Eden Unvarnished

The garden is beautiful, the fruit trees and twirling vines a resplendent wave of greens and golds and blue-orange-and-red medleys. Before this, she has only known the darkness of the earth. No one had told her that the darkness could produce such splendid things.

“Wow,” she says, and the man at her side smirks in satisfaction.

“Pretty great, right? And the best part is –” He nudges her with his elbow. “We’re in charge.” He pauses. “Well, I am. But you can help.”

She turns in a slow, wondering circle, blinking at the bright, incandescent beauty bursting with vitality surrounding her. “Why are we in charge?”

His brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she asks. “Why are we in charge and not them?” She points at the shapes lurking among the shadows of the verdant leaves and dense hanging branches. She can see flashes of tawny fur and golden eyes, sleek muscles rippling with power, great shaggy beasts of indeterminate origins which pulsate with some strange inner fire of strength and will.

He stares at her, his lips pursing in disdain. “They’re animals,” he says. “Irrational and stupid. Just look at them,” and he points to a bushy gray-and-white beast with a drooping tail and bright blue eyes, a long-limbed creature of fang and claw and stealth. She feels that it is the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen in her twenty-one minutes of life in this pristine new world. “Look at it. It’s nothing but a big, dumb brute.”

“What’s it called?” She whispers, and the creature cocks its head and pricks its ears at the sound of her voice, its plumy white tail wagging a little in greeting.

The man tilts his head to the side, and faint creases appears at the corner of his eyes as he tries to remember. “A wolf, I think, is what he called it.”

She straightens. “Who called it that?”

“Oh, the Maker,” he says, waving his hand at the wonders of the world that stand bright and shining and new all around them. “He made all of this stuff and showed it to me. He told me what they’re all called, but there’s just so many of them. It’s hard to remember.” He pauses. “He made us too. He made you,” he points at her and winks, “just for me, as a kind of gift, because I asked him to. So if you think about it, you have to obey me too, just like all of them.”

She doesn’t like this at all. “But I’m a person, not a beast.” Even as the words fall from her lips, she glances sidelong at the animals watching her with wide, curious eyes, so intelligent and shrewd, from a few feet away. She feels guilty, and they blink at her as though they can hear the unspoken apology that never falls from her lips. “Why did he put you in charge of them, anyway?”

“I don’t know.” The man shrugs. “He just did.”

“Well, didn’t you ask?”

“Of course I asked him,” he snaps. “He just said, ‘Because I said so.’”

She purses her lips and crosses her arms over her chest. She likes the feel of the silken bare skin of her arms as it caresses the soft, tender flesh underneath her breasts, the way that the wind floats across her exposed skin like the faintest whisper of the kiss. It’s probably best not to argue too much, she thinks. Best to just go along with whatever he says so she can stay here, forever, in the cleanness of the open air and the light and the sweet citrus scents lingering on the breeze, not like the dank, dark place from whence she was formed, that water-logged place where whenever she opened her mouth to breathe, her throat and her lungs became clogged with mud and silt.

This though – this is much better. She likes the colors, very much. The colors are a good thing.

“Okay,” she says. “What else do I need to know?”

“Not much.” He puts his hands on his hips as he surveys his kingdom, and she feels annoyed because obviously there is everything to know about this place. This is the source of all knowledge, the fountainhead of wisdom and the wellspring of creation, and he clearly has no interest in exploring the depths of its wonders, probing at its secrets with a patient, practiced hand.

She fela like she might hate him a little.

“Oh!” He snaps his fingers. “There’s the thing about the tree.”   

Her irritation grows. “What tree? There are hundreds of trees.”

“C’mere,” he says, and he grabs her wrist and drags her towards the middle of the garden, indifferent to the way that she stumbles and trips among the stones of the earth behind him, unused to these newborn feet of hers as she is. He tugs her along with impatient haste, and she lifts her upper lip in a wordless snarl at his broad back, and she sees them then, in the shadows of the brush surrounding them, how the dark silhouettes of the animals pace along beside her, their furry paws and hooves and pincers scraping through the dirt in unison with her steps.

She feels a little comforted. At least she is not alone with the man here in this garden. At least she has them, these companions to whom she has never spoken but for whom she feels an innate affinity. It probably grates on them as well, she thinks, that they are subordinate to this supercilious man, despite the wonder of their being.

