“Please. I can’t do it without you.”
Ezra stared down at the snake in fear. He was still a solid hour’s walk to the next village and several hours from home. If the snake bit him he probably wouldn’t make it very far on foot, and even if he did there were still miles of forest between him and the nearest people. Ezra wasn’t afraid of the snake biting him though. Not anymore. He was afraid of the snake talking to him again.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” the snake slithered back a few inches.
Snakes don’t speak. Snakes cannot communicate with humans in any decipherable language. Ezra thought back to the food he had eaten earlier in the day and wondered if perhaps the berries he had picked possessed any hallucinogenic properties.
“I know it’s a lot to take in and I really wouldn’t have asked you if I weren’t so desperate…”
But this snake was talking to him. It was raspy and soft but clearly the same language. The snake even paused to nod its head at appropriate intervals- it was thinking and understanding.
Slowly Ezra crouched down to be closer to eye level with the snake, hand still outstretched to maintain the distance between them.
“Don’t come any closer,” he whispered. How ridiculous. He was talking to a snake. Even more ridiculous, the snake nodded in response.
“So...so let me get this straight. You’re...not a snake?”
“Not at all,” replied the snake
“And...you need my help?”
“If you’d be so kind.”
Ezra looked down at the creature. It was quite repulsive. Black beady eyes stared back at him as it’s head remained eerily still over it’s slowly coiling body. It was a dark green that almost would have blended in with the fallen leaves if it weren’t for the flecks of gold in it’s scales that caught the sun every time it drew a breath. Ezra had never much liked snakes, and he didn’t expect this to change anytime soon. He was also not generally inclined to ignore somebody in need of help, which unfortunately for him was not about to change anytime soon either. He let out a deep sigh.
“Alright. I’ll do it.”
The snake hissed and curled in response.
“Brilliant! Thank you!” It slid closer to Ezra and looked up at him.
“My name is Damien, by the way.”
The snake traveled fast for its size and Ezra was glad at the pace they were keeping. He still had to get to the village by sundown if he were going to make his delivery on time. They arrived at the cave within a few minutes. The entrance was narrow, little more than a jagged crevice in the rockface.
“In there.”
“In there?”
“In there.”
Damien nodded his head. It was a strange thing to see a snake nod its head in reassurance, and not nearly as reassuring as Damien must have thought it looked, but Ezra pitied the creature and pressed forward. He slipped his right arm and leg into the crevice and tried to maneuver the rest of his body into the cave. The opening was barely as wide as he was and sharp in places.
“I’m not sure I can fit in here,” he paused to breathe a second, half of his body still outside the cave.
“It’s much bigger on the inside, and you’ll have no trouble getting back out, believe me.”
Pushing all the air out of his chest Ezra flattened himself and shoved his weight against the side of the opening until the rest of his body tumbled into the cave. He lay on the ground panting and heard Damien slither in behind him.
“It’s pitch black in here,” mumbled Ezra, trying to catch his breath.
“Give yourself a second.”
Ezra lay on his back in the darkness trying to orient himself. As his breathing slowed, he saw far above him a faint star. To the left of it another star, barely brighter. The longer he lay there the more stars he saw.
“Are those…?”
“Glow worms,” replied Damien “they’re all over this place. Quite helpful really.”
As Ezra’s eyes adjusted to this new light he saw just how vast the cave really was. He was in a cavern larger than his own home, the ceiling and walls aglow with the light of thousands of the luminescent creatures.
“This way,”
Ezra had almost forgotten his reptile companion in the excitement of this new place. Slowly, he tore his eyes away from the galaxy above him to follow the snake as they made their way deeper into the cave.
“I was thirteen...I think I still am. I don’t really know.”
They were making their way deeper into the cave, having followed one of the several tunnels leading out of the main cavern.
“I still feel thirteen, but it’s been a long time. Maybe years. Maybe a lot of years.”
Damien paused for a second as though he hadn’t thought about this in a long time, then continued on.
