“Fear not. Alarid will see to it,” Adnarel reassured.
“A pelican in the desert?” Sandy asked, feeling that the great bird was part of a fevered dream.
“A pelican in the wilderness,” Adnarel agreed. He dropped to one knee and put his hand against Sandy’s reddened cheeks. Through the fingers flowed a healing warmth, a warmth which had nothing to do with the stifling heat in the tent. Sandy had almost grown accustomed to the strong, gamy smell of the skins, but the seraph seemed to bring a lightness and a freshness to the air.
“Where, young one are you fromP” Adnarel asked.
Sandy sighed. “Planet Earth, where I hope I still am?”
The seraph smiled again, not answering the question. He touched Sandy’s forehead gently, and the touch helped him to clarify his thoughts, which seemed to lose their focus- “And from where on planet Earth do you come?”
“From the United States. The Northeast. New England.”
“How did you get here?”
“I’m not sure, uh, sir.” There was something about Adnarel’s presence which brought out the old-fashioned forms of respect. “Our father is working with a theory about the fifth dimension and the tesseract . . .”
“Ah.” Adnarel nodded. “Did he send you?”
“No, uh, no, we—“
“We?”
“Dennys. my twin brother, and I. It was our fault. I mean, we have never before done anything so incredibly stupid as to mess with anything of Dad’s when an experiment was in progress, except we didn’t realize that an experiment was in progress.”
“Where is Dennys?”
“Oh, please—“ Sandy implored.
Grandfather Lamech explained, “The brother, the Dennys, went out with a unicorn, and has evidently been called back elsewhere. Japheth is looking for him.”
The seraph listened gravely, nodding at what Sandy felt was an insufficient and unclear explanation. “Fear not,” Adnarel said to Sandy. “Your brother will be returned. Meanwhile, Grandfather Lamech and Higgaion are doing the best thing for you, in keeping your skin moistened.” From a pocket deep in his gown he took out what looked like a handful of herbs and dropped them into the water jar. “This will help the healing.” He smiled. “It is good that you have at least some knowledge of the Old Language.”
“But I don’t—“ Sandy started.
“You have been able to understand, and talk with, first Japheth, and now Grandfather Lamech, have you not?”
“Well. Yes. I guess so “
“Perhaps the gift has been awakened because you have not had time to think.” The seraph’s smile illumined the tent. Adnarel turned from Sandy to Lamech. “When the cool of night comes, wrap him in this.” And the seraph took off his own creamy robe. His wings were visible now, as golden and shining as his long hair. He gave an effect of sunniness in the dark tent, lit only by the oil lamp. “The animal skins are too rough for his burned flesh. I wilt come by in the morning to see how he is doing. Meanwhile, I will check on Japheth and see if he has found the brother.”
As Adnarel talked, Sandy felt his eyes dose. Japheth was looking for Dennys. Adnarel was going to help him. Sureiy, if the seraph was involved, then everything would be all right.
His thoughts drifted off into soft darkness.
3 Japheth’s sister Yalith
When Yalith left her grandfather’s tent, she hurried toward home, near the center of the oasis. At her side she had a small pouch of darts, similar to Japheth’s, but instead of the miniature bow she carried a small blowpipe. The arrows were tipped with a solution which would temporarily stun but not kill a predator, even one as large as the manticore. The manticores were strong and bad-tempered, but not intelligent or brave. She feared the manticores less than she feared some of the young men in the town, and she kept a dart in her hand in case she needed it.
After leaving the grazing grounds around Lamech’s tent, she walked through one of his groves that led her onto the desert of white sand lapping against brown grasses. Wherever there were not enough wells to provide for irrigation, the desert took over. But she preferred walking across the desert to the dusty, dirty paths of the oasis. Stars were bright against the velvet black of sky. At her feet, a late beetle hustled to burrow itself under the sand until morning. To her right, high in the trees of Lamech’s groves, the baboons were chittering sleepily.
She looked toward the horizon, and on an outcropping of rock similar to the one the earthquake had made when Sandy and Dennys met Japheth and the mammoth Higgaion, she saw the shadow of a supine form. She looked to make sure it was a lion, then called softly, “Aariel!”
The creature rose slowly, languidly, and then leapt down from the rock and loped toward her, and she saw that she had been deceived in the starlight, for it was not a lion but one of the great desert lizards, called dragons by most people, although its wings were atrophied and it could not fly.
She stood frozen with anxiety on the starlit sand, her hand holding one of the tiny arrows. As the lizard neared her, it rose straight upward to a height of at least six feet, and suddenly arms were outstretched above the head; the tail forked into two legs, and a man came running toward her, a man of extraordinary beauty, with alabaster-white skin and wings of brilliant purple. His long hair was black with purple glints, and his eyes were the color of amethysts.
“You called me, lovely one?” He bent down toward her tenderly, a questioning smile on his lips, which were deeply rosy in his white face.
“No, no,” she stammered. “Not you. I thought—I thought you were Aariel.”
“No. I am Eblis, not Aariel. And you called, and here I am,” his voice soothed, “at your service. Is there anything you want?”
“Oh, no, thank you, no.”
“No baubles for your ears, your lovely little neck?”
“Oh, no, thank you, no,” she repeated. Her sisters would think her stupid for refusing his offer. The nephilim were generous. This nephil could give her everything he had offered, and more.
“And all of a sudden you have changed,” he said. “You were a child, and now you are not a child any longer.”
Instinctively, she folded her hands across her breasts, stammering. “B-but, I am a child. I’m not nearly a hundred years old yet. . .”
He reached out one long, pale hand and softly pushed her starlit hair back from her forehead. “Do not be afraid of growing up. There are many pleasures ahead for you to taste, and I would help you to enjoy them all.”
“You?” She looked, startled, at the glorious creature by her, light shimmering like water from the purple wings.
“I, sweet little one, I, Eblis, of the nephilim.” No nephil had paid attention to her before. She was too young. Then she saw, in her mind’s eye, the strange young giant in her grandfather’s tent. She was no longer a child. She did not react to the young giant as a child.
“There are many changes to come,” Eblis said, “and you will need help.”
Her eyes widened. “Changes? What kind of changes?”
“People are living too long. El is going to cut the life span back. How old is your father?”
“He must be, oh, close to six hundred years. Middle-aged.” She looked at her fingers. Ten. That was really as far as she could count accurately-
“And your Grandfather Lamech?”
“Let’s see. He was very young when he had my father, not quite two hundred years old. He, too, has lived for very long. His father, Methuselah, my great-grandfather, lived for nine hundred and sixty-nine years- And his father was Enoch, who walked with El, and lived three hundred and sixty and five years, and then El took him—“ Involved in the great chronologies of her fathers, she was not prepared for him to unfurl his great wings and gather her in, enveloping her in great swirls of purple touched with brilliance as with stars. She gasped in surprise.
He laughed softly. “Oh, little one, little innocent one, how much you have to learn, about men’s ways, and about El’s ways, which are not men’s ways. Will you let me teach you?”
To be taught by a nephil was an honor she had never expected. She was not sure why she was hesitant. She breathed in the strange odor of his wings, smelling of stone, of the cold, dark winds which came during the few brief weeks of winter.
Enveloped in Eblis’s wings, she did not hear the rhythmic thud as a great lion galloped toward them across the desert, roaring as it neared them. Then both Yalith and Eblis turned and saw the lion rising to its hind legs, as the lizard had done, leaping up into the sky, a great, tawny body with creamy wings, gilt-tipped, unfurling and stretching to a vast span. The great amber eyes blazed.