Eblis removed his wings from around Yalith, hunched them behind his back. “Why this untoward interruption, Aariel?”
“I ask you to leave Yalith alone.”
“What’s it to you? The daughters of men mean nothing to the seraphim.” Eblis smiled down at Yalith, stroking his long fingers delicately across her burnished hair.
“No?” Aariel’s voice was low.
“No, seraph. A nephil may go to a daughter of man. A nephil understands pleasure.” He touched a fingertip to Yalith’s lips. “I would teach you, sweeting. I think you would like what I can give you. I will leave you now to Aariel’s tender ministries. But I will see you again.” He turned away from them, toward the desert, and his nephil form dropped into that of the great dragon/lizard. He loped away into the shadows.
Yalith said, “Aariel, I don’t understand. I thought I saw you on the rock. I was sure it was you, and I called, and then it wasn’t you, it was Eblis.”
“The nephilim are masters of mimicry. He wanted you to think it was I. I beg you, little one, be cautious.”
Her eyes were troubled. “He was very kind to me.”
Aariel put his hand under her chin and looked into her eyes, clear and still childlike. “Who would not be kind to you? Are you on your way somewhere?”
“Home. I took Grandfather Lamech his night-light. But, oh, Aariel, there is a strange young giant in Grandfather Lamech’s tent. Japheth carried him there. He has a terrible sunburn. He can’t be from anywhere around here. He says he is not a giant, and I have never seen anyone like him. He is as tall as you are, and his body is not hairy, it is smooth like yours, like the nephilim, and his skin, where it wasn’t burned red, was pale. Not white, like the skin of the nephilim, but pale and tender, like a baby’s.”
“You seem to have observed him carefully,” Aariel said.
“There’s never been anyone like him on the oasis before.” She flushed, turned slightly away.
Aariel asked, “What is being done for his burn? Does he have fever?”
“Yes. Higgaion is keeping him sprayed with cool water, and they are going to ask a seraph what to do for him.”
“Adnarel?”
“Yes. The scarab beetle.”
“Good.”
“He is not one of you, this young giant, and he is not one of the nephilim. Their skin burns white and whiter in the sun, like white ash when the fire has burned fiercely in the winter weeks.”
The creamy wings trembled, the golden tips shimmering in the starlight. “If his skin burns, he is not of the nephilim.”
“Nor of you.”
“Does he have wings?”
“No. In that, he is like a human. He seemed very young, though he is as long as you, and thin.”
“Did you observe his eyes?”
She did not notice the twinkle in his own. “Grey. Nice eyes, Aariel. Steady. Not burning, like—not giving out light, like yours. More like human eyes, mine, and my parents’ and brothers’ and sisters’.”
Aariel touched her gently on the shoulder. “Go on home, child. Do not fear to cross the oasis. I will see that you are not harmed.”
“You and Eblis. Thank you.” Like a child, she held her face up for a kiss, and Aariel leaned down and pressed his lips gently against hers. “You will not be a child much longer.”
“I know …”
He touched her lips again, lightly, and a moment later a large lion was running lightly across the desert.
Yalith turned onto a sandy path through a field of barley. At the end of the path was a stone road cutting through white buildings of sun-baked clay, low buildings, built to withstand the frequent earth tremors. Some of these low buildings contained small shops for baked goods, for stone lamps, for oil; there were shops with hanging meat, shops with bows and arrows, shops with spears of gopher wood. Some entryways were curtained with strands of bright beads, which tinkled in the evening breeze.
Out of one of these came a nephil, his arm around a young woman who was gazing up at him adoringly, leaning against him so that her rosy breasts touched his pale flesh. Her glossy black hair fell down her back, past her hips; and the eyes with which she regarded him were the deep blue of lapis lazuli.
Yalith stopped in her cracks. The girl was Mahlah, Yalith’s sister, the only girl besides Yalich to be in the home tent. Their two older sisters were married and lived in another part of the oasis with their husbands. Mahlah had been away from the home tent a great deal lately. Now Yalith knew where she had been.
