"The male calls me Eve. He is Adam." Her eyes seemed to focus on the piece of fruit that lay on the ground beside Adryel.

"You ate from this tree?"

"I did, and it is absolutely one of the most marvelous things I have ever tasted. Do you like it?"

"I've never eaten any of it. No, we were told not to touch this fruit."

"Really?" Adryel played at sounding confused. "Why not? It's so very good."

"We were told that if we were to eat it, we would die."

Adryel laughed. "Die, you say? Die?" She moved her head to inspect her long, sleek body. "I've eaten some of it and I'm very much alive, and I'm much smaller than you. Maybe I haven't eaten enough." She bent over and took another bite, savoring the taste with enough verve to pique the human's interest further. Then she looked up and shook her head. "Nope. Still not dead. If it doesn't hurt me, how could it hurt you? You're so much bigger and stronger than I."

Eve looked at the fruit and then at Adryel. "I don't understand."

"Take a bite. You're not going to die. In fact, the fruit will make you become wise. Look, a piece is hanging right there on the tree, within your reach."

She hesitated.

"I'll not tell. Go ahead. It tastes so much better than do the peaches."

Eve plucked a piece from the tree. As she held it in front of her face, the sunlight caught it and the morning dew glistened.

"Beautiful," Adryel whispered. "Looks good enough to eat."

Eve hesitated, looking first at the red ball in her hand, then the tree, then at the fruit once again. "Don't tell Adam," she said as she bit into it. Adryel thought she heard Lucifer stifle a scream. The woman stopped eating, and a look of confusion crossed her face. Then she gazed down at her body. As she did so, another voice floated across the garden.

"Eve. Eve, where are you?"

"It's Adam. He'll see me." She looked at herself again. "I shouldn't be. . .He'll see me." She stepped to the side, hiding herself behind a shrub.

Adam strode into the clearing.

"Here you are. What are you doing?"

"I'm talking with the serpent." She gestured toward Adryel. "Here, try this." She held the fruit out to him. "It's really good."

"You shouldn't be eating that. You know if we eat it then we'll-"

"It's safe. I'm alive. The serpent is alive. She tells me it will make us wise."

"There are so many things you don't yet know," Adryel whispered. "Ask Eve."

Adam hesitated.

"Go on. Take a bite." Eve thrust the fruit at him. "You've never tasted anything so good."

"Never," Adryel echoed.

Adam took the fruit from her and inspected it. As he put it into his mouth, Dariel's voice rang out. "Stop. Don't do it. Don't eat it," he screamed.

Adam took a bite.

"No. Don't." Dariel dashed across the clearing. "Spit it out," he ordered.

In all the chaos, Adryel stepped out of the serpent, and leaped behind the nearest bush. The two humans and Dariel turned and watched as the serpent slithered away, making for the branches.

"You're too late, Dariel," she whispered to herself.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Adam glancing down at his body. Then he inspected Eve's, still partially hidden by the bush. His eyes dilated and he blushed. Dariel's face wore an expression of horror.

He had failed to protect his humans. Dariel would be disgraced. The thought caused Adryel to smile.

"Oh," Eve exclaimed.

Adryel turned to see Adam's hand caressing Eve's face. He seemed to notice her watching him and he suddenly bolted from the clearing. As Dariel's eyes followed Adam, Adryel scurried in the other direction, deep into the underbrush. She crouched, motionless.

Eve stared at Dariel. She looked up at the serpent. Then a smile played across her face and, covering her body with her hands, she dashed away, calling for Adam.

Dariel's head swung back and forth, looking first at Eve, then seeming to be searching for the serpent, then watching Eve's back as she fled through the garden, the confused expression on his face saying he was not sure what he had seen. Finally, he chased after the humans.

As Adryel stood, Lucifer appeared.

"Yes, yes, yes," he shouted. "Not only the female, but both of them. Magnificent."

He grabbed Adryel and pulled her to him. "You were magnificent. I'll not tell. Looks good enough to eat. I almost rolled with laughter."

He released her and held her out at arm's length. "Together, Adryel, we'll be unstoppable. Together we can do anything. Together, we'll take the earth and heaven and all of creation."

