Many Waters

by Madeleine L'engle

  "You are an intelligent young man," Adnarel said. "This is not easy to understand."

  Sandy realized that he had closed his eyes, almost stopped breathing, in order better to concentrate. He opened his eyes, took in a deep gulp of air. "Can you do it?"

  "Do what?"

  "Tesser. Take a quantum leap."

  Adnarel smiled again. "When I am in the scarab beetle, as I have told you, I am limited by what limits the beetle. When I am in my seraphic form, I have fewer limits."

  "Can you get off this planet if you want to?" Sandy asked. "I mean, can you travel to other solar systems or other galaxies?"

  "Oh, certainly. We are here because there is need. Our brothers, the nephilim, cannot leave this planet. They have lost some of their freedoms."

  "Why?" Sandy asked.

  But Adnarel was examining Sandy's healed skin. "You are beginning to get a nice protective tan. When your twin comes, each of you must spend a little time, and then a little more, in the sun, until your skin can bear the rays without burning. You must always remember to stay in the tent during the noon hours. Even in the shade, you can burn from the sun's reflection."

  "I've been sunburned before," Sandy said. "Once when our Scout troop went to the beach for the day, and we all got burned. But it was nothing like this."

  "I think you come from a more northerly part of the planet," Adnarel said, "and this sun is younger than it is in your time."

  "And not so much pollution now between earth and sun. Does anybody here ever have allergies?"

  Adnarel smiled. "Allergies do not come until later."

  "Hey," Sandy said. "Grandfather Lamech's granddaughter Yalith, the one with hair the color of you when you're in the scarab beetle--why has she never come back with the night-light? Why is it always somebody else?"

  "Yalith has been busy, taking care of your brother."

  For a moment Sandy was washed over with a sick wave of jealousy. He shook himself. If he and Dennys were not interested in mythical beasts, neither were they interested in girls. They went to the regional school dances, but usually stuck with the other members of the hockey and basketball teams. There was going to be plenty of time for girls later. Sometime after they had their driver's licenses and weren't dependent on parents to drive them. Sometime when they met girls who were not silly and giggly and showing off.

  But Yalith was not silly or giggly and she did not show off and she was not at all like any of the girls at school. Even though he had been dizzy with fever that first night in Grandfather Lamech's tent, his memory of Yalith was as vivid as though she had come with the stone lamp the night before. Her bronze hair had held sunlight even in the dark shadows of the tent. Her body was tiny and perfect. Her eyes, like her hair, held sunlight. Trying to keep his voice level and not succeeding, for it cracked immediately, he said, "Well, I wish Yalith would bring the night-light tonight."

  Adnarel looked at him, and Sandy blushed. He understood why he was feeling the way he was feeling, and at the same time he did not at all understand the way he was feeling, and this conflicting mixture of emotion confused him. His cheeks were as hot as they had been from fever and sunburn. He wondered how much Adnarel saw. But the seraph looked at him calmly. "Now I have business elsewhere. You worked very hard in the garden this morning during the dawn hours. Good work. You may stay out for fifteen more minutes. I will send my griffin friend to tell you when it is time to go inside."

  "What's a griffin?"

  "Ah, yes, I forget again," Adnarel said. "A griffin is a mythical beast."

  "Not like the manticore, I hope." Sandy was not likely to forget the manticore.

  "Griffins have a larger vocabulary than the manticore. Some of them can be fierce, but my friend is as gentle as a lamb."

  "What does he look like?"

  "She is half lion, half eagle."

  "Which half is which?" Sandy's mind for the moment was off Yalith.

  "Her front half is that of an eagle, her rear half that of a lion. She can fly like an eagle, and she has the strength of a lion." Adnarel turned and strode through Grandfather Lamech's grove of royal palms, date palms, coconut palms, scrub palms, all of which blocked the hot wind and provided such a thick shade that Sandy felt comfortably cool. He lay back and looked at the vast expanse of sky, then quickly shut his eyes against the glare.

  At home the summer sky was blue, and the blue was made brighter by the white cumulus clouds. Except for an occasional grey day, the sky was constantly in motion, protected by the encircling hills. Here the sky stretched naked from horizon to horizon, licked by volcanic flames, burning in the sun.

