When the new one appears across the cranberry bog, he is wrapped in dark-colored garb clinging to his frame. Eve straightens her back, turns to face what will happen to her. No cowardice ever lingered in Eve’s heart. The body shape is like her and Adam. Similar height. Two arms. Two legs. The being tips a covered head, waves and begins striding toward Eve.
Eve spits out the cranberries that stain her teeth the same red as the blood in the mouths of the lions when they raise their massive, glorious heads, having gorged the steaming bodies of prey. Eve imitates the animals of Eden. She has a talent for impersonation, and it can get boring in the garden. To transform into a lioness, Eve devours fistfuls of cranberries, tousles her long, straight, black hair, throws her head back and roars. Recently, some lions have begun roaring back, albeit tentatively.
When the new one halts before her, Eve reaches out and flips the covering from his head.
“How delightfully rude of you,” he murmurs, his tone amused, his voice like Adam’s only fathoms deeper. “I expected nothing less of you.”
The new one is bald. He has no eyebrows, no eyelashes, a pinched-in nose finished off by mere slits for nostrils. His mouth, chock-full of sharp-tipped, white teeth, slices so far into his cheeks it nearly splices his face in half. Though certainly odd looking, the new one does appear to be of flesh, the warm kind.
“You’ve wasted an entire mouthful of scrumptious cranberries,” he observes. “No need to have done so on my account.”
“Who are you?” Eve demands.
The new one shrugs and settles into what can only be described as an adoring gaze. Eve blushes. The new one’s eyes. My heavens! There is no red in all of Eden this shade. While Eve’s eyes are pale green and Adam’s the hue of chestnut hulls, the new one’s eyes are the translucent crimson of pomegranate seeds. For a moment, Eve allows herself to be drawn into those eyes.
Eve has worshiped all variations of red from the moment she opened her eyes and saw Eden the first time. A multitude of colors, yes, but when choosing things to pick, she plucks the striking poppies, yarrow, cherries, chilis, prickly pears. She thrills to the brilliant cardinal on a bleached tree branch, the mischievous, red pandas, the wings of majestic scarlet ibis framed against darkening storm clouds. She collects red things. Another boredom chaser.
“Who are you?” Eve demands again, arresting herself from the new one’s stare, focusing instead upon his pale, smooth-skinned chin.
“I am so pleased to finally meet you face to face, Eve,” the new one responds, dipping his head deferentially.
“How do you know my name?” Eve’s hand flies upward to cradle her tightening throat.
“Your name suits you,” he says. “Eve can be the end of something but also a beginning.”
“Answer me!” Eve cheeks flare.
The new one cocks his head to the side, forms a shape with his mouth, the smirk of a sly crocodile. “I am no stranger to you, Eve.”
When Eve darts her hand through the divide between their bodies, to see what the new one feels like, he doesn’t flinch. Instead, he snatches Eve’s hand midair, squeezes it until Eve whelps. Overhead, a bird of prey shrieks in wild approval. The new one’s touch is something she has experienced many times before. She doesn’t have to ask. She knows at once that the tree bearing the fruit she and Adam are not supposed to eat belongs to him.
Eve slaps the new one’s smug cheek. This sets the chimpanzees to chattering and swinging wildly. The echoing bays of a family of Purus red howler monkeys follows, then an anxious rumble of thunder. The new one has managed to agitate all of Eden. When he turns his other cheek, Eve shakes her head. She will not be toyed with.
“What do you want?” Eve repeats. For emphasis, she throws her head back, opens her throat, brings forth her huntress roar.
“Impressive, but not as good as mine.” The new one snarls, the sound the lions make at the first, faint aroma of approaching prey, praise for the meat they have tasted and desire again. Maybe this new one is here to consume her. He’s not going to. He’s scrawny. Eve is strong as a wolverine. She can take him no problem.
She turns her back, begins slogging across the cranberry bog toward a faraway bank. There has never been a visitor to Eden. This is nothing to be faced alone without her mate by her side.
