She was full of years, yet this is the first day I can speak of it without collapsing in utter rage and anger and sorrow.
My sons buried her in the ground underneath the ginkgo tree she loved so much. I stood nearby with my daughters and watched. My mouth made no sound, but inside, I keened and wailed, every fiber of my body crying out in my anguish.
Bone of my bone. Flesh of my flesh.
Sometimes, when we made love, I’d murmur those words to her. I’d look into her eyes at our moment of ecstasy and for just a moment, we’d be almost be back there, under the stars, the amazing wild scent of the fruit trees and the nearby animals filling our senses. But then the moment would pass, and we would be back in our little stone house again, with rough skins underneath us instead of soft grass. And I would hold her close and weep, and we both knew why.
Hawa died last week, and at first I didn’t realize what was happening.
Oh, I’d seen death before. We all had. Ha’bel’s young, strong body lying twisted and still out there in his wheat field, looking like something beautiful formed out of clay, marred only by the bright red blood that flowed from the gash on his head. I cradled his head in my lap, and the hot sun whirled in the sky, and the earth tilted underneath us.
Hawa found us there, I don’t know how much later. I think it was nearly dark. I was ready then to rise and be what she needed. I held her, my hands slick with her son’s life, and we cried and prayed for Caen. We didn’t know then what had happened out in that field, only that one son was struck down by something unknown and the other was missing, and we were afraid.
In that moment, we asked ourselves: had the Dust-Eater come back for vengeance and taken our sons from us too? In a way, he had, but at that moment, in our innocence, we never would have imagined how.
So yes, I’d seen Death in its hot brutality. But this was different. This was a slow gasping, a soft smile at me, a closing of the eyes that had held mine from the first moment I’d seen her coming over the hill by the river on that morning so long ago.
Once, one of our sons had journeyed far away and returned to us, telling stories of a great water which rose and then receded every day. During the time he’d camped there, he had eventually decided that it must be the great white orb of the moon pulling at that water, making it come close and then flee away. In the last moments before her passing, my Hawa was like that. She was being pulled in two directions. One was toward me, and she’d open her eyes again and look at me and love me. But then she’d close her eyes again, and I knew she was back there again, and it was the place she most longed to be, and I knew that it would eventually win. She loved it more than me, loved the Presence more than me.
I was sitting by the dying embers of my fire thinking all this the night the Dust-Eater came to me. When he walked into the dim orange light, I saw at once that the years had not been kind to him. Gone was the jeweled skin that had once glittered so enticingly in the soft afternoon sunshine under the lush trees.
How Hawa had loved that beautiful skin, clutching my arm every time she caught sight of it!
Now it was pitted and scarred. Grime marred the smooth jewels, dulling their colors. He was almost an object to be pitied, and I almost did, until my eyes met his face. His face had not changed. It had not lost its sharpness or one iota of its burning beauty. His eyes glinted in my firelight, somehow taking in what little light there was, but giving none of it back. And as I watched, the corners of his mouth drew wide, too wide, in an expression of savage glee. And then he spoke, and his voice was full of wild music.
“Hail, O Firstborn crouching by your flame. How fares it with thee?”
Everything in me longed to send the Dust-Eater away. The very presence of him made my saliva burn, and I could once more taste the fruit on my tongue. Yet propriety won out, for now.
“Come into the circle of hospitality, O Eater of Dust,” I said, gesturing to the empty place opposite my fire and the hut behind my back. “Rest yourself until you are ready to be on your way.”
The Dust-Eater drew nearer and with a smooth, unnatural folding of limbs, settled onto the hard earth a few paces away. His grin did not waver as he stared at me, silent, waiting me for me to speak. I did not make him wait long.
“It’s been a long time since I last saw you,” I said. “Where have you been?”
“I have wandered this earth, to and fro, up and down,” the Dust-Eater intoned. “Up hill and down valley. Across plains and in the moonless depths of caverns. I have seen.” The grin widened until it looked like his head would crack in two and he looked at me with his hungry eyes. I felt my midday meal rise in my throat. “I’m going to enjoy this, my world,” he said.
I said nothing, knowing that of all things, he wanted me to speak right now, to protest. But he was right. It was his world now. Every grain of wheat that I cultivated in the hot fields had his mark on it, somehow. Every piece of fruit I picked from trees had his taint in its juice. Everything living around me groaned and cried out under his burden, under the weight that twisted it just a little away from perfection, from rightness. Even my own body cried out, deep inside, just as hers had. Maybe that was what she meant at the end, when she said—
“And how is your lovely helpmate, the Living One?”
He spoke her name now in the heavenly tongue, but it came out and fell to the ground like a foul thing. Somehow he made the wonderful syllables into a blasphemy even by pronouncing them. I looked up and glared at his half-unseen face above the flames.
