Many Waters Part 3

"Get up on them before they decide they aren't needed," j.a.pheth ordered.

The twins climbed each onto the back of one of the silver creatures, both feeling that this was a dream from which they could not wake up. But, without the unicorns, they would never make it to the oasis.

The unicorns flew across the desert, their hooves barely touching the surface. Occasionally, where the sand had been blown clear and there was rock, a silver hoof struck with a clang like a bell, and sparks flew upward. Small desert creatures watched them fly by. Sandy noticed, but did not mention, some scattered bones bleached by sun and wind.

"Hold on!" j.a.pheth cried in warning. "Don't fall off!"

But there was a sense, in riding the unicorns, of unreality. If this was no stranger than their mother's world of particle physics, it was at least equally as strange.

"Hold onl" j.a.pheth shouted again.

But Dennys felt himself sliding off the smooth flanks. He tried to grasp the mane, but it sifted through his fingers like sand. Was the unicorn becoming less real, or was the still-blazing sun affecting him?

"Dennys! Don't fall off!" Sandy shouted.

But Dennys felt himself slipping. He did not know whether it was himself or the unicorn who kept flickering in and out of being.

Then he felt something solid. Sandy on his unicorn pressing against him. Sandy's strong arms shoving him back onto the unicorn, the virtual particle suddenly real, not just something in the lab. His head hurt.

j.a.pheth and the mammoth were running beside them, amazingly swift for such small creatures- "Hurry," j.a.pheth urged the unicorns. "Hurry."

Sandy, his flannel s.h.i.+rt still draped over his head, was hardly aware that he was supporting his brother. His arms felt as fluid as water. He was breathing in great searing gulps which burned his throat. His head began to swell, to be filled with hot air like a balloon, so that he was afraid he was going to float off into the sky.

The mammoth pa.s.sed j.a.pheth and the unicorns, leading the way to the oasis, so that his stocky legs were no more than a blur of motion, like hummingbirds' wings. Occasionally he would raise his trunk and make a trumpeting noise, urging the unicorns along. j.a.pheth ran along side, beginning to breathe, open-mouthed, with effort.

But they were not fast enough for Dennys, who was slipping into unconsciousness, and as the world blackened before his eyes, his unicorn's horn became dim and the silver creature began to dissolve as Dennys lost sight and hearing and thought. And Dennys flickered in and out of being with his mount.

Sandy, barely holding on to consciousness, was not aware that the arm he had held Dennys with was now holding nothing. He felt himself drop to the ground. He did not land on searing sand but on soft green. His burning body was shaded and cooled by the great fans of a palm tree.

His unicorn had made it to the oasis.

2 Pelican in the Wilderness Sandy slid slowly into consciousness, eyes tightly closed. No alarm clock jangling, so it must be Sat.u.r.day. He listened to hear it Dennys was stirring in the upper bunk. Felt something cool and wet sprayed across his body. It felt good. He did not want to wake up. On Sat.u.r.day they had heavy ch.o.r.es. They washed the floor of their mother's lab, or the bathrooms. If it was snowing again, there would be snow to shovel.

"Sand-"

He did not recognize the odd, slightly foreign voice. He did not recognize the smell that surrounded him, pungent and gamy. Again his body was sprayed with cool wetness.

"Sand'"

Slowly, he opened his eyes. In the light which came from directly above him, he saw two brown faces peering anxiously into his. One face was young, barely covered with deep amber down. The other face was crisscrossed with countless wrinkles, a face with ancient, leathered skin and a long beard of curling white.

Unwilling to believe that he was not waking from a dream, he reached up to touch Dennys's mattress above him. Nothing. He opened his eyes more widely He was in a tent, a sizable tent made of goatskins, judging by the smell. Light came in from the roof hole, a rosy, sunset light. A funny little animal crossed the tent to him and sprayed his body with water, and he realized that he was hot with sunburn. The animal was bringing water from a large clay pot and cooling him with it.

"Sand?" the young man asked again. "Are you awake?"

"Jay?" He struggled to sit up, and his burned skin was scratched by the skins on which he was lying.

"Sand, are you all right?" j.a.pheth's voice trembled with anxiety.

"I'm okay. Just sunburned."

The old man put his hand against Sandy's forehead. "You have much fever. The sun-sickness is hard on those unaccustomed to the desert. Are you from beyond the mountains?"

Sandy looked at the ancient man, who was even smaller than j.a.pheth but had the same brightly blue eyes, startling against the sun-darkened skin. Sandy touched his forehead as j.a.pheth had done. "I'm Sandy."

