“A dream,” she offered, “or hallucination. Not sure.”
“Ah, more dreams. That’s good. Anything you want to tell me about them? You seem to have a lot.”
Lilly thought for a moment before answering, “No. They’re confusing.”
How could she tell him what she didn’t understand? She felt herself withdrawing. Lilly had no explanations for babies and beginnings or for a wondrous but unfamiliar black woman named Eve who claimed to be her mother, or the certainty that she was just spinning toward the edges of insanity.
That night, when sounds were hushed and lights had dimmed, Lilly had a sense of being outside, looking up into the sweep of stars. Distant lights pulsed into the darkness of her prison and occasionally roamed across the sky in some great, confident dance. Like an aurora the display rose and fell without predictable patterns. The movements blossomed and stirred distinct emotions about what she had seen with Eve—the deep and thickening dark, and then the most beautiful of unfoldings.
She rode the currents between wakefulness and sleep, but each time she edged toward rest’s shore, the tiny cry of an infant would wake her anxiety.
She imagined overhearing voices in a late-night conversation. As the pendulum swung between night and day, thin bits of memory began to visit Lilly, but they never stayed.
“Now come and see,” a woman said, once more taking both of Lilly’s hands in hers.
“Eve?” Lilly snapped awake.
The woman laughed and wrapped Lilly into her embrace. “Dear one,” she whispered, “you are alive and I am the Mother of the Living. You must witness with me the child who occupies so much of your thoughts.”
Again, Lilly felt as if she was stepping through a black and engulfing drape that separated times and worlds, the dark barrier between the Refuge and Beginnings, and the moment Lilly pierced the divide, Eve again released her hand. They stood side by side, behind them the curtain of light and water.
“The baby?” Lilly asked, taking a step toward the spot where he had been taken from the earth.
A touch on her shoulder gently stopped her. At that same moment Eternal Man, who sat before the boundary, lifted his smiling face. He held the unmoving newborn, wrapped in a swaddling of glorious light, to His chest. He looked directly at Lilly, and she felt His peace wash through and over her. For an instant that single look relieved her of grief and whispered possibilities. Then she looked away and shrugged it off.
The attending Wind and the Energy that tumbled through the wall gathered round the Man. The three formed a single face that leaned to kiss the child, but it was more than the touch of the lips on lips. It was the breathing in of life, and with that breath, the fragile infant became a living soul.
A tiny wail fractured the night, and Lilly gasped, relieved.
“My Adam is born,” Eve whispered to Lilly, her hand still resting on the girl’s shoulder.
A thunderous cheer arose alongside the baby’s life-affirming cry, and the rippling sounds were carried by innumerable spirit messengers out to the edges of the cosmos.
“These know the portals and windows built into the fabric of the worlds,” Eve said. “They travel now to bear the news, good tidings of the Father.”
Three massive personages approached the gathering, two of them from opposite ends of the wall and one from the darkness beyond.
“Who are they?”
“Cherubim!” Eve stated respectfully. Each of them dwarfed the colossal wall of Eden, but as they approached, their size changed until they were not much taller than the rest. Still, with their approach Lilly felt that she was shrinking. Their feet seemed not to touch the ground, and she sensed the vague movement of massive, unseen wings.
The two from the wall lowered their heads, but the third waited a moment before it also bowed. Its stunning crown radiated twelve gemstones splaying out a rainbow of colors, like a tent pitched above the gathering. To this one Eternal Man spoke.
“Look and see, Anointed Cherub. Here in my arms and nursing at my breast is the highest expression of my creation. These hold dominion over every created thing, the seen and the unseen.”
Questions tumbled through her mind, but Lilly was frozen in the moment, helpless in the grasp of exhilaration, drawn to the newborn for reasons she couldn’t explain.
