The Eve Tree: A Novel

by Rachel Devenish Ford

  but you shall be called My Delight is in Her,

  and your land, Married.

  For the Lord delights in you,

  and to him your land will be married.

  There was something in the room that kept sliding through Molly's awareness. She would almost catch it and it would be gone again. Something about the logging, the old growth, desolation on the hills. In the long ago past the tan oak had been stripped, then all the huge trees hauled away to be chopped. Molly had always thought, "I wouldn't have done it. I wouldn't have sold the trees," but here she was and she couldn't save them. All over again. Not here!

  What would it be like to burn? How long would it take before it stopped hurting? She cried, afraid. She wanted Jack.

  She looked at the burl carving again. You will no longer be called Desolate, your land will no longer be Forsaken. It was teasing her, something that was very important, but that she couldn't quite get. Finally, though, it came to her. She grasped the elusive truth by the tail and pulled it up, out of the water. It was about naming. It was about a name. She sat up and wailed, put her hands to her mouth to stop the sound. She could see it! Her name was something different, something other more than the things she'd said, the things she'd done. Catherine knew this, she could live because she had discovered that she was not what she had done. She was not made of the thing she was afraid of.

  Neither was Molly, was that what she had come here to find out? There was something at the center of Molly that could never be changed by all the stupid things stumbled over. She sobbed, devastated. She needed to get out. She needed not to burn here, she needed to know her name. She turned the water off and stood up, ready to get out of the bathtub and find a way out of the fire.

  The men were back at the door. She heard all their clamorous voices dragging at her. Then one voice separated from the rest and became Jack. Was it him, really?

  "Molly, Beloved. Come out please. We need to go."

  She froze. Mollybeloved, her true name. It was Jack, really, he knew her name. And she knew it then. Beloved. She was loved. She was loved by Jack and by Jefé, by her father, and her children, and finally she knew, by her mother, because why else would she make that painting? She had run away from all this love for so long that she had almost lost it.

  "Can you come in here, Jack?" she asked. Her face was wet with tears, they were flowing steadily, making their way into the creases in her neck, sliding over her collarbone, falling in the water.

  He was arguing with the men. She was dripping water onto the floor, like in labor when her water had broken and she had soaked the floor with all that new birth. She turned the lock, so Jack could come in. Heavy footsteps in the hall, back in the direction of the kitchen, and Jack opened the door. She stood and looked at him. His eyes were wet, too, his black eyelashes clumped together. He had black marks on his face, and his mouth was pulled down. His curly hair was standing on end. He was so beautiful. She reached to touch his hair.

  "Molly," he said. "I was so worried."

  "Oh," she said, lifting her hands to her face. "Oh, I've wrecked everything."

  He shook his head at her. He was smiling but he still looked sad. She let him come inside. He closed the door behind them.

  He plucked a towel from the shelf and began carefully to dry her off. The towel picked the water up off her like a flame might, if it was close enough. He was so tender that she was crying again. Had he ever done this before? Maybe she had never let him. He finished drying her neck and kissed her on the mouth. Her face was still wet with tears, and she tasted salt, his or hers she didn't know.

  The kiss shot through her, the warmth of his lips put her back where she belonged, standing in her own feet on her own floor. Loved. Heat filled her belly. He leaned back and looked at her. She was still holding the wine glass. There was a swallow left, and she took a sip, just enough that it wet her mouth and she tasted the pungent breath of it. Then she raised the glass to Jack's lips and was gratified when he opened his mouth for the last drops.

  "I'm going to find you something to wear," he said, and he closed the door behind him as he left. She hugged herself with her arms and shivered, swaying where she stood. The pink water in the tub quivered with the vibrations of people hurrying around their home, and Molly leaned over to pull the plug out. She watched the water disappear. She would never leave Jack.

  Only he could cup her cheekbone in his hand like the petal of a flower. Or take their ranch on his wide shoulders, day after day, year after year.

  He opened the door again and held a caftan out to her. "We'd better hurry, Molly, Beloved," he said, and she smiled a quavery smile. She pulled the caftan over her head and let it drop around her ankles.

  She had never been able to protect the things she'd been entrusted with. She regretted it, oh, how she regretted it. She lost her mind and couldn't keep her babies safe. She couldn't keep her forests from harm. But her mother had dreams of falling trees, and Jack had regrets, and after just a little wine the bath water had been pink, like something pure all the way through, after only a moment.

  Jack had come back for her.

  They walked out together. Molly looked around her bathroom one last time, looking for something to tell her what had happened there, for the truth that had brought her back from the chasm, but only saw a bathroom, the hideout of a crazy woman, perhaps. Real change was hidden that way sometimes, depending on whether it decides to reveal itself. It's obvious that a redwood tree has been around for thousands of years, but a small stone, the kind you can hold in your hand, may have been around for even longer.