Mahlah saw her younger sister and smiled.
The nephil smiled, too, graciously acknowledging Yalith.
Before they came out of the shadows, Yalith thought he was Eblis, with a sense of shock and betrayal. But in the full starlight she could see that his wings were much lighter, a delicate lavender. She could not tell what color his long hair was, but it, coo, was lighter, and seemed to have an orange glow. He had a sinuous, snake-like curve to his neck, and hooded eyes. He smiled again, tenderly. “Mahlah will stay with me this night. You will let your mother know.”
Yalith blurted out, “Oh, but she will worry. We are not allowed to stay out at night…”
Mahlah laughed joyously. “Ugiel has chosen me! I am his betrothed!”
Yalith gasped. “But does Mother know?”
“Not yet. You tell her, little sister.”
“But shouldn’t you tell her yourself? You and—“
“Ugiel.”
“But shouldn’t you—“
Mahlah’s laugh pealed again, like little bells. “The old ways are changing, little sister. This night I meet Ugiel’s brethren.”
The nephil stretched a soft wing about Mahlah. “Yes, little sister. The old ways are changing. Go and tell your mother.”
Yalith turned, and they watched her go, fingers waving at her in farewell. At the end of the street she heard foot-steps and turned to see a young man following her. She reached for a dart and put it in her blowpipe, but he disappeared around the corner of a building.
The low white buildings gave way to tents, each tent surrounded by the land of the dweller, at first the small plots of the shopkeepers, then groves and fields, sometimes many acres. Along the path she saw sheep, goats, camels grazing. Grapes were ripe on the vines.
Her father’s tent was a large one, flanked by several smaller tents. She hurried into the main tent, calling out to her mother.
It was the smell that brought Dennys back to consciousness. His nostrils twitched. His stomach heaved. There was a smell of cooking, smoky, rancid. A smell worse than the rotten-cheese smell of silage which clung to the farm-hands near home. A smell far stronger than that of the manure spread on the fields in the spring; that was a fresh, growing smell. This was old manure, rotting. A smell that made the urinals in the lavatories at school seem sweet-And over it all, but not covering it, a cloying smell of per-fume and sweat, body sweat which had never been near a shower.
He opened his eyes.
He was in an enclosed space, lit by the moonlight pouring in through a hole in what seemed to be some kind of curved roof, and by the equally brilliant light which poured from a unicorn’s horn. The silver creature looked around, sniffing, pawing the dirty earthen floor. At its feet, a mammoth cringed.
Dennys almost cried out, “Higgaion!” But this mammoth was not the one who had accompanied Japheth. This mammoth had matted fur on its flanks, and it was so thin that the skeleton showed through. Its eyes were dulled and it seemed to be apologizing to the unicorn.
Staring at the unicorn, still unaware of Dennys, were several small people. But, just as the mammoth was unlike Higgaion, so these people were unlike Japheth. They smelled. The men’s bodies were hairy, giving them a simian look. Their goatskin loincloths were not clean. There were two full-bearded men, and two women, naked except for the loincloths. Both the women had red hair, and the younger woman’s hair was so vivid it almost seemed like flame, and some care had been taken with it. The older woman was wrinkled and discontented-looking.
The unicorn’s light flashed against the younger woman’s green eyes, making them sparkle like emeralds. “You see!” she cried triumphantly. “I knew our mammoth could call us a unicorn!”
The light in the horn dimmed.
The younger of the two men, who had matted brown hair and a red beard unkempt and spotted with food, snarled at the girl. “And now, dear sister Tiglah, that we have a unicorn in the tent, what do you want of it?”
The girl approached the unicorn, her hand held out as though to pet it. The horn blazed with blinding brilliance, and then the tent was dark so suddenly that it took several seconds for Dennys’s eyes to adjust to the moonlight coming through the hole in the roof.