“Do not speak her name again, Dust-Eater. You have no right to speak it.”
He paused in silence while those eyes crawled over my flesh, examining, extracting information from the way I held my muscles taut, from the flare of loss and anger in my nostrils. And then he laughed, and it was like flint skittering across a dry riverbed. “So she is gone from you forever. She is Dead. And yet no hand touched her—not like that lovely boy of yours.”
“Do not speak his name, either.”
“I did him no harm. Not directly, anyway. Could I help it that poor Caen was so open to suggestion? All I did was crouch at his door until the day he threw it open wide. And then I showed him that a well-made club would split open a fragile human skull. He was a good student.”
The anger and what I did caught me by surprise. With an unarticulated roar, I leaped high above the fire, the edge of my foot swinging around with deadly force to connect with that grinning face, just to make it shut up, to force it back into the darkness.
With a fluid motion, the Dust-Eater half-rose and caught my foot, twisting hard. I slammed into the ground, tasting grit and blood between my teeth. Groaning, I raised myself on one elbow and looked up at him as he stood over me.
“Not yet,” he said, his lifeless eyes focused on my foot. He hardly seemed even to be talking to me, but to ssomeone selse entirely. “Not him. Not now. One day, maybe. But not today.” He suddenly seemed to see me again, and his face turned up to mine.
“Don’t do that again,” he said. “You do not know how miserable I am capable of making you if you challenge me.”
Once more, he resumed his seated position by my fire as if nothing had happened. I hauled myself to my feet gingerly, hoping that I wasn’t seriously injured. My ankle ached where he had grabbed it, as if his mere touch had sapped it of life. Other than that, and a few cuts from where I’d struck the ground, I was fine, though I could sense the beginnings of how much I’d ache in the morning. I sat down heavily, suddenly weary and feeling the many generations I’d been alive.
“Now what were we talking about?” the Dust-Eater said. “Oh, yes. Your mate, the incomparable Hawa. The one who now lies rotting under the earth at the foot of that gingko tree over there.” I tightened my fist, but made no move this time. My ankle still throbbed, as if to remind me of the futility of assaulting a being infinitely older than me, and a thousand times quicker and cleverer. I clenched my teeth.
“Are you here to mock me? If so, have at it and begone.”
The Dust-Eater regarded me solemnly and his grin morphed into a mere smile, one that looked so caring and fatherly. I shuddered, and suddenly felt cold.
“I am not here to mock you, O Man,” the Dust-Eater said. “I am here to offer you something.”
“There is nothing that I want from you,” I growled. “You don’t give. You take, and you’ve already taken too much. Get out.”
“No, there you are wrong,” the Dust-Eater said. “That day in the Garden, I only gave you half of my gift to you. We were interrupted, if you recall. I have come here to offer you the other half of my gift.”
And from somewhere—I did not see where—he drew out an object and held it out into presented it in the firelight. I looked at it. It was round, neatly filling the Dust-Eater’s emaciated hand. It was shaped like a piece of fruit, but its skin was translucent, and from within its core, a dim golden light shone. I swallowed as a longing rose up in my chest, a yen for something I’d seen before.
“Where did you get that?”
The Dust-Eater smiled. “Never mind that,” he said. “I have my ways. The question is: do you want it? It’s the second half of my gift to you and your kin. I never got a chance to give it to you before, though it was only a short stroll away from the first tree. All you had to do was march over and pluck this fruit and eat it, too. But you were too busy noticing how naked you were.” A sneer curled his lip briefly, then settled back into his gentle smile. “But now out of the kindness of my heart, I’ve returned from my wanderings to give you a second chance. So what do you think?”
“You are a liar. That’s what I think,” I said. “How do I know that you’re not trying to trick me?”
The Dust-Eater’s eyes narrowed. “You’re getting smarter, aren’t you? That suits me fine. No problem.” He snapped his fingers. From beyond the darkness that surrounded my little fire, I heard a rustling in the grass. And then into the clearing before my hut came a grass-cutter, its sleek black hair gleaming with orange highlights, its hairless tail trailing behind it. It came near to the Dust-Eater and stopped, then reared back on its haunches and looked at him quizzically, its long whiskers twitching. In a flash, the Dust-Eater’s long fingers reached out and snatched the little creature from where it sat. I heard its spine crack as my adversary squeezed expertly and then threw the grass-cutter onto the ground in front of me.
“Examine it, if you want,” he said. “It’s dead.” His voice was thick with the killing lust. I’d heard that same tone before, just two months ago, when one young man had struck down an Elder who’d tried to banish him from the village. He’d boasted of the crime in the same way. I did not touch the unmoving body of the grass-cutter. “You killed it,” I said. “You took a life that you did not even make. How dare you?”
“It belongs to me now,” the Dust-Eater said. “You gave it to me, don’t you remember?”
