"Who are the seraphim?" Dennys asked.
The stocky, brown man smiled. "You are better. This is the first time you have asked questions."
"You have been to see me before?"
"Several times."
Selah snuggled up against him, and he put his arm around her, and his skin was healed enough so that her fur did not scratch and hurt. "And seraphim?"
"They are sons of El. We do not know where they came from, or why they are here."
"Are they angels?"
"You have angels where you come from?"
"No," Dennys said. "But we don"t have mammoths or virtual unicorns, either. I am not as much of a skeptic as I used to be."
"Skeptic?"
"Someone who doesn"t believe in anything that can"t be seen and touched and proved one hundred percent. Someone who has to have laboratory proof."
"Lab what?"
"Oh. Well. I guess you can"t prove virtual particles any more easily than you can prove virtual unicorns."
"What kind of unicorns?"
"Oh. Just what I call them."
The man interrupted. "Are you feverish again?"
"No." Dennys touched the back of his hand to his cheek, which felt quite cool. "Sorry. Your name is-what?"
"Noah. How many times do I have to tell you?"
Noah. Noah and the flood. So they were on their own earth after all, and not in some far-flung galaxy. Somehow or other, he and Sandy had been flung through time into the pre-flood desert. That was a lot better than being in some unknown corner of the universe. Or was it? "I wish I had a Bible," he said.
"A- Perhaps you need a drink of something cool?"
"I"m all right. I"m sorry." There would not have been a Bible in Noah"s time. Probably not even a written language. Not yet. Neither Dennys nor Sandy had given much of their concentration to Sunday school. They didn"t go in for stories.
No? He remembered their mother reading to them every night until too much homework got in the way. What did she read? Stories. Greek and Roman myths. Indian tales, Chinese tales, African tales. Fairy tales. Bible stories.
Who was Noah? Noah and the flood. Noah built an ark and took his wife, and their sons and their sons" wives, and many animals, onto the ark. What about Yalith? He couldn"t remember anything about Yalith- Or Oholi- Oholibamah. j.a.pheth. Maybe that had a familiar ring.
Shem. Yes. Maybe. But not Elisheba. Elisheba was all right. She had rubbed ointment all over him one day, matter-of-factly, when something had taken Yalith and Oholi away, not flinching at the suppurating sores, the crusting scabs She had talked through, at, and around him the day she had attended him in the hospital tent, and he remembered her muttering something about it being a shame to leave the old grandfather all alone in his tent with only a mammoth to take care of him.
Selah snuggled against Dennys"s shoulder. He continued to try to think. There was Shem. And there was Ham. He barely remembered a small, pale man and a redheaded woman in the big tent that first night "Is Higgaion all right?" he asked suddenly.
"Higgaion?" Noah sounded surprised. "He"s helping take care of your brother "
"Are there many mammoths around?" Dennys asked.
"Very few. Many have been eaten by manticores, and most of the rest have fled to where they feel safer " Noah shook his head "It is a hard time for mammoths. Hard times are coming for us all. El has told me that."
Dennis frowned. This pre-flood world was weird. Mammoths. Manticores Virtual unicorns. Seraphim and- "Who are the nephihm?" he asked.
Noah pulled at his beard. "Who knows? They are tall, and they have wings, though we seldom see them fly. They tell us that they come from El, and that they wish us well. We do not know. There is a rumor that they are like falling stars, that they may be falling stars, flung out of heaven."
"Seraphim, too?"
"We do not know. We do not know how it is that their skin is young and not yet shriveled from the sun, though they are ageless, it would seem-older, even, than my Grandfather Methuselah."
Old as Methuselah. It had a familiar ring. Vaguely.
Dennys shifted on Matred"s linen cloth. The remnant of his bundle of clothes had been found, and taken by j.a.pheth and Oholibamah, to be aired and put away. In this hot land he would not need flannel shirts or cable-knit sweaters. He had been given a soft kid loincloth, and Yalith had told him that Sandy had been given one, too.
In this tent where he was recovering, the stench was less disturbing than in the big tent. Yalith had bathed him with water scented with herbs and flowers. Oholibamah had rubbed him with fragrant ointment. Both young women were reticent about where they came by the perfumes, and Dennys thought he had heard Yalith saying something about Anah and Mahlah. Anah: Ham"s redheaded wife, he reminded himself. Mahlah was Yalith"s sister, who, it appeared, seldom came home. Who were all these people he did not remember as being part of the story? He needed Sandy. Sandy might be able to suggest some way for them to get home before the flood. How much had this El told Noah?
Noah said, "El has told me that these are end times for us all. Perhaps we will have a great earthquake."
"An earthquake?"
Noah shrugged. "The mind of El is a great mystery."
"Is he good, this El?"
"Good and kind. Slow to anger, quick to turn again and forgive."
"But you still think he"s going to nuke everybody?"
"What"s that?"
"You think he"s going to send some big disaster and wipe everybody out?"
