Standing at the frozen base of the Trathorn Falls, we all gathered around the sled bearing Maeven. She was so pale that I feared it was already too late for her, yet her mouth moved to form words that lacked sound. She breathed so shallowly, that there was barely enough breath behind her moving lips to give tone or timber to what she struggled to say, but I leaned down close, taking her hand, trying to reassure her that we had brought her where she desired to go. The cold and ice bruised her lips into a gray-blue, yet I rubbed her hands trying to get the circulation flowing again as much as I could. Her eyes flickered unfocused and then focused on me for the briefest of seconds, and though it must have cost her a great deal of pain, she fumbled with my fingers and hissed what little words she could, “Did,” she swallowed with difficulty, “they bring the branch?”
“Maeven, we don’t need the log, we are near the falls and will go into the caves and the pools. The Pearl is still on the ice and it is frozen solid.”
With a hard swallow, she winced and said, “Bring the branch.” Her eyes pleading with mine.
I looked up at Dominic and Matthew and Mason, and now Will who had recovered enough to climb off of the sled, but stood aloof from us and very quiet.
“Guys, we’d better do as she says,” I looked to each of them. “How fast can you guys go get it and bring it to the falls?”
Matthew hung his fingers in his belt and roused by my words, over the worry and concern he felt for Maeven, he said, “We’ve got this. Just make her better.”
Mason nodded in agreement and Dominic and Will turned to go with them, trotting away across the ice towards the distant place where they’d last left it.
“James and Begglar, we’d better haul her up. The ice sheets are broken and the way is treacherous, be careful not to slip or drop the sled. Nell and Christie, please help steady Maeven on the sled, one on each side so she doesn’t roll off. She is tied somewhat but we cannot be too careful. I’ll grab the front and you two grab the runners on each side.
We hoisted Maeven and carefully made our way over the strewn colonnades of it, the lip of the cavern is just four to five feet in. The lake flash froze so there is a thick spongy carpet of wet green moss along the floor until the rock takes over. The pools are about fifteen to twenty feet in, but there is one, in particular, we need to get to. Watch that you do not step into one of the black pools. We were warned about them. Hurry now, but be careful doing so.”
We lifted Maeven and the sled over the scraped ice where the Moon Sprite bodies had been dragged and rammed into the columns of ice. The mouth of the falls looked like a sinister white-bearded Santa Claus with broken and jagged teeth and just a few black gaping gaps in its clenched, sneering jaws. Clearly, this Santa was more suited to giving out only shovel loads of coal rather than the latest toys and gadgets.
Once inside, beneath the daggered ceiling of icicles and frosted knuckles that had not collapsed when Mason and I were contending with the pursuing Moon Sprite children, James, Begglar and I set the sled down for a quick breather. The ice berm we had climbed over had cracked, and the large pieces tumbled and clinked, but miraculously we had not lost our footing. Christie quickly checked Maeven’s wound binding in the bluish half-light as much as she was able, and strove to warm her hands and other leg by rubbing them, but Maeven’s skin was feeling cooler and cooler to the touch.
“What’s next?” Christie pivoted on her heels as she knelt by Maeven, tears of desperation forming in her eyes as she looked up at me, “I’m losing her. Please hurry!”
We picked up the sled serving as a litter again and trudged forward, towards the tunnel bend where we’d encountered our reclusive host when Mason and I first entered.
The topaz color of the water had darkened, and the wash of light rings on the ceiling of the cave merged, expanded, collapsed and folded into themselves with an eerie sort of light, as the outside world beyond the cave began to brighten with the glowing edge of the dawn.
Nell walked up to the water’s edge, staring into the swirling mix of darkling colors beginning to take shape, form, and definition while continuing to undulate and swirl.
“It is beginning,” she said, without explanation as she stared into the watery depth as something far deeper below began to bubble and froth and wisps of black oily tendrils cast a metallic sheen across the surface of the water.
James and Begglar started to lay their end of Maeven’s litter down next to this pool that occupied Nell’s fascination, but I spoke up.
“No! Not this one. The one we want is further inside, along the edge of the falls. This one is full of death. I inclined my head to a far rounded corner of the pool that had been partially hidden in shadow. The robed skeletal remains of a person hung halfway in and halfway out of the water, its hands withered but still clawing at the gravel at the edge of the pool where it once sought refuge and retreat. It’s threadbare and ragged clothes moldered and mildewed in a corner beyond its reach, not covered by dust and some viscous ooze, with a few white-capped mushrooms grew out of the folds in the clothes, somehow surviving and thriving after its former occupant’s demise.
“Eew gross!” Christie exclaimed upon seeing the body and the decomposing clothes, “What happened to that guy?”
