Father Hawk nearly jumped when he noticed the twelfth shadowsnake. It was a speedy creature that tore through the water, practically galloping. It drove itself down and below the lake, arching its back before diving in. Then, it would almost immediately thrust itself back up the water, moving through the air in an arc, before crashing back below.
As it did this, the water exploded and flattened in thick curls of foam, thicker than any caused by the other snakes. The water seethed with quick repetitive movements, louder than the other snakes.
The snake appeared for mere seconds and disappeared as soon as it had appeared.
“Now!” said Sunjata, louder than before and more urgently, no longer whispering. Father Hawk looked at him, moving his eyes away from the lake. Sunjata was looking at him intently with frowning eyes. He raised a wing and nudged Father Hawk gently. He didn’t remove his wing. The six other Eagle comrades stared at Father Hawk expectantly with calm faces. Their eyes slightly squinted, as if they were curious as to what Father Hawk would do.
“It is time,” said Sunjata. He spoke in a level voice, quietly, but no longer whispering. “We walk to the edge of the treetops and you will dive forth as soon as you spot a snake emerging. You mustn’t hesitate for the snakes. Do not stay above water for long. Though they can swim underwater for long, they cannot keep going without periodically rising above water for air. These are fleeting moments and as soon as you spot an emergence, do not hesitate. Dive forth and soar quickly to snatch the creature. As soon as it is in your claws, fly up and we will follow behind and intervene if the snake gets close to biting you. You must be firm and wrestle it to submission. The creature will grapple with you to try to escape. You mustn’t let it. If it does, we will fly back here and move to a different treetop on the perimeter.”
Sunjata paused and a silence ensued, broken up by rustling leaves in the trees.
“Are you ready, Hawk?” he asked, eyeing Father Hawk with his intensely frowning eyes.
Father Hawk opened his mouth. He looked back at the lake. The fast snake was gone, but he spotted the thin dark tail end of a snake disappearing below far away. For all he could see, the lake was a placid oasis of grey stillness.
“Yes,” said Father Hawk with an air of thoughtful decisiveness, ending off at a high pitch, as if he was wondering at his own decision.
“Then move!” ordered Sunjata. He pushed Father Hawk forward and Father Hawk followed the movement, rushing to the edge on his claws. There was the rustling sound below of the other Eagles following behind, their claws brushing the leaves.
When Father Hawk reached the very edge of the treetop, he constricted his claws, clamping on the leaves bordering the edges. They were held up by wooden branches that snaked around below.
His eyes widened and he scanned the lake intently once again. His eyes strained under the tension and weight of his own eyelids, folded in frowning concentration.
He looked all across, noting the slow ripples and wavering in the water and their thickness, height, duration. He looked at folded white lines, shining under the faint sun, cloaked by grey clouds. He noticed how it was the line edging the top of a crest that shone brightest. He saw how the glow dissipated as the thin crest flattened, sunk. Then, the glow split apart, highlighting newly formed crests of thin grey waves.
They could have just been the breeze or wind. Or the slow and rarely lapping waves of the water itself. Most of them probably were one of those two just because most of them were slow and quickly melted away, almost as quickly as they had appeared.
But Father Hawk had paid enough attention to the lake to know that there were going to be ripples large and long lasting enough to be signs of snakes.
He spotted a crest emerging to the far right, larger than the rest. It was towards the right, but stayed close to the center, far enough from the lake’s bank.
Father Hawk leaned over ever so slightly, so as not to fall over and peered intensely. The crest, bobbed, waved. But it didn’t waver. Didn’t melt away. Suddenly, the beginnings of a black line emerged from the end in front, squirming out as its body rose up, cutting through the edge of the crest.
Father Hawk’s eyes widened and the soles of his feet pushed up, making his claws clamp down harder, tearing a few leaves off their branches.
Sunjata’s breath moved right behind Father Hawk and his wing lightly touched Father Hawk’s back. But by then, Father Hawk decided to push off. Sunjata’s wing moved on Father Hawk’s back with his fall, but in seconds, Father Hawk was plummeting far below Sunjata’s touch. The air and wing rustled him in his plummet. Father Hawk spread open his wings, riding on the propulsion of air.
He tucked his head and tilted his wing, turning their front below, and their back up. He tilted his whole body to the right, eyes locked on the snake above the water.
Below was the stillness, interrupted by a whirlpool of the snake’s movement. The water gurgled, frothed and rippled around its path.
Father Hawk swooped, diving headfirst for the snake.
He neared the snake and its slimy thickness revealed itself. It was actually a very dark shade of grey and under the faint sunlight, tiny spots of reflected light danced all over its wriggling body.
Father Hawk soared within mere inches of the snake and caught soft susurrant whispers that, despite their low volume, pierced Father Hawk’s ear with their repetitive sing-song pattern.
“Sssssssssssssssssssssssiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii………………….ooooouuuuuu……………..Ssssssiiiiiiiii……….Ssssoooo……Sssssssssssssssssssssssiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii………………….ooooouuuuuu…………”
Father Hawk’s concentrated frown wavered for a bit and his eyes widened warily as his descent seemed to slow in time. The hissing whispers were eerie, unsettling and venomous in their weakening hold on Father Hawk, entering his body like fumes, breaking his concentration.
The sounds stopped as the grey snake dipped its head into the water and began slithering back under.
Father Hawk could hear the flapping of his Eagle comrades above him and that broke him out of his uncertainty. Animals behind him. For him. Supporting him. Father Hawk had them. He could do this.
