My mare galloped full-out through the thickening fog and deepening darkness, her hooves swift over the ground. But she was tired, her stride and pace choppy. In the medicine pouch on my chest, the stones began generating heat again as they had on the two other occasions when danger had been near. Even though we weren’t moving as fast as earlier, I was still afraid to let go of my mare’s mane to take the hot pouch away from my skin. Even for a second. Even when it felt as if it was beginning to burn.
When Glooscap’s stallion reared up and kicked its front legs, whinnying and chuffing wildly, I knew we’d arrived. Then I saw it through the fog. A writhing, black shape constricting a fallen horse. A snake. A massive snake. A momentary paralysis overcame my limbs, and I stood there taking it all in, fixed, frozen.
The fallen horse’s eyes bulged as it chomped the air desperately, gasping for breath. Its legs were splayed at odd angles, kicking the air feebly. Two people––Channa and Maroona––stood on the far side of the snake, at the edge of the foggy dark. Beside them that mangy, one-eyed dog from the village was hunched low, barking crazily. I couldn’t understand what they were doing there? And by themselves?
The snake’s head rose up, its yellow eyes fixed on me. It was bigger than a fully grown python or anaconda, longer and thicker, like a fallen tree that’d come to life. It was the size of Titanoboa, the prehistoric snake I’d seen on a Discovery Channel documentary. Maybe it was Titanoboa. The head swayed back and forth menacingly a few times, then twisted and lunged at the girls. Chana thrust a spear in an attempt to keep it at bay, as Maroona held onto her.
“Tanner,” said Glooscap. He tossed me a spear that he’d taken from the Wendo, leaping from his stallion. He hit the ground and drew his bow. As soon as my feet touched the ground, I rushed forward. Glooscap let fly an arrow, which hit the snake below its head, burying halfway to the red fletching. My body unfroze and I leapt to action.
But suddenly the back of my calves were swept out with a mighty blow that sent me careening. I landed on my hands and feet like a cat, heard a whoosh overhead and saw the snake’s tail arcing through the air. My mare sidestepped quickly out of the way, just in time to avoid being struck.
Another arrow hit the snake. I charged forward, hoping to draw its attention away from the girls. It whirled around to face me, opening its maw to reveal two long fangs the size of hunting knives and hundreds of smaller razor-sharp teeth. Spittle drooled from its lower jaw.
I brought the spear back, then thrust it into the body below the head. The snake reeled, hissing, tearing the spear from my hands.
“Over here. Move, move,” I yelled, waving Chana and Maroona onward.
Chana pulled Maroona along as the snake thrashed from side to side. It began uncoiling from the broken horse. Another arrow struck it, giving the girls a chance to dash to my side. I took Chana’s spear, lunged forward to meet the snake head-on and stabbed its tough underbelly. It unleashed a hissing and thrashed about.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the tail cutting through the fog a second before it struck my shoulder and knocked me to the ground. A sharp pain shot through my arm, as if it had been struck by a sledgehammer. The dog darted between me and the snake, barking and growling, doing its best to be intimidating. Then I felt it begin to coil around my legs, tightening and crushing. I was stuck. The spear was too long––Conroy’s Swiss Army knife! I pulled it from my kangaroo pouch, fumbling to flip out the blade, just as the snake’s head came within striking distance. I stabbed its eye, burying the entire blade. It hissed and uncoiled from around my legs.
I scrambled to my feet. The snake retreated in large sweeping S motions. The protruding arrows made it look as if it’d been attacked by a porcupine. The girls were then behind me, holding onto each other, near their horse which had been mangled and crushed so severely that I couldn’t discern whether it was a mare or stallion. Another arrow hit the snake as it retreated toward a pool.
A loud horn suddenly blared, the same horn I’d heard earlier that morning when we’d been attacked. Then three men––faces painted black, bare-chested––ran toward us screaming and wielding tomahawks. Leading them was Dejunga, a savage expression on his face. Then I saw it. Brodan’s head was fastened to his hipbelt, bouncing around, joining the other two heads in their silent, endless screams.
Glooscap let an arrow fly. It hit one attacker in the chest and sent him rolling on the ground. Dejunga closed the distance between us swiftly. I had just enough time to defend myself with the spear raised overhead, a hand on each end, before he brought his tomahawk thundering down, vibrating the spear painfully in my hands. I pushed him back. He retreated a few steps. He swung his tomahawk in large loops as though he was searching for an opening. Then he lunged forward and took a powerful, well-aimed swing at my head. I ducked and thrust the spear. He gracefully sidestepped, whirled off to the right and then leapt forward again, shoulder first, crashing into me and sending both of us down to the soft ground. We both struggled to get on top of the other. Then he straddled me. He was all muscle, like corded steel. He clenched my throat with one hand and raised his tomahawk, preparing to deliver a fatal blow. Then he looked into my eyes, grinning the most wicked grin, revealing those shark teeth, and shreds of meat hanging from them, his breath rancid.
An arrow thudded into his shoulder, knocking him off me. I scrambled to my feet and picked up the spear. Dejunga grabbed the protruding arrow shaft, snapped it off, and sneered.