“We followed her home. It was pretty easy actually, she left the marketplace at the same time every day, and then one day we just left with her,”
“With her? With the…?”
“The witch, yes.”
Ezra nodded, though he wasn’t sure Damien could even see him in the dark.
“We were following at a distance though, hiding behind trees and bushes...It was stupid really, but we thought ourselves clever.”
The floor of the tunnel began to slope downwards and Ezra used the wall of the cave to steady himself as they pressed on.
“The plan was to wait for her to fall asleep, and then one of us would sneak in and steal the amulet,”
“The one she wore in the marketplace?”
“Exactly. The one she wore every day. Everyone had a story about the amulet- some people said she used it to control the weather, others said it gave her eternal life. I remember one boy told me he saw her using it to make people’s hair fall out,”
He let out what Ezra could only assume was a chuckle.
“We waited for a long time outside her house. She lived all the way out in the forest, and there was a lot of noise inside for an old woman that lived alone, but we didn’t think anything of it. Not until the sun set did we start to actually consider what we were doing. It all seemed so much more real in the dark, and the noises from inside seemed less funny.”
Damien was quiet for a moment, and for the first time Ezra pictured him as the thirteen-year-old boy he might have been.
“I’m sure you’ve already figured out which of us went into the house. I thought myself brave at the time...it was pretty easy to get in. Nothing was even locked, I walked right in. It seemed like a fairly normal cottage- I’m not sure what I was expecting, but there was nothing out of the ordinary, a small dining table, a rocking chair, a couple of paintings on the wall. The amulet was on a table, I remember that just sitting there next to a candle and a couple of flowers she must’ve picked earlier. I grabbed it- I had it in my hand- and I was almost out when I heard it.”
“Heard what?”
“...Something. I...don’t know. It was like a quiet humming but I couldn’t just hear it, I could feel it too. I knew the sound, like a song I had heard a long time ago but couldn’t quite remember. But it wasn’t music, it was like...like a call. I felt it in my skin, in my blood, I could taste it in my mouth even, and it was calling me.”
They had reached a ledge on the wall of the tunnel and Damien nodded towards the top.
“We’re going up there.”
Ezra, having almost forgotten where they were looked up at the ledge and sighed. It wasn’t going to be an easy climb. He had almost gotten his footing when Damien brushed up against his leg.
“I, uh...I might need some help.”
He moved closer.
“The rocks on the ledge are pretty sharp...Coming down will be easy but I’ll get cut if I try to pull myself up.”
Ezra looked up at the ledge. He was right, the very rocks that would make Ezra’s climb easier would probably cut Damien’s underside.
“If I could just…?” He slid right up to Ezra, who held out his arm. Slowly, Damien wrapped his body around the arm. He was cool and smooth and made his way up to Ezra’s shoulders in slow, powerful coils. Ezra let out an involuntary shudder.
“Sorry...it’s strange, I know.”
“It’s fine,” He began to climb, though it didn’t feel fine at all. He tried to distract himself from the discomfort of the slowly winding body on his arm, “What about the noise?”
“It was coming from behind a door,” he continued from somewhere close to Ezra’s ear.
“There was a light too, dim, but something was definitely there. I should’ve left. I was almost out. But there was something about that call that was...well it was like it was part of me. I had to find out what it was.”
Ezra grunted as he pulled himself higher up the ledge.
“I opened the door and there were stairs leading down, I couldn’t see how far. The noise got louder the further down I went and I couldn’t get it out of me, it was in my fingertips and my feet, it moved my legs forward towards it.”
They were almost at the top of the ledge now.
“I don’t know how long I was walking those stairs but it felt like I had been listening to this song my whole life, the noise was in my head and it was all I could think and see and smell, and then the stairs stopped and I was in a room and the noise was louder than I’d ever heard, and she was there. Just standing there. Waiting for me. I dropped to my knees, unable to stand the ringing of the call in every part of my body and she just stared at me. She didn’t move, didn’t say anything, she just smiled...She was still old but she looked stronger than she had in the marketplace, and I realized the light was coming from her, a faint green glow that somehow made the rest of the room seem even darker.”
