Eve by Elissa Elliott

and a splotched blackness swirled in front of me. Protect me and help me in my time of need.
    Then all went black, and I knew no more.
    Once more I became Aya the Bird. I swallowed sky. I floated up on a curtain of air, I drifted upon the breeze, I darted among the crags, I swam in the sea. I understood why things were the way they were, the order of things, how everything fit, just so, into Elohim’s grand scheme. Oh, it was beautiful! Elohim created, and it was good, and I did not understand the whys and the hows and the when, but it was still good, and I felt a wave of calm rush over me. Elohim was there, beyond the seas, and He beckoned. Come, He whispered. We shall fly together, you and I.

    It was a jolt when I awoke rudely next to firelight, with Abel supporting my head and Jacan pouring water over my lips. “Sister,” Abel was saying. “Aya, can you hear me?” To Jacan, “Do it again.”
    Jacan splashed water over my mouth, and I licked my lips. I felt the chill of night air on one side, the fever of fire on the other. Abel leaned over and wiped my chin with his robe. “Ah,” he said. “You are with us. We were worried.” The light flickered on his face, and there was the smell of wood and sweat and charred meat.
    No! I closed my eyes; I wished to remain with Elohim, who saw me, who wanted me. Do not be far from me, I begged of Elohim.
    “Stay awake,” Abel said, frantic.
    My dreams were gone. I smelled Abel’s fear and Jacan’s restlessness. I knew they were sorry they had brought me here, and I turned my face away so they could not see my guilt, my sorrow. I did not want to be pitied.
    Abel’s voice was tender and soft. “I’ve set your arm. It was disjointed, not broken. Can you sit up?” He braced my shoulders and my head and hoisted me up to a sitting position. I was faint with pain, and my head lolled back; my tongue was heavy in my mouth. “Breathe,” he said.
    I sucked in air, and the night slowly grew steady around me.
    “Here,” said Jacan, wrapping my shoulders with one of Naava’s heavy woolen blankets. He squatted in front of me, studying my face. “We came back and saw them. They were scared,” he said.
    “Shush,” hissed Abel. “Not now.”
    Jacan looked disappointed at this forbidding. He ached to tell me something; in fact, the words were dammed up behind his teeth.
    Abel saw my frightened glances into the brushy landscape lit eerily by a bright moon. “They are gone,” he said.
    Suddenly I burst out, “I would have run, you know, away from them—”
    “Shhh,” said Abel. He reached among the coals and removed a blackened lizard. An orange flame flickered up at the dripping fat as he handed it to me. “A little overdone, not up to your skills, but it’ll have to do.” I reached for it with my good hand and sank my teeth into its tough, crunchy skin, searching out the bones with my tongue. I found that I was famished and ate faster than I should have.
    Once my belly was full, Abel told me what had happened. The men got drunk and scrambled up the hillside to where I slept. They attempted to mount me, as all animals do when they’re in rut, but in the last moment they saw my brokenness and fled. “I did not think,” he said, “they would violate the law of the land.” He looked away from me, into the fire. “I am sorry, Aya. I have failed you.”
    I was in the grotesque company of Unlucky Omens, along with Falling Stars and Disappearing Suns and Malformed Lambs, according to the city people. In short, my hooked foot saved me.
    My tears spilled over with this realization, so brutally laid out for me.
    Abel reached out and wiped the tears from my cheeks. “I’m sorry.”
    Violently, I shook my head, and he withdrew his hand.
    “If you cannot talk to me,” he said gently, “Elohim hears the brokenhearted.”
    I said nothing.
    “I talk to Him, you know,” Abel said. “I’m teaching Jacan too.”
    Then, more abruptly than I wanted, I heard myself saying,