by Tosca Lee
Though the serpent I had known had no human head, I could not forget the sight of him growing greater before the One, sprouting wings, again and again, standing up on two legs as his front pair lengthened to the size of arms . . . looking up at the One with one face . . . and down at me with another.
“What—what is that?”
“Only some creature I made up,” he said. “Do you like it?”
“I think,” I said, steadily, “that you should take care to save it and show your father.”
That night Adam drew me aside. “What tales have you told the boy, that he should draw that serpent in the clay? I would not have it, or any rendering of it, so close to the house—or anywhere on this earth, for that matter!”
“I told him nothing! But now what more proof do we need that this is the time? Surely it will come back to strike his blow—as though he has not had victory enough already—but this time Kayin will kill him. It is time! Then perhaps . . .”
I could say no more. I was almost superstitious in my hope. For the next day Adam said little to me, frowning slightly whenever I saw him, lost to his thoughts.
No matter.
We said nothing to Lahat about his drawing—only that we did not think it proper to give a human head to an animal as though it could be part one and part the other.
“You are a man now, too old to be given to fancy.”
His expression around his eye drew down when I said it, but he did not disagree. Nor did he do it again in my sight.
Kayin kept to himself more and more and began even to stay in his own home. I thought he was exhausted and worried about waking us with his restlessness at night. But then I realized, as he left the house whenever I entered it, that he was merely avoiding me.
“My son!” I said to him one day as he prepared to leave after I had come in. “Will you not stay? Have you no word of love for your mother?” I laid my hand against his cheek. He flinched as though it burned him.
“What is this—are you ill?”
He looked away and then back at me. “No, Mother. I am not ill.”
“Then why do you keep to your own? Are there words unspoken between us?”
Now he lowered his gaze, fixing it solidly upon my belly, but he would not speak. I felt my heart and expression soften. “What now, are you jealous for a son of your own?”
“No, Mother,” he said, with sudden vehemence. “I mean, yes, if the One should will it. It is only that I cannot stand the thought that his seed should fill you after such vile words as I know he spoke to you.” His mouth twisted as he said it. “How should I look on that, knowing how he has pained you, when I have loved you greater—”
“Stop!” Shock coursed through me at his open admission. “He is your father and my husband. What is this presumption of yours? The child is a blessed sign! Do not forget that!” I was shaking, and I realized I had raised my hand.
“Will you strike me again, Mother? Then strike me because I love you so well.” Tears were in his eyes. “Strike me, but never let him pain you again as I have seen. It is enough that I have stolen from him a portion of your love—oh, I know how he thinks. It is enough that I must portion out my place in the field upon the ground with which he works. He looks at me as though every furrow I scratch in the ground is in his own skin, and so he criticizes everything I do, jealous for it, as though there is nothing good enough in his eyes! But all this I can bear, all of this I bear gladly, if it means that I will do this thing, whatever it is, that the One will ask of me because I know it will soothe you. But do not ask me any longer to gaze with love upon the seed he has planted, knowing all the grudge he bears every work of mine.”
I had not known. I had not known until that moment the extent of the resentment between them. For the first time I understood, and great was my pity for him. Still, he must bear it. I was his mother, not his sibling. He must bear it and bear it well, for all of us.
“You speak to me as you should not speak to your mother. I will not hear it. He is your father. You must follow him in all that you do. You are also the seed of your father and of my womb. And you might do well to take your planting to heart as well. Lila is all these years without a child, with only mine to carry in her arms. If you would not look upon mine, then see to the getting of your own.”
Even as I walked away, I knew I had done him more hurt than ever the adam had done to me. But I did it, as I had done all things, for love.
Or so I told myself.
THE SUMMER WORE ON. The barley grew gold on the stem. An argument broke out between Zeeva and Renana that sent Besek scuttling home, his head lower than I had ever seen it even as Renana’s lifted higher. We made space for him, as always, and he stayed close to the house—or at least away from both Zeeva and Renana, who continued to come to the house under some guise or another.
“That girl is up to no good,” I said one day to Lila but would not speak of it to Adam. My pride would not allow it. Lila only nodded, going about her work, saying nothing, and it was all I could do not to press her for whatever she knew, she, who knew more than she ever spoke, the most silent of all my children. Only the furious flight of her shuttle ever indicated her agitation.
I left my children to arbitrate themselves, and Adam stayed more clear of their conflict than was his wont. Eventually it was not Kayin, as I expected, who intervened, but Hevel. Whatever he said to Besek, he went back to Kayin’s home two days later. Renana kept her home with Hevel and Ashira, and I did not see her again for many days.
Kayin could not have been called upon in those days to arbitrate much at any rate; he worked all day, returning at night with slow gait, staying only so long as it took to eat a meal, sometimes to play with Sufa or replace the flint blade of his scythe. He did not stay at my hearth but slept in his own house.
I should have known it then. I should have seen, by the measured gait of Kayin, careful and graceful out of habit for anyone who might be watching. I should have known by the counsel he kept only with himself, measuring out his words as one shows only his best side or his best handiwork to another for inspection.
