Eden River Read Online Free Page B

moment, to return very soon carrying a vessel brimmed with water from the river. This journey he made again and again, till Eve’s purposes were fulfilled. He’s of our kind, said Eve, giving Adam a loving glance. And of the coneysthat ran from their holes to see what was happening, and of the lamb and the lion that came to peer and sniff at their new brother, she exclaimed, as though remorseful of forgetting them: But these too are kind. And what has come to the birds that they are so shy of us? Look, Adam! He’s ours, a new man. And Adam smiled on the usurper of his bed, though he did not know, nor Eve guess, that this new man was the fruit of his loins and the flower of his seed.
    Seeing him thoughtful, and wishing to atone to him for her inattention, How clever of you, Adam, said Eve, to bring us water! And this achievement, and Eve’s praise of it, so mightily pleased him that it became the first of many inventions. From the shore of the lake, when the tide of the river was low, he collected shells and stones, not idly as hitherto, but with an eye to their shape. Fallen branches had a new meaning for him, and he learned to delve in the earth, whence would spring water more cool to the tongue, more cool and clear, than the river water. It was Eve who, by plaiting long grasses together, made the first basket; but it was Adam who contrived baskets that should hold water, for, having noticed in a season of comparative drought that the clay of theriver bank dried hard, a dim memory, some moons later, led him to gather handfuls of clay while it was soft, and to mould it, with grass for binding, into various shapes, the gourd itself being his first model. It was Eve who fashioned a quilt or coverlet of large leaves, for warmth when the nights grew cold; Adam who invented a way of tapping a tree for water, making with a sharp stone a cross-cut in one of the channels where rain and dew ran down the trunk, and driving in a chip of wood by which the water would be diverted into his clay-vessel. This last device was born of the necessity that persuaded them, in the season of rain, to sleep in the shelter of a giant tree, far away from the river; and it was a related cause, the fear of floods, that put it into Adam’s mind to build a bed for himself and his two companions in the convenient lower branches of this same tree, branches no higher from the ground than his own shoulders but amply high to be beyond reach of such floods as he had known: as he had known, and Eve too, and suffered no harm from, though often they had woke to find the grass of their bed all but covered with the rising water; but now, having a creature to care for that was oddly more helpless than the smallest shrew-mouse, as helpless indeed as a birdnaked from the egg, Eve instinctively required a higher standard of comfort and safety; and when, not long after her labour, the rains came and the river swelled overflowing its banks, and for seven days, a period beyond her counting, the greater part of the valley was covered in shallow water so that the grass seemed to ebb and flow like a green sea, then she was glad of this high dry bed, wrought cunningly of interlaced boughs, and furnished with moss and turves; and as they lay, all three, under their quilt of stitched leaves, and heard the water beneath them soaking into the ground with little sucking and gurgling noises, her heart grew warm for Adam and her blood leapt with his.
    The hazards and discomforts of the rainy season served to enhance the pleasure of these three in the innumerable golden days that followed, when the waters receded and the sun shone and a new greenness was seen upon the earth. And perceiving that the child depended on its mother’s milk, lest Eve should be drained of all her substance Adam became diligent in the gathering of food, and Eve cunning in the husbanding of such as could be put aside without loss. So the child prospered, and Eve had great joy of him,