  A shadow deeper than the shadow of the trees fell across his face. He opened his eyes, expecting to see the griffin.

  Instead, a young woman was looking down at him. He caught his breath. She was the most spectacularly beautiful girl he had ever seen. Tiny, like all the people of the oasis. She wore a white goatskin which covered one shoulder. Her hair was a sunburst of red. Her eyes were almond-shaped and as green as the spring grass at home. Her body was perfect, her skin the color of a peach.

  "Hello!" she said, looking at him with a radiant smile. "I'm really glad to see you again."

  Sandy looked at her in astonishment.

  "You haven't forgotten me, have you? I'm really sorry for what happened, when my father and brother..."

  "I don't know what you're talking about." Sandy could not keep his eyes off her.

  "About when you suddenly appeared in our tent, and my father and brother..." Again her words trailed off, as though she didn't want to finish the sentence.

  "I've never been in your tent." Sandy was confused. "I've only been out of Grandfather Lamech's tent to work in the garden.--Oh. Maybe you mean my brother."

  She opened her eyes wide. Her lashes were long and dark and beautiful. "Your brother?"

  "My twin brother," Sandy said. "We do look very much alike."

  "You haven't been staying in one of Noah's tents?"

  "No. That's my brother Dennys."

  "Oh. Who are you, then?"

  "I'm Sandy."

  "Well, then, Sandy, I'm very happy to meet you, and I'm glad you're being nicely cared for."

  "What's your name?" Sandy asked.

  "I'm Tiglah. I'm Anah's sister."

  "Anah?"

  "Ham's wife. Noah's daughter-in-law. And I'm Mahlah's friend. Do you know Mahlah?"

  "No."

  "Mahlah is Noah's daughter, the next-to-the-youngest. Yalith is the youngest. Mahlah is the beauty of that family. We've been giving Yalith and Oholibamah salves to help heal your brother. Oh, dear, this is confusing. I mean, I was really startled to find you here, instead of at Noah's, and then you aren't you at all, I mean you're not the one who appeared in my father's tent that night and who... Giants who look alike! And have no wings..."

  Sandy sighed. "In our time and place we're not anywhere near as tall as giants. We're just tall, and we probably haven't even finished growing."

  "You aren't as white of skin as the nephilim, and you don't have wings, but you're as tall as they are. And as handsome, in a different sort of way." She reached out and stroked his face. Then she bent closer, and he was half-fascinated, half-repelled by the strong odor of perspiration mingled with heavy perfume. She had rubbed something red onto her lips and over her cheekbones. It looked like the juice of some kind of berry. She bent closer and brushed her lips against his.

  "Hey!" Sandy protested.

  "You're sweet, you know," she said. "You're really sweet. You're young, aren't you?"

  Sandy said, stiffly, "We're adolescents."

  "What's that?"

  "Teenagers."

  She shook her head. "The nephilim don't have any age at all. They just are. But they've been around. There isn't anything they don't know."

  Sandy sighed. "Well, I'm not like the nephilim."

  Her lips touched his again, warm and fruit-smelling.

  A bird's scream cut across the sky. Above them
was the shadow of two dark, flapping wings, then a thud, and a flailing of a long, ropy tail, as the griffin landed. Out of the beak came a negative squawk which was quite evidently "No, no, no." And another squawk which sounded very like "Tiglah."

  Tiglah leaned against the trunk of a tall palm, stretching her arm up to reveal her figure to perfection. "Go away, griffin. I like this young giant, and I think he likes me."

  The griffin cried an eagle cry, and pushed herself between Tiglah and Sandy. Her beak opened. "Go, go, go."

  "No, no, no," Tiglah mimicked. "He's just fine right here with me to tend him. The other one that looks like him has Yalith and all those other women hovering over him. It's only fair that he should have some female care, too, isn't it, Sandy?"

  Before he could answer, the griffin had gently but firmly pushed Tiglah toward the path.

  "You'd better not hurt me!" she shouted indignantly. "Rofocale is my friend."

  From the griffin's beak came a sound very much like a mosquito shrilling. Tiglah kicked at it, hitting just where eagle and lion joined. Her toenails were long and sharp. The lion's tail flicked back and forth in irritation. Then the griffin pushed at Sandy, urging him toward the tent.

  "I don't want to go in yet." Sandy looked at Tiglah's smiling green eyes.

