Many Waters Part 28

"No." j.a.pheth touched his fingers to his tiny bow. "No, Sand."

"And look what they've done to their mammoth," Sandy said indignantly. "They've nearly starved him, and they've broken his tusks."

"All right," j.a.pheth said hurriedly. "We'll take him with us. But we'd better get out of here before they come back."

"I think I'm safe as long as I'm with the unicorn," Sandy said, "because they won't be able to come near."

j.a.pheth smiled. "I can't, either." He stared at boy and unicorn. "Sand. Do you remember when I first met you and the Den in the desert, and we called unicorns. and the Den went out?"

"Of course I remember."

"Can't you go out with the unicorn now?"

Sandy sighed. "The problem is, Jay, that I believe in the unicorn."

The mangy mammoth suddenly p.r.i.c.ked up its ears and started to whimper. Higgaion pushed himself up onto his feet, and j.a.pheth swung around to see the tent flap open violently. Two small, chunky men came in, carrying spears. Tiglah's father and brother.

"Auk! What have we here?" the older man demanded.

"A unicorn," the younger man exclaimed. "And one of Noah's sons. Well, well." He moved toward Sandy and the unicorn, then drew back with a sharp intake of breath."You, young giant!" he shouted. "Come along! We want you."

"Sorry," Sandy said. "You can't have me." He looked at j.a.pheth and the two men from Tiglah's tent and wondered anew at how small they were. Tiglah's father was made even shorter by his bowed legs. No wonder they had used the poisoned dart on him. In a fair struggle, they would never have captured him.

j.a.pheth's pleasant features were distorted by anger.

"You've done enough harm. Get out of here."

The tent was so small that the three little men were close together, with Sandy, his arms still about unicorn and mammoth, near enough to draw back at the odor of the men from Tiglah's tent.

"Auk's nuts to you," Tiglah's brother said.

j.a.pheth glanced swiftly at Sandy, then in a reflex so swift it hardly seemed motion, he drew one of the darts from his quiver and jabbed it into Sandy's arm.

The two men from Tiglah's tent shouted in surprise and anger. Tiglah's father roared, "What happened?"

Where Sandy and the unicorn and mammoth had been there was only a pile of filthy skins.

j.a.pheth replied calmly, "They went out with the unicorn."

Both men roared in frustration. "Call him back," the bowlegged man said.

"Or we'll kill you," the younger man threatened.

"And what good will that do you?" j.a.pheth demanded. "You'll never get the Sand back without me."

Tiglah's brother snarled, deep in his throat, and lunged at j.a.pheth with his spear, but Higgaion jumped between them, tripping the red-bearded man so that he sprawled on the floor of the tent. He snarled up at his father, "Why didn't you stop him?"

"Me? What could I do?"

"You let him go out with the unicorn, and our mammoth, too."

Tiglah's brother scrambled clumsily to his feet, hefting his spear. "Give us your father's vineyards, then."

"No," j.a.pheth said, and reached for his darts.

But the older man swooped on him with the spear, and despite j.a.pheth's quick reflex, the spear cut across his ribs, and a trickle of blood slid down his side.

Higgaion lunged at the man, trumpeting in outrage.

But the two men with their spears were too much for j.a.pheth and the mammoth. j.a.pheth clutched his wounded side as the mammoth lunged again and was viciously kicked by Tiglah's brother.

Suddenly a roar burst over them- "Hungry!" And the manticore stuck his hideous face into the tent. "Hungry!"

"Go away," Tiglah's father yelled.

In terror, Higgaion backed up, hitting the skins of the tent, which gave slightly. j.a.pheth, trying to reach for the mammoth, saw that the skins were not pegged securely to the ground. Not many people bothered to set up their tents as well as Noah and Grandfather Lamech.

"Run, Hig, run!" j.a.pheth commanded, and Higgaion backed out of the tent.

"Hungry!" The manticore's ugly face was followed by his lion's body and scorpion's tail.

j.a.pheth was the farthest of the three men from the tent flap. He reached for a dart and his tiny bow, and let a dart fly, to strike the manticore in the forehead.

"Hung-" the manticore started, and fell, unconscious on Tiglah's father and brother.

Swiftly, j.a.pheth dropped to his knees and pushed out the opening in the rear of the tent through which Higgaion had left.

The mammoth was waiting outside, whimpering in terror but not willing to leave j.a.pheth completely.

"Run!" j.a.pheth shouted as he stood upright; and they ran. Ran without looking behind them. Onto the desert. And then the illusion that Rofocale had set was broken and j.a.pheth knew exactly where they were. They were at the far end of the oasis, the opposite end from Grandfather Lamech's tenthold. He hardly realized that blood was streaming down his side as he hurried toward home.

Admaei the camel, Adnachiel the giraffe, and Akatriel the owl left their posts and followed j.a.pheth and the mammoth into the desert.

j.a.pheth, running faster than he had ever run before, suddenly felt dizzy. Everything paled. He slumped slowly onto the sand. Higgaion pushed his feet against rock to slow himself down.

Akatnel flew down to the sand beside the young man, and resumed his seraph form. "He has lost much blood. He is still bleeding."

