One day she is no longer looking for her brother or her home but for the tree-tall man Michael. She will fall at his feet and beg him to end her torment.
If he is as merciful as she remembers, he will do it gladly.
Perhaps she misremembers, though. Perhaps she imagined him.
The heat pummels her. The world flickers and glints.
She travels at twilight like the rodents whose eyes flash in the dusk. Snakes molting against the stones teach her to scrub her limbs with sand. She darts lizardlike after lizards, stomping their heads and sucking out their hot slick innards.
Seeing people, she runs toward them. Like the pools of cool water that appear when the sun is high, their faces evaporate as she draws near. Beckoning hands sprout spikes. In fury she slashes them open, licking at the astringent moisture inside.
Every day is the same.
Every day, the earth shakes.
The first time she felt it, she thought it was her own body trembling. A bone-splitting crack, followed by the appearance of a jagged cleft in
the otherwise uniform plain, showed her the truth. She was too confused, and it ended too quickly, for her to feel genuinely frightened.
The next time, however, her mind was primed. She felt the movement and heard the roar and began screaming and running in circles until it ended. There was no place to hide, no reason to think she could.
The wrath of the Lord was upon her.
When, after days without number, a new shape appears on the horizon, she initially takes it as another mirage.
Rather than shrink and dissolve, however, the shape grows larger and sharper as she approaches, casting a lengthy rectangular shadow.
It is a lone wall, fissured and wind-worn. Made not of lashed branches, like the walls of her family’s hut (for a happy instant she remembers that; remembers them), but of dried clay — the same ocher clay she stands on, the same clay she has wandered forever.
Somehow it has been summoned up from the bed of the plain, commanded to take shape and to remain erect.
She studies the seams between the blocks; scrapes at the wall’s surface, grit collecting under her fingernails.
More blocks demarcate the intended outline of the structure. The other walls have collapsed, if they ever stood. There is no roof. It appears as though the builder gave up midway through.
The symmetry, the ingenuity: she is looking at Cain’s handiwork.
Why would he abandon his efforts?
She has her answer that afternoon.
Curled up in the shadow of the wall, she jolts awake with the angry earth. Luck saves her, for she has not managed to move before the wall buckles and heaves away from her, collapsing into rubble.
Eventually the shaking stops, and she uncovers her head and rises in a cloud of fine clay dust. The pile of broken blocks sighs as it settles, disappointed to have missed her.
Had she slept on the other side — or had the wall chosen to fall toward her — she would surely be dead.
The futility of building on such fickle ground is clear to her. Cain must have understood, too. He will keep going until he finds a more sensible place to camp.
She experiences a stab of kinship.
Kinship rekindles memory.
Memory rekindles hatred.
She waits till evening to strike out, the anger in her heart reborn.
Several months later, she finds the second hut.
All that time she has been walking in a straight line, away from the setting sun. She has done so because it’s what Cain would do. She turns her thoughts to his, and signs of him begin to reappear, and the path glows anew.
She will not falter again.
Within days, the sameness of the plain gives way to isolated stands of trees. Grass appears, first furtively, then with confidence, and then overwhelmingly, swarming forth like so many locusts. Thorny grass; sticky grass; a grass that makes Asham’s mouth feel cold and another that smells spicy and makes her itch for a week if she is so unwise as to brush against it.
Against this pale terrain, the black stains of campfires long abandoned stand out, and the glowing path leads her to the broken skeleton of a medium-sized beast, its bones finely scored by a stone blade.
The cut marks are efficient, the product of a practiced hand.
Deep in the grasslands, the earth no longer stinks or smokes or shakes. The weather turns mild enough to sustain streams and ponds. They return a horrifying reflection when she kneels to drink: flaking skin lies tight against her bones. Her scalp shows through where clumps of hair have fallen out.
The second hut, when she comes to it, is no surprise. She has been sensing it for some days. Nor is she surprised to observe Cain refining his methods. Three thick walls, a mat of woven grass, a pile of unused clay blocks.
Animal bones abound, some of them fashioned into tools she cannot identify. She selects one the length of her arm, its point menacingly honed, before setting out again.
Each of the next two huts is larger and more elaborate than its predecessor. The fifth is more impressive still; it’s more than a hut, really, consisting of several outer structures arrayed around a dominant central building.
Curiously, while the smaller buildings contain the by now familiar signs of habitation — seed husks, bone tools, ash — the largest building houses nothing but a towering clay pillar, painstakingly worked smooth.
Something important occurred here. It is not like the Cain she knows to build without a practical purpose in mind.
And having built, it is not like him to run.
He must know that she is behind.
That night, she sits before the fire with a handful of berries. Since entering the grasslands, she has returned to surviving on plants.
How disturbed she is, then, to find herself yearning for a taste of flesh.
And how convenient to turn and find a bloody hunk before her.
Without hesitation she buries her face in it. Quiveringly fresh, unimaginably delicious, and best of all, it never runs short: new flesh grows in to fill in the cavities where she tears at it with her teeth. Her stomach swells to bursting but she cannot stop eating, not until she hears her name called and looks up to see that the meat is not a detached slab but a living limb.
It is Cain’s thigh, raggedly joined to his body at the socket.
He gazes at her kindly. Satisfy yourself.
She awakes from the dream with her face and neck wet: saliva has pooled in the hollow of her throat and dried across her chin.
While traveling one evening, she feels a wet sensation and glances down to see that she has cut her thigh. She didn’t feel it happen, but as soon as she probes the wound and discovers its depth, it begins to throb. A long trail of red drops follows her. She tears a strip of soiled linen from her blanket, binds herself up, and presses on.
Within minutes, the fabric is saturated and dripping. She grimaces and hurries ahead to a small clearing, easing down to retie the linen. She jerks it tight, steadies herself to stand, pauses.
She is not alone.
Unseen bodies ripple the grass. She reaches for a stone and whips it into the grass with a shout. The movement stops.
A low growl follows. Another in reply.
Silence.
They’re moving again.
She hurls another rock. The rippling of grass tips continues, undeterred. Her first shot missed. They know she cannot harm them.
She stands, clutching the bone spear in one hand, her injured leg with the other.
Waits.
Black snouts appear, twitching greedily.
Tongues swing from yellow spotted faces set in round skulls. Idiot grins.
She counts four, five, six, seven. They are bony, haloed by fleas. They stand as high as her waist. She would tower over them, if she weren’t bent awkwardly, holding her bleeding leg.