I should have known by the way Hevel shook his head and then chuckled at his sisters even as concern wrinkled his eyes. At the way he sought the approval of none, saying what he would, regardless of what it was. The way he bared his arms to deliver the ewes. By the way he gave extravagantly to his brothers, from the best of the animals for their own flocks, even as Kayin gave after much consideration, seeking with silent need the smile of thanks for his work.
How much Kayin wanted to please. How much he knew he must. How quietly Hevel lived his life, hiding often behind his easy laugh so that only those few of us who had known him as a child might know that he was like the river with its hollows and depths beneath its reflective surface.
One night before the sacrifice, I dreamed.
I stood at the mountain gate of our valley. Before me on either side was a pillar of flame. I felt the heat of them and stood back as though they would burn me but could not bring myself to look away. As I gazed into them, I began to see shapes in that golden flame—the shape of a man within each pillar. And I saw that they were each holding an object like a spear, but they were not spears. Nor were they made of wood but of the metals that are found in rocks, shaped like long knives, the tips lifted to the heavens.
Around each of the men curled two sets of wings lifted up off their shoulders as though they had dropped from heaven, their wings trailing like the long hair of a girl. So brightly they shone that I lifted my arm but still could not look away. Ah, how they wore such beautiful consternation on their faces! I imagined that in the midst of the inferno, tears coursed down their lovely cheeks. Even as their faces tilted down toward me, the backs of their heads lifted up toward the heavens—just like the serpent! But they were not the serpent. They were utterly alike, with one accord shared between them, where the serpent, unique and more beautiful than these two, had had only his own.
I shouted to th
e flaming ones. “Will you let me by?”
“Daughter of the One and of man,” they said, speaking with a voice as of many, as though in a chorus, their mouths forming the words as one. “You will not pass through this gate.”
“Where is the serpent? The one who is so like you?”
“What is the serpent to us? What is the serpent but a creature of the field?”
“But he had wings, as you do, and a face that looked at me as his other looked up to God. Surely you know he was like you!”
“These are matters greater even than you.” Their mouths moved as one. “Blessed are you and the seed of your womb.”
I woke, my throat parched as though I had breathed in an oven.
The next morning Hevel came to me. His eyes were tired, as though he had not slept in days.
“Have your children kept you up through the night?”
He gave a weary shake of his head. “No, it is not that. How I dream, Mother! And I come to you wanting to know what it could mean.”
I felt myself draw back as though within my own skin.
“I dreamed that I stood in your valley, and I knew it was your valley from all that you have told me; it could have been no other place.” He raked his hand through his hair.
“And was it a beautiful place?” I asked, carefully. Was there longing in my voice? Was there hope?
“It was. Or might have been. But as I stood there—and there must have been a river because though I did not see one, I could hear it behind me—I found myself in what seemed a cave of willows.”
I stared, trying not to visibly recoil.
“It was dark in there, and I came out to stand in the light in a clearing. But I came to the clearing, and there I saw two forms that I had never seen before. Creatures, flayed for the sacrifice.” He came close to me and laid his hand against my arm. “And so tell me,” he said, with an intensity I had never seen in him. “Have I dreamed truth?”
I wavered on a narrow precipice. I did not know what else he had dreamed. Had he seen his naked mother and father, trembling before the One?
“What does your heart tell you, Son?”
His eyes were wild. “Is this how it was and what you saw and how it was done?”
I looked beyond him as though I would see again that clearing, though I had no desire to see it ever again, even in memory.
“Yes,” I whispered.
He looked troubled after that, but when I asked him why, he would not tell me but said only that he must think on his vision now that he knew it was true.
SEVERAL DAY LATER ADAM and Besek began repairs to the altar. Lila scoured and oiled the wooden bowl, which I had kept all these years, sacred and vile at once as it was to me.
The children prepared as though for festival. Every harvest had become a great celebration for them, and they stayed out at night eating and drinking long after dark, sometimes sleeping around a fire. Lila revealed several new tunics that she had made for Sufa and Lahat. Ashira made a wealth of cheese to accompany Zeeva’s sweet-smelling cakes. Adam laid his arm around me, his hand upon his son in my belly. Kayin did not rest through the heat of the day but labored straight through it, toiling in the sun.
I celebrated with them, though not for the harvest or the sacrifice, but because soon, I was convinced, we would stand before that mountain gate.
Hevel brought the lamb to the house the night before. I watched the way he got down before it, stroking its fleecy head and scratching its neck in silence. Vaguely, I wondered if he communed with those animals in ways long forgotten to us.
Would that I had asked.
Watching him, I thought how much he resembled the boy he had been. My children idolized Kayin and stood a half step apart in awe of something about him that he wore about his shoulders as heavily as a mantle, but with Hevel there was neither awe nor burden. There was only the man that loved each as they came to him, who always had a moment for his youngest siblings—and now his children—to crawl upon his lap, and who gave from his own plate and of his own belongings and of his own energy in all patience and love, to anyone who asked.