“I think we just fought and killed a few of what happened,” I conjectured, as we continued on past the edge of the blackening pool.
The front-falls-end of the pool was too narrow and covered by frost to safely carry Maeven through to the other pool beyond, so we were obliged to carry her deeper into the cavern, where the former priestly occupants had maintained a sort of makeshift apartment within the caves. The ground had been scored and tiled with rough paver stones made of slate and limestone rock not typically present within this type of granite grotto. Other shallow water pools ran deeper into the cavern under the lowering cave ceiling, and in the torchlight, we could see the shallow bottom of stone and cave silt. Those waters were still and seemed not to be contaminated by the oil slick and black striations of the deeper pool. These were more of a wading variety and probably supplied by seepage from the river falls above.
Many other passages and stone corridors branched off the main shelf hollow beneath the frozen falls, but the glow of the dawn’s edge managed to extend into the cave through the broken and jagged holes in the ice curtain left by the pummeling of the dead Moon Sprites as they were mysteriously consigned back into the mysterious pools from which they arose.
Begglar carried the back end of the sled and James, the taller, carried the front end maintaining the incline of the wound over Maeven’s heart. We waded into the water of the declivity, careful not to let Maeven roll with the bearing as we trudged through the deeper beige mud and silt along the bottom. Christie and Nell bore the torches Mason and I had lit while exploring the cave before and the orange and yellow flames sparkled and danced up the water, and flickered with stretching and spinning shadows along the ceiling sparkling in the quartz and calcite dripping from the myriad needles of stalactites overhead. A chandelier of mid-sized and tiny daggers. Columns formed from the older stalactites that had joined their twin stalagmites building like rising mushrooms from the floor rock-strewn floor below.
We ascended dripping and wet, the beige mud sliding from our calves and feet as we topped the land bridge shore on the other side. Tiny insect-like creatures skittered away scuttling into the darkness, their carapaces pale and greyish white with a yellow cast from our firelight. These may have been a sort of crayfish, but their scattering made positive identification too difficult to discern. Dust gathered and caked our feet as we climbed upon a raised stone rib of rock pitted with small pits of mud. Nell led the way ahead and we could see the central pool just ahead, its water catching the wavering rays of our firelight. Beyond and deeper into the cave shelf, along the channel, we could hear the roar of falling water, and a grayish amber light illumined the distant pool revealing a great deal of plunging water pouring down into the underground basin from a shaft opening above it. The central pool and our desired location barely rippled but seemed to have some luminesce coming from below with a greenish-blue tint. Formation of some twisting images reflected upon its surface, much like that of the first pool we had encountered, and Nell had remarked upon. A faint sort of mist rose from the water’s surface and it was difficult to tell whether the shimmering images were reflections if this hanging mist and vapor or of something more mysterious still.
We worked our way further back onto a narrow shoreline of about six feet in dept before the rock formations rose and slanted upward to the ceiling like roots attached to the massive boles of a stand of mangrove trees. Begglar and James carefully eased the sled pallet down along the dusty shoreline and Christie and I set about untying Maeven from the cords and rough netting that typically secured the packed cargo upon the sled. Christie had loosed the tourniquet and stowed Maeven’s personal pack to the side of her. She unwrapped the water bladder she had used to seal the wound, and James knelt on hands and knees preparing to lift Maeven into the water.
“I am so worried that she might bleed out,” Christie said, looking from the paleness of Maeven’s skin and up to me.
“Not everything that happens here works as it does in the Surface World,” Nell whispered softly, “Some things operate by laws governing this land alone and everything in it. Maeven, herself had a difficult time grasping some of them as well, her being from the Surface World, as you are. Giving up some ways of thinking come hard for most people, but some things need to be unlearned before new knowledge can be gained. Just trust in the One, dear. He loves Maeven too.”
Christie looked from me to Nell and then back to me again, nodding, a tear coursing down her cheek with the strain of releasing Maeven into this strange sort of care we had of putting her into a dark cave pool. Something that would prove fatal to anyone attempting it in the Surface World. It was why those attempting and succeeding in suicide were all too often found in dead in their own bloody bathwater. Water draws from a wound the lifeblood and keeps it from being able to coagulate and clot and close up the severed vessels. Blood loss causes the victims to slowly fall asleep unaware of their final moments of life as they exsanguinate.
Suddenly the water’s surface, once smooth, serene and calm as glass, began to ripple as if something gently touched its surface somewhere out into the center of the pool some twelve feet out from the edge of the shore. Something was stirring and brushing the surface of the water, like an invisible wind that we neither felt nor saw, save in the concentric rings that rippled towards the shore.
