Sandy, barely holding on to consciousness, was not aware that the arm he had held Dennys with was now holding nothing. He felt himself drop to the ground. He did not land on searing sand but on soft green. His burning body was shaded and cooled by the great fans of a palm tree.
His unicorn had made it to the oasis.
2 Pelican in the Wilderness
Sandy slid slowly into consciousness, eyes tightly closed. No alarm clock jangling, so it must be Saturday. He listened to hear it Dennys was stirring in the upper bunk. Felt something cool and wet sprayed across his body. It felt good. He did not want to wake up. On Saturday they had heavy chores. They washed the floor of their mother’s lab, or the bathrooms. If it was snowing again, there would be snow to shovel.
“Sand—“
He did not recognize the odd, slightly foreign voice. He did not recognize the smell that surrounded him, pungent and gamy. Again his body was sprayed with cool wetness.
“Sand’”
Slowly, he opened his eyes. In the light which came from directly above him, he saw two brown faces peering anxiously into his. One face was young, barely covered with deep amber down. The other face was crisscrossed with countless wrinkles, a face with ancient, leathered skin and a long beard of curling white.
Unwilling to believe that he was not waking from a dream, he reached up to touch Dennys’s mattress above him. Nothing. He opened his eyes more widely
He was in a tent, a sizable tent made of goatskins, judging by the smell. Light came in from the roof hole, a rosy, sunset light. A funny little animal crossed the tent to him and sprayed his body with water, and he realized that he was hot with sunburn. The animal was bringing water from a large clay pot and cooling him with it.
“Sand?” the young man asked again. “Are you awake?”
“Jay?” He struggled to sit up, and his burned skin was scratched by the skins on which he was lying.
“Sand, are you all right?” Japheth’s voice trembled with anxiety.
“I’m okay. Just sunburned.”
The old man put his hand against Sandy’s forehead. “You have much fever. The sun-sickness is hard on those unaccustomed to the desert. Are you from beyond the mountains?”
Sandy looked at the ancient man, who was even smaller than Japheth but had the same brightly blue eyes, startling against the sun-darkened skin. Sandy touched his forehead as Japheth had done. “I’m Sandy.”
“Sand. Yes. Japheth has told me.” The old man touched his forehead, tipped with softly curling white hair. “Lamech. Grandfather Lamech. Japheth carried you to my tent.”
Sandy looked around in alarm. “But Dennys—where’s
Dennys?” He was now fully awake, aware that he was not in the bunk bed at home but in this strange desert place which might be on any planet in any solar system in any galaxy anywhere in the universe. He shuddered. “Dennys?”
“He went out with the unicorn.”
“What!”
“Sand,” Japheth explained patiently, “Dennys must have fainted. I told you about unicorns. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t. When Den fainted, the unicorn went out, and took Den with him.”
“But we’ve got to find him, bring him back!” Sandy tried to struggle to his feet.
Grandfather Lamech pushed him back down onto the skins with amazing strength for so small a person. “Hush, Sand. Do not worry. Your brother will be all right.”
“But—“
“Unicorns are very responsible,” Lamech explained.
“But—“
“It is true that they are unreliable in that we cannot rely on them to be, but they are very responsible.”
“You’re crazy,” Sandy said.
“Hush, Sand,” Grandfather Lamech repeated. “We do not know where the unicorns go when they go out, but when somebody calls the unicorn again and it appears, Den will appear, too.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. I am sure,” the old man said, and for a moment Sandy relaxed at the authority in his voice.
Then: “Well, call a unicorn, call him now!”
The old man and Japheth looked at Higgaion. Higgaion raised his trunk toward the roof hole of the tent. The rosy glow had faded, and the old man and Japheth and Higgaion were barely visible shadows in the tent. There was a sudden fiash, and Sandy could see the shimmering silver body of a unicorn. But no Dennys.
“Dennys!” he cried.
And heard Japheth echo, “Den!”
