Many Waters Part 27

"Oh, Adnarel." Dennys cried, "Sandy never came home after he gave Noah the camel! We don't know what's happened to him!"

Adnarel bowed gravely, listening, saying nothing.

j.a.pheth said, "I worry that he may not have gone whereever it is of his own free will."

Adnarel turned to j.a.pheth. "Explain what you are thinking."

"Since he didn't follow my father to Grandfather's tent as he said he would do, then I am afraid that perhaps..." His voice trailed off.

Adnarel's wings glittered. "You are thinking of Tiglah?"

"It was Anah's suggestion ..."

"No," Dennys contradicted.

"We know she's a seductress," j.a.pheth said.

"No," Dennys repeated. "Sandy would never have gone off with Tiglah, with Grandfather dying. Never."

Adnarel nodded. "Of course. He would not have disappeared of his own volition."

"Then where is he?" Dennys demanded.

Adnarel raised his wings, slowly lowered them. "What are you doing to try to find him?"

j.a.pheth did not know of the visit of Tigiah's father and brother to Noah's tenthold. "We are ail searching, but we have found no trace anywhere-"

Adnarel looked at the two young men, eye to eye with Dennys, down for j.a.pheth, small and lean and strong.

j.a.pheth continued: "Sandy cares about Grandfather Lamech. He cares about his brother. It is not in his character to go off at such. a time."

"Nephilim," Adnarel said softly.

A ripple of concern rolled across Higgaion's flanks. j.a.pheth said, "That's what we were afraid of. But even they couldn't make him vanish completely, could they?"

"They are masters of illusion," Adnarel said. "They can make any part of the oasis look like someplace else. They can disguise odors. That is why Higgaion's scenting was to no avail."

"But where do you think he is?" Dennys's voice soared with anxiety.

"I think the nephilim have used human greed. I suspect that some of the less pleasant people of the oasis, perhaps the men of Tigiah's tent, have taken him and put him in some little-used tent and are asking some kind of ransom for him. They are acquisitive, but they don't like to work for what they get, and they would be easy to tempt into doing whatever the nephilim want."

Dennys raised his head as he heard the strong beating of wings, and a pelican plummeted out of the sky, and then Alarid stood beside them. "The nephilim are afraid of the twins." His wings shook silver.

"But why?" j.a.pheth asked. "The twins are good."

Adnarel and Alarid touched wing tips. Adnarel said, "The nephilim fear what they do not understand. Did Higgaion go all the way across the oasis with his scenting?"

j.a.pheth nodded.

"To the far end?" Alarid asked.

"Yes."

"Try once more. This time, go straight across the length of the oasis and concentrate at the farthest point. They will have taken him as far away from Noah's tents as possible."

"And they're not likely to have gone in the direction of Grandfather Lamech's tent," Alarid added.

Higgaion's stringy little tail flicked.

j.a.pheth said, "The sun is high. The Den cannot cross the oasis at full noon without getting the sun sickness again."

Both seraphim looked at Dennys, already red and sweating. "You are right. The Den will stay here, in Grandfather Lamech's tent, for the afternoon rest. One of us will stay with him, in case . . ." Adnarel did not finish.

Alarid said, "And we will see to it that he gets to Noah's tenthold before sundown. Whether you find the Sand or not, you must be home by then."

Higgaion raised his trunk in an impatient trumpet.

"We'll go," j.a.pheth said. He looked up at the seraphim, asking in a low voice, "Are you worried?"

Gravely they acknowledged the question.

In the dark heat of the prison tent, Sandy slept fitfully, dreaming a confusion of meaningless dreams. Tiglah was tying his thongs tightly and shoving a bowl of spoiled meat at him. His nostrils twitched.

