“Jay—“ Dennys’s teeth were chattering.
“Who’s hurt you?” Japheth asked. “Can you tell us?”
Dennys closed his eyes again.
“Don’t bother him with questions now,” Oholibamah said.
“Don’t be afraid. Den,” Japheth encouraged. “We’re not going to let anybody hurt you.” Japheth bent down to him. “I’m going to carry you to some place where it’s cool and quiet. Don’t be afraid.” Japheth picked Dennys up as carefully as possible and slung him over his shoulder.
Japheth was the tallest man in the tent; even so, he was so much smaller than Dennys that the boy’s feet dragged on the ground, and he curled his fingers to keep them from scraping, too. No wonder in this place he and Sandy were thought of as giants. Dennys had a feverish vision of a trip his class had taken to a museum, where everybody had been amazed at the exhibition of knights’ armor. How small those knights must have been! The people on this planet where he and Sandy had been flung were even smaller than the medieval knights.
His thoughts misted off, as tenuous as the virtual unicorns. The remembrance of the field trip to the museum was no more of a dream than his being carried by Japheth, who was amazingly strong for so small a man, a short young shepherd carrying a lamb. A very small shepherd. Dennys’s toes scraped over a rock, and he cried out. If he could wake up, if he could shake off the heat of this feverish dream, he and Sandy would be in their bunk bed at home.
He opened his eyes, and the stars were brilliant, and he took a gulp of fresh air. Then his head brushed against a tent flap, and he felt himself being lowered onto something soft but so delicate that he could feel the rough skins underneath. He licked his cracked lips and realized that he had a raging thirst. “Water, Jay,” he managed to croak, but could not summon the energy to add, please.
The black-eyed girl bent over him and held a wineskin to his lips, and he tasted something bitter and sweet at the same time. It stung his throat as he swallowed, but at least it was wet.
The black-eyed girl withdrew the skin. “We shouldn’t give him too much wine.”
“I forgot the fig juice,” the plump, nut-like woman exclaimed. “I’ll be right back.”
Dennys heard the pad of bare feet, and the thud of a leather tent flap falling.
“He recognizes me now.” Japheth’s voice was troubled.
“I don’t think he’s afraid of us anymore,” the younger girl said, the one with amber eyes.
“Water—“ Dennys begged.
The amber-eyed girl said, wistfully, “Grandfather Lamech’s wells still have water to spare.”
The other girl agreed. “I wouldn’t mind going to get a pitcherful, but I wish Grandfather Lamech did not live at the bottom of the oasis.”
Japheth put his arm lovingly about the girl. “I’ll take one of the camels and go. I don’t want either of you crossing the oasis at this time of night. Every moon, there are more bandits and thieves.”
“Oh, but be careful,” the younger girl begged.
“Take my camel, love,” the black-haired woman offered. “She’s the swiftest, and you’ll be safe on her.”
“Thank you, Oholibamah, my wife.” Japheth leaned to her and kissed her on the lips. Dennys, watching through the confusion of headache and fever, thought that it was a nice kiss. It was the kind of kiss he had seen his father give his mother. A real kiss. If he lived through this, he would like to kiss someone like that.
He heard Japheth leave, and closed his eyes, sliding into a fevered sleep. Like his virtual unicorn, he seemed to flicker in and out of being. He retreated deep within him-self in order to retreat from the flaming pain of his scraped skin. He did not know how long he had been unconscious before he became aware of the two women speaking softly.
“Why won’t my father reconcile with Grandfather Lamech?” the lighter voice asked. “I had to beg him for the oil for Grandfather’s night-light.”
The older girl, the one Japheth had kissed, with an odd name, Oholi something, had a voice like velvet. “Your father was hurt when Grandfather Lamech insisted on staying in his own tent.”
“But as long as Grandfather can care for himself—“
“It’s complicated,” the dark voice said. “People don’t revere old people the way they used to. They don’t want to listen to their stories.”
“I love Grandfather’s stories!”
“I, too, Yalith.”
Yalith, that was the name of the amber-eyed one. Yalith and Oholi. Dennys was vaguely aware of something cool touching his skin, something that numbed the pain.
The one called Oholi continued. “I always enjoy it when it’s my turn to take him the night-light. And at least your mother feels as we do. She’ll always manage to get the oil for us to take to him.”
“When did it change?” Yalith asked. “People need to sit at the feet of the old people and listen. But now—I heard Anah say that her grandfather was put out in the desert to die, and his bones were picked clean by vultures.”
“Oh, El, what are we coming to!”
At the trouble in the dark voice, Dennys opened his eyes.
“He is still so hot, so hot,” Oholi said. “I wish we knew who had hurt him.”
“But what could we do?” Yalith asked. “What in El’s name could we do? People are ugly to one another today. Were we this cruel before the nephilim and the seraphim came?”
“I don’t know.”
“And who came first?”
“I don’t know,” the dark-eyed one repeated. “There is much we don’t know. Where did this young wounded giant come from, for instance?”
“The other one,” Yalith said, “the one in Grandfather Lamech’s tent, said that they came from some kind of Nighted Place.”
“United States,” Dennys corrected automatically. Then Yalith’s words registered. “Where is my brother?”
“Oh, good, he’s coming to!” Yalith cried. Then said, kindly, to Dennys. “He’s in my Grandfather Lamech’s tent, being cared for by Grandfather and Higgaion. He’s sun-struck, too, but not nearly as badly as you are.”
The words began to buzz into meaninglessness as Dennys slid back into unconsciousness. He knew that the combination of too much sun, of being thrown into the pit, of scraping himself with sand, had made him ill. Very ill, indeed. This was far worse than when he had flu and a temperature of over 105°. Then he had antibiotics to fight the fever. Heaven knew what had been in that garbage pit. Heaven knew what horrible infection might follow. He thought that he was probably dying from overexposure to the sun, and he didn’t much mind, except that he wished he was at home, on his own planet, rather than here, wherever in the universe here was, with these strange small people. He wished he was young enough to call out and wake his mother, so that she would come in to him and she would wake him from the nightmare and take off the knight’s helmet that was pinching his skull and giving him a terrible headache.
He drifted into darkness.
For the first few days in Grandfather Lamech’s tent, Sandy was miserable. His reddened skin bubbled into blisters. Where he didn’t sting, he itched. But as his fever abated he began to look for Yalith in the evening. She did not come, and he felt only a weary indifference to the older women who brought the light, often staying to chat with the old man so that they would have an excuse to stare at Sandy.
He knew now that Dennys was safe in a tent near Japheth’s, and that he was being well cared for. He knew that he and Dennys were objects of intense curiosity to the women who came each evening.
“I’ve never seen anything like it!” the oldest one called Matred, exclaimed. “Except that our giant is burned so much more badly, I would not believe that they are two.”
Anah and Elisheba took their turns taking the night-light to Grandfather Lamech, whispering over Sandy and his likeness to their own twin, still burning with fever in the women’s tent. But they shyly held back from talking with Sandy, speaking softly so that he could not hear what they were saying.
Adnarel came each day, at least long enough to drip fresh herbs or powders into the water with which Higgaion continued to bathe the bumed skin. The pelican kept the water jar filled, and when Grandfather Lamech thanked the great bird. He treated it as more than a pelican, causing Sandy to wonder. The old man spent hours cooking concoctions to tempt Sandy’s appetite, and the ones that tasted best were the ones which reminded him of his mother’s bunsen-burner stews. Sandy wanted to ask the old man about the women who came in the evening and, most importantly, to ask him why Yalith was not one of them, but he was embarrassed and held his peace. And slept, and slept, healing.