Gold in Havilah: A Novel of Cain's Wife

By Jean Hoefling

"Author Hoefling (Journey to God, 2010) seamlessly combines her extraordinary mastery of early biblical tales with a spirit of inventive creativity, weaving a story that both embellishes but also preserves the original story... a gripping account that only deepens an inherited tale about the birth of mankind and about good and evil." -Kirkus Reviews

Akliah, a daughter of Adam and Eve, has grown up at the foot of the holy mountain where the Garden of Eden lies. She and her siblingsknow well the story of their parents fall from innocence and their banishment from Eden. And they know the prophecy, that their privileged brother, Cain, will soon crush the head of the ancient serpent who tempted their parents there. Fiercely in love with Cain, Akliah is determined to become his wife. But her schemes are shattered when Cain kills his brother, Abel, and abducts her to a barren land east of Eden where shegrieves her mistakes and Cain spirals into ever-deepening tiers of delusion through his bondage to a beautiful fallen angel. When she finally meets a man who offers a chance for love and redemption, Akliah is torn between an honest confession of her past and her longing to be admired. Against the backdrop of life in a city dedicated to dark powers,Akliah must finally make the choice to restore her integrity, or die trying.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jun 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781512787979

Jean Hoefling

Jean Hoefling is an editor living in her native Colorado who finally decided to write the book she always wanted to read, based on her fascination with early Genesis. She blogs for reliefjournal.com and has written two books on her journey into Orthodoxy (Regina Orthodox Press). Her essays and short fiction are published in several formats and she received a notable mention for her essay “Remission” in Best American Essays 2012.

Book preview

EPILOGUE

Know this before we begin: I never planned to turn away from the true God. I didn’t intend to exchange heavenly love for fleshly, or dismiss that One who was all purity, as though he were evil. Yet I, Akliah, daughter of Adam, gorged on the same forbidden food he and my mother, Eve, ate on the day they chose to die. I was born with the tainting poison in my blood that first coursed through theirs in a garden called Eden. I craved the mysteries of unearned knowledge instead of the simplicity of God. This is the true curse that drove my parents from paradise: the lost desire for the heart of God.

Few people beyond the lands of Havilah know who I am. Yet most know of my brothers, Cain and Abel, and the story of how one murdered the other. The prophets have scratched out a brief record of what happened between them, setting down the obscene narrative of Cain’s slaughter of my womb twin in sharp-edged cyphers on smoked leaves of palm, so that those who come after may read, and consider. Only the proud or willfully ignorant will not understand that this story is about more than the earth’s first pair of brothers: it is about all of us. For the truth is that we all murder our brother; if not with flint or stone then through slander and the jealous broodings that fester in every heart.

Killing takes many forms.

I understand the need for brevity in telling Cain’s shameful deed. The details of such blatant crime so early in the human story are perhaps best left obscured. But the truth is that none of the elders of my people were there in that early time, hundreds of years ago now by the reckoning of the stars. I am the only one left who knows the story first-hand, and only in these latter days have I begun to understand that if I die without telling it all, the things my family suffered and learned those many years ago will be lost forever and of no use to anyone. That is why I now sit well-shadowed within the women’s prayer cave, ready to unburden the story of my life to the young scribe who kneels before me with her stack of blank folios, ready to receive my words. Don’t misunderstand: I am not an ignorant woman. I learned to form the cyphers myself years ago at the insistence of my brother, Seth. He was always asking me to put my story down for all to know. But to speak of it too early would have been to give away too much of myself. To remain quiet was better, for there is power in a secret.

And now it is almost too late. My hands shake and my eyes are as dim as the depths of a shadowed spring; I know few days are left to me. So this eager girl, fresh from the scribes’ school, will record my story of boundless, willful desire and then relinquishment and what came after; of despair so deep I thought I stood at the door of the abyss, and of certainty as broad and clear as the firmament that stretches like a tent above the earth. Perhaps by knowing what happened, people in this day will better understand themselves. For whether our bodies were formed from the rib of Adam himself or nourished in the wombs of mothers a thousand generations afterwards, we are not so different from each other, you and I. There are few stories on the earth, and we are all derived of one heart.