James came up from his knees, resting his weight upon the front balls of his feet, his hand supporting Maeven’s back as he gathered her into his arms. Christie and I gently lifted her pelvis and bent knees upward, following James as he stood up with her, bearing most of the weight of her small but compact frame, and we shifted her legs over his other arm so as not to put pressure on the gash wound, now dripping with more of her lifeblood.
With pained and fearful expressions we looked from one to the other and back at Maeven. Her lips were nearly grey, and her mouth was slightly parted…and she wasn’t breathing.
Oh dear God! She wasn’t breathing.
Panicked Christie and I realized in the same moment that we may already have gone past the point of resuscitation.
“Nell?! Maeven, she’s…oh God! Dear God no!” Christie began to weep copiously and James bore an expression of pained shock, tears also coursing down his cheeks and into his short beard, as he wept for Maeven helpless to do anything more for her.
I felt like a knife pierced my heart, as I fumbled for Maeven’s hand feeling only a clammy coldness to her skin.
“No. She can’t…No, Maeven, you can’t be…” I choked on my own tears overcome with a dawning ache, that I resisted, anger clouding my vision, as a wail built inside me that made me want to scream out. I trembled as I touched her parted lips, searching for some faint sign of warm breath. Anything to deny this tragedy.
I felt Begglar’s arm behind me, and Nell gathered Christie in her arms and held her steady as she wept, her body wracked with muscle spasms and sobs.
“Hon, it is not over yet,” she whispered into Christie’s hair, “Just you wait and see.” She nodded to her husband and I felt Begglar calmly but firmly guide James and me towards the water.
“Ease her down carefully now, son. You don’t want to go and be dropping her now.”
Startled, James looked into Begglar’s eyes and saw his steady and warm gaze looking back up at him. With a deep breath, James seemed to gather a slight ember of hope from Begglar’s eyes and his tear-stained face lifted up from Maeven’s gaunt face to mine and then back to Begglar’s and gave a slight doubtful nod of understanding.
Begglar and I moved to either side of James, our hands on Maeven, caressing her as if she were a sleeping child. However, when James stepped down into the water, suddenly ribbons of light pulsed away from his feet forming patterns in the water, as James continued to progress inward and slowly let Maeven’s body down into the water.
Nell stiffed suddenly, and her eyes lifted from Christie’s hair to the shimmering images forming in the water below, circulating out from James and Maeven as they floated gently in the lapping Ghost Pool. Our minds all seemed to clarify from the pain and Christie slowly lifted her head, feeling the change in stance from Nell, turning slowly to see what was happening behind her, still gathering in her sobs, as the light began to effuse the cavern chamber and arise like glowing smoke from the surface of the water. It had been some time now since we’d had this collective feeling come upon us, but now it surged forth again, and from my vantage point I could tell Nell had at once identified where the source of the imagery was coming from. With my perception peaked as it now was, and my nerves raw, I could at last see and discern its source as well. A story emerged within the sights and sounds of the water, but from a perspective, I did not recognize as being separate from me. I felt within it a strong parental dread as I did, in a similar way, with how I felt about the prospect of losing Maeven. The story unraveling upon the waves was coming from James…and it revealed itself as follows:
The Sleeping Baby – Story #8
I stared in seething, helpless hatred, my pulse pounding, taking in short, shuddering breaths that rasped and wheezed through my tightly-clenched teeth. My body trembled in barely controlled rage as I stared into the crib and saw the quietly sleeping infant oblivious to its imminent danger.
I didn’t dare speak, tried to quiet my tremulous breathing as I carefully approached the crib, not daring to wake the blissfully unaware child. Something terrible and violent was about to happen, but I didn’t know how to begin….
[Two hours earlier…]
The night had turned cold and misty as hidden Death moved silently and fluidly through the jungle. It coasted around thick, green bamboo, hardwood cypress, teak, kyun and palm boles. Over rotting leaves, moss and jungle detritus. Between thick ferns. Far beneath the wet multi-layered canopy. An unseen hunter, deadly in its calculation and skill.
The normally warm and moist night air was now cold and gradually numbing. Unpleasant and stiffening to the muscles.
A mist had settled over the ground, barely covering the jungle undergrowth of ferns, elephant ears and flowering tropical flora. The once vibrant colors now shone muted through a grey translucent haze of wet silver. The air near the ground was slightly warmer than the moist air lying supine above across the couched foliage.
Dark, emerald eyes scanned the terrain, tasting, sensing, listening, feeling, perceiving and calculating its next move in the night hunt. It paused. Waiting in the filtered moonlight.
