Eden Read online

  “Go on, take it,” the Hollow Man said. “We can’t go on like this forever.”

  Eden’s will began to weaken, her mouth watering for the first time in god knows when. But she knew if she took this slip of meat she would no longer be her master’s friend and protector, but this creature’s creature sitting across in the dark. He would own her, possess her, she’d become his alone. Just when she thought she would succumb, when she began to crawl on her belly for a taste … her master’s soft voice held her close.

  “Why not?” he asked. “Why can’t we go on forever?”

  The Hollow Man seemed taken aback; he had not foreseen this turn.

  But then he slyly turned her master’s mind back on itself, pointing toward the ledge and the currents of air rising into their faces.

  “Prove it. Take that step … and I’ll follow you.”

  Her master looked over the ledge into the stony abyss, an endless fall. Eden joined him, poking her nose over, but his arm blocked her from going farther. They retreated from the edge.

  “Follow whomever you wish,” she heard her master say, “but by your choice we shall know you.” And with that Eden’s hunger suddenly vanished. She no longer wanted that bit of meat that had seemed so delicious only a moment before. She sat by her master’s feet and felt his hand upon her shoulder. “You have free will,” her master told the Hollow Man. “He gave you that. But you cannot have mine.”

  The creature sitting in the dark did not seem vexed. He shrugged and gazed out across the open abyss.

  Suddenly a vision seemed to grow from the depths of the emptiness. The very world itself lay like an endless carpet. Eden had no idea the world could be this big, this grand: open deserts, snow-clad mountains, lakes and forests, a thousand castles, a thousand palaces, a thousand streets and markets, ports and harbors overflowing with the goods of every land, nation upon nation, stretching beyond sight and out of mind.

  A sea of faces lifted upward all begging to worship those sitting on the ledge: the faces of the living, the faces of the dead, even the faces of all those yet to be born like eager spirits clamoring in adoration of those three figures perched above. The nameless throngs would slave for them, die for them, kill for them, make monuments to their magnificence, burn offerings and sacrifice the lambs of the world.

  The horizons of all Eden had ever known shrank to a paw print in the sand. The little village, the dried-fish seller, the clamoring children on the rooftops, the men in the fields and the sheep in the orchards, became the merest speck on this lush carpet of humanity and beasts and all their works.

  The very world.

  Offered to her master, offered to her …

  And she heard the silky voice of their adversary bargaining all for all, “Will this not make you follow me? For what is mine shall be yours and more besides …”

  Eden looked into the black void below, then into the black void above, and the stars stopped wheeling in their endless orbits. “Get away!” she tried to growl, but she found her jaws locked together, the cliff fading from her eyes. The stars blinked out one by one. The abyss opened at her feet.

  And she fell, falling, falling and knew no more.

  Eden awoke at the base of the cliff in the pit of the barren valley as if she had never been up high. The stones no longer mocked her, but lay mute on every side. She lay on her side in the dark, tongue swollen with thirst, eyes crusted with salt. The adversary of the high place was nowhere to be seen, his scorpions and serpent only a memory.

  The man lay beside her, exhausted, beaten. His chest slowly rose and fell, he barely breathed. And then to make things worse, Eden realized they were not alone.

  Three hyenas had padded to the lip of the dell and stared down. Their lips peeled back from their teeth and when they laughed at her, Eden’s bones grew cold.

  Nor did they wait to attack. Two came on as one, forcing her against the cliff, and the third went for the man on the ground. That one tore at her master’s cloak, and in the darkness Eden saw a flash of naked skin. Eden didn’t think—she ripped through the two hyenas, snapping one in the face and the other on the snout. The third tearing her master’s cloak yelped when her teeth clamped on his neck.

  But one dog against three couldn’t last for long. The hyenas cornered Eden again, and as each lunged, she’d snap, then snap at the next and the next. Panting, she finally missed one and he clamped on her ear. A flash of pain filled her head and blood ran over her eyes.

