Havah by Tosca Lee Page B

stores raided by rodents.
    We began to find the scat of hyena and wolf closer to the trail leading to our cave. Though we had never feared these animals, it became clear that they were not themselves as we discovered more evidence of their penchant for killing and their newly carnivorous habits. Eventually we built a low bramble fence before the mouth of the cave.
    I had begun by now to comb out bits of the lamb’s coat with a thistle, and I used the soft fuzz to line the inside of a basket just the right size—or so I estimated—for a baby. I collected new grasses and retted fibers and broke flax for weaving. What small experiments I had made in the valley before, I began to test in earnest.
    Adam foraged as a common scavenger for useful bits of hoof, bone, or antler. He fashioned rope and awls and scrapers and, one day, his first spear. The lovely boy that he had been was gone completely. His jaw had squared, and his shoulders broadened. The down on his cheek thickened, as did the hair on his chest. Though I often missed the boy of the garden, he had every association to all that was perfect to me—how alluring to me were the narrow hips and the ridges of his abdomen, the cords of his neck as they stood out in exertion. I will make a child like him, I thought.
    Or would I? Now I became intensely curious what this child might look like; though we were Ish and Isha, as alike as twins from the same womb, his lips were thicker than mine, curving into a more pronounced bow. His nose was straight and refined and wide. Mine rounded at the tip. His cheeks were straight and long. Mine were round like the bare shoulders of a girl. His legs were lean and corded with muscle. Mine were as long as saplings. Where once we noted the similarities and differences in animal offspring so that we could even predict the variance in color of wolf pups in a litter, we began to do the same with the son growing inside me.
    “He will have your cheeks and my nose.”
    “He will have my hair and your feet,” Adam declared.
    “Oh, how I hope to the One that he has my feet and not yours!”
    We always knew it would be a son. Not, as some have said, because the adam, being a male, came first, since before me he was simply one human in a vast earth. We knew because it had been said by the One on the terrible day that he laid judgment upon the serpent and upon the ground.
    We estimated the length of my pregnancy based on the gestation of the ewe and the great cat.
    “At least eight cycles of the moon,” Adam said finally. “No more than ten.” I concurred, wondering how long it would be after that until the word of the One was fulfilled. Thinking of it, I could almost bear the stinging nettles. I could even almost suffer the horrid hide garments as the trappings of a life I knew would not last forever.
    During this time I set aside my gall at Adam’s betrayal. It seemed a thing done by a boy I no longer knew, who lived in a place where I no longer dwelt—just as I was no longer the girl I had once been. I welcomed the man to my mat to lie with me in ways familiar and alien in this world of silence between us, where we must rely evermore on finding the words to say the things we never needed to speak before. He was cautious with me at first until I assured him that I thought the child held fast within me. Still, pleasure did not come as easily as before. Where we had come together as two halves, we came now as two individuals, imperfectly matched.
    Neither did laughter visit us as often as it had in the valley. Ease was something of memory. Our hands were constantly busy. We were on our feet nearly every hour we were awake. We had labored before in the garden, but now the tenor of our work had changed. Every night we fell bone-weary to our mats.
    “We cannot stay here indefinitely,” Adam said one night in the darkness. “There will be three of us—and Gada—and we will need to range farther to find the food we want by the season. If not