As the whispers grew in Cain’s mind, so did the movement of the eyes and the vines that slithered forward and extended sharp points toward the people.
“Prick your fingers on the vines,” Cain said.
“Why?” Eve asked, and the others mumbled agreement.
“It is a rite of passage.”
Lukian was the first to prick his finger, though he stared oddly at the blood as it beaded on his finger. Mason was the second, and the others followed until at last Jacob let the Garden drink its fill.
The eyeballs snapped shut and curled into the thorny vines that slithered away into the foliage on either side to reveal a passageway. There was a strange calm as they passed within, and all life seemed caught in a stillness so pervasive it swallowed even the sounds of the fluttering leaves, which were clearly moving, though not under any compulsion so natural as a breeze.
Jacob gaped at everything, and Kiile’s children kept stopping to point, only to be urged along by Elsa. Lukian was staring again, searing holes into Cain’s skull, and Sarah walked beside Mason, as comfortable a distance from the edge as possible. Eve strode on like the queen she was, suffering her right hand to lead Adam, though she walked as if the light of the Garden dared not touch her countenance.
Cain smiled. This Garden is no fabrication as you think it is, dear mother.
They entered an orchard around which lay a seemingly impenetrable wall of thorns and greenery. The bobbing globes were everywhere, though their slits were closed and their glow diminished. It seemed the grove was filled with fruit trees of every kind. Apple, peach, mango, pomegranate, cherry, and on and on until they saw mixtures of the fruits, and what seemed to be wholly new breeds. Their bewilderment cooled, and starvation overcame their lingering fear, so that they plucked the bounty and ate in muted wonder.
Cain rubbed his face with a shaking hand and groaned. He had fasted longer than he should, but the time was not yet ripe. It was Sarah, the way she stood with her arms folded, and spun to stare at the entrance of the Garden fastened against them with thorny vines. He approached as the others moved on, though she failed to notice, seemingly too distracted by the Garden.
He pushed aside a leafy branch and she jumped at his presence. They stared into each other’s eyes for the first time since his return. His chest constricted and he grappled for a breath.
“I ache for you,” he said. Or had he merely thought it? He could hardly think because in her eyes lay no ambiguity, no guardedness, only a transparency that was at once terrifying and stirring. He thought of the years of kisses and injuries exchanged under sun and moon alike, and all jumbled together and pressed against his mind, buzzing with the Abomination’s incessant chatter. He wanted to squeeze her arm the way he had when words were outlawed and only action could speak, but dare he open himself to her? Dare he invite her to gaze upon what he knew resided inside?
“You look the same as when we kissed under the starlight so many years ago.”
She continued staring with that spellbinding transparency. What did she search for?
“Do you remember the night?” he said. “Do you remember the love on the sea breeze and the salt taste on our lips?”
The transparency smoked as she looked away. “Perhaps you have mistaken me for another.”
“I remember. Even now I see you crouched over countless shells, your feet pushing the foam of the surf that is washing more ashore. You pick your favorite.” He touched her chin and she met his gaze again. “And bring it home, caught between your fingers.”
Sarah’s eyes dimmed. “Much has faded behind memories I can never forget, behind a broken home and bloody hands, a falling sky and … pain. I see pain, I feel pain—I am pain.”
The trees swayed and brushed their leaves against them, and Cain was struck by how violence could hide in the most benign of places. In a kiss. In a smile. In a glance. In a word. As the light dimmed, she squinted as if noticing something new.
“What?”
“Your eyes,” she said. “They are not the same silver within silver. They are different. They are dark again.”
Cain paused and searched for the familiar buzzing sensation, though he felt nothing but the sweat matting the clothes to his skin. He searched for the Abomination, and his jaw hung as he realized there were only the sounds of him and Sarah bathing in Garden green.
She narrowed her eyes. “What are you hiding?”
“Nothing.”
“Something haunts you. If you desire my trust, why face it alone?”
He extended his arm. “Hurry. Take my hand.”
47
Sarah clenched Cain’s arm and silently cursed herself for so quickly abandoning her desire to remain detached for the comfort of his touch. She should have stayed in the orchard, but there were many things she should have done, and for reasons she thought better to ignore, her hands remained where they were. “Is someone following us?”
Cain’s chin sliced left, and his profile—the one she had so often admired in sleep and in waking concentration—was silhouetted by moonlight peeking through the alley above. “It’s the Garden.”
“Can it hurt us?”
“It could kill you. But it won’t.”
Her back muscles contracted as the hiss of movement sounded behind them.
“We are almost there,” Cain said.
As they passed a pair of trees with gnarled bark undulating slowly like pulsing veins, one of the branches whipped Sarah’s arm and she shuffled back, noticing blood as it oozed from her shoulder. She stared at the trunks and pointed, horrified. “There are faces in the trees.”
He hushed her and pushed her behind him, lingering to stare at the blood smeared across her arm. His face paled and became shadowed, but as she opened her mouth, he grabbed her and pulled her toward the space between the trees. The canopies quivered and lurched, and the branches unraveled and snaked away, revealing a hallway deeper into the Garden.
