Something not many people remember about Eve is that not only was she a loving wife and tender housekeeper and mother, she was a commander. You can not give birth to and raise fifty-six children in an empty world without becoming a force to be reckoned with. Better than any captain or general I have seen since, she ordered that our journey be prepared for and was obeyed. A small town’s worth of people hustled to gather food, pack supplies, and prepare our horses. Within an hour we stood at the gates ready to depart. Eve’s horse, Snowmane, was harnessed beside Shadefall and Moonfreckle and I still believe that that beast was the sire of the unicorns.

“Mother, this is lunacy,” Seth insisted.

“Then why are you coming?” she asked with indifference.

“Because my aged mother is going on a crazy quest to get herself killed,” Seth spat. “And my dying father asked me to.”

“You know the prophecies,” Eve said calmly as she sprung onto Snowmane’s back. “You know what we are trying to prevent.”

“But it is forbidden by God himself,” Seth said.

“So was something else,” Eve replied and flicked her reins.

Seth growled, mounted his horse, and followed. I did likewise. I felt like I didn’t belong on this quest but I followed. As independent as I thought I was, I didn't want to be abandoned in a strange land. We went back the way I had just come, north and west through the valley and into the mountains. The next day in the foothills of the Red Mountains Eve presented to us two devices of Atlantean design.

“We can go with one and return with the other,” she explained.

“No,” Seth objected. “Enoch may play with the forces of the world, but I will not. Some things were never meant to be done. We are not yet in such dire need.”

“Are we not?” Eve asked. “Is not, even now, my husband alone and dying?”

“He has strength left,” Seth assured. The tension between mother and son was thick, but I had gone long enough without answers.

“What are those,” I asked, “and why shouldn’t we use them?”

Eve and Seth looked at me and cringed that I was privy to their quarreling. “They are transporters,” Seth explained then turned back to his mother. “How do you have transporters already attuned to the garden?”

“Ondi-Ahman is a sacred place,” Eve said, choosing her words carefully. “A place where prayers are heard.”

“Such travel must take a toll,” Seth accused. “Laws when broken have a consequence.”

“There is no broken law,” Eve said with heat.

“And yet the keeper of this secret lies dying,” Seth said through pain of soul that I could hardly fathom.

“I can’t use it,” I interjected in an effort to force a truce between them. “I have problems with those devices. I don’t know what it would do to me.”

“That’s right,” Seth acknowledged with a note of triumph. “I had forgotten.”

“What is so special about this fruit?” I asked. “And what are these prophecies about?”

Seth looked away and it was Eve who finally answered. “The purge of Eden. All of the earth will be destroyed and purified. Some say by water and others by fire.”

“Some say both,” Seth said.

“No,” Eve responded. “Not both. At least, not yet. It is said that this will only happen once the first of days leaves this world.”

“And this fruit of life can save him?” I asked.

Eve nodded. “But Seth is right. There is always a price.” She considered me with pity then remounted Snowmane. “If we can not transport then we must make haste.” She spurred forward and left us to follow once more. I wondered why they didn’t simply leave me behind. Why didn’t they use their Atlantean transporters and go right then? I never suspected that when they said there was a price to pay what they really meant was sacrifice.

Days and weeks passed on our thousand league journey to Ondi-Ahman. Eve told me the story of her time in the garden and of her exile. Few people had ever heard her version of those events. I had always been taught that she had cursed humanity and that all of the evils in the world came from her disobedience. She was always celebrated as the mother of all, but tainted. Her version of the story was always less well known, and quite different. I heard it firsthand and I am inclined to believe her rather than those who benefit from her slander.

“What do you know about where we are going?” Eve asked me as we rode along.

“I know that we are going to the garden where Adam and Eve were made. Where they lived for countless years in bliss until…” It occurred to me that I was relating the story to someone who had actually lived it and I grew nervous.

She smiled and nodded for me to continue.

I cleared my throat. “Until the fallen one convinced you to turn against God.”

“Close,” Eve said, “but about as far from reality as the garden was from real bliss and happiness. Do you want to know the real story?”

I nodded.

“When we get there you will meet Simiel and see the garden, then you can judge for yourself which version of the story is true.” She sounded resigned, as one who wasn’t used to being believed. “The first thing I saw  when I woke in the garden was the hole in Red’s side being closed over. There was no scar but forever after that you could see that one of his ribs was missing. I had no memories, no knowledge, but also no fear. Red taught me to speak and things simply were what they were. Neither of us knew it then, but we were very much like babies. We were children playing at reality and we had no basis to know what life was supposed to be. We lived and laughed an played and the Father would speak to us but it was so hard to understand what he meant. I understand now, but then it was hard to imagine the things he told us.

“He would tell us about the future and things that would happen, but we didn’t know what time was. The world was constant, static. When we ate, it was meaningless, we didn’t need it. We spoke to each other and named things but not out of necessity. I can’t even guess how long Red and I lived, there was day and night, but no reason to count them. There was no rot, no aging, and no death, not even among plants or animals. We were innocent like children, but even more so because we were blocked. There was nothing more to be or do. The worst part was that we didn’t even know it.

“The Father would come at times and walk with us but we had no other contact with speaking things. There were others, the wyrms, the djinn, the spirits of the earth and the fae, but we were kept separate, isolated from them. They in turn were forbidden from entering the garden. Red and I journeyed out once to see them but it is hard for me to remember why we did anything back then. There were no needs to drive us, no consequences to dissuade us. We simply were and did. We had little to say because nothing ever changed.

