From the Shores of Eden

by Shelley Penner

  By the time spring arrived, Shusha had completely recovered. He carved a crutch for himself and padded it with fleece. Almost full-grown now, the ewe seemed no worse for having grown up on human milk. Even when supplies dwindled to their lowest, Pan-Dora could not bring herself to kill the wild creature that had become like a child to her.

  When the meltwater ebbed in the river, they packed up their belongings and moved back to the valley. That short, arduous journey made it clear to Shusha that he could not expect to follow the clan on their biannual migration. The journey to Seeva na Serjanna where the Korudanai would summer lay well beyond his capabilities. When they reached the site of last year’s halavada, they found all sign of human habitation washed away by the flooding river. Yet, along the shoreline, grain seeds sprouted wherever Pan-Dora had spilled them.

  * * *

  The party of three stopped on a rise overlooking Koru Col. Two years had passed since they last looked upon its grassy meadows. They returned now, Buludumas, Rabshen and Aradumi, preceding the migration of the Danai, to honor the remains of those they had left behind and to cleanse the valley of any spirits that might linger to trouble the living. From this height they could look down on the river and the site of past summer camps. A single vadu rested on the shore now, surrounded by small, strangely regular patches of vegetation. A thread of smoke rose from a cooking fire, yet a ewe and her twin lambs grazed nearby with no apparent wariness.

  “Could Pan-Dora have survived somehow?”

  “Alone, over two winters? Impossible. It must be messengers from another clan awaiting our arrival.”

  The peaceful scene filled each of them with inexplicable uneasiness. As they drew closer, they realized the patches of vegetation were all food plants, ones which had never grown so close to the halavada before. And the sheep reacted with very un-sheeplike curiosity, drawing closer instead of drifting cautiously away. A figure emerged from the vadu, rising on one leg, supported by a crutch, followed by a small child.

  “Shusha!”

  Rabshen and Aradumi ran forward to embrace him, amazed and overjoyed to find him miraculously alive. But Buludumas hung back. Only when they had separated did the shaman step forward to confront Shusha silently, staring deep into his eyes, then leaning forward to smell his breath. Buludumas stepped back, his face grim. Still he spoke no greeting. His reticence cast a net of tension over all of them.

  “How have the Korudanai fared these seasons past?” Shusha demanded, eager for news. “Mother and Minshu…”

  “Ruanpye remains well. She almost died of grief that winter after we left you here, but Minshu became her solace. We have raised him as our son.”

  “Kitana?”

  “Kitana is dead.”

  Shusha stilled, not sure how he felt about this news.

  “She began one day to bleed, although it was not her moon time. We think she may have become pregnant and tried to abort the child. The women did all they could to save her, but they could not stop the bleeding. Three days after her death, Johara disappeared. We have not seen him since.”

  * * *

  Pan-Dora saw the men from a distance, seated around the campfire. She knew this day would come, but she dreaded the losses a return to community life would bring. She had grown to meet the challenge of survival and would no longer fit comfortably into a traditional woman’s role. She strode proudly into the camp carrying Shusha’s bow and arrows with the fruit of her hunting, a pair of ducks, slung around her neck. She greeted the men politely, trying not to notice their shocked expressions.

  Still Buludumas watched and said nothing. When evening came, the visitors bedded down together under the stars, but before morning the shaman disappeared. Shusha knew where he had gone and dreaded his return. Two days later, Buludumas came back with the setting sun. He stalked right past Shusha as if he didn’t exist. Confronting Pan-Dora accusingly, the shaman held up a handful of dried sheep dung, crumbling it slowly into dust.

