I tightened all my muscles, forcing her to exhale as she screamed. Her ribs were near the breaking point, I only had to apply a little more pressure. I imagined curling the bicep I no longer had to apply even more force. It felt good, so good to crush her, to feel her heart thump hard and wild in her chest, beating against the pressure I applied.
A pain in my side caught me off guard. She somehow managed to get one heavy claw up to rake my body, leaving a bloody gash along several ribs. The woman-bird thing had caught on; she knew to fight and to fight a serpent. I clamped down more tightly on her throat though I could not crush her windpipe. She was still too human in that part of her body for me to close my jaws enough to collapse it. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw not a beak, but a mouth full of small pointed teeth - more reptilian than bird - and she was twisting her head around so as to grab me near my jaw.
I let go of her throat and before she could make a move, lunged at her eye. I caught her on the eye socket, my lower jaw settling into her jawbone. By clamping down, I was able to pin her mouth shut with my own. I hoped I could also take out her eye but my angle was such that I could not tell. Her screams were high-pitched instead of the guttural sounds she’d made before. She countered with a swift knock of her wing shoulder, knocking the air out of me and the gash she’d given me pushed fire through my entire body. The blow shocked me and I let go, falling backward off of her face though my body was still wrapped around her. Using her claws, she loosened my grip, pushing me away, stepping to the side.
She was panting and ruffled her feathers. I’d turned over to face her once more, I was going to kill her. I lunged again, but she hopped backward. A deep-throated human laugh came from her when I lunged again and she sidestepped my attack. I was furious and kept lunging toward her, each time she let me think I would make my mark only to be mistaken.
“Well, serpent,” she said, her voice not entirely human but still I could understand her, “are you ready to give up? Can you not see that we are at a standoff? You cannot harm me.”
I spoke but only air moved in my throat. I thrashed my tail, hoping to show my anger in the sound of shaking bushes. We had fought to near the pool below the waterfall and she looked sidelong at the rocky edge. I flicked my tongue, smelling my way to face her again. But my rage blinded me, and it was too late as she picked up a rock with one claw and brought it down hard on my head. The world was red but I didn’t black out. Perhaps because my jaw slid sideways as she struck the blow, allowing my brain to move with the thrust instead of taking the full force of it. I lay still, trying to recover from the double vision and the pain greater than any headache I’d ever encountered. I saw her let go of the rock. She let back her head and crowed - half laugh, half bird screech. She thought she had killed me. She kicked at me, breaking ribs. She grabbed me by the tail and flung me over onto the boulders. I couldn’t defend myself. She thought I was already dead, and if I didn’t regain my strength and senses, she would kill me before I could kill her.
But with each blow, I found my entire body aflame, my eyes could not focus. I could barely flick my tongue, my one true sense of what was happening or about to happen. The blow to my head must have been more than I thought because I could not make sense of anything around me or happening to me. She just kept finding ways to beat me.
After one mauling, she stopped, perhaps exhausted from her rage against me. Out of the one eye that had not swollen shut, I watched her move away from me and toward Toci. She was going back to do something to Toci. She clucked softly, as if speaking only to herself, her gaze focused on my friend. I could not move, pain sliced me head to tail.
I thought I was coming to my end when I saw flickering light coming from the woods. We had been fighting long enough that I thought it was dawn. But when I focused, it was a flicker, not rays of sunlight. Not a single flicker but flickers, growing brighter. Lights morphed into torches. The smell of humans. Shouts and commands. There were people coming to the clearing.
Running from between the trees were women.
The first was Upsee - a club raised in her hand - shouting like a banshee, running toward the bird-woman. Her crew filled in the spaces behind her, brandishing sticks or rocks or whatever they could find, bearing down on us. I wanted to scream that I was not a beast! I am Betty! But snakes have no voices. Their raised hands were ready to beat me to death, the fire from their torches reflected in their widened eyes. I writhed in terror and pain, how could I make them understand I was Betty?
“You will kill the serpent,” I heard the bird woman say as Upsee backed her toward me, her crew circling us, “then we will celebrate our victory over her with wine. You will like my wine.”
I knew what she was doing but I had no voice to warn Upsee and her crew. I could only scream in my own mind, “I am Betty! I am Betty!” over and over, wanting them to see me not the serpent I was. The pain intensified along the length of my body, I felt bones cracking and ligaments stretching as I had when I became the snake that now lay dying and likely smashed with rocks and sticks by the women who would not know who I was, who I really was.
The bird woman kept talking to them, desperately using her trickery as their circle tightened, their torches illuminating the ugly grin the bird woman tried to command to her face, her voice a mix of squawking and pleading. Instinctively I tried to raise my hands over my head to protect myself from blows I thought were sure to come at any moment. I felt the heat from the torches and the women’s panting breath from running through the forest.
But no blows came.
“Tis Betty!” I heard Upsee shout to the woman standing next to her. The woman shouted back, “It’s Betty, not a snake!”
“Look, she’s changing back to herself,” another shouted though the woman next to her didn’t flinch as the other shouted directly in her ear.
With my arms I pushed myself into a halfway upright position. With my arms. I had arms and hands and fingers. My throat was hoarse but I spoke, “I am Betty. Yes, I am Betty.”
“WHAT?” Upsee shouted at me. It was then that I saw she had stuffed her ears with cloth. So had her crew. She was not tricked by the bird woman because they could not hear her. In this moment of recognition, the bird woman had slowly backed her way away from the circle.
“The Harpy! No escape for that there monster!” Upsee said as she realized what the bird woman was doing. They left me, chasing after her. I was alone in the dark, able to hear the terrible thumping sounds, the grunts, the gurgling, strangled cries of a bird, a woman attacked, as Upsee and her crew found the Harpy.
They came back, clutching feathers, some attached to clumps of flesh. Blood spatter like tie-dye splashed across their shirts; smiling wicked, frenetic, manic smiles. One carried an unconscious Toci over her shoulder. Pain and relief mingled in me, mashing my thoughts, making the world, the stars, their torches whirl around me. I wanted very badly for everything to go black. And that is exactly what it did.