“The Self-existent One had told us to be happy and take care of the world we lived in, but we had as little idea or need to do that as someone who is told to keep their heart beating. We had only one way to be. The world had only one way to be. What he told us next made us question everything. We were told to make more like us. To fill the world with our kind. We tried lots of ways to do it too, like children imitating their parents. Like a child leaping into the air in an effort to fly.

“We made crude puppets of clay and stone. I wonder if our stone figures are still standing by the fir trees?” Eve smiled at the memory and shook her head. “We were ignorant of so many things. I suppose that even those stone people have crumbled after so long. It was not only Red and I that fell but the whole world after all. The garden is probably not what it once was. We were told one last thing. We were forbidden to eat the fruit of a certain tree, and if we did we would die. We were told things to do before but never before had we been given a consequence for failure. How could we have failed before then?

“We were supposed to find joy, but why, how? We were supposed to not eat the forbidden fruit. Why? Because we would die. What was death?

“In a land of stasis, death was unknown and new. Therefore it was special. That one thing that was different made me want it and I had never wanted anything before.” Eve took a deep breath as if digging deep for the long past memories. “I mentioned before that other speaking creatures were not allowed in the garden but there was a wyrm that I would see from time to time. I wondered how she could be in the garden if it was forbidden. It had never occurred to me before that she could disobey and come anyway. No cause, no permission, no exception. I wondered if I could do something for myself. Something other than what I was told. I knew her as Tiamat, but you know that it was really Lucifer. I only saw my old friend Tiamat.

“She asked me why I shouldn’t simply take what I wanted. ‘I was told not to,’ I answered. ‘Who taught you to speak?’ she asked me. ‘Red,’ I said. ‘And who taught him?’ the dragon asked. ‘The Father,’ I answered. ‘Why speak except to learn from another what you do not know for yourself?’ she asked.

“She was right.

“‘How can you do anything without the knowledge to do it?’

“She was right again.

“‘The only way to do as the Self-existent One has asked is to be like him and to know,” the wyrm pressed. ‘And the only way to get knowledge is by eating the fruit of knowledge and becoming more like the Father.’ ‘But I will die,’ I protested. ‘You will not die,’ my friend said, ‘but be wise like the Gods.’

“So there I was. The wyrm that was really Lucifer had come into the garden and made their own choice. I wanted to believe her and if death was the end or stasis of the body then I could either take the chance and end in stasis, or I could do nothing and live in eternal stasis. What was the difference? Only the chance. The chance to do something else. To be more.

“So I did. Such a simple act. Such a simple thing changed everything. It was only after that that I knew. I knew how to do what was asked of us. Just like a child who grows and suddenly understands a joke. In that same way I knew what had to happen. I grabbed a fruit and I ran for Red, hoping against all reason that I would find him before I was found.

“I hid when I saw him,” Eve stopped and laughed. “I hid,” she said between bursts of laughter. “It was all so new. I knew what I was doing. I knew what had to happen, but I hid. I was ashamed through my skin to my core. He found me and I will never forget the look on his face as he saw me trying to hide from his innocent eyes. There was shock and familiarity and understanding. He knew exactly what I had done. Tiamat was there. She had followed me to see the results of her work and gloat.

“‘I am going to be cast out,’ I cried. The sorrow of that moment was so fresh, so poignant, so exquisite, that I was overwhelmed. ‘You will be alone,’ I pleaded.

“He looked at me with resignation. He would stay alone unless I convinced him, the stubborn man. ‘I don’t want to be separated from you,’ I said. ‘Then why did you do it?’ he asked. ‘Because,’ I struggled to find the words. ‘Because now I know.’

“I will give Red this, I took the fruit in faith, hoping for the best but not knowing what would happen, he figured it out first and made the same choice already knowing.” Eve paused and a tear rolled down her cheek. “He knew what it would cost and did it anyway. For me.

“The rest of the story is pretty accurately told. ‘It wasn’t me, it was Eve.’ ‘It wasn’t me, it was the wyrm.’ ‘Guess what, I’m really Lucifer in disguise.’ I was shocked at that one. ‘I only did what I had to do.’ ‘Curse you. Cast you out. Done and done.’”

“What was it like being cast out?” I asked.

Eve held out her hand to me and I saw a pale scar in a half circle. “I found out it was real when I tried to touch a fox and it bit me. The world had changed. It was hard, but it has been a long time since then. My life could have been very different, but it couldn’t have been better.”

“Do you regret it?” I asked.

“I have borne fifty-six children,” Eve said. “I have been bruised, burned, and broken. I will die soon. But I would do it all again.”

Seth reached over and grasped his mother’s hand as we rode. It was obviously a story he had heard before.

“Maybe it will take an outside opinion to know if I chose right,” Eve considered.

“You did nothing that didn’t need to be done,” Seth said firmly.

Eve smiled. “But you are my son. My children may have a small bias seeing how they exist because of me.”

When we reached Ondi-Ahman we camped among the ruins of humanity’s first settlement before they were divided by bloodshed. The stars blazed in the early autumn sky. The fire was warm and comforting though it was not cold. I wasn’t home and hadn’t been for about year by this point but I was content. I knew these people and had traveled the world with them. They weren’t family, but for the moment they were as close as I’d had for a long time. I was excited to be getting close to our journey’s end, but afraid of what our journey’s end might mean. Life has a way of turning the things we fear on their heads.