A Wrinkle in Time Quintet (71 page)

Alarid dropped to one knee, so that he no longer towered over her. “Yes, we are still brothers, though we have chosen very different ways.”

“And you’re sure yours is the better way?” There was scorn in Mahlah’s voice.

Alarid shook his head sadly. “We do not judge. The seraphim have chosen to stay close to the Presence.”

“But you’re too close to be able to see
it! The nephilim have distance and objectivity.” He looked at her, and her glance wavered for a moment. “Yes. Ugiel told me that.”

Alarid rose slowly to his full height. With one silver wing he drew her briefly to him, and she smelled starlight. Then he let her go. “You will not forget us?”

“How could I forget you!” she exclaimed. “You have been my friend since Yalith took me out to greet the
dawn and I met you and Aariel.”

“You have not greeted the dawn lately.”

“Oh—I am learning about the night.”

Alarid bent down and kissed the top of her dark head. Then he walked slowly across the desert. Tears fell silently onto the sand.

Mahlah looked down. When she raised her head, she saw a pelican flying up, up, to be lost among the stars.

*   *   *

Yalith hurried into her family tent.
“Mahlah is betrothed to one of the nephilim!”

No one heeded her. Her parents, brothers, and sisters-in-law were lying around on goatskins, eating, and drinking wine her father had made from the early grapes. Several stone lamps lit the tent with a warm glow; too warm, Yalith thought. Almost no breeze came through the open tent flap, or the roof hole. The moon was descending, and only stars were
visible. She looked around for Japheth, her favorite brother, but did not see him. Probably he was still out looking for the brother of the young giant in her grandfather’s tent.

Her mother was stirring something in a wooden bowl, intent on what she was doing. A mammoth, well fed, with lustrous long hair on its flanks, lay sleeping at her feet.

Someone had been sick, probably Ham, who had a
weak stomach, and the smell of Ham’s sickness mingled with the smell of wine, of meat from the stewpot, of the skins of the tent. Yalith was accustomed to all these odors, and noticed only that Ham was lying back on a pile of skins, looking pale. Ham was, in any event, the lightest-skinned in the family, and the smallest, having been, according to Matred, born a full moon early. Anah, his red-haired
wife, knelt by him, offering him wine. Languidly he pushed it away, then pulled Anah down to him, kissing her full, sensual mouth.

Yalith went up to Matred, her mother. Repeated: “Mahlah is betrothed.”

Matred looked up briefly. “She’s not old enough.”

“Oh, Mother, of course she is. And she is.”

“Old enough?” Matred was preoccupied with what she was doing.

“Betrothed.”

“Who is it this time?”

“It’s not one of us. It’s one of the nephilim.”

Matred shivered, but went on stirring, without focus. “Mahlah has changed. She is no longer my merry little girl who was satisfied to see a butterfly, or a drop of dew on a spider’s web. She is no longer satisfied to be with us in the home tent.” A tear dropped into the bowl.

Yalith patted her mother’s arm. “She’s grown up, Mother.”

“So have you.
But you don’t go chasing about the oasis at night. You don’t run after nephilim.”

“Maybe the nephil ran after her?”

“She’s pretty enough. But it is not right for me to hear something like this at secondhand. That is not how things are done. That is not how my daughter behaves.”

“I’m sorry,” Yalith said uncomfortably. “I was walking home from Grandfather Lamech’s, and I saw them, Mahlah and
a nephil. His name is Ugiel. He asked me to tell you, so that you would not be worried.”

“Worried!” Matred exclaimed. “Just don’t tell your father, that’s all. What’s to prevent this Ugh—”

“Ugiel.”

“This nephil from coming himself, with Mahlah, to tell me and your father, according to the custom.”

Yalith frowned worriedly. “He said that times are changing.” Eblis had said that, too. She felt
a jolt of insecurity in the pit of her stomach. She did not tell her mother about Eblis.

Matred put down her wooden spoon with a bang. “There are many who think it an honor to be noticed by a nephil and accept their ways. Anah”—Matred looked across at her son Ham’s wife, redheaded, still luscious, but beginning to be overblown—“Anah tells me that her younger sister, Tiglah, is being singled out
by a nephil for marriage. Anah is thrilled.”

“But you’re not.”