"Together," Adryel echoed. It was true she no longer had the life she'd had before. It was true she could not go back. This was her new life now, and she could rule, alongside of Lord Lucifer. The heavens and the earth-all of creation-would be theirs.

Hand in hand, Adryel and Lucifer strolled through the garden, admiring the flowers and sampling the fruits, the nuts, and the berries that they found. Adryel was fascinated by the sun, watching as it moved across the sky, the light changing as it traveled toward the west. Then, as it finally sank below the horizon, they left the garden.

Remembering, Adryel smiled as she pictured Dariel's face when he had realized that both humans had eaten the round, red fruit. She chuckled aloud when she recalled Lord Lucifer's stifled shout of joy when the female had bitten into the fruit. She giggled uncontrollably as she imagined the humans' faces as they realized they were naked.

A moment later, she shrugged as her smile faded, briefly.

None of it mattered. Michael and Adonai had betrayed her. Ramael was dead.

The rules had changed. But that didn't mean she couldn't make the best of the new rules.

In the twilight, she and Lucifer stood on a small rise where they could see the garden gate, and they watched as Michael forced Adam and Eve out of the garden. The two humans were wearing sets of hastily constructed robes. As she had told them, the fruit had made them wise, not dead. She chuckled as she thought about the coy smile on Eve's face as she had chased after Adam, and what other things they would learn about each other, perhaps that very night.

As the humans trudged away, their heads lowered in dejection at being cast out of their beautiful home, Adryel felt a pang of regret. They had been happy in the garden, before she and Lord Lucifer had arrived. . .just as she and Ramael had been happy before Lord Lucifer's rebellion.

She shook her head. Nothing lasted forever-nothing except Adonai-and one had to learn to accept change and to move on. Lord Lucifer was her life now, yes, her protector. Perhaps, one day, maybe even her love.

As Dariel planted himself before the gate, a flaming sword in his hands to a.s.sure the humans did not return, Lucifer spat on the ground. "Fools. They are proven wrong. Why continue the confounded experiment? Adonai should acknowledge his error and move on."

"Perhaps he believes that had we not intervened. . ."

"Bah. How could he know? Dariel did not see you. I'm certain of it. Besides, it was just a matter of time. You simply expedited the process, tempted the female. You didn't force her to eat the fruit. No, she chose to do it." He paused, watching the last rays of the sun turn the western clouds shades of orange and red. "He did make it beautiful," he muttered. "But to what end?"

Lucifer turned back to Adryel. "I want to say again what a marvelous job you did. Scarcely anything you said was untrue. I think that is where Ami went astray when she dealt with the male. She tried to bribe him with things that were very unlikely."

He put his arm around her shoulders. "I should have come to you first. You've never let me down, Adryel." For the first time, she felt pleasure in his touch, and she looked forward to their return to the cave.

Fully half of the army awaited them there. Some had pa.s.sed through the portal, while others stood just inside the cave. Lucifer sent a team to the garden to collect food for the evening meal.

"The fruit and nuts will appear strange," he said. "Collect it anyway. All of it is good to eat."

Then, as the evening meal ended, Lucifer stood and pounded on the wall for everyone's attention. Once he had it, he raised his arms in the air. "The earth is ours. The garden is ours. The fruit, the grain, the creatures, they are all ours now. I fear we must continue to dwell here in h.e.l.l, but we may wander widely across the land. Make your home comfortable. Eat to your heart's content. In time, we will make further use of the humans. Life will be good."

Cheers erupted around the cave, and Adryel felt a surge of pride as she gazed at Lord Lucifer. Yes, life would be good again. Different, but good.

"Now, I want to thank the one who has made our new lives possible." He turned to Adryel and held out his hand. "Adryel, we all owe you our thanks." Lucifer looked out at his army, encouraging them to applaud.

"Today, Adryel demonstrated the true nature of the human creatures. Just a piece of fruit, a few sweet words, and they leaped to do the one thing they had been forbidden to do. All residents of Celestial City will see the error in Adonai's Plan of Creation. They will see that I was right. Time will expose the truth. If the humans will forsake Adonai so easily, one can easily imagine how they will treat one another. For this, we owe Adryel our grat.i.tude."

Lord Lucifer stepped back from Adryel and nudged her forward to the cheers and shouts of the gathered crowd.