The way was lit by green globes and flowering vines arching overhead that projected a pale, pink light.
“Don’t touch them,” he said. “Their thorns are deadly.”
She jerked back her hand and resisted the impulse to wrench herself out of his grip, for she feared the Garden over his cruelty. Ahead, a wall of green globes turned and opened. Cain slapped them away and jerked Sarah through the opening, and as she stumbled forward, caught in his arms, she squinted and gasped.
A dome of black thorns arched over a great tree, around which were thousands of flowers upturned toward the crest, where a great light floated. The light, which looked like a small sun, threw gray shadows from drooping willow-whip branches and the fruit that bent them low.
Cain gripped a fruit and twisted until it cracked from the branch. “You must be hungry. Come, eat.”
Sarah took three steps forward, careful not to crush the flowers that seemed to watch her as she walked. Something about the fruit disturbed her, though she knew not what it was. She looked around. “What is this place? What have you done since leaving me in that storm?”
He bit the fruit and smiled as the juice dripped down his chin. “I wandered far and returned to bring you to your new home. Here we can live freed from struggle, freed from the hunger that forced me to labor long under sun and rain. You and I can raise our children in safety. We can live as gods.”
“Safety,” she intoned. The smell on his breath revived the memory of matted hair and crackling candle flame. “And if I refuse?”
“You do not know what is in my power to offer. I understand your reticence, but it is a gift, Sarah.”
She let the drooping branches stream across her shoulders, then curled her fingers around a dangling fruit and felt its flesh quiver. She broke it off with a twist and brought it to her nose. It had no smell at all, and she was tempted to bite it, to taste what Cain had tasted, to try it just once. She turned. Cain examined her every movement and expression. “After so many years,” she said, “there is still an element of that boy I l
oved. You’ve always struggled to impress.”
“Things could be as they were. They don’t need to stay how they are.”
“And how are they?”
He neared, yet his arms remained at his sides. His eyes tipped to search hers. “In those many days, I tried to conjure your voice just to feel the fire of your spirit. But you are more compelling than any memory I could summon.”
She bit her lower lip, and her skin tingled at the brush of his breath across it.
He slid his hands to the small of her back. “It feels like years. If only you knew what I …” He hesitated, his eyes probing.
“What?” A pause. “Tell me.”
He set his jaw.
She turned in his grip, but he held her fast. “If you want me, show your secrets.”
“And what of yours?” There was accusation in that voice.
“You left only weeks ago, but now you return with silver eyes, black marks on your skin, and—”
“And what?” The seduction was gone.
“There’s something in you. I saw it when you first came. It was the tone of your voice, the look of your eyes. An evil so deep I thought it would swallow me. You bring me here and offer something I do not understand, but what reason do I have to trust you, who beat me? Who murdered your twin brother and left me to die?”
“You think me insane, but I did what was necessary.”
“As do I.”
He said, “Did you think I could let you follow me into the wilderness? Did you think I could take you with me to the depths of hell?”
“I wish that you had hated me. At least then I could understand why all this has happened the way it has.”
Cain released her and ran his fingers through his hair, which had grown these past few weeks. The branches swayed and bent as the wind whispered through the canopy of leaves.
She nodded, and her eyes burned. “You always were a liar.”
“What right do you have to judge me, after everything I’ve seen of you?”
“Stop being a child.”
“I did it for us.”
“You did it for yourself. You abandoned me. You abandoned our children, and our grandchildren have been murdered by the beasts you seem able to control.”
A hint of a smile attempted itself on his face. “Ah, yes. Our children.” He took a few steps forward, eyeing her stomach.
“What are you looking at?” She shuffled back.
“Little child, will you not tell us whose you are?”
Darkness settled in her toes. Her voice shook. “How dare you?”
“Innocence carries no reason for anger.”
She threw the fruit and it crashed through the branches. “The only fidelity between us is my own. You may think your bitterness is justified, but I watched your eyes wander long before the thought ever entered my mind.”
Cain said, “Where were you those nights I lay awake?”
“Sitting in the darkness and weeping for the love we had but somehow lost.”
“You made love to Abel.”
“I never touched him.”
“You snuck off into the fields under the cover of darkness as if it would hide your sins.”
Her face reddened. “He was a good man.”
“I wonder if Lilleth knew.”
“I never touched him, but now I wish I had, because then maybe this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe he’d be alive, and you …”
The silver grew, and he approached her. She fell to her seat and scrambled away, but he climbed on top of her and struck her in the face. She screamed, “I never touched him,” but he hit her again. She was weeping, and the tears wetted her hair. His fists came again and again, and she thought she would choke.
Cain stopped and fell back, the breath hissing between his teeth. Sarah lay weeping on the ground, her legs and arms pulled into herself. She cupped her face, which swelled with aching wounds. He stood, and his voice sounded alien as he said, “You may think you can choose a different way, but you and everyone else will find there is nothing now but me.”
