After checking the status of Lilly’s fever, which had neither risen nor fallen, John grunted and exchanged an inscrutable glance with Anita.
“Now, we eat,” he said, leading them into an alcove where food and drink were spread on a table with five settings. It was a feast of fruits and vegetables, crackers and cheese, and many sauces and dips, some chewy while others smooth as cream. Water, juices, tea, and coffee were plentiful.
Lilly was pleased to have an appetite, and doubly happy when John indicated she should sample whatever she liked. She chose a plump bunch of red grapes.
Knowing that Gerald and Anita were married somehow deepened Lilly’s appreciation for the integrity of their friendship. She watched these two at ease in each other’s presence, respectful of their differences. One and then the other would defer, as if they had learned to navigate a secret language.
As John explained to Simon and Gerald about the room’s antiquities, Lilly nudged Anita.
“Married, huh?”
“Of course, dearie,” she responded, “I thought you knew. It wasn’t meant to be a secret, but I can see it made for a good surprise. I do love him, this Gerald person.”
“What is . . . love? I don’t think I know what that is.” Her question slipped out easily.
Anita touched her arm in a motherly way. “It’s both mysterious and simple. Gerald’s good is more important to me than mine, and mine is more important to him than his. We each own this conviction individually, not expecting it to be reciprocated. Healthy love looks different from one second to the next because it’s built on respect for self and for the other. A lot of work, though, getting to know someone.”
“How do you know what that is—the good for the other?” Lilly asked.
“Ah,”—Anita patted her arm—“that is a profound question, dear one, a deep mystery of all relationships. Only God Who is Good can reveal what the good is, and often He does that only in the moment such revelation is needed. Part of the great dance.”
“As I said,” muttered Lilly, under her breath, “I don’t understand what love is.”
“That’s what your head is saying,” Anita said gently, touching the girl’s cheek. “But I am convinced that you already know, somewhere inside you.”
• • •
Turns out we won’t go into the mysterious Vault until tomorrow. I’m supposed to “record” the stuff I witness but I don’t know how that works. It’s all messed up, keeping secrets about what I saw, Eternal Man and Eve and Adam and the Creation. I lied outright to John today. What if it’s true that I have lost my mind? In some ways that would be easier. I would have an excuse.
Simon told me I had to stop Adam from turning, and I told him it was too late and he looked really shocked. I did tell him that I looked in the mirror, but I didn’t tell him what I saw. Still don’t want to talk about it, or write about it. I’m trying to figure out how accepting what the mirror showed me as the truth of my being will help me change history. Change history . . . right . . .
Lilly looked up at the glorious ocean wall that filled one side of her bedroom, watching the water dance with the anemones on the coral. The peaceful scene seemed to taunt her. She added a final note to the diary.
Adonai said that I am forever found. When I think of how Anita and Gerald love each other, I think maybe that love is what it means to be found. All I know is that since I saw Adam turn and looked into the mirror, I feel forever lost.
• • •
SOMEWHERE IN THE STOREHOUSE of the soul everything is kept, and while access to remembering may be restricted, history continues to find a way to make itself known.
In the space that night between sleep and wakefulness, Lilly’s past rudely emerged. These memory spasms were vicious and violent, lightning strikes that destroyed her connections to reality, to love, to wholeness: A book being read to a young girl by a woman—her mother? The smash of a fist across the girl’s face, blood blinding as she reeled, dark shadow men stalking her, prowling with razor-sharp fingernails and foul breath, a pressure on her chest that squeezed until it paralyzed, brief bursts of trains and warehouses and screams, crouching in the dark on a dirty floor, hoping to go unnoticed. She screamed without a voice, and then watched helplessly: a little girl dragged into a room, and the door slammed shut. Safety dissolved into a tiny circle of darkness inside her heart, her only refuge from the terrors.
Her eyes opened to Anita, sitting next to the bed, holding Lilly’s hand, eyes closed and lips barely moving as if in silent prayer.