"It is my joy to honor her, and proclaim Adryel to be my eternal consort." He swept his arms wide as the inhabitants of h.e.l.l roared in support. "Allow me to present to you, Adryel, the Mistress of h.e.l.l."

Gift of Fire.

Adryel stepped through the portal and found herself on Earth. She whirled around, smiling as she strained to catch the smallest sound, and heard. . .nothing.

No strident voices raised in anger. No arguments concerning who had won the last round of rokmon or who had cheated or who owed how much to whom. No m.u.f.fled screams from those who had been consigned to the lake of fire for violating one of Lord Lucifer's dictates. No whining or backbiting from Ami or any of the other hundred fifty angels who lived in h.e.l.l.

She drew a deep breath of sweet honeysuckle-scented air and held it for several moments. Sighing as she noted the absence of the dank smell of the cave and the rotten-egg odor of burning sulfur that permeated the air below.

She gazed up at the cloudless blue sky and she slipped the sandals from her feet so she could feel the soft velvet gra.s.s beneath them. The rocky cave in which she lived, the jagged stones that cut into her bare feet when she took even a single step without shoes, the hard walls that left bruises when she crashed against them after slipping on the damp floors, the ceilings on which she would smack her head if she forgot to duck when pa.s.sing from one cavern to another, all were gone.

It was so good to have escaped for a while.

The wall of the garden stretched out before her. Quite some time had pa.s.sed already since the humans were banished and they had moved away. It had been the hot season when they were expelled, and hot seasons had come and gone at least twenty times since then.

Dariel had been posted at the garden's gate to keep them from returning-such a pointless a.s.signment, guarding the entrance from two creatures who had totally disappeared years before. She had often hidden in a nearby grove of trees to watch him as he paced back and forth, muttering to himself. She suspected he was being punished for allowing the two humans to eat the forbidden fruit.

One morning, after laughing at his obvious misery for almost fifteen years, she discovered he had been replaced by a young power. Eventually, that guard too had been recalled.

She had always enjoyed visiting the garden, and she had decided to spend time strolling through it as she began her trip. In part, her excursion was simply a diversion, an opportunity to get away from h.e.l.l for a while. Beyond that, Lord Lucifer had renewed his interest in the humans.

No one knew where they had gone or how many there now were. It was possible both humans had died. They may not have survived the first cold season, or, perhaps, Adonai had given up on his experiment and had eliminated them.

Adryel would do her part and look for the humans during her outing, but she understood the earth to be a vast place, and the humans, even if they were alive, could be anywhere. Finding them would be an accident, and she did not really expect to stumble upon them.

Beliel had suggested that, should she locate them, the humans might not be pleased to see her. After all, she had been responsible for their ejection from the garden. Adryel believed his fears were unfounded. They had been so intent on their confrontation with Dariel when she had taken her normal form that she doubted they had even noticed her. As she approached the garden's wall, she discovered that a section had toppled over. The humans were not there to repair it, and the angels from h.e.l.l would never stoop to heavy labor, so the rocks from which the wall had been made lay scattered across the ground. She sighed. The garden had been so beautiful, such a relief from the dark caverns of h.e.l.l.

Adryel stepped through the opening. She followed a path that led to the other side of the garden. Originally, it had been a full meter wide, with smooth, packed earth. Now, small bushes and vines brushed against her ankles as she strolled along, and roots ran across the path. She bent to lift a branch that blocked her way, tossing it off to one side.

The clearing to her left, where she had taken the form of the serpent, was disappearing. A vine with small green leaves and tiny white flowers covered both the ground and the tree that stood in the middle of the clearing. It climbed the tree, wrapping around it, and hung across its limbs so the tree was no longer visible, its presence noted only by the support it provided for the vine. A part of her almost searched for the serpent, but she knew it would have died long ago.

She paused as she recalled that morning, some twenty years ago now. Fear of failure had upset her stomach and she'd had difficulty forcing her legs to move as she and Lord Lucifer had trekked through the long tunnel, hiked to the garden, and vaulted the wall. It was not until she had taken on the serpent's body and she no longer felt like herself that she was able to calm down and approach the woman.

