live!
WHEN I CAME TO the river after racing Adah to the far vineyard and back, I found the adam waiting for me, jewels of our garden in hand. He poked the buds of roses into my hair. He laid a wreath of laurel upon my head. But it was the thing he offered upon his palm that caused me to catch my breath: a carved bit of alabaster, a miniature form. I turned it over, touched the lines of legs and curve of hip and buttock and breast. Her arms were straight at her side, her face without detail except for the hint of a nose. But it could only be me. He showed me the burin with which he had carved it. He had with him, too, a short length of cord that he wrapped around the woman before fastening her around my neck. I fingered the smooth figurine, wishing there was a way to tie it without shrouding it in cord; I loved the feel of her form beneath my fingers.
“On the day you woke up beside me, this is how you were lying.” His gaze rested upon the figure at my throat.
That day I sat before one of the quiet pools. I studied my wreathed and adorned reflection, my face framed by a fall of dark hair. I touched my cheek in the way the adam liked to do. I traced the line of my nose to its curved tip and round nostrils.
I was a sleeker creature than the adam, if not more beautiful. My jaw was softer, my forehead less broad. We bore little resemblance to each other, which struck me as strange. I suppose I expected more of his unmistakable features upon my face, the curve of his lip upon my mouth.
The watery mirror rippled. The serpent glided into the middle of it, his magnificent wings folded upon his back.
How beautiful you are, daughter of God and man.
You are more beautiful yet.
Do you not believe the One has made you the most lovely and gifted of creatures? His was the most beautiful of unspoken voices, soft and melodious.
I am gifted with every good thing. . . .
Every good thing?
Surely the One withholds nothing from me.
And neither do I. Go and look up upon the precipice, in that tall tuft of grass there. You will see a delight. Soon I will show you another.
He spread wide his wings and took to flight. For a moment he eclipsed the sun.
Within a cup-shaped nest in the grass lay five spotted eggs. I gasped—one of them had begun to hatch. I watched over them for an hour, even after the mother returned fresh from dinner. I stroked her feathers as together we watched the slow progress of the hatchlings. But my mind was on the serpent.
I DREAMED I STOOD on the edge of the earth. I was a giant, towering into the heavens. My heels rested upon the craggy shore, my toes stretched to the sea. A tapestry lay at my feet: jade of glaciers, the desert dunes, the glow of lava . . . trees covered by blankets of moss, mists crawling from valley to valley, the lettuced edges of waves fringing the shore.
But now I realized the ocean was not the only surface rippling with movement. A motion caught my eye upon the savannah. There! A pride of lions. There! The tarpan mob, running like a river upon the steppe! I saw the elk in the wood and every other animal in strange and foreign terrain: the elephant, the tiger, the ostrich, the bear, the crocodile and wild auroch, the boar, and even from this great height the badger, the rabbit, the minx, the mole.
Finally, in the valley so familiar to me, I saw the serpent gliding among the reeds and staring up at me.
THE NEXT NIGHT I dreamed I rushed upon the plain, grasses bowed in my wake.
The roar of the lion and whooping hyena sounded from the distance. The voices of a thousand frogs screamed in chorus, and the wolf howled at midday: songs of homage sung not for me but the One before me, borne on a current greater than the air itself, than the world or any element within it—and more alive.
Behind me came the osprey, the falcon, and the hawk. We crested the mount as dawn spread across the valley. We plunged from its height—down, over pine and cedar, like water running
Justine Dare Justine Davis