Many Waters

by Madeleine L'engle

  Noah's tears rolled quietly down his cheeks, into his beard. "I have been stubborn and stupid--"

  A faint laugh came from his father. "I did not say that you are not human. But you listen to El?"

  "I try, Father. I try."

  "El has told me that through you shall blessing..." The old man's breath failed.

  "Hush, Father. Don't try to talk."

  "It is... it is our last..."

  "I listen, Father. To you. To El."

  "You will do what--"

  "Yes, Father. I will do what El tells me."

  "No matter..."

  "No matter how strange it seems."

  "Yalith--"

  Noah's tears flowed more freely. "Oh, Father, I don't know."

  "Never fear." For a moment Lamech's voice was strong, and he sounded almost like one of the seraphim. Then the strength faded, and he spoke in a thin whisper. "El will take care of..."

  "Father. Father. Don't go."

  "Don't hold me back, my son... my son..."

  Noah's tears fell like rain.

  "Our dear twins--"

  "What, Father?"

  The old man gasped, and then smiled a surprised smile of joy, so radiant that it seemed to light the darkened tent. Had lightning flashed to make the smile visible?

  "Father!" Noah cried. And then, "Father!" And then his sobs broke like waves across the dry sands of the desert.

  The stars did not sing. The sky was silent. Higgaion sat up, ears alert. Dennys raised his head, and it seemed that the stars were holding their light.

  And suddenly the bright presence of a seraphim stood before him, and the starlight again fell onto his upturned face.

  Japheth and Oholibamah held vigil for Grandfather Lamech in their own way. They went to the desert, to their particular resting rock, and sat quietly, holding hands.

  At last Japheth spoke: "Thank El that my father and grandfather are reconciled. It would be much harder to bear this if--"

  Oholibamah smiled. "Two stubborn old men. Yes, it is better this way. We have the Den to thank for this."

  "It was a happy day when I first found them in the desert, our young giants. They have taken good care of Grandfather."

  Oholibamah sighed. "We are going to miss him. Yalith, especially; she was the closest to him of us all."

  "True." Japheth cradled her dark head with his hand. "But Father says it is best that death has come to get him now. He is too old and frail to stand the trip."

  "What trip?" Oholibamah asked.

  Japheth's eyes were darkly unhappy. "Oh, my dear one, it is what I promised to tell you. Father says that El has told him strange things. And that he has been given very specific instructions."

  "What instructions?"

  Japheth sounded uncomfortable. "Oh, my wife, it is very strange indeed. El has told my father to build a boat, an ark."

  Oholibamah, who had been leaning against her husband, sat up abruptly. "An ark? In the middle of the desert?"

  "I said it was strange."

  "Could he have made a mistake?"

  "El?"

  "Not El. Your father. Could he have misunderstood what El was telling him?"

  Japheth shook his head. "He sounded very certain. He said that El had also told Grandfather Lamech the things which are to come."

  "An ark." Oholibamah's dark brows drew together. "An ark, in a desert land. It makes no sense. Has your father told the others?"

  "Not yet." Japheth pulled Oholibamah back against him. "He says they will laugh."

  "They will," Oholibamah agreed. But she did not laugh.

  "I have never seen him more serious," Japheth said.

  "What's the ark to be built of?" Oholibamah asked.

  "Gopher wood. At least we have plenty of that. And then he is to put pitch inside and outside to make it watertight."

  "From what water?" Japheth was silent. She turned so that she could look at him. "This does not sound like your father."

  Japheth spoke in a low voice. "Nor does it sound like El."

  Oholibamah stroked his face. "We do not know what El does or does not sound like. El is a great mystery."

  Japheth laughed. "So is a big boat in the desert."

  "How big?" Oholibamah asked.

  Japheth flung out his hands. "Three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high."

  Oholibamah asked curiously, "El gave these precise measurements?"

  "According to Father."

  "I don't understand," Oholibamah said. "I wish you'd had a chance to talk to Grandfather."

  Japheth shook his head, wiping the tears from his eyes.

  "And our twins," Oholibamah said. "What will happen to our twins now?"

  "It is possible they might go on taking care of Grandfather's garden and groves. But I'm not sure. Grandfather's death is the beginning of a big change."