Higgaion appeared to be consulting with the unicorn. Then he looked toward Japheth and the old man. Trumpeted.
There was another flash of light, and then a faint glimmering and the unicorn was gone.
Grandfather Lamech said, “It would appear that someone has already called the unicorn on which the Den was riding.”
Sandy jumped to his feet, but was so weak that he sank back onto the skins. “But he could be anywhere, anywhere!” he cried wildly.
“Hush,” the old man repeated. “He is on the oasis. We will find him.”
“How?” Sandy’s voice was a frightened small boy’s squeak.
Japheth said, “I will look for him. When I find him, I will bring him to you.”
“Oh, Jay—I want to come with you.”
“No.” Grandfather Lamech was firm. “You have the sun-sickness. You must stay here until you are well.” He looked up at the roof hole. The fading sunset was gone, and the moon, not full, but beaming bright, shone down on them. The old man touched Sandy’s arm, his thigh. “Tomorrow you will be all blisters.”
Sandy’s head felt strangely buzzing and he knew that it was from fever and that Grandfather Lamech was right.
“But Dennys—“
“I will find him and bring him to you,” Japheth promised.
“Oh, Jay, thank you.”
The young man turned to his grandfather. “One of the women—my wife, or one of my sisters—will bring you a night-light. Grandfather.”
The old man looked at the moonlight which brightened the tent. “Thank you, my dear grandson. My grand-children are kind to me, so kind . . .” His voice faltered. “My son . . .”
Japheth sounded embarrassed. “You know I can’t do anything with Father. I don’t even tell him when I’ve come to your tent.”
“Better that way.” The old man was sorrowful. “Better that way. But one day—“
“Of course, Grandfather. Oneway. I’ll be back with the Den as soon as I can.” He pushed out of the tent. and the flap slapped closed behind him.
Higgaion dribbled cool water from the jar onto the cloth on Sandy’s burning forehead.
“Giant”—the little old man leaned over him—“where do you come from?”
“I’m not a giant,” Sandy said. “Really. I’m just a boy. Dennys and I are still growing, but we’re not giants, we’re just ordinary tall.”
The old grandfather shook his head. “In our country you are giants. Can you tell me where you come from?”
“Home.” Sandy felt hot and feverish. Home might be galaxies away. “New England. The United States. Planet Earth.”
The wrinkles in the old man’s forehead crisscrossed each other as he frowned. “You don’t come from around here. Nor from Nod. The people there are no taller than we are.” He put his hand on Sandy’s forehead. The hand felt cool, and dry as an autumn leaf crumbling to dust. “Your fever will go down, but you must stay here, in my tent, out of the sun, until the burning is healed. I will ask one of the seraphim to come tend to you. Seraphim do not burn in the sun. They are better healers than I.” Sandy relaxed into Grandfather Lamech’s kindness.
The mammoth started toward the water jar, then dropped to its haunches, whimpering in terror, as some-thing screeched past the tent like an out-of-control jet plane. But on this planet, wherever it was, there were no planes.
The old man leaped to his feet with amazing agility and grabbed a wooden staff.
The hideous screech, not bird, not human, came again, closer, and then the tent flap was pushed aside and a large face peered in. It was the largest face Sandy had ever seen, a man’s face with filthy hair and a matted beard, tangled eyebrows over small, suspicious eyes, and a bulbous nose. From the mat of hair came two horns, curved downward, with sharp points like boar’s teeth. The mouth opened and shouted, “Hungry!”
The rest of the creature pushed into the tent. The head did not belong to a man’s body but to a lion’s, and as it came all the way into the tent. Sandy saw that the lion did not have a lion’s tail but a scorpion’s. Sandy was terrified.
The old man beat at it futilely with his staff. The man / lion / scorpion knocked the staff out of his hand and sent him flying across the tent. Grandfather Lamech fell onto a pile of skins. The mammoth lay flat on the skins by Sandy, trembling.
“Hungry!” The roar made the skins of the tent tremble.