Eden's Garden: A Nia Rivers Adventure (Nia Rivers Adventures Book 5) Read online

  “Of course.” It was all I could think to say. “So… you’re God.”

  “Gah.” Eden cringed. “I don’t like that word. It’s very harsh sounding.” She shook her head as though she tasted something bad.

  “But it’s who you are?”

  Eden shrugged. “I simply am. I never thought to question it. It’s how it’s always been. Since I was born.”

  “You were born?”

  “I was born here.” Eden lifted her slim arms to indicate the light surrounding us.

  “Where are we exactly?”

  “At the core of the planet, in its womb. Where all life began. My life happened to be the first life. Every life form that came after me likes to call me the Creator, but in reality, it was the planet that created us all. The Earth is our true god. But that comes off as abstract, and since I was born first, and engineered what came after me, all of creation looks to me.”

  I nodded in understanding, but my head was spinning with all the implications.

  Eden held out her hand. At first, it was a solid palm without lifelines. Then the flesh melted away. In the middle of her palm was a pool of swirling light. “Would you like to see it again?”

  “See it? Again?”

  “The birth of creation. I’ve shown you before.”

  I looked down at my hand. My fingers were now covered in skin. Thinly knit. Thin enough for the light to shine through.

  I reached out to her hand, tentatively. I had no idea what I was afraid of. God was going to show me creation. It’s what all scientists secretly dream of, a definitive answer to life’s greatest question.

  The moment my fingertips touched hers, I was pulled, yanked out of my skin. I don’t know if my eyes were closed or open, but fire and heat and embers clouded my vision. Then, in an instant, the scene cleared and there was nothing but blue.

  A blue so bright and soft at the same time it took my breath away. Earth. I’d always thought the planet was the most beautiful in the solar system. But this rendition of it, no print or satellite picture had ever come close to the Earth as seen in these waters.

  The waters pulled into the Earth and it was like watching a National Geographic Special. Beautiful landscapes, growing flowers, grasslands, and seas teeming with life paraded through the waters of the cylinders like the opening of the Lion King. The Earth in all her majesty was on display.

  “It takes precise chemistry to create the spark of life,” said Eden. “I watched the seas and the first cells divide and multiply until they became what you call dinosaurs. I watched the first blade of grass grow until the first fairy stepped out of its roots. I watched primates stand up on straight spines and then discover fire. It’s been most entertaining.”

  And then there was darkness. Eden had removed her hand from mine. My eyes had been closed. No light. Only the darkness of my eyelids.

  “Ah, Nia.” Eden’s voice held a frown as she spoke the single harsh consonant in my name. “You’re all done. Back in your skin.”

  I opened my eyes to the bright room. I rose to a sitting position. I was back in my own skin, and naked.

  It hadn’t dawned on me before that I was truly bare. I wasn’t modest. But I felt weird being naked in front of God as a grown woman.

  “I tried to keep to your original model.” Eden admired her handiwork, cocking her head from side to side and squinting her large eyes. “How does it feel? Be honest. I can take criticism.”

  “I get the feeling you’d know if I wasn’t honest.”

  Eden only smiled. An upward tilt of one side of her thin lips.

  “I feel good as new.” And I did. Better than new. There was a lightness about me. Though corporeal, I felt myself barely tethered to the platform.

  “Good,” said Eden. “Some beings are sentimental about their original skins. But all things must change.”

  I shifted on the platform, reaching my toes toward the white floor. The ground was solid, like marble, but warm. With both feet planted on the ground, I shifted and tried to stand. But the moment I was on my own, dizziness overcame me and I gripped the edge of the platform.

  “My head hurts.” I rubbed my temple, thankful it was solid this time.

  “Those are your memories trying to fit themselves inside your head,” said Eden. “You’ve been encased in a human body for thousands of cycles. These cavities were not designed to last so long or to hold the amount of memories you’ve acquired. A flaw in the design, I apologize. There’s only so much space in the human ganglia.”

  I looked at her quizzically.

  “Ganglia, the network of nerves that make the flesh of the body function. I believe mankind has taken to calling it brains. Such a funny word.” Eden sniffed again, wrinkling her nose, her large eyes crinkling at the edges. “When the brain is confined inside your body cavity, it cannot access all your records, your memories, as it can in your natural state.”

  “My natural state? As a being of light.”

  She nodded.

  “So, I am an angel?”

  Eden smiled. “I’ve always liked that word. Ahn-gel. So soft.”

  “But I remember being born. I had a mother… and a father.”

  A father. I had a father. My brain ached at trying to reach deep into the recesses of my nerve network to pull up any memories of him.

  “Mother. Father,” said Eden. “Such human concepts. Though I do like the word daughter. It’s soft but also strong. But mother?” She shuddered. “Such an invasion to have something inside of your body and then yanked out. The eggs and larvae were a good design with the reptiles and avians. But I was particularly fond of the grafting and seedling design of the flora.”

  My mother was dead. She’d been human. But my father hadn’t been. He was like me. Like Eden. “Where is my father?”

  Eden tilted her head to the side, much like a bird listening for the presence of another. Her bright eyes glowed and then she refocused on me. “He’s near.”

