And still they did not mention Yalith.
Yalith and Oholibamah were helping Matred to clean the big tent when they were disturbed by the flap being pushed open, and a lavender-winged nephil came in. He spoke without greeting. “It is nearly Mahlah’s time. She will need you to help with the birthing of the baby.”
Matred held the broken palm branch which she was using as a broom. “Do you not have one of your own kind to help?”
Ugiel looked at Oholibamah with hooded eyes. Flicked a long finger in her direction. “She will be of use. And Mahlah will need her mother and sister.”
Oholibamah took a step away from the nephil. “How will we know when to come?”
“Tonight. At the time of the moonrise. I, Ugiel of the nephilim, tell you so.”
“We will come,” Matred pronounced. “I will not have my daughter labor alone.”
“Good. I will expect you.”
“We will come,” Matred repeated, “but you will wait outside.”
Ugiei shrugged. “Have it your own way. It is a woman’s job to see to all the blood and mess of a birth.” He started out, then turned his burning gaze on Yalith.
She did not drop her eyes. Biting her lower lip, she met his stare.
“You cannot have them both, you know,” Ugiel said.
Then he was gone.
Yalith and Oholibamah spread skins over some low scrub palms. Some skins they would discard, if they were too soiled. Others they would scrape and beat clean.
“What did he mean?” Oholibamah asked.
“Who?”
“Ugiel.”
“About what?”
“About not having them both.”
Yalith picked up a skin foul with spills and put it in the dump pile. “Who ever knows what a nephil means?”
“You do, and I do,” Oholibamah said. “He meant our young twins.”
Yalith picked up another skin, appearing to examine it closely. “The Sand was the first one I met. The Den is the one we saved from the sun death.”
“And they are two people, not one,” Ohoiibamah reminded her.
“I know. Oh, yes, Oholi. I know that. They are very different when you get to know them.”
“And you do not love one more than the other?”
Yalith shook her head. “Anyhow, they are too young.”
“Are they that young in their own time?”
“We don’t know anything about their own time.”
Oholibamah sat on a stump, a pile of cleaned skins across her knees. “I love my Japheth. I am very happy with him. I wane you to be happy, too.”
Yalith shivered. “Mahlah seems to be happy, married to a nephil.”
“Our twins are not nephilim.”
“But they are different. They are not like us.”
“And you love them.”
“Yes.”
“You love them both.”
Yalith picked up a pile of skins to be discarded. “I’m going to throw these away. Then we’d better stop. The sun’s getting high and it’s too hot for this kind of work.”
Matred said to Elisheba, “You have not been to the women’s tent for two moons.”
Elisheba nodded, put her hands to flushed cheeks in an unwontedly girlish gesture.
Matred embraced her. “Is it true?”
“Yes. You will have yet another grandchild.” Hugging each other, they danced with joy.
Eblis the dragon/lizard was waiting for Yalith when she went to the well for water. He was not in his animal host, but was leaning against the trunk of a royal palm, purple wings wrapped around him, so that he was almost lost in shadows-When he stepped forward, Yalith was so startled that she almost dropped the clay pitcher which she carried on one shoulder.
Eblis rescued the pitcher and put it down. “Every day you grow lovelier.” He touched her gently on one cheek.
Yalith blushed and reached for the pitcher.
“Let me help you,” Eblis said. When the pitcher was full, he touched her again, tracing her brows with one pale finger. “Ugiel is right, you know.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, yes, you do, my sweet one, yes, you do. And I am the only answer to your problem.”
She looked at him questioningly.
“I want you, lovely little one. You know that I want you. I can give you all that Ugiel gives your sister Mahlah, and you know how happy she is.”
“I know …”
“Those stupid young giants who dazzle you with their youth can give you nothing except grief. You cannot choose between them, and if you should choose one, what would happen to the other?”
“They have not asked me—“ She faltered.
“But I have. I do. I want you.”