  Oholibamah nodded. "There are dissonances in the song of the stars."

  "Have you heard it?" Japheth asked.

  Oholibamah nodded. "The song has changed. Yes, I have heard it. But why should Grandfather Lamech's death be the beginning of change? He is a very old man."

  Japheth agreed. "It is not at all strange that he should die."

  Oholibamah mused, "Perhaps it is strange that Grandfather Lamech should die just as El gives extraordinary commands to Lamech's son."

  "Oh, my beloved," Japheth said. "You are wise. Sometimes I wish you were not quite so wise."

  They twined their arms about each other. Japheth put his lips against hers, and they took comfort in their love.

  When it became apparent that Sandy had not returned to Lamech's tent, nor had he stayed in Noah's, there was great consternation.

  Noah's sons and their wives had come with Matred across the desert, and stood sadly outside Grandfather Lamech's tent.

  "We haven't seen him," Japheth said anxiously to his father. "We thought he was following you."

  Yalith reached for her brother. "We were so busy with our grief, we didn't even think..."

  Noah pulled at his beard. "He said he would follow me."

  Ham said, not unkindly, "Whatever's happened, we can't look for him now, not with the morning sun rising."

  Shem explained to Dennys, "In our country, in this heat, the dead must be buried quickly."

  Dennys tried to hide his panic at Sandy's inexplicable absence. Sandy was reliable. If there was a reason for his not having followed Noah to Grandfather Lamech's tent, he would somehow or other send word.

  How? There were no telephones. But wouldn't he have tried to find one of the seraphim? He wouldn't just have gone off somewhere, without telling anybody.

  Matred put a motherly arm about Dennys. "Now we must anoint Grandfather Lamech's body and prepare it for burial at sundown. Then we will leave our grief and look for the Sand. There is some reasonable explanation for his absence, I'm sure."

  Anah suggested, "Perhaps he's somewhere with my sister. I think they're very taken with each other."

  Dennys shook his head. He did not believe it. Sandy would not go off with Tiglah, knowing that Grandfather Lamech was dying.

  Yalith slipped her hand into his and squeezed it comfortingly. She kissed him lightly on the cheek, like a butterfly, and then went with her mother and the other women into the tent. The men stayed outside while Lamech's body was rubbed with oil and spices and wrapped in clean white skins.

  The sun rose high in the sky, beat down on them with the fierceness of a brass gong.

  Japheth said, "Do not even think of going off to look for him in this heat, Den. The sun would strike you down, and that would not help your brother."

  Had it not been for Japheth, Dennys would have put on one of Matred's woven hats and gone to look for Sandy. But Dennys knew that Japheth was right.

  "Surely he's somewhere in the shade," Shem said. The palm grove where they were sitting shielded them with its dense shade. "Don't worry, Den. The Sand is a sensible lad."

  "Yes, but--" Dennys
started. And stopped himself. The people of Noah's tenthold were grieving for Lamech. Higgaion was in the tent with the women and the old men, and Dennys knew that it was irrational of him to feel abandoned by the mammoth. He was, after all, Lamech's mammoth.

  The tent flap was pushed open slightly and Higgaion trudged out, and toward Dennys, raising his trunk in sorrowful greeting and asking to be picked up, much as a small child will raise its arms to be lifted.

  Dennys gathered up the little creature and held it against him, letting his tears drop onto the mammoth's shaggy head.

  At sunset, Noah and his sons carried Grandfather Lamech's body to a shallow cave not far across the desert. The women followed. Dennys stood between Yalith and Oholibamah, as Noah and Shem, Ham and Japheth dug a grave in the sand just inside the cave. Dennys had offered to help with the difficult digging, not only out of love for the old man, but also to take his mind off his near-terror over Sandy.

  Noah told him, gently, that it was the custom that only the sons should do this final act of love, but that Dennys should stay with the women and the sons-in-law, because he had become a child of the family.

  The sun slid below the horizon. The sky was a deep crimson. As the sun vanished, there was a faint glow on the far horizon, and the young moon began to peer over the edge of the planet. The moon's diamond crescent seemed strangely subdued as it rose, and Dennys, standing to one side, thought that he could hear a soft and mournful dirge. A star trembled into being, then another, and another. They joined the singing of the moon, singing for Lamech, whose years had been long, whose life had been full, and who, at the end, had been reconciled with his son.

