Eve: A Novel (6 page)

“I didn’t mean to embarrass or hurt you,” he said softly. “I have no idea why or how what I asked would cause you pain. But it did, so I apologize.”

She tried to shrug it off. After all, she didn’t know why she felt offended.

“It’s okay,” she offered, her breathing heavier as she worked to control the emotions. “I’m sorry too . . . that I growled at you.”

“Then you’ll forgive me?”

That little bit of kindness broke apart her resolve. The waterfall of feelings, which she had been holding at bay, came rushing like a torrent. She didn’t just cry, she wailed. She sobbed for losses she didn’t even remember, for the storehouses of memories and faces that she couldn’t access, for pain that only grace and kindness can approach, for rising fear, and because she was just a little girl and she didn’t know where home was and she felt lost and everything hurt again and she couldn’t keep it back.

And this man, this kind man, cried with her. He bowed his head till it touched hers and put his hands on both sides of her face as their tears mingled. She thought it was a sort of baptism. The lost and the found, forever and irretrievably entwined.

“C
ome, Lilly,” the woman whispered, and for an instant as the girl rose up, the light around her imploded and she thought she was again losing consciousness.

Lilly gasped as her sight returned. “Mother Eve, where are we now?” The colors, sounds, and smells of a grand forest overwhelmed her senses.

“Inside Eden’s gate.” Eve’s strength of presence flowed through Lilly. “It was outside Eden’s boundary that you witnessed Adam’s birth.”

The place was astounding and yet suited her perfectly somehow. The warmth, the humidity, all brought comfort and ease and pleasure.
So this is what normal was always meant to be
. But hard on the heels of that thought came another:
You’re anything but normal. You don’t belong here
.

“Lilly, would you like to see more?”

When Lilly nodded, Eve grasped her hand. They rose up,
buoyed on the air itself. Her feet felt as if they were on solid ground even as she looked down at the receding earth. The view tipped her sense of balance. Recovering was simple; all she had to do was look up and out, trusting in the invisible solidity beneath her feet. She couldn’t resist and tapped her foot. Yes, it felt like something was there. Eve looked at her and grinned.

Above the trees they slowed to a stop, suspended.

“This is the Garden of God,” Eve said, “created for all of us to inhabit.”

“It’s enormous!” Lilly exclaimed. It spread in every direction for hundreds of miles until in the distant horizon the boundary walls rose and disappeared into the sky, each like a geyser of rainbowed water. The nearest border was close and powerfully impressive. The air was clear and crisp and warming, as if perfectly attuned to her.

“You said Eden is a cube, right? As big as it is, I don’t think that we would all fit in here.”

“Eden expands and contracts as needed. It is not a
place
as you would understand. In the coming age, after all has been finished and allowed, it will grow to include all creation.”

“You sound sad,” Lilly said.

Eve smiled at her. “Not sad, my daughter. Remembering. It is
here
that righteousness dwells.”

“Righteousness?”

“Right relationships, face-to-face and trusting.”

“Is that even possible?” Lilly felt embarrassed by her impulsiveness. “I mean, is there such a thing?”

Eve squeezed Lilly’s hand. “Yes. And don’t be ashamed, Lilly.
Our deep longings remind us we have lost something vital and precious. Such yearnings are the stirring of hope. Of returning.”

“Returning where?”

“To this garden.”

“But didn’t God make you leave?” Lilly asked.

Eve sighed and appeared about to answer when something diverted her attention and she smiled. “Listen,” she directed.

Lilly could hear it too. Approaching from a distance, it was a song both beautiful and slightly off-key. It was the clear and joyful voice of a boy making his way through the forest.

“Is that . . . ?”

“Adam? Yes! Look!”

But Lilly glanced at Eve instead and recognized the face of a woman young and in love.

•  •  •

J
OHN WAS LEANING OVER
her as she opened her eyes.

“Why did you wake me up?” she snapped, groggy and miffed that her dreaming had been interrupted.

“I didn’t.” His expression revealed his confusion.

“Oh,” she mumbled. “Good morning, then.”

