Eden River by Gerald Bullet Read Free Book Online Page A

answered, in that tree: it’s a swarm of little flying creatures. It’s a swarm of bees, said Larian. We must catch them, and they’ll give us honey. I shall need your help, Abel; so be ready, and do what I say. She took his hand and led him to the bee-laden tree. The branch is too high to reach, she said, so you must climb the tree. And when he was astride the branch she stood underneath it, with her two skeps ready, and said: Now shake the branch, but gently, or you’ll frighten them. He did what was required of him, and did it precisely, less by the exercise of his private judgement than by yielding his imagination to hers, so that it was as if she herself unerringly controlled his every movement; and when the capture of the bees was effected she told him the story of how, in her home with Adam, she had first discovered the habits of these busy creatures, and of thesweetness their labours yielded to careful hands. In the hive, she said, they build for themselves such beds as we have never built. There, even on the coldest night, even in the season of much rain, they live secure; and, when the sun is shining, all day long they fly to and fro gathering scent and sunshine out of the flowers. There’s one greater than the rest who is the mother of them all, even as Eve is our mother. Have they, asked Abel, an Adam as well? What’s Adam to us? asked Larian. This was a question that Abel could not answer; but it fell into the soil of his mind, and his eyes, withdrawn from Larian, followed it searchingly.
    Perhaps it was Larian’s account of the bees that turned Abel’s thoughts on building again. He stared at the broad terrace which he and his brother called their bed and had shared for so many moons, and a sense of its inadequacy troubled him. The season of rain would soon be round again, and he remembered that the shelter of the tree had proved anything but sufficient on the last occasion: with every gust of wind those broad leaves had showered the water down. It was inevitable that Abel should plan his building in terms of beds: the more general notion of house was something that necessity had never persuaded him to conceive. What he and hisfellow-woodlanders needed was a shelter for the night: and that only at certain seasons, for in the long dry spells they slept in the open as a matter of course. If I could fix the body of a tree at each corner, he said to Larian, speaking his thought aloud, we could spread a canopy over their tops and lie dry in our bed. A canopy? said Larian: what is that? It is what I have in my mind, said Abel excitedly. I’ve seen and named it. Listen, Larian, and you, Zildah: listen. Where’s Cain? I want to tell him my plan. We’ll gather the largest leaves, very many; and we’ll fasten the leaves together so that they are one leaf; and this shall be our canopy. How, asked Zildah, shall we fasten the leaves together?
I
shall do that, put in Larian. And this canopy, Abel continued, shall be raised above us on the bodies of four trees, and the rain won’t reach us. After a silence Larian spoke. The canopy that
I
see, she said, is different from yours, Abel. But Abel was too full of his project to ask what she meant; and at that point in the conversation Cain arrived, and it all had to be expounded again from the beginning. Cain was not slow in catching fire from the general excitement. Moreover he had important contributions to offer. Cain, after countless experiments, had invented the flint-axe, whichhe could use with astonishing effect; and he made short work of the first difficulty, that of providing the four posts. With graphic gestures he shewed his companions how that would be done, and at once, as by unspoken agreement, the others joined him in this game of anticipation. I’m scraping a hole for the tree to stand in, said Cain, with the appixjpriate pretended action. I am scraping another and another and another, said Abel. I, said Zildah,