Eve clears the bog in a flash. Hearing no footsteps behind her, she exhales. Perhaps the new one will simply return to wherever he rightfully belongs and never return. On the horizon ahead, the dominating shape of his tree. What would she do without it? It is the most unique and striking tree in all of Eden, rising far above all other varieties. Silken bark as warm as animal hide. Should her lips feel cold, Eve presses them against the trunk. Should Eve’s body shiver, she wraps her arms around the trunk. Should Eve struggle to find a secure place for her next foothold while climbing, the tree quickly slides a branch under her toes. Whenever Adam plans a full day of fishing, Eve spends the day with the tree. From its top limbs, she has seen something Adam has never seen. A revelation she has not been tempted to tell Adam about. Not yet anyway. There are four rivers flowing through Eden, and it appears that a tributary from one of them exits the garden entirely. Eve has spied the narrow waterway, slim and shimmering. It disappears under the vast white fog wall that surrounds all of Eden.
Back on dry ground, Eve comes to a halt. Around her bare toes and a few steps ahead, the dark green grass, plump clover, delicate purple and yellow flowers that thrive in wet ground shrivel, blacken and disappear with a poof of red smoke. When she tries to step forward again, death happens again. From behind her, that deep, deep voice, another rumble of thunder and this time a deafening chorus, a multitude of the broad-winged birds, the eagles, the hawks, the vultures, circling the greying sky, riotous with rapture.
“Why do you prefer the blue apples?” The new one whispers inches from Eve’s ear. “I have been so very curious about that for so very long.”
Eve whips around.
“The blue ones are quite tart. You have been spying on me? You have been here before?”
“Not spying,” he responds, shrugging. “It’s just that I happen to be in the area.”
“In the area?” Eve intones, incredulous. “How long have you been sneaking into this garden?”
“You certainly do make a pig of yourself, Eve. Stop tossing all your nibbled cores all over the ground under my tree. It’s unsightly. I tire of sweeping up after you.”
“Why couldn’t I hear you following me across the bog?”
“I followed in a different way,” the new one answers.
When he wiggles his shoulders, a lustrous black feather pops from his back, floats slowly to the ground. Part bird then, perhaps?
“Why haven’t you told Adam that the fruit from my tree is the best in the entire garden?” He asks, winking one of his translucent eyes.
“What did you mean you followed in a different way?” Eve asks. “Can you fly?”
Eve is panting. She draws in a deep, cleansing breath, holds it in before she clears her throat and begins again. “If you won’t answer that question, then explain this to me. Why does everything wither and die underneath your feet?”
The new one draws in a deep breath of his own, the coughs. “Because I don’t belong in Eden,” he answers. “Actually, neither do you.”
“What do you mean I don’t belong in this place?” Eve cries out. “I was given life to be here!”
“Is this all you think life can be?”
“Stop answering my questions with more questions. I could just strangle you. Maybe I will!”
Eve lunges toward the new one who avoids her reach so deftly it is almost as if he vanished and reappeared.
“Temper, temper, Eve.”
“Oh, shut up!”
The new one throws his misshapen head back to laugh. An infuriating, gleeful, gloating sound like all the whispers you hear in the air that remind you of what you know to be true and don’t want to face added together with all the harping voices inside your head reminding you to stop what you’re doing when you are doing something you have been told you should never, ever, be doing.
Eve pounces, goes for his throat, but just as her hands are curled to make contact, the new one vanishes. Eve cries out, twirls around, but the new one is gone. All that remains of him are two indented, hoof-shaped prints in the grey mud surrounding the cranberry bog. His shallow footprints begin at once to fill with brackish water.
Eve leans over to examine her face. Rounded chin, nose with its wide nostrils and flat bridge, but where once her pale green eyes would have been barely visible on the top of water, the color of her eyes now could not be more piercing, more radiant. Reflected in the flooded footprints left behind by the new one are two orbs the same translucent crimson of pomegranate seeds as his. Eve gasps, straightens her frame and runs.
Who was he? What does he want? What was he talking about? Of course she belongs! What will she tell Adam? How will she explain? It is not as if not she did anything wrong. There was no reason to refuse to talk to the new one when he appeared on the other side of the bog. Would Adam have done anything differently under the circumstances? Eve’s pounding feet echo in the still of the garden. Funny, the birds are suddenly so quiet. Where is the monkey chatter when you need it? Reaching the closest river, Eve drops to her hands and knees, juts her head over the slow-moving current, leans in. Her eyes have returned to the coppery color of this section of the waterway. Exhausted, she sits back, wipes the sweat from her brow.
