“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 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 up-ward, and suddenly a tall and radiant personage was looking down at Dennys.
“What—“ he gasped.
“A seraph,” Yalith said.
The glowing skin of the seraph was the color of Yalith’s, and there were great silvery wings, and hair the color of the wings. Was it a man? A woman? Did it matter? Yet, with Yalith and Oholibamah, and even more with Anah, Dennys was very well aware that he was male and they were female.
The seraph raised its wings, then dropped them loosely. “Fear not. I am Aland, and I have been helping with your healing. At last you are getting better. No. Don’t try to stand. You are still too weak.” Strong arms enfolded Dennys, and he was taken out of the tent and lowered onto a soft bed of moss. In the starlight, the moss shimmered like water.
“There,” the seraph said. “So. I am Alarid. And you are the Den.”
“Dennys.”
“Den is simpler.”
“And your name is Alarid? And what about Oholibamah?”
Alarid smiled gravely. “I take your point, Dennys. Forgive me. Now, I have conferred with my companion, Adnarel, who has been helping to take care of the Sand.”
“Sandy. Alexander.”
“Alexander? Is there not an Alexander who wants to conquer the world?”
“Not in our time,” Dennys said. “Way back in history. Not as far back as now. But back.”
“Ah,” Alarid said. “I tend to see time in pleats. Now, Dennys, there seems to be considerable confusion over who and what you are, and why you are here.”
In his weakness, Dennys could not hold back the tears which sprang to his eyes. “We are fifteen-year-old boys who come from a long time away.”
“You come from a far time, and yet you speak the Old Language?”
“The whatP”
“The Old Language, the language of creation, of the time when the stars were made, and the heavens and the waters and all creatures. It was the language which was spoken in the Garden—“
“What garden?”
“The Garden of Eden, before the story was bent. It is the language which is still, and will be, spoken by all the stars which carry the light.”
“Then,” Dennys said flatly, “I don’t know why I speak it.”
“And speak it with ease,” Aland said.
“Does Sandy speak it, too?” Dennys asked.
Alarid nodded. “You were both speaking it when you met Japheth and Higgaion in the desert, were you not?”
“We certainly didn’t realize it,” Dennys said. “We thought we were speaking our own language.”
Alarid smiled. “It is your own language, so perhaps it is best that you didn’t realize it. Do others of your time and place speak the Old Language?”
“I don’t know. Sandy and I aren’t any good at languages.”
“How can you say that,” Alarid demanded, “when you have the gift of the original tongue?”
“Hey. I don’t know. Sandy and I are the squares of the family. Our older sister and our little brother are the special ones. We’re just the ordinary—“
Alarid interrupted him. “Because that is how you are, or because that is how you choose to be?”
Dennys looked at the seraph, his eyes widening. “What happened to the Old Language?”
“It was broken at Babel.”
“Babel?”
“The tower of human pride and arrogance. It has not happened yet, in this time you are in now. You do not know the story?”
Dennys blinked. “I think I remember something. People built a big tower, and for some reason they all began to speak in different languages, and couldn’t understand each other anymore. It was in, oh, pre-history, and it’s a story to sort of, explain why there are so many different languages in the world.”
“But underneath them all,” Alarid said. “is the original language, the old tongue, still in communion with the ancient harmonies. It is a privilege to meet one who still has the under-hearing.”
“Hey,” Dennys said. “Listen. I guess because we got here so unexpectedly and everything was so strange, and we didn’t have time to think, and when we met Japheth it just seemed natural to speak to him—“
“It is a special gift,” Alarid told him.
“We’re not special, neither Sandy nor I. We’re just the sort of ordinary kid who gets along without making waves.”