  “Does he know I’m here?”

  Eden nodded.

  I hesitated to ask to see him. He knew I was here. Why wasn’t he waiting by my side when I woke up? Maybe he didn’t care about me. Maybe he didn’t want to be bothered with me.

  In my mind, his face was hazy, his words muted. My mother had loved him, but I got the impression it was one-sided. What had Eden said about emotion? That caring and emotions weren’t actual things.

  But that was false. Emotions surged through my body like they had when my mother held me for the first time. I knew that emotion. It was love.

  I was like my mother. I was capable of love. I had loved deeply in my life. And then my heartbeat quickened.

  “Zane? Where’s Zane?”

  3

  Now that I knew I was bound, I took a moment and looked at my surroundings, realizing I was inside a structure. My eyelashes touched the tops of my cheeks as I blinked a couple of times. The white light that had dominated my vision gave way to yellow rock and red clay. Cabinets lined the perimeter. Inside the crevices of the shelves were creatures the likes of which I’d never seen before.

  There was a bird-like creature, tall as a giraffe with a neck just as long. Except it had a beak like a parrot and the wings of a bat. There were creatures suspended in liquid, too. A pink jellyfish with a fat, opaque body. Inside its body was a worm-like creature that had a single dark eye. There was a cephalopod with rainbow-colored tentacles, its eyes vacant as its appendages swayed in the liquid.

  “Those are the lost ones,” said Eden. “Life forms that have gone extinct.”

  Her large eyes cast downward. Her lips bent in one direction and her brows creased in the opposite direction. The light in the room dimmed and the shadows fastened themselves around my shoulders.

  I had never felt such intense sadness in my life. Now I understood her distaste of compassion. But I was still me, even inside a new body. I stepped away from Eden to investigate further.

  There were also plants on display. Delicate sprouts with leave
s that looked like hands. Vines with monstrous, bulbous heads that reminded me of Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors. There were slender, reed-like blossoms with long blades that looked like legs and arms. The flowering bloom at the top of the staff looked more like a head than a bud.

  Writings and diagrams floated in the air. The etchings were drawn not with ink or lead or pigment. They were penned with the same white energy that had permeated the room, the same energy in Eden’s eyes.

  Some of the symbols I recognized but my brain had trouble deciphering the meanings. There were schematics of animals: invertebrates, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Also plants: mosses, ferns, gymnosperms, and angiosperms. Off to the side, there were combinations, various mixings of the groupings.

  This was a science lab, filled with some of God’s biggest hits and likely greatest failures. I guessed the creatures hanging in suspension were the failures, since none of them continued to walk or swim the earth. Which brought me back to my original question.

  “What have you done with Zane?” I reached for the dagger perpetually at my hip and met only flesh. I was bare in more ways than one.

  “The same as I did with you,” said Eden. If she’d noticed that I’d reached for a weapon, she showed no concern. “I gathered his essence and made him a new skin.”

  “Then why isn’t he here with me?” Zane would have never left my side while I was in danger. The man had fallen to his own death alongside me.

  “Zayin’s sire came to collect him some time ago.”

  “His sire?”

  “You would use the word father, and I suppose in this instance it would be correct. Michael did lie with Zayin’s mother and she conceived. Zayin’s essence grew in her core and then she pushed him out through her vagina.” Eden shuddered, distaste screwing her features. “Such an inefficient form of reproduction. I never adopted the practice myself.”

  She waved her hands in front of her bare torso. My eyes were drawn down to her non-existent genitalia. I cringed, shook my head, and looked away.

  “I don’t like that process or that word—vagina. One of my daughters calls it a hoo-ha. I do like the sound of that.”

  Eden sighed again, looking around at her schematics like this, the problem of vaginas and hoo-has, was a problem she wished to correct. Her gaze settled on an orb. It looked like a nucleus with swirling bits of energy of different shades circling around a core.

  The orb took hold of my attention. I took a few tentative steps toward the orb. I reached out, but Eden’s body came between my fingertip and the sphere.

  “Ah ah,” she chided. “Knock that down and you’ll start the apocalypse.”

  But I couldn’t take my attention away from it. “What is that?”

  “The center of the earth. And the entire genetic library of existence.”

  I frowned at her, waiting for more of an explanation. None was forthcoming. I shook myself and took a step back, refocusing on the matter at hand. I needed to know that Zane was safe, intact, and whole again. The last time I’d seen him, felt him, he was dying in my arms, because of me.

  There had to be a way out of here. I took a few tentative steps away from Eden. She didn’t follow. Only watched me with that same impassivity, as though she were recording notes on my behavior for an experiment. That was likely true. She was the world’s first scientist.

  I found what looked like a doorway. There was no handle. It simply looked like a darker impression in the wall than the rest.

  I reached my hand through it. It wasn’t solid. The temperature shifted on the other side. It was markedly warmer on the outside.

  I prepared to put my whole body through. I lifted my foot, but then noticed that my feet were bare. My gaze tracked up my legs and my torso.

  I turned back to Eden. “Where are my clothes?”

  “Discarded along with your original body.”

