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