A Wrinkle in Time Quintet (74 page)

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

Lamech
nodded. “El.”

“El what?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lamech looked first at Sandy,
then at the mammoth. “Yes. This is enough for a first excursion.”

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

FIVE

The nephilim

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

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

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

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

“Yalith’s father, Noah.”

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

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

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

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

“As soon as you are well. Not long.”

“Where is he?”

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

“I keep forgetting.”

“That is from the sun fever.”

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

“India?”

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

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

“Who are the seraphim?” Dennys asked.

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

“You have been to see me before?”

“Several times.”

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

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

“Are they angels?”

“You have angels where you come from?”

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

“Skeptic?”

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

“Lab what?”

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

“What kind of unicorns?”

“Oh. Just what I call them.”

The man interrupted. “Are you feverish again?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who was Noah? Noah and the flood. Noah built an ark and took his wife, and their sons and their sons’ wives, and many animals, onto the ark. What about Yalith? He couldn’t remember anything about Yalith. Or Oholi—Oholibamah. Japheth. Maybe that had a familiar ring.

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

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

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

“Are there many mammoths around?” Dennys asked.

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

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

“Who are the nephilim?” he asked.

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

“Seraphim, too?”

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

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

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

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

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

“An earthquake?”

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

“Is he good, this El?”

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

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

“What’s that?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I do not go to my father’s tent.”

“Why not?”

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

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

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

“But don’t you help him?”

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

“But he’s your father!”

“He should not be so stubborn.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The pelican nodded gravely to Dennys.

“Do you have a name?”

The pelican blinked.

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

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

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

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

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