  “You have defiled the Mother Cave beyond cleansing, unnatural woman. Your ego-soul has grown so fat with self-importance you have denied the needs of the spirit world. You, whose role is to give life, have killed and eaten of the meat. You have broken the by taking the gifts of the Mother and twisting them,” he indicated the plots of planted vegetation, “to your own purpose.” Words rolled from his mouth like stones, gathering in a thunderous avalanche of doom. “From this day forth, Pan-Dora, you are damonai, cast out, cursed for all time. Forevermore shall the dark side of the Trickster be known by the shape of the goat clan, and by the name of the walking dead man who fathers them…De’wil-Sakan. Blinded by the Trickster, your children shall enslave their Mother. Never again shall they know true harmony with her, but shall exploit her generosity, manipulate and steal from her the sacred powers of fertility, poison her body and rape her spirit…and all they inflict upon her they shall inflict upon one another. And all the powers of Creation shall curse them with sickness of mind and body, with strife and famine and death. When the Rainbow Serpent rises in the sky like a bright bird and plunges into the earth, you will know pestilence and plague, and such a flood as will cleanse your spawn from the earth forever, and only those who remain meek before the will of the Mother shall survive.”

  Pan-Dora fell to her knees as if struck a physical blow. “No, Buludumas! The fault is mine, mine alone! Is there no escape from this dreadful curse, no hope of atonement?”

  “Willing sacrifice of your lives remains the only atonement, for all your sins lie rooted in a defiance of death.”

  Aradumi opened his mouth to protest, but Rabshen’s hand closed on his arm in a painful grip. With tears in his eyes, Rabshen led the young man away. They would have to hurry to turn aside the Korudanai before they reached this accursed place. Whatever happened now, it would have been far better had they found the moldering bones of their loved ones stripped by scavengers and scattered by the river. Rabshen felt an invisible spear embedded in his heart and knew that, like Shusha, a part of him had died. He might live on a few years, but without joy, without hope, and when true death came he would embrace it.

  Shusha’s heart broke too, seeing his father and his friend turn away. He struggled forward and fell to his knees before the shaman. “I accept this judgement, Buludumas. Take my life. It was for my life Pan-Dora committed these wrongs, so it seems fitting that the judgment should fall upon my head. Only spare my son, for he is yet a baby, an innocent.”

  But Buludumas could neither see nor hear him for, like the spirit-children, Shusha was already dead. Pan-Dora heard him, however, and his words kindled a fire of denial in her breast. She leaped to her feet and her chin rose sharply. She seemed to swell with pride and power.

  “I do not accept your judgment, Buludumas! I do not accept your curse! For two years we have survived here alone, and we can continue to survive. We don’t need you or the Dani. Shusha is alive…fully alive! I will not willingly sacrifice the lives of those I love to salve your injured pride!”

  Buludumas showed no evidence of pride, for his shoulders sagged and his voice expressed sadness beyond words. “Then the curse stands as I have spoken it. The Mother is not without mercy, however. In the darkest days of death and despair she will send a river of milk to suckle the innocent, and on one day of each year you may petition for forgiveness and at-one-ment. But until such time as the will and sanctity of the Mother are once again recognized and honored, your children’s children shall torment the earth and labor in the dust for their livelihood, and only through a divine union of Mother and Father can their ancestral soul become reborn.”

  * * *

  For days Shusha brooded without speaking. He slept little and ate nothing. Frightened by his withdrawal, Pan-Dora prepared his favorite foods, hoping to entice his appetite.

  “Husband, I beg you, do not punish me further with your silence. Forgive me for bringing this exile upon you. If you choose death for us and our son, I will accept it. I would face any dange
r, any sacrifice, I would challenge the Mother herself for love of you.”

  For a long moment he remained unresponsive, then his face twisted in anguish and he reached out for her. He drew her into his arms and held her tightly while tears of despair washed his cheeks.

  “Buludumas is only a man. His words need not come true. I will abide by whatever you decide, husband.”

  Later, while she slept, Shusha stood over her with a spear poised to kill. Only the sleeping innocence of their son stayed his hand. That night, the seventh night of his fast, the Spirit Father sent him a dream. The Rainbow Serpent came to him once again and opened its mouth to swallow him, and he knew this time he would not survive. Suddenly a blinding light appeared in the form of a man, too glory-bright to look closely upon, and the man placed the neck of the Rainbow Serpent beneath his foot, her pride and her poisonous fangs held low in the dust. The Serpent began to wane smaller and smaller beneath the foot of the Spirit Father, until he could barely see her. She vanished in a flash of light, and the radiant Father handed Shusha a crystal with the Serpent captive in its heart.