Lilly squeezed her hand. “Hi,” she rasped.
Anita squeezed back, opening her eyes with a tired smile. “Hi, little one. Go back to sleep. I’ll be right here.”
A rush of fatigue rolled over her and Lilly let it sweep her gently away.
She floated on Anita’s upturned hands into another dream that was not a dream. Now Eve was sitting beside her, but Lilly’s blanket didn’t register her weight.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Lilly exclaimed, and turned her head into the woman’s shoulder.
“I am too,” Eve acknowledged.
“Mother Eve, what am I going to do? I hate not telling them, and I don’t know why I don’t. I get close, like I’m at the edge of a cliff, and just before I jump, I get terrified and hide.”
Eve was quiet before answering softly. “Lilly, hiding behind secrets is like walking across a frozen lake as it melts beneath your feet. Each step is filled with fear.”
“I don’t know how else to try and get across.”
“Keeping secrets is a dangerous endeavor. You must learn to think like a child. Children don’t keep secrets until someone convinces them that the keeping is safer than the telling. It almost never is.”
“But I’m not a child!” Lilly could not stop her own internal reaction.
Eve hugged her. “Lilly, we are all children. But once persuaded that secrets will keep us safe, we slowly fade into our hiding places and forget who we are. It is no wonder that the shadow-sickness grows in isolation.”
“So am I going crazy?” Lilly asked, exasperated. “Am I talking to myself in a padded cell somewhere? Are you the result of medications or mental illness? What happened to me? Which world is real? And everyone talks to me like I’m important and I matter, but I can’t meet their expectations!” She knew she was venting and didn’t expect a response. It was a relief to talk out loud about things she was avoiding, and she was grateful that Eve let her talk without expressing impatience or discomfort.
“I have seen this all before,” Eve finally said, “but not with you.”
“Seen what exactly? A girl with someone’s else’s foot?” Lilly lifted the hem of her skirt to look at it again. “Or someone stuck between worlds with creatures she couldn’t imagine? Or a Witness to the very first moments of creation . . . ?”
Eve chuckled. “No, many of these are a first for me too. I was referring to having seen the destiny of the entire creation, of man and beast and spirit—even the very being of God—entrusted to another girl, about your age.”
“Really?” Lilly was genuinely surprised. “So I’m not the only one? I’m not alone?”
“You have never been alone, dear one.”
Lilly looked down at her hands, lying open on her lap, and let her hair fall down around her face. “That’s not what I was asking, but . . .” When she spoke, barely above a whisper, her voice broke. “Then why didn’t—why didn’t God protect me?”
And there it hung, the question.
Eve let it hang there, suspended and ominous, the question uttered by a billion other voices. It rose from grave sites and empty chairs, from mosque and church, from offices, prison cells, and alleys. Tattered faith and battered hearts lay broken in its wake. It demanded justice and begged for miracles that never came.
Eve touched Lilly’s shoulder and the girl again felt warmth spread out inside her. “I have no answer in this moment that would satisfy you, Lilly. No words that would knit together w
hat is wounded in your soul and in your body.”
Lilly closed her eyes but refused to cry, instead allowing the tingling comfort to climb into her tired body and calm the rising fever. Despite hearing no answers, she felt safe in this mother’s presence. Minutes passed before she spoke.
“I feel like I’m climbing a mountain that has no top. I’m barely holding on to the rock wall. I’m scared, and everyone expects me to make it. If I don’t, it’s like all that’s wrong in the world is going to be my fault.” Lilly leaned her face into the woman’s neck and whispered, holding back emotions. “What if I can’t do this and I let go? Or what if I jump, will God still catch me?”
“He will, but to you it will feel as though you hit the ground.”
Again they were quiet for a time.
“Mother Eve, do you know how this turns out for me?”
“No, neither of us has been here before. But I am not afraid.”
“Did it turn out okay for that other girl? The one my age?”
