The Key to Eve
a fantasy
5
Eve’s New Year
AS TIME PASSED, the witch’s girl, as the people of Tumwater knew her, matured into quite a beauty. Stories of the gentle beauty began to spread away from the village, but those who lived there were quite protective of her.
Now, lest you think of Lilith as an evil witch with a captive maiden held hostage for some nefarious purpose, let me remind you this is not a run-of-the-mill fairy tale. In fact, the people of Tumwater respected the witch, and if they did not quite love her, she was still revered. Magic was not otherwise unknown in the area. The midwife knew spells and herbs to help in childbirth. The old man who sat near the smithy could predict the weather each morning. The dowser could find water with naught but a willow stick.
But if there was ever an illness that befell a person, a blight on a crop, a threat from brigands, a lost child, or any other danger, the witch was the first person consulted by the family or the town leaders. She was a font of wisdom, a skilled healer, a renowned herbalist, and a fierce defender of the village.
Nonetheless, strangers often arrived in the town for no other reason than to catch a glimpse of the witch’s girl—or better yet, simply to catch her. As a result, the girl seldom left the mansion, and never without her guardian. She contented herself with her books and learned the spells and magic the witch taught her well. No one guessed she was nearly as powerful a witch as Lilith.
Still, she was a bit on the melancholy side and yearned for good company from a man who could love her. Many a night passed with her hand between her legs as she dreamed of her hero who would find her and mount her as her lover. More often than not, the hero wore the face of the handsome lad she had once seen outside her garden wall. Those were the most satisfying nights of all and her fingers were drenched in her dew as her breath escaped her.
Many men visited the village, assuming they were worthy of the beautiful maiden, but as usual, none were. Men, especially scoundrels, tended to vastly overestimate their worth. Wealthy men placed all their worth in a bank and it never touched their impoverished souls. Brave men approached love as if it were an enemy to be conquered. And poor men, among whom there were some of great worth, tended to discount themselves out of existence or to imagine that if they married well, they would never face drudgery again.
The girl sat in her chamber writing her assessment of the men she had met. It was sad that intellectual men discounted their heart’s value. Poetic men, wrapped their hearts in verse, insulating them from contact with reality. Handsome men were often vain. Ugly men often vicious. Sober men were pious, and drunkards were unpredictable.
“The witch’s girl,” she wrote, “is judgmental.”
She had no pretense of being a prize catch with her opinion of most men. All she had to offer, it seemed, was her beauty. Looking at Aunt Lilith told her that would fade.
She was just eighteen years old that very day—All Hallows Eve. Auntie had told her she would have a special party that night when just the two of them would run naked in the garden and walk between the worlds to communicate with the spirits of those who had passed this year.
Before the day was far advanced, there came a clamor at the garden wall. Stupid people could not open their eyes wide enough to see the gate. She followed Aunt Lilith to the gate where the noisy people were summoned.
“We demand the return of our daughter!” a haughty man declared.
He was backed by three spearmen. They did not look very professional. They wore no uniform but each had a red scarf around his neck. And each carried a long spear. They looked like neighborhood toughs the man had recruited with the promise of pay in the future. Beside him was a woman who looked just as haughty, but had only one handmaiden accompanying her. She vigorously nodded her head.
“Why have you come to me?” Lilith asked pleasantly.
The girl shrank back among the shadows and disappeared. Powerful men are worse than drunkards, she surmised. Always lording it over others. She quietly performed a summoning spell, calling for the village leaders to help her aunt.
“You took our daughter from us when she was a baby. You snatched her right from her mother’s loving hands and cursed us as you ran off with her!”
The girl had never heard this story. She had always been with Aunt Lilith and had no idea who her parents were. These two left a bad taste in her mouth.
“Oh! Snatching a baby! Hmm. Would that be the baby girl you were insisting your wife drown because she had not birthed a son?” Lilith asked innocently.
“We would never have actually drowned our daughter,” the man spluttered. “You misunderstood. We were baptizing her.”
“When the bubbles cease to surface, the baptism has gone on too long. Infanticide. I took only a dead child and breathed life back into her.”
“You cursed us and left us to be barren with no child. Not only no daughter, but no son to help with the work. Our daughter is nearly eighteen. We have several good prospects for a husband for her—one who will pay well for a virgin beauty,” the father said.
“So, you would now kidnap the daughter you drowned in order to sell her into slavery!” Lilith exclaimed.
