A Wrinkle in Time Quintet (84 page)

“About not having them both.”

Yalith picked up a skin foul with spills and put it in the dump pile. “Who ever knows what a nephil means?”

“You do, and I do,” Oholibamah said. “He meant our young twins.”

Yalith picked up another skin, appearing to examine it closely. “The Sand was the first one I met. The
Den is the one we saved from the sun death.”

“And they are two people, not one,” Oholibamah reminded her.

“I know. Oh, yes, Oholi, I know that. They are very different when you get to know them.”

“And you do not love one more than the other?”

Yalith shook her head. “Anyhow, they are too young.”

“Are they that young in their own time?”

“We don’t know anything about their own time.”

Oholibamah
sat on a stump, a pile of cleaned skins across her knees. “I love my Japheth. I am very happy with him. I want you to be happy, too.”

Yalith shivered. “Mahlah seems to be happy, married to a nephil.”

“Our twins are not nephilim.”

“But they are different. They are not like us.”

“And you love them.”

“Yes.”

“You love them both.”

Yalith picked up a pile of skins to be discarded. “I’m going
to throw these away. Then we’d better stop. The sun’s getting high and it’s too hot for this kind of work.”

*   *   *

Matred said to Elisheba, “You have not been to the women’s tent for two moons.”

Elisheba nodded, put her hands to flushed cheeks in an unwontedly girlish gesture.

Matred embraced her. “Is it true?”

“Yes. You will have yet another grandchild.” Hugging each other, they danced
with joy.

*   *   *

Eblis the dragon/lizard was waiting for Yalith when she went to the well for water. He was not in his animal host, but was leaning against the trunk of a royal palm, purple wings wrapped around him, so that he was almost lost in shadows.

When he stepped forward, Yalith was so startled that she almost dropped the clay pitcher which she carried on one shoulder.

Eblis rescued
the pitcher and put it down. “Every day you grow lovelier.” He touched her gently on one cheek.

Yalith blushed and reached for the pitcher.

“Let me help you,” Eblis said. When the pitcher was full, he touched her again, tracing her brows with one pale finger. “Ugiel is right, you know.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, yes, you do, my sweet one, yes, you do. And I am the only
answer to your problem.”

She looked at him questioningly.

“I want you, lovely little one. You know that I want you. I can give you all that Ugiel gives your sister Mahlah, and you know how happy she is.”

“I know…”

“Those stupid young giants who dazzle you with their youth can give you nothing except grief. You cannot choose between them, and if you should choose one, what would happen to the
other?”

“They have not asked me—” She faltered.

“But I have. I do. I want you.”

He bent toward her, and suddenly she felt nothing but fear. It was as he said: he wanted her. He did not love her. She picked up the water pitcher and fled, heedless of the water splashing on the ground.

NINE

Mahlah’s time, Lamech’s time

The afternoon was the hottest the twins had ever experienced. Sandy woke from unpleasant dreams of erupting volcanoes, to see Dennys sitting up on his sleeping skins, shiny with sweat.

Higgaion spent the midday sleeping hours with Lamech. At night he dutifully took turns with the twins, but Sandy suspected that the past few nights had been spent at Grandfather
Lamech’s feet. The old man’s extremities tended to get cold from lack of circulation.

“Is anything wrong?” Sandy asked.

“It’s terribly hot.”

Thunder rumbled in the distance.

“That might mean rain,” Sandy said. For the moment he had forgotten that rain might mean flood.

So had Dennys. “Oh, good, for the orchards and the garden. Even with all our watering—”

The thunder came again, with a crackling,
electrical sound.

Higgaion padded over to them, whimpering, looking across the tent to Grandfather Lamech.

The two boys hurried to the old man. The flap had been pegged open to let in as much breeze as possible, and the air outside was sulfurous, the sky a greenish yellow.

Sandy squatted at one side of Grandfather Lamech, Dennys at the other. The old man was propped high on folded skins. Dennys
took one of his hands and was shocked at how cold it was. He began to massage it, trying to get some circulation into the withered fingers.

Lamech opened his eyes and smiled, first at one twin, then the other. When he spoke, his voice was so faint that they had to strain to hear. “In your time and place—over the mountain—is it better?”

Sandy and Dennys looked at each other.

