The Best of C. L. Moore Part 15

Lilith drew a deep breath. Excitement was rising like a tide in her, and the wind from nowhere swirled the dark hair in a cloud about her shoulders.

"Let him try!" she cried exultantly. "I can save Adam. G.o.d made a mistake when he put such power in the Garden. He shouldn't have left it living, half-conscious of itself. He shouldn't have let Adam know how close he is to the earth he was taken from. Adam and the Garden are one flesh, and the power of G.o.d is in them both. G.o.d can't destroy one without the other, and together they are very strong- If they defied G.o.d together, and I helped them-"

Lucifer looked at her, a trace of compa.s.sion on his handsome, reptilian face.

"G.o.d defeated me," he reminded her. "Do you think He couldn't you?"

She gave him a proud glance. "I am the Queen of Air and Dark-ness. I have secrets of my own, and powers not even G.o.d can control. If I join them with Adam's, and the Gardens. . . . G.o.d made the Garden alive and powerful, and Adam is one flesh with it, each in-complete without the other as Man is without woman. Adam has Eve now-but when Eve's gone he'll remember Lilith. I'll see that he re-members! And I'll see that he understands his danger. With my help, perhaps he can avert it."

"If G.o.d destroys Eve," said Lucifer, "he'll destroy Adam, too. They're one pattern."

"But he may not destroy them at the same time. I'll gamble on that. I'd kill her myself if I could, but I can't touch anything in the Garden without its own consent. - - - No, I'll have to wait until Eve proves to G.o.d her unfitness to wear flesh, and while he punishes her I must seize that moment to rouse the Garden.

It's almost aware of it-self already. I think I could awaken it-through Adam, perhaps. Adam and Eden are almost one, as Adam and I will be again if we can get rid of Eve. None of us separately has the power to defy G.o.d, but Eden and Adam and I together might do it!" She tossed back her head and the wild dark hair swirled like a fog about her. "Eden is an ent.i.ty of its own-I think I could close a sh.e.l.l of s.p.a.ce around us, and there are places in my Darkness where we could hide even from G.o.d!"

Lucifer narrowed his eyes at her. "It might work," he nodded slowly. "You're mad-but it might work, with my help. The woman is beautiful, in her way-" He laughed. "And what a revenge on G.o.d!"

"The woman," mused Lilith, "is in my body, and I am evil. . . . I think enough evil remains there that Eve will find you-interesting. Good luck, Lucifer!"

In a hollow, velvety cup in the Garden's very center the two Trees stood. One at the edge of the clearing was a dark Tree, the leaves folded like a cloak about a pale glow from within where the Fruit of Life hung hidden. But in the center of the hollow the Tree of Knowl-edge flaunted its scarlet fruit that burned with a flame almost of their own among the green and glossy leaves. Here was the heart of the Garden.

Out of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil the beat went pulsing that shook the air of Eden.

Eve set one small, bare foot upon the downward slope and looked back timidly over her shoulder. The serpent flicked a forked red tongue at her. His voice was cool and clear, and sweet as honey.

"Eva," he said softly. "Eva-"

She smiled and went on, he rippling after her with an unearthly beauty to his gait that is lost forever now.

No one knows today how the serpent walked before the Fall. Of all human creatures only Eve knows that, and there were things Eve never told Adam.

They paused under the shadow of the tree. In long, slow rhythms the air went pulsing past them. Eve's fair hair stirred a little, so strong was the rhythm here. All the Fruit of the Tree pushed out among theleaves to see her, and the nearer branches bent caressingly toward this woman who was of the flesh of Adam.

The nearest branch stooped down enticingly. Eve reached for a scarlet apple that dipped into her hand.

Almost of itself it snapped free of the twig that held it. Eve stared at the apple in her palm, and her hand began to shake. She drew back against the serpent, a little whimper of terror rising in her throat.

The serpent dropped a coiled embrace about the lovely, light-clothed pallor of her body and bent his handsome, slanted head to hers, whispering at her ear in a voice so cool and sweet that the terror faded from her face. She smiled a little, and her hand steadied.

She lifted the Fruit of Knowledge to her lips. There was a hush. all through the Garden as she hesitated for a long moment, the red fruit at her red mouth, her teeth denting the scarlet cheek of Knowledge. The last few timeless moments stood still while innocence yet reigned over Eden.

