From the Shores of Eden

by Shelley Penner

  Those sea apes left on the coast evolved too, but in a different direction, as they became more and more adapted to the ocean. But the skeletal evidence of that missing link in human evolution became lost to the sea or pounded to powder by the waves. Far in the future, rare sightings of that dying breed, paired with their dolphin friends, would generate legends of mermaids. And even though the last of them died out long ago, the dolphins remember and occasionally protect humans from sharks or tow drowning swimmers to shore.

  3.

  Roots plunge deep, suckling from the dark breast of the earth, drawing on the grounded wisdom of elemental reality. In darkness they work to establish a stable foundation, to transmute a dream of water and mineral into energy to power and sustain the dance of life.

  * * *

  Beyond the edges of the solar system, the celestial wanderer plunges into the deep dark, beginning a solitary pilgrimage through the cold emptiness of interstellar space. Centuries will pass before she returns, but the chaos generated by her visits has caused ripples of change that continue to evolve far into the future.

  EXODUS

  Third Ritual: Rebirth

  ON THE SHORES of a salty, landlocked sea, a group of primitive humans gathered around a woman killed by a pack of hyenas. The victim had shoved her two-year-old son up into a tree but had no time to climb high enough herself before the predators dragged her down and killed her. The clan Keeper, mother of the woman killed, cradled her traumatized grandson while they all grieved. But life goes on and they eventually had to leave the remains to scavengers. The Keeper, named Moema, carried her grandson with her.

  In the years that followed, the boy, Huda, never forgot his mother’s sacrifice nor lost his hatred for hyenas. He went to sleep at night listening to the sound of Moema’s voice, a comforting litany of stories about the ancestors, the legends of the first People and the lessons of Father Sun and Mother Earth. During the day he followed like her shadow while she foraged. She taught him to recognize the plants, which ones to eat, which ones to avoid and which ones could cure certain ailments.

  When Oot grew sick, his belly distended, Huda watched while Moema searched out a certain plant, its leaves covered with fine, hooked hairs. She tore a single leaf into several thin strips, then rolled the strips into balls with the hooks to the inside. She convinced Oot to swallow three of the balls. The next day when he defecated, his feces smelled strange. Moema stirred them with a stick and pointed out to Huda the thread-like parasites caught on the hooks of the undigested leaves. As Keeper of the Mother’s Secrets, Moema’s role included the responsibility to pass knowledge down to her daughter as Keepers had for generations. But now, with her daughter dead and the unexpected responsibility of raising her grandchild, the aging Keeper had no energy to train a new apprentice. So she taught what she knew to the child who remained constantly at her side, and he absorbed that knowledge like a thirsty sponge.

  At first the clan didn’t realize what Moema was doing. They only saw that she nurtured an orphaned youngster who clung to her after the trauma he had suffered. Not until Huda had grown almost to adulthood did they recognize that their Keeper had trained a male into a traditionally female role. After all, how could a man understand the Mother’s Secrets when he himself could never become a mother? A cloud of censure hung over Huda after that, but he enjoyed the learning and felt hungry for more, so he ignored their disapproval.

  No one dared voice disapproval to the Keeper herself, for often their survival depended on her. She knew where to find water when the rains didn’t come. She knew where to find food when the ground cracked from dryness, and where to find shelter when the rains finally did come to flood the plains with a foot or more of water. She knew what foods would keep through the lean times, where and how to store them so decay and insects didn’t ruin them. Many of the elders shared some of this knowledge, having lived through numerous seasons, but only Moema remembered it all, the legends of the Ancestors and the first People, the survival wisdom of generations, the aural maps and landmarks of clan territory and the healing secrets of the Mother’s wild pharmacopeia. If she died without passing on that wealth of knowledge, the loss could prove a crippling blow to the clan, perhaps a fatal one. Yet she chose no apprentice from amongst the young women, despite the waning of her years.