Ezra pulled himself up to the very top of the ledge where Damien slithered off as he struggled to catch his breath. There was a little spring at the top of the ledge, bubbling quietly near the cave wall. Damien made his way over to the spring.
“This is it.”
“What happened with the witch?” asked Ezra as he made his way over.
“The...the witch? Oh, yes, the witch,” He seemed distracted now that they had finally reached their destination.
“She didn’t say anything at first. She just started laughing, and I think that was probably the scariest part. It was a shrill, echoing kind of laugh that shook her whole body...I wanted to run but I couldn’t figure out how to move. I heard the door slam behind me and the laughter stopped. She looked at the amulet in my hand and just smiled...and then she started mumbling something under her breath. It wasn’t really words, they were more like sounds...she was quiet and still at first but she got louder and started shaking, she was screaming these sounds that started seeping into my lungs, she glowed brighter as the noises burnt my skin, until...until…”
“Until?”
Damien looked up at Ezra.
“That’s all I remember. I woke up here, like this,” he nodded to the rest of his body, his scales looked almost black under the glow of the worms, “it took me a while to find my way out on my own.”
“And so...the spring? What happens now?”
Damien stared at Ezra for a long time before looking back at the spring and answering.
“Do you see that light?”
Ezra looked deeper into the spring. It was barely wide enough for a person to stand in, and looked to be about waist deep. At the very bottom of the spring he saw a faint green glow.
“Is that…?”
“The amulet, yeah.”
“So...you want me to grab it for you?”
Damien nodded.
“It’s the only thing that can change me back. I would grab it myself but…”
He moved towards the spring as if to go in and the water started hissing and frothing. Ezra could feel the heat from where he stood and knew it was boiling. Damien retreated and the water calmed.
“I see. So I just grab the amulet and bring it back up to you?”
Damien nodded. Ezra positioned himself over the water. He figured that he could probably reach it if he kept his knees planted and just reached in with his top half. Damien nudged him gently as he readied himself.
“Ezra...thank you.”
Ezra smiled at the snake, glad he had taken a chance on the creature. He took a final breath and plunged his head into the spring. It was colder than he had expected, and the bottom was further than he had realized. He pushed himself deeper into the spring, his knees leaving the ground until his whole body was in the water. The glow grew brighter as he reached out his hand, he could see it clearly now, a small green crystal on a leather string at the very bottom. With a final push he was able to grab it. No sooner had his fingers closed around the amulet than the water started bubbling and the crystal started burning him. He dropped it, but the burning didn’t stop, it was all around him, the water was boiling, and he was fully immersed. He pushed off the sides of the spring but he couldn’t find the surface, he couldn’t see and he couldn’t hear, all he could do was feel his flesh withering away in the heat.
Slowly, Ezra opened his eyes. He was back on the cave floor, not on the ledge but in the main cavern. He tried to lift his head but he felt strange, he was weak. Sitting across from him was a boy about his age, with black hair and green eyes.
“Ezra are you okay?”
Again Ezra tried to nod his head, but he couldn’t quite figure out how.
“I’m so sorry. It was the only way…” The boy was wearing Ezra’s clothes.
“You’ll remember the story I told you, and you’ll tell it to somebody else one day…” The boy was sad, he looked to the entrance of the cave and back, as though he couldn’t decide if he wanted to stay or leave.
Ezra tried to call Damien’s name, but no sound came out.
“You’ll find your voice soon, I promise, it just takes a little practice.”
The boy looked back towards the entrance and Ezra began to panic. Damien crouched down to be at eye level with Ezra.
“I’m not the boy from the story. I don’t even know if the boy that told me was the boy from the story, but the curse is real.”
He stood up, and started towards the cave opening.
“I brought you back up here so you don’t get lost in the caves,” he called as he tried to squeeze his body through the opening. Ezra stared at his friend in disbelief as the truth finally washed over him.
“It’s not all bad, being a snake, I promise.”