HAVILAH

A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good.

— Genesis 2:11-12

CHAPTER 1

M y body was not yet a woman’s the day I knew I loved Cain. Don’t assume that what I felt was only the adoration of a young girl for a splendid older brother, even though that brother’s destiny was steeped in the very prophecies of God. The awareness that came to my heart as I curled in the deep grass of the eastern meadow was something beyond sisterly affection or my high esteem for Cain as the savior of the human race. It was nothing I would ever have expected, but I could not turn away from the sudden, confounding hunger-love I felt—the love of a woman for a man. In one instant, I knew I wanted to be Cain’s wife.

Would this love for my brother have possessed me like it did if the moment of beguiling had not been moving over Havilah? True, magnolia was on the wind, but it was the cast of the afternoon sunlight that changed everything. I still wonder how different my life might have been if that slanted wash of glory had been less of heaven and more of earth that day. It saturated the air like water swells the pores of a sponge. It scented the meadow of Havilah even more than usual with the aroma that wafted down the mountain from the garden called Eden. Pinpoints of light pricked at the river Pishon beyond me, going out from the garden to water the whole earth. Everything radiated from Eden, for that lost paradise was the earth’s absolute center.

Don’t imagine that you have experienced what I am describing, just because you too have lingered in meadow bowers and watched afternoon light rinse hollows and rills in its splendor. I tell you, everything was different then, and the earth was a mirror of heaven. What people perceive of the natural world in these long years since the genesis of human time cannot compare with that time before idolatry and the art of war began to cloud the air, or hives of cities sprang up from the borders of Cush to the far reaches of the land of Nod. Every blade of grass and tiny dove in its nest burst with the glory of its Creator in that time, and I see now that we took it all for granted. We did not know that, too soon, everything would dissipate to a lesser glory.

But on that afternoon, I stared into the flawless blue vault of sky and basked in this potent glory I speak of. I imagined celestial beings moving beyond the sky ethers. I wanted to see straight into the place above the lower heavens where God and the mighty angels called seraphim dwelt. If I looked long enough, I might catch sight of those six-winged beings. I might even glimpse the Creator, that One who had no day of birth. He was the One who, with a word, had brought cosmic order out of chaos and instructed dawn and darkness to do his bidding while he laid the foundations of the earth. Before my parents’ exile from Eden, their eyes had been strong enough to observe these things. Miracles were trifles, once.

I leaned over my drawn-up knees and shivered. A feeling washed through me, as it sometimes did when I came to that meadow. It was the awareness that a part of me would never die, just as the One who had created all things would never die. I tried to hold the sensation, but I could not. The brief awareness plunged away and I was left with the ache of my stranded mortality. I was alone in a green expanse where blue-winged dragonflies the span of my outstretched arms dipped and rose in the grass and a deer and her stick-legged fawn stared at me from within a stand of small, trembling trees I had no name for.

But as the other awareness dissolved, Cain suddenly appeared before the eye of my mind, as though he had been crouching at the door of my consciousness, waiting. How beautiful he was, with the line of his jaw moving when he laughed and the light making an angel’s aura of his hair, as it always did before he left our cave to go down to the barley fields each morning. I imagined the muscles in my brother’s back, moving beneath his skin as he sickled out a row of wheat. There was a new scent on my brother in recent years. Cain was no longer a child, but a man. And now, I had the feelings of a woman for him.

I was an innocent child. What did I know of the marriage and coupling of human beings? There were only six people on the earth then. My father was Adam, man formed of red clay. Into his mouth, God had breathed ruah, divine breath. The name of my mother was Eve. It meant mother of all living. Eve had been formed from the substance of my father’s flesh, taken from a place just below his heart. All people to come would originate from the womb of her body. Together, Adam and Eve bore the wholeness of God’s image, which was a profound mystery. Their union had produced four children, yet I had never seen these first two created ones enmeshing in body as male and female— that act I could observe in the animals of the exquisite glades and woods of Havilah where I had spent my life. Now, I too wanted to express God’s image with someone. I wanted to be Cain’s wife.

