by Geoff Ryman
“I promised I’d meet him there,” Cara remembered.
“You go on. I have to get on with my work.” He looked mildly perplexed for a moment. “I wish I knew where your mother was.”
By the river, Tikki was calling Cara’s name, over and over. He was a child with white hair. There were no reeds to hide behind. “Cara,” he said when he saw her, accusing her in a piping voice. “You said you’d come and play. I’ve been waiting here all day.”
“I’m sorry, Tikki. I can’t play now.”
The white horse licked the white hair out of his eyes. The eyes were only shadows. “You said you’d come and play,” he repeated, in a wan and pale voice. They left him waiting, his feet rooted by the river. They heard him begin to call her name again.
Further along the banks of the river, Caro, Cara’s elder brother, sat surly and miserable, his face darkened by the shadows of his spots, throwing stones at the river. They skittered and bounced across it. He looked up at his sister, and then away, as he always had done, Caro who somehow had never taken his rightful role of heir to the House, Caro who now never would. The ribs of the white horse swelled outwards and then contracted with a sigh. They rode on.
“How much longer?” Cara demanded.
“Soon enough, dear daughter,” said the horse. “Soon enough.”
They rode down the river, through the marsh, past Hapira Izamu Pa, to the sea. They rode across the surface of the sea, that was as white as the sky and indistinguishable from it. Ahead of them, in the sky over the East, was a glow of silver blue, like the sun about to rise.
They rode to an island in the whiteness, and like a bubble all around it was warmth and shades of brown and beige and grey-green, revealed by a hidden light that waxed and waned. The horse climbed up from the sea, stepping up onto the warm bank and into the soothing air.
“Oh!” moaned Cara in relief, and rolled her head, drooping in the saddle with pleasure. Her heart and lungs gave a fitful shudder and were still again. She began to notice things around her.
It was the last of autumn in the garden. Leaves were on the ground, and the long spindly grass underfoot crackled like straw. As they neared the centre, the colours deepened, the season shifted. Leaves on the trees blushed into red and orange. The stalks of the flowers were green, though the blossoms were still withered. Suddenly Cara and the horse seemed to plunge into a curtain of hanging green leaves on purple, flexible, vicious stalks that whipped back into Cara’s face, which could not be cut. There was a rustle among them, and a whistle of air through feathers, and a bird rose up, shrieking. Cara gave a grateful laugh and felt a sudden coursing throb of blood in her cheeks. They broke through the screen of leaves, into the centre of the garden.
It was a field of flowers, light mauve, bright yellow, deep crimson, delicate lavender, with white butterflies bobbing between them. In the middle of the field was a tree, an apple tree in blossom. It was not very large, but strong, spreading wide, with beautiful bark in pieces like a puzzle, and thick shiny green leaves. Coiled all around its branches, as though trying to pull it down, and piled up behind it in a mound, was the body of the Serpent.
The scales of the Serpent were purple and gold and green, all at once, like oil on water reflecting light. The scales of the Serpent reflected light all around them, in ripples, on the tree, on the flowers. Light came from within them. In the centre of the mound of the Serpent’s body, there; unable to be hidden by layers of coil; clear and simple and lucid, without halo or refraction, undimmed, undistorted, its shape sharply defined, glowed the White Flower, the Flower of Life.
Cara felt her heart twitch again, and her lungs open up, and she felt a chemical stirring as the cells of her body began to process again. She felt the nerves in her mind like branches in a tree, blossoming.
“Ama,” she whispered. “Ama. Thank you.” Lovingly, she stroked the horse’s muscular neck.
The Serpent began to move. Coils slid away from each other one after another, to reveal, in their midst, a woman. A white woman, pale as chalk, with white hair and white nipples, and a white, caked mouth, straining in vain towards something red and yellow in her hand. Coils fell away from her shoulders, and knees, and there was the Serpent’s head, resting across her lap. Green, slitted eyes glared balefully at Cara, and she understood her terrible danger.
“It doesn’t matter what happens to me now,” she reminded herself, and the thought was an immense comfort to her. “It does not matter what happens to me.”