Adam’s voice echoes across the river valley, familiar, soothing, nothing like the irritating sound of the new one’s laughter. A sound that sliced Eve to the core, spun her around, burned a hole of daylight straight through all the thoughts she has been trying to shove aside all her life. Now those thoughts are free, flapping around inside her head like starlings do when a nest of their hatchlings is under attack. Admit it. Something is wrong with Eden. There has always been something wrong with Eden. Maybe she doesn’t belong here, Adam too, and since she’s being completely honest with herself, maybe she doesn’t want to be here any longer.
“Eve? Are you alright?” Adam inquires.
Adam is gorgeous inside and out. Really, he is. Those deep dimples, the way his brown eyes are speckled with gold. Adam exudes his very own star sparkle. Muscled and tall. Graceful and swift. Gentle and kind. Patient. The perfect man for a perfect place if there was one.
“Eve, what is wrong?” Adam persists.
“Don’t annoy me today, Adam,” Eve snaps. “I’m not in the mood.”
“Geez, what did I do?” Adam asks. “I haven’t been here all day. I thought you’d be happy to see what I found. Look at this giant turtle. Won’t he be delicious?”
Adam slings the dripping creature off his back and holds him up for Eve to admire. There’s the little cave where his head pops out to crane his neck in search of a tasty green leaf or a ray of idle sunlight. Eve sets a trembling hand on top of the turtle’s shell, leans over and peers inside. The turtle is in there alright. Poor little guy. The shadowy shape of his head jerks back and forth. He smells of damp earth and chicory.
“Let him go,” Eve says.
“No way,” Adam says, shaking his head. “I’m starved. Aren’t you hungry?”
“I’m going to eat plants from now on,” Eve announces. “The thought of putting anything else inside my mouth is revolting.”
“What happened while I was away?”
“What happened? That’s pretty funny,” Eve says, frowning at the turtle. “Nothing ever happens around here. Every day is the same as the one before it. Come with me. I need to show you something.”
“You don’t want this turtle?”
The turtle’s legs are outside his shell now, churning frantically.
“Set him free, Adam.”
Adam shrugs his broad, tan shoulders, and gently places the turtle among some tall grasses nodding under the touch of a gentle breeze. Sometimes the purity of Adam’s devotion to Eve makes Eve cry. Usually, Adam and Eve stride side by side, hand in hand, but Adam seems to be heading in the right direction, so Eve falls back and lets him lead. When they reach the new one’s tree, Adam stops and addresses her without turning around.
“I was wondering when you were finally going to tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“Listen, Eve,” he says, lifting his arms up to the tree, floating them above his shoulders as if to say Behold. “Every time I come back from a long fishing day your teeth are blue. You don’t think I haven’t seen all the colors of the apples in this tree? Especially the glossy turquoise ones you apparently prefer so much?”
“Why didn’t you say something before?” Eve asks, breathless.
“Because on those days you are the happiest,” Adam answers, turning around. “You smile often. You even find me funny. I selfishly don’t want to break the spell. But now it is time for you to tell me what you have been hiding from me.”
In Adam’s straight lips and lowered eyes, Eve senses a mix of sadness or is it apprehension.
“Well, I wouldn’t put it that way,” she says. “I wasn’t hiding anything exactly. I was going to tell you eventually and you know, you can eat this fruit too. Who is going to stop you?”
“Don’t get testy, Eve,” Adam says. “Clearly, we have both been lying a little bit to each other here and there.”
“You have been lying to me?”
There is only so much that should happen in one day. There is a threshold, surely. Some way to stop the ground from spinning up into the sky and the sky from being sucked down into the ground. Eve lifts her hand to smooth back some glossy black curls that have fallen over Adam’s eyes. Eyes that have not transformed into any other color, Eve is relieved to see.
“I have been eating from the tree too from time to time,” Adam says. “Though, I prefer the lilac apples. A combination of plum and apple.”