The old weariness settled over me. I remembered. “Very well. It’s dead. Now what?”
“Watch.”
The Dust-Eater scooped up the grass-cutter’s body and held the luminous fruit near to its snout. As soon as the fruit’s translucent skin touched the creature’s lips, its entire body convulsed once. The Dust-Eater smiled and dropped the grass-cutter onto the ground. It shook itself, looked at him, then scurried away back into the darkness and the safety of its meadow home nearby.
“So now you see what I have,” the Dust-Eater said, holding the fruit in front of me. “This is life. Life forever. One whiff brought a lowly creature back to life. One bite, placed in the mouth of someone you love, can make her live again. And another bite, one for each of you, and you will never need fear death again.”
I drew in a long shuddering breath, afraid to expel it, afraid of what words would come tumbling out after it, afraid of the emotions that surged now behind the dam of control.
“Why would you offer this to us?” I managed to spit out. “You hate us.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “I don’t hate or love. I am beyond those pitiful emotions. I know. I analyze and strategize. And I know that you and your kin are ideally suited to rule this globe alongside me and the deathless ones who follow at my heels. You have tasted knowledge. Now I offer you life, and the chance to preside over this earth the way you were meant to. You deserve so much more than trying to scratch a living out of reluctant ground. You deserve to rule.”
I gritted my teeth. Small grains of sand from my earlier fall crunched between them. Closing my eyes, I tried to breathe slowly, regain control. But in the darkness behind my eyelids, green phantom flames danced, and over them, a dim light glowed, beckoning, promising. Promising life again for her, for my own tired bones. Forget his vain promises of domination. We couldn’t have the garden again—a cherub with a flashing sword made sure of that—but we could have each other once more. Forever.
I opened my eyes after what seemed like hours. The Dust Eater sat across from me, motionless, still holding the fruit of life in his thin, smooth hand.
“Come,” I said, standing. “Her grave is not far.”
A slow smile wrinkled the sides of the Dust Eater’s head, and he rose with a single elegant movement from his place by the fire.
“You have made a wise choice, O Man.” he said.“One day, you will—”
“Silence,” I said.
Above the trees, the sky grew light. Birdsong announced the advent of sunrise. Together, the Dust-Eater and I walked up the hill to the ginkgo tree, and our feet made dark marks behind us in the dewy grass. In the early morning light, the being that trudged beside me looked grey and pale. Darkness now evidently suited him better than the sun’s unflinching scrutiny. We reached the top of the hill, where underneath the gingko’s overarching sanctuary of green branches, rose a mound of fresh earth. I knelt beside it and thrust my hand into the loose soil, scooping it to one side.
“Wait.”
I looked up. The Dust-Eater stood impassively just behind me, the luminous fruit held in one hand. With his other hand, he gestured, and from out of the tall grass that grew in a sea that lapped at the base of the hill came dozens upon dozens of grass-cutters. They swarmed past his ankles, their little hairy bodies black in the early morning light. And then they were all around me and on the mound of earth, digging.
From around their dextrous paws, the loose earth flew, landing all around me. I stood and hastily backed away as they toiled at the urging of some unheard command. I tried not to glance at the Dust-Eater as he stood there, arms folded across his bejeweled chest. Yet even as a blind man knows the location of the sun from its heat upon his head, I knew from the shrinking of my flesh that his ever-hungry eyes were fixed upon me while his minions dug. And then, as silently as they had come, the grass-cutters stopped their work and fled away, back to the cool, dark safety of their daytime burrows, leaving the two of us alone under the ginkgo tree once more.
“Behold your wife, O Man,” the Dust-Eater said.
My heart quailed in my chest as I stepped to the edge of the pit and looked in. It had been a week. Had death marred the clean lines of her face, dulled the lights in her lustrous hair? I looked down into the grave, the smell of freshly-turned dirt filling my nostrils, and quickly swallowed down the grief that rose in my throat. It was worse.
Her body was the same. But she wasn’t there. Lying there at the bottom of the pit was a shell, a shadow, a mockery of everything she had been. This was not her, and yet it was like I’d caught a glimpse of her through the trees of an impenetrable forest. It was enough like her that my heart ached anew, like I’d opened a wound that had barely scabbed over to see bright blood welling up once more underneath.
I felt a touch of burning cold on my shoulder, startling me.
“Take it,” said the Dust-Eater.
I looked down. The fruit of life entered my field of vision, and for a moment, all else receded from it, as if it were the focus of the whole universe. My shoulder muscles twitched once, and then the fruit was cupped in my hand almost before I knew what I was doing.
It was heavier than I expected, and its flesh was cool to the touch. Yet underneath that, at the edge of what I could feel, there was a thrill of warmth, a quickening that traveled through my veins straight back to my heart. I shuddered suddenly, not knowing why I did.