Then the serpent whispered again, urgently: "Eva-" he said.

Lilith stood s.h.i.+vering in Adam's arms.

"You were mine first," she was whispering fiercely. "You and I and the Garden-don't you remember? I was your wife before her, and you belong to me!"

Adam could see his own arms through the ephemeral stuff of Lilith's body. He was shaken by the violence in her voice, but his mind was too fogged with the unthinking blank of innocence to un-derstand very clearly. He tried hard.

The rhythm that pulsed through Eden was curiously uneven now. Lilith knew what it meant, and excitement choked her. She cried more desperately: "Adam . . . Adam! Don't let anything separate us, you and the Garden and I! You can hold us together if you try! I know you can! You-"

One great, annihilating throb shook through the air like thunder. The whole Garden reeled with it and every tree in Eden bowed as if before a tremendous wind. Adam looked up, aghast. But Lilith laughed a wild, excited laugh and cried, "This is it! Oh, hurry, Adam, hurry!"

She slipped through his arms that were still clasped about her and went fluttering effortlessly off through branches that did not impede her pa.s.sage, Adam following half stunned with the stunned Garden.

All Eden was still reeling from the violence of what had just hap-pened beneath the Tree.

Lilith watched the sky as she ran. Would a great bolt of lightning come ravening down out of heaven to blast the woman out of being before they reached the Tree? "Wait, wait!" she panted voicelessly to G.o.d.

"Give me a moment longer-" Would a bolt strike Adam, too, as he slipped through the parting trees beside her? "Hurry!" she gasped again.

Breathless, they paused at the edge of the hollow where the Tree stood. Looking down, they could see Eve just clear of the shadow of it, the fruit in her hand with one white bite flawing its scarlet cheek. She was staring about the Garden as if she had never seen it before. Where was G.o.d? Why had He not blasted her as she stood there?

Lilith in her first wild glance could not see the serpent except for a glitter of iridescence back in the shadow of the Tree. Even in her terri-ble excitement she smiled wryly. Lucifer was taking no chances with G.o.d.

But she had no time to waste now on Lucifer or on Eve. For some inexplicable reason G.o.d was staying His hand, and she must make the most of the respite. For when G.o.d was finished with Eve He would turn to Adam, and before that much had to be done. Adam was her business now, and the living Eden, and all eternity waited on what the next few moments held.

She stood out on the lip of the hollow and a great dark wind from nowhere swelled monstrously about her, tossing out her hair until it was a cloud that shut her from sight. Out of the cloud her voice came rolling in tremendous rhythms paced to the rhythm at which Eden breathed-and Adam.

"Garden!" she called. "Eden-hear me! I am Lilith, the wife of Adam-"

She could feel a vast, dim awareness stirring around her. All through Eden the wakening motion ran, drawing closer, welling up deeply from the earth underfoot, monstrously, wonderfully, a world comingalive at her call.

"Adam!" she cried. "Adam do you hear me? You and Eden are one flesh, and Eve has destroyed you both. She has just brought knowl-edge into Eden, where G.o.d dares not let it exist. Cod will destroy you all, because of Eve. . . unless you listen to me-"

She felt Adam's attention torn away from Eve and focusing upon herself in fear and wonder. She felt the Garden's wakening awareness draw around him with growing intensity, until it was as if the earth of Eden and the flesh of Man quickened into one, married by the same need for one another as the thought of parting and destruction shud-dered through each.

Was this what G.o.d had planned as an ending for His divine scheme, as it was the beginning of Lilith's?

She had no time to wonder, but the thought crossed her mind awesomely even as she wooed the Garden in a voice as sweet and coaxing as the voice she used to Adam.

And the whole great Garden shuddered ponderously around her, awareness thrilling down every tendril and branch and blade, pulsing up out of the very hill on which she stood. And all of it was Adam. The Garden heard and hung upon her words, and Adam heard, and they three together were all that existed.

Success was in her hands. She could feel it. And then- "Adam. . . Adam!" screamed Eve beneath the Tree.

Lilith's sonorous voice paused in its invocation; the Garden hesi-tated around her.