Noah shook his head. "It is true, as El says, that people"s hearts are turned to wickedness."
"Yalith"s isn"t," Dennys said. "Oholibamah"s and j.a.pheth"s aren"t. I"d be dead if it wasn"t for them."
"And for my wife, Matred," Noah added. "I might not have let you stay in my tents had it not been for Matred." He looked thoughtfully at Dennys. "Sometimes I have wondered why I let the women insist on keeping you. But I think you mean us no harm."
"I don"t. We don"t. Listen, what about my brother? When can I see Sandy?"
"As you have been told, he is in my father"s tent." Noah"s voice indicated that the subject was now closed.
"Have you seen him? Sandy?" Dennys asked.
"I do not go to my father"s tent."
"Why not?"
"He is a stiff-necked old man, insisting on staying alone in his own tent, with his wells, the best in the oasis."
"But why don"t you go see him?" Dennys was baffled.
"He is old. It is nearly time for him to die. He can no longer tend to his crops."
"But don"t you help him?"
"I have all I can do, taking care of my herds and my vineyards."
"But he"s your father!"
"He should not be so stubborn."
"Listen, he"s taking care of Sandy all by himself. He doesn"t have Yalith or Oholibamah to do the nursing. Only the mammoth."
"One of the women takes him a light every night."
"But he"s your father," Dennys protested. "Wouldn"t he appreciate it if you took him the night-light?"
Before Noah"s growl became audible, the tent flap shifted and a pelican waddled in, followed by Yalith. A pelican seemed a strange creature to appear in this desert place. The bird approached Dennys, then opened its enormous bill. and from it flowed a stream of cool, fresh water, filling the large bowl from which the women bathed him.
Dennys asked, "Hey, you"ve been here before, haven"t you?"
Yalith spoke delightedly. "He is truly better! He"s remembering things."
The water felt healing as Yalith dipped a cloth in it and cooled his skin. She knelt beside him and with the cloth touched some of the loosened scabs. "They will soon be off."
Dennys regarded the pelican. "Where did the water come from?"
"From Grandfather Lamech"s. And the pelican has been kind enough to bring it to us, flying across the oasis."
The pelican nodded gravely to Dennys.
"Do you have a name?"
The pelican blinked.
Yalith said, "When he is a pelican, we usually call him pelican."
"When he is a pelican! What else is he?"
"Don"t confuse the young giant," Noah said.
"I can"t be much more confused than I am," Dennys expostulated. It was a relief to know that he was still on his own planet; even so, he felt lost, and far from anything familiar.
The pelican stretched its angled wings toward the roof hole, raised its beak, seemed to thin out and stretch up-ward, and suddenly a tall and radiant personage was looking down at Dennys.
"What-" he gasped.
"A seraph," Yalith said.
The glowing skin of the seraph was the color of Yalith"s, and there were great silvery wings, and hair the color of the wings. Was it a man? A woman? Did it matter? Yet, with Yalith and Oholibamah, and even more with Anah, Dennys was very well aware that he was male and they were female.
The seraph raised its wings, then dropped them loosely. "Fear not. I am Aland, and I have been helping with your healing. At last you are getting better. No. Don"t try to stand. You are still too weak." Strong arms enfolded Dennys, and he was taken out of the tent and lowered onto a soft bed of moss. In the starlight, the moss shimmered like water.
"There," the seraph said. "So. I am Alarid. And you are the Den."
"Dennys."
"Den is simpler."
"And your name is Alarid? And what about Oholibamah?"
Alarid smiled gravely. "I take your point, Dennys. Forgive me. Now, I have conferred with my companion, Adnarel, who has been helping to take care of the Sand."
"Sandy. Alexander."
"Alexander? Is there not an Alexander who wants to conquer the world?"
"Not in our time," Dennys said. "Way back in history. Not as far back as now. But back."
"Ah," Alarid said. "I tend to see time in pleats. Now, Dennys, there seems to be considerable confusion over who and what you are, and why you are here."
In his weakness, Dennys could not hold back the tears which sprang to his eyes. "We are fifteen-year-old boys who come from a long time away."
"You come from a far time, and yet you speak the Old Language?"
"The whatP"
"The Old Language, the language of creation, of the time when the stars were made, and the heavens and the waters and all creatures. It was the language which was spoken in the Garden-"
"What garden?"
"The Garden of Eden, before the story was bent. It is the language which is still, and will be, spoken by all the stars which carry the light."
"Then," Dennys said flatly, "I don"t know why I speak it."
"And speak it with ease," Aland said.
"Does Sandy speak it, too?" Dennys asked.
Alarid nodded. "You were both speaking it when you met j.a.pheth and Higgaion in the desert, were you not?"
"We certainly didn"t realize it," Dennys said. "We thought we were speaking our own language."
Alarid smiled. "It is your own language, so perhaps it is best that you didn"t realize it. Do others of your time and place speak the Old Language?"