Sandy said, “It’s
very different.”

“How?” the voice whispered.

“Well. People are taller. And we don’t live as long.”

“How long?”

Dennys answered in words which seemed to him an echo of something long lost. “Threescore years and ten.”

“Sometimes fourscore,” Dennys amended.

Dennys looked at Sandy, at his tan, healthy skin, muscled arms and legs, clear eyes. “We have big hospitals—places to take care of sick
people. But I’m not sure I’d have had any better care for my sunstroke there than I got from Yalith and Oholibamah.”

Sandy said, “We have showers and washing machines. And radios and rockets and television. And jet planes.”

Dennys smiled. “But I came to your tent on a white camel. Almost all the way.”

Lamech whispered, and both boys bent down to hear. “People’s hearts—are they kinder?”

Sandy
thought of the first vender who had tried to give him half the amount of lentils Grandfather Lamech had requested, and who had snarled and cursed when Sandy protested.

Dennys wondered how much real difference there was between terrorists who hijacked a plane and Tiglah’s father and brother, who had thrown him into the garbage pit.

“People are people—” Sandy started.

Simultaneously, Dennys said,
“I guess human nature is human nature.”

Lamech reached out a trembling hand to each boy. “But you have been to me as my own.”

Dennys gently squeezed the cold hand.

Sandy mumbled, “We love you, Grandfather Lamech.”

“And I you, my sons.”

“El’s words are strange words. I don’t understand,” Lamech said. “I don’t understand the thoughts of El.”

Neither did the twins.

Lightning and thunder came
simultaneously. Light splashed through the roof hole and the open tent flap. The walls of the tent shook from the violence of the thunder and a long earth tremor.

But no rain fell.

*   *   *

The twins sat on the root bench to watch the stars come out. Higgaion stayed in the tent with Grandfather Lamech. The sky still had a yellow tinge, though there was no further lightning or thunder. Tongues
of flame licked up from the volcano. High in the trees, the baboons chittered nervously.

Sandy curled his toes on the soft moss under the tree root. “We’ve never been to a deathbed.”

“No.”

“I thought
that
was going to be one, this afternoon with Grandfather Lamech.”

Dennys shook his head. “I think he wanted to ask us those questions.”

“Does he know there’s going to be a great flood?”

“I
think his El that he talks to has told him.”

Sandy picked up a fallen frond of palm and looked at it in the last light. “But the flood was a natural phenomenon.”

Dennys shook his head slightly. “Primitive peoples have always tended to believe that what we call natural disasters are sent by an angry god. Or gods.”

“What do you think?” Sandy asked.

Again Dennys shook his head. “I don’t know.
I know a lot less than I did before we came to the oasis.”

“Anyhow”—Sandy’s voice was flat—“it didn’t work.”

“What didn’t work?”

“The flood. Wiping out all those people, and then starting all over again. People are taller, and we do even worse things to one another because we know more.”

Dennys took the palm frond out of Sandy’s hand. “I wouldn’t choose Ham and Anah to repopulate the world,
if I were doing the choosing.”

“Oh, they’re not that bad,” Sandy said. “And Shem and Elisheba are all right. Not terribly exciting. But solid. And Japheth and Oholibamah are terrific.”

“Well. What you said. It didn’t work.”

“Maybe nobody should’ve been saved.” Sandy’s voice was hoarse.

Yet again, Dennys shook his head. “Human beings—people have done terrible things, but we’re not all that
bad, not all of us.”

“Like who?”

“There’ve been people like—oh, Euclid and Pasteur and Tycho Brahe.”

Sandy nodded. His voice came out more normally. “I like the way Tycho Brahe was so in awe of the maker of the heavens that he put on his court robes before going to his telescope.”

“Who told you that?”

“Meg.”

“I like that, I really do. Hey, and I think Meg would like us to mention Maria Mitchell.
Wasn’t she the first famous woman astronomer?”

“I miss Meg. And Charles Wallace. And our parents.”

But Dennys was still involved in his list. “And the wise men who followed the star. They were astronomers. Hey!”

“What?”

“If the flood had drowned everybody, if the earth hadn’t been repopulated, then Jesus would never have been born.”

Sandy, his nostrils assailed by a now familiar but still
disturbing odor, hardly heard. “Shh.”

“What?”