“Tiglah is not my daughter. Mahlah is.” Matred turned away. “Child, I am not star-dazzled by the nephilim. They are very different from us.”

“They are beautiful—”

“Beautiful, yes. But they will make changes, and not all changes are good.”

—I don’t want things to change, Yalith thought. And then, in her mind’s eye, she saw again
the young giant who had bowed to her in Grandfather Lamech’s tent, and who was unlike anybody she had ever seen.

Matred continued: “Change is, I suppose, inevitable, and sometimes it brings good things.” She looked across the tent to her oldest son, Shem, who was sitting with his wife, Elisheba, eating some of the grapes from the vineyard which were not pressed for wine but kept for the table.
Shem was pulling one grape at a time from the bunch, and throwing it to Elisheba. She would catch each grape in her open mouth and they would both laugh with pleasure at this simple, sensual game. It seemed amazingly young and romantic for this stocky, solid couple. “Elisheba is a great help to me. And then, Japheth’s wife—”

Yalith looked to where a young woman with softly curling black hair
against creamy skin was scouring a wooden bowl with sand. The young woman looked up and waved in greeting.

Matred said, “She comes to us from another oasis, and with a strange name.”

“O-holi-bamah.” Yalith sounded it out.

“Look at her,” Matred commanded.

Yalith looked again at her sister-in-law. Oholibamah was fairer of complexion than Yalith or the other women, even fairer than Ham. Her hair
and brows were blacker than the night sky, a rippling, purply black. When Oholibamah stood, she was nearly a head taller than the other women. And beautiful. She always seemed lit by moonlight, Yalith thought. “What about her?” she asked her mother.

“Look at her, child. Look at her.”

Yalith was shocked. “You mean you think she—”

Matred shrugged slightly. “She is the youngest daughter of a very
old man.” She held up the fingers of both hands. “More than ten years younger than her brothers and sisters. I love Oholibamah as though she were my own. And if Oholibamah was indeed sired by a nephil, then great good has been brought into our lives.”

Yalith looked at Oholibamah as though seeing her for the first time. After Yalith and Mahlah, Oholibamah was the youngest woman in the tent, younger
by several years than Elisheba, Shem’s wife, or Anah, Ham’s wife. All three of Yalith’s brothers had married at unusually young ages, and all three had grumbled at having to take on domestic duties so soon. Shem had protested, “But we are too young to marry. I’m the oldest, and I’ve barely reached my first hundred years.”

His father had replied, “There is a certain urgency, my son.”

“Why? And
how will you find wives for us when we are so young?”

“You are fine-looking men,” the patriarch assured him.

Ham had joined in. “But why the rush, Father? What is this urgency you speak of?”

The patriarch pulled at his long beard, which was beginning to show white. “Yesterday, when I was working in the vineyard, the Voice spoke to me. El told me that I must find wives for you.”

“But why?”
Ham protested. “We’re young, and we need time.”

“There are changes, great changes coming,” the patriarch said.

“Is the volcano going to erupt?” Shem asked.

“If the volcano erupts,” Ham said, “wives won’t do us any good.”

Their father told them only that the word of El had come to him in the vineyard, and that El had given no explanation.

Elisheba and Anah were easily found for Shem and Ham.
The patriarch had a reputation as an honest man. He had the largest and best vineyards on the oasis, and fine flocks of goats and sheep. The fame of his wine had spread to many other oases round about. Matred was a woman of unquestionable virtue and beauty, and her girth attested to her skills as a cook. It was a privilege to marry into her tent.

Japheth was young enough so that no one stepped
forward. His face was still smooth and beardless. His body hair was no more than soft down. His eyes were friendly and guileless. But he was on the threshold of manhood. His father went off on his camel one day, and came back with Oholibamah.

Japheth had been at the well, getting water for the animals, when he saw a young girl on a white camel, a young girl of fair complexion, with dark hair
tumbling richly against her ivory shoulders. His eyes met Oholibamah’s eyes, dark as the night sky between stars, and his knees became fluid. She slid off the white camel’s back and came toward him, slender hands outstretched. Their love was a bright flower, youthful, and radiantly beautiful.

Oholibamah. O-holy-bamah. A name as strange as her moonlit beauty. But soon it flowed easily from their
lips.

