“Eve,” Michael said, his sword a languid question. He parted the jasmine tree in Gan Eden, by the Bell Trees of Memories, where a thousand soldiers had fallen like rain at his brother’s hands.
Eve, her skin like earth, her hands as stolid and wrinkled as a date palm, worn now – a grandmother – was a wise woman that angles like him could only begin to ken.
Michael, ageless, softened at the grace of his love. If only he too could grow laugh lines – show some mark from the smile of the sun. He warmed at the grace of his bosom friend.
They sat down together and shared an apple. Or maybe, it was a pomegranate.
Perhaps, a fig.
No matter, whatever fruit, they chewed, the seeds popping like questions. Eve laughed a bit, a trickster, and held Michael’s hand in the silence.
She was God’s gift to humanity – a matrix of motherhood, the first gardener – if Adam had named the beasts, Eve had named the plants, and she passed the love of fennel stalk, cane rod, and pan pipes on to her sweet but bloody Cain.
Seth was of all providences: his father’s kine, his mother’s milk. And now, millions of years after Lucy walked as Australeopithicus, and this Mitochondrial Eve had sheltered in the Horn of Africa – hunting, dancing, painting with henna on the cave walls, decorating seashells and obsidian on Adam’s neck strung with twine, and sewed a million and million more hide pants with a bone needle for her billions of sons and daughters – it had come to evening.
It was time for Eve
to rest.
Eve looked up, wizened and hoary, her tight coils of long, wild, honey-smelling white hair like spackled clouds. The pith of the fruit they had shared was well chewed, and she planted it in the dirt by her bare feet. Her haunches were wide and silken, her belly scarred from a breech birth, her paunch heavy and beautiful – but her lips, they were hungry for humor.
She had always, even as a girl in Micheal’s place – before the fall, before autumn came – descended to till fields and cultivate the plants he and Lucifer had taught her and Adam to garden – delighted in their Father’s mysteries.
“Hello, old friend,” Eve nearly sang; her voice was faded into a hollow curve of Earth like the soil she had sprang from.
Michael would know. Eve was his own cutting – ‘twas no rib she hailed from, but fruit of the vine, a babe the Archangelina in his female form had nursed, sacrificed sleepless nights too, and raised as a tot and girl in Heaven.
If Lucifer was Eve’s Father, Michael was her Mother.
And oh, how when Samael and Michael had come together to create her – the did not know their love would falter.
Eve was braiding sorghum. Her flaxen, brown fingers folded the lily brown pads of vegetables uprooted, sweetgrass, an ancient medicine, into rows like cranes flying North, on to stiller waters. Her black eyes – hazy with cataracts – almost looked like green serpents were flying between her brows and bespoke an old fondness for her Brother, Father, Mother, and Son.
“Shall we walk the usual path, Chavah?” Michael said tenderly, helping the old, witchy woman of such grace yet solid foundations creak to life in her buckskin dress and whorled birch cane.
Raphael had carved it for her two decades ago, when she reached 20 million years old. Now, it seemed, Eve was as cracked in the face as a crow’s crackle – but so old, so beautiful, she could spin tales of all that was, all that had been, and all there was
to be.
“Yes, dear Michael. I would enjoy watching the ferns grow, and seeing the finches peck at the seed we left out this morning.”
So, Eve and Michael walked with both nubile, full, and yet ancient, weighted steps, past Neshema, past Naamah, past Nema.
The jungle twined together, the taiga froze their feet. They laughed and spoke of how the serpent got its tooth, or how the lion got its mane. Eve’s favorite – the narwhal and its horn – was as raunchy as dear Gabriel’s drunken jokes.
When they came to the edge of Creation, they watched Yeshua set – the Son, the Sun sublime – and he beamed solar providence like manna down.
They ate the cloudy populace of Eucharist, and milk, honey, and wine flowed in rivers from Da’ath.
“Let’s do this again tomorrow, Michael,” Eve winked. “I will tell you how the dragonfly got its sting.”
“I would love that, Mother Eve,” Michael agreed jovially, and he took her curved, voluptuous, tilled body, flew in mighty brambles of white wings back to the Cave of Adam and Eve, then gave her to the arms of old Adam, who sat out front, smoking a pipe and watching the rolling wheat, and Michael resumed his position amongst the stars –
Looking forward
to their morning
breakfast.
