Havah by Tosca Lee Page B

It seemed darker than it had that morning and softer than it should have been. The smell of it, fainter to my nostrils than before, seemed overly sweet—rotten.
    The flies had not let up in any small manner and massed upon the newest spoils. I could see now bees and beetles and roaches among them. The birds descended, a squabbling maelstrom. The thud-thudding of falling fruit, like the cudgel of a heart, seemed it would never end. Beside that great tree, the bush with the berries seemed as vibrant as ever, but it might as well have not existed for the rabid beaks and maws and vermin surging toward every fruit falling to the ground.
    I plunged into the river and swam for the bank, fighting the current. Had I ever struggled so much in water or on earth? Had my footing ever been unsure before in my life? Yet I slipped on the bank and stumbled several steps as my stomach threatened to empty itself again. Behind me the island was in riot; birds mobbed the ground, plunging from a swarm that nearly darkened the sky.
    Something thumped to the ground before me: a piece of fruit dropped by an avian thief. It was positively rotting, and a beetle was bedded within the pulp like a tick. I shrunk back just as a fox—Chalil, the flute lover!—darted out from a nearby shrub and began, with no heed for the beetle or the carious flesh, to eat it. The adam and I used to laugh at antics such as these. But even as I took a mote of comfort in the sight of him, a shadow streaked across the ground, talons extended. Chalil went down in a flash of feathers, twisting and snapping. Crimson splashed his fur, and the eagle came away with the fruit—and Chalil’s eye.
    I screamed and screamed.
    I don’t know how long I stood there, paralyzed with screaming long after the fox and eagle had gone, before the adam finally appeared and forcefully pulled me away.
    We ran along the river beyond the cloud of frenzied birds and fell down beneath a fig tree.
    “Where were you?” I shouted at him.
    His eyes were dull. “I went to find the serpent.”
    My heart sparked, but the adam’s mouth, so plush, so beloved, was a grim line. “He’s gone.”
    I did not know what to say. There was no word for fear. No word for regret.
     
     
    I HAD AN IDEA that eating one of the figs might settle my rebelling stomach. But at the sight of my hand reaching to pluck it in the same way it had for that fruit, I quailed and hid my face within one of the great leaves.
    There was no ease. Grief was a river without outlet to the sea.
    Was this what it was, then, to die the death? Surely I knew evil now.
    The adam’s hands closed around my shoulders. Where before they had brought me comfort, now I felt worse—guilty and most culpable. “I have done this,” I cried, not lifting my face. “I have done this to both of us. Were it not for me, you would not have eaten.”
    I wanted him to say that he could have stopped me had he wished. That he might have refused. That we were Ish and Isha, one flesh. He said none of these things.
    “We will find the way,” he said, sounding not at all resolved. “We must seek the One that Is.”
    My stomach lurched. I had willed thoughts of the One aside the moment I lifted that fruit from the tree. Even upon waking with dulled senses, I had thought to resolve that mystery before facing the One again. But the adam was right. We could not put right all that had gone awry without him.
    I let go the leaf. When I dropped my hands, one of them brushed against the adam’s thigh where he stood behind me. I flinched away, thinking again of what we had done. When he caught my hand and brought it back to him, I pulled away. We had used each other cheaply. I felt a hot wash of shame even as I felt an absurd flicker of desire.
    This, too, the One would know and would gaze upon us in our guilt.
    I felt laid bare, a fruit split open to reveal only moldering inside. I turned away from the adam, unable to look at him. I had cleansed myself to no avail; I