She rambled through the garden, gazing all around her. Fruit hung on several trees, but not as much as she ought to find at this time of the year. In the grain field on the western side, a few scraggly stalks poked through the earth. It seemed to Adryel that none of them reached higher than her waist. By rights, the field should be full of stalks waving high above her head. It would be, if anyone had bothered to spend even a few days in the field at planting time. And if the residents of h.e.l.l had not picked everything over long ago.

With no one caring for it, the garden would soon become simply another bit of woodland, with only the remnants of the wall to show it had ever been anything else.

She reached the tree whose fruit she had persuaded the female to eat. A few pieces hung from the branches and several were strewn over the ground beneath. Adryel wondered what would happen if one of the animals were to bite into the fruit. Would they, like the humans, know the difference between right and wrong? What had happened to the serpent who had eaten the fruit while she had inhabited its body?

She gazed up. Little blue birds sat on a limb above her head, and she chuckled at the image of them wrapping themselves in leaves, ashamed that anyone could see their naked bodies as the humans had been.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, it had been called. Adryel smiled. When the female had eaten the fruit, the result had certainly been evil for her, since she had been banished from the garden, but it had been good for Adryel, because it had cemented her position with Lord Lucifer.

On that morning, some twenty years ago, she had crawled over the wall afraid of Lord Lucifer and the consequence of failure, a frightened child who wished she could return to the city. By high noon, she had earned Lord Lucifer's admiration and, more important, his trust. As Mistress of h.e.l.l, he would leave her in command when he was away exploring the caverns and tunnels that stretched in every direction from the cave where they lived. Her commission to hunt the humans reflected his confidence in her. Beliel had lobbied for the a.s.signment, but he was required to stay behind.

No one else, not even Lord Lucifer himself, had tossed as big a wrench into Adonai's plans as she had that morning.

She turned down the path toward the gate. The worst part of living in h.e.l.l was not the darkness, nor the screams floating up from the lake of fire. It was not the rocky floors and walls, nor the stink. The worst part was the boredom. Life without work or without purpose was almost worse than no life at all.

For a long period, she and some of the students who had followed Lord Lucifer had met daily, later weekly, to discuss philosophy. Eventually, though, their meetings had seemed pointless.

Lord Lucifer talked incessantly about another attempt to take the city, and the male angels trained to be physically fit, prepared to fight. Those with no experience learned to use swords and spears. Lord Lucifer called meetings of his war council.

Adryel attended the meetings at first, but every plan hinged on their ability to leave h.e.l.l and reach the city even though, in spite of an extensive search, no one had yet discovered a route back to the heavens. Beliel had once scaled the walls of the pit, but he had returned to report that, as suspected, a huge boulder lay across the opening, and no one could suggest a way to move it.

Moreover, every plan ultimately culminated in another surprise attack. Adryel saw no reason to suspect that a frontal a.s.sault with a hundred fifty soldiers would be any more successful than was the first attack with one thousand. With no way to reach the city, and no better plan of attack should they reach it, the war councils seemed like another waste.

Eventually, Adryel had turned to drawing and painting as ways to pa.s.s the time. As she had when she was younger, she made her own paper using bark from the trees in the garden and she located plants from which she could make dyes. She would sit for hours in the garden, copying the intricate designs of the flowers and carefully mixing the colors so they were identical to those on the blooms. Beliel always made fun of her work, but Lord Lucifer seemed to enjoy her paintings, and they had several placed about in their small cave.

Adryel pa.s.sed through the gate, now hanging open, and looked in the direction of the rising sun. The humans had fled in that direction as they had run from the garden. Perhaps they had settled in the hills she could just make out in the distance. No path had been worn across the earth, so Adryel simply set out, with the sun shining on her face.

Tiny yellow flowers carpeted the ground, poking their heads out from among the blades of gra.s.s. A large tree with pink flowers stood off to her right, and bees swarmed around the tree in search of nectar.

She spotted a rose bush and bent to admire its graceful blooms and to inhale its fragrance, tracing the shape of the flowers with her finger. It made her think of the palace garden, and she suddenly felt sad, but she shook the feeling off, berating herself for sentimentality. The city and everything in it was her past. She had moved on.

Nothing was going to spoil her adventure today.

As the sun rose higher and the air became warmer, she sat in the shade of a tall tree to rest. The tree had long, arching branches covered with large green leaves. She leaned against it and she sighed.