Demon

I looked at her, baffled.

“We were all staring, gape-mouthed as you, by then. And then he surrounded this thing. He was everywhere around it, as if he had gathered the dirty thing in his arms and cupped it by the head. And then I heard it.”

She was clutching my arm, her fingers biting into my flesh so that I was glad I had worn a sweater, sure that she would have left half-moon punctures with her nails in my forearm.

“The sound, it was the same expectant sound at the dawn of all the world. A breath exhaled into the mud! Given to the mud thing as surely as if he had set his mouth against those dirty lips and breathed.

“Oh, divine exhale! It was himself. Much more than life, it was everything—the awareness, all the emotion, the propensity to love, to nurture, to create. And he endowed it all upon this new creature made of mud.” The plush mouth contorted. Behind her irises, the unnatural light I had noted before blazed like a black nova. “And the clay chest filled, and expanded, and warmed. The man coughed and fell down, alive.”

I stared. “But you’re saying—”

“Yes, Clay”—her mouth smoothed into a chilly smile—“Image of El, breath of God. In such an unworthy vessel. Something far more precious than diamonds, denied even to us but entrusted to a container of mud.”

“I take it Lucifer was as thrilled as you seem.”

Again the brittle laugh. “His jealousy exploded in a fiery blast, the fallout infecting us with his cancer.”

She shrugged out of her coat, and I instinctively moved to help her. She wore a sleeveless turtleneck beneath, and the skin of her arms was smooth, luminous. I wanted to touch it.

“Eden, once the seat of his government, had been made anew, raised up and recreated lush and living—and prepared for another.” She took the coat from me and draped it over her arm, a delicate silver watch on her wrist catching the light. “No more stones like mirrors—this was a handcrafted cradle for no creature of our kind.”

“So he—El—made it for Adam. I assume that’s the man you’re talking about.”

“Yes. This new garden, planted by Elohim, became his home. The former throne of Lucifer now belonged to a cherished new creature made of mud.”

“You said yourself that Lucifer didn’t want it anymore.”

“Not as it was. Not ruined. But El had done something special and made it anew— and given it away. Worse yet, El himself deigned to go there. He went down from the heavens daily. He left the mount and moved among the creatures, speaking with the man, walking with him in the shade and telling him things beneath the trees. Oh, intimate whispers! How my soul suddenly longed to be a clay creature!”

All this time we had been alone, the museum unusually quiet for a Saturday afternoon.

“By now Lucifer was no longer content to sit by. The earth was his, had been since its inception. He meant to inspect these new creatures and all this strange life now roving about and sprouting from this planet of his jurisdiction.” She stopped to peer at an assortment of jewelry: shell bracelets and necklaces, their tiny conches perfectly intact. “From the Red Sea,” according to the numbered notation.

“There had never been any question, in Lucifer’s mind at least, as to who would rule this place, this new life, the creatures. The earth—all of Eden—belonged to him. He might disdain this refurbished Eden and its new tenants, but it was his. But El wasn’t finished.”

She moved farther to my left to gaze intently into the exhibit case, and I saw the object of her interest: an ivory comb. For several moments, she stood unmoving, her expression thoughtful, her lips pursed. And then she tilted her head and said with what I thought was sadness, “I knew the woman this belonged to. She used to sing to the moon at night, and I used to stop to listen to her, this human who seemed to see in that pale light the very thing I did.”

I could not help but wonder if some accident had befallen that woman—the 2200 BC equivalent of being run down by a car. Just then it hit me: I stood shoulder to shoulder with a being older than any item in this room. Or the next. Older, even, than the very soil it was built upon.

She touched the Plexiglas. “How odd that I should share sentiments with a human. It was, I think, the most kinship I have ever felt with one of your kind.” Her fingers fell away. “Of course, I realized sometime later that it had not been the actual woman I was drawn to, but those qualities within her that were the earmark of El. In the poignant yearning of her psyche, in the loveliness of her voice, I had heard El.”

She fell quiet after that, her lips moving slightly, emitting no sound. And I realized that she mouthed the words to a song.

“You said El wasn’t finished,” I prompted.

She sighed. “No, he wasn’t. In a sudden, great blow to my prince, he gave the animals to the man and told him to rule over them. Do you understand what I’m saying, Clay?” She leaned against the case, her face turned up toward mine. “Gave them to the clay man! He brought them to the man and gave him the power to name them. And the man, oblivious to what he did in usurping Lucifer’s rightful place, did it. But it got worse.” She shifted her coat, lifting a finger for emphasis. “For every animal there was a counterpart.” She added a second finger and turned her fingers this way and that. “But for the man—nothing. Naming the animals took a long time. Caring for the garden was no small task. The man needed help. And he was lonely. Communing with nature is only novel for so long.”

“He had El,” I offered, wondering that such pious-sounding words should come out of my mouth.

“True, and that ought to have been enough. But El is extravagant. And what was good enough for us positively paled beside what he was willing to do for the mud race.” There was a strange, ironic tinge to her voice.

“And so, like your bakers, who pinch off dough from one loaf and set it aside to leaven another, El took out a part of this man—no flesh, but fine, sleek bone—and crafted a new thing.” She moved on toward the next room but glanced over her shoulder as though to see if I followed. I noticed that the smooth skin bore a small tattoo: a falling star. “And she rose up, a counterpart to the man, the female to his male.”

She smoothed her hair back with her hand, her fingertips brushing absently against the side of her neck, pausing to trace the line of it, to feel, perhaps, the faint pulse there. “They were as regal a pair as could ever hope