I did not move. The certainty of what I felt fascinated me, pushing aside the last vestiges of all childish preoccupations. To mate was the way of all the earth. Wild stallions rose over the mares that grazed in the western fields, planting their seed within them with a curious animal urgency. The she-horses grew big bellied and lay down to expel their young into the grass. They suckled the foals that became tall horses and reproduced again.

This would be the way for Cain and me, as well. My father would bring me to my brother and place my hand on his. How did I know that it began with hand on hand? In the agreement of our unity, Cain and I would live in our own cave. I would be the proud wife of mighty Crusher, the name we gave Cain because the prophecy given to our mother was that her seed would crush the head of Serpens, that archangel grown foul. It was Serpens whose scheming had been the demise of our parents in paradise.

As the wife of Crusher, I would no longer be small and of no account, the least of Adam’s children. I would grow heavy with child many times as my body nourished Cain’s seed—seed that was almost as unsullied as my perfect father’s. Just as Cain and I and our other siblings, Abel and Luluwa, were our parents’ legacy on the earth, Cain and I would leave a legacy of children. When we finally returned to the dust from which God had drawn our father, we would live on through those children.

Everything became clear then. Though God had commanded our parents to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth with their offspring, our mother had not gone to Adam’s sleeping pallet in many years. Who then, besides Cain and me, would fill the earth with Adam’s progeny? One leg of my womb twin, Abel, was short and twisted. He was too weak to work the fields. My sister, Luluwa, was bound to her duties in our camp. Except for attending to the grain fields, she did most of the work in our camp. Besides Abel, there was no other man for my sister to marry.

The sun sank lower down the sky and flooded the meadow with its dazzling authority and spread farther over the lush, verdant pitch of the holy mountain where Eden lay. Star points blinked even brighter across the surface of the Pishon. I was that river, sparkling with new light. I was the beautiful woman who would complete Cain, and he would complete me. Together we would express the fullness of God. I yearned for my brother, my heart beating fast at all the things that were flooding my understanding under the golden light.

In his exhilaration at taking me to wife, Cain would go confidently to battle and quickly crush the head of the enemy of God, fulfilling the old prophecy. The two of us would lead the others back into jeweled Eden to reestablish the original human home. Cain and I would slip away to sleep among lilies and bathe in the uncreated light of God that shone in Eden still. We would wake from our lovers’ sleep and know each other again. We would find contentment in each other’s company every moment.

I released my breath. My thoughts darted like fireflies at nightfall. Before, my understanding of life had been as small as the clearing in front of our cave. Now, there was nothing to separate me from a thousand wonders. A flock of tiny white birds rose out of the reeds clustering at the riverbank. They merged and separated and spiraled upward, as though pure movement was a joy. Everything was different now. Anything could happen.

CHAPTER 2

T he meadow light dimmed, casting shadow into the grass. The change startled me, like waking too suddenly from sleep. A jolt of remembering came: This was the evening of Sabbath, and there was work to be done in camp before the sun went under the earth as a signal that the holy and last day of the week had begun. Guilt at my negligence replaced my obsessive thoughts of Cain. Luluwa would once again have borne my share of the Sabbath preparations while I sat spinning reveries in the meadow.

Luluwa was Cain’s own womb twin, born moments after him. Did she ever have the thoughts about her brother I had just awakened to? In our mother’s womb, Luluwa had once curled beside Cain, so how could she not long for unity with him now? As a man, and as Crusher, there could be no one in the world equal to Cain, even if a thousand other people were somehow alive outside Havilah. Surely Luluwa wanted him.

