EDEN

I wanna tell you a story about the love of my life. 

I won’t say much about myself, mostly on account there ain’t much to tell. I’ve been drifting as far back as my memory goes. My hands are a better way to know me than my face, though both keep a telling collection of linework. I can sometimes wrustle myself a horse or an ox if I’m smart about it, but it doesn’t take something larger’n a person long to find sickness out here, so mostly I wander by foot, placing one ’front of the next, and walking whatever path will hold me.

I eat when I find something fit for eating and not so fit for living that I’d feel I’d taken something I shouldn’t’ve, and when I find a soul with kindness enough to spare. I fill my canteen when I come upon a settlement, sometimes secret at night, sometimes not, or when an establishment will have me. In moments of lonely and desperation, I’ve eaten my leather and wet my whistle with my own blood to keep the sand from drying out my throat completely. In one such lonely and desperate moment, a whole moon since I’d seen another living thing up close, I found myself an angel. 

The day had been hot, more’n usual, as not even the sand was stirred to cast a shadow on the cracked amber earth, but the night festered worse, the whole world weighed down by a fever that made my skeleton creak with every movement, the type of heat that makes a person daydream about the relief of hellfire. I was just to the edge of ready to loose my muscles and flatten myself face-first against the earth, seeking the escape of sleep or whatever else found me first, when I came aware of a light fog collecting around me. 

I watched lightning bugs spin through the clouds that thickened as they wrapped around me, flooding my vision with a glowing softness. When I remembered my skin I first thought I was in a cold sweat, but it was that fog that was painting me with a chill dew, and as a shiver danced through me I laughed and licked at my hands and arms, letting the moisture soothe my cracked tongue. I was caught up so fully by the creature comforts of the wet and the cool that it took me quite a while to notice my company.

The usual thing out that far from a building is unfriendliness, and you’ve gotta decide quick if you’re gonna be a predator or prey in a match-up. But this creature wasn’t stalking or sizing up, nor was it hiding or turning tail—it was sitting, and watching me, so patient I couldn’t’ve been sure at first it wasn’t a clever cut of stone. I ended up approaching with hands empty, more curious than anything, and found myself in awe.

In a word, it was beautiful. It was more than the biggest person I’d ever seen, nearly twice my height and wideness, stood up on two legs but hard to discern shape-wise. It was covered in long ribbons in every colour layered over its form like the feathers of a creeping devil, and through its streamers I could catch the shiny attention of two big yellow eyes in an ivory white face. I could tell it was seeing me, too. It swished its long thin tail through the curls of fog like a playful farm cat, and then with no disinterest or hurry, it turned and began to walk, followed by a dry rattle like the husk of a dead cactus, and by my shaking step.

When I was a babe, I was told stories about angels, things big and bright and strange, hard for the mind to grasp on account of their holiness, captivating and terrifying like no creature that walked the Earth. Fully grown, I wasn’t sure I believed in angels, ’til I met mine. 

As it walked, the mist seemed to reach to pet it as it broke through the clouds, leaving a parted path for me to trail in its wake. I spent most steps wondering if I was dreaming, but kept my eyes up, stumbling reverently. 

The angel led me through the other side of the fog and to a garden—the truest use of the word I’d ever come by. I’d seen tilled earth with healthy sprouts and climbing vines, orchards of trees stooped low with succulent fruit, but I’d never seen a place like this. Nestled against the concave face of a ridge was a network of the lushest shade I’d ever laid eyes on, an expanse of green that blanketed everything and reached up from the ground with tall arms wrapped in leaves. Everything sparkled with dew in the moonlight, and at the center of it all was a small spout of water trickling down from a fissure in the rock flat. 

The angel stood between the reaching vegetation, peeking between leaves as big as my head, and watched me drink on hands and knees from the spout, yellow eyes never leaving me. Belly full of water, I collapsed into the soft plush green beside the spout’s small pond, smiling, and I fell almost immediately to sleep. 

The sun could only reach me through the leaves at its highest, and when the noon roused me, those watchful eyes were still stuck to me. 

