“And they love you.”
“I don’t want them to die. Will they die?”
Aariel folded his wings about her. He did not look at her.
“I do not know.”
Sandy slept. He still did not understand his reaction to Tiglah and her proposals for escape, but after a while he stopped questioning himself. When the time came for him to do something, he would know what to do.
Daylight was not a good time for escape. Perhaps in the cover of the night…
“Twin!”
It was Tiglah’s voice, Tiglah’s smell.
She pegged open the flap. “You have a visitor,” she said.
He sat up, instantly alert. So her father and brother had come to kill him.
But it was Rofocale who came into the tent, bowing low to enter, so that his flaming wings dragged in the dust. Like Sandy, he was too tall to stand upright in this small tent. With swift grace he sat, facing Sandy, staring at him with garnet eyes. His bright hair was tied back, his cheeks white as snow.
He thrust out one hand and touched Sandy on the knee.
The touch was that cold which is so cold that it burns. Sandy flinched, but did not cry out. “Why are you still here?” Rofocale demanded.
Sandy replied in his calmest voice. “I have been kidnapped and am being held hostage. If I escape and leave this tent, I will be easily seen. There is no way I can lose myself in a crowd. I am as tall as you are. I’d make an easy target.”
“Why have you come?”
“Come? I didn’t come. Tiglah’s father and brother kidnapped me, and I suspect you put them up to it.”
Rofocale said, “I am not asking why you are here, in this tent. I am asking why you and your brother chose to come to this oasis.”
“It was a mistake,” Sandy said, as he had said to Tiglah. Rofocale again stretched out his hand, again touched Sandy on the knee. Sandy had had frostbite one winter, and this was how it had felt.
“If it was a mistake for you to come, why do you not leave?”
Sandy said, slowly, deliberately, “We will leave when it is time to leave.”
“And how, then, do you plan to leave?”
How, indeed? “We will know that when the time comes.”
“You do not belong here.”
“No. I belong with Noah and his family.”
Rofocale made a noise like a mosquito shrill. “You do not belong here on this oasis. There are no giants like you in this time and place. Why do you not have wings?”
“We fly in planes and spaceships.”
“What?”
The nephihm did not know everything. Sandy said, “We have machines that fly.”
“Can you leave the planet?”
“We have gone to the moon. We fly among the stars.”
“You?”
“I am too young,” Sandy said. “My father has made several space flights.”
“Did El send you to torment us?”
“What do you think?” Sandy asked.
“You are not of us, the nephilim. Neither are you, I think, of the seraphim.”
“No. We are human beings.”
“Mortals?”
“Yes.”
“Then why have you come?”
“It was a mistake,” Sandy said again.
“Would you like me to take you out of this place, this little tent?”
“No.”
“They will come and kill you.”
“Perhaps.”
“Noah is unwilling to give up his vineyards.”
“He is quite right. One does not give in to terrorists.”
“You are foolish. I could give him a message, if you like. If you ask him, I think he will give up the vineyards.”
“I wouldn’t ask him.”
“Then you will die.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Sandy asked. “Perhaps you’d like to kill me yourself?”
“I will leave you. You are insolent.”
“Why don’t you like us, my brother and me?”
“You do not belong to our world. You will cause trouble. I think you have been sent to cause trouble to the nephilim.” Rofocale rose. Energy crackled in the air, so that Sandy’s skin prickled, and a mosquito flew away.
In a few minutes. Tiglah came in. “Did he tell you?” She was giggling. In the light slanting from outside, the dimple in her chin seemed a cleft.
“That your father and brother plan to kill me, yes, he told me.”
“Not that.” She was consumed with laughter.
He saw nothing funny. “What, then?”
“About Noah.”
“He said that Noah is unwilling to give up his vineyards.”
“No, no, not that, either.”
“What, then?” He was irritated at her giggles.
“Noah is building a boat. A boat!” Her laughter peeled out.
Sandy sat up. Asked, carefully, “Why is he building a boat?”
“An ark, he says.” Her laughter was derisive. “The nearest sea or river is moons away.”
“Then why is he doing it?” Sandy asked.
“Who knows.”
“Is he building it by himself?”
“Oh, no, it’s a very big boat. I mean, hugely big. His sons are helping him. He says it is going to rain!” Her laughter jarred against Sandy’s ears. “We have rain only in the spring, and then not much. He is the laughingstock of the oasis.”
Sandy sat, alert, watching her.
“Rofocale thinks he may be building it to get rid of you. A boat where there is no water is silly.”
“I’m hungry,” Sandy said.
“Oh, I’ve brought you more food.”
“Then just leave it with me.”
She pouted. “You don’t want me to sit and talk with you while you eat? I’ll unbind your hands and feet.”
“I’ll manage.” Sandy flexed his muscles so that the thongs looked tight. “I need to think.”
“About the silly ark?”
“About a lot of things.”
“Well … all right.” She left the tent, returned with a bowl of stew. “You’re sure you don’t want me to stay?”
Sandy was firm. “Quite sure. Give up, Tiglah. Go.”
Pouting, she went.
He sniffed at the stew- Ugh. It was spoiling. He pushed it aside, worked his hands out of the thongs, unbound his feet. If Noah was already building the ark, there was no time to wait. Dangerous or not, as soon as it got dark, Sandy would leave the tent, head for the desert, try to find out where on the oasis he was being held, and head for whichever was nearer, Grandfather Lamech’s tent or Noah’s. Then he lay down to rest and wait for nightfall.
“They have gone too far,” Noah said, “taking our Sand.”
The family was gathered back in the tent, retreating from the heat of the sun.
Ham said, “You’re certainly not going to give them the vineyards!”
Noah shook his head. “I told them that I would not. But now—I have already turned one of the older vineyards that needed replanting into a lumberyard. What difference will the vineyards make if they are all covered with water?”
Ham said, “We are helping you with this idiocy, Father, because you have asked us to. But surely you don’t believe that there will be that much rain?”
“That is what I have been told.”
Shem had returned from hunting, and was sitting on a pile of skins with Selah next to him. “You’re sure it was the voice of El?”
“I am sure.”
Elisheba suggested, “It couldn’t, maybe, have been the voice of a nephil?”
“I know the voice of El from that of a nephil.”
“They mimic very cleverly.”
“El is El. If one of the nephilim tried to sound like El, then El would tell me that.”
Matred looked up from her stewpot. “When will the rain start?”
“When the ark is ready.”
Shem said, “What about our misters and their husbands and their children?”
Noah wiped his hands across his beard- “I am to make a window in the ark, and set a door in the side, with lower, second, and third stories. El told me that I am to bring in animals of every kind, and my wife, my sons, and their wives.”
Oholibamah’s voice was sharp. “What about Yalith?”
Noah shook his head sorrowfully.
Shem protested, “But it’s going to be a big boat, Father! Surely there’s room for more than just the eight of us.”
“Animals,” Noah repeated, “of every kind, so that, when the flood waters abate, there will be both animal and human beings to repopulate the earth.”
“I don’t believe any of this,” Ham said. “But if it should come to pass, I will give my place on the ark to Yalith.”
Oholibamah looked at him in grateful surprise.
“Nonsense,” Anah said. “When you build this ark, and nothing happens, how are you going to face everybody?”
Noah stroked his beard. “I obey El.”
“And our twins?” Oholibamah asked. “What about them?”
“And where is the Sand?” Elisheba asked.
“Japheth and the Den will surely find him,” Noah said. Selah raised her trunk and bugled. “And if they do not return with the Sand by sunrise, I will change my mind. I will give them the vineyards. When the flood waters abate, I will plant new vines.”