Serpent of Life

Water flowed slowly, yet powerfully, around and past Reto. The surface was painted green with the reflections of trees, towering over its mirror. His father’s canoe put a thick wooden wall between him and the liquid forest. Its embrace made him feel safe, able to move with the strength of the river, as part of it, rather than against it. Dipping his oar gently below the surface, he swirled the images into a mess of murky debris and glided forward. The great river, the Rio Amazonas, mother of all things and giver of life, fell before Reto’s oar strokes. His body, and the wood in his hands, married with the current to become one. He took a deep breath of the drenched air, cooling it with his lungs and sighing it back out into the oven that was the rainforest. Then closed his eyes and shook his head in defeat. He was ready to give up. A week of searching and travelling, in near constant motion downstream, and still he had found nothing. He had seen much of the wild ways, just not what he was looking for. If the Yacumama, the great serpent, still wished to speak with him, she would need to wait for his return on a future day. He had failed in his mission to track her down.

Reto directed his father’s canoe toward the muddy shore. He gracefully pulled in and braced against one the mighty roots of an ancient mangrove tree, being careful to keep a decent space between him and the land. There were many dangers in the forest. Perils he would rather avoid. Caution was needed on the water too, but there, at least, he had an inch of dug out Mahogany between his bare legs and anything that thought to strike them. It was always wiser to stay on the river - a lesson taught to all the young. Reto reached down and fished through his pack. He had just enough food for the return journey. Water was never an issue. As long as he could filter it of the brackish material that contaminated it. The land was always trying to push its filth on the waters. He could have ventured onto the soil to forage for more food, but it felt wrong to do so. As if touching his toes to the dirt would void any chance he had of speaking with the first anaconda. So, he nodded to himself, proud to be making the wisest choice, and spun the nose of his canoe about. The way back, paddling upstream, would be hard on his already tired muscles, yet it would be nothing compared to the pain to come. Arriving home as a failure, would be humiliating at best. He would be lucky not to be cast out of the tribe for his actions.

Darkness eventually began to fall, much to the relief of Reto’s biceps, which were straining hard against the current. He pulled into the side of the great river once again, just before the start of a large bend in the track of the serpentine flow. He tied up tightly to another tree that stretched bravely out into the torrent and stowed his oar. Looking out to where the sunset fell into the river, Reto marvelled at the gift that Yacumama had blessed the earth with. The winding bends of her body had formed the great water course itself and birthed the plentiful forest that had sustained his people for generations. Yet if his dream was to be believed, all he could see before him, was about to change. The green anaconda had sent to him a message. Something was coming, something monstrous. Disaster, incarnate. It rode toward them upon the waves of the great ocean. Only something of immense power could do such a thing. Something even more magnificent than Yacumama herself. So, he had come to her call, searching for more information, wanting to know how he should lead his people to safety. Only to find her completely absent. Reto sighed another heavy breath and looked to the stars.

“Where are you…” He whispered, “I have come, against my father's wishes, taking his canoe without permission. I defy my chieftain and all the elders! All to serve the vision you sent! Some vague impression of danger. A glimpse of an unnamed beast. I could use a few details…I need more Yacumama…”

Nothing answered. All he heard was the usual sounds of the forest. The insects chirping, the parrots screeching and the branches shaking under the grip of some arboreal creature. He dropped his head again, as the sun dipped below the surface of the water, drenching him in darkness. Laying on his back, Reto settled himself in the bed of the canoe and felt the rhythm of the water, rolling him from side to side. His eyes closed, and he fell into an immediate sleep, comforted by the embrace of the river.

Reto’s eyes snapped open. It was still night. The moon had risen and cast a white glow across the flowing river. Mosquitoes danced where it touched. But something sounded…wrong. A movement of the river that was not normal. He sat bolt upright, readjusting the headdress of feathers that bound his long hair away from his face, and scanning through the shadows for the source of the sound. A seething of the river caught his attention, the force of the water surging against the canoe, pushing it to one side sharply. Reto jumped into position, straightening the cloth around his waist and taking up his oar in a tight grip. He looked down at the patterns of his tribe, black and red against the white of the material, and knowing something important was coming, whispered a promise.

“I’m sorry for my disobedience father. I promise that I did this for our people, out of love and protection. I’ll see it through. If this is her…I will treat with the mother. Then I’ll do all I can to return alive, to complete my pledge.”

Reto sucked in a lungful of air, still warm, despite the hour, then pushed the boat out onto the open water.

Even in the low light he could see the turmoil on the river. Rising waves fell away from a central point. One that was moving toward his position at speed. Something enormous lurked beneath the surface and was displacing immense amounts of the liquid. He could feel thudding vibrations through the soles of his feet, as debris in the deep collided and battered against itself. He could hear the waves lapping more quickly against the shore. He noted the silence in the trees. Still, he rowed forward, determined to meet the creature that approached. He was wary, concerned at what it could be, but hiding a secret excitement. Despite the danger, this could actually be her...it could mean success. He may not need to return to the tribe ashamed after all. His breath came quickly, and his arms powered the canoe forward with vigour. It was both fear and adrenaline that held his eyes wide. As he slid into the direct path of the approaching arrow of moving water, he stowed his oar and stood on wide feet, raising his arms in both welcome and submission to a primal god of the Amazonas. In response, it burst from below in a torrent of spray. The waterfall of liquid that erupted before the creature seemed to rise and fall in slow motion. Reto’s jaw dropped low, and his smile fell with it, as his mind comprehended what was emerging before him. It was not the Yacumama.

