Eve: A Novel (3 page)

“All right then, easy does it.” The man’s tone, meant to be soothing and reassuring, only stirred her nausea. “I imagine you’re extremely confused right now. You must have a million questions. If you don’t, I do. And don’t try to talk,” he quickly added. “None
of that will work yet, but they tell me it will soon.

“If you’re able to understand what I am saying,” John continued, “please open your eyes and blink once for yes and twice for no.”

She blinked once.

“Ah, just to be sure, that was single blink, for yes, yes? Not some random response and unfortunate timing on my part? Again, one blink for yes, and two for no.”

A tinge of anger tempted her to pretend to be unconscious. She resented her captivity and his commands. Still, she obeyed.

Blink.

“Excellent.” He sounded genuinely pleased. “Good. Wouldn’t want to keep babbling just to hear the sound of my own voice. Hmm?”

Momentarily perplexed, she decided to blink twice. Was he asking a question?

“So sorry!” he apologized. “This is our first attempt at an actual conversation, and I must do better. What if I ask ‘yes’ or ‘no’ at the end of any real question? Would that help? Yes or no?”

She blinked.

“Good! Then let me start with some basic introductions. My name is John and you are being cared for in my home, which most refer to as the Refuge. And also in the room at this moment is the feisty and diminutive Letty . . .”

“He means short, dearie,” came the shrill female voice from somewhere lower than the level of the bed. The unexpected presence of a woman in the room was comforting.

“I’m
short and older than him, and he is envious of both,” she chortled. “And dearie, in case you are concerned, you are completely gowned and covered, and others of us women have been watching over you. Though you have nothing to fear from John.”

Through her distorted vision she saw the man smile toward the voice. “Letty, I could get a stool for you to stand on so she could see you.”

“There is no need for that just yet, John. I dropped by to check on your charge and let you know that three strangers have arrived in our community, Scholars from the look of them, and from a very great distance. They want to speak to you and her. That’s all.” The humming resumed, confirming Letty was its source.

The man returned his attention to the girl. “Do you know your name, yes or no?”

Blink. Blink.

“No? Hmm, then I must assume that you don’t know where you’re from either, or even
when
you’re from. Not a question, simply an observation.” She closed her eyes, uninterested. She wanted him to leave. She wanted to sleep.

“Do you have any memory at all of how you came to be here, yes or no?”

Blink. Blink.

For the next quarter hour or so, he asked questions. But the communication was entirely one-sided, and the incessant demands that she answer became frustrating and tiring.

No, she didn’t remember where she came from, or her family. She did know she was human and a female, questions she thought peculiar.

Yes, she hurt.

That was true—her head was pounding out the rhythm of her heartbeat—but no, she couldn’t wriggle her toes or move her feet, or feel them when he tapped. She could raise her eyebrows and furrow her forehead and blink, but no other movement seemed possible.

Again, she felt panic rise as the throbbing in her head increased its pace, but he immediately explained the reason for her paralysis. Specific healing herbs and medicines had been administered because her initial recovery required complete immobilization. This eased her alarm but raised additional questions, which she could not ask.

As the man talked, he moved about tinkering with or clanging this or that, business that she could only hear and imagine. Finally, he stopped asking questions and began giving her information.

John referred to himself as a Collector. As a Collector, John amassed things delivered by offshore currents onto rock-strewn beaches near his home. She had been in the Refuge recuperating for months.

“Washed up” was how John described her, on the shores of an “island” between worlds, a victim of what he called a tragedy—some event both terrible and destructive. Along with her had come wreckage: a chaos of metal, paper, toys and wood, artifacts, and other detritus of her civilization and time. It had all been boxed and placed in another storage room somewhere nearby. When her strength returned, she could rummage through it.

“I didn’t mean to discover you,” John said. “After all, I’m a simple Collector, not a Finder.”

Apparently Finders would always be mystically entangled with whatever it was they found. From the way John spoke of it, such a law was authoritative throughout the universe.

The girl didn’t like the sound of that. Entangled with a man? Anxiety stirred within her like an agitated wolf.

