Eden River Read Online Free

Eve seemed reluctant to accompany him on his forage for food, and in fact allowed him to go off into the woods by himself, he did not pause to ask himself the reason of her unusual behaviour. It chanced that he wandered further than usual that morning, penetrating far into the forest that stretched between his country and the mountains of the horizon, and emerging at intervals into a wideglade. In one such glade he came upon a tree alive with yellow birds: a large tree standing alone, and the birds filled it with singing and gold, and the lower branches sagged to the green ground. The young of a wild cat came mewing after him, till their dam, following indulgently, grew impatient and pounced, seizing her eldest by his scruff: whereat the others flung themselves playfully upon her, and thus laden and beset she picked her way delicately back to her lair in the undergrowth. The animals may well have found Adam a little strange this morning, for though he paused to ruffle the mane of a sleeping lion, and surrendered his hand for a moment to the eager tongue of a leopard, his manner was abstracted, his eyes having the evasive slant of one who looks inward. Yet his thoughts had little definition: it was no more than a wandering daydream that engaged him, a dim conjecture stirred into being by the occasional sight of those distant mountains, which were in his fancy the end of the world. And beyond the end—what? For the first time the question became articulated in his mind, and it was in the company of this idea of a something beyond that he slowly returned, empty-handed, to where he had left Eve. The sun had already made the half of his journey up the sky:perceiving which, Adam knew that he had been long absent.
    Eve being nowhere in sight, he grew afraid and called out to her. No answer came, but in the long silence that followed his cry he heard a distant moaning: a sound unlike the voice of Eve, yet hearing it he felt fear leap again in his bowels, and his feet, without instruction, began taking him in the direction whence it had come. The moaning was repeated, and now it was louder and to Adam’s ears so unfamiliar that his instinct was divided against itself and he trembled, not knowing whether to go forward or run away from his first contact with another’s pain; but his curiosity gaining the upper hand of him he went on with dragging feet and soon found Eve where she lay in the long grass, hiding her secret labour. Yes, it was Eve: his doubt was set at rest. But she was a strange Eve: he stared at her coldly, in bewilderment and self-defensive anger. For what she would be at, and why her face was contorted and her mouth uttering strange noises, was beyond understanding, until, as he stared and gaped at her, the half-formed memory of a dream flashed into his consciousness, and her posture became reminiscent for him of something he had witnessed in anotherlife. As he drew nearer he saw that a dark conical shape was beginning to protrude from the entrance of her body; and Eve, becoming aware of his approach, cried out in a sighing voice: O Adam! At the sound of that cry a ghostly pain shuddered in his belly and he knew in every pulse of his blood, as before he had known only by the cool report of the eyes, that this was Eve indeed, a part of his very self. The bird, the bird! he answered her. The bird is coming out of you. Kneeling down to get a nearer view he could see nothing to justify the prediction, and at last, impatience getting the better of fear, he thrust in his hand and so eased the passage of the new-comer into the world of light. Eve shuddered and lay still, with closed eyes; but Adam, at first, had eyes for nothing but this odd little creature that lay in his hand. It lay so very still that he, to see what it would do next, set it down in the grass; and, to see what it was made of, gave it an experimental slap or two. Whereupon it began showing signs of life, and set up a thin wailing cry. It is a man,