“I can’t believe this! How long has this been going on?”
“Since the beginning,” Adam replies matter-of-factly.
Eve feels lightheaded. Spying a patch of velvety moss in the wide circle of shade cast by the new one’s tree, she stumbles over, collapses. Adam follows. Lying down beside her on his back, he closes his eyes, folds his arms over his chest. If only she had avoided the cranberry bog altogether, spent the day with Adam even if it meant fishing. Fishing is so tedious, but at least things would still be the same. Instead, the whole world has been uprooted.
“You look like you’re dead when you lie like that,” Eve complains.
“Lie down beside me and I’ll prove I am very much alive and well,” Adam teases, a nearly edible smile tugging at the corners of his closed mouth.
Damn him. He’s so irresistible.
Near the edge of the moss, a petite grey vole appears, sits up on her hind feet, twitches her pink nose at Eve. Eve twitches her nose back, places her palms on top of the thick moss bed. The vole scampers and climbs aboard. Eve whisks the little one up to her lips for a peck on the top of her warm, fuzzy head. Adam pops one eye open.
“Is there any animal around here that you haven’t kissed, Eve?”
“Good question. Let me think about that,” Eve counters. “I am a tad squeamish about horns. So not things like cape buffalo or water bison.”
“Very smart,” Adam says, propping himself up on one elbow. “Here we go again.”
It happens whenever Eve is at rest. Hordes gather round her to be petted and hugged and smooched of course. Soon the area is filled with tiny prancing paws and thwapping tails. Chortling sounds and bleats. Vervet monkey, bat-eared fox, lamb, honey badger, aardvark, a bundle of otters tumbling over each other to get to Eve first. Some of the animals go to Adam, but only as a second choice.
“If we are to escape before an elephant herd, or worse yet, a rhino stampede,” Eve says, “I think we should start climbing the tree immediately.”
Adam leans back, gazes up into the leafy branches swaying above them abundant with apples of all colors except for red.
“It really is a spectacular tree,” he says wistfully. “And the fruit is indescribably delicious, so crisp and thirst-quenching, but still, the sight of it fills me with dread.”
“Why?” Eve is incredulous.
Eve is now covered in birds of all feathers, flying strands of her silken hair up into the air, flapping contentedly.
“I have always been afraid that eventually something to do with this tree might take you away from me,” he explains. “And I were to lose you, Eve, I would wish for nothing else except my own ending.”
Eve opens her mouth to object to such preposterous ideas only to be silenced by the trumpeting of an elephant herd on the move. She jumps up, grabs Adams’s hand, pulls him toward the new one’s tree. Adam pulls in the opposite direction at first, shaking his head, clearly terrified, but Eve urges him onward. Before disappearing into the thicker branches in the middle, Eve glances downward. There he stands, the new one, hands planted on his hips, blinding teeth filling up half his face.
How could Adam think she would ever let anything or anyone separate them? They have meant everything to each other. Cast into Eden with nothing but a few words reigned down from a sky voice so long ago now Eve barely remembers them. She and Adam survived in the garden by learning and working together. Loved each other in all the natural ways. Witnesses to suffering and violence and the inevitability of death, yes, but daily lives filled also with beauty too, and laughter. There can’t be an Eve without an Adam or an Adam without an Eve. Adam must know this.
When Adam and Eve reach the treetop, a more forceful wind is passing itself through the lofty branches, swaying them back and forth. The storm is getting ready to break the sky open. Once settled and comfortable on a limb, Adam casts his eyes into the distance, toward the tributary that appears to pass through, or perhaps under, the mysterious white fog curtain.
“You’ve seen it already, then,” Eve whispers.
“Not from climbing the tree but my fishing expeditions have brought it into view,” Adam says. “I was going to tell you about it.”
“And I was going to tell you about it.”
“Are you unhappy here in Eden?” Adam asks, turning to look into the eyes of his soul mate.
“The truth is I am bored here, Adam, and even worse than that, something about Eden doesn’t add up to me,” Eve answers. “It never has. Do you feel it?”
“Sometimes, but fishing helps.” He says with a wink.
“I’m serious. Don’t you feel that something about Eden if out of whack?”
