Chapter Three: The Births
The first pain came on a night when the moon was thin as a blade. I thought I was dying. I begged Adam to kill me before the child inside me tore me apart. He held me instead, whispering useless comforts while I cursed the day I ever saw that Tree. Then Cain slid out, red and furious, fists already clenched as if he had been born arguing with the world. I laughed through blood and tears and said,
"I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord."
I believed it then—that every sorrow could be repaired by new life. Abel came easier, two years later, born at dawn while Cain slept beside me. He did not cry at first; he opened his eyes and looked at me as if he already knew my name.
When Cain woke and saw him, he touched his brother's cheek with one careful finger, then crawled into my other arm. For a moment the four of us were whole. They grew brown and strong under a sun that no longer loved us. Cain fought the ground until it surrendered grain. Abel spoke to the sheep the way his father once spoke to God—quietly, expectantly. I nursed them, disciplined them, sang to them the songs of a garden none of us would ever see again. I told them stories of a place where their mother and father walked naked and unafraid. They listened wide-eyed, then ran off to wrestle or chase lambs, as if paradise were only a bedtime tale. I watched them and thought:
This is the redemption. This is why the pain was worth it. But one afternoon, when the wind carried the scent of rain and the earth was soft beneath us, Abel sat beside me on the red soil. His hands were stained with the dust of his flock, and his eyes, quiet and wondering, turned toward me.
"Mother," he said, "what was it like—back in the garden of God?"
For a moment I did not answer. The memory came upon me like light breaking through cracks in stone. I dug my fingers into the earth beside me.
"It was—alive, Abel. Everything was alive. The wind, the trees, even the stones had a voice. We were not apart from them as we are now. The Spirit moved like breath through everything, and I felt it in my bones. We walked with God as one walks with sunlight—never questioning its warmth or where it came from."
Abel listened, eyes half closed, and said softly, "It sounds like peace."
"It was peace," I answered. "The kind that does not need guarding. I could speak, and the world would answer. The animals trusted us. We were close to the spirit realm—so close that even silence spoke." I touched my chest. "But when we left, all that closeness fell away. Now—it is as if the world speaks a language I no longer understand." Abel was quiet for a while, then asked what I had never spoken aloud to either of them.
"Mother, do you ever wish you had not eaten the fruit?"
I turned to him then, the red earth clinging to my legs, the distant bleating of his sheep carrying on the wind.
"When God created me," I said carefully, "I was meant to be Ezer for your father. Not just one to tend to his needs or bear his children. I was to Adam as God is to us—that kind of help. Strong help. Divine help. I failed your father because I thought I was doing exactly that. I believed that by giving him the fruit, he would become greater, wiser, and closer to God. I thought I was fulfilling my purpose. But I did not understand the task fully. I did not see the deception for what it was." Abel frowned a little, his brow furrowed as he thought.
"But Mother, you told me that God Himself made the serpent—the most crafty of all His creations. Why did you expect to outsmart what God made so clever?"
A smile touched my lips, sad and small.
"My son, God's ways are not our ways," I said. "Yet even so, I have asked myself that same question countless times. How could He expect me to resist something He created with such cunning? How could light wrestle with something made of shadow without being touched by it?"
Abel leaned against my arm, his warmth grounding me.
"Maybe He wanted you to see what strength really meant," he murmured.
"Maybe," I whispered, though in my heart I was not sure.
The memory of the garden still burned like a forgotten language, half-remembered, half-lost. We sat in silence then, mother and son, the red earth warm beneath us, the sun slipping low, the world both living and distant all at once.
I watched him trace a stick into the dust, and I thought again—perhaps redemption begins not in the return to the garden, but in learning to love the wilderness.