  Even so she struck out blindly, but the hyenas were just playing with her now. There was nothing to stop them from tearing at the prostrate man. He groaned but could not rise.

  This was the end then …

  Eden felt it in her heart. The man’s hand held Eden close to him.

  All she could do was lie on her master, just lie on him and let the devils get her too—

  The three hyenas grinned at her one last time.

  Blood speckled her white fur.

  For a moment they hesitated before the final go. Why stop now?

  A faint sound came to Eden’s torn ear.

  The sound of little bells jangled sweetly in the air. Their brassy chimes filled the narrow ravine. Three large rams with bells about their necks bounded across the stones, followed by three fat ewes. The ewes circled Eden and her master, while the rams with their great horns went straight at the grinning hyenas. With a thud of horn on hide and three terrified yelps, the devils fled, limping as they ran.

  And the sound of tiny brass bells echoed off the cliff face.

  They were saved.

  Eden felt someone licking the blood from her face and the cut on her ear. At once she recognized the young goat from the river, the kid’s little gray muzzle nuzzled her face. You saved me, you saved me, the little animal whispered. Goodness gracious—a goat among the sheep, and Eden almost laughed, but her throat was too dry. A great udder appeared in front of her nose and she suckled like a pup again. And when the sun rose in the narrow ravine her master was sitting up, breathing easier now, drinking milk from that empty gourd. No rams. No hyenas. No little kid.

  And when Eden touched her mangled ear with her paw, yes, a scrap of white fur was gone, but the flesh had knit closed, fresh as new.

  A Wedding

  The followers did not come all at once, but as drops of rain at the head of a storm, first one, then another, and then another …

  Eden stood by the riverbank once more. Her master had returned to speak and a few people, recently touched by the water, stayed to listen and to dry themselves by the campfires. The dog felt her master’s mind, his hopes and fears like an aura all on its own. He needed to do many things. But he could not do it all alone. Much would he say, and many would listen—but he needed men to help him. Nearby, the wild man’s donkey roused himself from his mound of fodder and stood quietly by, listening as her master’s voice rose and fell.

  At last the donkey spoke, “No one thought you’d ever come back.”

  Eden thought of the hunger and thirst, the mocking stones. “Me either.”

  “What did you see?”

  She thought of the strange, empty man and his evil creatures. What to say? We met the man at the end of the world, he tried to tempt us. No … instead she told the donkey:

  “Hyenas and goats.”

  The donkey nodded gravely. “That sounds a lot like here.” He shook his head and shifted his ears. “What did you learn?”

  “I learned the world is broad and wide, bigger than this riverbank, bigger than our village, bigger than even the wasteland.”

  The donkey grew silent, considering Eden’s words. At last he said, “I would like to see this world you speak of.”

  “Won’t your master miss you?” Eden asked the donkey.

  Again, the old donkey pondered her words.

  “No,” he finally told her. “The man of the river carries his own burdens.”

  Eden looked at the man of the river standing by the campfire, listening with the others. He lean
ed on his staff for support, weary in body and mind, but his face and eyes in the firelight seemed lit within just by standing in her master’s circle.

  “You’ll have to leave your mound of hay behind,” Eden told the gray-faced donkey.

  “At least I can forage by the side of the road. But what of you?”

  Eden looked at the knot of people gathered by their campfires. Her master’s words rose and fell on their upturned faces. “So far I have never starved,” she told the donkey. “There is food by the roadside for me as well. Through thick and thin, somehow the world provides.”

  That settled matters. So in the end the donkey joined them.

  They journeyed north towards the great lake. And yes, the world was broad and wide, and as each league passed they found food where it appeared and neither dog nor donkey went hungry. They kept to the river where grass grew and in the swampy places they rooted about in hoopoes’ nests and stole pelican eggs. In other places, her master swept fish out of eddies with his hands to flap on the rocks, cooking them on hot coals. At night he spoke by the campfires of those who journeyed, and food was shared even when there was little to go around.