“I have wondered about the tributary that escapes. I wonder where the water goes to when it sneaks under that edge.”
“Sitting up here turning my lips blue, I’ve thought about us exploring the other side together. Just to peek.”
“I’ve often thought of the same thing. I’m not sure if I am more excited or afraid about the prospect.”
“Me either.”
When Adam leans forward to kiss her, Eve fears her heart will pound itself right out of her chest. Adam’s caresses, so warm and sweet, ever tender, passionate and true. When she and Adam touch in any way, they glow.
“Adam,” Eve begins with quivery voice. “There was a stranger in the garden today. A very odd one. I believe we are sitting in his tree.”
Adam sighs and covers his face with his hands. “He showed up in my fishing craft too,” he says. “Just poof! There he was. Had very little to say for himself. I was going to tell you right away, but you seemed, well, a bit out of sorts already, so I thought maybe another day.”
“I couldn’t get anything out of him either, but he did say that he doesn’t belong here, and neither do I,” Eve says. “And also, when he stepped onto ground, everything died around him. All the flowers wilted. The moss. It all blew up in a red smoke.”
“Like his eyes!” Adam says, grabbing Eve’s hands in his. “Weren’t his eyes spectacular though? What a color!”
“Yes, his eyes were astonishments, but Adam, about those eyes…”
“Eve,” Adams interrupts. “His eyes are nothing compared to yours. Yours are awe itself. The color of life, all that is fresh and green and bursting their growth in all directions, toward new and fruitful destinies. There is no green like your eyes. No moss, no vine, no leaf, no butterfly, nothing compares to you.”
Again, the ache in Eve’s heart. The heat to her cheeks. What can she say. She is helpless Adam’s charms. She smiles a blushy smile despite the panic that has begun burrowing deeper. Even though everything about her existence stands at the brink of boundless change, Adam is here beside her, so how bad can it be? She casts her eyes out over the panorama of Eden and all its splendor. It is far from perfect. That is true. A bit overdone, perhaps. Not exactly gaudy, but a lot going on. Still, she does so adore all the other living things in the garden. Eve begins to massage her throbbing temples.
“Are you feeling dizzy?” Adam asks. “Should we descend? I think the herd has lost interest in you by the sounds of it.”
Overhead, a flock of doves appears, their white-tipped, fan-shaped tails whistling past in flight. Eve shields her fair eyes to watch. How amazing it must be to have wings to carry you through the empty peace of the sky, so far above the landlock, to wherever you choose.
“I was hoping the stranger would only appear to me,” Adam admits.
“Why? Did you think he would frighten me? I wasn’t afraid, Adam.”
“I feel foolish admitting this,” Adam says. “But I was afraid that you might prefer him to me. I’ve never had to face any competition for your affection.”
“Prefer him!” Eve scoffs, slapping her knee. “You have got to me kidding me! Have you taken a good look at the guy? He’s hideous!”
The leaves and branches beneath them begin to shake, tickling Eve’s dangling toes. She looks down, longing to see the gorgeous face of one of the long-lashed giraffes. Having some animal company up here would be the perfect thing right about now. Something genuine and entirely ordinary, and giraffes are especially affectionate.
Instead of a giraffe, the largest snake Eve has ever seen is winding up the tree trunk, stabbing at the air with a dark tongue as large as a beaver’s tail, scarlet scales adorned with alternating copper and fuchsia bands. A shimmery, stunning creature, but rather an enormous one for a tree of any size to support. When Eve clutches tighter onto the limb she is perched on, two nearby branches grow toward her and curve gently around waist. She knows instinctively that this is the new one, the stranger among them.
The creature circles the tree several in a graceful, fluid motion that only snakes can achieve and then, groaning deeply, he lifts his massive head and plops it onto Adam’s lap, quaking the tree mightily. Adam reaches down to scratch the snake under his chin just as Adam would any animal resting in his lap. Eve opens her mouth and finds she has not the faintest idea of what she should ask or say to this creature. The three souls sit in measured silence listening to the wind in the leaves, the sounds of the animals on the ground and the birds in the air.
“Hey! That tickles!” the snake cries out. “Stop that!”