Never was sure if it couldn’t talk, or if it just wasn’t keen to. I told it thank you and tried to ask it what it was, where it came from, how the garden could even be in the first place. It didn’t offer me any answers, though it seemed to listen. I spent the first day in the pond, washing my clothes and then myself, drying all of us in the warm sun at the edge of the garden. Somehow, the muggy waves of heat couldn’t seem to slither beyond the green border much, and nights in the garden were always a refreshing cool.

That first evening, I sang to bleed some of my joy and content, and the angel—who’d retreated to the recesses of the growth for the daylight hours—found my company again. It sat in a thicket of leaves and gave audience, eyes closed and tail winding slowly, ’til I quieted. It approached me calmly, closer than it had come before, and reached out a delicate sort of hand the colour of sun-bleached bone from its stripes. It waited until I did the same, nearly touching it, to release a hearty handful of the plumpest cicadas I’d ever seen. We ate side by side at the small fire I built, and at that distance, I could hear it breathing almost musically, nearly a whistle, in the tune I had sung. 

Over the following days, it toured me ’round the garden, demonstrating to me which flowers were edible and which were just pretty to look at, directing me to the hidden populations of rosemary and sage and lavender, and even bringing me to a deep hand-dug hole from where it had pulled out a hefty lump of workable clay. In return, I picked the herbs its long bony fingers weren’t dexterous enough to pick, cooked and seasoned the bugs and greens we foraged, and showed it how to mould a bowl and a cup from clay like I’d been taught. I sang in the evenings, and each time it ventured to join me a little more boldly, whistling and dancing and rattling to the tune I offered. 

I had never been one to find any happiness in stagnation. Usually, if I got too used to a place, I got this unreachable itch right down the center of my back that could only be scratched by a new coat of dust on my boots. But in the garden with the angel—in our garden with my angel—I was happy to settle into our little routines. When my belly was full, my next thought wasn’t about how far it would take me before I’d need to find another meal for the first time I could think of. We seemed to uncover a symbiosis in our little duets, my angel and me, and with each little endeavour I learned more about its expression, its body language, its temperament. It was very stubborn, especially with delicate tasks, and would always break sticks and brush for tinder with incredible focus and gentle hands. 

One of the few downsides to the damp of our oasis was that when my matchbook ran empty it was more than difficult to nurture a spark from my flint and knife, and all I managed to make was a cut across my palm. Without a fire, it was cold enough to bring me to shivering, and when I laid down, sleep kept dancing out of my grasp. I only opened one tired eye when I heard that dry rustling rising slowly and felt my angel’s ribbons, surprisingly soft and slick like silk, brush my skin as it curled around me. Its hands were warm when it found mine, and it sang to me in its whistle. I kept my gaze up to the stars until I fell asleep, content and comfortable.

In the morning, I was alone. I spent my day as usual and caught no glimpses of my angel curled up or crawling through the shade. When I tried again to start a fire in my usual spot by the pond, I was more successful, but I sat in its glow still alone.

I waited for days for my angel to return. I searched every inch of the garden, which, as I traversed it alone, began to steadily wither and brown. Each day crusted drier, and one by one, everything died until there was nothing green left to call a garden. The shady leaves shrivelled and rotted and the pond shrunk to nothing. When the spout ran only clotted red mud, I knew in my gut that I would have no choice but to leave, but still I waited one more night, singing out into the dark and hoping for a harmony.

It took until I was feeling every shard of my broken heart to realize that what I felt for my angel had been more than I’d felt for anyone or anything before. When I held the crude but so gently formed cup my angel had made in the husk of the Eden we had shared, the only word that came to me was love, and I cried one tear for each eye before stopping myself to keep my hydration as I started westward back into the desert. 

Every night when I look up at the stars, I think of my angel, of where it could be now. Of if it even knew the meaning of the word "love," let alone could do it. Most nights I settle on yes. Still, I feel a hole in myself that I don't think will ever be filled by another. I will feel an absence for the rest of my days, a longing—a little hole in the heel of my boot I feel with every step. Some nights I fantasize about hellfire, and others I dream quiet moments of green love I know will never come true. But as I continue to wander after meeting my angel, it seems I always find water just when I start to really feel thirst.