It knew that the pale green, moss-stained structure, just fifty yards ahead, though externally adorned with cold stone also had a heart of huddling warmth within. Ever so quietly, it made its way closer and closer to the festooning short garden of freshly turned, dew-moistened earth and row after row of now closed, brightly-colored cups bent in slumber awaiting the coming of the rising sun. Jeweled ice, silvered by the waning moon, dripped quietly from the downward turned petals and leafy fronds slithering into the thick, dark soil. Careful not to leave incriminating prints in the soft ground around the structure, the killer distributed its weight evenly along the paver stones, as it circled the perimeter, searching and seeking for the most opportune, quiet and unobserved way in.
It had seen the fat pink infant playing upon the soft green grass, during the day. A manicured patch of lawn, bordered by pieces of wood, carefully and meticulously hand weeded by the woman charged with amusing and humoring the child during the day. The small one smelled of warm milk, and some other sweet, floral and fruity fragrance. It made odd warbling noises, as it reached and discovered, crushed and dug into the fecund earth. The killer had watched the baby day after day, smelling it, tasting it from afar. And then, once again, not so far. Later, only a few feet, and eventually as close as mere inches away, beneath the rhododendron bush. A time or two it had merely missed taking it away into the forest by a few seconds of hesitation. An adult had lifted the child out of its reach, unaware of its deadly proximity. This was a mistake the killer would not make again.
The smell of sweet milk upon the baby’s breath and body was intoxicating. Hunger pangs caused the killer to unknowingly quicken its pace, and scan even more desperately for the entrance opportunity. Its warm pink naked flesh would feel good against its cold and shivering body. It realized its growing speed and tried to calm itself and temper its throbbing heart, slowing its breathing through flared and dilated nostrils, quieting its whistling breath by closing and clamping its lips tightly together.
If it moved to fast or created too much noise, it would be forced to contend with and kill the rest of the family right away. In time, it thought, If I am careful, I shall be the one to choose the order of my silent kills.
Yet the thought of the warm, sweet, fat baby, continued to work on the mind and tease the desperate dark needs of the hunter, causing irritation. Irritation that flowed into growing annoyance, streaming into ever deepening pools of desire and insatiable need. Despite how much it knew it needed stealth, its obsession with its need for the baby grew and over took its caution. In its haste, it was leaving a careless trail of evidence of its passage.
It imagined the first juice-filled bite into the pink flesh, the sweet nectar flowing over its tongue, filling its mouth with ambrosia as its teeth sliced through skin and soft, undeveloped muscle. It shuddered uncontrollably at the thought. But first, it had to get warm. It was hungry, yet its muscles spasmed under this unseasonable chill. The infant’s body was warm, filled as it was with heated blood, plumb and rounded with the swell of it. Often the baby was wrapped in a thick soft coverlet of down-like material. Similar to the breast feathers of a young bird.
Many, many birds had been surprised by him in the dark heart of the night. Awakening with sleepy eye’s expecting the return of their mother with some soft writhing morsel in her beak to further fatten them up. Only to find that they were indeed now the “choice morsels” served conveniently arranged in a rounded bowl, like canapes to the hungry predator. “May I?”, asks the uninvited guest. “Oh, yes! Certainly.”, graciously replies the oblivious but accommodating waiter. A reversal, taught by the harsh realities of the natural wild. Lessons learned but rarely if ever passed along beyond their fateful night. Only interruptions of the inopportunely returning mother, ever caused the lessons of those nights to become instructive beyond those final experiences of their siblings, as they witnessed their terrifying disappearance one by one. The order of the kill was supremely important, but it would ultimately be determined most by opportunity and proximity. The smell of the infant was distinct and lingered in the killer’s memory. Upon entering the structure, it would locate the baby first by that intoxicating smell. Night tended to slow all movements, and cause the adults to surrender themselves to the quiet darkness and await the coming of the morning. Because of this, it was quite possible, probable even, that it could take the baby into the night, without ever alerting the occupants of the house. A most desirable and perfect solution, indeed.
At last, the killer spotted it. A place of entrance. Unnoticed and very convenient. Teeth marks outlined the portal, signifying that the killer could begin this phase of the hunt with a series of warm, furry appetizers. The hunter approached the entrance, crossed the threshold and descended, not once bothering or thinking to knock politely before making its way inside. Death tended to be a very rude guest. Tonight’s raid would be no different. Experience had taught it, however, that this night’s first pre-meal reception must begin with rudely awakening and dealing first with the parent and then proceeding to eliminate their young witnesses.