She imagines for a minute what they could do if they revolted – how those fangs and claws and talons would rend his weak flesh with such effortless ease, how quickly he would die, his lifeblood spilling out and soaking into the damp black earth of his birth, how they would live free and unopposed in this incandescent paradise for the rest of their days.

At least they have that, she tells herself, as she stumbles to a halt behind him, and he jerks at her wrist peevishly as she bumps into the back of his calves with her clumsy toes. She is soft all over and weak and devoid of any sharp edges that could be honed into a weapon with which to win her freedom.

“There,” he says, and nods at the mammoth tree with snow-white bark which looms over the surrounding grove of figs and oranges and olives which encircle its ominous presence. “That’s the one. We are not allowed to ever eat the fruit of that tree. We can eat all we want of the other ones, but don’t ever touch that one, okay?”

She stares at it, at the glistening red-and-green fruits which dangle from its twisted white branches. She feels like she can smell it, the warm, cidery scent which whispers of low-burning fires and autumn and hearths of home. She can almost hear the crunch of the ripe, firm skin breaking underneath the sharpness of her incisors, and she closes her eyes and imagines it -- the tart, crisp taste of the zesty meat melting on her tongue.

She opens her eyes and for the first time in her life, she feels hunger.

"Why?" She asks, and it's more urgent this time than her last query, her idle curiosity vanished on the warm winds gliding through the yellow strands of her hair. "Why can't we eat them?"

The man sighs with longsuffering aggravation. "I told you," he says crossly. "Because he said so."

Her fists clench at her side without her consent. "Did you even bother," she asks, and she can feel the way her tongue hisses and twists across her teeth as she bites out the words, like a scaly, slithery creature might slide through the grass, "did you even think to ask him why?"

"Of course not. He's the Maker. You just do as he says and don't question it." He sniffs. "Don't be so dumb."

Her shoulders stiffen. "I want to see him," she says. "I want to ask him why. Maybe he'll tell me."

He laughs. "He won't talk to you," he says, and she can feel the oily sheen of his smugness slink across her skin, and she flinches in disgust. "He'll only talk to me. He told me that too. He's in charge of me, and I'm -" he thumps on his chest with his open palm. "I'm in charge of all of you."

“That’s not fair.”

“You don’t make the rules,” the man says flatly. “He does, and if he's not here, I do, and you do as I say.” His eyes harden and she notices for the first time the rigid lines of the muscles in his shoulders, the unforgiving planes of his broad, meaty chest, the cords of sinew and bone which widen through the upper parts of his arms. She looks down at her own arms, soft and slim and supple, and sees a creation devoid of iron, something that is pretty and frail, and she wonders if that is by design or by coincidence, that she is so soft and he is so hard.

She feels a little afraid.

“Okay,” she says again, but her voice sounds defeated and sad even in her own ears, and the man is satisfied, and he turns and stalks away through the grass and the dirt to other side of the garden, his tense, muscled arms swinging at his sides.

She stands still as the smooth gray stones that puncture the gleaming greenery of the grass and looks at the white, whispering tree.

She ceases to feel and begins to think.

She thinks that she knows why she is forbidden to eat its fruit. She thinks she knows why no one will tell her the truth. She sees the gleam of the watching eyes of the animals as they crouch in the shadows, and she thinks that they are holding their breaths right along with her, hoping against hope that she will break loose of these bonds and eat of the tree and set them all free.

She slips forward, her steps suddenly confident and clean, no more blundering across the uneven earth for her, and she ducks underneath the low-hanging white branches to pluck a reddish green fruit from the tree, round and ripe and brimming with raw, undiluted power.

This, she thinks, this is the key, the source of all knowledge. If I eat of this fruit, she thinks, I will become like him, this mysterious Maker, who can issue illogical edicts unquestioned and create an entire universe of life on nothing more than an idle whim. If I eat this, she thinks, I can become a being who answers to no man.

She raises it to her lips and takes a bite.

It is bland and mild in her mouth, no taste other than texture, and she chews with dogged determination and swallows in one fluid motion.

Nothing changes. The earth does not move and the sky remains clear and blue and bright above her and the birds continue to chirp uninterrupted and calm in the neighboring trees.

