Daily Book Excerpt: YA/Children’s books
Next book on the shelf is Many Waters
Chronologically, this should be the third book in the Time Quartet – falling in between A Wind in the Door
I LOVE THIS BOOK. I have read it over and over and over. It never palls. There’s magic in it. There’s magic in all of her books – but for whatever reason, this one completely haunts me. Also, it’s one of those books where: every time I read it it feels like a new book. It has new messages for me, new lessons to teach, new themes … things I feel like I missed the first time around. But no, I didn’t miss them. I just wasn’t ready for those particular messages.
Marvelous book. I tormented myself with picking out an excerpt.
Meg, Calvin and Charles Wallace have nothing to do with this book – which makes it stand out from the rest of the quartet. The “stars” of this book are the twins – Sandy and Dennys – the ones in the other books who are practical, “normal”, good students, jocks, good-looking – they don’t worry about echthroi or tesseracts …. They are good kids, but they feel like they are the only regular people in a family full of weirdos. They’re smart, too – they don’t have the tortured genius thing of Meg and Charles Wallace. They read, they absorb what they read, they do well on tests … they’re “average”. I love it that this book is about them – because there’s a point to be made there, a very important point. The Murrys are not your average family – the parents are Nobel prize winning scientists … Meg is awkward, does horribly in school, and yet has some kind of genius. Charles Wallace is 5 years old and could give Einstein a run for his money. The twins in the other books are peripheral …. but if L’Engle had kept it that way she could have been seen to have making a point about worth. Who is worthy to go on these time-traveling adventures? Certainly not AVERAGE people. I’m not saying I picked up on that in the other 3 books – I just know that reading Many Waters is a delight, and one of the reasons it is a delight is because Sandy and Dennys, the so-called “normal” ones – are actually extraordinary people. Deep, smart, willing to learn and grow … They are just as amazing as the rest of their amazing family – it’s just that the two of them have a much better “game face” – They are much more socially acceptable. They play hockey. They get in fights to defend their sister. They gripe about tests and chores. But does that mean that they are not capable of having great lives? I feel like I’m not making the point here …. but for me the book packs a punch because the two heroes are so “normal”. It gives hope to us all. Not all of us are geniuses, or amazing, or weird, or out of the ordinary … But the possibility of greatness and depth reside within us ALL. L’Engle was right to give Sandy and Dennys their moment in the sun.
The book takes no time in set-up. Sandy and Dennys are home alone. They are teenagers. The two of them are connected in a way only twins are. They kind of speak with one voice, they’re totally attuned to one another. They’re home, they’re making an after-school snack, it’s a freezing cold day – the winter is long – they end up going into their parents lab – where Mrs. Murry is in the middle of some kind of experiment. As a joke, Dennys goes over to the computer and types: “TAKE ME SOMEPLACE WARM”. Sandy says, “Hey – we shouldn’t mess with that …” but before anything else can happen – there is a huge sonic BOOM – and the two of them are suddenly standing in the middle of a desert. A blazing hot desert – stretching out on all sides, nothing else in sight. Much confusion and alarm ensues. What did we do? Where are we? How do we reverse what we just did????
They wander about, they think they see palm trees, they are dying of the heat. Eventually, they meet a small (4 foot tall) hairy man – there is much alarm – a clash of civilizations basically – who are these 2 tall pale giants??? Who is this short hairy midget??? One of the twins begins to get ill – from the heat. They end up being taken back to an oasis.
Now – long story short – and as always – describing her plots make them sound hokey – eventually it becomes clear that they have gone back in time. WAY back in time. To the time of Noah. This is revealed very slowly – Sandy and Dennys are both quite ill from the desert heat – one of them almost dies from it and spends a good deal of time healing – but eventually they realize where they are and what the did.
The book, though, really develops all of these characters – characters that we know from the bible. Noah isn’t just the dude in the bible. He’s a kind of cranky crazy father of a large family – a man who gets messages from “El” on a daily basis – who is confused by the messages. He seems like a real person. The women in the story also become real – and they’re barely mentioned in the Bible. We get to know Noah’s daughters – the wives of his sons –
Great changes are coming. There is going to be a clash of some kind – of the old world and the new – of good and evil – .
