The dimple in Tiglah’s chin deepened. “At least he came with me this time.”
“So he did. And did you kiss him?”
She nodded. “He tasted so young. Young as the morning.”
“Did he like it?”
“He liked it. But just as I thought he was ready to go further, he pulled back. But give me time, Rofocale. This is, after all, the first time he’s been willing to go with me.”
Rofocale in a movement of swift grace knelt so that their eyes were level. “You must work fast, my little Tiglah.”
“Why? What’s the hurry?”
Rofocate rubbed the back of his hand against his fore-head. “Some of our powers have been weakened. We can no longer tell—but Noah knows something. His sons married abnormally young, and hurriedly. Noah still speaks with the One on whom I have turned my back. There may not be another hundred years.”
“But why do you want me to—to seduce him?”
“Wouldn’t that put him in your—and my—power?” He drew her to him. “What you do with the naked giant will not make you any less mine, little lovely one. I like my women to be experienced in the ways of lust.”
“Will I make a baby for you?”
He spread his wings so that she was wrapped in a cloud of flame. “Soon.”
“Soon,” Oholibamah said. “Soon. Press down, Mahlah, press down. Hard.”
“Soon,” Yalith echoed reassuringly. “It will come soon.”
Matred said nothing.
Mahlah, lying on her back on a pile of skins, screamed. Her hands groped frantically, and Matred took them in a firm grasp, while Mahlah clutched.
“It’s gone on so long,” Yalith whispered, “How much more can she take?”
“Get up,” Matred ordered Mahlah.
Mahlah wailed, “I can’t. I can’t. Oh, let it come, let it come soon—“
“Get up,” Matred repeated. “Squat.”
“I did, I did, until I was so tired I couldn’t—“
“You’ve rested enough “ Matred’s voice was rough. “Help her up,” she ordered Yalith and Oholibamah.
The two girls had to use all their strength to pull the resisting Mahlah off the skins.
“Squat,” Matred said. “Bear down. Now. Now. Push.”
“The moon is setting,” Yalith said.
Oholibamah looked at Matred. “My mother went through this. She is still alive.”
“Yes, my dear,” Matred said. “Thank you.” It was Oholibamah’s first open acknowledgment that she had been sired by one of the nephilim, and Matred pressed her shoulder in gratitude.
The moon set. The sun rose. It was stifling in the small while clay house. The four women streamed sweat. Mihlah’s hair was as wet as though it had been dipped in the water jar. Her eyes were wide open in agony. She moaned. screamed, shrieked. Occasionally, between contractions, her mouth would fall open laxly and her lids would droop shut as she dropped into an exhausted sleep, only to be wakened as she was assailed by a fresh pain
The sun slid low in the sky.
“Squat,” Matred ordered. “You must squat again.”
Three nights and three days. Squatting, lying, screaming.
She will die, Yalith thought. —This cannot go on.
“Soon.” Oholibamah continued to reassure the tortured Mahlah. “It will come soon. Press down. Harder.”
Matred’s voice was sharp with anxiety. “Work, Mahlah, work. We cannot have this baby for you. Work. Push.”
For the fourth night, the moon rose.
“Push,” Matred commanded.
A long, grunting groan came from Mahlah, more terrible than her screams.
“Now. Now”
The groan seemed as though it would tear Mahlah apart.
“Now.” And at last Matred reached between Mahlah’s legs to help draw the baby out of her body. The baby’s head was so large that Yalith could hear Mahlah’s flesh rip as the child came out. Matred shook it, patted its buttocks, and the air rushed into its lungs and it howled.
While Sandy was with Tiglah, Dennys went in to Grandfather Lamech, uneasy about him. He walked to where the old man was lying.
“Son?”
“It’s Dennys, Grandfather.”
An old hand groped for his. Dennys held it, and it was cold, deathly cold. “Can I do something for you, Grandfather?”
A serene smile wreathed the old man’s face. “El has spoken.”
Dennys wailed.