  * * *

  Reff found a juicy root and smacked his lips, anticipating a tasty meal, but he expressed his delight a little too openly. Juzo sidled over and demanded a share. Normally the pair remained allies, but when it came to food during the dry season, dominant males in particular did not share and often stole from subordinates. When Reff turned his back, shielding his find, Juzo clouted him over the head with his digging stick and just took the delicacy. He had it half eaten before Reff began to stir. When Juzo noticed Huda watching with an expression of disapproval, resentment gathered in his heart.

  Huda had grown into a giant among his kind, almost a head taller than any of the clan and enormously strong. If he chose to, he could easily challenge for dominance, a position Juzo now claimed through bullying and intimidation. But Huda felt no desire for power over his peers and made no attempt to enter into the competition for status, something Juzo simply could not understand.

  Juzo charged at Huda with a belligerent roar, intending to either intimidate or force him to fight. Huda thrust out a hand to fend him off and Juzo, misjudging the bigger man’s reach, slammed right into it. His head stopped abruptly but his feet kept going and he landed flat on his back, stunned. Huda turned and ambled away. His indifference, his careless lack of retaliation, only fueled Juzo’s resentment, because he couldn’t understand such an attitude. In his mind it denoted a lack of respect. However, the experience taught him to remain wary and more devious.

  * * *

  The clan gathered for the night in a cave in the sandstone cliffs that once stood on the shore of a retreating sea where wind and waves carved and hollowed it out. The clan huddled together for warmth and listened to Moema’s voice as she soothed them to sleep with legends of the distant past.

  “In the beginning, Father Sun took a piece of his fiery heart and dreamed a wife for himself. He blew his breath of life across her burning face and rolled her around for a long time until her outsides began to cool and form a shell of hard rock. He divided her into four elements — the fire at her heart, her body the earth and rock, her womb the watery seas and her spirit the air that surrounds and protects her.

  “The Earth has many lesser wombs than the ocean and each one births different creatures, so each animal and plant has its own place of fertility and its own place that connects it to the Dreaming. The sea remains Earth’s first and largest womb, but most deep caves are entrances to other of her wombs. The Adham pit of red clay is also an entrance to her womb, filled with the thick blood of her moon time. It remains very sacred, and we must always treat it with deep respect.

  “Once our ancestors lived in a perfect place, where water and food remained always plentiful and no land predators existed. One of the First People, a young female named Able, could talk to the spirits of the sea and call on them to protect the People if danger threatened. She had a favorite spirit that she called Sea Brother. She loved him dearly, but her brother of the People, Cane, grew jealous, for he feared the sea and its spirits. One day, Cane lured Sea Brother onto the land where the spirit lay helpless and Cane slew Brother. In her grief, Able cried out to Mother Earth and the Mother responded. Her fiery heart opened and bled onto the land in a hot, burning river. She belched out poisonous gas and hot rocks that drove the People into the sea, all except for Cane, who feared the sea and stayed on the beach alone to face the Mother’s wrath. For days the People swam and swam, searching for land. They could not ever return, for Father Sun set a fiery spirit named Ashtarth to bar the way back. Many of the ancestors died of exhaustion and cold. Again and again Able called out to the spirits of the sea for help, but they knew what Cane had done and they stayed away.
At last, when it looked like none of the People would survive, the sea spirits responded, lifting them up and carrying them to safety on the beach at Spirit Bay.”

  * * *

  An outcropping of rocks loomed up through the mist, looking like a huddle of people, and Moema began telling its story to Huda. “That is the family of Ontock. They disrespected the Mother Earth by taking what was not theirs to take, so Father Sun turned them to stone, to remain a part of the Mother forevermore.”

  “What did they take?” Huda asked, eyeing the rocks with a mixture of awe and horror.