Father Hawk dropped his claws and dipped them into the water, clamping down on the tail end of the snake which was still on the water’s surface.
The lake was chilly and its sloshing frigidity swamped his feet. But his claws were quickly back up in the air.
The water below splashed excitedly and came up in foaming spurts above the bent, rippling surface due to the snake’s ceaseless writhing, twisting and slapping on the water.
“Hurry!” screamed Sunjata. “Wrestle it to submission! Flap! Flap! Fly away!”
Father Hawk clenched harder on the wriggling snake, feeling it grow limp in return. He flapped harder and he swung his body to and fro, rising substantially with each thump of his wings.
At this lake and amid these trees where all was quiet and mostly still mere seconds ago. Where critters sulked behind bark and under plants. Where creatures of the water bathed and dominated below a still surface only interrupted by the most momentary of gentle ripples.
Here, the scene caused by Father Hawk was a thunderous storming ruckus. Waters splashed and churned where the shadowsnakes had attempted to escape from Father Hawk.
Determined, he flapped as hard as he could and lifted his head to the sky, only allowing the jagged tips of leafy green treetops to enter his vision.
The shadowsnake’s hissing returned. It arched its neck around from below, bending its neck to look at Father Hawk and began flicking its tongue.
Father Hawk panicked and held the shadowsnake down, clenching harder on its scaly grey body. He pressed as hard as he could with his claws and inadvertently, pushing his claws forth, away from himself, his flapping wings moved backwards.
By the time he noticed his backwards movement, it was too late. His second of hesitation brought on by his observation cost him flight and Father Hawk immediately flapped frantically. His wings beat speedily, but in a shorter depth.
He dug his claws into the flesh of the shadowsnakes and shook his feet, trying to disorient it. The snake’s head jiggled in stiff movements. In the shaking, the hissing blared in intervals, whenever the snake’s head whipped towards Father Hawk.
Nevertheless, the hissing was deafening and earsplitting. It consumed his hearing, penetrating it. Father Hawk could hear the shouts of his Eagle comrades, but their language was unintelligible to him over the noise of the hissing.
When the hissing practically became a gushing, overwhelming sound, the water beneath the ripples repeatedly and then suddenly burst into arrays of bubbles, fizzing, popping and always reappearing. From underneath came a gurgling sound. Seemingly thousands of spuming bubbles dotted the water. They were steaming grey warts and heat emanated from them.
His vision fuzzied, first at the edges, then slowly centering across. Eventually, he was rendered sightless except for blurry masses of sifting colors. Black and white objects danced and waved across his vision around a thin writhing black snape. The Eagles were wrestling with the snake which appeared to be in a wild dance for a bite of Father Hawk.
Father Hawk writhed almost as much as the snake he clutched. He jerked, twisting his limbs and torso and flinching every time the snake’s head bent towards him, whether it bent up, around or under. However, with time, Father Hawk weakened and slowly grew tired.
The bubbling turned to a deafening roar and the hissing to an electrifying, overwhelming crackle.
One of the black and white masses of the Eagles screeched and opened its beak, baring it at the shadowsnake. The snake hissed and flinched, turning its head back. As soon as its head was positioned away from the Eagle, he grasped at the snake’s body.
The heat below grew stronger and more immediate. Father Hawk was flapping, slower and slower. The weaker and less forceful his wings became, the closer to the boiling water he got. And the closer to the water, the weaker he became, befuddled and scorched.
The hot wave baked his back and shooting droplets of froth seared his feathers, inflicting a burning sensation that crawled all over.
Meanwhile, the Eagle who’d grasped the snake had managed to tighty clutch it, squeezing it. She was supported by two other Eagles, one who had grabbed hold of its middle, and the other who squeezed its neck. They were all positioned to the right, keeping away from a flailing and trashing snake head that hissed through a wide open mouth. The hiss was high pitched and coarser in its helplessness.
The Eagles flapping around the three Eagles pulling at the snake, yelled something to Father Hawk, but it was completely drowned out by the desperate and frantic hissing of the snake and the roar of the nearing water.
The battle was blurring to Father Hawk every second. He made out a long red bar flicking out of the snake’s head, but what he identified as its tongue soon narrowed to a thin red blur.
Panic. Fear.
“What am I doing?”
Father Hawk barely flapped his wings. The lower part of his body slumped, nearing his proximity to the water.
The hissing snake and roaring water seemed to be fumes for his ears, wrapping around his mind and intoxicating him with melancholy and vexation.
“I knew I couldn’t do this.”
He was being immersed in a bath of hot air. And the more he bathed, the more fearful he became. The closer he got to the water, the angrier he became. The more helpless he felt.
He hated Mother Hawk for pushing him away with her misery and anger. The winged shapes and the squirming line of the snake turned into nearly indistinguishable blurs. Finally, the frenetic shapes of the black and white Eagles lifted off with the snake, wrangling it out of Father Hawk’s claws. He had finally let go when he grew tired of the Eagle’s tugging.
A series of barking noises pierced the day, breaking through the clamor around Father Hawk.
He knew he couldn’t resist. Who was he? Not an Eagle trained from birth.
He was nothing but a foolish god, broken of his goodhood.
The bubbling water and its roar overtook everything else, cutting off the barking.
Father Hawk fell.
The world above him washed over. Flying water covered the edges of his sight and singed the bottom of his body.
And most of all, Father Hawk decided, he hated the Huntsman.
The shadowlake’s frothing waters of darkness submerged him.
G.R. Nanda 