  Noah and Matred's older daughters, Seerah and Hoglah, and their husbands and children, stood in a cluster, wailing loudly. Mahlah stood to one side with her baby. Ugiel, she apologized, was not able to come. She looked curiously at Dennys.

  Sandy, Noah told Mahlah in the same words she had used of Ugiel, was not able to come.

  "Why?" Mahlah asked. No one answered.

  Oholibamah spoke in a low voice, for Japheth, Dennys, and Yalith alone. "Mahlah will ask Ugiel about Sandy when she goes back."

  Yalith whispered, "Will he know?"

  Oholibamah shook her head. "If he does, he won't tell. I suspect the nephilim have something to do with this."

  Japheth frowned. "I hope you aren't right about that."

  Dennys looked at them with fresh fear.

  The grave was dug.

  As the son and grandsons picked the old man up to place him in the grave, Dennys sensed, rather than heard, presences behind them, and turned to see the golden bodies of seraphim standing in a half circle. Once again, he could hear clearly the singing of the moon and the stars.

  Aariel called, "Yalith!"

  Startled, she let out a small cry.

  Aariel raised arms and wings skyward, and the song increased in intensity. "Sing for Grandfather Lamech."

  Obediently, Yalith raised her head and sang, a wordless melody, achingly lovely. Above her, the stars and the moon sang with her, and behind her the seraphim joined in great organ tones of harmony.

  Japheth took Oholibamah's hands and drew her out onto the clear sands, and they began to dance in rhythm with the song. They were joined by Ham and Anah, and the four of them wove patterns under the stars, touching hands, moving apart, twirling, touching, leaping. Shem and Elisheba joined in, then Noah and Matred and the older daughters and their husbands, and then Yalith took Dennys's hands and drew him into the kaleidoscope of moving bodies, an alleluia of joy and grief and wonder, until Dennys forgot Sandy, forgot that Grandfather Lamech would never be in his tent again, forgot his longing to go home. The crimson flush at the horizon turned a soft ash-rose, then mauve, then blue, as more and more stars brightened, and the harmony of the spheres and the dance of the galaxies interwove in radiance. Slowly the dancers moved apart, stopped. Dennys closed his eyes in a combination of joy and fierce grief, opening them only when the requiem was over. The sky was brilliant with the light of the moon and the stars. The seraphim were gone. Yalith stood beside him, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  Noah and his sons tamped down the earth over Grandfather Lamech's grave.

  Sandy opened his eyes and could see nothing. His limbs felt numb. Whatever had pricked him had temporarily paralyzed him. There was a strange tingling in his limbs as feeling began to return. He knew about the tiny darts that Japheth and Yalith and some of the others in Noah's tenthold used, and guessed that something similar had been used on him.

  Why?

  He smelled goat, urine, sweat. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see that he was in a small tent. The smoke hole was covered, so that very little light came through. It was a much smaller tent than Noah's or Grandfather Lamech's. He tried to move his arms and found that his hands were tied, bound firmly with thong. So were his feet.

  As sensation returned to him, he wriggled around and finally managed to sit up, his back against the rough skins of the tent, his bound hands in front of him. He raised them and tried to bite at the thongs. The taste made him gag. The thongs had been wound about his wrists so many times that it was futile to try to chew through them, nor could he find a knot to try to bite.

  He stopped his useless reflexive efforts and tried to think.

  He had been kidnapped on his way from Noah's tent to Lamech's. Why? When terrorists hijacked a plane, they wanted something. What use would he be to anybody as a hostage? This was a world still without money, without political prisoners. As far as he knew, nobody held anything against Lamech or Noah.

  So, why?

  His stomach growled. How long had the poisoned dart kept him asleep? What time was it? He could not see even a line of light to indicate where the tent flap was. The light from the covered smoke hole was so faint that it might even have come from stars.

  There had to be a tent flap. He wriggled around so that his feet touched the tent wall, and kept wriggling, feeling with his toes. Wriggled until he was exhausted and had found no way out. Rested. Wriggled again. Again. At last his feet felt a line of roughness. He pushed, and the flap moved slightly, enough so that he could tell that it was indeed night outside. Stars. A single palm tree silhouetted against them. He had no idea where he was, or even if he was still on his own oasis.