“Yes! It did. Lilly, her participation changed everything.”
Everything. It was a big enough hope for the rest of the night. Lilly slept at peace, no vivid dreams or hallucinations, no questions worrying her mind.
But much later, with no way to tell the hours that passed or even the time of day, she snapped awake, alarmed by something crawling up her arm.
Eleven
* * *
THE VAULT
Lilly almost snatched her hand away before realizing it was a furry little forest marsupial sniffing at it, barely visible whiskers tickling her arm. Carefully, so as not to scare it, she reached her other hand across to stroke its back, but as she gently touched it, the animal screeched and bolted into the underbrush.
That was weird, she thought. The inflamed fang marks pulsed above her wrist. Could this creature have sensed the poison that was slowly spreading in her body? It was stranger still that any animal was aware of her at all, her presence here usually intangible and masked.
It only took a moment to get her bearings; she was somewhere inside Eden, but alone: no Eve, and no sense of any Invisibles. Lilly walked toward a rock outcropping, overlooking a broad and busy plain. Adam stood pointing down, surrounded by Fire and Wind and next to Eternal Man.
What are they doing? Lilly wondered. She stopped, close enough to hear. Adam, sensing her presence, turned and looked straight through her, as if trying by concentration to give substance to an apparition. He was unsuccessful.
“This is the closing of the final day of naming,” Adam stated sadly, as if to her, “and I have yet to find a face-to-face other.”
Spinning away, the young man raised his fists and screamed fury into the sky, one word. It reverberated and echoed back as time and place and beast stood still.
“Alone!”
Lilly felt it penetrate her to the core, shredding her with hopelessness, the resolute declaration of the lost.
Adonai reached out to touch His son, and Adam flinched, his head bowed, hands covering his eyes, embarrassed by his weakness. Lilly tried to move, to take a step toward him, but it was as though her feet were mired in unyielding clay. And then she heard what she thought was Adam’s voice say something completely unexpected.
“Lilith? Lilith?”
“Lilly? Lilly!” It was Anita, shaking her arm. Jolted out of her vision, she found herself staring into the older woman’s expression of focused concern.
“Anita?” Lilly looked around and quickly tried to mask her absolute confusion. They were all at breakfast and looking at her, some with silverware frozen halfway to their mouths and she with no idea how she got there, no memory of the morning, of waking, or of anything except terrors in the night and Adam’s naming.
“I’m sorry,” she stammered, scrambling for an excuse. “I was lost in something John read to me the other day.” They seemed to accept this explanation, and everyone relaxed.
“Lost!” Anita exclaimed. “I think lost is an understatement. More like gone. Dear one, you had us worried for a moment! Whatever were you thinking about? It must have been important.”
The woman’s relief gave Lilly the moment she needed to collect her thoughts. “John read to me the story of Beginnings and I was thinking . . . who is Lilith?”
“Lilith?” blurted Simon, almost choking on his food. She thought she saw him barely shake his head, as if in warning. The others looked equally shocked.
“You didn’t hear that name from anything I read to you!” avowed John.
Lilly faltered. “Then what’s the deal with her?”
“Sheer rubbish, my dear girl,” stated Gerald, almost sternly. “Mythology at its most insidious. Utter nonsense. Where did you ever hear of Lilith?”
“I’m not sure?” Lilly replied. “Maybe in a dream?”
“Maybe in a nightmare!” Gerald was as animated as Lilly had ever seen him. “Or a snakebite.”
“Gerald, calm yourself.” Anita reached and patted his arm. “I think you may be upsetting the poor girl. Obviously, she doesn’t know who Lilith is.”
“My apologies, dear girl,” Gerald sputtered. “No intentions whatsoever to upset you or fault you for bringing that . . . thing . . . up in conversation. Please forgive me for my fervor.”
“Of course, Gerald,” Lilly stated. “What is it about this Lilith that has you so riled up?”
