“Oh, don’t go, please don’t go!” Tiglah cried. “I’m alone, I promise you.”
Tiglah’s promises meant little. They stood warily by the tent flap, watching her as she approached. But there was nobody with her, neither father and brother, nor nephilim.
“It’s starting to rain,” she said. “We never have rain except in the spring. Did Noah really build this big boat because he thinks there’s going to be more rain than we’ve ever seen before?”
Sandy nodded.
“Anah is my sister. Would there be room for me on the ark?”
“There is not room for Sandy and me,” Dennys said.
“Then what are you going to do?”
“We’re not sure.” Sandy was cautious. “We hope to go home.”
“I don’t like this rain.” Tiglah sniffled. “It’s cold and wet.”
“Rofocale will take care of you,” Sandy said.
“Oh, he will, won’t he! I’d better go find him. It’s very nice to have known you.”
“Thanks for nothing,” Sandy said rudely.
“Ditto,” Dennys echoed.
“You’re not blaming me for my father and brother, are you?”
“Perhaps not for your father and brother,” Sandy said, “but for doing whatever Rofocale tells you, yes.”
“So go to him,” Dennys urged, although he did not have much faith that the nephilim cared enough about any human being to be willing to help unless it was convenient.
“I still think it’s nice to have known you,” Tiglah said.
“I wish I could have known you better. I mean, really known you.”
“Sorry, Tiglah,” Sandy said. “You are a great deal older and a great deal more experienced than we are.”
“I could teach you—”
“No, Tiglah. The timing isn’t right.”
“Goodbye, then,” she said.
“Goodbye,” the twins echoed.
* * *
Japheth came to them. “I’m worried about you.”
Sandy was still looking after Tiglah’s retreating form. “Don’t worry, Jay. We’ll be all right.”
“How?” Japheth demanded. “You know we can’t take you on the ark.”
“We know,” Dennys agreed. He looked up at the clouds, which occasionally let a drop of rain fall. Tried to listen for the hidden stars.
“Can you get home?” Japheth asked. “To wherever you came from?” He, too, looked at the sky, shook his head as though baffled by silence.
“We’re going to try,” Sandy said. “Don’t worry about us. You have enough to do, collecting all the animals and food and fodder and grain and everything.”
Japheth nodded. “Perhaps—”
“Perhaps what?” Sandy asked.
Japheth rubbed his broad hand across his face, wiping away tears. “Oh, twins—” He rushed at them, and they flung their arms about him and the three of them rocked back and forth, holding one another.
* * *
Oholibamah went, just before dawn, to Mahlah’s low white dwelling.
Mahlah was alone, nursing the baby. It was indeed a large baby, drinking greedily, and Mahlah looked pale and fragile, but she crooned over the child while she fed it.
She looked up at Oholibamah and smiled in welcome. “It’s good to see you, Oholi. Come in.”
Oholibamah stood, looking down at Mahlah and the child. “Is Ugiel good to you?”
“He is very good.” There was deep love in Mahlah’s shadowed eyes.
“You’re happy with him? Truly happy, as I am with Japheth?”
“Truly happy. Though Ugiel is Ugiel and Japheth is Japheth.”
“He doesn’t ever hurt you?”
“Never.”
“He takes care of you?”
“Very good care. And he loves our baby.”
“Good,” Oholibamah said. “That’s all I wanted to know.” And she left Mahlah and went back to the tent she shared with Japheth.
* * *
The seraphim were gathered together as dawn suffused the desert with a soft pearly light. The clouds were thickening, and in the trees the birds sang more softly than usual, and the baboons’ chatter was muted.
“It does look possible, I think,” Adnarel said.
Alarid nodded. “We are not bound to this place and time. Two of us should go to the twins’ world and call them back.”
Admael asked, “Does it really need to be unicorns? I would feel safer if I could carry them.”