  As they walked through the house, Molly ignored the stares of the firemen. She saw the most beautiful structure she'd ever seen, her own home, the home she had come back to. She'd never wanted anything quite as badly as this home that was already hers. She followed Jack out of the house, onto the driveway.

  And here she was again, on the driveway in the sun while Jack spoke to a fireman and flames danced on the edges of her vision. She tried to scoop up the parts of herself that had leaked over and fallen outside the lines of safety. Sam nosed around her legs and jumped up on her, like he had when he was only a puppy. She put a hand on his head and looked up at the hill toward the Eve tree. She gasped. The hillside was burning. Dread filled her and she started crying, doubled over and clutching her stomach. Jack came to her side and put his arms around her. "I'm sorry, Molly, I'm really, really sorry," he said.

  The Eve tree was burning. They were losing more than they could ever regain.

  "They've saved the horse barn," Jack said. " Jefé and Moses were inside, like the renegades they are."

  Molly smiled and cried at the same time. "Those two."

  Despite the disorienting landscape, they had made their way home.

  She thought about her father and the painting her mother had made, thought about the bewildering map of the mind. A landscape where a drought can blight one section or another, where a lack of love can cause no fruit to grow. A place where every person has their own topography. So what if her heritage had given her hills and boulders instead of fertile prairies? People always acted as though hills couldn't be navigated. Hills were hard, but you just had to climb up, scrabble along for awhile, before you found another face in the landscape, met and touched another person.

  Molly crossed the dry lawn with Jack, passed by Catherine's favorite rosebush and climbed into the truck. She sank against the seat.

  "I don't want to leave."

  Jack looked at her. "I know," he said. "I'm sorry."

  They were silent as he started the truck and put it in gear, accelerating and rumbling up the driveway. Molly swiveled in her seat and watched her house receding behind her, barely visible through the thick layers of smoke, like fog in a painting as beautiful as a dream.

  EPILOGUE

  Humboldt County, Northern California

  Spring 2006

  Jack glanced back at his wife, who sat on her horse as if entranced. Th
e horse moved slowly along the trail, under a sky as clear as a mountain stream, white clouds high and fat. Molly was looking all around with an expression on her face that reminded Jack of what she looked like before she tucked into some really good food.

  He smiled and turned back to face the trail. They were on the ridge, walking the horses through grass so verdant it almost hurt the eyes with its exclamation of green. The blackened branches of burnt trees twisted and gesticulated in the air, indelible marks on the blue sky. Around them was the biggest crop of wildflowers that had ever existed on the earth before. Or on the O'Leary Ranch, at the least. Flaming California poppies, purple lupine, and the dozens of tiny white and yellow flowers matted like carpet in great swathes. And all among the grass and flowers, tiny new trees. A revelation was waiting around each curve the horses took. Jack almost couldn't bear how beautiful it was.

  It was their spring flower journey. They let the horses eat when they wanted to. They didn't speak, didn't plan anything, didn't talk about milk or cheese or cattle. Jack kept throwing glances at Molly, and in return she gave him little secret smiles that unlocked his chest and nearly burst his heart.

  What a year it had been. The days circling around fire and madness last summer, the grim awakening of over a thousand acres burned. A hard winter with stark, burned trees all around them. And yet here they were with April dawn, coming to terms with a new landscape, a forest in its startling infantile stage.

  Molly dismounted and hiked off to a little vale of grass. She slipped down a tiny hill and began to fill her arms with wild irises and Indian paintbrush. Jack wished he could make something for her with all these flowers. He wished he could weave them into a mountain for her. Or a ladder that she could climb, sit above everything, with the clouds. He wished he could make her a bed of them. She could sink into it, find safety inside. He wanted to give her everything, to crack the world open for her and watch her discoveries as they happened.

  But the only thing he had to give was himself. Incredibly, for her, he was enough.

  She turned to him, grinning, and he saw the little girl, the woman in danger, the strong and graceful tree. The one that hadn't burned.

  I do, he said. I do.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  A thousand thanks to Mark and Tammie Chapman, for the seed of a story that captured my heart and mind for the last four years, who saved me from embarrassing ranch mistakes, and who are the truest kind of friends.

  Thanks to Renni Browne and Shannon Roberts at The Editorial Department, (www.editorialdepartment.com) who were crucial in helping to develop the shape of the book. Thanks to Melissa Westmeier, one of the first editors. Thanks to Cate, who gave me a kind read through, and to Renee, who read with enthusiasm. Thanks to my dad and mom, Terry and Trisha Devenish. You are the most supportive parents anyone could wish for. Thanks especially to my mom for proofreading. And thanks to my brothers and sister, whose love for me is like food.

  Thanks to the readers of my blog. Your encouragement and discernment grew me up as a writer. Special thanks to Eleanor, who wanted to know more about Molly and Jack at a key time in the writing of this book. You may have kept me going. Thanks to Levi and Jessie Benkert, for the gift of a computer that carried the book along for much of its formation. Thanks to friends at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers for your feedback and encouragement.