Thick, ridged skin of pure white filled the sky. Burning red eyes locked on to Reto from above. He felt minuscule and insignificant in his tiny boat. An opening maw displayed rows upon rows of sharp teeth, each the size of the canoe itself. The long snout of the enormous albino caiman moved to point toward Reto with the sole aim of devouring him. There was no time to do anything but drop to his knees and vainly attempt to claw backwards. But there was nowhere to go. As the monster of a reptile reached the peak of its leap and began to fall in a death dive. Just as Reto expected to die, another creature leapt from the depths. A second, gigantic, scaled head shot from beneath the churning water to slam directly into the neck of the attacking caiman. It hit with a boom that rent the air. Both fell sideways and missed Reto’s hardwood canoe by a vast span. The boats thick walls no longer seemed so protective under the weight of such creatures. He watched, eyelids pinned open to the spectacle, as the great green anaconda of the river flowed her long body endlessly in an arch through the air, pushing the caiman back under the black, boiling surface. Reto grasped the edges of his boat, hanging on for dear life, as it was thrown from side to side, water spilling into its belly. The waves seemed to grow larger and more violent, buffeted him around like a feather in the wind. He ducked his head down and managed somehow to get a grip around the handle of his oar, pulling it into position and trying to get some control of his movement. All around was a maelstrom of writhing water, spray and the solid walls of scaled bodies. The darkness only added to the chaos. The young Amazonian caught few glimpses of recognisable shapes. The caimans tail, thick as the largest mangrove tree even at its tip, rose high into the sky, slamming down and sending half the river into the air to scatter the moon’s light in a thousand directions. Endless coils of Yacamama’s long body rose and fell from every direction, tensing and constricting, pulling this way and that. Reto could only attempt to stay upright and prevent his tiny canoe from capsizing, shifting his weight, pushing with his single oar and praying that the serpent would protect him from harm. Eventually, the water fell eerily still, and as the last of it peppered back down from the sky into its usual home, all went silent. Reto snapped his head back and forth, searching for signs of more danger. His senses heightened and buzzing with panic. It did not seem possible that such titan creatures could simply disappear. The river slapped against his hull as it steadied. The only sound left in the night was his own panting, fear-soaked breath. Until a sudden and inescapable rumbling rose from directly below, and an impossible impact sent him flying from the safety of his father's canoe, straight into the murky depths.

Reto thrashed, kicking and reaching in all directions as he tumbled through the suffocating embrace of the river. Once calming and reassuring, its grip was suddenly too tight and assuredly deadly. He lost sight of which way was up, everything was the same level of darkness, striped with shafts of moonlight that seemed to come from all directions. Thick dirt, sticks and leaves choked his skin, and everything melded into a foreign world of impenetrable soup. In his panic, Reto could not think, could not reason and was consumed with nothing but an instinctual fear and insurmountable desperation to breathe. The water held him, gods of nature surrounded him, and he was powerless before it all. How foolish he had been to seek an audience with a source of strength beyond his reckoning. His flailing hands brushed a surface, then his scrambling fingers found a purchase out of nowhere. Smooth and warm, came a scaled body that pushed up against his legs and pressed against his palms. It gave him a reference, and he found himself standing upright, half suspended by the river, his headdress long gone but his body feeling as though it belonged to him once more. Out of the darkness toward him, steadily pushed the immense flat nose of Yacamama. Her bright yellow eyes followed close behind and her arrow shaped head settled slowly into the centre of a cutting shaft of moonlight. She held there, watching Reto intently as he rested against her body, growing hungry for a gulp of air. Despite his situation, Reto found himself ignoring his instincts and gazing into those enormous eyes. He was transfixed by the gentle power of them and found a strange comfort in her attention. She hovered, calm, and inquisitive. Her head moved slightly from side to side, harmonising with the eddies of the river. Then, as quickly as before, that gaping maw of teeth emerged from the darkness behind her head. Before Reto had even the chance to register what was happening, the savage creature slammed its jaws closed around the mother of the river’s throat and dragged her away into its pitch-black depths. The Yacumama was ripped from the Amazonian’s sight. One last flick of her serpent bends, the moment before she was taken, sent Reto flying uncontrollably upward, where he broke the surface at speed and was immediately falling through the air, away from the immense reptile's battle.

Completely spent by the surreal encounter, Reto dragged himself over the edge of his father's canoe and fell into its bed on his side. He swept the water away that clung to his face and hair and gasped in shock and exhaustion. When his body allowed him a moment to think, his eyes roved the stars above and he whispered to them once more.

“Yacamama…” He wept, “I understand. I wish I didn’t. But I know now how important your message was…and how futile. The time of our people is over. The time of the river is spent. The white ones come to devour and take all that is known.”

He sat upright between the wooden walls of his boat and stared across the perfectly still waters of the life-giving river. Placing his palm against the surface he prayed thanks to the serpent that was caught in a fight for her life, all to defend her children. His people. He knew deep down, she was going to lose. It was just a matter of time. So, he cried a promise to the waters, hoping she would hear him.

“I am sorry I cannot not save you, green anaconda. I will do all I can to preserve your legacy. Perhaps there is yet something we can retain from the albino. Perhaps the white caiman and his people will not take it all? Yet, I see how his power exceeds your own. I will warn them. I will fight for what I can save...just as you do.”

Reto picked up his oar, and ignoring the pain that wracked his muscles, began paddling for home through the night. Determined to convince his father of the danger that was rapidly approaching their shores.