“What have we here?” the Serpent said in a voice like metal, that rose in sudden rage. “What have we here?” And his head shot across the field in the space of a heartbeat and reared up, and his huge unpleasant face was level with Cara’s own, and she was staring deep into his green eyes. The horse whinnied for the first time, in fear, and stepped back. The Serpent’s head was larger than its own, and his breath smelled of dead and rotting flesh. His breath wreathed out of him, icy and vaporous.
“An armed warrior in the garden?” the Serpent asked himself unblinking. His tongue flickered, investigating. “No. Not quite that. And not altogether dead, either. Look behind you, warrior. Go on, look. I’m too interested in you to bite you yet.”
Quickly, not trusting, Cara looked behind her for the first time. Trailing behind her along the ground, the way she had come, was a cord of pale flesh, with threads of blood in it.
“I cut it, and you are here forever,” said the Serpent, in harsh and bitter glee. With blinding speed, he spun around Cara and the horse, making a circle around them on the ground with its gleaming body. “Now,” he said. “Why are you here?”
“I,” said Cara, and faltered. “I am here to answer Hawwah’s riddle.”
The Serpent threw back its head and roared with laughter, his mouth open like a trap, his long white fangs seeping venom. He twirled like a whirlwind, laughing, back to the white woman. “Hawwah! Hawwah!” he rejoiced. “Someone wants to play your game!” With a snap, he settled back in her lap, and gazed up at her in a mockery of fondness.
Hawwah managed a sideways glance at Cara, and a cramped smile, as though impolitically disturbed. Her full attention returned again to the apple in her hand. It was red one side and speckled yellow on the other. Her nostrils quivered with the scent of it, and her head and hand yearned towards each other, but could not meet.
“Oh, come Hawwah, greet our guest. Delight her with your kindness and wit. Wile her, my love, as you do me. Tell her all the things that fill your mind.”
“The Apple,” said Hawwah, in a little girl voice. “All I want is another bite of the Apple.
“The first new thing in ten thousand years, and that is all you can say. Your game, wife. She wants to play it. Your clever riddle, love. Remember it?”
Hawwah turned again, and gave Cara a look of idiot knowingness, raising her eyebrows, and narrowing her eyes and laughing a silent but mischievous laugh. Then distracted, blinking, she turned again, back to the Apple.
“Look warrior,” said the Serpent, “at the face of Knowledge. Is it not divinely inspired? Does its variety not enchant? Oh-ho,” the Serpent gave a dark and vengeful laugh. “Hawwah can ask a riddle, one riddle, but she cannot answer any. She cannot sing or dance, or open up her legs. Hawwah can’t think. Is this called Knowledge? Is it? Warrior? Knowledge?”
“It is called Death,” said Cara. “And you made it.”
The Serpent howled, and even faster than before, he ploughed his way through the flowers, and pressed his face close against Cara, slapping her with his tongue. “Yesss!” he hissed. “I made it, warrior. But it does not stop me from being weary and it does not stop me from being alone. It does not stop me being dangerous with boredom.” With a sudden spin he was behind Cara, sidling across her back, and round to face her again. “Are you sure you want such Knowledge, warrior? Are you sure you want to sin, like Hawwah?”
“How. How did Keekamis Haliki lie?” asked Cara, still in the befuddlement of half-life.
“I
f you do not know that, perhaps you cannot answer the riddle,” the Serpent said, softly.
“I,” said Cara, and faltered again, in the same place. “I have come to answer Hawwah’s riddle.”
“You have said that!” howled the Serpent, and with a shudder fell away from her. “You have already said that! Do not repeat yourself! I am surrounded by the dead. All the world’s dead, and every day the world produces more. I’d destroy them if I could, but the dead cannot be destroyed. You are alive. Surprise me! Stun me! Do something new! Answer,” he commanded, “Hawwah’s riddle.”
With a sudden loop and arch and slither, the Serpent wrapped himself around both Cara and the horse. He reared up, lifting them, and the horse shrieked in terror, kicking its long white legs that hung down behind. The Serpent wound sideways, carrying them to the apple tree. Cara distinctly felt him shiver, quake, like Epesu’s hands. They were lowered through the apple blossom, and stood in the strong, sweet scent of Knowledge.
