The pillars of creation

With deliberate care, gripping the thing behind the head with one hand, Oba pressed the blade upward with his other. The tough scales, like pale white armor, resisted penetration. The snake, now under threat from Oba's deadly blade, suddenly began struggling-not to dominate, this time, but to escape. Muscular coils unwrapped from Oba's legs, sweeping across the ground, trying for purchase against roots and saplings, searching for anything to latch on to. With his foot, Oba pulled a length of the shimmering green body back toward him, preventing any escape.

The razor-sharp blade, with Oba's powerful muscles pushing it, suddenly popped through the thick scales under the jaw. Oba watched, fascinated, as blood ran down his fist. The snake went wild with fear and pain. Any thoughts of conquest were long forgotten. Now, it wanted desperately to get away. The animal put all its considerable strength to that effort alone.

But Oba was strong. Nothing ever escaped him.

Straining with the effort, he dragged the twisting, turning, writhing body up onto higher, drier ground. He grunted as he lifted the heavy beast. Holding it aloft, screaming with fury, Oba ran forward. With a mighty lunge, he drove his knife into a tree, pinning the snake there with the blade through its lower jaw and roof of its mouth, like a long, third fang.

The snake's yellow eyes watched, helpless, as Oba drew another knife from his boot. He wanted to see the life go out of those wicked yellow eyes as they watched him.

Oba made a slit in the pale underbody, in the fold between rows of scales. Not a long slit. Not a slit that would kill. Just a slit big enough for his hand.

Oba grinned. "Are you ready?" he asked the thing. It watched, unable to do anything else.

Oba pushed his sleeve up his arm as far as he could, then wormed his hand in through the slit. It was a tight fit, but he wriggled his hand, then his wrist, then his arm into the living body, farther and farther as the snake whipped side to side, not just in its futile effort to escape, but now in agony. With a knee, Oba pinned the body to the trunk of the tree and with a foot held down the thrashing tail.

For Oba, the world seemed to vanish around him as he felt what it was like to be a snake. He imagined he was becoming the animal, in its living body, feeling its skin around his own as he pushed his arm in. He felt its warm wet insides compressed around his flesh. He slithered his hand in deeper. He had to stand closer, so that he could get his arm down in farther, until his eyes were only inches from the snake's.

Looking into those eyes, he was wildly exhilarated at seeing not just brutal pain, but the most marvelous terror.

Oba felt his destination pulsing through the slippery viscera. Then, he found it-the living heart. It beat furiously in his hand, throbbing and jumping. As they gazed deeply into each other's eyes, Oba squeezed with his powerful fingers. In a thick, warm, wet gush, the heart burst. The snake thrashed with the sudden, wild strength of death. But as Oba held the quivering burst heart, each of the snake's movements became progressively more labored, more sluggish, until with one last rolling flip of its tail, it went still.

The whole time, Oba stared into the yellow eyes, until he knew they were dead. It wasn't the same as watching a person die, because it lacked that singular connection of human identity-there were no complex human thoughts with which he could relate-but it was still thrilling to see death enter the living.

He was liking the swamp better all the time.

Victorious and blood-soaked, Oba squatted at the water's edge, washing himself and his knives clean. The entire encounter had been unexpected, rousing, and satisfying, although he had to admit that it was nowhere near as exciting with a snake as it was with a woman. With a woman, there was the thrill of sex added in to the experience, the thrill of having more than his hand inside her as death entered her, too, to share her body with him.

There could be no greater intimacy than that. It was sacred.

The dark water was turned red by the time Oba had finished. The color made him think of Jennsen's red hair.

As he straightened, he checked to make sure he had all his belongings and hadn't lost anything in the struggle. He patted his pocket for the reassuring presence of his hard-eamed wealth.

His money purse wasn't there.

In cold panic, he thrust his hand in his pocket, but the purse was gone. He realized that he had to have lost it in the water while struggling with the snake. He kept the purse on the end of a thong he tied to a belt loop so as to be sure it was safe and couldn't be accidentally lost. He didn't see how it was possible, but the knot in the leather thong must have come loose in the struggle.

He turned a scowl on the dead thing slumped in a heap at the base of the tree. In a screaming rage, Oba lifted the snake by the throat and pounded the lifeless head against the tree until the scales started sloughing off.