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to the sea.
    Near the marshy delta, I was restless. I circled to the bank, in the mud, into the water and back, like the wild dog before sleep, like the dervish eddying in the corner of a canyon.
    But no, it was not I but another who circled in that pregnant manner, pacing in the mud until the earth began to churn. Water rolled against the bank and a great cloud passed over the face of the rising sun. There, in the shadow of the day, came a queer unrest in the earth. The mud began to bubble up. Steam rose from the simmering earth as from the surface of a hot spring upon the valley floor. It did not drift away with the wind but rose like a phantom into the air.
    The river receded from the bank, pulling back her watery skirt to lay bare the fecund clay. Water bugs and frogs fled the naked bed.
    Now the clay began to gather up upon itself in great misshapen clods. Once, twice, it sank back upon itself only to rise up, taller, larger—and fall back again as sand beneath a wave.
    Silence from the throat of every beast. The air stood still. The earth launched up onto the grassy bank. But this time the mud was no longer formless.
    A mist crept into the valley—how could this be, by the light of the climbing sun? It drifted over the form in the grass, nearly obscuring it, seeming to draw all sound into itself. I thought I might burst from the strain of that silence . . . until a single sound shattered it:
    The gasp of an indrawn breath.

5
     
     
    Late the next morning I sat near the marsh peeling fibers from stalks of soaked hemp. I liked to be alone the day after such dreams, so the adam had gone to see the gazelle, several of which were swelling with young.
    No, it wasn’t that I wanted to be alone. I wanted to be alone with the One. The One who scaled then careened from the heights of the mount. The One who raised up the man from the mud. The One who fashioned me from a part of the man and knew me more intimately than even the adam.
    Fish leapt in the current, jubilant at the sun snared on iridescent scales. Levia’s mate, Ari, lay upon the bank, bemused by the fish, feline brows lifting over great, limpid eyes.
    Normally I would have stayed with him, but the restlessness of the churning earth of my dreams had suffused my morning, and I was unable to sit still.
    I left my work and jogged upstream in the direction of the terraced vineyard. I climbed upward, the sun on my shoulders like two warm hands.
    As I picked my way among vines that already seemed ancient, I almost called for the adam. He was too far away to hear me shout his name but would have heard me with that other sense. But I did not call him.
    I wandered farther up the slope, the scent of grapes cloying in my nostrils, practically salivating at the thought of tart, tannin-laden skins. But I had not come for food.
    I found a narrow terrace and lay down upon it in the very posture in which I had entered this world. I tilted back my head. My legs sank into the earth. And then I flung wide my arms, palms opened to the sky, as though laying bare every bit of my skin to the air.
    It came upon me: the thing that inhabited sun and air, the elements beyond them both, the heavens, and time and life.
    Ah! I was filled with joy. I was slain with pleasure! It brimmed through me, galvanized my spirit. I recalled the primal excitement of the animals as the One had blazed across the earth. I lifted my voice in wordless jubilation.
    I was more alive than the first day I drew breath. Than the first time I lay in the adam’s arms. I was alive as one can only be in the presence of the One.
    Was there air? Was there earth? Was there animal or mountain or river? I was all of these things. I was the ripple of wind through the tail feathers of bird, the soft pad of cat. I was the soul that knows the secret name of the One who fashioned it. In the distance I heard the chatter of the stream, the dance of the needle dropping from the stem, the song of the sun through glaciers a world away,