And then, before I could change my mind, I slid down into the grave and crouched next to the body of my wife. I held the fruit in my hand and looked at her face. A week under three feet of earth had done nothing to dim her beauty. There was a small clod of dirt on one of her eyelids, and automatically, I brushed it away. A pang of emotion like sudden hunger rushed through me, and I nearly groaned aloud. Not one moment more would I be separated from my Hawa, my life, not when I held hers in my hand.
With the fruit cupped in my trembling fingers, I touched it to her pale lips.
Her eyes flew open and she raked in a single, long shuddering breath. She cried out, and the ragged sound was like a newborn tasting its first burning lungful of air. And then her wild eyes fastened on mine, and the expression in them pierced me to the bone.
It was like looking into a deep chasm of loss, of regret. There was a light still visible in the depths of her eyes, but it was fading fast.
Behind and above me, I could hear the voice of the Dust-Eater. “She can’t speak or move yet. One touch was sufficient to wake her for a moment. A single bite of that fruit will restore her for eternity. But do not hesitate, O Man, or she will be gone from your embrace forever.”
A brief tremor passed over my body as the bloodless voice penetrated my thoughts. The Dust-Eater was our enemy. That was clear. Yet if we could live forever, who knew what could happen? One day, we and our many descendants would certainly outnumber the Dust-Eater and his minions. We would stand together holding power in our hands, my mate and I, and we would finally rule the earth and subdue it. Forever. And the Presence would be pleased with us, when he saw what we had done, how we had proved ourselves. Undoubtedly, the Dust-Eater meant to betray us in some way, but hadn’t we lived long enough to know what treachery was? I saw Ha’bel lying in a field, his blood crying out from the ground. Yes, the Dust-Eater would pay for that, too. Treachery in exchange for treachery.
I reached forward once more with the fruit, feeling the Dust-Eater’s eyes burning upon my back. Hawa’s eyes followed my movement, and as I drew closer, her speechless lips formed two silent words: Please. No.
I stopped and looked into her face. The glory was almost gone from it, but by its sign, I knew where she had been before the fruit upon her lips had yanked her so rudely back. She had been with the Presence. I had seen that light before, in the garden, under the trees in the cool of the day. She had been there, and it was the only place where she wanted to be now.
My heart settled in my chest as I made my decision. I retracted the fruit and clasped it in my hand close to my chest, away from her body.
Hawa held my gaze, and her eyes shone with thankfulness until she closed them and the heaving of her chest sank to a gentle stop.
When she was quite still, I stood and climbed up out of the pit.
The Dust-Eater just looked at me as I walked past him, and as I glimpsed his face, I saw bafflement there for the first time.
Before he could even move, I was halfway to my small hut at the foot of the hill. By the time he turned and started down after me, I was already beside the flames of my still-burning fire. I raised the fruit above the fire, feeling its heat on my forearm. And then, behind me, I heard him shout, he who had always talked in such a soft voice.
I opened my hand and let the fruit drop into the flames. It didn’t even sizzle. There was a flash and a puff of smoke, and then it was gone.
A long wail rose from behind me as the fruit of life vanished into ashes. I turned to face my enemy.
The scream must have come from him, but it was impossible to tell, his face was so placid. It was as if he’d swallowed up all of his despair and loss and hidden it away somewhere deep, only allowing that stark beauty of his to show on the surface.
He came nearer now, and my muscles tensed. If he attacked me, how long would I last against such a foe?
Yet he did not move against me; instead, spoke only one word: “Why?”
Even as I opened my mouth, the answer came, as if it was being given to me from outside of my own thoughts.
“That fruit was not yours to give, O Dust-Eater,” I said. “I will accept it from one hand alone, and not yours.”
“So be it,” he said. Without another word, the Dust-Eater turned and strode away in silence. His trudging form was quickly swallowed up by the tall waving grasses of the meadow around my home.
Another week has passed since the Dust-Eater came, and once more I sit staring into flickering orange flames at night, thinking. Another succession of sunrises and sunsets has passed without her, and there are many more ahead. The pain is still there, but it is dull now, like a wound that is healing, but will leave a deep mark, a mark that will never completely fade. My flesh and soul ache for her, but I know by the feel of my bones that there will not be many more weeks before another mound rises beside that first one under the gingko tree.
I understand her last words to me now. Her hand was on the back of my neck when she said them—I can almost feel her warm fingers even now—and she looked deep into my eyes.
These are birth pains, my beloved. Thorns and tears. All of it. But there is life coming on the other side of the pain. Be patient. Wait.
The fire slowly fades to glowing embers. The night air grows wet, and I shiver. Then, the still-hidden sun begins to brighten the sky’s dark cloak, and the first birds herald its arrival.
I wait, unmoving and cold, until my fire turns to grey ash and rising smoke.