  It took a minute for my world to stand still after those words. I didn’t know what disturbed me more, that she’d thrown out my favorite boots or my body.

  “Discarded?” I said.

  “Hmm, I believe your flesh was thrown into the dragon pit as a snack.”

  Oh. Okay then. I supposed it wasn’t a worse way to go than falling down a cavern. “Can I have something to cover myself?”

  Eden cocked her head. “I gave you skin. Do you not like it? Is there a flaw in my design?”

  “No,” I said. “The body is fine. But if I’m going to go outside, where there are others, I want to cover myself.”

  Eden’s brows pinched. “I will never understand this need of human beings. I’ve seen you cover other animals too. Little canines? They don’t like it, you know. It’s entirely unnatural.”

  “Please.”

  She shrugged and raised her hand in acquiescence. Her fingers did that knitting motion again. Cotton formed around me out of thin air. But I knew it wasn’t out of thin air. It was as though the material grew at her will. The fabric knitted over my skin, just as my flesh had moments ago, until my chest and torso were covered.

  Creator she might be, but fashion designer she was not. It was just a plain white sheath. There were straps over my shoulders and then the fabric hung down to just above my knees. But I was covered, and that was my goal.

  I wasn’t modest, but the hell if I was going to go out into the unknown without weapons or materials to cover my vulnerable spots.

  “Are you ready now?” Eden asked.

  I nodded.

  She waved her hand, indicating that I should precede her out the doorway. I stepped through the opening and out into even more bright light. It felt like I stood close to the sun.

  All around were stalactites and stalagmites. They were rusty red, sandy brown, and orange like the ripest fruit. Impossibly, between each of the pointy structures were grassy knolls and flowering bushes and tall trees. A stream of the clearest water meandered through the idyllic scenery.

  The scene didn’t make sense. It looked as though we were underground, in a barren desert, and in a lush oasis all at the same time.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “In the core of the earth.”

  That couldn’t be possible. We should be burning up, eviscerated, if these were truly the temperatures of the core. The heat wasn’t overbearing. It warmed me through, but not just my skin. It warmed the life essence inside of me. I stood for a moment, basking in it, feeling like it was charging me up like a battery.

  “It would feel even better if you didn’t have so many layers on,” said Eden. “But to each his own. Come along… Nia.”

  She grumbled over my harsh-sounding name, but my attention focused on this whole new world I found myself in. My lips rounded in oohs and widened in ahhs as I took it all in. I ducked as something flew overhead. A pterodactyl.

  “I kept specimens from all of the Earth’s creatures, mainly for my records but also for nostalgia. I rather liked the Mesozoic Era.”

  “I thought the dinosaurs were wiped out by a comet that hit the Earth.”

  Eden chuckled. “I’ve heard that theory. Humans can be so imaginative.”

  “That’s not what happened?”

  “No,” she said simply.

  Her lips bent downward again with a touch of sadness. But not so great as when she’d gazed at the specimens she called the lost ones. Maybe the dinosaurs weren’t exactly extinct. Not if there was a pterodactyl alive and well living below the Earth’s surface.

  It flew over a tree, flying close enough to touch its branches and making the tree sway. But the tree wasn’t swaying, it was moving. Walking, to be exact. The arbor inclined the top of its branches as it passed me and Eden.

  The tree wasn’t the only thing that uprooted itself from the lush earth. Flowers rose, rising on petals to fly. The flowers and dinosaurs weren’t the only things flying. There were beings of light flying. Angels. No. That wasn’t the right term.

  “Elohim,” said Eden. “That’s what we call ourselves.”
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br />   Back on the surface, Elohim was used in the Bible as the name of God. But there was a great debate over the word because it was used in both the singular and the plural. Now I knew why.

  “They’re like you?” I said. “You all used to walk the earth.”

  These were Elohim, the original children of the earth. Beings of pure light. Before there was any firmament or water, there was fire and light. Like Eden, they came out of the light. I knew so much of this, but it was hard keeping it all straight now that my mind was encased in skin.

  “That was a long time ago,” said Eden. “I don’t venture above any longer, not since the Ice Age. It’s far too cold on the surface.”

  One Elohim swooped in close to us. Its body wasn’t encased in skin, but its light had the shape of a human. Something about the way the being moved told me he was male. He, too, was naked, but had no genitalia.

  I wrenched my gaze away. My cheeks heated, and I felt shame, though I’m not sure why. Another glance at his face told me that I should recognize him. Not his features, but there was something familiar about him.

  He walked to Eden, more like marched to her. As he passed me, he spared me a single glance. His facial features weren’t defined, but I would swear he sneered at me like I was something the saber-toothed tiger dragged in. I started to step back, but thought better of it. So instead, I held my ground even though my newly formed knees knocked.

  “Ah, Michael,” said Eden.

  Michael? The man she said was Zane’s sire? This was Zane’s father.

  Michael inclined his head to Eden. “Did you get what you needed from that one?”

  Michael didn’t acknowledge me this time, even though he was talking about me.

  “I did, indeed,” said Eden. “Her records were very detailed.” She looked at me, a touch of admiration sparkling in her bright eyes.

  But I wasn’t dazzled. “Records? What records?”