“Hevel, do you remember the first lamb you gave up for the altar?”
He smiled slightly. “I do, Mother. I cried for three nights afterward.”
“You must have thought us cruel to take him in that way. You couldn’t look at it when it was being done but turned your face away, against my leg.”
He shook his head slightly. “I couldn’t bear to see it done. But I knew he was going to the One. And, I have never told you, I think a part of me, knowing the mystery even at that age, envied him just a little.” His face registered a slight awe, shining in his eyes.
“Ah, my good boy,” I said with a soft chuckle before going inside.
Laughter amid tension, smiles before the chasm. We are the new shoot before the storm, the shelter before the flood.
WE WENT AT DAWN. We did not always do it then. We did as seemed to be given us. We did as seemed best . . .
We did as seemed best.
We gathered around the altar: Kayin carried a basket of finely ground flour in one hand, a jar of oil in the other. Behind him came the procession of his sisters: Lila bearing wheat and barley, Ashira bearing flax, and Zeeva carrying a wealth of vegetables. They had not been harvested first but allowed to grow to such size and beauty that these were, I was certain, the best specimens I had ever seen.
Only I knew the tension in his shoulders, how his hand trembled as he set down the basket.
He wore nothing that dawn but linen tied around his waist. I was shocked at how lean, how stringy his muscles had become. How fine he was! Was there ever a more handsome man except for his father?
He laid the baskets upon the stones, arranged them beautifully. He took the oil and poured it out. I petitioned in my heart that it should be the fragrance of every pleasing thing, that it should remind the One of every delight in our valley and that the One might long to walk with us within it again.
When he turned back, I saw the look upon Adam’s face: pride. And though Kayin chafed every moment he was in his father’s presence, his face lifted as I had not seen it do in all these recent years.
If Adam could look upon him with approval, how should the One resist?
I knew Kayin looked next at me, but I kept my eyes fixed stolidly upon the altar.
Would that I had given him any kind word. Would that I had motioned for him to come to my side. But I did not. Even then I had no small mercy for him.
Every man must stand before the One alone.
In my heart, however, I poured out my love like oil. Hevel would not sacrifice the lamb himself but gave it over to Adam. He always stood back and hid his face; he would not come to the altar with tears. Adam sliced the throat of the lamb. I held out the bowl.
For the first time I welcomed the flow of blood into that vessel, and through the process of flaying the animal, I sent up my hopes to heaven.
When Adam laid it upon the altar, I set out the bowl of blood. As I did . . .
Did I see false? A phantom line of skinless animals seemed to stretch out before me.
Blood and oil. Grain and flour. With it we laid out our every hope.
A blaze shot up from the bier. I thought I saw again the fiery pillar, the golden wings stretching up toward heaven, shielding the sword as though it were a flame.
I clasped Adam’s hand as if in doing so we might return to the thing we had always been: one flesh.
Soon.
I dropped back my head. It was the same thing I had felt every time the One was near. I almost expected that evening breeze here, in the light of dawn, or the feel of the sun, too bright for morning. I opened my eyes and saw, beyond the fire of the altar, the bright morning star, undaunted by the blaze.
Yes. Come, Great Initiator, Beginning and End.
Though I knew my children were here around us, in that moment it was only Adam and I. The ground beneath us might be an alluvial plain or the foothill
of a mountain . . . or a fertile valley. All of it was holy. All of it was good, for it had all been made by God.
I was torn from the moment by a strangled cry: Kayin’s.
He lurched toward the altar and reeled back from the heat of the fire. Adam let go my hand and tried to haul him back, but Kayin tore free and snatched one of the sheaves of wheat from atop the altar. I watched in confusion as he held it toward the holy fire as one does to light a torch. And then I saw why . . .
One side of the altar burned in bright conflagration. The other had never properly caught. It sent great, reeking coils of stench into the early morning sky so that the burning animal seemed clean and fragrant by comparison.
Adam pulled him back. “Do not interfere with the fire of the One!”
Ashira’s son, Nave, pointed. “Why, the other side isn’t burning at all!”
Ashira hushed him, pushing down his finger and covering his mouth. Kayin cried out in one last desperate push for the altar, but Adam held him fast. It was too late by now anyway; the fire over Hevel’s lamb was burning lower and lower, until it was the flickering fingers of one burning hand. And then the carcass—what was left of it—glowed as a timber that has been burnt through . . .
The fire went out. The form of the animal collapsed upon itself, only ash.
Hevel stood with head bowed, swaying slightly, saying nothing, looking at no one. His lips moved, though no sound came from them.
The lamb was gone, consumed utterly. Even the embers were gone, the ashes already stirring in the air.
But the once-feast on the other side of the altar continued to smolder, ruined, the smoke horrifically foul.
Kayin slumped in Adam’s arms, and, when his father continued to hold him fast, pushed him away with a violent shove. Adam staggered back.
“The One will do as the One will do,” Adam said. But even I wanted to cry out that the sacrifice, the bounty, had been perfect.
Lila, normally so reserved, covered her eyes with a great wail, but Ashira silenced her.