  But somehow, miraculously, neither man nor animal starved. And as the sun rose each day, Eden and the donkey looked ahead with fresh eyes.

  After a few nights, the two animals and their master were no longer alone, as newcomers had joined them. These were also travelers who stopped to listen by the campfire, only to awake the next dawn wishing to follow the sound of the master’s words and see the wider world. Without even an invitation the newcomers abandoned their personal journeys, as if joining paths with a dog, a donkey and a total stranger were the most natural thing in the world. But where this stranger, his dog and the donkey would lead them—where the travelers were bound or what they would find—no one knew.

  What they did know was expectation in dawn’s first breath, free of fear, free of doubt—as though this trek past nameless hills and hovels, this march along the river, heralded some great event.

  Perhaps this was when the mice of the field began to mark their passing, peeking through the tufts of grass at the travelers’ padding feet, then murmuring mouse to mouse—behold! Behold!

  A stranger who walks from place to place, needing nothing to sustain him but a few fish from the river, a little water and the arc of heaven over his head as shelter for the night. Clearly, this is no ordinary man, the mice whispered among themselves, nor those who follow him. Why do they follow? What can they hope to gain? And what purpose served? No mouse could say.

  After many leagues the stranger’s journey brought him to the shore of a wide lake, where on a hill nearby a great celebration was being held.

  As the companions trudged up the dusty road, they learned the celebration was a wedding. The revelers welcomed them into the circle of tents.

  At first the travelers rested on the edges of the party asking neither for food nor drink. But after a few moments Eden sensed a familiar smell, the family-smell. There on the ground, a footprint! The scent of sawdust and wooden-handled tools, the scent of sharp chisels and the sweat of working—yes, she knew it now! A member of her master’s family—her master’s mother! And Eden put a familiar face with that familiar smell.

  The woman from the carpenter’s shop emerged from the crowd to welcome them and Eden rushed to greet her. And once more that familiar hand stroked Eden’s ears as it had all those years she had lain in front of the shop watching the world pass by.

  Soon the platters and jars were passed around and the travelers ate and drank their fill, wrapped in the embrace of the wedding party as if they had always belonged. The gray-faced donkey found a mound of hay behind a tent, and Eden a great lamb shank discarded by the fire pit with thick shreds of meat clinging to it.

  But as the day drew on and more and more people came to join the party of tents, the servants were called again and again to fill every jar and every cup and every plate. And as greater numbers joined the celebration, the platters of food began to thin and the jars began to drain, and Eden saw the worried looks on the faces of the elders. Their dismay grew as the servants returned with less and less food, and the wine jars lay empty on their sides.

  The donkey took his nose out of the mound of hay.

  “Perhaps we should leave now and not burden this family further,” he said to Eden.

  Then she saw the carpenter’s woman speak into her master’s ear, urging her son to do something, take some action, relieve the elders’ distress at the lack of food and drink. But her master merely shook his head, refusing to intervene, even as the next platter passed to him was nearly bare. Yet his mother persisted, convinced her son could do something.

  Then one of the new companions suddenly rose, caught up in this pressing moment. He stood looking at the carpenter’s woman, and also their master, and waved his arms at the crowd now combing the platters and jars for more. His voice rose in urgency, as if it would make what he said more true:

  “The burden is in the fear of want, Master. Banish want and we banish fear. We banish violence and anger and strife.”

  The carpenter’s woman left her son’s side. Gently she brought the passionate companion back to his seat with the calm hands Eden knew so well. And with one glance their master bid his new friend be silent, as if this were no place or time for anxious words or speeches.

  The donkey dipped his long gray nose, whispering to Eden:

  “No one can banish fear. And no man can banish want. We are born in want and die in fear. That is the way of it.”

  Eden thought about the donkey’s words and saw her master sigh, then make up his mind. He rose from their group and went to a servant, where he picked through the remains on that last platter. Then her master went to another servant and peered deeply into an empty jar. A few words were exchanged between her master and the servants, but none that seemed to satisfy the moment.

