rewrapped Seth in fresh cloth, before laying him back down on the bed. Eve rubbed Cain’s earlobe appreciatively. A spark of joy ran from his ear all the way down to his toes.
“How was your day?” Eve asked. He poured her a small cup of milk. He thought about telling her that they had found a branch snake. That he was so scared when the turtle popped his head out. But then dad had let him name it. But then he thought about her lying in bed all day, and all the chores he had skipped, and Cain swallowed his excitement.
“The walk was kinda boring.”
Eve’s eyes flashed with a brief smile. “I definitely don’t miss hiking.”
They sat on the bed in silence until Seth started to gently snore.
Cain remembered going on long walks in the woods with his mom and dad. Riding up on Adam’s shoulders, and Abel wrapped tight against his mom’s chest. He remembered her strong hands digging out bright pink and yellow flowers to replant them along the fence in their garden. His dad would stuff his pockets with tree nuts and berries, and fill scroll after scroll with drawings of the strange animals they found.
But something had changed when Seth was born. The night of the birth Cain sat at the dinner table just outside his mom’s bedroom. His stomach knotted as he listened to her scream in pain. His dad sat next to him nervously eating berry after berry from a wooden bowl. All night he watched the midwife run out of the room with blood-stained sheets, then return with her arms full of water and fresh bedding.
“Was it like this when I was born?” Cain had asked during a long terrible silence.
“It’s always like this.” Adam winced as his wife screamed again. Cain didn’t remember falling asleep. But when he woke up, his head was on the table. He could see his mother was lying still on the bed. His new baby brother, Seth, lay next to her. Her head was in the sunlight. She wasn’t moving. She looked dead. He walked to her bed and gently nudged her. She made a guttural sound and he felt his stomach unclench.
But when Eve finally woke up, she was different. It was hard for Cain to say how exactly. She didn’t pay attention to what was happening. She kept forgetting things, and she barely ate. Day after day she lay in bed, her legs under the covers, Seth beside her. The brightness in her eyes slowly faded into a dull tiredness. Her body was still there, but part of her was gone.
After month’s her rosy, plump cheeks became pale and hollow. Her treasured flower garden grew wild and filled with dead branches and weeds. Rabbits and deer began to eat the vegetables. The grass grew long and wild. Eve finally struggled to produce milk and Adam started feeding Seth cow’s milk in the mornings before she woke up and late at night after Eve had fallen asleep.
During the day Adam would take Abel on long hikes, just the two of them. They’d leave early in the morning before Cain woke up. On the first of these walks Cain found a note his dad had left for Eve. Adam wrote that he had left to work on his scrolls and that she was now responsible for taking care of the house and the garden. Cain looked at his mother asleep on her bed. He put the note in his pocket and walked to the garden. He milked the cows and goats, and then swept the house. He placed a bowl of berries and a cup of milk by his mother’s bed and one on the table from his father and Abel. When Adam returned he smiled and nodded at Cain who felt tired, but proud of his work.
The next day the muscles in Cain’s arms and legs ached. But he forced his tired body out of bed. To make the walk around the garden more manageable Cain decided to use a flaming log to clear a path through the tall grass. Slowly lighting the stalks then stamping them out with his sandal.
Each day his chores felt a little more manageable, until the snake came. Cain had caught glimpses of something in the garden. Flashes of brown and yellow, the end of a tail disappearing around a corner. He began carrying his bow and arrow everytime he left the house.
He was picking berries when he heard his mom scream. He ran back to the house with the bow out and an arrow notched. He found his mom sobbing, the bed covered in blood. The snake had come into the house and bit her on the heel as she slept.
“What if it had bit Seth!” Adam shouted at her that night. She should have never let the grass get so long, he said. It was her fault that she’d been bit. She couldn’t just lie in bed. There was work to do. Their sons needed a mother.
Cain sat the dinner table watching. He had never seen his father yell at her before. Adam’s fist balled up as if he was going to hit her. And his mom just lay in bed, silently staring at the wall. Tears rolled down her pale cheeks and onto her pillow. He felt a knot in his chest. This was all his fault. He should have burned all the grass. He should have told someone that there was a snake in the yard.
“It’s my fault.” Cain said quietly.
“What?” Adam shouted at him.
“I should have burned all the grass,” Cain said, trying to hold back tears of his own.
Adam stared at his son and balled up his fist. “Don’t let it happen again.”
Cain nodded. Then he walked past his father and picked up Seth, who was crying in his soaking wet clothes. Cain laid Seth down on floor and changed him. After Adam left the room, Cain smiled at his mom. She gave a faint smile back and reached out to rub Cain’s earlobe. Cain felt a shiver of warmth run through his body. Cain spent the next three weeks in the garden with a bow and arrow slung over his shoulder, burning the grass, and stamping the flames out.
Cain sat on the side of the bed in silence next to his mother, his legs dangling just above the dirt floor. The smell of smoke and cooked rabbit blew in through the window.
“Abel spent the whole afternoon shooting at rabbits,” Cain said, watching his dad scrape the back of the rabbit’s fur as Abel fed small sticks into the growing fire.
“You think they’re going to share any meat with us?” Eve smiled from the corner of her mouth.
“It kinda looked like a baby rabbit,” Cain shrugged.
Eve smirked. “Did you bring something back for me?” pointing at the red and orange fruit lying on the dirt floor by the satchel.
Cain had forgotten about the fruit. He slid off the bed and picked it up. “It’s a new fruit we found,” Cain smiled, handing it to her. “Dad thinks it’s a healing fruit,” he added. Eve turned it over in her hands, rubbing the dimpled skin.
“Should we try it?” She flashed a smile.
“If you want to.” Over the years, they had tried feeding her every type of healing leaf, flower, petal, mushroom, fruit, and milk in the forest. But nothing had helped.
She sat up higher in the bed as she pulled the red and orange skin apart. Inside were clusters of bright green seeds. She took one seed and placed it on her tongue.
“It’s sweet,” she said, then her lips puckered and she coughed. “And tart.” She ate them one by one and then rolled the final green seed around in the palm of her hand before chewing it. Cain lay on her chest, hugging her tightly. She rubbed his earlobe.
“Hopefully I’ll feel better in the morning.” She said, kissing his head.
“I shot this rabbit for you, mommy!” Abel ran into the room holding a tipping plate of thin slices of meat. Abel crawled onto the bed and elbowed Cain out of the way. Spilling red meat grease on the blanket. He held the tipping plate right up to their mother’s face. She opened her eyes wide and smiled as she picked up a stringy brown piece off the plate. For years Cain had watched her force herself to look excited whenever Abel and Adam were around.
“Oh, it’s hot,” she whispered, blowing on it before putting it into her mouth. “But it is delicious,” she said, scruffing Abel’s hair.
Cain reached for a piece of meat but his brother pulled the plate away. “It’s all for mommy!” Abel shouted.
“Shhhh.”