[Fifteen minutes later…]
A slight trickle of blood drew a red threaded bead down over and behind the killer’s left emerald eye. It further traced an arcing smear pattern in its wake as the killer proceeding upward through the floor boards and across the white tile, moving silently through the dark house. The parent had been fierce in her protection and indignation at being so rudely awakened by him. With long incisors, she had hissed and cut its forehead, and savagely pierced its beaded flesh, cutting and stabbing deeply into him. The pain had been surprising, but it had been fully and swiftly recompensed. Five bulges rounded its elongated belly as its chilled muscles constricted and further crushed its appetizers along their inevitable digestive way.
Its body was warming due to metabolizing of its the fresh meal, but the overall chill persisted. The white, large square tile, produced its own coldness, as the killer moved silently over it, winding left and right, sensing its surroundings, orienting itself to this unfamiliar environment, seeking and planning its escape routes should it be discovered too soon.
The size of the child would be a problem. Taking it back into the jungle would be difficult enough, but it could not be done and carried out of the house through the same route it had gained entrance. Another larger exit path must be found. The killer had no idea if the noises from its raucous pre-meal reception had roused the sleepers within the house. If so, the exit options would serve to accommodate him only. The baby be cursed. Survival was preeminent. There would be other opportunities to taste the baby. Invariably, the hyper-vigilance of the parents would wane. It would only be a matter of time. Distractions and time had served the killer well. They were the sharpened tools of the killer’s trade. Holding and keeping an edge far keener than any stropped knife could ever be. Swallowing and constricting it would take hours and turn time into its enemy. Besides, digestion of a larger meal would bring on a lethargy and make its movements sluggish and slow. Also deadly if the adults were awakened too soon. The bulge of the child would also limit the killers exit opportunities, and he was not in the mood for entering a store without procuring something for itself. Too much time and planning had gone into this. Though it was used to waiting, it was not keen on waiting indefinitely. And then it smelled that familiar scent. Sweet ambrosia. Slightly soured milk and cream, and something else besides. A clean powdery fragrance, tangy, and tart. And another earthy smell below that layer. Pungent, but rich with a stench that the killer interpreted differently.
A burrow like smell, like its first nest as a hatchling, buried beneath rotted leaves and jungle earth, warming them as these organic materials decomposed. Scents of its very first home. The lower den, upon which it competed for space and preeminence with its forty three writhing siblings.
Its hatch-bearer and sire abandoned them to thrive and learn how to subdue and kill on their own. How to compete with other predators and how even to predate upon its competitors whenever necessary.
Others of its general shape and build were conveniently consumable. They did not form as many lumps within the digestive track that had to be constricted and crushed. Sure they struggled and writhed a bit when going down, but were often long dead before the final swallow. Impudent creatures. Hardly worthy of sharing their likeness. They ruled the night and napped, basked and slept by day. Few would deny that they were an apex predator in the region, greatly feared. All the land offer its bounty and tribute to them and designated them with an appellation of royalty.
[An hour and forty-five minutes later…]
I couldn’t move, could dare close my eyes and wish the nightmare away. There before me was the epitome of every parent’s worst nightmare. My child, my sleeping innocent one, cradled and encircled in the cold limbs of an apex predator.
What could I do. Every thought halted my actions with blurred and savage outcomes. If I made a noise I would awaken the baby, and the cobra would bite it to subdue its terror. If I roused the cobra and tried to remove it with a stick, the cobra would fight to defend itself and harm the baby. It seemed to be presently unaware of my discovery, for its head was hidden from view, buried underneath the warm blanket next to the sleeping baby, no doubt cuddled up to its exposed tummy and entwined within its plump legs. A mere stretch or thoughtless kick, might stir the viper. All I could do was stand there in shock and horror, as the hideous, two-meter-long serpent nestled next to my sleeping daughter. My eyes poured with silent tears. My fists clenched and unclenched at my side. My mind tormented me with the futility and helplessness of the predicament. Terror pulsed behind my eyes, throbbing in my temples as I struggled to slow my rapid shallow breaths. Helpless, all I knew to do was pray. I could not call for help from anyone else within the house, so I silently cried out in my spirit to the One in the heavens above. Mewling in desperation, I found myself whispering over and over, “Please. Please. My little girl. Not my little girl. Please spare my little girl.” I struggled not to vocalize because my voice would inevitably rise in octave and volume, pushed as it was by the force of my terror of losing her. Though blurred in vision, my eyes saw the scene tableau through bifocals, desperate for the safety of the child and seething hatred for the predator sharing her tiny bed. If I could have killed that creature with my glare alone, it would have been burnt to charred and smoking embers.