Adnachiel the giraffe bent his neck to look at j.a.pheth's wound, then lowered himself so that he could reach the torn skin with his tongue. Carefully, thoroughly, he licked the wound.

Admael the camel galloped off.

Higgaion hunkered down beside j.a.pheth and the giraffe whimpering. Adnachiel continued to lick, cleaning the jagged cut the spear had made.

When it was clean, Admael returned with a furry-looking, cactus-type leaf, which he gently pressed against the wound, holding it until the bleeding slowed and stopped.

j.a.pheth, quivering, opened his eyes, to see the seraphim reaching up out of their hosts and into their seraphic forms.

Akatriel, with eyes as wise as those of the owl he had just left, affirmed, "You are all right. You have lost much blood, and that spearhead cannot have been too clean. But Adnachiel has washed the wound and Admaet has stopped the bleeding."

"And you ran much too quickly." Adnachiel nodded.

"Hig-"

Higgaion touched j.a.pheth's hand gently with his trunk tip.

"Sand?"

Adnachiel asked, "What happened?"

"I sent him out with the unicorn," j.a.pheth said, struggling to sit up.

Admael nodded approval. "That was good."

"Should we call the Sand back?" j.a.pheth asked.

"Better," Adnachiel said.

Admael asked courteously of the mammoth, "Will you? Or shall I?"

"Both." Adnachiel was peremptory.

With a light briefly bright as the sun. making them all blink, the unicorn appeared. Sandy's arm slid from around its neck and he slipped onto the sand. A mangy mammoth tumbled beside him.

j.a.pheth explained, "I used one of my darts on him, but it's a very short-lasting-"

Sandy's eyes blinked open, and he sat up.

The three seraphim stood looking at j.a.pheth, Sandy, and the two mammoths.

"Thank you," Sandy gasped. "Oh, Jay, thank you."

Embarra.s.sed, j.a.pheth shrugged.

"What's happened to you?" Sandy demanded. "You're hurt."

"I'll be all right," j.a.pheth rea.s.sured him. "The seraphim have cleaned my wound."

"Go home," Admael ordered. "Sandy, you can help j.a.pheth. He is weaker than he realizes."

"But what happened?" Sandy demanded.

j.a.pheth laughed. "I never thought I'd be grateful to a manticore, but I am now. They'd have kilted me if a manticore hadn't pushed his way into the tent and stopped them."

The mangy little mammoth pressed against Sandy. "It's all right," Sandy rea.s.sured. "We'll never send you back. What happened to them?"

j.a.pheth shrugged.

"Nothing, I suspect," Akatriel said. "I saw the manticore running away, weeping, a dart falling from his forehead, calling out that he was hungry."

j.a.pheth laughed again. "I could almost feel sorry for the manticore."

"Go, now," Admael urged. "j.a.pheth needs food and rest."

"Unicorn?" Sandy asked. "What about you?"

As he looked, the unicorn began to flicker, to fade.

j.a.pheth said, "The unicorn knows we don't need it anymore."

Where the unicorn had been, there was only a shimmer in the air, and the scent of moonbeams and silver.

They were united m the big tent that evening. j.a.pheth, hovered over by Matred, lay on a pile of soft skins, pale but smiling, and sipped at the strengthening broth Matred kept offering him.

The starved mammoth had been fed and lay curled up with Higgaion and Selah.

Sandy and Dennys kept grinning at each other in relief, with Sandy repeating over and over his praise of j.a.pheth and Higgaion. "It was a wonderful idea to have Higgy scent for me. I don't know what would have happened, otherwise."

Anah looked subdued. "I am so ashamed. That my father and my brother-that my sister should have tried-I thought she liked the Sand-I don't know what got into any of them! Can you forgive me?"

"It was not your doing, daughter," Noah said gently.

"But to think they tried to force you to give up your vineyards! To threaten to kill the Sand and j.a.pheth-"

"Don't dwell on it," Matred said, rubbing ointment Oholibamah had given her onto the healing wound on j.a.pheth's side.

"Is it over?" Elisheba asked. "Or will they try something else? I don't mean your father and brother, Anah. The nephilim."

n.o.body answered.

Sandy held his bowl out for a refill. "It is so much better than what Tiglah cooked for me-I wonder how I could eat the other stuff, even when it was fresh." Then he said, "Rofocale the nephil used Tiglah and her father and brother. They are not nice people-sorry, Anah-but I don't think they'd ever have thought of kidnapping me on their own. If the nephilim are after Dennys and me, they'll try something else."

"But why are they after you?" j.a.pheth demanded.

Sandy finished licking his bowl clean. "They know we don't belong here."

Noah's fingers moved against, his beard. "But you do. Both of you. The Den made me see that being stubborn was not brave."

Matred added, "And you both made Grandfather Lamech's last moons happy ones."

Noah had tears in his eyes. "You were to him as his own grandsons. He could not have stayed in his own tent without your help. You have become our beloved twins."

Matred wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "And yet, husband, you have said that there is no room for them in the ark."

Dennys said quickly, "Don't worry. We know we don't belong on the ark. The nephilim aren't entirely wrong about us."