Each time I exhaled, she cinched tighter; she knew me. It was intimate, sensual; she melted into me, compressed me, made me smaller. I could feel her reading my muscles, mapping the suck and hush of blood in my veins; planning every bone she would snap and crush, the iridescent diamonds of her flesh whisper-dry, and I didn’t care if she kept going, it just felt so good, but one more turn and she would encase my belly.

I need to do something now, I thought. Now. This is my baby; if I can’t care about myself, I must care for this child. Omar’s child.

Her breath singed my face with all the sweetness of decay, as I thought, Come on, Lily, this is happening, do something. I remembered Omar telling me snakes smell their prey with their tongue; hers snapped in and out, ever faster, sniffing my fecundity. My ripeness seemed to enrage her. Quickly she looped herself once more around my belly, squeezing tight as if to pop me like a balloon, head raised in ecstasy.

I woke the next morning—the first day of the fourth week Omar had been gone—to the shrieks of macaws, their cries so heart-wrenching it felt like the end of the world every single day. Of course it had all been a dream; still, I couldn’t explain why my body ached, or the bruises that throbbed on my thighs. From the doorway of our hut I watched a vulture swing up and down over the river, a deathly black cutout against the pale blue sky.

I was beginning to give up.

And then I heard his voice.

The relief was chemical; his voice among the others down by the boats made something break and re-form in my chest. I was desperate to run to the shore, but dizziness overwhelmed me and I had to sit and wait for it to pass.

He crashed into the hut, arms and chest still streaked with mud and blood from the hunt. He threw his arms around me and pulled me to my feet, stroking my hair, crying. Why was he crying?

“Lily, you’re alive. Thank God, thank God,” he sobbed. “Are you all right? Tell me you are, tell me the baby’s okay.” His wide, strong hands read my belly.

Stunned with relief, I couldn’t speak as parts of myself glued back together with the knowledge he was alive.

“I killed an anaconda last night,” he said. “I had to. He was hunting me.”

His eyes searched my face like there was something I should know about this.

“Lily, they mate for life. They come after your mate when you kill theirs. They hold grudges. It’s a spirit thing, they travel in other worlds.”

I told him about her crushing weight, her breathtaking power, the bright green scales hissing across my flesh, the wonder and terror of her visit. He listened closely, nodding, serious, his handsome face a map of exhaustion and relief. As the words tumbled out of my mouth, I felt myself giving in; believing, finally, that everything in this place was magical and connected, that nothing here was happenstance. That my child’s life depended on opening my eyes and heart to this new world.