"Sand. Yes. j.a.pheth has told me." The old man touched his forehead, tipped with softly curling white hair. "Lamech. Grandfather Lamech. j.a.pheth carried you to my tent."

Sandy looked around in alarm. "But Dennys-where's Dennys?" He was now fully awake, aware that he was not in the bunk bed at home but in this strange desert place which might be on any planet in any solar system in any galaxy anywhere in the universe. He shuddered. "Dennys?"

"He went out with the unicorn."

"What!"

"Sand," j.a.pheth explained patiently, "Dennys must have fainted. I told you about unicorns. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. When Den fainted, the unicorn went out, and took Den with him."

"But we've got to find him, bring him back!" Sandy tried to struggle to his feet.

Grandfather Lamech pushed him back down onto the skins with amazing strength for so small a person. "Hush, Sand. Do not worry. Your brother will be all right."

"But-"

"Unicorns are very responsible," Lamech explained.

"But-"

"It is true that they are unreliable in that we cannot rely on them to be, but they are very responsible."

"You're crazy," Sandy said.

"Hush, Sand," Grandfather Lamech repeated. "We do not know where the unicorns go when they go out, but when somebody calls the unicorn again and it appears, Den will appear, too."

"You're sure?"

"Yes. I am sure," the old man said, and for a moment Sandy relaxed at the authority in his voice.

Then: "Well, call a unicorn, call him now!"

The old man and j.a.pheth looked at Higgaion. Higgaion raised his trunk toward the roof hole of the tent. The rosy glow had faded, and the old man and j.a.pheth and Higgaion were barely visible shadows in the tent. There was a sudden fiash, and Sandy could see the s.h.i.+mmering silver body of a unicorn. But no Dennys.

"Dennys!" he cried.

And heard j.a.pheth echo, "Den!"

Higgaion appeared to be consulting with the unicorn. Then he looked toward j.a.pheth and the old man. Trumpeted.

There was another flash of light, and then a faint glimmering and the unicorn was gone.

Grandfather Lamech said, "It would appear that someone has already called the unicorn on which the Den was riding."

Sandy jumped to his feet, but was so weak that he sank back onto the skins. "But he could be anywhere, anywhere!" he cried wildly.

"Hush," the old man repeated. "He is on the oasis. We will find him."

"How?" Sandy's voice was a frightened small boy's squeak.

j.a.pheth said, "I will look for him. When I find him, I will bring him to you."

"Oh, Jay-I want to come with you."

"No." Grandfather Lamech was firm. "You have the sun-sickness. You must stay here until you are well." He looked up at the roof hole. The fading sunset was gone, and the moon, not full, but beaming bright, shone down on them. The old man touched Sandy's arm, his thigh. "Tomorrow you will be all blisters."

Sandy's head felt strangely buzzing and he knew that it was from fever and that Grandfather Lamech was right.

"But Dennys-"

"I will find him and bring him to you," j.a.pheth promised.

"Oh, Jay, thank you."

The young man turned to his grandfather. "One of the women-my wife, or one of my sisters-will bring you a night-light. Grandfather."

The old man looked at the moonlight which brightened the tent. "Thank you, my dear grandson. My grand-children are kind to me, so kind . . ." His voice faltered. "My son . . ."

j.a.pheth sounded embarra.s.sed. "You know I can't do anything with Father. I don't even tell him when I've come to your tent."

"Better that way." The old man was sorrowful. "Better that way. But one day-"

"Of course, Grandfather. Oneway. I'll be back with the Den as soon as I can." He pushed out of the tent. and the flap slapped closed behind him.

Higgaion dribbled cool water from the jar onto the cloth on Sandy's burning forehead.

"Giant"-the little old man leaned over him-"where do you come from?"

"I'm not a giant," Sandy said. "Really. I'm just a boy. Dennys and I are still growing, but we're not giants, we're just ordinary tall."

The old grandfather shook his head. "In our country you are giants. Can you tell me where you come from?"

"Home." Sandy felt hot and feverish. Home might be galaxies away. "New England. The United States. Planet Earth."

The wrinkles in the old man's forehead crisscrossed each other as he frowned. "You don't come from around here. Nor from Nod. The people there are no taller than we are." He put his hand on Sandy's forehead. The hand felt cool, and dry as an autumn leaf crumbling to dust. "Your fever will go down, but you must stay here, in my tent, out of the sun, until the burning is healed. I will ask one of the seraphim to come tend to you. Seraphim do not burn in the sun. They are better healers than I." Sandy relaxed into Grandfather Lamech's kindness.