  “No one knows for sure. Some say they discovered a special tree in the place where Father Sun planted the First Seed in Mother Earth’s womb. It bore both flowers and fruit at the same time, so beautiful and tempting. Ontock’s family picked and ate the fruit without asking permission, even though they felt no hunger in that magical place. Father Sun grew so angry he plucked them up and flung them away and they landed here and turned to stone. The wisest way to avoid Father Sun’s anger is to respect all life forms and follow the One Law. Do you remember the One Law?”

  “To preserve the Mother and all her children as they originated on the First Day,” Huda recited. He frowned thoughtfully. “Are you sure hyenas are the Mother’s children? They seem evil and twisted somehow.”

  Moema nodded. “They seem evil to us because they prey on us. We must seem evil to the rabbits we sometimes kill for food. The hyenas only kill when they feel hungry. If they seem twisted, it is because they hold too much male energy and not enough female to balance it. People can get that way sometimes too. Then they kill one another over trivial things. Male energy remains active, aggressive, linear and penetrating. It works on an exclusive, power-seeking hierarchy, where only one can lead and all else must follow. Female energy remains passive, receptive, and follows many paths, like the rooting and branching of a tree. It maintains the ties of kinship and community, where mothers lead by example and teach their children and their children’s children, so that each mother, in her time, becomes a leader to her own offspring.”

  Huda bent to pick up a chunk of shiny black obsidian, not wanting her to see his anxious expression as he asked, “What if one has too much female energy and not enough male?” More than once Juzo and his cohorts had teased Huda, calling him a she-male.

  “Then you become like the family of Ontock,” Moema replied dryly, waving toward the stone people. “You sit all day and watch the world go by. When danger comes, you do not bother to defend yourself, you just accept whatever happens.” She smiled at Huda and added, “You need not worry, Grandson. You remain far better balanced than Juzo and his friends.”

  Huda smiled and nodded, feeling relieved and grateful for her understanding. “So being balanced means you have equal amounts of both energies?” he asked.

  “Not necessarily always equal, but both remain necessary for health and wholeness. The characteristics of the two energies remain opposite, so they exist in a constant tug of war, first one dominant, then the other. Each has its gifts to offer and each has its importance, each offers its own wisdom and each needs to be respected in a different way. Men climb to the mountaintops when they want to get closer to the voice of Father Sun, so he can tell them what they ought to do. This is why men call him Otten, while women just call him Fahd. When women need to commune with the Mother, we go into the deep, fertile valleys or to a delta, where the river enters the sea. During the rainy season, the Mother feeds her children so they can grow strong, but sometimes she sends overwhelming floods. During the dry season, the Father gives us warmth and dreams but sometimes burns everything to ash. The best season of all comes when the gifts of the Mother and Father balance one another, when the sun shines warm but the land remains green and the water courses full. I have long suspected that a land exists in the north where the Mother and the Father remain balanced throughout all the seasons.”

  Huda sighed. “I would like to find such a place. It sounds like the Before Place, the Edenland.”

  “Show me the rock you found.”

  Huda opened his hand to reveal the black, shiny stone, its planes smooth and glassy.

  “Ah! I thought it looked like the ‘stone that bites’.”

  “Bites?” Huda felt a stab of uneasiness but didn’t drop his prize.

  “Some call it ‘the rock with teeth’. A long time ago, when the ancestors first came to Spirit Bay, they lived like the dolphin people do today, eating shellfish, crabs and seaweed. They used stones to crack open the hard shells and to knock mussels off the rocks. One day, a young man found an unusual stone on the beach. He liked the way it looked, just as you did, so he picked it up.” Moema bent to pick up an ordinary-looking piece of grey rock. “When he tried to use it, it shattered into slivers with very sharp edges that cut his fingers.” She took the black stone from Huda and gave it a glancing blow with the grey stone. A large flake sheared off and dropped to the ground. She picked it up very carefully and showed him the razor-thin edge. “It makes very useful tools for cutting and scraping.”

