tent flap, watching her as she approached. But there was nobody with her, neither father and brother, nor nephilim.

“It’s starting to rain,” she said. “We never have rain except in the spring. Did Noah really build this big boat because he thinks there’s going to be more rain than we’ve ever seen before?”

Sandy nodded.

“Anah is my sister. Would there be room for me on the ark?”

“There is not room for Sandy and me,” Dennys said.

“Then what are you going to do?”

“We’re not sure.” Sandy was cautious. “We hope to go home.”

“I don’t like this rain.” Tiglah sniffled. “It’s cold and wet.”

“Rofocale will take care of you,” Sandy said-

“Oh, he will, won’t he! I’d better go find him. It’s very nice to have known yon.”

“Thanks for nothing.” Sandy said rudely.

“Ditto,” Dennys echoed.

“You’re not blaming me for my father and brother, are you?”

“Perhaps not for your father and brother,” Sandy said, “but for doing whatever Rofocale tells you, yes.”

“So go to him,” Dennys urged, although he did not have much faith that the nephilim cared enough about any human being to be willing to help unless it was convenient.

“I still think it’s nice to have known you,” Tiglah said.  “I wish I could have known you better. I mean, really known you.”

“Sorry, Tiglah,” Sandy said. “You are a great deal older and a great deal more experienced than we are.”

“I could teach you—“

“No, Tiglah. The timing isn’t right.”

“Goodbye, then,” she said.

“Goodbye,” the twins echoed.

Japheth came to them. “I’m worried about you.”

Sandy was still looking after Tiglah’s retreating form.

“Don’t worry, Jay. We’ll be all right.”

“How?” Japheth demanded. “You know we can’t take you on the ark.”

“We know,” Dennys agreed. He looked up at the clouds, which occasionally let a drop of rain fall. Tried to listen for the hidden stars.

“Can you get home?” Japheth asked. “To wherever you came from?” He, too, looked at the sky, shook his head as though baffled by silence.

“We’re going to try,” Sandy said. “Don’t worry about us. You have enough to do, collecting all the animals and food and fodder and grain and everything.”

Japheth nodded. “Perhaps—“

“Perhaps what?” Sandy asked.

Japheth rubbed his broad hand across his face, wiping away tears. “Oh, twins—“ He rushed at them, and they flung their arms about him and the three of them rocked back and forth, holding one another.

Oholibamah went, just before dawn, to Mahlah’s low white dwelling.

Mahlah was alone, nursing the baby. It was indeed a large baby, drinking greedily, and Mahlah looked pale and fragile, but she crooned over the child while she fed it.

She looked up at Oholibamah and smiled in welcome.

“It’s good to see you, Oholi. Come in.”

Ohoiibamah stood, looking down at Mahlah and the child. “Is Ugiel good to you?”

“He is very good.” There was deep love in Mahlah’s shadowed eyes.

“You’re happy with him? Truly happy, as I am with Japheth?”

“Truly happy. Though Ugiel is Ugiel and Japheth is Japheth.”

“He doesn’t ever hurt you?”

“Never.”

“He takes care of you?”

“Very good care. And he loves our baby.”

“Good,” Oholibamah said. “That’s all I wanted to know.” And she left Mahlah and went back to the tent she shared with Japheth.

The seraphim were gathered together as dawn suffused the desert with a soft pearly light. The clouds were thickening, and in the trees the birds sang more softly than usual, and the baboons’ chatter was muted.

“It does look possible, I think,” Adnarel said.

Alarid nodded. “We are not bound to this place and time. Two of us should go to the twins’ world and call them back.”

Admael asked, “Does it really need to be unicorns? I would feel safer if I could carry them.”

Adnarel’s eyes widened for a moment, then nearly closed in thought. “I do not think they could take the transition from matter to energy and then back again to matter. Even we find it tiring.”

“But what about the unicorns?” Adnachiel, sometimes a giraffe, asked. “What happens when they go out?”

Adnarel said, “They are only when they are here. Or when they are there. But not in between. It is not quite the same thing as a transfer of matter and energy.”

