Jennsen strained with all her might, using the roots to try to pull herself free. She cried out as living coils wrenched her around, breaking her grip on the roots, and flipped her onto her back. She frantically reached behind, splashing, groping, trying to snatch for another handhold. She reached, then stretched again, catching hold of thick roots with first one hand and then the other just in time to prevent herself from being dragged under the water.

The head came out of the depths to slink up across her stomach, as if to inspect its stubborn prey. It was the biggest snake Jennsen had ever seen. The body, covered in iridescent green scales, shimmered in the weak light as muscles along the powerful trunk flexed. The light intermittently played gleaming stripes along the length of it. Black bands sweeping back across the fierce yellow eyes made it look as if it were wearing a mask. Red tongue flicking, the dark green head glided up between her breasts, coming for her face.

Crying out, she shoved the head aside. In response, the muscular body twisted and contracted, grappled with her, drawing her out into the deeper water. Jennsen's fingertips held fast to the roots. With all her might she tried to pull herself out of the water, but the snake was too heavy and too strong.

She tried to kick her legs, but the snake had them both, now. The coils compressed, tugged, and dragged her in deeper. Coughing up water, Jennsen fought panic that clawed at her, just as fiercely, just as tenaciously, as if it, too, were a thing alive.

She needed her knife. But to get the knife, she would have to let go of the roots. But if she let go, the beast would pull her down under the black water and drown her.

One hand, she told herself. That was all she needed, one hand. She could get her knife if she let go with one hand. But as the unrelenting snake undulated, steadily working itself up her body, gripping her now around the middle, her panic locked her fingers all the tighter to the root.

As the broad flat head of the snake emerged from the water and once again began slinking up along her body, Jennsen gripped the root as tight as she could in her left hand. With desperate resolve, she let her right hand go and thrust it in under her cloak. Wet cloth bunched as she pushed. She couldn't get under it. The snake's jaw pressed against her chest, as if to let her know that next it was going to compress her lungs so she couldn't breathe.

She sucked in her stomach and pushed with her fingers, trying to get them in under the snake, but the heavy body squeezed with paralyzing power against the length of her torso, preventing her from getting her hand in under her cloak to get her knife.

As she struggled madly to get to the weapon, wriggling, worming her fingers, the snake suddenly lurched, lifting heavy coils higher, pinning her arm to her body.

With her one hand, she still tightly gripped the root behind. The weight of the thing, though, felt as if it would pull her arm from the socket if she didn't let go. She was absolutely certain that letting go would be the worst thing she could do. But the weight was too much. The snake was pulling her so hard that she feared the skin was going to strip from her fingertips.

Despite her best effort, she felt her fingers slipping from the root. As tears of pain stung her eyes, she had no choice. She let go of the root.

She plunged into the dark depths of deeper water. Her feet at last contacted the bottom. She used her momentum to go where she was pulled, letting her legs bend, and then with strength powered by terror, she pushed off the submerged roots. As her body flicked around, she seized the roots on the far side.

The snake rolled with her, turning her on her back. She cried out as her shoulder twisted, But in all the movement, the splashing, the rolling, the choking on water, there was a brief opening in the snake's grip on her. She didn't waste it. She seized the silver handle.

As the broad head, with the thin red tongue flicking, was again coming toward her face, she brought her knife up, wedging the tip of the blade up under the snake's jaw. The snake paused, seeming to recognize the threat that the razor-sharp point represented. Both were still, staring at each other. She felt giddy relief to at last have her knife in hand, even if it was a deadlock.

She was on her back, lying in water with the heavy snake wrapped around her. She wouldn't be able to balance or use her weight to help her. Her arm was weak from the struggle and ached from being twisted. She was exhausted. With all that working against her, it would be no easy matter to dispatch an animal so big and powerful. Even if they were on dry land, such a task would be difficult.

The yellow eyes watched her. She wondered if it was a venomous snake. She hadn't yet seen its fangs. If it went for her face, she wondered if she could be quick enough to stop it.

"I'm sorry I stepped on you," she said. She didn't actually believe the snake could understand her; she was, in a way, talking to herself, reasoning out loud. "We've both scared each other."

The snake remained stone still as it watched her. The tongue remained inside the mouth. Its head, lifted several inches by the tip of the knife, could probably feel the sharp point. Maybe it conceived the threat of the blade as a fang. Jennsen didn't know, she just knew that it would be better not to have to battle such a creature.

