So I lunged for it as it swept past me.

It’s not easy to grab a snake in full-blown panic, but I did. With both hands, as close to the head as possible so it couldn’t curl around and bite me. Its big eyes were wild. Maybe even as wild as my own. And I suddenly saw its black-and-white world. Felt the tight choke of a frog in its throat. Its ribs arcing like slender moons inside the dark galaxy of itself.

And I almost set it free.

But I didn’t.

I made myself hold it tight, as far away from my face as I could, as I hurried out of the washroom, back to the bedroom where my father lay sleeping. I hung on with one hand while I opened the door and tossed it inside, pulling the door shut and then leaning against it, breathing so hard my lungs hurt.

My hands trembled as they tried to forget the feel of that snake. The giantness of it.

I saw the snake’s shadow from under the door. Felt it butt up against the sill. Heard it scraping along the too-narrow gap.

I pictured it racing around the room, trying to find a way out, hole seeking, peering into the mouth of my mother’s dusty mandolin, and then, finally, slithering up the post of my father’s bed, coiling on his warm belly, its tongue flicking like a little blade, its eyes wide and anxious.

I knew that snakes only bit what they ate or what tried to eat them. I knew it wouldn’t bite someone sleeping.

I knew Esther would come in soon from the churning.

I knew she would go to my father’s room to check on him, as she always did when he’d been without us for a time, which was one of the reasons why I loved her.

I knew she would be the one to find the snake.

And I knew that if screaming could wake my father, he would wake.

Chapter Twenty

Before I left the cabin, I unwrapped two of the fish and left them for cooking. Wrapped the third in the oilcloth again. Put it back in my pack and took it out into the yard.

“He’s not inside,” I said to my mother, who was scooping butter out of the churn and into a bowl in Esther’s hands.

“Then go find him,” Esther said.

I held up my pack. “I’m taking a fish to Mrs. Anderson to trade for eggs. I’ll look for him on the path.”

My mother nodded. “And then bring him straight back for lessons.”

Which my mother gave to me and Esther and Samuel nearly every day, rain or shine, summer or winter, sick or well, and no argument about it, not that we were likely to give her one.