The Ways of the Fay

Lilith Speaks

With Eve there was another

Primal woman was she,

Not temptress nor demon but

lover, sister, mother.

I've heard it all - the fables through the ages as they come and go like sea waves sliding back and forth upon the shore. All I can say is that they're all lies. Not one is true. Based on the word of Cain. He was always a liar. When I exposed him as the killer of his own brother, he pointed his blood-stained hands at me saying that I sucked the blood of children. What nonsense! And even though by that time I wanted nothing to do with Adam, he called me his father's seductress. After centuries of slander, I realize that life is not always fair, and the righteous don't always win. For it has been his words that have echoed out into the world obscuring the truth.

So, I've been hiding, waiting for a time of understanding and compassion to reveal my story. I see human ways are shifting. But now, humanity is putting me on a pedestal as a goddess. There still is no truth in it. It is only because I have the burning need to be understood that I venture to speak openly. To claim the present, I must rectify the past. It is the only way to a forthright future.

Let me begin with the loss, through my eyes. The Garden of Eden - so soft, lush, and abundant, was the home of my youth. There were, not just two children...but four. We were two sets of twins – Adam and Danu, and my sister, Eve, and me. As far as I know, we were created by the Tree of Life. There was no other tree like it -. it was a genesis tree. When a fruit dropped on the ground and combined with water and earth, the seeds would sprout a creature. We children were created from one fruit that had two seeds.

Adam and I were close because I was his equal in both agility and wit. He was my best friend, but as we reached maturity, we toyed with love... to my sister's dismay. What a different story it would have been if the quality of greed and jealousy did not exist within our hearts. Oh, Eve, her jealousy was so petty, but that was only one part of the problem. It was when Adam discovered the dead bird, that changed our fates forever. Adam held the limp feathered body in his hand and asked if we would die too. I remember his dark eyes filled with horror when he realized that this was his fate. From then on, death consumed his mind.

The Tree of Life was protected by a snake-like basilisk. It was neither a dumb nor a conniving beast. With its silver scales and blue wings, it was regal, beautiful, and wise. But it was not wise enough. Though it was the only animal that ate fruit from the Tree of Life, and it guarded the fruit viciously, it must have been lonely for it allowed a few pieces to us - maybe just to have someone to talk to. But the consciousness the fruit opened in us led to thoughts that the basilisk didn't bargain for. Adam became obsessed with death, and the Basilisk grew warry of him. Adam got Eve to ask the basilisk if there was anything in the Garden that could escape death. The basilisk told gentle Eve that the Tree was immortal and that it, itself, was immortal because it stayed coiled within the Tree's branches. When Eve told Adam, he wanted nothing more than a branch to hold for his own immortality.

On the day when we lost everything, Danu and I had been filling the leaf baskets with water and gathering the blue mushrooms the Basilisk liked to eat. As we carefully carried the water back to the Tree, we arrived to see the unbelievable - Adam was holding Eve in his arms, the Tree was broken in half with fruit scattered, and the basilisk lay dead on the ground. That image is still burned into my mind.

Adam blamed Eve. Eve clung to Adam, silent. I could see she now had a powerful secret with him, and it would sear him to her forever. I hear she's still taking the blame. Well, she got what she wanted. They ran off together taking a small branch from the tree and wearing the wood as pendants around their necks. It made them live a long time - but not forever. We call their children, the Evelans, the children of Eve.

Danu and I remained by the Tree and tried everything we could to mend it, pouring water on it, pushing the branch back up, pasting the peeled bark back onto the trunk with mud. Nothing worked. Its purple-green bark turned black, and its soft, spongy pours became brittle. When we gave up, Danu rested her head on the trunk and cried. Her tears soaked into its porous bark. Suddenly the trunk trembled. Its trunk cracked and split open. From the center of the tree emerged a man - tall, green with pointed dragon ears. I shrank back. There had never been anyone else but us four in the garden, but Danu fearlessly stepped forward to claim him, naming him Greenman. Together they created the first lineage of the Fay, the Tuatha De Danann – the pointy-eared children of Danu.

It was the deepest betrayal - my whole family; Adam, Eve, and Danu had turned from me. Alone, I peeled the fibrous inner bark from the Tree and tried to create something with it. The Greenman helped me weave it into a cloak. He was a quiet man. At first, he seemed dumb, but I have found that he knows things, secret things. I was only thinking of keeping something around me to remind me of the life I loved, but he must have known that the woven cloak would hold the power of the Tree. For when I placed it around my shoulders it came to life, whipped around, covered me tightly, and pulled me into the Earth. I thought I was going to die. I couldn't breathe. But I didn't die, instead, I've learned to move with it, finding comfort in being compressed into earth. Now, it is my power and I have mastered the ability to travel underground. I can also turn into a stone. This is how I hear the talk of humanity. When I open the cloak wide it can erase feelings and the memories of anyone who stares into its dark inner folds. This magic has come in handy many a time when I have meddled in Evelan history, for my presence has not been remembered. Perhaps I have only myself to blame for my obscurity.

The cloak is my companion - and my master. I don't like to admit this, but it does 'bid' me to do things. I am not a free woman, I am bound by genesis, the only goal of the Tree of Life. Where I would have revenge or neglect the life of another, the cloak will not allow it. I must always work for life, even when my heart is cold. The cloak's greatest power is the transformation of life. When I wrap a bit of nature within its dark folds, a miniature child with qualities of the plant or animal will emerge. These are my children, the second race of the Fay, the tiny nature faeries - the fair-shee.

Because of the cloak, I am the only immortal of my family. I have endured, yet no stories of me prevail. I must reveal the stories of the Fay to the children of my sister Eve, for some Evelans are part Fay and will begin to remember as they hear the fables. Each story is about me or another Fay in a pivotal time. Together, these events build our history. Even though I and the faeries were driven into hiding, we will not die in obscurity. I reach out now to re-right history, to clear my name, and to be known not as a demon, but as Lilith- the righteous, protector of the Fay.