But it was not Luluwa who had sat under the exquisite light and taken on wisdom about the future. I would be the one to share with my family the untaught visions for my future that had unfurled like the fronds of a tender fern. One look at my face, and they would know the truth of what had happened to me. I laughed a little; Luluwa would have spent the afternoon hacking thistles out of the melon patch, while I journeyed to paradise and back. But though I was lazy, I loved my sister. I must return and make a show of work before the two of us went to the river for the ritual bath that opened our Sabbath.

I found the path beyond the stiff, bristling dragon tree and ran toward the slope below our cave. Thoughts of the rituals and joys of Sabbath and its welcome rest were not in my mind. I hardly noticed the towering, tapered cypress trees silhouetted against the dimming sky, or the flowers folding petal over petal under the weakening light. Even the thought of our evening pilgrimage up the blessed mountain to gaze into Eden seemed tedious, compared to my thoughts about Cain. What would I say when I saw my brother at the river? Yes, I would stand near him and smile. I would cast down my eyes and raise them to meet his again, revealing my longing and devotion. Our father would know what was now between Cain and me. He would put my small hand into my brother’s wide one, sealing the first consciously pledged marriage on the earth. I would oil my skin more often and comb my heavy hair and keep my face cleaner. Cain would see my beauty and desire me. Desire. I did not know fully what this was, only that it was in me to cultivate.

I put my feet into the path that led through the greenwood below our cave. We had no name for the trees of that place and called them only haven of angels, because sometimes on Sabbath as we went down to the river, we caught brief glimmers of celestial beings cradled in the arms of those trees. The frothy, pale green branches rose so high that I had always assumed they scraped the sky. I smiled to myself. Childhood was over and I had more important things to think about, now that I had Cain.

The light dappled warm in the greenwood, tinting the air a watery lime. Beneath me, were the faint vibrations of the waters of the great deep. The waters must be singing now, lulling the earth in their bosom, in celebration with me in these first moments of my love. I sprinted the slope out of the trees, and ran into the clearing in front of our cave.

The ample opening in the mountain that our father had long ago named Cave of Treasures always looked to me like a dark, gaping mouth that was as resigned to sheltering its human inhabitants as we were to living within the rough confines of its walls. Protrusions of misaligned rock jutted over the top of the cave opening where tangles of sweet juniper shrub hid long-toothed prey cats with their hunched, limber shoulders and their rasping screams that sometimes woke us in the night as they leaned over the crags in search of ground rodents. The dank air that wafted from the cave’s depths was always in the clearing, mingling with the smoke from our fire and the odors of fresh bread and warmed tubers and parched grain. Through it all was the scent of the six people that made the cave a home.

The clearing in front of the cave was sheltered on two sides by another kind of fragrant cypress tree. Into the broad, low branches of these cypress I had often climbed, imagining myself to be an angel who would, in the next minute or in an eon, soar out of the clearing and into the blue above, there to dance with other celestial ones and learn secrets of the heavenly realm.

I had lived my entire life in this clearing and this cave, as had Cain and Abel and Luluwa. But, in the beginning, our parents had known nothing of such things. Before the day they sinned, Adam and his Eve had lived in Eden, where shadow was not even a thought, let alone a word. Only on the day of exile from that paradise had the disgraced bearers of God’s image come weeping down the mountain with their bodies covered in the stinking fleeces of lambs, forced to find refuge in the cave’s depths. God himself had killed the lambs to cover their nakedness, for the simplicity of nakedness had been something different before sin took root in human hearts.

I did not know how long ago the cursed events of the day of exile had taken place, or how long the earth’s first two people had lived in the cave before we children were born. I sometimes asked my mother why they referred to our dwelling as Cave of Treasures. There were no precious stones embedded in its walls, and no bright gold there. Grass-stuffed sleeping mats and sunbaked crocks of grain and flour lined walls and niches, and medicinal plants hung from threads of hemp, ready to treat fevers or hasten sleep. My mother’s answer always sounded strained, like pushing a plow through hard earth. It seemed that she resisted making an answer.