There are creatures who roamed the earth then – seraphim and nephilim – and to me, this is where L’Engle’s genius comes out. Her descriptions of this race of beings – what they are, what they do, what their argument is with one another – It’s one of the many “ways in” to this book. There will always be those who are in alignment with the light. Meaning: good. And there will always be those who are in alignment with the dark. Meaning: bad. The age-old struggle. The seraphim and nephilim do battle over the humans in their midst – corrupting or enlightening – trying to protect, or trying to bring down … It’s terrifying.
Sandy and Dennys, once they realize what story they are in, become alarmed. They know the end. They try to remember the details of the story from the Bible but they can’t. Both of them become great friends with Yalith – one of Noah’s daughters. She is not mentioned in the Bible. Sandy and Dennys wonder, tormentedly, why not. Why didn’t she “make it’ into the story? What is going to happen to her??
It’s a terrific book. I love it. Just flipping through it this morning made me want to read it again.
Here’s an excerpt where Yalith walks across the oasis … it is night … seraphim and nephilim appear … you get the sense of big frightening changes coming. Yalith is young. She has no eye for the future, but she can feel the transformation approaching.
Why I love this book is in its healing message. But I also love it for the details of the writing. Like how she describes the smell of the nephil’s wings below.
Excerpt from Many Waters
After leaving the grazing grounds around Lamech’s tent, she walked through one of his groves that led her onto the desert of white sand lapping against brown grasses. Wherever there were not enough wells to provide for irrigation, the desert took over. But she preferred walking across the street to the dusty, dirty paths of the oasis. Stars were bright against the velvet black of sky. At her feet, a late beetle hustled to burrow itself under the sand until morning. To her right, high in the trees of Lamech’s groves, the baboons were chittering sleepily.
She looked toward the horizon, and on an outcropping of rock similar to the one the earthquake had made when Sandy and Dennys met Japheth and the mammoth Higgaion, she saw the shadow of a supine form. She looked to make sure it was a lion, then called softly, “Aariel!”
The creature rose slowly, languidly, and then leapt down from the rock and loped toward her, and she saw that she had been deceived in the starlight, for it was not a lion but one of the great desert lizards, called dragons by most people, although its wings were atrophied and it could not fly.
She stood frozen with anxiety on the starlit sand, her hand holding one of the tiny arrows. As the lizard neared her, it rose straight upward to a height of at least six feet, and suddenly arms were outstretched above the head; the tail forked into two legs, and a man came running toward her, a man of extraordinary beauty, with alabaster-white skin and wings of brilliant purple. His long hair was black with purple glints, and his eyes were the color of amethysts.
“You called me, lovely one?” He bent down toward her tenderly, a questioning smile on his lips, which were deeply rosy in his white face.
“No, no,” she stammered. “Not you. I thought — I thought you were Aariel.”
“No. I am Eblis, not Aariel. And you called, and here I am,” his voice soothed, “at your service. Is there anything you want?”
“Oh, no, thank you, no.”
“No baubles for your ears, your lovely little neck?”
“Oh, no, thank you, no,” she repeated. Her sisters would think her stupid for refusing his offer. The nephilim were generous. This nephil could give her everyhthing he had offered and more.
“And all of a sudden you have changed,” he said. “You were a child, and now you are not a child any longer.”
Instinctively, she folded her hands across her breasts, stammering, “B-but, I am a child. I’m not nearly a hundred years old yet …”
He reached out one long, pale hand and softly pushed her starlit hair back from her forehead. “Do not be afraid of growing up. There are many pleasures ahead for you to taste, and I would help you to enjoy them all.”
“You?” She looked, startled, at the glorious creature by her, light shimmering like water from the purple wings.
“I, sweet little one, I, Eblis, of the nephilim.”
No nephil had paid attention to her before. She was too young. Then she saw, in her mind’s eye, the strange young giant in her grandfather’s tent. She was no longer a child. She did not react to the young giant as a child.
“There are many changes to come,” Eblis said, “and you will need help.”
Her eyes widened. “Changes? What kind of changes?”
“People are living too long. El is going to cut the lifespan back. How old is your father?”
“He must be, oh, close to six hundred years. Middle-aged.” She looked at her fingers. Ten. That was really as far as she could count accurately.
“And your Grandfather Lamech?”
