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The serpent followed. It did not speak again; instead, it wrapped its body around my father’s ankle.
Adah screamed and kicked his foot frantically, almost dropping me as he struggled. He grabbed a fallen branch and started beating the snake.
“Don’t hurt it!” I squealed. “Adah!”
Freed from the serpent, my father ran faster than before, pounding deeper into the jungle.
The rain had ended. Mist layered the trees, and faint gold sunlight streaked across the graying sky. I only noticed because Adah ran hard and had to stop often, his chest shaking as he breathed. His back was slippery, and my hair became drenched with his sweat and odor. At some point, I craned my neck up for fresh air.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Quiet.”
The chill in Adah’s voice startled me, and I fell silent.
At last we came to a valley with a great clove tree at its center, ringed by flat white rocks. Elsewhere in the jungle, trees wrestled for space, their branches snarling against one another for a mere brush of the sun’s nurturing light. But this crooked tree was alone. Not even gnats or dragonflies or mosquitoes dared to encroach here. As soon as we approached, they flittered away from Adah’s skin, done with him.
Adah set me down on the largest rock. Rain and sweat glistened in his beard.
“Stay here,” he said.
“Are you coming back?”
“I will come for you in the morning.”
He would not look at me as he said this.
“Adah….” I began to cry. “Don’t go!”
“Stay, Channari.”
At the sound of my full name, I made a whimper and crouched obediently.
The rock’s face was cool and dry, shaded by the tree’s canopy. As Adah turned back the way we’d come, I gathered my knees to my chest. In the distance I saw a family of monkeys climbing a tree. One of them had a baby on her hip, and I thought of Mama on that bed, screaming. Mama had never allowed me to enter the jungle before. Why was I here now?
“Adah!”
He’d left. The bushes still rustled, betraying his proximity, but no matter how I howled “Adah! Adah!” he did not come back for me. I was alone.
Well, not completely alone.
Birds chirped unseen in the trees. Centipedes and other mites skittered across the dirt around the clearing. Then the serpent—the same one that had attacked Adah earlier—appeared.
I backed away from it fearfully as it slithered across the rock. Its eyes glittered like emeralds, and its bright red scales were stark against the watery sunlight.
“Come with me,” said the snake.
I flinched, but not because the idea of a talking snake surprised me. I’d heard enough about magic and demons not to be frightened by such creatures. What made me hesitate was that this snake had tried to bite Adah. I couldn’t trust him.
“Go away.”
“Follow me,” the snake said. “Angma is coming.”
Though I was very young, a chill swept down my spine when I heard that name. Mama had told me about Angma, always in the same cautionary tone she used to warn me when Adah was in a foul mood.
“Long ago,” she’d begin, “Angma was a human witch whose daughter was stolen from her. In her rage, she was transformed into a fearsome demon, wandering the earth in search of her daughter. She devoured babies to maintain her immortality and strength, and sometimes, when a child was offered freely, she would grant a favor in return.”
Such as saving my mother’s life—or so Adah must have hoped.