In the darkness of the cave, we were cut off from all distraction. There, we unearthed the treasure of repentance, was all she would say. I heard the words, but understood little of such things. As a child, I was merely astonished at each day’s small wonders on the vivid, virgin earth. I paid little attention to the movements of my heart, whether sinful or good.

Only Luluwa was in the clearing. My older sister knelt before the grinding stone, her work tunic dusted white with flour. I grimaced, for Luluwa had once again finished my tasks along with her own. Reed baskets of star fruit and green melons and mud-caked root vegetables were arranged near the entrance to the cave as food for the coming week. Three earthen crocks stood near the grinding stone. They were full of freshly ground wheat, its warm nuttiness mingling with the changing scent of breeze in the cypress now that the declining sun had slightly chilled the air. The area around the fire ring was swept clean of ashes and rubbish in preparation for Sabbath, the word that meant to cease work. The fire’s flame was doused, for during the cycle of Sabbath we kept no fire and cooked no food. Instead, we were told to warm our souls with greater mindfulness of God.

I hurried past the loom and the balls of newly spun flax mounded in their container of lashed bark. I squatted beside Luluwa, my breath coming hard after the exertion of running. Forgive me, for Eden’s sake, I said. Luluwa did not look up. Her red-gold hair fell to her knees. The ends of her hair drifted in the floury dirt around the grinding stone. Why hadn’t she bound the shining mass at the top of her head as she usually did when she worked? The unbound hair hid Luluwa’s comely face, and I could not tell if she was angry or not.

I have no excuse, I babbled. But when I tell you about the things that came to my mind not far from the dragon tree… Maybe I would confess it all to Luluwa now. It was in my mouth already.

Luluwa stood up and looked at me. I saw her disappointment and felt then like the slow, negligent child I was. My womb was not yet alive, and I had no breasts to suckle a baby, while Luluwa had been a full-bodied woman for the span of many moon cycles. Her name meant beautiful, this firstborn daughter of the earth’s first couple. My own name, Akliah, meant only she knows. How had such a name fallen from my father’s lips at my birth? Even he was not sure. God gave us your name, and only he can say what it means, was all he or my mother would tell me.

Yet though she appeared perfect to me, Luluwa was often dirty. She worked from before dawn until the kindling of the evening fire to make up for our mother’s lack of interest in daily chores. For the truth was, our mother was often despondent because of her longing for Eden. She would sit languidly, her hand absently combing through her hair, looking into the heights of the mountain where Eden was, as though nothing else mattered.

My sister’s neck was ringed in grime now, and I thought of her hoeing in the garden alone and was sorry for my selfishness. But something was in Luluwa’s eyes besides fatigue and disappointment at her younger sister. "The nepes within you is disturbed," I said.

My soul rests well. We are late to the river, that’s all, she said. She turned away, so that I would not see her eyes. But I did see them, and her cheeks, damp with tears.

You’re not well. I’ll bring galingale, or balm for your belly. Maybe the blood of your womanhood will come early this month. To diagnose another’s lack of bodily ease was a woman’s privilege. To show concern relieved my sense of guilt.

Luluwa picked up one of the crocks of flour and thrust it into my arms. We would store the crocks at the back of the cave beneath a sheet of linen, far from the spirits of the damp that sometimes came to foul our food with bitter spots. The flour would be waiting when we returned to our work on the day after Sabbath.

My time will come at half moon, as it always does, Luluwa said, irritation in her voice. She swiped at the tears. What’s the use of hiding what’s happened? I didn’t want to tell you until after Sabbath, but our father will probably announce it at the river, so you may as well know what he’s asked me to do. She picked up the other two crocks and started toward the cave. I shifted my own vessel to my shoulder and followed her.

Will it never stop, the demands on me? Luluwa called back as we walked. Her voice broke in places. Demand. The word meant someone’s insistence. It meant one person might will something over what another wished. Had our father come to Luluwa to demand that she help him in the fields because Cain had not come to the threshing floor at all during the recent wheat harvest? Luluwa stopped walking and turned to me. There was anger in her face now. Doesn’t it seem strange that Cain has been a man for the course of many harvests and still hasn’t crushed the head of Serpens? He doesn’t even speak of it, and barks anyone into silence who wants to ask him why he waits. Our mother’s prophecy must be fulfilled or we’ll never return to Eden. She is spent with waiting for it. These many nights, she eats little and cries out in her sleep. It frightens me that Cain doesn’t seem to care how she suffers.