I searched for some way of interposing my body between the serpent and my child in hopes of blocking the envenomed defensive strikes and allowing it to bite me rather than her, while I snatched her away to safety, but could not see how that might be possible. My baby was too close to it. Horrifically, she stroked its long dark brown body in her sleep, smiling contentedly, lost in another reality of pleasant dreams. I stifled a cry by biting into a knuckle as I saw the serpent shift within the blanket, responding to her innocent strokes.
I had to find out where the creature’s head was. To be able to do anything at all I would have to know. I had to find a way to keep its attention occupied and focused away from my daughter. And then I saw.
My heart stopped…then skipped a beat. A King Cobra.
It glared at me with strangely luminous green eyes. I had never seen one quite like it, cold hard coal black-eyed ones yes, but never with eyes like this one, luminous and strangely sentient. It hissed loudly when it saw me, opening its hollow, yellow throat in menace. Daring me to snatch or reach for its prey.
I trembled when it looked from me and back down at my sleeping infant, threateningly flaring its characteristic black hood. Its eyes shifted to me again, following my every movement. Daring me to attempt one step closer.
I had heard of a variety of cobra that spit venom into the eyes of anyone that threatened it, but I did not think this was one of those, but I couldn’t be sure. If there was a way to get between its lethal bite and my child the creature was free to spit away at me. One way or another, this vile thing would be dead before the sun rose, I vowed to that.
But the thought of losing my girl as well… Way too much. I gasped at each second by second possibility, as the viper looked with hatred from me and with burning desire at my child.
It dipped and undulated its head, extending its neck higher and higher. Intimidating me further. Its swaying head brushed the hanging baby mobile above it, causing the small stuffed colored stars to sway and turn the dangling carousel into one additional note of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’. I held my breath not certain how the snake would react. The snake’s eyes shifted to the source of the noise, studying the dangling and swaying stars, debating. The snake stabbed me with an accusatory stare and then looked down again at my slightly stirring infant.
“Oh, dear God,” I heard myself pray, feeling like I was standing outside of my own body witnessing this terror from a different vantage point.
I could see a dark line and smear on the blanket, and a smudge on the small padded mattress that I could not register at first, but then my mind slammed me with shock. Was that blood? Had the snake already bitten my tiny baby? Was it merely waiting for her to die in her sleep while it sidled up to her curling around her as her body temperature fell to that of room temperature?
I covered my mouth to stifle a scream of rage. No! This could not be happening! Was my delayed action, merely taking away the final moments she might have to possibly be treated with an anti-venom?
In rage, I almost rushed forward, but felt my feet planted, rooted to the floor.
And then my prayers were answered. I did not know that was what was happening. I almost passed out from the terror of it, almost caused both of us to be bitten, but I was unable to move.
A voice, unexplainable, yet powerful, spoke into my spirit and commanded me:
“Be Still and Know…”
The viper’s head suddenly constricted, its muscles in its long neck pulsing and flexing. The serpent seemed to forget about the child as its body swayed unsteadily from left to right, between the dangling mobile stars. I suddenly noticed something about the snake that in my terror I hadn’t noticed before. Its body bulged in places. Mostly in one particular place, though there were the hint of some smaller places as well, already resolving back into its girth. This cobra had already had a meal prior to entering this room where my daughter slept. A faint hope sparked within me, like a tiny pin pricks worth of light. Given time and attention that tiny light will illumine the entire room.
The rat poison.
The bulge in the serpent’s body suddenly moved, though I could not tell whether the motion originated from within or due to some sort of gagging reflect of the creature itself.
The snake suddenly shuttered and writhed, seeming to become disoriented. Its body flexed and twisted and I was sure any moment the baby would awaken. Its stomach muscles around the bulge began to rhythmically flex and expand, as if its consumed meal was suddenly coming back to life and fighting to get out of its belly. With a gasp, I saw the cobra flare open its mouth, revealing and hyperextending its jaw to unsheathed two large black fangs that looked like spikes extending from its mouth. It was going to bite my child!
I started to lunge forward, arms extended, as I watched it descend with a speed I did not know was possible. Unable to speak, I saw it come down, its nasty dripping spike fully and completely unsheathed from its gums, and watched as they sung deep into its own body and the bulged that was causing its distress.
My extended arm swept the vertical plastic stem of the baby mobile, causing the wind-up music box to play a more extended bar and scale of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’. The stem snapped under the force of my desperate reach, and the carousel arms and ribbons entangled the cobra’s neck as it continued to strike at the pain in its own body.
I swept the snake upward in one motion flinging both it and the baby mobile across the room, adrenaline pumping through my veins, my heart beating like a jack hammer in my chest. Both snake and mobile crashed to the floor at the far side of the nursery, toppling the baby changing station we’d have shipped to us from the states.
