and then stretched beyond his natural size until he stood—upright on two feet—nearly twice the size of a man. The golden scales around him burst like a split shell and fell to the ground, discarded as though he had emerged from a chrysalis, no longer a serpent at all but something far greater and more beautiful. His wings glimmered as though with all the quartz of a mountain. The thing that had risen to its full height uncoiled wing after glistening wing so that he had not one pair like the serpent, or even two as the dragonfly, but three pairs as no creature known to me. His face, though I knew it to be turned toward the One, seemed to look in all directions—forward and backward and east and west at once. He stood upright with a posture so straight that I marveled he might stand so erect before God. And as he lifted his chin to the Almighty, the face on the back of his head lowered until it fastened upon me.
It was too beautiful and terrible to look upon, so perfect that I thought, Surely I have come from the mud!
The One said, I will set enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and hers.
I heard then a sound more fearsome than that of any beast: a taut strain like a note plucked and held too long, and a low rumble against it. The rumble lengthened, vibrating against that tense sound, at odds with it as laughter in the face of danger.
Laughter.
The sound was sick, the audible sum of premonition and power and dread.
His wings opened and then he was gone.
The chrysalis that had entombed him had shriveled to a long cocoon. As I pushed up with powerless arms to the place where the serpent had been, the chrysalis twitched and then slithered away like an overgrown worm.
Softly now: He will bruise your head, but you will strike his heel.
I did not know what this meant. I knew only that the One was here and that every fiber within me cried out for reconciliation—with the One, with the valley and all that dwelt within it . . . with the adam.
I need you!
I meant to say I would never long for any other pleasure if I might return to my vineyard and orchard and bower. That I would question nothing, ask nothing, seek nothing if only I could have it all back. That I now knew the thing I had done.
But I couldn’t. Because here was the worst of it: Even now, in the presence of the One, he seemed somehow impossibly far away from me as he had never been before. Even as he said, so very gently, I am.
I cried out in a language without words for the One to retrieve, to restore me. But it was too late; I was like the child that reaches up with broken arms.
He said very quietly, I will greatly increase your conceptions; with pain you will give birth to children. You will long for your man, but he will rule over you.
I blinked at the ground, not understanding. Was I not to die the death? Or was this how it was to be done? What care did I have for pain? Could any pain be greater than this?
The One said to the adam: You listened to the voice of your woman and ate from the tree from which I commanded you not to eat.
How deftly the human finger pointed at me was returned to its owner. But greater than that was the sorrow behind it—a sorrow made deeper by a history of love.
So softly: Cursed is the soil for your sake. With toil you will eat from it all the days of your life. It will sprout thorn and thistle for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow, you will eat bread until you return to the soil from which you were taken.
Did God weep? Was the One capable of tears?
Dust you are . . . to dust you will return.
The light faded like a back that turns to walk away.
I keened, empty except for grief. Pouring out grief like poison, unable to excise it.
I die. I die.
I lay a long time like that, facedown upon the ground. Wretched. Spent. Covered in dirt. Near me the adam lay as one dead; only by the heaving of his breath did I know he lived and that he did so in a grief all his
It was too beautiful and terrible to look upon, so perfect that I thought, Surely I have come from the mud!
The One said, I will set enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and hers.
I heard then a sound more fearsome than that of any beast: a taut strain like a note plucked and held too long, and a low rumble against it. The rumble lengthened, vibrating against that tense sound, at odds with it as laughter in the face of danger.
Laughter.
The sound was sick, the audible sum of premonition and power and dread.
His wings opened and then he was gone.
The chrysalis that had entombed him had shriveled to a long cocoon. As I pushed up with powerless arms to the place where the serpent had been, the chrysalis twitched and then slithered away like an overgrown worm.
Softly now: He will bruise your head, but you will strike his heel.
I did not know what this meant. I knew only that the One was here and that every fiber within me cried out for reconciliation—with the One, with the valley and all that dwelt within it . . . with the adam.
I need you!
I meant to say I would never long for any other pleasure if I might return to my vineyard and orchard and bower. That I would question nothing, ask nothing, seek nothing if only I could have it all back. That I now knew the thing I had done.
But I couldn’t. Because here was the worst of it: Even now, in the presence of the One, he seemed somehow impossibly far away from me as he had never been before. Even as he said, so very gently, I am.
I cried out in a language without words for the One to retrieve, to restore me. But it was too late; I was like the child that reaches up with broken arms.
He said very quietly, I will greatly increase your conceptions; with pain you will give birth to children. You will long for your man, but he will rule over you.
I blinked at the ground, not understanding. Was I not to die the death? Or was this how it was to be done? What care did I have for pain? Could any pain be greater than this?
The One said to the adam: You listened to the voice of your woman and ate from the tree from which I commanded you not to eat.
How deftly the human finger pointed at me was returned to its owner. But greater than that was the sorrow behind it—a sorrow made deeper by a history of love.
So softly: Cursed is the soil for your sake. With toil you will eat from it all the days of your life. It will sprout thorn and thistle for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow, you will eat bread until you return to the soil from which you were taken.
Did God weep? Was the One capable of tears?
Dust you are . . . to dust you will return.
The light faded like a back that turns to walk away.
I keened, empty except for grief. Pouring out grief like poison, unable to excise it.
I die. I die.
I lay a long time like that, facedown upon the ground. Wretched. Spent. Covered in dirt. Near me the adam lay as one dead; only by the heaving of his breath did I know he lived and that he did so in a grief all his
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