ReVision

This story is by Austin Banks and was part of our 2024 Fall Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here.

Every morning, after a quick dip in my river, I sip tea – fennel sweetened by our bees – from my stoneware bowl and watch my boys play with the deer beneath the Great Tree. Every morning, I think: Surely, Father didn’t mean for us to spend our entire life here, in this moment.

Adam seems immune to my moods. He just laughs and brushes himself off before taking the bowl from my hands. “Oh, Eve, let’s go wander. Roll around in that great big yellow field.” This before my belly grew thick with sweet Abel and daring Cain. And after “Oh, Eve, we have so much to teach the boys.”

Did we? Adam tries teaching them to fish, but in those days, the salmon threw themselves out of the water until we’d eaten our fill. I try showing them to tend the fruits, but they grow bored and pummel each other with apricots. The spent fruit is cleared the next day, ever replaced by a fresh crop.

As the boys grow older, I find myself drawn more to the Great Tree. The wind blows through her boughs, restoring some of the joy I’d felt upon first waking up beneath her. I call the wind inside of me to answer her melody.

On a day otherwise indistinguishable from the rest, a vine uncurls itself from the bough of the Great Tree. “Dear one, do you know the gifts you have been given? Eat of my fruit and see,” it whispers, unfurling to bring a tantalizing golden orb to rest just outside my outstretched arms. It smells of jasmine and vanilla, of rich Earth and the trees she births. Once, we had come across a fallen tree, billowing with the cloudlike growth we’d named mushrooms. This fruit held their smell too.

“Great Tree, Father has said your fruit is forbidden,” I weep, “and surely I will die for consuming it.” For though the gift intrigues me, the smell of Earth and decay wafting from it gives me deep fright.

“Dear one, Father said this to preserve you in your innocence. But in watching you, we know those days are behind you. Eat, that you may know yourself.”

I clasp the fruit in my ravenous paws and shove it into my mouth. Golden juice drips down my chin. Now, a taste so sweet and floral I know I will spend my life describing it. Adam comes upon me then, and in my euphoria, I bid him to eat. Now, the taste of rich Earth and her accompanying decay, and I know that I am naked and cold.

Oh, Earth. I am going to die.

Choking, Adam’s eyes grow wide. I can see our coming doom reflected in them. “What have you wrought, serpent?” He curses at the vine from which our apple had been claimed. It falls from the tree and writhes away from us.

He fixes me with a look half-feral, sticking one hand to my breast, the other to his.

“See how the deer are clothed where we are not?” Adam growls, launching himself at a nearby Stag. Later, we would teach the deer to fear us; for now, the Stag stood and welcomed his friend’s embrace. They remain even as Adam spills blood over the rocks, darting away only once he’d pulled the Stag to the ground and lunged toward another, leaving the first to cool and spoil upon the rocks.

The wind picks up and we see Father’s shadow fall over the Great Tree. “Hide,” Adam hisses, pulling the carcass with him into the underbrush.

“Children, I hear the cry of my creation. I see their water spilt upon the Earth. Why hide from me?” Father’s lightning splits our cowering tree, and his fog-wreathed form billows into the space.

“Father,” Adam stammers, “You placed this woman here to guide and assist me, and she allowed the serpent to deceive us.” I weep, but what is there to say?

“Oh, children.” The rain has begun, a torrent of fury to wash us from our home. “You have done a terrible thing. Because of you, the Earth will produce only thistles, and only by your sweat will you eat. Because of you, your children will know suffering.”

Father’s pronouncement did not take hold all at once. The rain drove us from our paradise and did not relent until it had become a sea and our mountainous refuge a bank along it. Still, we ate our fill and left our offerings to the Earth just as we always had, but no longer did the fields restore their bounties for us afresh each morning.

The fields grew fallow and the animals fled from our glut, until one morning Cain and Abel decided to petition Father for his mercy. Cain followed me but yanked his offerings from the Earth without care. Adam returned from the woods alone. “We found many deer that would have served well, but Abel would permit me to chase none of them. I see Cain has at least produced something.” Adam grabs one of the fatter tomatoes from a pile set apart from the altar and shoves it in his face, just as I had the Great Tree’s fruit all those years ago.

At last, Abel emerges, the sun merely a finger’s width from the horizon. A deer follows behind him, unbolting, as though remembering when we were his dearest friends.

Father came down the next morning. “I thought my anger would take generations to cool, but you have taught your son well. Continue to live as Abel has shown you, and I may yet drain Tethys.” My tears did not remain joyous for long. Before Adam or I could react, Cain plucked a stone from the ground and lunged towards Abel, calling to mind his father’s slaughter of the deer those many years past.

Lightning coursed around Cain’s neck; rain washed Abel’s blood further into the ground. “You who wash the ground with your brother’s blood, no longer will it yield for you. If ever I see paradise restored, you will never again set foot upon it.” The lightning ran in reverse, pulling Cain up into the Earth.

Abel. My sweet, loving, simple boy. Cain, strong and beautiful in his own way – quick to temper but never so swift to act. Both lost to us now. I am tired, heartbroken, and I want to go home.

Many years will pass, my back stooping and my hair turned grey, before my belly again grows thick and the moon ceases her pull upon my internal tide. I begin to look for Lavender in my foraging. Where before the wind had led me to the fragrant purple bushes, now they hid from me just as we hid from Father. When I can no longer walk, I send Adam to look in my stead, but night after night he returns with fewer scraps and nothing to stanch my pain.

One morning, the first contraction roils through me, and I know Seth will not drop from my belly like his brothers had. Earthfire! Had Cain been so overgrown? Had Abel? Had Father truly reached down and stitched tight my womb?

Another contraction. I force myself to close. I will not bear another life to ache and die because of my folly. I hold on, knowing if I don’t release him soon, Seth and I will both die. At last, I hear a crash from the forest beyond us. Through pain-stricken haze, I see Adam emerge, led by a bird with a blue neck and wings speckled with red. Floral tea spills over me and down my throat.

The gift washes away some of my sorrow; at last I can see. Father’s sorrow, not his fury, brought the rain. We were not cast from paradise for accepting the gift of wisdom. For our scorn toward wisdom and all her other gifts, the Mother Earth took paradise away.

I hold Seth in my arms, his pained cries and my joyous ones echoes to each other. “Thank you,” I weep. “Thank you, Earth, for sustaining us even as we scorned you. Thank you, son, for finding a way back to us.” Even now, I know my descendants will never see the valley below. And yet, “Thank you, Father, for your mercy.”

I ask Adam where he found the Lavender. “Cain showed me to another paradise, one not yet lost and awaiting restoration like our own.” This, then, was wisdom’s gift: to learn for ourselves how to make and share paradise.

Every morning, I wash away yesterday’s languor in the river. I sip river water, blessed by fire and fennel and sweetened with honey gifted by the bees. I watch as my grandchildren dance to the wind, to the steps taught by Wolf and Bear, and Deer. Every morning, I dip my brushes in the river, and I thank the Mother for letting me spend this moment – this lifetime – in her embrace.