The mammoth started toward the water jar, then dropped to its haunches, whimpering in terror, as some-thing screeched past the tent like an out-of-control jet plane. But on this planet, wherever it was, there were no planes.

The old man leaped to his feet with amazing agility and grabbed a wooden staff.

The hideous screech, not bird, not human, came again, closer, and then the tent flap was pushed aside and a large face peered in. It was the largest face Sandy had ever seen, a man's face with filthy hair and a matted beard, tangled eyebrows over small, suspicious eyes, and a bulbous nose. From the mat of hair came two horns, curved downward, with sharp points like boar's teeth. The mouth opened and shouted, "Hungry!"

The rest of the creature pushed into the tent. The head did not belong to a man's body but to a lion's, and as it came all the way into the tent. Sandy saw that the lion did not have a lion's tail but a scorpion's. Sandy was terrified.

The old man beat at it futilely with his staff. The man / lion / scorpion knocked the staff out of his hand and sent him flying across the tent. Grandfather Lamech fell onto a pile of skins. The mammoth lay flat on the skins by Sandy, trembling.

"Hungry!" The roar made the skins of the tent tremble.

Instinctively, Sandy thrust the mammoth behind him and, exerting the last remnant of his strength, rose, tottering, to his full height and took a step toward the monster. . "Giant!" the man's head screeched. "Giant!" And scorpion's tail, lion's body, and man's head backed out of the tent, so that the flap snapped back into place.

The old man pulled himself out of the corner where he had been flung. "Ridiculous manticore," he grumbled, "wanting to eat my mammoth."

Higgaion got unsteadily to his feet, raised his trunk, and trumpeted, but it was more of a whiffle than a call of triumph. He rubbed up against Sandy.

The old man retrieved his staff. "Thank you. You saved my mammoth from being eaten."

"I didn't do anything." Sandy's legs crumpled under him as he fell back onto the skins. "It's the first time I've ever scared anybody, just by being tall and sunburned."

"A gentle giant," the old man said.

Sandy felt too weak to contradict him. "Anyhow, the manticore is a mythical beast."

Grandfather Lamech shook his head. "I don't know what you mean."

"Things like manticores are mythical," Sandy stated. "They aren't supposed to be real."

Grandfather Lamech's smile crinkled. "You will have to ask the seraphim to explain. In this time many things are real, you see." He looked around. "Where's the scarab beetle?"

The mammoth, too, looked around, but they both stopped, and the old man's face lit up as a soft scratching was heard on the outside of the tent flap. It was obviously some kind of signal, because he called out gladly, "Come in, Granddaughter-" Then he turned courteously to Sandy. "Yalith, my youngest granddaughter."

The tent flap opened enough to let a girl through, a girl about the size of the old man. barely four feet tall. She carried a shallow stone bowl which contained oil and a softly burning wick. By its light, which was brighter than the moonlight, which had moved beyond the roof hole, Sandy could see that the girl, who wore only a loincloth, like j.a.pheth and Grandfather Lemech, was gently curved, with small rosy b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her skin was the color of a ripe apricot. Her softly curling hair was a deep bronze, which glimmered in the lamplight and fell against tier shoulders. She looked. Sandy thought, about his age, and suddenly his burning skin was not as painful as it had been, and he felt energy returning to his limbs. He got to his knees and stood to greet her, bowing clumsily.

She saw him and almost dropped the stone lamp. "A giant!"

The mammoth reached up with his trunk to Sandy, and Grandfather Lamech said, "He says that he is not a giant, dear Yalith. j.a.pheth carried him here, and they tell me that there is another one just like him, but he went out with a unicorn. j.a.pheth is looking for him. This one"-he beamed at Sandy-"appears to be human, and he just saved Higgaion from the manticore."

Yalith shuddered. "I heard it screeching and going off with a rat." She put her stone lamp on a wooden keg. "I've brought your night-light, Grandfather Lamech."

"Thank you, my dear." There was a deep tenderness in the old man's voice.

Sandy bowed again. "h.e.l.lo. My name's Sandy Murry."

He could not keep a foolish grin off his face.

She looked at him dubiously, backing away slightly. "You do not speak like one of us. Are you sure you're not a giant?"

"I'm a boy. I'm sorry I look so awful. I have a fierce sunburn."

Now she looked at him without flinching. "Oh, yes, you do. How do we help you?"

Higgaion dipped his trunk into the water pot again and showered Sandy with it.

Grandfather Lamech said, "Higgaion is keeping his skin wet. But I think we ought to get one of the seraphim to look at him."