Many Waters

by Madeleine L'engle

  "But the others don't," Dennys said. "I mean, the other ones, the nephilim. I've seen them looking at us when they thought we weren't noticing. And a mosquito kept buzzing around me the other day after Tiglah had been around. I don't think it was just a mosquito."

  "Rofocale," Sandy said. "I heard her call one of the nephilim Rofocale."

  "They don't like us," Dennys said.

  When supplies were needed, the twins left Grandfather Lamech's and went to the nearby shops, carrying figs, dates, and the produce of their garden to barter for rice or lentils. On the dusty paths they passed many of the people of the oasis, who always paused to look up at Sandy and Dennys, surreptitiously if not openly.

  When they passed nephilim, with whom they could look eye-to-eye, brilliant wings quivered, but the nephilim did not acknowledge their presence, except in sudden reversion to the animal host, so that a tall, bright-winged man would vanish, and there would be a skink scuttling across the path, or a red ant, or a slug leaving its slimy trail.

  The women, at least the young ones, let Sandy and Dennys know that they were admired. Small hands reached up to touch them. They were bathed in lavish smiles. Tiglah seemed to know when they needed rice or beans or lentils, and would be waiting at whichever stall they were headed for.

  The men and the older women were different. Sometimes the twins were cursed at, spat at. They did not tell Grandfather Lamech, who would have been distressed. They learned to go to the few venders who treated them kindly and did not try to cheat.

  Dennys said, one day, "Hey, Sand. If you want to go for a walk with Tiglah, don't let me stop you."

  "I don't want to." Sandy turned his gaze from the side of the path, where a vulture was picking the flesh from a small carcass.

  "I mean, just because it was her father and brother who threw me into the garbage pit--I mean, I'm not stopping you, or anything."

  "No problem," Sandy agreed.

  They were careful with each other as they had never been careful before.

  And still they did not mention Yalith.

  Yalith and Oholibamah were helping Matred to clean the big tent when they were disturbed by the flap being pushed open, and a lavender-winged nephil came in. He spoke without greeting. "It is nearly Mahlah's time. She will need you to help with the birthing of the baby."

  Matred held the broken palm branch which she was using as a broom. "Do you not have one of your own kind to help?"

  Ugiel looked at Oholibamah with hooded eyes. Flicked a long finger in her direction. "She will be of use. And Mahlah will need her mother and sister."

  Oholibamah took a step away from the nephil. "How will we know when to come?"

  "Tonight. At the time of the moonrise. I, Ugiel of the nephilim, tell you so."

  "We will come," Matred pronounced. "I will not have my daughter labor alone."

  "Good. I will expect you."

  "We will come," Matred repeated, "but you will wait outside."

  Ugiel shrugged. "Have it your own way. It is a woman's job to see to all the blood and mess of a birth." He started out, then turned his burning gaze on Yalith.

  She did not drop her eyes. Biting her lower lip, she met his stare.

  "You cannot have them both, you know," Ugiel said.

  Then he was gone.

  Yalith and Oholibamah spread skins over some low scrub palms. Some skins they would discard, if they were too soiled. Others they would scrape and beat clean.

  "What did he mean?" Oholibamah asked.

  "Who?"

  "Ugiel."

  "About what?"

  "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 Grand
father 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?"

  "Yes, I like it." His voice was hoarse. "I like it too much."

  "Too much? How can anything be too much? What is there in life except pleasure, and the more the better! How can you talk of too much?"

  "You're too much." He tried to laugh. "I think I'd better go now. Grandfather Lamech isn't well."

  "He's dying," Tiglah said bluntly. "Rofocale told me."

  "Rofocale doesn't know everything."

  "He knows more than we do, more than any mortal."

  Sandy stood still. He thought he heard the shrill whine of a mosquito. Then silence. He turned and started walking back to the oasis. Tiglah slid down from the rock, ran to catch up with him, and reached for his hand.

  "You, too," she said. "You must be of the same breed as Rofocale, so tall, so strong. You could pick me up, and throw me over your shoulder. Where do you come from?"