I reached down and carefully but swiftly gathered my daughter in my arms and shouted to wake the house. Moments later that seemed like hours, my wife and two household guests rushed into the nursery and saw me cradling the baby. Eyes fixed and searching the floor as the light illumined overhead.
My vision had adapted to the dark and for the moment I was temporarily blinded and panicked.
“Be very careful!” I warned, “Don’t come in here. There’s a snake in the house.”
My wife began to scream and struggle to take the baby from me, but I could not let go.
“Tell me,” she begged, still struggling to get me to release our child,”Did it bite our baby?! Tell me she’s okay!!”
“There’s blood in the crib,” I stammered, still trying to focus on where the snake had gone, “I don’t know for sure.”
“Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” she cried, a wailing misery that I could not bear.
One of our guests ran for the phone to call the hospital. The other emerged further into the room from behind me bearing a large coconut splitting machete.
“Where did you last see it?” he asked, approaching the over turned changing station.
“Don’t go near that!” I warned, “I think it’s underneath there!”
My wife was weeping still trying to take the baby from me, saying over and over again, “My baby! My baby! Please give me my baby! Oh, God protect my baby!”
Suddenly, I heard the most beautiful sound I have every heard in my life and to this day doubt I will ever heard such a sweet sound as heard in that moment. My sweet baby, had awakened, startled by the commotion and was silent at first, but now she began to cry in bewilderment.
Carefully, I surrendered my precious girl into my wife’s arms as she covered her in the blanket from the crib, still partially smudged with blood. My wife and the lady guest who had called the hospital, took my little girl from the room to go check her out and follow the instructions they were being given in Burmese to English over the phone. I could hear them checking the baby for cuts and bruises. Anything that might indicate immediate danger. I heard my wife calming the baby as our female guest checked her, ensuring there were no signs of her being bitten. When I heard my wife finally exclaim, “Thank God!, Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!” I knew at last that my little girl was going to be okay. But I had my own pressing business at hand.
I remembered my vow, and asked my guest to hand me the machete.
“What kind of snake is it?” he asked, as he handed me the blade.
“It was dark, but it looks to be a King Cobra.”
He had been creeping forward, cautiously approaching the over turned baby station cabinet but now he paused.
“Cobra?!”
“Afraid so,” I returned.
“And you’re going to go at it with just a machete?”
“It’s not getting out of this house alive, Saba!”
“Yes, yes, but a cobra…chances are neither are you.”
“Not funny. Help me find it. I think it’s under here.”
“It can be bad luck to kill a cobra. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I’m not living with a cobra slithering around in this house. Don’t be stupid.”
“Okay,” he turned and started to leave the room.
“Where are you going? I need you to help me find this.”
“If that is a king cobra, as you say, I’m going to get a much longer stick. Yes?”
“Be quick about it, then.”
“Right away!”
In a moment he came back into the room with a thick bamboo pole.
“Okay, can you see if you can leverage underneath the baby station, and tilt it up, so we can see if it crawled underneath there?”
My friend did as instructed and used the small daybed close to the overturned station as a fulcrum, sliding the end of the pole between the slatted bars of the prone table.
When he pulled down on the top the station cabinet lifted and pivot, but I could see no sign of the snake from my vantage point.
“I’ll have to get closer.”
“Better you than me,” my friend grinned sheepishly.
I cautiously approached, but still could not see the snake anywhere.
I wondered how long we had been distracted while trying to calm the baby and get her safely out of the room. Had the snake gotten past us? Surely not! Oh, dear God, I hoped not!
I slowly backed away, scanning the floor looking for any other place it might have slithered off to.
“What did you see?”
“No snake under there.”
My friend said something in Burmese that I wasn’t sure I wanted translated.
He lowered the pole and twisted it loose from between the slats.
Both our hearts were racing. Veins standing out on our sun burnished arms, as blood surged through us to support our fight or flight physiological sympathetic response.
“Saba, do you think it could’ve got out of this room?”
“You’re going to give this old man a heart attack thinking like that. I think we might be getting a hotel tonight, brother Michael.”
“Funny.”
Suddenly I saw something pale slightly sticking out from under the edge of the daybed.
“Wait,” I raised my hand and then dipped it downward pointing to about three foot from the edge of his sandaled feet.
Another word in Burmese escaped unbidden from his lips as he leapt and addition four feet from where he was standing.
A slightly curling and slowly sliding tail, pale yellow underside up, extended just beyond the edge of the daybed’s pink dust ruffle skirt.
“If you don’t need me anymore, I’ll be going back to my room to change my shorts and pack.”