Alarid nodded. “They have to be observed in order to be.”

“Believed in,” Adnachiel agreed.

“It is a long distance,” Admael said, “both in time and space.”

“It is a risk,” Adnarel agreed, “but one I think we must take.”

“Why are they here at all?” asked Achsah, with wings the same soft gray as his mouse fur.

“Do you think El sent them?” Admael suggested.

Adnarel spoke slowly. “I do not think El sent them. But neither did El prevent their coming.”

“Are they part of the pattern?” Admael asked. “Is it right and proper for them to be here?”

Alarid looked up at the veiled sky. “Perhaps Aariel will have word when he returns from taking Yalith to the Presence. But I think, yes, that they are part of the pattern.”

“The pattern is not set,” Adnarel said. “It is fluid, and constantly changing.”

“But it will be worked out in beauty in the end,” Admael affirmed.

 “Then you agree?” Adnarel asked. “We will try to help them to return to their own time and place in the way in which they have suggested?”

“We agree,” affirmed the seraphim.

The air lightened slightly as the hidden sun lifted above the horizon. There was a faint spattering of applause from the baboons, who were confused by the clouds and the occasional drops of rain.

Despite the clouds which obscured the light of the last dim stars, the seraphims’ ears were attuned to the song, although it was far away.

“Let us sing with them,” Alarid suggested.

And the singing of the seraphim joined with the singing of the hidden stars, and the call of the invisible sun.

Sandy and Dennys slept fitfully. The rain had not really begun in earnest. But there was an occasional patter on the roof skins as a drop fell here, there. The three mammoths were curled into a ball at the foot of the twins’ sleeping skins.

The morning songs of the oasis were softer than usual, but both boys roused from sleep and looked at each other.  Nodded.

Quietly, they dressed in their clothes from home.  Dennys was without the garments he had discarded after the garbage pit, but he pulled on his sweater and his lined jeans, feeling strange and constrained in clothes. The twins had become used to the freedom of being naked except for loincloths. Their winter clothes were hampering as well as hot.

They were careful not to disturb the sleeping mammoths. They looked across the tent to where Noah and Matred were still asleep. To the place which had been Yalith’s and which was now empty.

Then they tiptoed out.

Adnarel was waiting for them. “It’s best without good-byes.”

Dennys asked, “But you will say goodbye for us? And to Oholibamah and Japheth? And the others?”

“We will say goodbye,” Adnarel said, and looked toward a clump of palms and palmettos. Admael and Alarid came out of the shadows and moved toward them, followed by Aariel, who had returned from his journey with Yaiith.

“Now,” Adnarel said, “we will call the unicorns.”

“One more thing.” Sandy held back. “You will take care of the mammoths?”

“We will take care of them. Unicorns!”

With a glimmer of silver, two unicorns solidified before them.

“Now,” Adnarel said.

The two boys mounted the unicorns, sitting astride the silver backs, bathed in light from the horns.

“We leave you now,” Adnarel said, “Admael and I.  When we are in your time and place, we will call for the unicorns, and for you.”

“You’ll recognize it when you get there?” Sandy asked anxiously.

“You have given us very good parameters.”

Alarid and Aariel each stood by one of the unicorns.  When a drop of rain touched the light of their brilliant horns, it hissed slightly.

The unicorns crossed the oasis and moved onto the desert, Alarid and Aariel running along with them.

When they reached Aanel’s great rock, the two seraphim stopped and looked at the unicorns, then at the twins.

“Are you ready?” Alarid asked.

“Ready,” Dennys said.

Aariel slapped the two silver rumps, and the unicorns took off across white sand and rock. In his golden voice he cried, “Unicorns! Go home!”

Dennys felt a wave of sleep wash over him, as the rain and the unicorns quickened. Sandy, too, felt his mind softly closing. The rain was a curtain of silver.

“Alar—“ Sandy murmured.

“Aar—“ Dennys started.

The unicorns and the twins flickered like candles and went out.