  Moema spotted a large, edible mushroom at the far edge of the clearing. At the same time, Huda noticed a cluster of quasha plants. They separated to gather their finds into woven grass bags for later sharing. Huda thought about the opposing forces of the Mother and Father while he penetrated the soil with his sharpened digging stick and used it to lift the fruits of the earth from their resting place. He thought about how mated pairs among the People often quarreled but came together in unified love and defense of their children, who combined the spirits of both.

  The hairs on the back of his neck rose in a chilling reflex, an instinctual warning that made him whirl and raise his digging stick defensively. A few yards away, a lioness exploded from the brush and charged at Moema’s back. It grasped her in its claws, reaching for a killing spinal bite. Too late, Huda shrieked a warning. He acted without thought or hesitation to defend his beloved grandmother. He jabbed the lioness sharply in the flank with his digging stick. She roared in pain and whirled on him in fury. As she rushed at Huda, he backpedaled in terror, keeping the point of his sharpened stick aimed at the predator. He tripped over a stone and fell back against Ontock’s family. His digging stick jammed beneath Ontock’s foot, and the lioness leaped at him with a force that impaled her. The stick bowed but held while she struggled, slashing with her claws just inches from Huda’s chest. Then she stopped moving and sagged, suspended on his stick-become-a-spear. Her eyes glazed over and her panting breath stopped.

  Huda shoved her away and the added force finally snapped the digging stick so the lioness toppled onto her side. He scrambled up and ran to Moema. He gently turned her over. Blood spurted from deep wounds in her side and breast where the claws of the lioness had opened veins and arteries. The clan gathered around, having come in response to Huda’s shout. As he cradled her, Moema opened her eyes and murmured, “The Mother is calling me home, Huda.” With a shaky hand she drew the Keeper talisman from around her neck and slipped it over his head to rest against his chest. “You must become Keeper now.”

  “But the Keeper is supposed to be a woman,” he protested. “Don’t go Moema! We need you.”

  “You have enough of the Mother in you to balance your masculine nature. I have loved you dearly, Huda, and taught you what you need to know. Have patience and the clan will accept you, if only because they need you. Experience will add to your wisdom as you mature. If you meet Keepers from other clans, question them and do not hesitate to share your own knowledge. Sharing can only make the People stronger.”

  With a sigh, she closed her eyes and stopped breathing. Stunned by the enormity of this misfortune, the clan stood around her in silence. Some of the women sobbed. Tears streamed down Huda’s face, but he made no sound. He knew her spirit left when she no longer felt alive in his arms. She felt made of clay, a not-alive thing. He laid her on the ground and folded her arms over her bloody chest. She looked peaceful. Some of the children
brought flowers and scattered them over her. Then they left her to nature and went on with life. Only Huda stayed. He turned to the lion that killed her and at first felt rage at the loss. But he remembered Moema’s recent words, that the animals only killed when they felt hungry.

  He saw the chunk of glassy obsidian lying where he had dropped it and he remembered Moema’s final lesson. The rest of the afternoon he spent cutting free the lioness’s claws and teeth and binding them to the cord that held the Keeper talisman. By the time he finished, he had resigned himself to his loss. He dragged the lion over to lie beside Moema’s remains, hoping the smell of the predator might discourage scavengers, at least for a while. Then he cut himself a new digging stick, sharpened the tip against Ontock’s arm while saying a prayer of thanks, and walked away, carrying the stick in one hand and the obsidian stone in the other.

  * * *

  Over the days that followed, Huda found his status amongst the clan had taken a tremendous leap, but not because he wore the Keeper talisman. ‘Lion-killer’ they called him. None amongst the People had ever before killed a lion single-handedly. Even large groups had only ever managed to drive the predators away, never to kill them. The claws and teeth he now wore reminded them every day. At night when everyone retreated to the sleeping cave, Huda took over the reciting of stories and legends just as Moema had taught him. It gave him comfort to repeat her words, to know he could keep some part of her alive, if only in his own heart.