"Adam!" cried Eve again, terror flattening all the sweetness out of her voice.

And behind Lilith, in a drugged voice, Adam said: "Eve-?"

"G.o.d. . . G.o.d, destroy her now1'~ prayed Lilith soundlessly. And aloud, "Eve has no part in Eden!

Don't listen to her, Adam! She'll de-stroy you and the Garden together!"

"Adam, Adam! Where are you?"

"Coming-" said Adam, still in that thick, drugged voice.

Lilith whirled in the mist of her cloudy hair. Where was G.o.d! Why had He stayed His hand? Now was the time to strike, if her hope were not to fail. Now, now! Surely the lightning would come ravening down from heaven if she could hold Adam a moment longer- "Adam, wait!" she cried desperately. "Adam, you know you love me! If you leave-"

Her voice faltered as he peered at her as blindly as if he had never seen her before. The haloed light was like fire all around him, and her words had been a drug to him as they had been to the Garden, until the earth that loved and listened to her had been one with his own earth-formed flesh; a moment ago there had been nothing in creation for Adam or for Eden but this one woman speaking out of the dark. But now- "Adam!" screamed Eve again in that flat, frightened voice.

"Don't listen!" cried Lilith frantically. "She doesn't belong here! You can't save her flow! G.o.d will destroy her, and He'll destroy you, too, if you leave me! Stay here and let her die! You and I will be alone again, in the Garden. . . Adam, don't listen!"

"I. . . I have to listen," he stammered almost stupidly. "Get out of my way, Lilith. Don't you understand?

She's my own flesh-I have to go."

Lilith stared at him dumbly. His own fles.h.!.+ She had forgotten that. She had leaned too heavily on his oneness with the Garden-she had forgotten he was one with Eve, too. The prospect of defeat was sud-denly like lead in her. If G.o.d would only strike now- She swayed for-ward in one last desperate effort to hold him back from Eve while the Garden stirred uneasily around them, frightened with Lilith's terror, torn with Adam's distress. She wavered between Adam and the valley as if her ephemeral body could hold him, but he went through her as if through a cloud and stumbled blindly downhill toward the terrified Eve beneath the Tree with the fruit in her hand and a dreadful knowledge on her face.

From here Lilith could see what Adam had not yet. She laughed suddenly, wildly, and cried: "Look at her, Adam! Look!" And Adam blinked and looked.

Eve stood naked beneath the Tree. That burning beauty which had clothed her like a garment was gone with her divine innocence and she was no longer the flawless G.o.ddess who had wakened on Adam's shoulder that morning. She stood s.h.i.+vering a little, looking forlorn and somehow pinched and thin, almosta caricature of the perfect beauty that had gone down the hill with the serpent an hour ago. But she did not know that. She looked up at Adam as he hesitated above her, and smiled uncertainly with a sort of leer in her smile.

"Oh, there you are," she said, and even her voice was harsher now. "Everything looked so. . . so queer, for a minute. Look." She held up the fruit. "It's good. Better than anything you ever gave me. Try it."

Lilith stared at her from the hilltop with a horror that for a moment blanked out her growing terror because of G.o.d's delay. Was knowledge, then, as ugly as this? Why had it destroyed Eve's beauty as if it were some evil thing? Perfect knowledge should have increased her strength and loveliness in the instant before G.o.d struck her down, if- Suddenly Lilith understood. Perfect knowledge! But Eve had only tasted the fruit, and she had only a warped half-knowledge from that single taste. The beauty of her innocence was lost, but she had not yet gained the beauty of perfect knowledge. Was this why G.o.d delayed? So long as her knowledge was imperfect perhaps she was no menace to G.o.d's power in Eden. And yet she had disobeyed, she had proved herself unworthy of the trust of G.o.d- Then why did He hesitate? 'Why had He not blasted her as she stood there with the apple at her lips? A panic was rising in Lilith's throat. Could it be that He was laughing, even now? Was He giving her the respite she had prayed for, and watching her fail in spite of it?

"Taste the apple," said Eve again, holding it out.

"Adam!" cried Lilith despairingly from the edge of the hill. "Adam, look at me! You loved me first-don't you remember? Look at me, Adam!"