  The servants muttered and took both jar and platter away, hopelessly discouraged on an errand for more.

  “Perhaps the best we can do,” Eden told the donkey, “is not let want or fear fill the life we’ve been given.”

  She had been watching an old dog for some time now. The ancient fellow lay in the shadow of a tent flap, so worn and tired he could barely raise his head. But his eyes were bright, and Eden knew if he had been just a little younger he would have come over to play. Before she knew what she did, she took her meaty bone and instead of snarling over it alone, she brought it to the old one and set it by his paws.

  And the guests stared in wonder, for no dog acted thus. And they forgot their fear of emptiness and want. And as the jars were passed around, no man or woman could tell where the sweet drink began and the water of the lake ended, or where the full platter of lamb began and devoured bones gave out. They drank from the jars and it went into their hearts like wine, their spirits lifted and voices sang. Even as they reached onto each platter of food, whether they found discarded shreds, gristle or just a grain of rice, no one went hungry.

  The travelers left that evening, not wishing to overstay their welcome, but word of this amazing feast, how dog fed dog and none went hungry or thirsty, preceded the companions on the tails of mice scampering over rocks and blades of grass. Eden could hear them whisper as they ran—Behold! We have witnessed! We have seen!

  As the sun set, fishermen beached their boats on the shore, furled their sails and hung their nets to dry. The dark fell over the lake and Eden saw brick furnaces along the strand smelting metal. Bellows blew the charcoal white, while little glowing rivers of iron dripped into catch basins like angry, writhing snakes. The clank and spark of hammered iron echoed across the water as the companions walked into the night. Men were making swords.

  The wheezing furnaces and clanking anvils faded behind them. They passed fields on either side of the road, long abandoned. A wind blew across the pasture rattling dry stalks like idle chatter and the fallow earth gave off the scent of neglect.

  E
den snuffed the air, but all she sensed was emptiness.

  Back on the shore men made swords, swords aplenty, but here there was no one to plow. Furrows but no shoots, long rows of weeds but nothing sown. On the rise of a hill she saw a lonely plow leaning on its side, the metal plowshare taken for the smithies’ furnaces below.

  “Where is the plowman?” Eden asked. “A plow without a plowman, a plow without a blade and many swords below.… Where is the plowman?”

  The old gray donkey shook his head. He did not know.

  That night the companions sat about their campfire but did not speak. Eden could feel their loss of words. The clank of hammer on anvil had silenced them. The wind sighing over forsaken fields had silenced them. Mute stars in the cloak of night silenced them, leaving both man and animal alone in their thoughts till dawn. And the mice watched in silence from the surrounding fields.

  Another two days’ march passed without event.

  Until at last they reached the gates of a large city.

  Judas

  Neither Eden nor the donkey knew so many people and animals could live together. The people of this place seemed to be falling off their flat rooftops along with their huffy roosters—fussy birds who crowed, “More people, send them away! More people, send them away!”

  The companions kept close in the narrow, crowded streets, not wanting to be separated or lost. Clumsy oafs stepped on Eden’s paws and she yelped, strangers shoved the donkey and whipped his behind even though they didn’t know him. “Oh this place is awful,” the gray donkey brayed. “Take us away, let us leave.”

  But their master knew his destination. The great temple. And he bid the animals stay outside, leaving them in the care of his companions.

  “Wait here.”

  He approached the temple gates, swept aside a corner of the bright curtains and passed into the courtyard. A handful of men milled about in the busy street in the muted shadow of the temple walls. Eden and the donkey peered through the colorful swaying linen, glimpsing stalls and merchants crowding the enclosure. Inside, the temple was as busy as the street, while outside one companion paced anxiously before the temple wall, another wrung his hands gaping at the noisy throngs and yet a third clutched the donkey’s halter with one hand and clutched the dog with the other.