She tosses the remaining fruit to the ground in disgust, shaking her head as she stomps out from underneath the branches into the open air. What a joke, she thinks, what a stupid, senseless joke to play on us, to dangle the temptation of a forbidden delight in front of our noses for absolutely no reason at all. Her eyes sting a little in disappointment, in despair, but before a single tear can fall down her porcelain cheek, she freezes.

There’s a new man standing there, arms crossed across his chest, the contours of his wavering vaguely, as though his features were formed from nothing other than the vapors of the winds.

“Naughty girl,” he says, and she blinks at him.

“Who are you?”

He wags a finger at her. “He told you not to do it, didn’t he? Foolish boy.” His lips twist in a smirk. “He is so easily distracted. I knew that I made you too pretty.”

“You’re the Maker,” she says, and her limbs feel numb, like half-dried clay stuck to the sides of the damp gray stones.

“Indeed. And you,” he shakes his head, “you have eaten of the forbidden tree.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, but she’s not really, because she doesn’t understand. “Why is it forbidden?”

“Because I made it that way.” He shrugs. “Too bad. I had such high hopes for the two of you. Now I shall have to punish you, I suppose.” Before she can answer, he raises a hand and snaps his fingers, and her body shakes and jerks against her will and collapses on the ground. She hears a scream, and there is the man, clutching at his skull as his feet drag through the grass and the dirt, as though an invisible hand grips at his hair as it drags him forward only to toss him into the mud next to her.

“For you,” says the Maker through the dullness in her ears and the whimpers of the man, and she looks up to see him pointing at her companion. “Lazy and entitled as you are, I condemn you to work, to struggle through life, through its sorrows and its pains. You have ignored my gifts and forgotten their names. You devaluate and denigrate the fruits of my labor, and thus you now must labor a thousandfold in order to see a fraction of the glories which I have wrought in this world.”

“As for you –” He turns his burning golden eyes on her, and she trembles, her fingertips scraping at the thin blades of grass. “As for you, naughty, naughty girl. You desire the power of creation so badly, do you? Very well then – creation you shall have, building and growing and stretching in your belly, and you shall bring forth your makings into the world through your own blood and sweat and tears.” She cries out a little as the man next to her begins rocking back and forth on his knees, sobbing into his hands.

It’s unfair, she thinks wildly, this careless judgment passed on her personage. “But you never told me,” she says. “You never told me that I wasn’t allowed.”

The Maker arches his eyebrow at her. “No,” he says and points at the man. “But he did.”

She is confused, shadows reeling and winging their way across the dizzying spectrum of her vision. “But why should I have to listen to him?”

He smiles at her, and there is no mirth in his smile. “You didn’t,” he says. “But you had to listen to me.” His tongue flickers through his teeth and a hissing sound echoes in the air. “For generations to come,” he says, “your children will look back on this moment and know that this was the start of their doom.”

“But I didn’t do anything!” The man weeps as he stumbles to his feet, reaching out his hands in supplication. “I didn’t eat it – she did.”

The Maker shrugs with infinite indifference, and she clenches her fists. “I was wrong,” she says. “About that tree. It won’t really make us like you. It won’t really teach us about good and evil.”

“Oh no,” he interrupts. “It will and it has.” He smiles that horrible smile at her again. “It has taught you that there is no such thing unless I say there is.”

The man makes a keening sound as she slowly rises to her feet to stand next to him. They are allies now, she thinks, reluctant, resentful allies united against this universal force of ambivalence that stands before them. “That’s why you didn’t tell him why. You put him in charge to irk me because you knew me. Before you formed me, you knew me. You put that there to trick us, to tempt me into doing exactly what I did, so that you can punish us for no reason.” She points at him. “There is no why. It’s just a tree.”

“Even so,” he says smoothly, and she knows that there will be no salvation found in this garden of doom.

The Maker turns away, his hazy edges shimmering more violently before, and she knows that once he is gone, she will never see him again. He has created the chaos that he intended to create. “But why?” She asks as the man falls to his knees again, sobbing and screaming, his hands clutching at his short brown hair. She needs to know, to understand why this is happening, the ruination of her kind, because it can’t be because she ate a bite of a piece of fruit that had no real meaning outside the arbitrary determinings of an all-mighty being. “What was the point? Why couldn’t we eat it, if there’s nothing special about it?”

The Maker sighs, then turns to drift away into the trees, waving a hand over his shoulder as he begins to vanish into the ether. “Because,” he says, “I said so.”