Luluwa was right. It was as though our mother’s heart moved ever further from us. To me, she had always seemed distant. But her voracious devotion to Cain was evident, and she appreciated Luluwa for my sister’s similarity to herself in appearance and for her willingness to work hard. Abel and I, and even our father at times, did not seem of much interest to Eve, mother of all living. And why shouldn’t it be this way? Only Cain could lead her back to Eden, after all. Only Luluwa could perform the strange tasks called work that in paradise Eve had barely noticed, because work was caught up in joy like everything else.

Our mother had begun to tell her wistful old stories more often, about the days she wore the gossamer garment of virtue over her lustrous skin and her feet only skimmed the ground when she walked. Her voice had trilled like an angel’s and her heart had known only elation in that existence without self-consciousness or dishonor. The stories had always interested we four children while growing up. We had clamored around our mother with questions: How was it that you did not know you were naked? What color was the sky at night, since darkness never came fully to Eden?

But in past months, Cain seemed most reluctant to hear our mother’s stories. He left the clearing when she opened her mouth to begin. Her eyes would follow Cain’s form as he left the clearing. She would put a hand into her hair and then let the arm drop. She would stare into the fire, or at Luluwa at her weaving, yet as though she saw none of it.

Luluwa’s voice brought me out of my musings about our mother. More than before, Cain turns away from our father when Abba asks him how he will strategize on the day of battle, Luluwa continued. He turns his back to Abba, a grave disrespect. The look on his face tells me he is closing his heart to our father and our beliefs, and is no longer convinced of Serpens’s true cunning.

What could I say? I did not want to hear Luluwa. But my sister was not finished. I am ashamed that my own womb brother laughs in a strange way when it isn’t proper to laugh. Doesn’t he remember that the future of our family and our very race depends on him? What will happen to us, if Cain doesn’t slay Serpens and Eden remains closed? We’ll have to keep living in this cave and never know the bliss our parents did. A little sob left her throat, but I saw that she believed everything she said.

I let out my breath. How could my sister speak with such confidence, as though she knew all this to be fact? Luluwa must be overly tired, and not seeing things clearly. Cain was tall and perfect, despite the changes in him. He had been the brother who told me stories by the river and brought red fruit to our mother and to Luluwa and me, and I had always imagined that the sweetest pieces were for me. And Cain was skilled in farming. When he chose, he did the work of two men. He had always been the wit and energy that kept our hopes for the future alive while we waited for him to fulfill the old prophecy. God had told our mother, The serpent will bruise that son’s heel, but the son will crush the serpent’s head. The promise given by the mouth of God to our mother was burned into our hearts. I brushed aside the possibility that Cain had changed all that much.

It’s taking him time to come into his vocation, I said, repeating words I’d heard our mother say when our Abba, meaning father, murmured against Cain’s moods or inattention to field work. Great conviction sometimes comes after a season of stupor. I didn’t know what stupor or vocation meant, except that our mother was defending Cain—her first-born and the delight of her eyes— when she used the words. Cain’s name meant gotten with the help of the Lord. Our father had called out to God when he thought the birth pangs would kill his wife. They could not imagine what might come forth from the agony of pangs in Eve’s swollen belly. God had said, I will greatly increase your pain in childbearing. At her first look into the face of baby Cain, she understood everything and held no bitterness against God for the pain.

Now, the look on Luluwa’s face was the one she used when I had done my work poorly. I saw that she understood the meaning of what I had said and did not agree. But I had a woman’s thoughts now. Someone must speak well of my brother, my love. I was already his wife, and I would defend my husband.