  Worn out from his efforts, he fell asleep, his head just out of the tent. Sunlight blazing against his lids woke him, and he managed to slither back into the tent and sat leaning against the taut skins by the entrance. His stomach made loud, hungry noises. What wouldn't he give for a mess of Grandfather Lamech's pottage.

  Grandfather.

  When he got out of this tent and back where he belonged, there would no longer be the tiny, shriveled old man tending the hearth fire.

  Come on, Sandy. He's old. Seven hundred seventy-seven years. And Noah was pushing six hundred years old. It didn't make any sense. Except, he believed them. And after the flood people weren't going to live that long. At least, he thought that was how it was going to be.

  "Twin!"

  It was a girl's soft voice. His heart leaped. Yalith.

  Then smell followed sound. Not Yalith. Tiglah.

  "Twin?" she repeated.

  "Hello, Tiglah." He did not sound welcoming. He remembered what Dennys had told him about the people in Tiglah's tent. So it was they who were the terrorists. Terrorism was not just a twentieth-century phenomenon. It was evidently part of human nature, and it didn't get wiped out by the flood. There seemed less and less point to the flood.

  "You recognized my voice!" she chortled.

  --No, your smell, you slut, he wanted to say.

  She pushed in through the flap and pegged it back to let in the light. She had taken unusual pains with her hair, so that it glistened brightly. Her loincloth was of white goatskin. "Dennys?" She was tentative.

  "Sandy."

  "Oh, I'm so glad it's you! Dennys doesn't seem to like me, and I think you do, don't you?"

  "Why
would I like anybody who's kidnapped me and tied me up and starved me?"

  "But I didn't do that!"

  "You obviously knew about it."

  "But I didn't do it! My father and brother did. I wouldn't hurt you for anything!"

  "But you don't mind if your father or brother hurt me?"

  "Oh, beloved Sand, I can't stop them! I've come to bring you food and comfort."

  He sniffed. There was a nourishing smell of stew beyond the odor of the tent, as well of Tiglah's perfumed and unwashed body. If they'd already used some kind of poisoned dart on him, was it safe to eat the stew?

  Tiglah said, "I made it myself, so I know it's all right, and it's good, too."

  "I can't eat with my hands tied up."

  She paused. Appeared to be thinking. "I'll feed you!" Her dimples came and went with her lavish smile.

  "No. I'm not a baby. Untie my hands." He did not say please. How could he ever have been attracted by this girl?

  She paused again. "All right. I'll untie your hands and stay with you while you eat."

  "My feet, too," Sandy ordered. "I need to go to the bathroom."

  "What?"

  "I need to urinate."

  "Oh, for auk's sakes. Can't you just do it in the tent?"

  "No. You can come with me if you want. I don't care, but I need to go."

  She knelt by him and began working at the thongs, first on his wrists, then his ankles. When he was freed, he stood up, feeling very wobbly. This tent was not nearly as high as Grandfather Lamech's or Noah's, and he bumped his head on the roof skins.

  She took his hands and rubbed his wrists where the thongs had chafed them.

  "Let's go," he said.

  "Where?"

  "I told you. I need to relieve myself."

  "Come along, then." She pulled him out of the tent and to a small, grassy hummock a few feet away. There was no grove to provide privacy or a modicum of sanitation. "Go ahead."

  "Turn around."

  "You'll run away."

  He looked about. He did not recognize the part of the oasis where this solitary tent was. A few yards away were some palms, and a rocky field dotted with black-and-white goats grazing under the high brassy sky. He had no idea in which direction to go. "I won't run. Turn around."

  "Promise?"

  "I promise." He suspected that his promise meant more than would Tiglah's. When he was through, he said, "All right."

  She whirled around and caught his hand again. "Now come and have some of my good goat-meat stew."

  They ducked back into the tent, and she brought him a wooden bowl full of meat and vegetables. He had learned to eat with his fingers, if not as delicately as Yalith, at least tidily enough so that he did not slop food on himself. Tiglah's concoction was not bad. The goat meat was a little strong, but she had cooked it until it was tender. When he finished, cleaning the bowl with his fingers, he felt better.