“Collecting a bride price is not selling into slavery,” the father shouted. “All fathers do it. Now bring us our daughter.”
“No.”
“I demand justice!” the father said turning to see the town elders gathering around him. Many of the villagers had followed them and stood with pitchforks, staves, and scythes. At first, the spearmen took heart at the ‘reinforcements’ but the look they were given quickly disabused them of that notion. They nervously began to back away from the man and his wife. Even the handmaid stepped back.
“You accuse our Lilith of holding your daughter captive?” the chief elder asked.
“Yes. She has held her for these eighteen years.”
“And now you want her so that you may collect a bride price?”
“It is a father’s right.”
“And what is the name of this girl?”
Sudden silence fell over the entire gathering. The father spluttered a moment for the parents had never intended to give a name to their daughter. She was taken from the womb to the river to be drowned.
“Um… uh… Gertrude. She was named Gertrude after her grandmother.”
“Her grandmother’s name was Gabrielle, not Gertrude,” his wife hissed at him. He struck her across the face. She stumbled back against her handmaiden.
“Gertrude or Gabrielle. It makes no difference.”
“All those gathered here can attest,” the elder declared, “there is no Gertrude or Gabrielle living in our precinct, including with our kind and gentle Lilith. Take yourself and your henchmen and depart.”
“This is outrageous!” the father spat as he began to back away from the villagers who pointed their tools at him. The spearmen, thinking better of their situation, turned and pointed their spears at the man, stripping the red kerchiefs from their necks. “I’ll return! I’ll bring the suitors to this very doorstep and collect the bride price just for the opportunity to win my daughter. Don’t think I’ll let this go unsettled!”
He and his wife turned and hurried away, leaving the spearmen and her handmaiden behind.
Once things had quieted and Lilith and her charge returned to the mansion, the girl turned to question her aunt.
“Is it true, Auntie?”
“What part are you asking about?”
“Oh. That those disgusting people were my parents.”
“It’s been so long ago,” Lilith sighed. “By their actions and attitude, I would have to say it is a very good possibility.”
“And they tried to drown me?”
“Oh, succeeded, my dear. Succeeded. I snatched your lifeless body from their greedy hands and pressed the water out of your lungs. Then I gave you life with my own breath. I am sorry I was not able to reach them before they’d done the dastardly deed.”
“Thank you, Auntie. And thank you for refusing to turn me over to them. And preventing them from ever having children.”
“Well, that, as you have learned from your reading, is all in their heads. If you are definite and direct enough in your cursing to make the victim believe you, then the curse is effective. If the victim does not believe you, then it is for naught.”
“I remember the boy you cursed for taking an apple,” the girl sighed. “I wonder if he is still looking for the one who would love him.”
“It depends on how strong his faith is, dear. I believe he will find her one day, but you were much too young when he came sniffing around.”
They went about preparing their dinner, giving no more thought to the interruption.
Aunt Lilith placed a freshly baked cake on the table after dinner and placed a lit candle in it.
“Auntie, what is this for?”
“My dear, Halloween is the anniversary of your nativity. You are now eighteen years old.”
“Does that make much difference?”
“Well, people have always protected you as a child, just as I do. But now they will see you as an adult, and a very beautiful adult woman at that. I expect we will, indeed, see suitors coming to the gate, hoping to wed you, whether they come from your father or not.”
“Will you charge a bride price, Auntie?”
“Heavens no! Girl, I have loved you and raised you the best I know how. But you do not belong to me. You are your own woman. Just remember the decisions you make from this point on will be yours to live with.”
“It’s a terrible burden—being an adult, isn’t it?”
“It is. What will your first decision as a woman be?”
“I think I am ready to have a name.”
“Have you chosen one?”
“I’ve read that Lilith in ancient times was the first woman. That is you. So, I choose to be the second woman: Eve.”
“A fine name. Let this day mark Eve’s New Year. I love you, child.”
After cake, the two women went to the garden where they danced naked around a fire and summoned the spirits of townspeople who died in the past year. They would take the messages to their loved ones and let the spirits rest.
“I’ve seen a dark cloud on the horizon,” old Ma Staver intoned when she appeared before the witches. “Beauty brings out the beast in men. Mice and rats overrun the village. Beware. Beware!” The spirit faded into the smoke of the fire.
Lilith and Eve put an end to their midnight dancing and went to their warm beds.