  Thanks to my teachers in Chilliwack, British Columbia, namely Gordon Yakimow and Muriel Morris, for fanning the love of literature in me. Thanks to my community for support and kindness, and to my children who are the best recharge after hours of writing.

  And thanks most of all to my Superstar Husband, Chinua Ford, who made every writing hour possible and who loved the book from the beginning.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR -

  Read on for an Excerpt of A Traveler's Guide to Belonging.

  Newsletter

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  Bio

  Rachel Devenish Ford is the wife of one Superstar Husband and the mother of five incredible children. Originally from British Columbia, Canada, she spent seven years working with street youth in California before moving to India to help start a meditation center in the Christian tradition. She can be found eating street food or smelling flowers in many cities in Asia. She currently lives in Northern Thailand, inhaling books, morning air, and seasonal fruit.

  Works by Rachel Devenish Ford:

  The Eve Tree

  A Traveler's Guide to Belonging

  Trees Tall As Mountains: The Journey Mama Writings- Book One

  Oceans Bright With Stars: The Journey Mama Writings- Book Two

  A Home as Wide as the Earth: The Journey Mama Writings: Book Three

  World Whisperer

  Path of Springs

  Reviews

  Recommendations and reviews are such an important part of the success of a book. If you enjoyed this book, please take the time to leave a review.

  Don't be afraid of leaving a short review! Even a couple lines will help and will overwhelm the author with waves of gratitude.

  Contact

  Email: racheldevenishford@gmail.com

  Blog: http://journeymama.com

  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/racheldevenishford

  Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/journeymama

  Instagram: http://instagram.com/journeymama

  If you enjoy YA fantasy, you will love World Whisperer, Rachel Devenish Ford's new adventurous, coming-of-age book for teens and adults.

  Seven years ago, Isika's mother walked out of the desert with three children in tow, leading the priest of the Worker village to marry her and take in her children. In all those years, fourteen-year-old Isika has never been able to fit in as a Worker or live up to her role as the priest's daughter, and worse, she has been helpless against the tragedies that have fallen on her family.

  But now the four goddesses they serve want another sacrifice, and Isika's stepfather has chosen the next child to be sent out to sea: the little brother who Isika loves more than anything.

  This time Isika will not be powerless.

  Together, she and her two remaining siblings leave the walls of the Worker village to save their brother, traveling into unknown lands and magic they never could have imagined.

  ***

  Rachel Devenish Ford has spent ten years writing about life on her blog, Journey Mama. She has collected the best of these posts in the Journey Mama Writings series. If you love to know everything you wanted to know about authors and their children, you might like The Journey Mama Writing Series.

  Book One: Trees Tall as Mountains

  Book Two: Oceans Bright with Stars

  Book Three: A Home as Wide as the Earth

  If you like literary fiction, you might like A Traveler's Guide to Belonging.

  "A beautiful, beautiful book." -Sara J. Henry, Award-winning author of Learning to Swim

  Twenty-four-year-old Timothy is far from his home country of Canada when his new wife dies in childbirth. Stunned, he finds himself alone with his newborn son in the mountains of North India and no idea of what it means to be a father. He begins a journey through India with his baby, seeking understanding for loss and life and the way the two intertwine.

  Set among the stunning landscapes, train tracks, and winding alleys of India, A Traveler's Guide to Belonging is a story about fathers and sons, losing and finding love, and a traveler's quest for meaning.

  A TRAVELER'S GUIDE TO BELONGING

  PART 1

  CHAPTER 1

  Later, Isabel's mother would say that her daughter died like a pig on the floor, but Timothy had been there, and he knew that Isabel's death was nothing like the noisy, terrible death of a pig. It happened like this: Isabel was there and then she was gone, gone into the deep black Indian night, gone away from him and her newborn son, gone forever.

  The day had started like all o
f their days since they had moved to the foothills of the Himalaya mountains in the far north of India four months before. Timothy and Isabel lived in a tiny, sun-soaked house surrounded by corn fields. When they had first seen the house, there had been wheat rather than corn, the tall stalks rippling gently as they walked up the curving paths from house to house, climbing stairs on the hillside where there were no roads, until Isabel put one hand on her belly, round with their baby, and declared she had to sit down or she would fall down. Timothy found a chair for her at a small café, then, at her bidding, had walked across the path to check out the little white house. The house turned out to be perfect, the very house where they would live and wait for their baby. They moved in and the wheat grew tall, then was harvested by women wearing punjabi suits with sweater vests, shawls wrapped around their heads. Corn was planted, and it grew, until that day when Timothy and Isabel woke up, not knowing they would be saying goodbye to each other forever.

  The morning was so normal. They cuddled in their blankets until finally Timothy got out of bed to make the coffee on the burner in the corner of the room, wincing as his feet hit the cold concrete floor. From the pile of blankets, Isabel laughed at him.