“Look.”

A small, shadowy form left the public path and came toward them. “Tiglah.”

“She doesn’t give up,” Dennys mumbled.

Tiglah had learned that Dennys was not to be touched, not by her fingers, at any rate. She approached the twins demurely, eyes cast down, giving her eyelashes the full benefit of their lustrous length. She reached out and put
her hand lightly against Sandy, as though to steady herself. “It’s a fine evening, after all,” she said.

Dennys pulled back from the mingled odor of sweat and perfume.

“It’s okay.” Sandy looked dubiously at the yellow light pulsing on the horizon.

Tiglah said, “I thought you might like to know that Mahlah is going to have her baby tonight.”

“How do you know?” Dennys demanded.

“Rofocale told
me.”

“How does
he
know?” Sandy asked.

“He and Ugiel are friends. Yalith and Oholibamah are going to help.”

The twins had seen kittens and puppies being born, and once a calf, and they had played with baby lambs and piglets on a neighboring farm. They looked at each other. “I’ll bet Oholibamah’s a good midwife,” Dennys said.

Tiglah continued, “They tell me that Oholibamah’s mother had a hard
time birthing her. Nephil babies tend to be large.” She sounded anxious.

Dennys looked at her sharply. “Does that worry you?”

“It might, one day. I hope it won’t be too hard on Mahlah. She’s such a little thing. Like me.”

“Well,” Dennys said. “Thanks for telling us.” His tone was dismissive.

“It’s going to be a beautiful night.” Tiglah’s fingers strayed toward Sandy’s arm.

Dennys turned his
face away and looked toward the tent. The flap was still pegged open. Higgaion was sitting in the opening, waving his trunk slightly, as though to catch the breeze.

Sandy looked at Tiglah, hesitated.

Swiftly, Tiglah coaxed. “It’s such a nice night for a walk. After Mahlah’s baby is born, Yalith and Oholibamah will be walking home and we might meet them…”

Sandy rose to the bait. “Well … but
not far … or for long…”

“Of course not,” Tiglah reassured. “Just a little walk.”

Sandy became aware of Dennys carefully not looking at him. “Are you coming?”

“No.”

“Do you mind if I go?”

“Of course not.”

“I won’t be long.”

“Feel free.”

They were not communicating. Sandy did not like the feeling. But he stood. Tiglah reached up and put her small hand in his much larger one. When they reached
the public path, he looked back. Higgaion had left the tent and was standing by Dennys.

The night was heavier than usual. The stars looked blurred, and almost close enough to touch. The rainless storm had increased rather than decreased the heat. The mountain smoked.

“Let’s go by the desert,” Tiglah suggested, “and watch the moonrise.”

To step off the oasis onto the desert was like stepping
off a ship onto the sea. The desert sand felt cool to Sandy’s feet, which were now accustomed to the hot sands by day, to walking on stones, on sharp, dry grasses.

Tiglah led the way to a ledge of rock. “Let’s sit.”

Moonrise over this early desert was very different from moonrise at home. At home, as the moon lifted above the horizon, it was a deep yellow, sometimes almost red. Here, in a time
when the sea of air above the planet was still clear and clean, the moon rose with a great blaze of diamonds.

Sandy’s eyes were focused on the brilliant light of the rising moon, and he was not prepared to have the light suddenly darkened by Tiglah’s face as she pressed her lips against his. She was up on her knees in order to reach him, and her lips smelled of berries. Then he was surrounded
by her particular odor of scented oils and her own unwashed body.

He knew what she wanted, and he wanted it, too; he was ready, but not, despite her gorgeousness, with Tiglah. Tiglah was not worth losing his ability to touch a unicorn.

But Yalith—

He knew that he and Dennys should do nothing to change the story, to alter history. Even with Yalith …

He was getting ahead of himself. Yalith was
not Tiglah. Yalith smiled on both of them with equal loveliness.

Tiglah’s red hair, turned silver-gold in the moonlight, tumbled about his face, drowning him in its scent. She massaged the back of his head, his neck. Her breathing mingled with his. He knew that if he did not break this off, he would not be able to. With a deep inward sigh, he pulled away. Stood.

Tiglah scrambled to her feet,
stared up at him reproachfully. “Don’t you like it? Don’t you like what I was doing?”