“Car service doesn’t run this far outside of the city, this late at night. Sorry. Cobra’s can lay up to sixty eggs at a time, so I wouldn’t advise trying to walk it.”
“In that case, I’m staying here.”
“Glad you could make up your mind so quickly,” I quipped.
“It’s a gift, I have,” he said and we both shared in a nervous chuckle.
“Want to help me scoot the bed away from the wall?”
“Nope,” he grinned, “but I’ll do it for you anyway.”
We extended the cane pole behind the edge of the daybed, and pushed it away from the wall. The serpent lay on its back, its muscles spasming with the poisonous bites it had inflicted on itself. Cautiously I approached it, trying to ready myself in case it whipped itself around and lunged upward.
Saba, my friend peered down at the snake from a safe distance away.
“That is a big snake,” he said, stating the obvious.
From what I could tell the cobra was almost two meters long. How it had gotten into the house I could not figure out. We had sealed the foundation, and the exterior was rock and mortar. The drains were fine mesh grating, that should not permit anything of that size from entering in.
“It looks like it is already dying,” he added observing the slowing of its writhing movements, now almost completely stilled.
To be certain I climbed upon the daybed and brought the machete down upon it, hacking away until I had severed its wicked head from its body. Its mouth opened and its fangs extended with each blow of my blade, spilling venom and blood out onto the floor.
I was still working out how the snake might have gotten in when I again remembered the rat poison.
A rat had chewed through one of the wooden door frames, though I did not realize that it had already dug a den further in. I had set out the rat poison on the outside of the house, because I did not want my little girl getting to it, and I had pushed it up into the hole where the evidence of chewing had occurred.
My wife had been reminding me to deal with the rats, but I had been putting it off for too long. She told me that the rats would bring disease and harm to our baby, and that statement motivated me not to procrastinate any further. I had purchased the poison pellets in town before bringing our guest up from the airport. A small investment of time and money, a minor inconvenience really, just a cautionary planted seed in the service of my family, but one that had born fruit in such a short amount of time.
The lumps in its belly, indicated that it had dealt with part of our rat problem, but most likely it had also eaten a dying rat who had ingested the rat poison I had put out the day before. If the snake had eaten the rat shortly before entering our house, probably through the very hole that the rats had chewed through the door frame, it might not have gotten sick right away. Since it was a big snake it must’ve taken time for the poison to take effect. I suggested this possibility to Saba as we cleaned up the floor and removed the snake carcass out of the house and into the dump pile beyond the garden for the scavenger birds. It was too late to burn the garbage there so we returned to the house, carefully staying on the path and shining the lantern lights around us in a wide swath of light.
Saba had watched and studied the snakes head carefully, noting its angry and dangerous expression, and was all too happy to throw it away in the dust bin and be rid of it. He pondered my theory a moment, but shook his head. “Cobra venom and certain poisons are made up of proteins, that a snake, especially one that eats other snakes can ingest and digest without causing it harm. Like our pancreas produces a deadly concoction of toxic enzymes the inner lining of the pancreatic walls are resistant to that toxicity, and so as long as these toxins are contained within toxic resistant organs like the pancreas, we are okay. If they leak into our blood stream, however, that is a very different story. The snake’s digestive track is for the most part very toxin resistant, so the chances are slim that the digesting rat’s own poisoning is the true culprit is possible but perhaps not as likely as you might think.”
“What then?”
“I noticed it had a wound on its head. Probably the cause of the blood in the crib, since there are no marks on the baby.”
“I hacked away pretty hard at it. Perhaps I caused that wound.”
“Nope. The snake was on its back when you used the machete. Your cuts would come from underneath. This wound was behind its head. Most likely from the female rat when it was attacked in its own den.”
“Are you saying the rat I poisoned is partly responsible for saving my daughter’s life?”
“Partly, perhaps, but it did ingest the poison you set out for it, and it was most likely transferring that poison back into the head of the snake when it was defending itself.”
“So, my poisoning the rat also helped kill the snake?”
“That and your prayers, no doubt.”
I pondered that a moment. A perfectly horrible series of circumstances, ordered and played out in what seemed to be a chaotic sequence of events leading to a night of terror had pivoted into a miraculous deliverance for my endangered child. The Hand of Providence was clearly at work on my behalf, our behalf even when we failed to recognize it as such.
The tale had gripped us so much that we were barely aware of our surroundings and the circumstance that led us here when the story released us all back into awareness, but somehow with the following miraculous assurance burning within our minds.
Grief knows no bounds that Providence has not foreseen and already made provision for. Somehow, despite everything we feared, Maeven might just survive to fight another day.
Excavatia 