The Angel’s voice was warm, the tone controlled. “Adonai, this gathering of earth’s dust? Does Your breathing into dirt give it new meaning? They may Your image and likeness bear, but they are fragile, weak, and therefore . . . inconsequential. You are the One Who set the terms, Your nature inviolable, so why have You now revealed Yourself in an everlasting weakness? You would place our hope and life in this . . . this helpless bit of living matter?”
Lilly took offense. “All babies are weak,” she said through her teeth.
“As we remain,” Eve countered gently. Lilly glanced up at her, but Eve didn’t explain.
“Surprised?” said Eternal Man to the Cherub. His look of motherly affection and fatherly kindness was pure and right and filled with Love. “It is My nature to surprise. So will you, loved and Anointed Cherub, perform an honor?” He lifted His infant to the Archangel. Lilly noticed the baby’s cord still connected him to the earth.
For a moment the mighty being looked puzzled. “Machiara?”
Eternal Man nodded.
Lilly felt Eve’s hand grip her shoulder a little tighter. Instead of taking the child, the Anointed Cherub drew from somewhere in its swirling garments a small, razor-sharp dagger and held it up. She gasped. It would take nothing to slit the infant’s throat and prove the fragility of this being.
But instead the Archangel severed the infant’s cord, and Adonai drew the baby into His chest. The child slept peacefully in the arms of God’s good keeping.
“Thank you!”
“I am forever honored,” was the astonished Angel’s response as it examined the knife. Tiny threads of bloody flesh hung from the razor’s edge. “This is the best and highest of Your creating?” The softly spoken question was clear even as the blade was wiped clean against the radiant vestments and returned to the hidden sheath.
“Shining One, there are mysteries hidden from even you.” Adonai stood and rocked the baby in His arms, his once-white garment soiled with dirt and blood and water. “This being requires no proof to love. They are bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, and for them my everlasting Love and affection will never be diminished or darkened. They cannot drift into unworthiness.”
Lilly’s eyes and throat swelled with tears. She did not know why and felt embarrassed. “Why is He calling the baby boy they?” she asked, swiping at her cheeks.
“Watch,” Eve said gently. “In time you will see.”
Adonai spoke, “Here is My invitation for you: keep your rightful place, remain humbled, bow your head and heart, and let your way be purified by the fires of love and fellowship and service.”
“Of course, I bow.” The Cherub hesitated, still uncertain. “To You?”
“No, not only to Me,” the God-Man said. “But to this little one. They are your kings, they have dominion, and it is for them you give your service and keep your proper place. Your invitation is to serve them wholly and completely.”
“With joy, I bow, and vow to serve the Man as I serve You!” declared the celestial being. In spinning light the Anointed Cherub bowed, embraced the child, and kissed Eternal Man upon His cheek.
God now declared, “This is very good! Behold the child! Creation’s womb is fully blessed. Let everything, each in its way with voice or breath, now celebrate this coming. The whole of creation is the great Good! With this birth, Day Six is crowned and complete. We rest from all Our labor.”
• • •
LILLY WOKE WITH TEARS flowing down her cheeks and into her ears. Here in the Refuge, she couldn’t wipe them away.
Had she just witnessed the birth of Adam? How was that possible? The newborn baby had stirred up profound longings: to belong, to be held by someone who loved her without rea
son. It was safer to shut down such disorienting feelings. And Adonai? Why had her first inclination been to run to Him? It was more than that: she wanted to run into Him, to be known by Him. Was He God? Was He Man?
The swirl of thoughts was like a sucking whirlpool, dragging her down into darkness. She concentrated on breathing in and out, in and out, in and out.
John approached with a cloth soft as kitten fur and dabbed her tears away. “When you’re stronger, up and about, I’ll take you to the chamber where I’ve stored the things that washed ashore with you. It may help.”
“What things?” she croaked.
“Odds and ends, the stuff of your time and space and place. Not a single good book, though. Doesn’t anyone from your world read anymore?”