Adnarel’s eyes widened for a moment, then nearly closed in thought. “I do not think they could take the transition from matter to energy and then back again to matter. Even we find it tiring.”
“But what about the unicorns?” Adnachiel, sometimes a giraffe, asked. “What happens when they go out?”
Adnarel said, “They are only when they are here. Or when they are there. But not in between. It is not quite the same thing as a transfer of matter and energy.”
Alarid nodded. “They have to be observed in order to be.”
“Believed in,” Adnachiel agreed.
“It is a long distance,” Admael said, “both in time and space.”
“It is a risk,” Adnarel agreed, “but one I think we must take.”
“Why are they here at all?” asked Achsah, with wings the same soft gray as his mouse fur.
“Do you think El sent them?” Admael suggested.
Adnarel spoke slowly. “I do not think El sent them. But neither did El prevent their coming.”
“Are they part of the pattern?” Admael asked. “Is it right and proper for them to be here?”
Alarid looked up at the veiled sky. “Perhaps Aariel will have word when he returns from taking Yalith to the Presence. But I think, yes, that they are part of the pattern.”
“The pattern is not set,” Adnarel said. “It is fluid, and constantly changing.”
“But it will be worked out in beauty in the end,” Admael affirmed.
“Then you agree?” Adnarel asked. “We will try to help them to return to their own time and place in the way in which they have suggested?”
“We agree,” affirmed the seraphim.
The air lightened slightly as the hidden sun lifted above the horizon. There was a faint spattering of applause from the baboons, who were confused by the clouds and the occasional drops of rain.
Despite the clouds which obscured the light of the last dim stars, the seraphims’ ears were attuned to the song, although it was far away.
“Let us sing with them,” Alarid suggested.
And the singing of the seraphim joined with the singing of the hidden stars, and the call of the invisible sun.
* * *
Sandy and Dennys slept fitfully. The rain had not really begun in earnest. But there was an occasional patter on the roof skins as a drop fell here, there. The three mammoths were curled into a ball at the foot of the twins’ sleeping skins.
The morning songs of the oasis were softer than usual, but both boys roused from sleep and looked at each other. Nodded.
Quietly, they dressed in their clothes from home. Dennys was without the garments he had discarded after the garbage pit, but he pulled on his sweater and his lined jeans, feeling strange and constrained in clothes. The twins had become used to the freedom of being naked except for loincloths. Their winter clothes were hampering as well as hot.
They were careful not to disturb the sleeping mammoths. They looked across the tent to where Noah and Matred were still asleep. To the place which had been Yalith’s and which was now empty.
Then they tiptoed out.
Adnarel was waiting for them. “It’s best without goodbyes.”
Dennys asked, “But you will say goodbye for us? And to Oholibamah and Japheth? And the others?”
“We will say goodbye,” Adnarel said, and looked toward a clump of palms and palmettos. Admael and Alarid came out of the shadows and moved toward them, followed by Aariel, who had returned from his journey with Yalith.
<
br /> “Now,” Adnarel said, “we will call the unicorns.”
“One more thing.” Sandy held back. “You will take care of the mammoths?”
“We will take care of them. Unicorns!”
With a glimmer of silver, two unicorns solidified before them.
“Now,” Adnarel said.
The two boys mounted the unicorns, sitting astride the silver backs, bathed in light from the horns.
“We leave you now,” Adnarel said, “Admael and I. When we are in your time and place, we will call for the unicorns, and for you.”
“You’ll recognize it when you get there?” Sandy asked anxiously.
“You have given us very good parameters.”
Alarid and Aariel each stood by one of the unicorns. When a drop of rain touched the light of their brilliant horns, it hissed slightly.
The unicorns crossed the oasis and moved onto the desert, Alarid and Aariel running along with them.
When they reached Aariel’s great rock, the two seraphim stopped and looked at the unicorns, then at the twins.
“Are you ready?” Alarid asked.
“Ready,” Dennys said.