He bent toward her, and suddenly she felt nothing but fear. It was as he said: he wanted her. He did not love her. She picked up the water pitcher and fled, heedless of the water splashing on the ground.
9 Mahlah’s time, Lamech’s time
The afternoon was the hottest the twins had ever experienced. Sandy woke from unpleasant dreams of erupting volcanoes, to see Dennys sitting up on his sleeping skins, shiny with sweat.
Higgaion spent the midday sleeping hours with Lamech. At night he dutifully took turns with the twins, but Sandy suspected that the past few nights had been spent at Grandfather Lamech’s feet. The old man’s extremities tended to get cold from lack of circulation.
“Is anything wrong?” Sandy asked.
“It’s terribly hot.”
Thunder rumbled in the distance.
“That might mean rain,” Sandy said. For the moment he had forgotten that rain might mean flood.
So had Dennys. “Oh, good, for the orchards and the garden. Even with all our watering—“
The thunder came again, with a crackling, electrical sound.
Higgaion padded over to them, whimpering, looking across the tent to Grandfather Lamech.
The two boys hurried to the old man. The flap had been pegged open to let in as much breeze as possible, and the air outside was sulfurous, the sky a greenish-yellow.
Sandy squatted at one side of Grandfather Lamech, Dennys at the other. The old man was propped high on folded skins. Dennys took one of his hands and was shocked at how cold it was. He began to massage it, trying to get some circulation into the withered fingers.
Lamech opened his eyes and smiled, first at one twin, then the other. When he spoke, his voice was so faint that they had to strain to hear. “In your time and place—over the mountain—is it better?”
Sandy and Dennys looked at each other.
Sandy said, “It’s very different.”
“How?” the voice whispered.
“Well. People are taller. And we don’t live as long “
“How long?”
Dennys answered in words which seemed to him an echo of something long lost. “Threescore years and ten.”
“Sometimes fourscore,” Dennys amended.
Dennys looked at Sandy, at his tan, healthy skin, muscled arms and legs, clear eyes. “We have big hospitals—places to take care of sick people. But I’m not sure I’d have had any better care for my sunstroke there than I got from Yalith and Oholibamah.”
Sandy said, “We have showers and washing machines. And radios and rockets and television. And jet planes.”
Dennys smiled. “But I came to your tent on a white camel. Almost all the way.”
Lamech whispered, and both boys bent down to hear.
“People’s hearts—are they kinder?”
Sandy thought of the first vender who had tried to give him half the amount of lentils Grandfather Lamech had requested, and who had snarled and cursed when Sandy protested.
Dennys wondered how much real difference there was between terrorists who hijacked a plane and Tiglah’s father and brother, who had thrown him into the garbage pit.
“People are people—“ Sandy started.
Simultaneously, Dennys said. “I guess human nature is human nature.”
Lamech reached out a trembling hand to each boy. “But you have been to me as my own.”
Dennys gently squeezed the cold hand.
Sandy mumbled, “We love you, Grandfather Lamech.”
“And I you, my sons.”
“El’s words are strange words. I don’t understand,” Lamech said. “I don’t understand the thoughts of El.”
Neither did the twins.
Lightning and thunder came simultaneously. Light splashed through the roof hole and the open tent flap. The walls of the tent shook from the violence of the thunder and a long earth tremor.
But no rain fell.
The twins sat on the root bench to watch the stars come out. Higgaion stayed in the tent with Grandfather Lamech. The sky still had a yellow tinge, though there was no further lightning or thunder. Tongues of flame licked up from the volcano. High in the trees, the baboons chittered nervously.
Sandy curled his toes on the soft moss under the tree root. “We’ve never been to a deathbed.”
“No.”
“I thought that was going to be one, this afternoon with Grandfather Lamech.”
Dennys shook his head. “I think he wanted to ask us those questions.”
“Does he know there’s going to be a great flood?”
“I think his El that he talks to has told him.”
Sandy picked up a fallen frond of palm and looked at it in the last light. “But the flood was a natural phenomenon.”