Don’t worry, sister. Cain’s back is as broad as Abba’s now, and it’s only our brother’s humility that keeps him from talking about the day he will conquer our enemy. Serpens will soon appear, and Cain will send him to the ground with one blow. Then we’ll walk through the barrier between this earth and Eden and eat of that tree called Life, and all will be well. Yes, all would be well when I conceived my brother’s child. I would be matriarch of the clan of Cain.

Luluwa’s lower lip tightened, and she turned and went into the cave. You don’t know what you’re talking about, she said. As the youngest, your loyalty has cast mist over your sight. But Abba knows, and so do I, that if the battle were to take place today, Serpens would win. That’s why, this afternoon, our father pleaded with me to …

Something about the way the words came from her mouth troubled me. What…? I wanted words to counter hers or to draw out more, but I did not have them. Words were fewer in those days, and we gave objects or feelings or ideas their names as we had need. Luluwa set her crocks on the narrow, chiseled ledge near the back of the cave, and I handed mine to her.

Cain is as worthless as the runt a she-boar leaves for dead, she said, sliding the crock in line with the others. She looked around in the dim light, as though she were surprised at the force of what she had said. I gasped. What would that deity think of Luluwa, calling Cain the sickly offspring of a pig?

Someone has to say it, Akliah. Our brother doesn’t keep Sabbath vigil with Abba anymore, and sometimes I hear him muttering mockeries at the altar when he thinks none of us hear. I too had heard Cain’s mutterings. And it was true that nothing should be uttered at the altar besides praise to the creator. But could it be as bad as Luluwa said, when Cain’s slaying of the evil one was foretold? How could she speak of her own womb brother like this?

Amah might hear, I said, to caution her. But our mother was not there to hear, only the girl whose name meant she knows.

Luluwa picked up our clean Sabbath tunics and the wooden comb we shared. It frightens me that Amah can’t see Cain’s faults, yet complains about sweet Abel not working the fields beside our father, even though she knows he’s not capable of such work.

Abel should speak up about his pain more, I countered. It’s easy for us to forget about his leg since he never complains. And Cain has no more faults than the rest of us. Besides, God doesn’t lie, so the prophecy can’t be broken. Cain’s voice is as strong as a lion’s and he carries the scent of man on his skin. Yes, the scent of man. My man.

What does the scent of skin have to do with anything? Luluwa said, irritated again. I was small and stupid beside her beauty and knowing ways. How someone smells will be of no help against that dark angel, who is not a creature of flesh but of spirit. He lured our mother with promises of moral knowledge and queenly honors. He fed fuel into the fire of our father’s manly pride and took away their privilege as priests of the earth. They gave it all away with no thought to what it meant. She almost spat the last words and shook her head. When that evil one who indwelt the body of a snake appears, he will not be impressed by Cain’s looks. The one who slaughters Serpens must be mighty in spirit, not fine of face and form.

I wished I were back in the meadow, lost in my golden visions and thoughts of stallions and mares. How different I was from my sister, with her shrewdness and her dedication to the management of solid things. Was it possible Luluwa sensed my love for Cain and coveted him for herself, by speaking of him as though he were a failure? But why would she desire one she had such harsh words for?

It was true that Cain was not as he had been when he was younger. Often absent from our fire now, he said little even when among us. But even when he was subtly irreverent at the altar, I had noticed that our father only frowned and said nothing. It must not be so very bad, if Abba did nothing. As Crusher, Cain’s ways were above ours, inscrutable. That was the word our mother used, one that pursed the mouth, squeezing out doubt. Cain’s moods would pass when I became his mate in the ordained order God had given to humanity. My love would make him strong enough to slay a hundred chaos creatures like Serpens, that one who was crafty enough to deceive our mother but would not outwit the man who would be his demise. I ached to tell Luluwa these things and ease her troubled thoughts about the future. Would she be happy when she understood my love for Cain, and how that love would benefit our family?

But Luluwa was moving again. I followed her out of the cave. "I’m sorry you had to work so hard today; I won’t neglect my share of