  Tiglah's voice was cajoling. "Wouldn't you like to come with me to one of the bathhouses?"

  "Bathhouses with water?" Sandy asked eagerly. Dirt from the garden was deep in his nails, and he could not clean it all off with sand.

  "Water? Whatever for?" she asked.

  "To bathe in."

  "Goodness no!" She sounded shocked. "What an unhealthy idea! We bathe by being rubbed with oil, and we have lovely perfumes that cover all the bad smells." She giggled. "Whoever heard of bathing with water?"

  Sandy felt himself being propelled toward the tent by the griffin. He was not sure how he felt about bathhouses with no water, and where perfume covered the bad smells, any more than he was sure about Tiglah. There was nobody remotely like her in school or in the village. She gave him a pleasurable prickly feeling. And, as she had pointed out, Dennys was being tended by Yalith.

  The griffin pushed him into the tent.

  Grandfather Lamech was waiting for him with a bowl of soup. He looked smaller than ever, and incredibly ancient. His hand, holding the bowl, shook slightly. Sandy looked at him anxiously.

  He said, "Sand dear, you're late."

  "Sorry, Grandfather Lamech. I was talking to a girl."

  Grandfather Lamech asked, suspiciously, "What girl?"

  "Her name is Tiglah, and she's the sister of one of Noah's daughters-in-law."

  "Anah's sister," the old man said. "Be careful, Sand."

  "She's beautiful," Sandy said. "I mean, she is absolutely gorgeous."

  "That may be," Grandfather Lamech said. "But it is not enough."

  Sandy thought the subject had better be changed. "I'm thirsty. The soup was great, Grandfather, but is there anything cool to drink? Water?"

  The old man shook his head. "I can give you some fruit juice. Water is too precious to waste it in drinking. You do not have wells where you come from?"

  "Sure we do," Sandy said. "There isn't any town water where we live, and we have an artesian well."

  "And your water just keeps on coming?"

  "Well, in the autumn when it hasn't rained for a while, we aren't allowed to take long showers, and our parents warn us not to flush the toilet every time we use it--"

  "The what?"

  "Sorry," Sandy apologized. "I keep forgetting." Grandfather Lamech was tidier about his body's needs than many of the people on the pathways near his compound. Sandy had been requested courteously to go to a small grove which drained onto the desert, whenever he needed. But many people used no special place at all. When Sandy had wandered away from Grandfather Lamech's, and onto the public path, he had seen that the streets were full of human dung as well as camel dung, goat dung, cow dung. Perhaps the fierceness of the sun burned away things that would cause disease. He'd have to ask Dennys. Dennys knew more about sanitation and viruses and germs than Sandy did. Although, if he went into environmental law when he grew up, he'd have to learn about such things.

  Grandfather Lamech gave him a bowl of still-unfermented grape juice, and Sandy drank it thirstily. He sniffed at the pot sitting in the banked embers of the fire. Grandfather Lamech cooked in the cool of the night, then set the pot in the ashes, where it kept comfortably warm.

  "Smells good, Grandfather Lamech. What is it?"

  "Pottage," the old man said.

  "What's that?"

  "Lentils, onions, and rice, well seasoned."

  "Hey, I'm going to have to tell my mother how to make that when I get home." A brief wave of homesickness enveloped him as his mind's eye saw the lab, and a casserole of pottage cooking over the Bunsen burner.

  Higgaion, too, sniffed. He had his own bowl, and he ate the same food as Sandy and the old man.

  Grandfather Lamech seemed daily more tottery. If Dennys came to the tent, would it be too much for him?

  But now that Noah and Lamech were reconciled, Noah not only came to Lamech's tent to talk, he brought great kettles of food, skins of wine, bunches of grapes. And the two men laughed and cried, and Noah hugged his father. "Oh, my father, you must live forever!"

  And Lamech did not answer.

  In the end, Dennys was to cross the oasis on a camel, a white camel with a long, supercilious nose, sneering rubbery lips, and extraordinary gentian eyes, shaded by long lashes.

  Noah had cut his foot on a sharp stone, and Matred forbade him to accompany Dennys. "Now that you and your father are reconciled, do you want to spoil everything with an infected foot? It is healing well, but the public paths are full of filth. You are not to leave the tent until it has healed."