And Adam turned to look. The wind, which had clouded her from sight in the darkness of her hair, had calmed. She stood now, lumi-nous on the hilltop, the darkness parted like a river by the whiteness of her shoulders. And she was beautiful with a beauty that no mortal woman will ever wear again.

"I was first!" cried Lilith. "You loved me before her-come back to me now, before G.o.d strikes you both! Come back, Adam!"

He stared up at her miserably. He looked back at the flawed, s.h.i.+v-ering creature at his side, knowledge curiously horrible in her eyes. He stared at Eve, too, a long stare. And then he reached for the apple.

"Adam-no!" shrieked Lilith. "See what knowledge did to Eve! You'll be ugly and naked, like her!

Don't taste it, Adam! You don't know what you're doing!"

Over the poised red fruit he looked up at her. The light quivered gloriously all around him. He stood like a G.o.d beneath the Tree, radi-ant, perfect.

"Yes, I know," he said, in a clearer voice than she had ever heard him use before.

"G.o.d will destroy you!" wailed Lilith, and rolled her eyes up to look for the falling thunderbolt that might be hurtling downward even now.

"I know," said Adam again. And then, after a pause, "You don't understand, Lilith. Eve is my own flesh, closer than Eden-closer than you. Don't you remember what G.o.d said? Forsaking all others-"

"Eve!" screamed Lilith hopelessly. "Stop him! Your punishment's certain-are you going to drag him down, too?"

Eve looked up, knowledge dark in her blue eyes. She laughed a thin laugh and the last vestige of her beauty went with it.

"Leave him to you?" she sneered. "Oh no! He and I are one flesh- we'll go together. Taste the apple, Adam!"

He turned it obediently in his hand: his teeth crunched through scarlet skin into the sweet white flesh inside. There was a tremendous silence all through the Garden; nothing stirred in Eden while Adam chewed and swallowed the Fruit of Knowledge. And then turned to stare down into Eve's lifted eyes while awareness of himself as an indi-vidual, free-willed being dawned gradually across his awakening mind.

And then the burning glory that clothed him paled, s.h.i.+mmered, went out along his limbs. He, too, was naked. The queer, pinched look of humanity s.h.i.+vered over that magnificent body, and he was no longer magnificent, no longer Adam.Lilith had forgotten to look for G.o.d. Sickness of the heart was swelling terribly in her, and for a moment she no longer cared about G.o.d, or Eden, or the future. This was not Adam any more- It would never be Adam again- "Listen," said Eve in a small, intimate voice to Adam. "How quiet it is! WT hy, it's the music. The seraphim aren't singing any more around the Throne!"

Lilith glanced up apathetically. That meant, then, that G.o.d was coming- But even as she looked up a great golden chorus resounded serenely from high over Eden. Adam tipped his tarnished head to listen.

"You're right," he agreed. "They've stopped their song."

Lilith did not hear him. That dreadful sickness in her was swelling and changing, and she knew now what it was-hatred. Hatred of Adam and Eve and the thing they had done to her. Hatred of these naked caricatures, who had been the magnificent half-G.o.d she had loved and the shape she had put on to delight him. True, they might finish the eating of knowledge and grow perfect again, but it would be a perfection that shut her out. They were one flesh together, and even G.o.d had failed her now. Looking down, she loathed them both. Eve's very existence was an insult to the unflawed perfection which Lilith still wore, and Adam-Adam s.h.i.+vering beneath the Tree with a warped, imperfect knowledge leering in his eyes- A sob swelled in her throat. He had been flawless once-she would never forget that. Almost she loved the memory still as it lingered about this s.h.i.+vering human creature beneath the Tree. So long as he was alive she knew now she would never be free of it; this weakness would torment her still for the flesh that had once been Adam. The prospect of an eternity of longing for him, who would never exist again, was suddenly unbearable to her.

She tipped her head back and looked up through the glory above Eden where golden voices chanted that neither Adam nor Eve would ever hear again.

"Jehovah!" she sobbed. "Jehovah! Come down and destroy us all! You were right-they are both too flawed to bring anything but misery to all who know them. G.o.d, come down and give us peacel"

Eve squealed in terror at Adam's side. "Listen!" she cried. "Adam, listen to her!"