Under the marble-blue ceiling, John looked around and then back. “Actually, it isn’t morning. Late afternoon, maybe?”

“Already?” She turned her neck as if looking for proof.

“Well, look at you!” John exclaimed. “Incredible progress. All that emotional activity this morning seems to have freed up some movement between your spine and head. That’s a sign I’ve been told to watch for!”

She tried it again. The shift in her muscles was barely noticeable.

“Now, you be careful!” he said. “It might be tempting, but this is no time to overdo anything. We will now begin the work of removing the apparatus that has immobilized you.”

“What sort of apparatus?”

“Well, I told you that when I found you, you were very broken. In order for the Menders and Healers to work their kindness, we asked the Crafters and Builders to create an
apparatus
that would keep you completely immobile and allow them access and time to repair you.”

“So what happened to me? What is wrong with me?”

“Your neck and back were fractured, each in several places, among many other things. We found you in frozen stasis. It’s probably what kept you alive.” She could tell he was watching his words, perhaps sensitive about divulging too much especially after the cascade of emotions only a few hours earlier.

“Wait.” A series of questions were coming into focus. “How long have I been here, like here here? In this room?”

John paused, looking up, calculating. “Approaching a year.”

“A year? I’ve been here almost a year?”

“Yes, almost.”

“Where did I come from?”

“We have not ascertained that exactly, but from somewhere on Earth certainly.”

“From Earth? You mean this isn’t Earth?”

He shook his head earnestly.

“So where is this . . . this island I’m on?”

“It’s in an ocean you’ve probably never heard of. It resides in a
wrinkle between worlds, between dimensions. There are many such places.”

“John, that’s craziness.”

“I’m sure it seems that way.”

“Has anyone been looking for me? Does anyone . . . care that I’m missing?”

John looked away. “Not that I am aware.”

A new kind of fear gripped Lilly’s thoughts.

“A year? Really? Is there a way for me to go back . . . home?”

John cleared his throat and shifted in his seat.

“Lilly, all of this must be confusing and frightening,” he offered. “I don’t begin to understand the depths of what you are feeling, but I am deeply sad with you.”

“John, why am I here? I’m nobody.” Her throat ached, her eyes closed, and her mind was in disarray. Without any solid memories, she could not tether any of this to something solid or real. All she had were scattered remnants of recollections that came to her in bursts. She had the dreams, but if she told John about them, he might think she was crazy. She wondered why it mattered to her what he thought, but it did.

“Lilly, you are not a nobody,” he said firmly. “As for clarity about your coming, that will be revealed in God’s timing. You seem tired. Perhaps we might continue this later?”

“No, we aren’t done! Don’t you dare leave!” she demanded, eyes still closed.

He waited.

“What
exactly have your Healers and Menders been doing to me?” She rode the edge of rage.

“They’ve been reconnecting your spinal cord to your brain and reattaching, um, whatever needed to be, uh, reattached. Things like that.”

“What needed reattaching?”

With a sigh, John told Lilly that only one of her feet was original to her body. The good news, as John put it, was that her new left foot was female, a detail that made the truth no less grotesque.

When she had been found, he explained, hardly alive, among the many things broken in her body was her left foot, which had been completely crushed.

She asked from where her new foot had been harvested. The answer was as gruesome as she feared. The metal box in which she was found contained other almost-frozen bodies.

“What?” Lilly felt nauseated. John was talking faster, as if speed would stanch the flood of shock.

“The Healers and Menders immediately deduced that the only option, other than to have the Builders create some sort of prosthetic, was to attempt to match an existing foot from one of the most recently deceased girls. Perhaps it would help to imagine it as a sort of organ transplant?” he suggested, but Lilly preferred not to think about it at all.

“John? What do you think happened to us? To me and to the other girls?”

“I could only guess,” he began, then paused. “Lilly, every theory makes me furious and desolate to the core. Whatever was done to you was wrong in every way I can imagine.”

Like the last leaf on the autumn tree, Lilly could feel herself being swept away. In order not to fall, she tried to quickly change the subject.