He carried on for the better part of an hour explaining this, then apologized profusely for another quarter hour because his rant made it seem that her situation, and his as a result, was entirely her fault.

This was mean, she thought, inflicting pain as cruel as her physical injuries.

But it wasn’t long before the singsong rhythm of his words along with the quiet background humming caused her to drift. She couldn’t keep a grip on what he said, nor did she want to. She gave herself to the current, hoping for inky blackness and freedom from expectations.

Her hope was in vain.

A
pproaching the surface of the Earth, the girl floated down onto a
small, barren hill. It stood at the edge of a rolling flatland peppered by groves of trees that gathered into forests. Beyond these in the purple distance stood row upon row of larger hills, and behind these, the jagged teeth of a mountain range.

This grandeur she barely noticed, her attention drawn to and then riveted by what was behind her. Turning, she gasped and instinctively took a step backward. A titanic storm of undulating energy and water rose above a plateau. The barrier stretched from side to side and from ground to sky as far and high as her sight allowed. It pulsed like a living thing. Light and heat radiated into every cell of her body.

“It never ceases to mystify and enthrall me,” said a voice next to her. Barely able to tear her gaze from the wall, the girl glanced at the tall, fine-boned woman beside her.

“You’re the one who calls yourself Mother,” she said. “You’re not my mother.”

The presence of this woman was more substantial and captivating than even the stormy barrier. She stood with noble bearing, more striking and beautiful than the girl had first noticed, with high cheekbones announcing piercing dark-brown eyes flecked with gold, and white hair tightly braided with ends cascading like small rivulets to her shoulders. Her shimmering robes, regal and colorful, flowed as if teased by every thought or gesture.

The woman smiled and leaned forward until their foreheads touched.

“Yes, I am your mother, Lilly,” she whispered.

“Lilly?” The name stunned the girl, but she knew instantly it was hers. “My name is Lilly? Oh my God, I remember. My name is Lilly Fields!”

Just as quickly she realized what else the woman had said. “And you’re my mother? How can you be my mother? You’re . . .”

“Black?” She laughed so cleanly and joyfully that Lilly couldn’t help but join her, though still completely perplexed. “Dear one, how beautiful is black, which includes and keeps all color?”

“I still don’t know who you are. What’s your name?”

“Eve!”

“You’re Eve? The Adam-and-Eve Eve?”

“Yes, my child. Eve, the Mother of the Living! Lilly, where do you think we are?”

“I don’t know,” Lilly stammered. “Lost in some dream or drug hallucination or some kind of catastrophic mental illness?” She hesitated and then blurted, “Am I going crazy?”

Lilly lowered her head and looked toward the ground as if it might help her collect scattered thoughts. Surprised, she realized she also wore a sheer garment of flowing, prismatic light, perfect and pure and protective. Though Lilly instantly felt the familiar threat of being exposed, she was also surprised by a foreign sense of safety. This contradiction could not be true.

“Well, if you really knew me,” she mumbled, eyes downcast, “you’d know I don’t belong here.”

“Dear one,” Eve said, “can you ever say you truly know yourself?” Then suddenly the woman’s tone changed, her words both declaration and command. “I sense the presence of an accusation. Show yourself to me!”

As she spoke, Lilly heard a rustling in the brush, from which emerged the swaying head of a sinewy asp. If it was aware of Eve, it paid her no notice and instead swiftly rose in front of the girl. Lilly recoiled. It looked her in the eyes, its hood fanning like miniature wings. A tongue split darted in and out, tasting the air. Eve watched, her face blank and arms folded.

“What are you?” it hissed. “I have never seen your kind.”

Lilly’s breath caught in her chest. She averted her eyes. “Nothing,” she whispered. “I’m nothing.”

“By your own decree then, you are nothing. But nothing has a voice, so who are you?”

“No one,” Lilly said. “I don’t belong here.” Strangely, with each of her words it seemed the serpent grew in size.

“Curious!” The snake pulled back as if to get a better view. “So tell me, why is nothing and no one here?”

Lilly had no answer for that.