  "Women," Noah grunted. But he obeyed Matred.

  "Our Den will be all right," she reassured him. "If he is in the care of the seraphim, he will reach Grandfather Lamech safely."

  Alarid, the seraph whose host was the pelican, and who brought water to the tent for Dennys; Alarid, who had warned him not to change anything, came with another seraph. This one had wings of pale blue, and eyes like moonstones, a deeper, brighter blue.

  "So," Alarid said to Dennys, not quite accusingly, "you have already made changes."

  "But I haven't!" Dennys expostulated.

  "You persuaded Noah to go to his father, when he would listen to no one else."

  "I didn't really say all that much," Dennys said. "I sort of just listened to the stars. So I wasn't really the one--"

  "I am not here to accuse you," Alarid said. "We are full of joy that Lamech and Noah are speaking again, and it may well be that it was necessary for your brother to prepare the old man for reconciliation." He indicated the other seraph, who had been standing quietly listening. "This is Admael."

  The seraph did not extend his hand. Seraphim evidently did not shake hands. Admael bowed, and Dennys returned the bow.

  Together, the two seraphim carefully examined Dennys. "Yalith and Oholibamah have taken excellent care of you," Alarid said.

  Admael nodded in quiet approval.

  "They've been marvelous," Dennys agreed. "I think I'd be dead if they hadn't." The scabs were long gone from his skin. He could run across the desert without tiring. He knew that it was time.

  He looked at Alarid. "And you, too. Thank you." He bowed to the seraph.

  "Admael will carry you to Grandfather Lamech's tent," Alarid said.

  Admael's moonstone eyes beamed toward Dennys. "I will wait outside." With a grave look, the seraph left.

  "I should thank everybody." Dennys hesitated. He was eager to be with Sandy again, yes, and yet he was not at all eager to leave Yalith. And, of course, Oholibamah and Japheth. If he went to Grandfather Lamech's tent, would he ever see Yalith again? Would her delicate fingers slide confidingly into his hand the way they did when she took him out at night to listen to the stars, or
when they danced under the desert sky?

  "Fear not," Alarid said. "I have thanked them for you, all of them, Noah and Matred, Shem and Elisheba, Ham and Anah, Japheth and Oholibamah, and oh, yes, Yalith, too. In any event, you will be seeing them frequently. Now that Grandfather Lamech and Noah are reconciled, there will be much coming and going between the two tents. Are you ready?"

  "Ready." He would see Yalith again. Surely she would come to Grandfather Lamech's tent to visit him. Surely he would feel the touch of her delicate fingers.

  He followed Alarid out of the tent. Night had fallen, and the sky was crusted with stars. He was getting used to the pattern of early rising, the long afternoon nap, and going late to sleep when the fiery sands had cooled down and the very air had lost its burning quality.

  He looked for Admael, but there was no seraph. Instead, a white camel stood in the dim shadow of the tent.

  Noah was waiting for him, standing by the camel, leaning on a stick, his foot bound in a clean skin. "This is not goodbye, my son. We are all eager to see you and the Sand together. Then maybe we will believe that you really are two. The seraphim has looked at my foot and says that I will be able to walk on it safely in a couple of days." He held out his hand, palm up. "Put your foot there, and I will help you up onto the camel's back. Even for a young giant like you, a camel's back is a long way up."

  The camel had no real saddle, but heavy skins were spread on its back. Dennys was not at all sure how easy it was going to be for him to stay seated. There was nothing for him to hold on to, no reins, no pommel. But Admael in his camel form seemed to be a real flesh-and-blood camel, not nebulous, like the virtual unicorns. He did not think the camel would lose its tendency to life.

  Matred came hurrying out of the tent, carrying a bundle, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Here are your clothes. Perhaps, sometime, you will need them. Goodbye, our dear twin. We will miss you."

  And suddenly he was surrounded by the entire family, weeping, laughing, reaching up to the camel's flanks to hug Dennys's feet, which was as close to him as they could reach, even on tiptoe.

  Japheth had his arm around Oholibamah, and Yalith was standing with them. They blew him kisses, which he blew back, and then, without warning, the camel took off, and everybody called after them, "Goodbye, twin Den, goodbye, and we'll see you soon!"