“Let’s see. He was very young when he had my father, not quite two hundred years old. He, too, has lived very long. His father, Methuselah, my great-grandfather, lived for nine hundred and sixty-nine years. And his father was Enoch, who walked with El, and lived three hundred and sixty and five years and then El took him –” Involved in the great chronologies of her fathers, she was not prepared for him to unfurl his great wings and gather her in, enveloping her in great swirls of purple touched with brilliance as with stars. She gasped in surprise.
He laughed softly. “Oh, little one, little innocent one, how much you have to learn, about men’s ways, and about El’s ways, which are not men’s ways. Will you let me teach you?”
To be taught by a nephil was an honor she had never expected. She was not sure why she was hesitant. She breathed in the strange odor of his wings, smelling of stone, of the cold, dark winds which came during the few brief weeks of winter.
Enveloped in Eblis’s wings, she did not hear the rhythmic thud as a great lion galloped toward them across the desert, roaring as it neared them. Then both Yalith and Eblis turned and saw the lion rising to its hind legs, as the lizard had done, leaping up into the sky, a great tawny body with creamy wings, gilt-tipped, unfurling and stretching to a vast span. The great amber eyes blazed.
Eblis removed his wings from around Yalith, hunched them behind his back. “Why this untoward interruption, Aariel?”
“I ask you to leave Yalith alone.”
“What’s it to you? The daughters of men mean nothing to the seraphim.” Eblis smiled down at Yalith, stroking his long fingers delicately across her burnished hair.
“No?” Aariel’s voice was low.
“No, seraph. A nephil may go to a daughter of man. A nephil understands pleasure.” He touched a fingertip to Yalith’s lips. “I would teach you, sweeting. I think you would like what I can give you. I will leave you now to Aariel’s tender ministries. But I will see you again.” He turned away from them, toward the desert, and his nephil form dropped into that of the great dragon/lizard. He loped away into the shadows.
Yalith said, “Aariel, I don’t understand. I thought I saw you on the rock. I was sure it was you, and I called, and then it wasn’t you, it was Eblis.”
“The nephilim are masters of mimicry. He wanted you to think it was I. I beg you, little one, be cautious.”
Her eyes were troubled. “He was very kind to me.”
Aariel put his hand under her chin and looked into her eyes, clear and still childlike. “Who would not be kind to you? Are you on your way somewhere?”
“Home. I took Grandfather Lamech his night-light. But, oh, Aariel, there is a strange young giant in Grandfather Lamech’s tent. Japheth carried him there. He has a terrible sunburn. He can’t be from anywhere around here. He says he is not a giant, and I have never seen anyone like him. He is as tall as you are, and his body is not hairy, it is smooth like yours, like the nephilim, and his skin, where it wasn’t burned red, was pale. Not white, like the skin of the nephilim, but pale and tender, like a baby’s.”
“You seem to have observed him carefully,” Aariel said.
“There’s never been anyone like him on the oasis before.” She flushed, turned slightly away.
Aariel asked, “What is being done for his burn? Does he have fever?”
“Yes. Higgaion is keeping him sprayed with cool water, and they are going to ask a seraph what to do for him.”
“Adnarel?”
“Yes. The scarab beetle.”
“Good.”
“He is not one of you, this young giant, and he is not one of the nephilim. Their skin burns white and whiter in the sun, like white ash when the fire has burned fiercely in the winter weeks.”
The creamy wings trembled, the golden tips shimmering in the starlight. “If his skin burns, he is not of the nephilim.”
“Nor of you.”
“Does he have wings?”
“No. In that, he is like a human. He seemed very young, though he is as long as you, and thin.”
“Did you observe his eyes?”
She did not notice the twinkle in his own. “Grey. Nice eyes, Aariel. Steady. Not burning, like — not giving out light, like yours. More like human eyes, mine, and my parents’ and brothers’ and sisters’.”
Aariel touched her gently on the shoulder. “Go on home, child. Do not fear to cross the oasis. I will see that you are not harmed.”
“You and Eblis. Thank you.” Like a child, she held her face up for a kiss, and Aariel leaned down and pressed his lips gently against hers. “You will not be a child much longer.”
“I know …”
He touched her lips again, lightly, and a moment later a large lion was running lightly across the desert.
