Havah by Tosca Lee

face was twisted in despair! “Adam . . . Ish. I, too, have something I have not told you.” I lifted his hand and kissed it. “I bear the seed.”
    He blinked, dark lashes long in shadow against his cheek.
    “I am pregnant with that child. You yourself spoke of it the night it took root in me.”
    “And I did not even know it.” Wonder filled his face, his words.
    “And yet I do, and I am not afraid of the pain because what a child this shall be!” I went into his arms. “He will strike the head of the serpent, as you have said. Because I know now that the serpent was no common animal—”
    “I thought my eyes played a trick. It seemed to me he stood before the One almost as a man—no, as something greater.” We had never spoken of it. Now I felt a rush of relief and gratitude that it was laid plain between us at last. All of it.
    “I have pondered this many days, that this is the very thing the serpent wished for us, exactly as it has happened. I am certain it knew, as now we know, evil. But now I bear the seed. Because of him, the day will come when we need no landmark to know the way again.”
    I had to believe it. I must. Just as I must believe that as the earth remained intact, the waters would one day recede in our valley garden. Surely the fire must go out. We had seen the areas burnt by our fires, the way the grass had grown in more lushly than before. Surely the garden would heal as we healed from the cuts of thorns and stone.
    And then one day we would find our way back.

12
     
     
    We could not live as we had before. The world was different, and now we had to think of more than ourselves. We wandered the nearby hills, looking for caves. Most of them were filled with the scat of rodents. I wrinkled my nose, but Adam would not be swayed. He spoke little and frowned often in those days. He was frequently alone in his thoughts, speaking only when I questioned him directly. Even then he did not hear me sometimes so that I had to repeat my questions a second or third time. By then my tone was as abrasive as the coarse hair of the boar. How he annoyed me!
    Meanwhile we stayed in a series of ill-suited niches—they could not properly be called caves—in the hills for a number of days until he returned one morning to say he had found a cave that we could comfortably live in for a time. At that I threw up my arms and said that the world had been made anew, that the sun and moon had shone in the same day, and surely I was the most blessed of all women.
    We cleared away the dirt and debris and laid fresh rushes and grass and even flowers upon the floor. We stacked the baskets with our things, which at the time seemed many, against the wall. When it was done, the tension around Adam’s mouth and shoulders softened, and he laughed a little bit as he had a lifetime ago. I thought, This is where I will birth my baby. Here, in the cool shade, on the strew. The One had talked of pain, but I was not afraid of it. I would welcome it. This was the seed of whom the One had spoken, who would visit upon the serpent a greater blow than the serpent had done to me.
    I understood now that the serpent, once my wise advisor, was—and always had been—my enemy. I did not know why. I had known nothing of guile then. But I knew something of requital now.
     
     
    SEVERAL DAYS LATER I wandered west of the cave to the place where the hills, covered in herbs and wild flowers, flattened toward a wide meadow. There were several large, flat stones in the area, and the day before, as I had picked my way between them, I had come upon a snake. Its jaw was unhinged and the tail of a fat mouse protruded, limp, from the gullet stretched around it. I ran away, unmindful of the stones beneath my feet, seeing visions of Adah stripped of her skin, the waning light of the One, and the chrysalis of the serpent upon the ground slithering away like a worm. When I had gotten away, I retched up every bit of my breakfast.
    This time when I went back