“You’re a monster.”
“I killed Abel, I killed God, and if I must, I will kill you and everyone who stands against me. We could have peace. We could. Why won’t you listen?”
She clenched her eyes until they hurt. She could feel the heartbeat in her stomach. It ached and throbbed, and she rubbed it with her hand and prayed for her unborn child.
Cain’s voice rumbled behind her. “Whether the child is Abel’s or not, it will always be mine.”
48
Lukian knelt alone at the edge of the Garden. The sounds of the others had traveled far enough away to become mumblings, and so he sat with a fruit in each hand and a pile before him, eating. The pale thirst had returned stronger than before, and with it came that gnawing itch.
He swallowed partly masticated chunks. The fruit in his hands oozed on his fingers, but nothing brought satisfaction. It was like scratching an itch that remained too deep to be quenched.
Quenched, he thought. Thirsty.
A chill wind blew past and raised his skin. He dropped the fruit, stood, and turned every direction as the whispering voice crept close. “Brother,” Lukian whispered. “Is that you?” The buzz in his mind grew to a roar, and when he felt he could take no more, it stilled. The sounds of his family exploring the Garden danced on the fringes. But as he strained his ears, he heard footsteps approaching from deep in the thicket, and he shuffled closer to gain a glimpse, though the hedge was too thick.
Something pricked his neck, and he slapped at it. He brought his hand away with two spots of red and stared at them, recalling an identical moment deep in the Fog, and another in the forest.
At that moment, a pale arm extended from the thicket and pushed the branches aside. A second arm shot out and spread the gap, allowing the glow of the globes to illuminate a pair of delicate feet and slender calves, and the pale face of his little twin brother.
“Brother,” Lukian said, “deliver me from this sickness.”
The boy frowned with pity. “Come close so that I may.”
Lukian knelt and offered his hand. The boy took it and smiled, a thin line cupping a lengthy nose. Lukian silently pleaded for answers. Instead, the boy pulled out a fruit different from the last, perfectly round and the color of skin. “Taste and see …”
Something in Lukian was repulsed, but the longer he stared at the fruit, the more he itched with pleasure. Not the pleasure of fruition, but of a desire too deep to ever truly own. He smiled at the fruit, then those eyes. “Are they silver like Cain’s because you both died?”
“Cain found the God inside and embraced it. I came because I saw you searching for it. Because I recognized your potential—your receptivity.”
Lukian licked his lips and stayed a shaking hand from snatching the fruit. He wanted to maintain a semblance of dignity. “For me?”
It nodded, its eyes insatiable. “Taste and see. But understand that once you do, you may not return.” It paused. “You must understand.”
So the forest was just a vision, he thought. But what about the blood on my neck? “What will happen to me?”
“To conquer death you must embrace it. Death, like life, is an illusion. One that you might overcome if you but embrace the truth.”
“What is the truth?”
“That inside you is everything—the world, the stars, life, deity—and there you will find the power to transcend. You must no longer restrain your desire, for it is the key to finding your truth. You need only believe in yourself. Believe in what you can do, what you can become.”
“The Almighty?”
“His laws held you captive. They suppressed the God inside. They forced you to abandon happiness in favor of his. Come. Taste and see …”
Lukian shivered. His hand reached a few inches forward, his fingers itching to grab the fruit, but more so to grab the hand. He stared into those silver eyes, and though the rims were beautiful, they seemed like open thr
oats. This is my brother. Why should I fear my brother?
A voice called for him, and the boy’s silver eyes shot over his shoulder. Lukian turned to see, and in the distance, between the orchard’s branches, moving shadows danced long and low.
Lukian turned back, his soul longing for the fruit, but the boy and the fruit were gone. He struck the ground and suppressed the urge to scream.
Cheated, he thought. I’ve been cheated again.
Eve felt as if she had been thrown a hundred and fifty years into the past—back to the Garden of Eden.
It looks so authentic, but I know that it is not real. It cannot be real.
Something jerked her arm, and she glanced over her shoulder and saw Adam’s hand in hers. “Sorry,” she said. “I did not mean to twist your arm.” She let go and watched his arm swing flaccid at his side. Adam mumbled, though it took her a moment to realize she had not imagined it. She squeezed his shoulder. “What did you say?”
He mumbled again and his eyes jerked to something over her shoulder. She turned and saw a round purple fruit she had never seen before hanging off a branch. She broke the fruit off its stem and pushed it into his hand, but his fingers hung motionless. She brought the fruit to his mouth, but he puckered his lips and shifted away. She brought the fruit to her own mouth and tore the skin away. The juice was sweet and fresh, and the skin sour, and as she brought it to Adam’s lips, he bit, chewed, and swallowed.
When at last only the hard pit remained, she tossed it on the ground and used the hem of her garment to wipe his face and beard. Some of the juice had dribbled down his neck, and she scrubbed it from his skin.
Eve slipped her fingers into his again, and everything but the pain in her throat fell away as she pressed her lips against his bristly cheek.
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