“I don’t remember being much of a reader,” she rasped, and he gave her something warm to drink to ease the rough edges in her throat.
“Sad,” he said. “The right book, like the right song or the right love, can change the entire cosmos, for the right person, of course. And then it spills out from there.”
“Why can’t I remember?”
John reappeared between her and the marble ceiling. “Trauma and tragedy can cause a form of amnesia, but those memories usually return over time. When the council first decided you should be treated here at the Refuge, we had a few frightening challenges. You kept having seizures that threatened to undo everything we were trying to accomplish, so we employed a series of memory inhibitors.”
“What?”
“Nothing permanent. We have been easing you off them over the last few days, just a little at a time. You may experience flashbacks. It means you’re recovering blocked memories. Not losing your mind.”
“Yippee,” she muttered.
That made him laugh and returned him to a ramble about children’s books and how they create important building blocks for civilization. Something he said—a remark about a book—set her mind spinning without warning.
An onslaught of unanticipated images from her childhood dropped on her, smothering her thoughts like water on a fire.
She was a little girl. A woman was reading to her a story about a prince and snake and fox and rose, while Lilly pirouetted in a tattered dress to a tune inside her head. She spun until the shadows grew around her and then, panicking, she ran.
The assault of images was swift and brutal: terrified, she found safety under musty clothing in a dark closet. Peering through the cracks, she could see the woman lying limp on the floor, a man’s form standing above her. Approaching footsteps stopped outside her hiding place. Closing her eyes, she crawled into the only spot she thought safe, deep down inside, as the knob slowly turned.
Again, tears she couldn’t stop climbed to the edges of her eyes.
“I sometimes talk too much,” John muttered apologetically, dabbing her face again.
“It’s okay,” she rasped, not wanting him to see her more vulnerable and helpless than she felt.
“Meanwhile, Lilly,” he continued, “I have some good news. You’ve been responding so well that we’re making changes to give you back to your own body.”
“What?” Lilly responded. “What does that mean?”
“It means, Lilly, that we’re going to wean you off the drugs and start you on a physical therapy protocol. We’re going to start with sitting up. In time you will walk again, and dance and sing and all those things that every child is born to do.”
She winced at the mention of a dance, but how could he have known?
“It will mean arduous work on your part,” he continued, “but I personally think there is nothing you can’t do. What do you say?”
“I’m beyond ready.” She let out a long breath, as if it had been held for months.
“Good! Also, to celebrate, I brought you a small gift that I made.”
“A gift?” A wave of nausea again caught her off guard, unexpected and unsettling. Why would the mention of a gift affect her this way?
“You said you didn’t remember being much of a reader, but my opinion is that every person is a story and therefore is a storyteller. Trouble is that many fear failure, so they never begin. But you, dear Lilly, are a courageous girl.” He paused and then held up a small gift wrapped in floral print and an emerald bow.
“John, you know I can’t move, right?”
“Of course! I wrapped it myself, proving that I have the requisite genes to unwrap it.”
“Well then?”
He took off the paper, pausing to show each unfolding, until an elegant leather-bound journal appeared. It was hand-embossed with a series of circles and an intricate clasp. In this diary she could scribble daily thoughts and poetry and random musings. In case such things were private, John explained, he showed her how they would secure its contents by impressing her handprint on the cover. He also opened up the inside back, which looked more slate than leather, like the surface of a tablet.
“This is a built-in recorder of another sort, capable of remembering your experiences and emotions. There is nothing you have to do to activate it; it simply works in the background.”
Lilly felt gratitude come alongside her wariness. It was a wonderful gift, maybe the nicest she’d ever received. “Thank you, John.”
“You’re welcome. I hope it becomes a place of safety for you. I also write occasionally. Writing is a refuge in its own way. I hope you find it so.”
“Maybe,” she said. “John, someplace in your big library, do you have a story about a prince and snake and fox and a rose?”