It was not Tiglah's smell. It was not even the smell of rancid goat meat, He opened his eyes and saw only a small dark shadow, felt something soft nudging him. He reached out: his hand and touched something firm and curved. Moved his hand along whatever it was, until his fingers felt a roughness. It was a tusk, broken off at the point. His eyes adjusted to the dim light and he saw that he was touching a mammoth, not Higgaion or Selah, both of whom were sleek and well fed, with polished tusks, but an underfed mammoth with stringy hair, and one tusk broken off just at the point, the other slightly farther up. It was nudging him with the tip of its trunk.

What the mammoth wanted of him he was not sure.

But it was apparent that it meant him no harm, and that its overtures were friendly. Sandy began to stroke the s.h.a.ggy head, then ran his fingers over the ivory tusks. This little beast had obviously been abused, so it was likely that it came from Tiglah's tent. He was grateful for the company. Perhaps a mammoth, even a mangy mammoth would be helpful when night came, not so much helpful in the actual escape as in finding Noah's tenthold.

"Now," he said to the mammoth, fondling the fan-shaped ears, "if 1 only had a unicorn, then I could get out of here." He stopped. Then: "Hey. I didn't think of a unicorn before, because basically I still don't believe in unicorns."

Dennys, he remembered, had summoned a unicorn after Tiglah's father and brother had nearly killed him, dumping him into the garbage pit. It wasn't easy for Dennys to believe in unicorns either, but when he had to, he did.

It Sandy could believe something as outrageous as that he and Dennys had actually landed in the pre-flood desert, and that they had become so close to Noah's tenthold, especially Yalith, that they were like family, and if he could believe that he was now petting a mammoth, why should it be hard to believe in a unicorn, even if it was what Dennys called a virtual unicorn? His mother believed in virtual particles, and his mother was a scientist who had won the n.o.bel Prize for discovering particles so small they were scarcely conceivable even with a wild leap of the imagination.

"What'll I do?" he asked the mammoth, who responded by cuddling closer to him.

It Sandy left the tent on his own, they would be lying in wait for him-Rofocale, if not Tiglah's father and brother -and they would not hesitate to kill him. Even night would not provide enough cover, with the brilliance of the stars illuminating the oasis.

"The problem is," he said to the mammoth, "that I always have to see things to believe in them. But, after all, I have seen unicorns, two of them. I have seen them, there-fore I can believe in them."

The mammoth reached with its trunk to touch, softly, the boy's cheek. In his mind's ear Sandy seemed to hear, "Some things have to be believed to be seen."

"Unicorn!" he whispered, and the mammoth slipped its trunk into the palm of his hand. "Unicorn, please tend to life. Please tend to be."

Against the darkness of the tent came a starburst of light, and a unicorn stood, trembling, beside him.

"Oh, you are!" Sandy cried. "Oh, thank you!" He held out his hand. The unicorn came to him with silver steps, folded its delicate legs, and lay down, putting its head in Sandy's lap, so that the light of the horn flowed over the scraggly little mammoth, who lifted its head gratefully. Sandy fondled the silvery mane, soft as moonbeams. "Now what?" he asked the two disparate creatures.

The light of the horn glittered, but neither unicorn nor mammoth answered him.

"If I could fall asleep," Sandy mused, "or stop believing in unicorns, then you would lose your tendency to life and go out, and take me with you, the way you took Dennys. The problem is that now I believe in you. And as long as I believe in you, you'll continue to be, won't you?"

The unicorn nuzzled him, as affectionate as the mammoth.

"As long as I stay with you," Sandy whispered, "I think I'm safe, because I'm absolutely certain that Tiglah couldn't come near you, or her father or brother. But if they try to, and you go out of being, will you take the mammoth and me out of being with you? If we don't take the mammoth, they'll hurt him again. So will you take us?"

It was a rather intimidating thought. He had asked Dennys how it had felt the two times he had gone out with the unicorn, and Dennys had answered that it hadn't felt at all. But perhaps, Sandy thought, that might have been because Dennys had sunstroke and a high fever. Then he remembered Grandfather Lamech-or was it j.a.pheth?-telling him that unicorns never lost anybody.