The old man seemed to be trying to suck in enough air to speak. Finally he said, “All will not be lost. Oh, my son, Den, El has repented. While you were in the garden, El spoke to me here in the tent. I have never heard him here before. Oh, my son, Den, my son, my son, Noah will be spared. Noah and his family. El has spoken.”
“From what, Grandfather Lamech?”
“Eh?”
“From what will they be spared?”
The old fingers trembled in Dennys’s hand. “El spoke of many waters. This I do not understand. But no matter. What is of concern is that my son will be spared.” The fingers pressed against Dennys’s. “But you, my son? What will happen to you? I do not know.”
“I don’t know either. Grandfather.” Dennys massaged the withered old hand until a little warmth returned.
Ugiel stood looking down at the baby lying between Mahlah’s breasts. The young mother looked pale and exhausted, but radiant.
The three women who had shared her labor were nearly as exhausted as Mahlah. Oholibamah had deep circles under her eyes, and her cheeks were ashen. It was she who had somehow or other stanched the blood that poured out, nearly taking Mahlah’s life with it; she who had brought the afterbirth out safely. Her hands and arms were stained red from holding Mahlah’s torn flesh together until the rush of blood slowed to a trickle and the danger of hemorrhaging was over.
Ugiel paid no attention to the others. He gazed at his baby. It had a full head of hair, black, like Mahlah’s. He flipped it over and fingered the soft down outlining the shoulder blades. “I am pleased,” he said.
Matred was sharp. “And well you might be. It almost killed her. Without Oholibamah, it would have.” She turned away from Ugiel and fed Mahlah some of the strengthening broth Elisheba had sent over.
“Go home,” she said to Yalith and Oholibamah. “Go and get something to eat, and rest. I will stay with Mahlah. Elisheba will be by later.”
Oholibamah, also ignoring Ugiel, looked at mother and child. “She will need much care for the next several days. Be sure to call me if the bleeding starts again.”
“I will.” Matred promised.
Ugiel bent over Mahlah and with one long finger touched the baby on its eyelids, its nose. “I am pleased,” Ugiel said again.
Oholibamah sat in the big tent, letting Elisheba feed them lentil soup.
Oholibamah said, “He didn’t care whether she lived or not, as long as she had the baby.”
Yalich paused in the act of raising her bowl to her lips.
“Do you really think that?”
“You heard him, didn’t you? ‘Why doesn’t she get on with it?’ he said. ‘Why is it taking so long?” And then he would go away and not come back for hours and hours.”
“Mother said she didn’t want him around—“ Then Yalith stopped. Matred had been with her older daughters when they gave birth, shooing their husbands away but giving a running account of the delivery. Nor had the husbands gone far away. They had. in fact, been maddeningly underfoot. They had not simply vanished, like Ugiel, leaving everything to the women. She finished her soup in silence.
Oholibamah, too, drank. Her dark brows drew together. Her raven-black hair had come loose from its thong and fallen about her shoulders.
“Oholibamah—“ Yalith said softly.
“What is it?”
“The nephiliro marry our women, give them babies. But the seraphim—“
“They do not marry. Or give babies.”
“But in many ways they are like the nephilim.”
Oholibamah pushed her dark hair back in a weary gesture. “No. I think that once the nephilim were like the seraphim.”
“What happened to change them?”
“I don’t know.”
Yalith thought of Aariel, with the bright amber eyes and leonine grace, and then of Eblis, and she was glad she had run from the purple-winged nephil. She wanted nothing to do with Eblis, if he was like Ugiel, who did not care whether his wife lived or died. Could Ugiel once have been like Aariel? Could Eblis?
Oholibamah said, “I think that the seraphim are free to leave us for the stars at any time if they want to. I don’t think the nephilim can. Not anymore. They stay with us, not because they have chosen to, but because they have to.”
Noah and Japheth came into the tent, their arms and hands as stained with grape juice as Oholibamah’s had been with blood. Japheth embraced his wife. Yalith ran to her father. “Mahlah has had her baby! It is all right!”
Noah put his arms around his youngest child, but he seemed strangely disinterested.
“Did you hear, Father?” Yalith demanded. “Mahlah’s long travail is over at last!”