“Where in the future,” Alarid asked him abruptly, “do you come from?”
“A long, long way,” Dennys said. “We live at the end of the twentieth century.”
Alarid closed his eyes. “A time of many wars.”
“Yes.”
“And the heart of the atom has been revealed.”
“Yes.”
“You have soiled your waters and your air.”
“Yes.”
“Because you speak the Old Language there must be some reason for you to be here. But for the future to touch the past can be dangerous. It could cause a paradox. How did you get here?”
“I’m not sure.” Dennys frowned, then added, “Our father is a physicist who specializes in space travel, in the tesseract.”
“Ah, yes. But space travel is supposed to deal with space, not time.”
Dennys said, “But you can’t separate space and time. I mean, space/time is a continuum, “and . . .”
Yalith and Noah came out of the tent, and Yalith put her hand lightly against Alarid’s. “Look, he is very pale. You are tiring him.”
“Be careful of our young giant,” Noah warned.
Aland regarded Dennys. “You are right. This is enough for tonight.” The seraph’s eyes were compassionate, and their silver-green seemed to darken. “I am glad that you are better, and that you are coming back to yourself. Please, be very careful what you say, what you do. Be careful that you do not change anything.”
“Listen,” Dennys said. “All I want is to go home. To my own time. I’m just grateful to be on my own planet, and I’m not a bit interested in rewriting the Bible.” Did Alarid know that there was going to be a Bible? That there was going to be a flood? He looked at the seraph, whose face, serene and severe at the same time, did not change expression. Dennys was willing to accept that Alarid and the pelican who brought the water were some-how one and the same, but he was not willing to accept that his presence in this time and place might have an effect on anyone except himself. And, of course. Sandy.
“Sleep well, Dennys,” Alarid said. “Yalith and Oholibamah will continue to take good care of you.”
Yalith, Dennys thought. For Yalith he might be willing to change history.
Sandy could not sleep. Not only was the tent hot, but Higgaion was snoring. Grandfather Lamech was not. Grandfather Lamech was tossing. Turning. Grunting.
Sighing.
At last. Sandy could not stand it any longer. He crawled over to Grandfather Lamech’s sleeping skins. “Grandfather, are you awake?”
“Urn.”
“What’s the matter?”
The old man grunted.
Sandy spoke to him as he would have to Dennys. “Come on. I know something’s bothering you. What is it?”
“El spoke to me.”
Sandy tried to peer at him through the dark. Did this mean that the old man was about to die? Right then? That night?
But the old man said, “Great troubles are coming after I die. Terrible things are going to happen.”
“What kind of terrible things?”
Lamech moved restlessly. “El did not say. Only that men’s hearts are evil and hard, and it repents El that he has made human creatures.”
“So what’s he going to do about it?”
“I don’t know,” Lamech said. “But I fear for my son and his family. El plans to spare no one. I fear for Yalith. I fear for you. Sand, so far from your home.”
“Oh, I can take care of myself,” Sandy said automatically. But his words sounded hollow.
Yalith and Oholibamah came to Dennys in the deep dark just before dawn.
“You need to get out of the tent into some air,” Oholibamah told him. “You need to exercise. You will not recover until you walk about under the sky.”
“Starlight is healing.” Yalith’s voice was as gentle, he thought, as a small brook. But there were no brooks in this arid land.
He followed them out of the tent. Each took one of his hands, and their hands were small as children’s. They walked past the grove which served as outhouse, which was as far from the tents as he had ventured. Beyond them, the large tent was a dark shadow, with the smaller tents clustered about it.
His bare feet were still tender, and he walked gingerly. The girls guided him to the smoothest ways, until the sharp dry grasses and pebbles gave way to sand, and they were in the desert. The sand felt cool to the burning soles of his feet.
They paused at a low slab of white rock, which cast a silvery shadow on the sand. “Japheth and I agreed that this is as far as you should go,” Oholibamah said. “Let’s sit here and rest for a while. We’ll take you back to the tent before dawn.”
He sat between them on the rock, leaning back on his elbows so that he could look up at the sky. “I’ve never seen so many stars.”
“You don’t have stars where you come from?” Yalith asked.
“Oh, yes, we have stars. But our atmosphere is not as clear as yours, and not nearly as many stars are visible.”
Yalith clasped Dennys’s arm tightly. “It is frightening when the stars are hidden by the swirling sand. Their song is distorted, and I can’t hear what they say.”
“What the stars say?” Dennys asked.
“Listen,” Yalith suggested. “Alarid says you are able to understand.”
At first, Dennys heard only the desert silence. Then, in the distance, he heard the roar of a lion. Behind them, on the oasis, the birds chirred sleepily, not yet ready for their dawn concert. A few baboons called back and forth. He listened, listened, focusing on one bright pattern of stars. Closed his eyes. Listened. Seemed to hear a delicate, crystal chiming. Words. Hush. Heal. Rest. Make peace. Fear not. He laughed in excitement. Opened his eyes to twinkling diamonds.
Yalith laughed, too. “What did they say?”
“They told me—I think—to get well, and—and to make peace. And not to be afraid. At least, I think I heard them, and I don’t think it was just my imagination.” Suddenly he was glad that Sandy was not there. Sandy was pragmatic. Sandy would likely think Dennys was hallucinating from sunstroke. At school, if Dennys got lost in a daydream, Sandy always managed to cover for him.
“Yes, that is what the stars told you.” Yalith turned toward him with a delighted smile, very visible in the starlight. “You see!” she said to Oholibamah. “It is not everybody who can listen to the night. If the stars told you to make peace. Den, perhaps you will be the one to make peace between my father and my grandfather.”
“A big perhaps,” Oholibamah said.
“But maybe, maybe he can.” She turned back to Dennys.
“What else do you hear?”
Dennys listened again. Heard the wind rattling the palm leaves like sheafs of paper. There seemed to be words in the wind, but he could not make any sense out of them. “I can’t understand anything clearly—“
Yalith withdrew her fingers and clasped her hands together. Shook her head. Opened her eyes. “The wind seems to be talking of a time when she will blow very hard, over the water. That’s strange. The nearest water is many days away from here. I cannot understand what she is trying to say.”
“The wind blows where she wills,” Oholibamah said. “Sometimes she is gentle and cooling. Sometimes she is fierce and blows in our eyes and stings our skin like insects and we have to hide in the tents until she is at peace again. It is good, dear Den, that you have not come at a time when the wind blows hot against the sand. You will heal better now, at the time when she is more gentle, and the grapes and gardens grow.”
They were silent then, listening to the dawn noises becoming louder, as birds and baboons began to get ready to greet the day. Tentatively. Dennys reached for Yalith’s hand. She gave his fingers a little squeeze, then freed herself and jumped up. “It is time we took you back to the tent. This is more than enough for a first excursion. How do you feel?”
“Wonderful.” Then, acknowledging: “A little tired.” It would be good to lie down on the soft linen spread over the skins. To sleep a little. To have something cool to drink. He stifled a yawn.
“Come.” Oholibamah held out her strong hands. To his surprise, he needed her help in getting up.
When Yalith and Oholibamah needed ointments and unguents for Dennys’s burned skin, Anah, or Mahlah, if she happened to be home, would take them across the oasis to the close cluster of houses and shops to meet Tiglah, Anah’s sister.
“I don’t like it,” Japheth said to his wife. “I don’t like your going to such places.”
She bent toward him to kiss him. “We don’t go in. I wouldn’t take Yalith into such a place even if Mahlah—“