A whoosh of cold water stroked the flesh of my calves. Something had changed. My eyelids fluttered closed, and I prayed to any gods who might have been listening. Anna kept calling out to me to look at her, but I couldn’t anymore. I had to know. Forcing the rest of my body to remain still, my neck almost too stiff to move, I lowered my chin in the smallest increments of movement I could summon—just enough to let myself look down—and opened my eyes.

The eel had completely lost interest in the basket and was swimming between my legs.

A few of the women splashed up to their ankles in the shallow section. Jumping and screaming, they smacked at the water with their hands, with pots, pans, gourds, anything they could find.

I dropped my eyes again.

The eel continued to figure-eight around and between my legs and the basket.

With a howl, Doña Antonia tossed out the still-live fish on the cord; this time it plunged into the water next to me, its saucer eye bulging with panic. In a surge of dark purple rage, the eel burst out of the water inches from my elbow and clamped down its prehistoric underbite on the doomed thing. Five feet of eel smashed down as the women grabbed the cord and pulled, screaming at me to run.

After forcing stillness into my legs for so long, it took a few horrid seconds to get them to move again. Abandoning the basket, I lunged toward shore. Dresses glued to their bodies with sweat, Doña Antonia and two other women screamed encouragement to one another as they wrestled with the beast, tug-of-warring it long enough for me to leap onto dry sand. As soon as I did, they let go, falling in an exhausted pile. The eel—released, enraged—leapt up, hanging in midair for several seconds, a demonic black muscle writhing, before it crashed back down into a deep, coffee-colored pool on the other side of the ruined fish gate. In seconds, the water smoothed again, leaving only a soft welt on the surface, perhaps from the last flick of its tail.

Anna hugged me. “Are you all right?”

“I think so,” I said in a daze, startled to find myself still alive. As if I were cold, I shook uncontrollably, even my teeth chattered as I took a few steps along the shore, holding my elbows to my gut, trying to coerce my soul back into my body. Facing away from all of us, Beya calmly waded back to shore. Weirdly, I listened for her to “say” something more to me, but only her silence echoed in my head.

Anna watched me with concern.

“Thanks, Anna, for helping me.”

“That was the biggest one I’ve ever seen. So strong!”

As we spoke, a few other women gathered around us, as if Anna had broken through some kind of standoff. I thanked them all profusely. There were some smiles and a few more expressions of concern, even another hug or two. One toothless grandma grinned as she peered at me and patted my arm and said, “You are having a lucky day, gringa.”