The pillars of creation

She had thought drowning would be the sweet embrace of gentle waters. It was not. It hurt worse than anything had ever hurt. The feeling of helpless suffocation was horrifying. The pain crushing her chest was sharp and unbearable. She desperately wanted it to stop. She struggled in the water against the pain, the panic, consumed with the urgent need of air. Her throat was locked tight, terrified she might gasp in water, so badly did she need a breath.

It hurt.

Jennsen felt the coils of the snake under her, touching her, caressing her. She wondered if she should have tried to kill it when she'd had the chance. She supposed she could pull her knife, now. But she was so weak.

It hurt.

The coils pushed against her. In the silent darkness, she had stopped struggling. There was no reason.

Jennsen.

She wondered why the voice didn't ask her to surrender, the way it always did. She thought it ironic, since she was at last resigned, that the voice didn't ask, but only called her name.

Jennsen felt something bump her shoulder. Something hard. Another bumped her head. Then her thigh.

She was being pushed against the bank where the roots went down into the water. Almost without realizing what she was doing, she seized the roots and pulled with sudden desperation. The thing under her continued its gentle push up.

Jennsen broke the surface. Water sluiced off her head in a sudden rush of sound. Mouth open wide, she gasped wildly at the air. She pulled herself up enough to throw her shoulders up onto the knotted roots. She couldn't drag herself the rest of the way out of the water, but at least her head was up, and she could breathe. Her le s dangled, drifting, floating in the water, Panting, with her eyes closed, Jennsen clung to the roots with trembling fingers to keep herself from slipping back into the water. The desperate pulls of air felt wonderful as they filled her lungs. With each breath, she could feel her strength returning.

Finally, inch by inch, hand over hand, pulling against the roots, she managed to drag herself up onto the bank. She flopped on her side, panting, coughing, shivering, watching the water lapping only inches away. She felt giddy with the simple joy of breathing air.

She saw then the snake's head break the surface, easily, gracefully, silently. Yellow eyes in the black band watched her. They stared at each other for a time.

"Thank you," Jennsen whispered.

The snake, having seen her there on the bank, seen her breathing, seen her living, slipped back into the water.

Jennsen had no idea what it had thought, or why it hadn't tried to kill her, again, when it had an easy chance at it. Maybe, after the first time, it thought she might be too big to eat, or might suddenly fight back.

But why help her? Could it be a sign of respect? Maybe it simply viewed her as competition for food, and wanted her out of its territory but didn't want to fight her again. Jennsen had no idea why it had pushed her to the surface, but the snake had saved her life. She hated snakes, and this one had saved her from drowning.

One of the things that she had feared most had been her salvation.

Still trying to catch her breath, to say nothing of recovering her wits after coming so close to passing through the veil into death, she began moving again, on her hands and knees, crawling up higher. Water ran from her clothes and hair. She couldn't get to her feet, yet, didn't trust her legs, yet, so she crawled. It felt good just to be able to move. Before long, she had recovered enough to stagger her feet. She had to keep going. Her time was running out.

Walking revived her further. She had always liked to walk. It made her feel alive again, like her old self. She knew she wanted to live. She wanted Sebastian to live, too.

Huff ying through the tangle of vines and thorny shrubs, over the twisted roots and among the trees, her worry eased when she came at last to the place where the rock began to rise up from the mossy ground. She started up the spine of rock, relieved to have found the landmark among the trackless swamp and to be climbing out of the wet boggy bottom. It was getting darker by the moment and she remembered that it was a long way up. Jennsen desperately didn't want to spend the night in the swamp, but she didn't want to be scaling the spine of rock in the dark, either.

Those fears spurred her on. While there was still light enough, she had to keep moving. When she stumbled, she recalled how in places the ground dropped off precipitously to the sides. She admonished herself to be more careful. No helpful snake would catch her if she plummeted off a cliff in the dark.

While she made her way up, she kept going over in her mind everything that Althea had told her, hoping that something in it might be helpful. Jermsen didn't know how she could get Sebastian out, but she knew she had to try-she was his only hope. He had saved her life, before; she had to help save his, now.