He thought for a moment. “I do!” he exclaimed. “I know the one you’re talking about. I haven’t thought of it for years. I will look for it.” He smiled. “Shall I read it to you?”
“Yes. You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child. Dr. Seuss said that.”
The Collector laughed. “Hah! Dr. Seuss? How old did you say you are?”
Lilly felt shame rise up in her face. Defiance inside her instantly recoiled and sarcastically snapped, “Five!”
There was silence and then his face appeared above hers.
“I didn’t mean to embarrass or hurt you,” he said softly. “I have no idea why or how what I asked would cause you pain. But it did, so I apologize.”
She tried to shrug it off. After all, she didn’t know why she felt offended.
“It’s okay,” she offered, her breathing heavier as she worked to control the emotions. “I’m sorry too . . . that I growled at you.”
“Then you’ll forgive me?”
That little bit of kindness broke apart her resolve. The waterfall of feelings, which she had been holding at bay, came rushing like a torrent. She didn’t just cry, she wailed. She sobbed for losses she didn’t even remember, for the storehouses of memories and faces that she couldn’t access, for pain that only grace and kindness can approach, for rising fear, and because she was just a little girl and she didn’t know where home was and she felt lost and everything hurt again and she couldn’t keep it back.
And this man, this kind man, cried with her. He bowed his head till it touched hers and put his hands on both sides of her face as their tears mingled. She thought it was a sort of baptism. The lost and the found, forever and irretrievably entwined.
Five
* * *
THE GARDEN OF GOD
“Come, Lilly,” the woman whispered, and for an instant as the girl rose up, the light around her imploded and she thought she was again losing consciousness.
Lilly gasped as her sight returned. “Mother Eve, where are we now?” The colors, sounds, and smells of a grand forest overwhelmed her senses.
“Inside Eden’s gate.” Eve’s strength of presence flowed through Lilly. “It was outside Eden’s boundary that you witnessed Adam’s birth.”
The place was astounding and yet suited her perfectly somehow. The warmth, the humidity, all brought comfort and ease and pleasure. So this is what normal was always meant to be. But hard on the heels of that
thought came another: You’re anything but normal. You don’t belong here.
“Lilly, would you like to see more?”
When Lilly nodded, Eve grasped her hand. They rose up, buoyed on the air itself. Her feet felt as if they were on solid ground even as she looked down at the receding earth. The view tipped her sense of balance. Recovering was simple; all she had to do was look up and out, trusting in the invisible solidity beneath her feet. She couldn’t resist and tapped her foot. Yes, it felt like something was there. Eve looked at her and grinned.
Above the trees they slowed to a stop, suspended.
“This is the Garden of God,” Eve said, “created for all of us to inhabit.”
“It’s enormous!” Lilly exclaimed. It spread in every direction for hundreds of miles until in the distant horizon the boundary walls rose and disappeared into the sky, each like a geyser of rainbowed water. The nearest border was close and powerfully impressive. The air was clear and crisp and warming, as if perfectly attuned to her.
“You said Eden is a cube, right? As big as it is, I don’t think that we would all fit in here.”
“Eden expands and contracts as needed. It is not a place as you would understand. In the coming age, after all has been finished and allowed, it will grow to include all creation.”
“You sound sad,” Lilly said.
Eve smiled at her. “Not sad, my daughter. Remembering. It is here that righteousness dwells.”
“Righteousness?”
“Right relationships, face-to-face and trusting.”
“Is that even possible?” Lilly felt embarrassed by her impulsiveness. “I mean, is there such a thing?”
Eve squeezed Lilly’s hand. “Yes. And don’t be ashamed, Lilly. Our deep longings remind us we have lost something vital and precious. Such yearnings are the stirring of hope. Of returning.”
“Returning where?”
“To this garden.”
“But didn’t God make you leave?” Lilly asked.
Eve sighed and appeared about to answer when something diverted her attention and she smiled. “Listen,” she directed.