He put one arm about the unicorn, the other about the mammoth, and waited. This was a far better plan than going with Tiglah, or trying to cross the desert alone.

"You see," he said to the two creatures, who pressed confidingly against him. "When the time came for me to do something, I knew what to do, and I did it."

He held unicorn and mammoth close.

The nephilim gathered. Proud. Arrogant. Flickering in and out of their hosts as they spoke.

Rofocale the mosquito said, "I have put an illusion around the tent. It is on the edge of the desert at the farthest end of the oasis, but the illusion makes it took as though it is surrounded by flocks and groves."

Ehlis the dragon/lizard asked. "Are giant twins worth this much trouble?"

Rofocale answered, "I think they know something we do not know. When I questioned the one that Tiglah caught for me, he gave evasive answers."

Ugiel the cobra said, "There is danger in the air. The stars are drawing back. I am concerned for my baby."

Naamah the vulture went "Kkk. We chose to be silent with El. We chose never to hear the Voice again, never to speak with the Presence."

Ertrael the rat said. "We could ask the seraphim."

"Never," said Estael the c.o.c.kroach.

"But they still speak with El," Ertrael said. "The stars still talk with them."

"I do not care to listen to the stars," Eisheth the crocodile p.r.o.nounced.

"They might tell us," said Rumjal the red ant, "whether or not we are in danger."

"How can we be in danger?" Eblis asked. "We are immortal."

"And the one we caught," said Rofocale, "told me that he is mortal. If he is to be believed."

Naamah the vulture clacked his beak. "I smell that there will soon be much for us to eat."

"HowP" Rofocale demanded. "What is going to happen?"

Eblis the dragon/lizard asked, "Will someone tell me what Noah is building?"

"A good question," said Rumael the slug.

Rofocale gave his screeching laugh. "A boat! That is what my Tiglah tells me. He is building a boat!"

"A boat?" Eisheth the crocodile demanded. "Why on earth would he build a boat?"

Rugziel the worm asked, "Could the twin giants have told him something that we do not know?"

Rofocale said, "We need to get rid of the twin giants. Everything has been different since they came."

"Noah reconciled with his father. Kkk," said Naamah the vulture.

"And Lamech has died," Estael the c.o.c.kroach agreed.

"My lovely Yalith prefers the young giants to me," Eblis said "They must have some strange power, to make her turn from me to such soft-skinned, wingless creatures "

"And Noah is building a boat," Rofocale added.

"And Matred weeps," said Rumjal the red ant.

"We should find out," Ugiel suggested, "whether or not they-the young giants-are truly mortal or not."

Rofocale screeched again. "Tiglah's father and brother will find that out for us."

Higgaion finally found the tent where Sandy was imprisoned, because the unicorn was there. Rofocale's power of illusion had indeed made the tent seem to be in the middle of the oasis, had indeed altered Sandy's scent. But the unicorn had come to the tent after the illusion was set. Higgaion sniffed. He smelled silver, and he smelled light.

He nudged j.a.pheth excitedly.

Tentatively, j.a.pheth pushed open the tent flap. Enough of the late-afternoon light came through the tent hole so that he could see Sandy and the unicorn, their heads together in affection. The abused mammoth was only a dark shadow under Sandy's arm.

"Sand!"

Sandy opened his eyes. "Jay!"

The young man started to rush forward to embrace him, then stopped short as though held by some invisible barrier. The unicorn's light brightened.

Higgaion followed j.a.pheth into the tent, sitting back on his haunches in surprise as he saw the mammoth who pressed closely against Sandy, blinking fearfully.

Sandy's protective arm tightened. "It's all right. n.o.body's going to hurt you." Then: "Jay, how did you find me?"

"Are you all right?" j.a.pheth asked anxiously.

"Oh, I'm fine, but Tiglah's father and brother want to kill me ..."