“And when exactly did they do all this . . . reattaching? I don’t remember any Healers or Menders. Besides Letty, you’re the only one I’ve seen around here.”

“While you slept.” John took a breath. “Every day for months they have been working meticulously to put you together!”

When Lilly didn’t respond, John continued, “They designed and built this special room for you. Almost every night it’s sealed up, airtight. Then it’s mostly filled with a breathable liquid. Much of the work requires you be turned over, facedown, but they can’t turn you unless you are weightless. In the morning they turn you back over and drain the chamber. You can’t see from where you are, but there are all manner of mechanical devices—ladders and things that allow access.”

Lilly was silent. For at least a minute she lay there and again resisted slipping into a mental abyss that offered her safety and relief. John came into sight, a look of concern written plainly on his kind features.

“Anything else you’d like to ask, Lilly?”

“I’m done! No more questions.” She hesitated. “Wait, one more, for now. Why me?”

That elicited a smile. “Ah, Lilly, why not you?”

While that did offer another way of looking at her situation, it was not what she had asked. “I don’t mean why me in a cosmic sort of sense. I mean it more personally. Why would
you
go through all this trouble for
me
? You don’t even know me. Why me?”

He thought for a moment before he spoke again. “I believe you have come into my life because God loves me.”

“Because God loves
you
?”

Another grin. “Yes, because God loves me, Lilly. The how and why of our connection is a mystery, but it is no small thing! You matter! You are Eve’s daughter.”

“Eve’s daughter?” Was John somehow aware of her visions? “Eve, like Adam and Eve, that Eve? That’s just a story. A fairy tale.”

“Ah, now the stew is thickening, as they say.” He shook his head. “Lilly, fairy tales and myths are born inside imagination’s storehouse; just because something is considered to be ‘a story’ doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”

Once more Lilly resisted the opportunity to open up. However, his words did make her wonder about something.

“So, you think the story of Eden is true? It always seemed unreal, like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.”

“I do.” John’s expression was bemused. “Lilly, would you like me to read you the story from the Scriptures themselves, where it was first recorded in writing? I have it nearby. It would only take a minute to get it.”

“If it’s not a bother,” Lilly said, trying to hide her curiosity.

He ducked out and returned quickly with an old leather-bound book. “My apologies, it’s not an original manuscript, but at least it’s in
the original language, which I can read and translate for you as best as I am able. Better if we had a Scholar. Would you rather wait?”

“I’d rather you read it,” she encouraged him. John dragged a stool next to her. He opened the book from the back and then read it backward.

“In the beginning,” he began, “Elohim created . . .” John looked up. “Lilly, did you know that in the original and ancient language Elohim, God, is plural, and Ruach, the Spirit of God, or breath, or wind, is feminine?”

Lilly’s silent reply was to raise her eyebrows and shrug her shoulders.

“Perhaps, it is better if I simply read it. In the beginning,” he began again, “Elohim, God, created the heavens and the earth . . .” and so John read on through the first Creation account.

“So it was all good and God rested?” Lilly asked, lost in her own thoughts and images awakened by the words.

“Yes,” John responded. “It was all good, very good.” He hesitated as if to say more and then decided against it.

Standing and clearing his throat, he said, “Now, truly, you’ve had enough excitement for one day. If you like, I’ll read more another time, but for now it’s past time for you to rest. All things considered, today was a good day. Now blessings on your dreaming.” He pushed the necessary buttons to dim the lights in the room, and as if he had drawn a curtain or flipped a switch, her eyelids shut.

Even in her sadness Lilly recognized the increasingly familiar and
welcome touch that was lifting her and carrying her to somewhere.

•  •  •

“A
DAM HAS GROWN MUCH
since you watched his birth,” Eve said. It was as if there had been no interruption. Lilly was with Eve listening to an approaching song.

She watched a young man emerge from the forest, slim and tall, ebony-skinned with a deep tinge of dark brown-red, and thick black hair woven and matted with clay. He was striking, even more so as he danced and jumped his way through the trees, singing at the top of his voice. He was clothed in light.