Answering human terror dawned across the pinched features that had once been Adam's handsome, immortal face. "The Tree of Life!" he shouted. "No one can touch us if we eat that fruit!"

He whirled to scramble up the slope toward the dark Tree, and Lilith's heart ached to watch how heavily he moved. Yesterday's won-derful, easy litheness was gone with his beauty, and his body was a burden to him now.

But he was not to reach the Tree of Life. For suddenly glory bright-ened unbearably over the Garden. A silence was in the sky, and the breeze ceased to blow through Eden.

"Adam," said a Voice in the great silence of the Garden, "hart thou eaten of the Tree?"

Adam glanced up the slope at Lilith, standing despairingly against the sky. He looked at Eve beside him, a clumsy caricature of the love-liness he had dreamed of. There was bitterness in his voice.

"The woman thou gayest me-" he began reproachful'y, and then hesitated, meeting Eve's eyes. The old G.o.dlike goodness was lost to him now, but he had not fallen low enough yet to let Eve know what he was thinking. He could not say, "The woman Thou gayest me has ruined us both-but I had a woman of my own before her and she never did me any harm." No, he could not hurt this flesh of his flesh so deeply, but he was human now and he could not let her go unrebuked. He went on sulkily, "-she gave me the apple, and I ate."

The Voice said awfully, "Eve-?"

Perhaps Eve was remembering that other voice, cool and sweet, murmuring, "Eva-" in the cool, green dimness of the Garden, the voice that had whispered secrets she would never share with Adam. Perhaps if he had been beside her now-but he was not, and her resentment bubbled to her lips in speech.

"The serpent beguiled me," she told G.o.d sullenly, "and I ate."

There was silence for a moment in the Garden. Then the Voice said, "Lucifer-" with a sorrow in the sound that had not stirred for the man's plight, or the woman's. "Lucifer, my enemy, come forth from the Tree." There was a divine compa.s.sion in the Voice even as It p.r.o.nounced sentence. "Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life-"

Out from beneath the shadow of the Tree a flat and s.h.i.+ning length came pouring through the gra.s.s. Thiswas the hour for the shedding of beauty: the serpent had lost the fire-bright splendor that had been his while Lucifer dwelt in his flesh, but traces lingered yet in the unearthly fluidness of his motion, in his s.h.i.+ning iridescence. He lifted a wedged head toward Eve, flickered his tongue at her once and then dropped back into the gra.s.s. Its ripple above him marked his course away. Eve drew one long, sobbing breath for that green twilight hour in the Garden, that Adam would never guess, as she watched him ripple away.

"Adam, Eve," went on the Voice quietly, "the Garden is not for you." There was a pa.s.sionless pity in It as the Garden stood still to lis-ten. "I made your flesh too weak, because your G.o.dhood was too strong to trust. You are not to blame for that-the fault was Mine. But Adam. . . Eve. . . what power did I put in you, that the very el-ements of fire and darkness find kins.h.i.+p with you? What flaw is in you, that though you are the only two human things alive, yet you cannot keep faith with one another?"

Adam glanced miserably up toward Lilith standing motionless on the hill's edge, clothed in the flawless beauty he had dreamed for her and would never see again. Eve's eyes followed the serpent through the gra.s.s that was blurred for her because of the first tears of Eden. Neither of them answered.

"You are not fit yet to put forth your hand to the Tree of Life, and eat, and live forever," went on the Voice after a moment.

"Man . . . woman. . . you are not yet fit for perfect knowledge or immortality. You are not yet fit for trust.

But for Lilith the tale would have spun itself out here in the walls of Eden, but now you must go beyond temptation and work your own salvation out in the sweat of your brow, in the lands beyond the Garden.

Adam, I dare not trust you any longer in your kins.h.i.+p with the earth I shaped you from. Cursed is the ground for your sake. Adam-it shall be one with you no longer. But I promise this. . . in the end you shall return to it-" The Voice fell silent, and there was far from above the flash of a flaming sword over the gate of Eden.

In the silence Lilith laughed. It was a clear, ringing sound from the hill's edge: "Deal with me now," she said in an empty voice. "I have no desire to exist any longer in a world that has no Adam-destroy me, Jehovah."