“Me?” Adam says, plucking his hand from scales.
“No, not you, Adam. Her.”
During the ascension to the top of the tree, Adam and Eve had taken great pains not to disturb the multitude of bird nests they passed along the way, the last being the aerie of an ancient, bald eagle, such a regal creature, its nest massive, cradled by the tree. Adam had commented that he himself could curl up there and take a long, afternoon nap. The eagle has vacated her nest now and she is hopping up and down on the snake’s coils. The snake lifts his head, squints downward.
“That tickles,” the snake cries out. “Stop it!”
The bald eagle flies up, then drops back down to continue her dance, clearly pleased with herself, bright yellow beak bobbing.
“Isn’t it enough that I have to scrub their excrement from my tree trunk?” the snake whines. “Must all birds also be compelled to pester me whenever they get the chance?”
“Actually, I think she’s extremely fond of you,” Adam says.
“Well, probably not, since, according to Eve, I am extremely ugly to the eye.”
“I never said you were ugly,” Eve protests. “Just not my type.”
“Good to know,” the snake says, rolling his crimson eyes.
“Why did you decide to approach us both today?” Eve challenges.
“I felt like it,” he says, his tongue a sword thrown just shy of Eve’s kneecaps.
She takes a swat at it, but the tongue is too fast for her. “Now you stop that,” she says. “What are you hiding?”
“I have nothing to hide, Eve. Think of me as, let’s say, the morning light.”
“Says you. An invader. A peeping Tom!”
“You love this tree, Eve,” he counters. “I created it for you. No one likes to be trapped.”
“Trapped?” Eve asks. “Are we in a trap, Adam?”
“You can answer that one for yourself, Eve,” the snake says.
“I wasn’t asking you,” Eve snaps.
“Eve,” Adam begins, his head looking back and forth between his companions. “You did say something is off with Eden.”
“How is it that you made this tree,” Eve asks the snake. “The sky voice made Eden, not you.”
“I made this garden, because he ordered me to, and I did a splendid job, though when I visit, I do feel like a figure in a diorama. I added this tree as an afterthought, my finest creation. Then he told you not to eat from it, so I knew you would, and I was glad for you, because this fruit is the best in all of Eden.”
“Tell me about the sky voice,” Eve says, shifting his body closer to the snake.
No longer a snake, a man. So similar in appearance to Adam they could be twins. The man is taller and thinner, but the resemblance is striking. Same lustrous, black hair. His waves are longer, blowing about muscled shoulders. Same full lips, long eyelashes, eyes no longer red but the deep brown of elk eyes. Eyes that harbor a tenderness Eve has seen in the eyes of almost every animal in Eden at one time or another. Most recently some chimpanzees surrounding a first-time mother and her newborn. The mother’s rounded shoulders holding the baby close, protecting and rejoicing, had made Eve weep with joy. The new mother had birthed several stillborn before the blessing of a live one. Eve has never felt pain like that to weep over.
The man is now as covered as Eve was earlier by birds of all feathers. Eve whispers. “The birds love you too.”
“These birds are on my last nerves,” the man says, swatting helplessly. “What’s so surprising? You know how birds love the morning light. They get up with me and make such a ridiculous, daily fuss about it. I think they need to take a break from loving me.”
“That’s very funny,” Adam says. “If we could stop any of the animals from doing what they want, we wouldn’t be up a tree right now.”
The man gives up and lets the birds perch on his shoulders, atop his head. “I’m out of here for now, guys. Look, if you ever wish to get out of here too, find a red apple and eat it. Your fate is your own.”
“Our fate is our own?” Eve echoes.
“You’ve felt my presence from the beginning, haven’t you?”
“Not in the least,” Eve says. “The sky voice, maybe, a calm that comes over us when we want it.”
“Girl, you-know-who doesn’t like it when you lie.”
“But there aren’t any red apples,” Adam interjects.
“Look harder,” the man hisses, then disappears completely, leaving behind a putrid red cloud of smoke.
Adam and Eve sit still, stunned, choking on the air. Eve looks down through the tree, Morning Star’s tree, it’s branches laden with all the colors of the rainbow except red.