It
cocked its head to the side and tasted the air again. “You are a strange kind, unknown to me. At most you are an interruption.” With that it dropped to the ground and disappeared. Lilly felt agitated and somehow dismissed but remained still. The rustling of leaves shifted nearby, then swiftly moved away.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Sometimes,” responded Eve, “a snake is just a snake.”

“But it talked to me!”

“Sometimes a snake is something more. If a lie gets too much attention, it can grow. But that doesn’t concern me in this moment. What does is that your presence is known to others, some who may not always have your best at heart.”

Lilly hugged herself. “You’re scaring me a little.”

“Don’t be afraid,” said Eve. “I have seen how this unfolds.”

“This”—Lilly held up her arms as if to encompass all they saw—“has happened more than once?”

“No, only once, and this is it,” Eve said, as if it made perfect sense. “And you are here to witness.”

“Eve?” Lilly instinctively reached for the woman. Their fingers entwined, and Lilly was surprised by the unfamiliar sense that she could openly speak her mind without fear of being judged or punished.

“Yes, my daughter.” Eve smiled gently and squeezed Lilly’s hand.

“I don’t want to be a Witness, whatever that is.”

“It is a privilege and an honor.”

A knot of shame formed in Lilly’s throat. She didn’t know why.

“It sounds like another way to be a failure. I’m not into religious stuff, you know.”

A question furrowed Eve’s brow. “I know nothing of
religious.
”

“I
mean, I heard the story. I can’t remember when I learned it—when I was a kid, I think. God makes the world perfect, God makes man, God makes woman, woman ruins everything . . .” Lilly hesitated. “Well, I guess
you’d
know.”

The gold flecks in Eve’s eyes shimmered. “Know what?”

“Um, how everyone has been mad at women ever since. God seems pretty upset too, at least in my experience.”

“And what experience is that?”

Again, memory failed her. She looked at her fingers, still locked with Eve’s, and suddenly felt like crying for no apparent reason at all.

“Don’t leave me, okay?” she asked, her voice barely audible.

“I am never far away.” The mischievous sparkle in Eve’s eyes became a glistening of tears. “You are my daughter, after all, so I am already in you, and you in me.”

The assurance brought a glimmer of peace. Eve looked up and Lilly’s gaze followed. “Behold!” Eve said. “The appointed time is here. I will make you this promise: you will not regret being the Witness.”

•  •  •

“B
ACK TO THE MOMENT
, are we?” She couldn’t see but Lilly knew it was John who spoke, and she felt a prickle of anger to be pulled from sleep.

“I’ve been watching you dream.”

Great. He’s a creep.

He chuckled as if he had read her mind but was not offended in
the least. Embarrassment flushed her cheeks. “When you dream, your eyes move back and forth under your eyelids, as if whatever you’re seeing is really there.”

After a brief pause he added, “In truth, whatever you’re seeing might really be there. I’m no specialist on dreaming. Not my expertise. I should ask a Scholar. Anyway, you were deeply lost inside . . . whatever it was.”

Lost, Lilly thought, was exactly how she felt. Caught between the pain and dull ordinariness of this place and the overwhelming transcendence of her lucid visions. She did not want to be a Witness; neither did she want to be away from Eve. Something in her shifted, and her brilliant dream slipped away like a fading sunset.

Her eyebrows rose in question and he guessed. “Dreaming or Scholars? You want me to tell you about Scholars, yes or no?”

Blinking was aggravating, so the girl focused on her mouth, which had been freed from its cage. What emerged barely resembled a grunt, but John took it for a yes. She meant it as neither.

“I heard that! There you go! Congratulations! Well done.” John scooted his chair closer to her bedside.

“Scholars,” he said, “are an erudite lot who study this or that and can talk about it in prodigious detail. Very smart and unendingly educated, Scholars! They can explain almost anything, even if it isn’t true.”

He looked to see if that had made her smile. Detecting nothing, he went on, “Sadly, they spend most of their time speaking only to one another in languages that nobody but their kind can understand. I usually have to find a Translator or Interpreter if I want to engage scholarly profundity. It’s all quite tedious. But to be fair, they’re
not difficult people. And to be very clear, many of my best friends are Scholars.”