Naamah's Blessing

paddling.
    We drifted sideways alongside the herd. They ignored us. Rising carefully to one knee in the narrow vessel, I picked my target and took aim at a big, fat, well-fed fellow. I thought to myself that he would make a meal for all of us, and if I were quick, I might even be able to kill two of them.
    Before I had a chance to loose my arrow, the water erupted. To call the creature that emerged a snake didn’t begin to do it justice. It
was
a snake, but it was far, far bigger than any snake I’d ever seen in my life, as long as two of our canoes placed end to end, a thick, sinuous, shining length of mottled yellow and black.
    I let out a scream.
    Everything seemed to happen at once. The snake lunged at the fat
capybara
I’d chosen as my prey, sinking its teeth into it and twining around it. In a trice, it had the creature wrapped within its coils.
    The canoe rocked violently to one side as all of us recoiled in shock, then pitched hard to the other as everyone overcompensated in an effort to stabilize it. If I’d been seated, I daresay it wouldn’t have mattered, but I was kneeling and unbalanced, and the momentum flung me overboard.
    I hit the water. It was churning with the force of the snake’s attack, the flight of the other
capybaras
, the splash of my impact. Underwater, the snake’s yellow and black coils rotated before my open eyes through the rising sediment, impossibly thick.
    Flailing backward, I got my head above water and found myself face-to-face with the serpent, its dull eyes regarding me impassively above the jaws locked onto its prey. Having a good rapport with animals, I’d never been one to harbor an unreasonable fear of them, but the suddenness of the snake’s attack and the incomprehensible enormity of it, coupled with my very, very vulnerable position, struck terror into my heart.
    In the canoe, everyone was shouting. I felt hands grasp beneath my arms as Bao and Balthasar hauled me forcibly into the canoe.
    “Go!” Bao shouted to Brice de Bretel in the stern. “Go, go, go!”
    Paddling frantically, Brice managed to propel us some yards away, the canoe rocking dangerously as the others scrambled to regain their positions. I sat on the floor of the dugout, gasping and shuddering, my bow still gripped in one hand.
    Behind us, the snake unhinged its jaw to an unholy degree as it commenced the process of swallowing its prey whole.
    That night at camp, the giant snake was the topic of much discussion. Temilotzin was disgruntled. “You should have killed it once it began to feed,” he said to me, making a chopping gesture with one hand. “Cut off its head. That is when they are the least dangerous.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said humbly. “We didn’t know.”
    Temilotzin pointed at the three men who shared his canoe. “After we passed you, I tried to make them turn back so I could do it myself. But they pretended not to understand.” He jerked his chin in disdain. “They were scared.”
    “We all were,” Bao murmured.
    Eyahue assured us that the giant snakes very rarely attacked humans. “Unless you’re stupid enough to fall right on top of it,” he added, laughing at his own jest. “Lucky for you he already had his prey! Too bad, though.” His expression turned rueful as he rubbed his sunken belly. “We could have been eating meat.”
    “I’m sorry,” I repeated.
    “How did you not see somewhat so big?” Denis asked me.
    “I don’t know,” I admitted. “If I caught a glimpse of it, I must have thought it was a log. I was concentrating on the
capybara
.”
    “None of us saw it,” Bao agreed. “It wasn’t Moirin’s fault.” He stroked my hair. “Please do not frighten me so again.”
    “Believe me, I’ll try not to.” I sighed, rotating a skewer of sizzling grubs over the campfire. “Gods bedamned snake! I had a clean shot, too.” I glanced over at Balthasar, who was unwontedly quiet, his arms wrapped around his knees, trying to suppress a shiver in the warm evening air. “Will you not try them, my lord?” I entreated him, holding out the skewer. “Just once?”
    He shook his head. “I’m not that hungry.”
    “How can you not be?” one of the men grumbled on the far side of our campfire. “Name of Elua! Send them my way, won’t you?”
    “You’re not well,” I said softly, ignoring the complaint. “You need to eat and keep your strength up.”
    Balthasar lifted his head and glared at me. Famine had whittled away at his beautiful features