Hawwah’s face had the look of cunning that innocent people have when they think they are being clever. She liked asking her riddle. She liked each word of it, which she was unable to vary. “The riddle comes in two, like all things in life,” she said, reciting. “The first part is: what does every woman know that every man does not?”
Cara’s heart felt for her. For such a scrap of knowledge had the world been lost. Hawwah, the first woman, had wanted to know how it was that other people came climbing out of her swelling belly. She wanted to know why she was different from the beautiful Hadam, whom she loved and trusted; she wanted to know why they loved. The apple had told her, for a price.
“Oh, Hawwah, the world has changed. Women kept your secret for a time. But men learned it. We all would have learned it, in time, without the Apple. The secret is this: when men and women do the act of love, their seed combines in the nest of the woman’s belly, to make another person. Men learned, Hawwah, and women lost their power over them, to withhold children.”
That had been part of the riddle that Keekamis Haliki had answered.
“Oh,” said Hawwah in a sad, disappointed voice. She had forgotten the hero.
“And the second part of the riddle?” the Serpent said, in a steely voice. His coils were still wound around the horse’s belly, and Cara’s waist, and he stared unmoving at Cara, save for the tremor beneath his scales.
“The second part of the riddle is: are you a human being? Only if you can answer yes, is the Apple yours.”
“Yes,” said Cara, with narrowed eyes.
“The answer,” said Hawwah, pleased, “is no. The race has been divided. No one person is both man and woman.”
“I am,” said Cara.
The Serpent was absolutely still. “The bond has been broken, Hawwah. The Apple is no longer ours. Humankind is free to choose again.”
Somehow, the Apple was in Cara’s hand. She turned it over, red on one side, flecked yellow on the other, and cold to the touch. Hawwah sat, arm raised, lips yearning, her hand empty.
Cara’s plan was simple, almost hopeless; to follow in the steps of Keekamis Haliki, and succeed where he had failed—to answer the riddle correctly, to gain the Apple. Keekamis had come to solve the riddle of death, to regain life for humankind. He had failed to gain the Apple, but saw the Flower, and wrestled with the Serpent for it, and won. Exhausted by his struggles, he had fallen asleep, on the road back to life, and the Serpent stole it from him again.
Cara’s plan was to win the Apple, as she was the only person who could, and to ask it how to take the Flower. The Flower was what she wanted.
She wanted to give the Flower of Life, not to humankind, but to the Galu.
The Flower would make them immortal. If the Galu were immortal, they could not die, and if they could not die, they could not reproduce. They could be sliced to pieces, and the pieces scattered so that they could do no harm even though they still lived. Her vision had told her that this was the only way.
But she had to sin, to do it.
She turned the Apple over in her hands. Then she lifted it up to her lips, and bit it.
The Serpent gave a shriek of joy and released her. The Serpent danced. He wove from side to side, grinning. “Hawwah!” he cried. “Hawwah. We are not alone. We are not the only ones now. The only Human has sinned as well. Humankind has fallen again. A Second Fall. A Second Fall!” He wrapped himself around Hawwah, and licked her lovingly with his tongue, and she stared beyond and through him, looking still at her empty hand. “Hawwah!” he railed, his voice curdling. “Hawwah, you are free!”
Cara turned the flesh of Knowledge over in her mouth, trying to swallow. Despite its fragrance, its taste was salty. Finally, she swallowed it whole, and could feel it land, harsh and bitter in her stomach.
“Oh, Hawwah,” said the Serpent, and dropped away from her, as if in exhaustion.
Cara waited for the change. The Serpent waited, watching her now. Cara felt a tug, in her mind. Then suddenly, as if a curtain had been pulled back, Knowledge flooded into her mind. Knowledge burned her, dazzled her, like light and she screwed her face up against it, and covered her eyes. To understand the Flower, she had to understand everything else.
She saw the Creation, swirling dust and fire, and a shudder of life in the sea. Which was primary, man or woman? The answer was neither: both had grown slowly out of the other animals, and she saw how pleased and tender towards them was God, for intelligence had blossomed like a flower. A part of the universe could see and understand.
Cara saw that it was not woman who had been discontented with the garden and with love and with life. It was man who had hungered for more. Then Cara knew why there was Death, and why humankind had been driven out of the garden, and why Keekamis had lied. She knew who the Serpent was.