Two unicorns in an old stone lab connected to a white clapboard farmhouse were a strange sight. So were two tall, bright-winged seraphim.

The twins looked around. Aside from the unicorns and the seraphim, everything was as usual. Wood still burned brightly in the stove. The smell of stew—of boeuf bourguignon —was fragrant over the Bunsen burner. The odd-looking computer was where it had been when they punched into it.

Adnarel was sitting in their mother’s reading chair, his golden wings drooping behind it. Admael was peering into one of her complex microscopes, hunching his pale blue wings.

“Do you believe in unicorns?” Adnarel’s azure eyes were smiling.

“How was the ride?” Admael, too, smiled, though both seraphim seemed very relieved.

The outside door banged.

Adnarel rose swiftly from the chair. Admael turned from the microscope. The twins stiffened.

Their mother’s voice called, “Twins! Are you home?”

“Oh, oh,” Sandy said. “We’d better get the unicorns out of here.”

“They’ll go as soon as they aren’t believed in,” Adnarel said.

Dennys exclaimed, “But Meg and Charles Wallace believe in unicorns!”

Admael asked, “And in seraphim?”

“And we’re not supposed to be in the lab anyhow, with an experiment in progress.” Sandy looked anxiously at Adnarel.

“Never fear,” the seraph said. “You are all right?”

“Until Mother finds us in here.”

Dennys added, “Looking the way we do, all sunburned.”

“Compared with some of your other problems—“ Admael started.

Their mother’s voice called out again. “Twins! Where are you?”

“No farewells,” Adnarel said. He glanced at Admael, then put both strong, long hands on Dennys’s head. Admael followed suit with Sandy. Both boys felt, rather than a sense of pressure, a sense of the tops of their heads lifting, almost as the animal hosts lifted to become seraphim. And then each twin was staring at a normal winter twin, skins not darkened by the desert sun, hair not bleached almost white. Sandy glanced briefly at Dennys’s still bare feet, started to speak, then stopped as Adnarel held up his hand.

“Many waters—“ The seraph reached out and clasped a unicorn horn. The light from the horn flooded back into the seraph’s hand, through his body, his wings, until he was streaming with light. Admael, too, was filled with flowing light.

“Cannot quench—“ he seemed to be saying. Light blazed fiercely, blinding the twins. Then the brilliance faded.

Unicorns and seraphim were gone.

Brown-haired, winter-skinned twins stared at each other.

Mrs. Murry opened the door to the lab. Behind her, Meg and Charles Wallace peered in, curiously.

“Sandy. Dennys. What are you doing here? Didn’t you see the sign on the door?” She sounded extremely displeased.

“We didn’t actually see it,” Sandy started.

“We just came to get the Dutch cocoa,” Sandy explained.

“Look,” Meg said, “it’s out here on the floor, by the kitchen door. Lucky it didn’t spill.”

“We were just going to make some,” Sandy said. “Shall we make enough for you three?”

“Please,” their mother said. “It’s turning bitter cold.  But, Sandy; Dennys, I beg you, don’t go into the lab when you’re asked not to. I hope you didn’t touch anything you shouldn’t have.”

Sandy said, slowly, “It all depends. But I don’t think we touched anything we shouldn’t have, do you, Dennys?”

“Under the circumstances, no,” Dennys said.

 “Why are your feet bare, Den?” Charles Wallace asked.

“Good heavens!” Mrs. Murry exclaimed. “Put something on your feet this second, Dennys Murry, before you catch cold.”

Meg opened the kitchen door, and there was the familiar odor of fresh bread, apples baking in the oven, and warmth, and brightness, and all the reassurance of home.

As they followed the others in. Sandy whispered to Dennys, “I’m very glad the kitchen is all here. But you know what—I’m homesick.”

“We probably always will be, a little,” Dennys agreed.

“Well.” Sandy straightened up. “As soon as we have our birthdays, we can get our driver’s licenses.”

“And about time,” Dennys said. “Now let’s make that cocoa.”