“There is a myth,” resumed Gerald, calming himself but focused, “about Lilith. According to the tale, which I take no stock in whatsoever, she was the first wife of Adam.”
“Adam had more than one wife?” Now Lilly was surprised.
“No, of course not,” emphasized Gerald. “It is a myth. Eve was Adam’s only wife.”
“So in this story, was Lilith good?”
“In most of the versions, she was anything but good. An aberration of nature, part serpent and part woman, a terrifying moon goddess that haunted the night.” Gerald had his hands raised like claws to emphasize his point.
Again, Lilly saw the hint of warning in Simon’s look along with another slight shake of his head. She abruptly changed the subject.
“So what about the part where Adam named the animals? Why was that important?”
Simon was the first to respond. “Excellent question. Naming is of great significance. God brought the beasts of sky and field to Adam to ascertain their essential nature. In naming them, Adam established his dominion.”
“True,” inserted Gerald, “but Adam was in a desperate search for a counterpart, an ‘other’ to relate to him face-to-face. Someone or something to assure him that he was not alone—though he never was.”
“What Gerald is trying to say, Lilly,” Anita said, “is that if one is seeking a face-to-face relationship, naming is a futile exercise. Dominion cannot carry you there. There was no counterpart in all creation for Adam, and God patiently let him prove it. His counterpart was—”
“Within him!” Lilly connected the dots. “Eve is his counterpart and she has been inside him since Creation.”
“Exactly!” declared Anita. “And Adam is inside God; God Who has never been alone. Face-to-face-to-face-to-face . . .” And she swirled her butter knife in circles in the air to emphasize her point.
“Naming is still rightful dominion,” stated Simon, and from there the conversation turned scholarly and Lilly disengaged, again wondering how she had gotten from her bedroom to breakfast and bewildered by the hornet’s nest she had stirred up with the mention of Lilith.
John, who had been serving and clearing the table, announced that the Vault was waiting, if they were ready. Although Lilly’s temperature was still elevated, which continued to concern John, she played it off as nothing. The reality was that every time she moved her arm, jolts of pain like tiny electric shocks exploded in her wrist and elbow. She could tell the venom was spreading toward her shoulder. But it seemed easier to downplay her pain than take the chance that the opportunity to do her part, whatever that might be, would again be postponed.
/> Having convinced them all was well, Lilly soon faced the goal of their adventures, which waited only feet away. The entry door was substantial and looked impenetrable, without a visible knob. Symbols were carved deeply into its surface, as if etched by ancient artists, each precise and detailed.
“What do you see, Lilly?” asked John, wheeling her almost close enough to touch. “Can you describe it to us?”
It was a strange request, but when Lilly looked at the others, they too were waiting expectantly.
“Well, look for yourself.” She traced it with her hands in the air. “Here is a perfect circle stretching from side to side, so deep that it looks as if what’s inside is hung suspended rather than an actual part of the door. Even this close I can’t tell it’s not. The circle is divided from side to side and top to bottom into four sections by these wooden beams. Each of the four spaces holds an intricate carving, some kind of symbol or image.” Lilly recognized two of them instantly but started with the others.
“This one in the bottom left quarter is a pyramid mountain with the staring eye.”
“You are able to see the One Mountain?” Anita sounded astonished.
“Uh, yeah.” Lilly hesitated as if she had done something wrong. “I mean, look, it’s right here.”
“No, dear girl, you don’t understand. None of us see the same thing when we look at this wood. You are the only one who sees what you do.”
“Is that bad?” she asked, confused. “To see this mountain?”
“It is neither bad nor good,” said Gerald. “It is what it is, but that you can see the One Mountain is so unlikely as to stagger the mind. What else?”
Lilly looked more closely. How could they not see the mountain? She reached out to touch the eye, but Anita grabbed her hand and yanked it away.
“Don’t!” she commanded, and Lilly turned to her, perturbed.
“You’re freaking me out! What’s going on? I was just checking to see if it was real or my imagination,” she fumed.