Oholibamah was Yalith’s first real friend. They were not far apart in age, both of them barely out of childhood and into womanhood. They were alike, too, in their unlikeness to the others. They saw and rejoiced in what most people of the oasis never noticed. Both liked to leave the tent at first dawn to watch and wait for the sun to rise over the desert, delighting in the calling of the
stars just before daylight. It was during one of her dawn walks that Yalith had met the great lion who was the seraph Aariel, and on another walk, when she had persuaded Mahlah to join her, that she had introduced Aariel and Alarid the pelican to her sister. But once Oholibamah came, Mahlah preferred to sleep in the morning.

So Yalith and her youngest sister-in-law would slip out quietly. When
the great red disk of day pulled above the white sand, and the stars dimmed and their songs faded out, scarab beetles who had slept under the sand during the hours of the dark came scuttling up into the light. At the edge of the oasis, the baboons leapt from the trees, clapping their hands and shrieking for joy at the rising of the sun. Behind them on the oasis the cocks crowed, and in the desert
the lions roared their early-morning roar before retreating to their caves to sleep during the heat of the day. Yalith and Oholibamah shared a silent and joyful companionship.

Now, in the warm and noisy tent, Oholibamah beckoned to Yalith. “Have you eaten?”

“No.” Yalith shook her head. “I meant to eat with Grandfather, but I forgot all about food because there was a strange young—”

Ham interrupted
her, calling out from the pile of skins on which he was reclining. “I have a headache, Oholi. I need you.”

Oholibamah said sharply, “Let Anah rub your head. She is your wife.”

“Her fingers do not have the touch that yours do.” And, indeed, Oholibamah had a reputation for having healing in her fingers.

She was still sharp. “If you don’t want a headache, don’t eat and drink too much.” She turned
away and went to the cook pot, ladled some stew into a wooden bowl, and handed it to Yalith. The mammoth left Matred and came and nudged Yalith’s knee.

“No, Selah,” Yalith scolded. “You know I won’t give you anything more to eat. You’re getting fat.” She deftly picked pieces of meat and vegetable from the bowl and ate them, then raised it to her lips to drink the broth. It tasted wonderful, and
she realized that she was very hungry.

Beside her, Oholibamah sighed.

“What’s the matter?” Yalith asked.

The mammoth moved to the older girl, who scratched its grey head. “I was walking through the town this morning. We needed some provisions. One of the nephilim came out of one of the bathhouses, smelling of oil and spices, and stood in my path.” She paused.

“And?” Yalith prodded.

“He said
that I was one of them, one of their daughters.”

Yalith glanced at her mother, then back at Oholibamah. Thought of Eblis and his glorious purple wings. “Would that be so terrible?”

“It is absurd. I love my parents. I love my father.”

Yalith had never seen Oholibamah’s parents. And how would she herself feel if someone suggested that her father was not, in fact, her father? But now that Matred
had put the thought in her mind, it was easy to believe that Oholibamah had been sired by a nephil. She had gifts of healing. Ham was right about that. Her voice when she sang was beautiful as a bird’s. She saw things no one else saw.

But then, Yalith reminded herself, she, too, was different, the seventh child of her parents, and she knew quite well who her parents were, and that they had been
disappointed when they had had a fourth daughter instead of a fourth son.

“Did you hear me saying that Mahlah is betrothed to a nephil?” she asked Oholibamah.

“Yes, I heard. Mahlah likes pretty things. The wives of the nephilim live in houses of stone and clay, not in tents. I’m sure Mahlah feels proud to have been chosen.”

“What do you think about it?” Yalith asked.

“I’m not sure. I’m not
sure what I think about the nephilim. Especially if—” She broke off.

“And the seraphim?” Yalith asked.

“I’m not sure what I think about them, either.” Oholibamah pressed her fingers against her ears as Ham started to shout.

For a small man, he had a powerful voice. “Selah, come here! If Oholibamah won’t help me, then I need a unicorn!”

Anah said crossly, “You know a unicorn can’t come near
you.”

“It doesn’t have to come near,” Ham grunted. “They can cast their light from any distance. It’s only the light I need.”

Anah muttered, “You need more than that.”

“Yalith! You can call a unicorn. Or Selah! Call me a unicorn!”

A sudden flash of light made them all blink. It was as though lightning had somehow managed to get inside the heavy hides of the tent, perhaps flashing down through
the roof hole.

“Get away!” Ham cried. “Who are you!”