Tears began to trickle down the manticore’s cheeks, dampening its scraggly beard.
“And don’t try to make me feel sorry for you.” Admael paused. “Though I am sorry for you. You appear to be one of nature’s more peculiar efforts.”
The manticore turned, head drooping, and with its lion’s body it padded across the desert, scorpion sting clacking as it went.
“Wow!” Dennys said. “That was a close call.”
“Not really. Manticore’s courage is as skimpy as its vocabulary.” Admael picked up the skins which had served as saddle. “Let’s go.” Dennys looked at him questioningly. “It isn’t far. I’ve been running parallel to the oasis. Can you walk a little?”
“Sure.” He’d just as soon walk as be bounced around on the camel’s back. But he asked, curiously, “You’re not going to be a camel?”
Admael had slung the skins over one shoulder. “Not now. It takes considerable energy to transfer. We do not like to waste power when it is not necessary. The manticore is basically a coward, but there may be other dangers in the night desert. It’s best that we keep moving.”
Admael glanced upward, and when Dennys looked skyward, he saw the dark wings of a vulture blotting out the stars in swift circles.
The circle of the nephilim was dark against the desert, a dark shot with flames brighter than those from the mountain as they flickered in and out of their animal hosts in a show of power. They spoke from their nephil forms in bursts of primal energy, reverting in negative lightning to their animal hosts, and bursting with bright wings again in order to speak.
The crocodile opened its enormous jaws, then lifted green wings as it stretched skyward. “What are they doing here?”
“What are they?” Pewter wings faded like smoke and a rat’s tail swished back and forth over the sand.
There was a sulfurous smell as the nephilim flickered in and out, charging the air. “Not true giants.” Red wings and hair flamed in the hot wind and then a mosquito whined shrilly.
“Not one of us.” Purple wings misted and the dragon/ lizard stretched its useless wings.
“Though they speak the ancient tongue.”
“They burn in the sun.”
“They can’t change form.”
“Young. Infants.”
“Almost men, though.”
“They don’t belong here.”
“What to do with them?” Bronze wings dissolved and shrank with a tearing sound as the cockroach lifted its armored wings.
“Do we let them live?” Great garnet wings dimmed the clouds, dropped with a sharp crack, and the red ant’s small body cast a dark shadow in the starlight.
Flicker. Flame. Shadow. In and out in prideful bursts of energy.
“Ummm,” moaned the nephil who was the cobra. “Maybe we promise them that they will live.”
“Ummm, kkk.” The vulture appeared briefly and clicked its beak. Then dark wings shadowed the stars. “Power. Put them in our power.”
Yellow wings puffed into sulfur and the flea leapt from the dragon/lizard to the vulture, then raised wings high. “Power. That’s right.”
“Temptation,” the dragon/lizard nephil suggested.
“Temptation. Good.” And the mosquito droned.
“Lust,” suggested the cobra, and the nephil’s face was whiter than the sand.
“Ummm. Lust,” agreed the vulture. “Kkk. Lust.”
“We’ll sleep tomorrow in the heat of the day.” The reunited Sandy and Dennys sat outside Grandfather Lamech’s tent as the stars wheeled across the sky. The old man had gone in, after having sat outside with them to eat a fresh mess of pottage, and to prepare bowls of fig juice.
Higgaion was curled in the star shade of the tree, his flanks heaving in and out as he slept, occasionally twitching in dreams.
“Noah and Matred have a mammoth called Selah,” Dennys said. “Usually she sleeps by Yalith’s sleeping skins, but sometimes she came into my tent and slept with me. It was weird being without you.” Dennys wriggled his bare toes in the sand.
“Yeah,” Sandy agreed. “It was weird for me, too. Higgy and Grandfather Lantech have been very good to me.” He wanted to ask about Yalith. But something stayed his tongue. He said, instead, “I love Grandfather Lamech. You will, too “
“He seems okay,” Dennys agreed. “I’m glad Japheth was the first person we saw. Otherwise, I’d suspect everybody of being like those awful people who threw me out of their tent into the town dump.”
“It sounds rough.”
“Well, everybody in Noah’s tenthold was wonderful to me.”
