Read Eden for Free Online Page B

each pilgrim, unspoken burdens sapping their strength and draining their hope as they shivered in the cold.
    Eden sensed deep regret and pain on every leg she passed. Some of those along the riverbank smelled of remorse, others of desperation—a scent that overpowered all others. As the pilgrims milled about, the dog could smell their troubles with each leg she saw. And with each breath, another sin. This one beat his wife. That one gave herself to strangers. One failed to mourn a dead father. Another cursed his mother. The sins went on and on …
    Yet none of them dared go into the water. Instead they clung warily to the bushes, and roots along the bank to keep from falling in. Every so often one slipped, soaking his feet, only to scramble away, clinging ever more stubbornly to the rocky shore.
    Too fearful, too obstinate, too angry to wash their sins away.
    Suddenly Eden looked around. Where was her master?
    She had lost her master among the many feet.
    In panic Eden ran back and forth among the crowd, frantically snuffing the ground here and there. Trotting from leg to leg. Are you my master? Are you? She snuffed the air as deeply as she could, but for once the man’s familiar scent was nowhere on the wind. This time all traces of him gone.
    â€œWhy run when all you need to do is sit?” a solemn voice asked. Eden stopped in her tracks. By a mound of hay, a calm, gray-faced donkey sat on its haunches, staring moodily over her head.
    â€œI’ve lost my master!” Eden told him. “Have you seen him?”
    The old donkey tucked his nose into his feed, took a mouthful of hay and thoughtfully gazed across the slow river. The long gray face chewed and swallowed, and then at length the donkey cleared his throat.
    â€œOf course—look out into the water. Why fret? Do you think he’d really leave you?” he asked. “Your master stands with my master, who stands in the river. Now they both bear the water on cold blue feet.”
    Eden looked where the long gray nose pointed. The donkey’s man stood in the stream. Goatskin pelts barely covered his nakedness as he leaned on a goatherd’s crook for support. Eden’s master stood there too while the current tugged at his robe, but he bore the cold bravely, standing firmly as the current flowed around his calves—the only pilgrim who dared the river.
    Even as Eden watched, the wind sighed and held its breath.
    A sound came across the water: the faint bleating of a goat.
    Farther out in the stream a tiny goat was swept along by the current. The poor thing struggled to stay afloat, its little gray nose dipping under the water then coming up for air. The creature’s feeble cries fell on every ear.
    The pilgrims on the bank gasped in dismay, but no one stirred to help the poor thing—more afraid of the river than to see a creature drown. And for a moment Eden caught her master staring at her. So too the goatskin man and now both men stared, as though wanting her to do something. The tiny goat bleated once more and its nose dipped below the surface.
    Eden didn’t know what came over her.
    The dog leapt off the bank, rushing into the stream.
    Before the tiny goat floated ten more feet Eden paddled out to the poor struggling thing. One paw cut through the water and then the next, the water rose about her chest, her paws kept paddling and before she knew it she had swum past her master and his friend.
    The current was strong, but not so strong she couldn’t keep her head above water. The goat looked at her with frightened eyes and its gray nose sank for the last time.
    Eden found a good grip on the back of its neck and turned for shore.
    This was the hard part, for she was not a youthful dog any longer and her age got the better of her. Eden’s legs and shoulders began to fade. The goat in her jaws kicked and fought, gasping every time its nose came up for air, then suddenly went limp, exhausted.
    Dead weight, worse