“Are you really so happy that we have fallen again?” she asked, pulling back her hands, staring at him with dull eyes, seeping tears. “Father? Hadam?”
It was Adam who had tempted Eve, Adam who was jealous of God and wanted power. He had made his wife bite the Apple so that the blame and the harm would fall on her and not on him. In punishment, God had made him inhuman, made him the emblem of the male organ, to crawl on the ground. And Adam, poisonous Adam, deprived of intimate knowledge of the value of life, murderous Adam, had destroyed the Tree of Life, that kept intelligence alive, and had stolen the Flower of Life. He did it to deny humankind to God. He did it to keep his children to himself. Alive, immortal, humankind would grow and grow in wisdom until it was fully part of God. Death would cut off such growth, prevent its blossoming, prevent the fruiting of Life into Knowledge. Adam denied his children to God, but at the price of murdering them. He kept them in his kingdom, monotonous, dead, unchanging.
“No,” said the Serpent, answering her question. “I am not happy.” He was bereft of everything.
Cara could almost pity him. She understood evil. She understood how the Serpent could love what he hated, and hate what he loved. His hatred had turned in and in on itself, until it was as labyrinthine and twisting as his coils. His thoughts were a maze of hatred, from which he could not escape, and that was of his own making. She understood too how Keekamis had lied, could not bear to bring back this report of his own sex, that marched to war, that had made Death for the sake of Knowledge, how Keekamis had moved the blame on to a hapless beast of the field, and on to Hawwah, who had been bitterly betrayed. The Serpent shifted.
“Is that all you know. My son? My daughter? All?” The Serpent’s eyes gleamed with expectancy, and for one moment Cara wondered and dreaded what he meant.
Then Knowledge came again, like a blow in the stomach, and she gasped for breath, and doubled over, and whined in a voice made thin with horror. “No.”
For Cara knew suddenly that the Serpent had made the Wensenara, given them their spells, solely and only so that she, or someone like her, could be standing there, able to take the Apple, so that humankind could fall again. And there was worse to come. As she was the only person
who could take the Apple, so was she, the Paradox, complete, the only person who could carry the Flower back into the Land of the Living. The Serpent wanted her to take the Flower.
For the Flower shone for eternity next to the Serpent’s breast, and the Serpent could not die. It reproached him, for eternity. For eternity, his thoughts could grow towards his enemy, show him the dreadful trap he had made for himself. Holy, indestructible, the only fragment left of the living God in the universe, beyond the control of the Serpent, always threatening to break free and drench the world with light again, the Flower was the thing that the Serpent loved and hated the most. He wanted it destroyed.
The secret of the Secret Rose rose to the Secret Rose, rose up into Cara’s mind like vomit. She had been brought here to destroy the Flower. The Serpent had brought her here.
“Ah. Now you see,” the Serpent said, with settled satisfaction.
He had made the Galu in his own image; undying and hostile to life. Humankind would give them the Flower to be rid of them; the Galu would devour the Flower and the last light would be absorbed into destroying unnecessary evil. The Wensenara, the Galu, who had the same name, Cara herself, and the vision of her mother, all had been part of the same engineering, the Serpent’s scheme.
“I will not take it,” said Cara, her voice thick with tears. “I cannot take it.”
“No?” said the Serpent, smiling. “Won’t you? Not you? Not little Cara? Then look. At least, look.”
His gleaming folds unravelled, swiftly, layer on layer tumbling away, uncoiling, and the light grew even stronger, stronger than any light Cara had ever seen, but it did not dazzle. The outline of the Flower was hard and pure and fresh, gleaming white, and Cara saw it, a flesh flower, plump-petalled like an artichoke, with a thorn on each tip. She felt blood rush to her cheeks, and saw the plants of the garden turn towards it, new tendrils, pale and juicy, spiralling towards it. The field grew virulent with colours brighter than Cara had ever seen. All shadows were banished. In that radiance, Cara could see the blade of grass at the farthest end of the field. She could see the twitch of the leaf on the farthest tree. Hawwah’s breasts rose and fell with breathing. Her arm for the first time in a million years fell to her side. Her hair was red, and her lips were pink, and her eyes, like nipples, were dark brown. She stared at Cara, weeping.