A Different Lilith

 

 

The people were small, and they knew how to run. They ran over the grasslands, searching with keen eyes for the grains and seeds and berries, climbing trees to spy for game, and sometimes venturing into the forest edge. They were much less hairy than their cousins, the ones who foraged all day long for leaves and fruits, who lived deep in the forest and eyed them warily if they met. The people, Lilith’s people, had learned how to use tools to hunt, and fire to make the meat easier to eat. But they had not yet encountered the Voice.

 

Lilith heard the Voice as a teenager, a few months after she first lay with a boy of her clan. Resting one night under the full moon, she felt the first fluttering of movement in her belly, confirming what the wise women had already concluded. Staring up at the glowing orb and feeling the life in her womb, she drifted into dreams, only to be startled awake by the Voice.

 

The Voice sang to her in a way that sounded like like thunder, or like the ram’s horns her people sometimes blew in warning. She cried aloud, feeling a huge upheaval in her belly and the fear of death upon her. “Here I am!” she cried, to the Voice. And the Voice spoke in words she barely understood:

 

Two children are in your womb
One shall be solid and grounded
The other shall be curious and creative
A new species shall issue from your body
And they shall serve my creation in new ways.

 

Speechless and terrified, she lay under the moon as it set, not sleeping but not awake. When sunrise came, she returned to the place where her people were camped, but she sat apart.

 

When her birthing time was at hand, there were twins in her womb. Her labor was difficult; the wise women of her clan were puzzled and alarmed.  After days of pain, a bloody boy emerged, surprisingly hairless, and he cried.  Without thinking, Lilith spoke a name for him – Adam, Earth.  Her pain persisted, it grew and grew. With Adam at her breast, already greedy, she let out a long, low moan. A squirming girl emerged, also nearly hairless, save for her head which was lush with dark curls.  Lilith spoke her name – Chava, Life.  Lilith saw that they were good.

 

The women around Lilith chanted and lifted their arms.  It was out of their memory that a girl should give birth to two children!  And the babies’ hairless bodies were an omen, a sign. A strong wind began to blow across the plain. A storm was coming.