She was in the water, the snake's domain, and out of hers. Knife or no knife, the outcome was not certain. Even if she killed it, the weight of the creature, its coils locked around her in a death grip, could still drag her under and drown her. Better to part without a battle, if possible.

"Go, now," she whispered with deadly seriousness. "Or I will have to try to kill you." She lifted the point of the knife to make herself understood in a language she was more confident the snake might possibly understand.

Her legs began to throb as she felt the constriction ease. Inch by inch, the head drew back. Scaled coils loosened and slipped away from her body and legs, leaving her to feel suddenly buoyant. Jennsen followed the head as it backed away, keeping the point of her knife under the thing's jaws, prepared at the slightest sign of threat to thrust with all her strength. Finally, it slipped back into the water.

As soon as she was free of the weight, she scrambled up onto solid ground. She rested on her hands and knees, knife gripped in her fist, gasping for air, getting her breath, letting her frayed nerves settle. She had no idea what the snake thought, or why, or if the same thing might work in another time and place, but this day it had and she whispered a prayer of thanks to the good spirits. If indeed they had anything to do with her deliverance from death's scaly grip, she didn't want to fail to express her gratitude.

With the back of her trembling hand, Jennsen wiped tears of fright from her cheeks before rising up on shaky legs. She turned and looked out at the still black water lying beneath the overhanging leaves and mosses. In retrospect, she recalled her feet touching submerged roots. Looking back at the expanse of water she had crossed, she could see that perhaps the water had risen a few feet to cover the ground there. Maybe the land had sunk. Either way, if she had just carefully walked through the shallow area, rather than tried to jump to the root-turned-snake, it might have proven much less troublesome.

On the way back, she planned to cut herself a walking stick to help her wade through the low place, to feel ahead, and she would take care not to step on a snake.

Still catching her breath, Jennsen turned back to the dark way ahead. She had yet to get to the sorceress's place, and she was wasting time standing around feeling sorry for herself. Sebastian needed her help, not for her to feel sorry for herself.

She struck out once more, soaked to the skin. Fortunately, though it was winter, it was warm in the swamp. At least she wouldn't freeze. She remembered being wet when she and Sebastian fled her house after the quad murdered her mother.

The ground was mere inches above the expanses of stagnant water, but, with the profusion of roots woven through it, firm enough to hold her weight. Where the water came over the ground, it was only for short expanses and shallow. Even though the water was only inches deep, Jennsen stepped carefully, watching that the roots just below the surface were not lurking snakes. She knew that water snakes were some of the most dangerous. A poison snake, even if it was only a foot long, could kill a person. Like a spider, the size was immaterial if its venom was deadly.

She came to another area where steam rose from fissures in the ground. Colored deposits, mostly yellow, crusted around the openings where the vapor rose. The smell gagged her, and she had to seek a way around that would allow her to breathe. The brush was thorny and thick.

With her knife, she was able to cut several of the heavier branches and make it through to a shelf of rock against a rock wall. Following the narrow ledge, she skirted a dark pool of water. The surface moved with slow ripples as something beneath followed her movement. She kept her knife to hand, trying to watch her footing and keep an eye out for anything that might lunge at her out of the water. When she grabbed for a handhold and loose rock came away, almost making her lose her footing, she threw the rock in the water at the thing she couldn't see. It continued to follow her until she reached the far end, where she was able to climb up onto higher ground that took her into dense growth of tall shoots with broad leaves.

It reminded her of moving through a field of cornstalks. Off through the stalks, she could see slow movement. She didn't know what it could be, but by the size of it, she didn't want to find out, and picked up the pace. Before long, she was running through the thick growth, dodging stems and ducking under branches.

The trees grew in close again, and she was soon back to treading among the tangle of roots. They seemed endless, and progress was agonizingly slow. The day was wearing on. When she came to open areas, or at least open enough, she trotted to save time. She had been in the swamp for hours. It had to be close to the middle of the day.

Tom had told her that he thought it might be a day of travel in and back out of the swamp. But she had been at it so long that she began to worry that she might have missed the sorceress's house. After all, there was no telling how wide the swamp was. She could easily have passed it by and never have seen it. She began to worry that that was exactly what had happened.