Eve dreamed of blood. Her son's blood. Pouring into the mouth of his brother.

After their expulsion from Paradise, Adam and Eve journeyed eastward toward the sunrise and settled there for eighteen years and two months. In that time, Eve conceived and bore two sons. The first was Adiaphotos, called Cain. The second was Amilabes, called Abel.

Then one night, while they slept, Eve saw a vision that turned her blood cold. She saw Abel's blood being poured into Cain's mouth. Cain drank it without mercy. Abel begged him to leave even a little, but Cain gulped it all down. The blood would not stay inside him. It came back out of his mouth, as if the earth itself refused to let murder be swallowed quietly.

Eve woke trembling and told Adam what she had seen. "Let us go find them," Adam said. "I fear the Adversary may be attacking them."

They found Abel murdered. Slain by the hand of his own brother (Genesis 4:8).

God spoke to the archangel Michael: "Tell Adam this -- do not reveal the secret you know to your son Cain, for he is a son of wrath. But do not grieve. I will give you another son in his place, and he will show you all that you must do. Tell Cain nothing."

Michael delivered the message. Adam kept the word sealed in his heart. So did Eve. But they grieved bitterly for Abel.

After this, Adam knew Eve again, and she conceived and bore Seth (Genesis 4:25). Adam looked at the child and said to Eve: "See -- we have been given a son in place of Abel, whom Cain slew. Let us give glory and sacrifice to God."

A replacement. A second chance. But never a forgetting.

Adam went on to father thirty sons and thirty daughters. He lived nine hundred and thirty years (Genesis 5:5). And then the sickness came. A terrible weight settled on his body, and he cried out with a loud voice: "Let all my sons come to me, that I may see them before I die."

They came from every corner of the earth, which by then had been divided into three parts. Seth, his beloved son, asked him: "Father Adam, what is your complaint?"

"My children," Adam groaned, "I am crushed by the burden of trouble."

They did not understand. They had never known Paradise, so they did not know what it meant to lose it. "What is trouble?" they asked.

Seth guessed: "Have you remembered the fruit of Paradise, the fruit you once ate freely? Is your heart aching for it? If so, tell me. I will go to the gates of Eden. I will put dust on my head and weep and pray until the Lord hears me. Perhaps He will send an angel with a plant from Paradise to ease your pain."

Adam shook his head. "No, my son. This is not longing. I have sickness in my body -- seventy-two afflictions, every one of them."

"How did this happen to you?" Seth asked.

And so Adam told him. The whole story.

"When God made us -- me and your mother, through whom I now die -- He gave us freedom to eat from every tree in Paradise. Every one except a single tree. Through that one tree, we are to die. The hour came when the angels guarding your mother went up to worship the Lord, and I was far from her. The Adversary knew she was alone. He gave her the fruit of the forbidden tree, and she ate. Then she gave it to me (Genesis 3:6)."

Adam's voice grew heavy. "God was furious with us. He came into Paradise and called to me in a terrible voice: 'Adam, where are you? Why do you hide from My face? Can a house hide itself from its builder?' And He said to me: 'Since you have abandoned My covenant, I have brought upon your body seventy-two afflictions. The first -- pain in the eyes. The second -- affliction of hearing. And so on, one by one, until every stroke has fallen upon you.'"

Seventy-two plagues. One for every way a body can break. That was the price of a single piece of fruit.