How did I talk to a rattlesnake, even when I was one?
My companion coiled his body round and round, the movement mesmerizing. The triangular head lifted, darting forward until we were eye to eye.
Seer.
The word appeared in my mind, a thought not my own. I waggled my own three-sided head.
Listen and understand.
Listen? A bit hard without ears, but I got the concept. There was some kind of telepathy involved here. Maybe all animals had it.
Telepathy? the voice whispered. What is this?
Sharing of thoughts.
Yesssss. I come to share with you the thoughts of all earth’s creatures.
All?
The snake zigged one way, then zagged in the other. All who matter. Those who follow the path of good.
Snakes follow the path of good? Wasn’t there a little incident in a garden?
The bone-chilling rattle sounded. I wasn’t afraid. I had a rattle of my own. Just thinking of it made my tail buzz, and I got a head rush very much like adrenaline.
Not all snakes follow the dark man. Are all women as foolish as Eve?
Point taken.
Our rattles stopped buzzing.
You must fight the fight, seer. Only you can thwart the coming end times.
Why me?
Who is to know why this one is chosen and that one is not? You have the power, and you must use it.
What if I don’t want to?
Then you must live with that choice, or die from it. Only those who truly embrace what they are, who commit to the fight, can succeed.
And if I can’t? If I fail?
All will suffer. Not just humans, but beasts as well as breeds. The horrors to come will be as nothing you have known or imagined. You must do whatever it takes to become who you were meant to be, and then you must do whatever necessary to win. There will be sacrifice and pain. There will be choices.
Choices. I’d never been good at them.
The rattlesnake’s head lowered. Its body swirled, round and round, unwinding from the coil, then sliding rapidly across the dirt until it disappeared beneath the bush where the mouse had been.
A scratch, a scramble, then a sharp squeal. Silence.
The temptation to follow, to see if perhaps there was more than one mouse, was nearly overwhelming. But there was also that large, warm-blooded presence nearby.
Sawyer. He waited.
I imagined myself myself, and I was.
Well, not quite like that—shazam, I was me. But first hot, then cold, silvery light all around. Up I went; there I was.
Sawyer sat cross-legged next to the fire. He’d removed the rabbit. The scent was heavenly. My stomach contracted so tightly I sneezed. Or perhaps that was just the chill on my naked skin or the remnant of my blood having cooled. Quickly I dressed.
I joined Sawyer, and without comment, he handed me a plate of meat. I was so hungry I didn’t mind the lack of utensils. I shoveled it in with my fingers, barely chewing. I couldn’t recall anything ever tasting so good.
When I was finished, he took the plate, rinsed it in the lake, and began to pack what was left of his things.
I wasn’t sure what to say, so I fell back on the easy questions. “What’s the point to snake shifting? I mean, I understand the power of a wolf, a mountain lion, the shark. But—” I waved vaguely in the direction of his crotch.
“Did you feel the warmth of prey wash over your face?” he asked. “Did you know, despite the lack of sound, where everything was?”
“Yes.”
“Rattlers are pit vipers; we have pits below our nostrils to detect warm-blooded beings. Even in the dark we will find our prey. We can slither into places no other beast can, often undetected, and survive where warm-blooded animals cannot. Just by rattling our tails, we make all living things run.”
It creeped me out the way he said we, but I was also oddly pleased. I felt connected to him. There was no one like us in the world.
I shook off the pull of that connection. I didn’t want it.
“Is there a way to make all these powers go away?”
“All of them?” Sawyer sat next to me on the bedroll. “You don’t want the power you were born with?”
“I never did.”
“Let me guess. You want to be normal?” I nodded. He sighed. “You aren’t. We aren’t.”
“Couldn’t I be?”
“There is such a thing as destiny. You were created the way you were for a reason. You were meant to be who and what you are.”
“What if I don’t want to be?”
“Did it occur to you that if you don’t follow your destiny, if you become the normal woman you think you wish to be, the world you wish to be normal in will no longer exist?”
There was that.
Hell. The snake had said there’d be choices, but in this case there weren’t. Not really.
My life had changed at Ruthie’s; I had changed, and fighting against that change was not going to bring my other life back. It hadn’t been all that great anyway.
Sawyer stared into my face. He must have seen my capitulation, because he stood. “Time to travel down the mountain.”
“But I haven’t—”