Aariel slapped the two silver rumps, and the unicorns took off across white sand and rock. In his golden voice he cried, “Unicorns! Go home!”
Dennys felt a wave of sleep wash over him, as the rain and the unicorns quickened. Sandy, too, felt his mind softly closing. The rain was a curtain of silver.
“Alar—” Sandy murmured.
“Aar—” Dennys started.
The unicorns and the twins flickered like candles and went out.
* * *
Two unicorns in an old stone lab connected to a white clapboard farmhouse were a strange sight. So were two tall, bright-winged seraphim.
The twins looked around. Aside from the unicorns and the seraphim, everything was as usual. Wood still burned brightly in the stove. The smell of stew—of boeuf bourguignon—was fragrant over the Bunsen burner. The odd-looking computer was where it had been when they punched into it.
Adnarel was sitting in their mother’s reading chair, his golden wings drooping behind it. Admael was peering into one of her complex microscopes, hunching his pale blue wings.
“Do you believe in unicorns?” Adnarel’s azure eyes were smiling.
“How was the ride?” Admael, too, smiled, though both seraphim seemed very relieved.
The outside door banged.
Adnarel rose swiftly from the chair. Admael turned from the microscope. The twins stiffened.
Their mother’s voice called, “Twins! Are you home?”
“Oh, oh,” Sandy said. “We’d better get the unicorns out of here.”
“They’ll go as soon as they aren’t believed in,” Adnarel said.
Dennys exclaimed, “But Meg and Charles Wallace believe in unicorns!”
Admael asked, “And in seraphim?”
“And we’re not supposed to be in the lab anyhow, with an experiment in progress.” Sandy looked anxiously at Adnarel.
“Never fear,” the seraph said. “You are all right?”
“Until Mother finds us in here.”
Dennys added, “Looking the way we do, all sunburned.”
“Compared with some of your other problems—” Admael started.
Their mother’s voice called out again. “Twins! Where are you?”
“No farewells,” Adnarel said. He glanced at Admael, then put both strong, long hands on Dennys’s head. Admael followed suit with Sandy. Both boys felt, rather than a sense of pressure, a sense of the tops of their heads lifting, almost as the animal hosts lifted to become seraphim. And then each twin was staring at a normal winter twin, skins not darkened by the desert sun, hair not bleached almost white.
Sandy glanced briefly at Dennys’s still bare feet, started to speak, then stopped as Adnarel held up his hand.
“Many waters—” The seraph reached out and clasped a unicorn horn. The light from the horn flooded back into the seraph’s hand, through his body, his wings, until he was streaming with light. Admael, too, was filled with flowing light.
“Cannot quench—” he seemed to be saying. Light blazed fiercely, blinding the twins. Then the brilliance faded.
Unicorns and seraphim were gone.
Brown-haired, winter-skinned twins stared at each other.
Mrs. Murry opened the door to the lab. Behind her, Meg and Charles Wallace peered in, curiously.
“Sandy. Dennys. What are you doing here? Didn’t you see the sign on the door?” She sounded extremely displeased.
“We didn’t actually see it,” Sandy started.
“We just came to get the Dutch cocoa,” Sandy explained.
“Look,” Meg said, “it’s out here on the floor, by the kitchen door. Lucky it didn’t spill.”
“We were just going to make some,” Sandy said. “Shall we make enough for you three?”
“Please,” their mother said. “It’s turning bitter cold. But, Sandy, Dennys, I beg you, don’t go into the lab when you’re asked not to. I hope you didn’t touch anything you shouldn’t have.”
Sandy said, slowly, “It all depends. But I don’t think we touched anything we shouldn’t have, do you, Dennys?”
“Under the circumstances, no,” Dennys said.
“Why are your feet bare, Den?” Charles Wallace asked.
“Good heavens!” Mrs. Murry exclaimed. “Put something on your feet this second, Dennys Murry, before you catch cold.”
