Teranesia

He started stabbing wildly at the snake’s body, bringing the knife down from high above his head. The blade bounced off its skin. He collected himself; he was wasting his energy splashing up water. He put both hands underwater and drew the knife up towards his belly with all the strength in his arms and back, seppuku in self-defence. The knife burst through the leathery hide and sank up to the hilt. He tried to drag it along, to make a cut, giddy for a moment with triumphant visions of flaying the snake from head to tail. The knife wouldn’t budge; he might as well have tried to split a tree trunk this way. He pulled it out, and repeated the thrust that had proved successful. As the blade made contact, the snake shifted again, and the knife went spinning out of his hands.

He bent down and fumbled for it. The snake jerked him off balance, immersing him completely. He groped across the mud, but he couldn’t find the knife. He lifted his face up, arching his back to get his mouth out of the water, spluttering for breath. The tell-tale wake was passing in front of him again; the snake had almost completed a second coil. Grant might be able to reach its head. She might find a way to attack it without risking her own life.

And if she couldn’t?

She wouldn’t martyr herself. And if there was nothing she could do, and he died in front of her, she wouldn’t be crippled by the experience. She wasn’t a child.

He filled his lungs and bellowed, ‘Gra-a-a-ant! Help me!’ The snake had finally worked out how to drown a biped: Prabir could feel it change the tension in its muscles, skewing the angle of the coils, forcing him down. He tried to fill his lungs again while he still had the chance, but the constriction around the bottom of his ribcage stopped him dead half way through; it was like hitting a brick wall.

Then he went under.

Prabir lay beneath the water, no longer struggling, faint lights dancing in front of his eyes. This was all wrong: he should have died in the minefield of the garden instead. The first blast would have been enough to kill him instantly; no one would have had to follow him in. His parents would have grieved for the rest of their lives, but they would have had Madhusree, she would have had them.

Suddenly he heard a loud, rhythmic splashing noise. It wasn’t the snake turning hyperactive: someone was beating the water with a heavy object. The timbre gradually changed, as if the water was being struck in successively shallower locations. Then there was a resounding thwack, wood against wood.

The snake’s muscles slackened perceptibly. Prabir fought to raise his head. He caught a shallow breath, and then a glimpse of the lower half of someone standing on the shore. Not Grant: a woman with bare dark legs. The snake twitched back to life and jerked him down again. The beating sound resumed, ten, fifteen powerful blows.

As he struggled to snatch another mouthful of air, Prabir heard the woman slip into the water. He didn’t question his sanity: he knew he wasn’t hallucinating. As he turned the strange miracle over in his head, he felt no fear for her. Everything would be all right, now that they’d been reunited.

The woman said urgently, in bad Indonesian, ‘You need to work, you need to help me! It’s only stunned. And I can’t pull you out on my own.’ Prabir forced himself upright, fighting the passive weight of the snake. The woman wasn’t Madhusree.

She helped him loosen the coils enough for him to climb up on to her back. He didn’t seem to have any broken bones, but he was even weaker from the ordeal than he’d realised; she carried him like a child to the water’s edge, then manoeuvred him on to the ground before she clambered out of the water herself. She picked up the heavy branch she’d used to bash the python senseless, then reached down and hauled him to his feet. ‘Come on. Back from the water before we rest. It won’t be out cold much longer.’

Prabir staggered after her, still holding her hand. His teeth were chattering. He said in English, ‘You’re a biologist, aren’t you? You’re with the expedition?’

She frowned at him, and replied in English. ‘You’re not Moluccan? I knew there were no villages here, but – are you a scientist?’

Prabir laughed. ‘I must be, mustn’t I?’ Stick to the cover story. His legs collapsed.

She crouched beside him. ‘OK. We’ll rest for a bit, then I’ll get you back to base camp.’

‘What were you doing here?’