Before he could move, I charged. I stuck the spear-tip into the soft ground and vaulted feet first to drop-kick him in the chest. He careened backward and splashed into a pool, disappearing below. I yanked the spear from the ground and went to the edge. There were only ripples on the water’s dark surface.
Then he burst up like a demented jack-in-the-box and stretched his arms wide and let out a war cry, beckoning me onward with his free hand. And in that moment, I saw in him everything that’d ever hurt me, everything that’d hurt the ones I loved. He was Gregory Parsons. He was the bully at the youth detention centre. He was the F5 that killed my mother and the unnamed events that took my father. He was Brodan’s killer and would kill us if he had the chance, tie our heads to his belt like he’d done to Brodan’s. In a swift, fluid motion, I pulled one of the river stones from my kangaroo pouch and winged it at his forehead with everything I had. The stone hit him right between the eyes, making the sound of a golf club hitting a ball.
He stumbled side to side, shaking his head, his rooster hair flopping about, and then dropped back into the water. He tried to stand up but he couldn’t. He stayed half-kneeling a moment, trying to regain his senses, and then began to scan the water around him as if he’d felt something.
At first, nothing. But then there was a disturbance around his legs. His evil visage morphed into one of terror. A giant head erupted from the swamp behind him. Another Titanoboa, even bigger than the first. Its body emerged from the water and began to coil around his waist. The snake’s maw disjointed, opened abnormally wide, allowing Dejunga just enough time to scream before the snake engulfed his entire upper body. It lifted him from the swamp. His legs ran in the air. Then the snake twisted around and dove below the surface with a deafening splash.
The dog ran up beside me, barking. Breathing heavily, eyes fierce, Glooscap strode toward the girls, leaving behind a crumpled Wendo on the ground, silent, unmoving. Dead.
Glooscap wiped the blood from his bowie knife on the leaves of a plant as he passed by, then slid it back into the sheath on his back. Holding Maroona at her side, Chana looked at him defiantly as he closed the distance.
Glooscap yelled in Sawnay. Chana fired back even before he’d finished, gesturing her free hand in the air. As they carried on, I watched in disbelief with the dog at my side. After what had just happened, they wanted to argue? There was something almost brother and sister-like about it, like they’d done it a hundred times and knew they’d do it a hundred more.
Talking rapidly in Sawnay, Glooscap kept pointing from the mangled horse to the swamp where the first snake had vanished. After thirty seconds of this, Chana poked him in the chest and spouted off way too forcefully for someone her size. I started to feel like I was watching a dramatic scene in a foreign film, only it was real and starting to make me uncomfortable. There I was––on another world, having almost been killed, separated from my companions––watching two people going at it like siblings arguing over the bathroom. It was absurd after what had just happened, what could’ve happened.
It carried on for a minute more or so, until finally Glooscap slapped his thighs and grunted loudly as if he was fed up and done with the whole thing. He whirled around, strode over to the girls’ bundles. He flung one at Chana, who caught it in midair.
His black stallion nudged the mangled horse with his muzzle, whinnying softly, sniffing the air like it was trying to figure out if it was dead or not. Maybe they’d been related. Who knew? They could’ve been brother and sister, son and mother, or uncle and niece. Horrible way to find someone you cared for, horrible way to find anyone or anything––man or animal.
Glooscap snatched up an arrow off the ground, one he must’ve dropped, and slid it into the quiver on his back. Then he mounted his stallion. He rode up beside me. I’d remained absolutely silent up until that point, as if I’d been a stranger watching a family squabble with nowhere to go.
“She rides with you,” said Glooscap. He didn’t say who. He didn’t need to. He meant Chana. He spoke Sawnay to Maroona, much calmer this time. When he finished, she and Chana hugged. Then Maroona went to his stallion. Glooscap reached down and pulled her up behind him. She wrapped her arms around his waist, and without another word, they began riding north.
“Thank you, Tanner,” said Chana, looking relatively composed, considering she’d almost been devoured whole by a Titanoboa.
“What are you doing here?” I said, still baffled.
“Journeying north, with our dog, Tooney.” She looked at the dog. He was staring at us with his one good eye, tongue lolling.
“That much I figured. But by yourselves? You both could’ve ended up like the horse. Or what about the Wendo? What if they caught you––who knows what they would’ve done.”
“Do not try to tell me of things you know nothing about.”
“I do know they’re killers––they killed Brodan. They almost killed me.”
“If Dejunga wanted to kill you, he would have,” she said.
“So what are you saying? He gave me a pass because he likes my smile.”
“I don’t know why, but I know if he wanted you dead, you would be dead right now, Tanner.”
“That’s bullshit,” I said. “So why are you journeying north?”
“We have our reasons . . .”
“Everyone’s got reasons––doesn’t mean they’re right . . . or smart.”
My mare came walking over to us. “Does it have to do with your father?” I said.
She didn’t reply.
Pressing her for an explanation right then didn’t seem like the thing to do, not the time or place. I scratched my mare behind the ears a few times, my blood slowly simmering down, and then took a handful of mane and mounted. Chana outstretched her arm. I lifted her up behind me. As soon as she wrapped her arms around my waist, I put my mare into a trot, Tooney running alongside.
By then Glooscap and Maroona were only vague outlines in the foggy night.