Meg opened the kitchen door, and there was the familiar odor of fresh bread, apples baking in the oven, and warmth, and brightness, and all the reassurance of home.
As they followed the others in, Sandy whispered to Dennys, “I’m very glad the kitchen is all here. But you know what—I’m homesick.”
“We probably always will be, a little,” Dennys agreed.
“Well.” Sandy straightened up. “As soon as we have our birthdays, we can get our driver’s licenses.”
“And about time,” Dennys said. “Now let’s make that cocoa.”
OTHER NOVELS IN THE TIME QUINTET
An Acceptable Time
A Swiftly Tilting Planet
A Wind in the Door
A Wrinkle in Time
An Acceptable
Time
MADELEINE L’ENGLE
Square Fish
An Imprint of Holtzbrinck Publishers
AN ACCEPTABLE TIME
Copyright © 1989 by Crosswicks, Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Square Fish, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
L’Engle, Madeleine.
An acceptable time.
p. cm.
Summary: Polly’s visit to her grandparents in Connecticut becomes an extraordinary experience as she encounters old friends and mysterious strangers and finds herself traveling back in time to play a crucial role in a prehistoric confrontation.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-9437-8
[1. Space and time—Fiction. 2. Time travel—Fiction. 3. Druids
and druidism—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.L5385 Ac 1989
[E]—dc20 89-84882
Originally published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
For
Dana, Bér & Eddie
Ron, Annie & Jake
Chapter One
She walked through an orchard, fallen apples red and cidery on the ground, crossed a stone wall, and wandered on into a small wood. The path was carpeted with leaves, red, orange, gold, giving off a rich, earthy smell. Polly scuffed along, pushing the toes of her running shoes through the lavish brightness. It was her first New England autumn and she was exhilarated by the colors drifting from the trees, dappling her hair with reflected amber and bronze. The sun shone with a
golden haze through a muted blue sky. Leaves whispered to the ground. The air was crisp, but not cold. She hummed with contentment.
The trees were young, most no more than half a century old, with trunks still slender, completely unlike the great Spanish-moss-hung water and live oaks she had left less than a week before. Apples from a wild seedling had dropped onto the path. She picked one up, russet and a bit misshapen. But the fruit was crisp and juicy and she wandered on, eating, and spitting out the seeds.
Now the path led her toward a forest of much older trees, towering maples, spruce, and pine. Reaching above them all was an ancient oak, with large, serrated leaves of a deep bronze color, many still clinging tenaciously to the branches. It was very different from the Southern oaks she was used to, and she had not recognized it as one until she learned her mother and uncles had always called it the “Grandfather Oak.”
“When we first moved here,” her grandmother had explained, “most of the oaks were gone, killed by some disease. But this one survived, and now our land is full of young oaklings, all evidently disease-resistant, thanks to the Grandfather Oak.”
Now she looked at the oak and was startled to see a young man standing in its shadows. He was looking at her with lucid blue eyes which seemed to hold the light of the day. He wore some kind of white garment, and one hand was on the head of a tan dog with large, pricked-up ears, outlined in black. The young man raised his hand in greeting, then turned and walked quickly into the forest. When she reached the great tree, he had disappeared from sight. She had thought he might speak to her, and she was curious.
The wind had risen and played through the pines, sounding almost like the rolling of the breakers on the beach at Benne Seed Island, off the coast of South Carolina, where her parents still were, and which she had left so short a time ago. She turned up the collar of the red anorak she had taken from the generous supply that hung on pegs outside her grandparents’ kitchen door. It was her favorite because it fitted her well and was warm and comfortable, and she liked it because the pockets were full of all kinds of things: a small but very bright flashlight; a pair of scissors; a notepad in a leather binder, with a purple felt pen; an assortment of paper clips, safety pins, rubber bands; a pair of dark glasses; a dog biscuit (for what dog?).
A Wrinkle in Time Quintet Page 77