From time to time Eve would stand and make a circuit of the hilltop, looking down the slope in all directions to the grass sea below. A few wolves lingered around the base of the hill, looking up at her in a way that she now understood was indicative of hunger, and a tendency to see her as food. But none of them could breach the defenses with which the hill had surrounded itself.

Adam for his part was content to lie in the shade of the tree watching the blood run out of his hand. The flow lessened as the morning wore on, but he had become pale and listless. “So many new fluids escaping my body,” he remarked, which was a puzzlement to Eve since she knew only of the blood. “If bodies are like other things, then what has been lost must needs be replaced if I am not to be diminished.”

“In the Garden we saw bugs eating the stuff of plants, and birds eating bugs,” Eve said. “The worm ate an apple, and recommended it. And the wolves seem to have eating us in mind.”

“O Spring!” Adam moaned. “Why would you make your creatures thus? Having such appetites?” And his gaze strayed to the thighs and buttocks of Eve as she squatted on her haunches next to him.

Eve shrugged. “It is apparently the way of things. If we survive long enough to find Spring, perhaps we can put the question to her.”

“At least we understand, now, the curious word that the angel used,” Adam said. “‘Hazard.’”

“We need to find a way through those hazards between us and the far side of those hills,” Eve said, “where perhaps there are more souls like us who have devised some way of not being eaten. Your diminishment is of no help to us in that. You have no recourse but to eat something.” She looked up into the canopy of the tree. “Unfortunately this one does not bear apples, for some reason.”

Mab flitted up into the tree’s branches. A minute later, a small brown object fell to the ground near them. Its size, shape, and wrinkled surface recalled what hung below Adam’s penis. “A nut,” Mab said. “I have access to the knowledge that it might be edible. First you have to crack it though.”