  Shusha woke, clutching tightly the pouch that contained the crystal. His heart pounded at a feverish pace. He knew now what he must do.

  Pan-Dora woke the next day to find every weapon in the camp destroyed, the stone heads smashed, the shafts burned to ash. Shusha had disappeared. For three days she waited, hoping he would return, fearing he would not. Finally, through the morning mist, she saw a ghostly apparition slowly approaching. Only by his one-legged crutching did she recognize him, for he walked naked, coated from head to foot in a thick layer of red clay, like a newborn fresh from the Mother’s womb.

  “Shusha!” She ran to embrace him, but he held her off.

  “I am not Shusha,” he said. “Shusha is dead. My name is Adam, ‘man of red clay’. I am the first man of the One God. Henceforth I shall call you Eve, the first woman, bone of my bone, heart of my heart. The Spirit Father has made a covenant with me. I must place my neck beneath his foot and do his will, and you must place your neck beneath my foot and do my will, and for as long as we do the will of the Father, he will protect us from the wrath of the Rainbow Serpent.”

  * * *

  As the stars brightened in the last light of evening, the old man gripped his eldest son’s shoulder and crutched his way to a rock overlooking the meadow where the flock grazed peacefully. He seated himself with a heavy sigh. His hair and beard looked the color of a stormy sky, his face seamed with age and sorrow. “Call your brothers,” he said, for his own voice no longer had the strength to carry. As his children gathered to sit at his feet, the wandering star Ashtarth hung over their heads like a threat, the length of her fiery tail shimmering with rainbow color.

  “Listen carefully, my sons, that you may remember my words and pass them on to your sons, and they to their sons.”

  “We are listening, Father.”

  “Tomorrow is the Day of Atonement. Once again we must eat only bread, the first fruit of our sin, and bitter herbs for the bitterness of our lives as outcasts. We will wear the ashes of mourning and drink only water blessed by the Rock of the Covenant, that the flood may not wash us all away.”

  He told them again the familiar story of the shaman’s curse and the reason they had become farmers and herders instead of hunter-gatherers like their forefathers. “The power of the Mother is a frightening thing,” he concluded, “for it is a power of transformation, the power to create a chaos of change, to create life out of death. All women are born with this power, and men must learn to subdue and control it, for the power of the Father is the power to bring order to chaos. It remains the duty of all men to control their wives and subjugate their powers of creation. Listen, my sons, that you may remember my words and pass them on to your sons, and they to their sons.”

  “We are listening, Father.”

  “I have taught you the rites of increase, the songs of calling to each species on its altar of fertility.”

  “Yes, Father, but I do not understand the need for blood-letting.”

  “It is a ritual of reciprocation. The lamb gives its blood and body to ensure your continued survival. In eating it, it becomes a part of you. By consecrating the altar with your own blood you return the spirit potential of the lamb, ensuring the continued fertility of the species.

  “Your mother, by her woman powers, has captured the spirit of a species. The flock increases each year. In winter, during the Starving Moon, this seems good, for we never go hungry. But to eat of the flesh without releasing the captured spirit is to swallow the spirit of the animal. The species becomes ever more enslaved, and those who eat of it become more and more like that which they consume.”

  “What should we do, Father? How can we release the spirit?”

  “First, you must kill the animal only upon the altar of its fertility, nowhere else. You must not partake of its blood but must allow it to impregnate the earth of the altar, just as your mother when she gathers roots returns a portion to the earth, that the plant may grow again. Then you must remove the viscera and burn it upon the altar, that the flames might release the spirit of the animal to rise with the smoke into the heavens and the Realm of the Dead. Only when you have completed this ritual is the flesh fit for eating.

