“Yes,” said Mary Christmas. But her eyes grew dark when she told them that, and she would not describe the Tree of Life.
They were all quiet then for a few moments. The idea of anyone’s having lived in the Garden of Eden was quite too staggering. John particularly could not get things straight in his mind. Was Mary Christmas so old that, like the Garden of Eden, she was ageless? She who had seen the Tree of Life, was it not likely that she, too, had walked in the cool of the day with God and Adam and Eve?
“What’s the next oldest thing in your land, Mary Christmas?” It was Roger who asked this question. The Garden of Eden with Mary Christmas in it was too much for him. Like John, he could not get it clear, and he was hoping now for something less overwhelming.
“The next oldest thing?” repeated Mary Christmas, as though all time were passing in slow review before her. “A great mountain is the next oldest thing, the highest mountain in the world, almost, with snow on it all the year. It rises from the plain—so.” With her quick, brown fingers she gathered handfuls of the fallen petals and piled them on a flat, bare place near the tree trunk. The children helped her silently by scooping up more petals from among the grass and giving them to her. “So—it goes up from the plain into Heaven, white with snow. It is a holy mountain. It is where Noah landed with the ark, after the rain fell forty days and forty nights.”
“I know,” said Roger. “Mount Ararat. It’s in the Bible.”
“It’s in the geography, too,” said Cynthia.
“Ararat,” repeated Mary Christmas slowly. “Masis, my people call it. Well, Noah landed there after all the rain had fallen. One morning the ark stopped and shook them all. And there they were! The water began to go down—quickly—and there was my land—the oldest land in all the world!”
Again John was puzzled. Mary Christmas and her land were so inseparable that it almost seemed as though she must have been there to show its high pastures and clear waters to Shem, Ham, and Japheth, while Noah’s wife tidied up the ark before leaving it, and Noah anxiously loosed the beasts, clean and unclean alike, determined that this time there should be no hitch in the starting of a new world.
“What became of the ark?” asked Roger. He had a detail-loving mind. “The Bible doesn’t say.”
Mary Christmas looked at them all without replying. Perhaps she hesitated to supplement the Bible; perhaps she was preparing them for the effect of her answer.