"Madeline L' Engle - Time Quartet 04 - Many Waters" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Engle Madeleine)

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 reeth. 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

35 -B^s Pelican m the wilderness

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, lotter-
ing, to his full height and took a step toward the monster.
. "Giant!" the man's head screeched. "Giant!" And scor-
pion's tail, lion's body, and man's head backed out of the
tent, so that the flap snapped back into place.