  “Listen carefully, my sons, that you may remember my words and pass them on to your sons, and they to their sons.”

  “We are listening, Father.”

  5.

  The flower emerges, beautiful and seductively perfumed. Grounded by its connection to the roots, it lures in the active, drifting male principle and binds it once more into the unity of the seed, the promise of a new dream, a new cycle, a new chance to play out the potential of the tree.

  * * *

  Over millennia, close encounters with the inner planets have reduced the speed and the long, elliptical orbit of the celestial wanderer so it now barely skirts the outer edges of the solar system, making clashes with the inner planets more frequent and prolonged, the violent consequences varying unpredictably depending on proximity and angle of attack.

  THE RAINBOW SERPENT

  Fifth Ritual: Purification

  FROM THE CREST of the sandstone bluffs, Corandi and his companions, Yaramin and Manukain, studied the riverside settlement of the Tolmai. Much about the scene seemed disturbingly unnatural. The cliff across the valley showed ragged scars where the Tolmai quarried stone from its face. Scattered stone buildings squatted like mushrooms amidst broad fields that had been shorn of trees, cultivated and planted in regimented rows, dissected by a grid of irrigation ditches. A log bridge spanned the river and another cluster of thatch-roofed stone buildings stood on the far shore, surrounded by a palisade of sharpened stakes as tall as three men.

  “I have heard the Tolmai are accursed of the Mother,” Corandi whispered.

  His friends nodded, for they had heard the same. The Tolmai had remained enemies of the Dana’ai for generations. But while the young men had heard tales of heroic battles and stories of the depravity of these strangers, they had never actually seen a Tolmai. They saw several now, working in the fields below, though what they did remained unclear.

  “Look!” Manukain pointed to where an aurochs, one of the proudest, most fearsome of grass-eaters, plodded apathetically in an endless circle, harnessed to a huge grinding stone.

  “I heard they enslaved animals but thought it too preposterous to believe.”

  “They must practice a dark and powerful sorcery.”

  “Leeta says they castrate the males so they will have no heart to fight.”

  “Yes,” Yaramin added darkly, “he says they do the same to human captives.”

  The young men exchanged glances, measuring one another’s resolve.

  “We should wait until they sleep. Inside those stone buildings they will hear nothing beyond their own snoring. We can sneak in, steal a trophy to prove our daring, and leave without anyone knowing.”


  While they waited for nightfall, the young men continued to watch the activity of the town. Smoke rose from the dwellings as women prepared the evening meal. As the sun neared the horizon, flocks of sheep and goats returned from distant meadows, herded along by a handful of guards whose long staffs quickly tapped any escapees back into line. They crowded the animals into a communal pen, surrounded by a wall of thorny brush.

  Just as the sun slid out of sight, a man emerged onto the roof of the tallest building, a circular tower, and sounded a blast on a ram’s horn. The field laborers immediately stopped working and headed home, bearing their strangely shaped tools. The gates of the palisade closed behind them, and everyone disappeared inside their dwellings.

  Some hours later, taking advantage of the deep shadows of dusk, the young Dana’ai made their way down the cliff and crept close to the walls. They waited patiently until well into the night, then cast their ropes and climbed over the palisade. They encountered no guards. Apparently the Tolmai felt safe within their walls of wood and stone. Though an occasional lamp still shone in a window, most of the town slept. The young men separated, each going in a different direction.

  Manukain climbed through a darkened window and dropped to the earthen floor without a sound. Listening sharply, he pinpointed the breathing rhythms of three people. He drew his knife and considered using it but decided against killing them in their sleep. Even the worst of enemies deserved a fighting chance. Instead, he soft-footed over to the wall where a row of tools rested on a stone shelf, high above the reach of childish hands. The curving blade of the sickle would make a wicked weapon. He tested its edge, grimacing when it sliced into the ball of his thumb. In contemplative mischief, he dripped blood over the floor, the furniture and even the bedclothes. The Tolmai slept as if drugged.