“Dennys.” Sandy was suddenly somber. “Do you remember the story? The story of Noah and the ark?”
Dennys shifted uncomfortably. “The story we got blown into. At first I thought we were in some way-out solar system.”
“It might be easier if we were,” Sandy said. “Grandfather Lamech sent me into town today to trade fruit for lentils. I passed a lot of people. They’re all going to be drowned.”
Dennys looked at the glow of the volcano on the horizon. “I know. Everybody except Noah and Matred, Shem and Elisheba, Ham and Anah, Japheth and Oholibamah.’
Now Sandy’s voice cracked. “What about Yalith?”
Dennys managed to keep his voice from soaring. “I don’t know. But I don’t think Oholibamah, Elisheba, or Anah are called by name in the story. Matred isn’t, either.” His voice jumped an octave. “Nor Yalith. At least as far as I can remember. I wish we had a Bible.”
“It was a very patriarchal society,” Sandy said. “I do remember that.”
“Meg would call it chauvinistic,” Dennys said. “Who-ever wrote the Bible was a man. Men.”
“I thought it was supposed to be God. Wasn’t that what we were taught in Sunday school?”
“When we were little maybe. The thing is, the Bible was set down by lots of people over lots of years. Centuries. It’s supposed to be the Word of God, not written by God.”
“Okay,” Sandy said, “but nobody ever mentioned that there were twins named Sandy and Dennys Murry with Noah and his family.”
“Do you have any idea,” Dennys ventured, “when the rains are supposed to start?”
Sandy shook his head. “No, I don’t. And I don’t know how we’re going to get out of here and go home. Do you?”
“I thought you might have thought of something to do,” Dennys said.
“I don’t have a clue. You pay more attention than I do when everybody goes on at the dinner table about tessering and red shifts and mitochondria and farandolae and stuff.”
“Mitochondria.” Dennys looked at his twin. “Do you remember when something was wrong with Charles Wallace’s mitochondria, and we thought he was going to die?”
“We went out to the vegetable garden,” Sandy said.
“Because we had to do something.”
“Even though we knew it didn’t have anything to do with helping Charles Wallace get well.”
“But it was something to do.”
They were silent for a dark space. Then Sandy said,
“Well, we can do it again, work in a garden. Grandfather Lamech has this huge vegetable garden—I mean, you’ve never seen such gigantic plants. And weeds. I’ve pulled up a mountain of weeds, wait and see, and I’ve hardly made a dent. And then there are his groves to prune and water. There’s plenty to do. Whether it helps anything or not.”
Under them the ground trembled slightly, but by now they were both so used to the shifting and sliding of the young planet that they hardly noticed. “Well. That’s good. The garden, I mean. As long as we don’t get sunstroke again.”
“Oh, we work only in the early morning and the evening. Grandfather Lamech is very careful about that.”
“Good, then.”
“Yes, but none of that gets us home. What do we do now?” Sandy was asking himself, rather than his twin.
“I think,” Dennys spoke slowly, “that we don’t do anything. I mean, this is way outside our experience.”
“Outside anybody’s experience,” Sandy added. “I think you’re right. We wait. With our eyes and ears open.” He looked over to where Higgaion was sleeping. The scarab was not in its usual place on Higgaion’s ear. Therefore, he thought, Adnarel must be somewhere else. Doing what?
“We wait,” Adnarel said. “To do anything is to make changes, to cause a paradox.”
“Does not their very being here in itself constitute a paradox?” Alarid, who was sometimes a pelican, asked.
Admael, who had earned Dennys across the desert, said, “They have already made changes. The boy, Dennys, caused Noah to reconcile with his father, when it seemed that nothing would ever make that come about.”
Adnachiel, his wings as sunny as the hide of his giraffe host, said, “Perhaps the boy Sandy played a part.”
Aalbiel, with wings as white as those of a snow goose, asked, “Could they have been sent for this?”
Aanel, tawny as a lion, said softly, “We do not know. Perhaps they are part of the pattern.”
Abdiel, sometimes a golden bat, spoke equally softly.
“There are many things that even the angels in heaven do not know. And we have chosen—“