“Let’s go that way!” Nora called to us. She spotted Tabitha and Laurel just climbing out of the hole. “What’s up, you two? If you’ve had a good rest, let’s move on!”
The two women nodded as they dusted the dirt and grime off their wrinkly clothes. They glanced at Tessa, who was still immersed in her prayers. Tabitha mumbled, “She’s so pious. Do you think God with really bless her?”
Nora shrugged. “Let’s go!”
The forest was rather humid in the morning. The soil had become loose. One could hear the soft crunching of the earth just by stepping on it.
“Ah!” Laurel screamed. Then, she squatted on the spot she had previously stepped on and began to scrape at the ground.
Very soon, we saw what had been hiding underneath the earth. It was a cluster of yellowish-white fungi. Some of them had been crushed under her feet.
Only a few short and stout ones were spared.
“Mushrooms!” Tessa, who had been reciting her prayers the whole time, promptly came forward and started digging up the plants from under the fertile soil. She wiped the dirt off and began to swallow them a few pieces at a time.
Laurel, looking equal parts terrified and worried, wondered, “Do we… eat them raw? Just like that?”
Tabitha turned around and, indeed, managed to find other mushrooms of the same variety under some rotten leaves.
She passed some of them to us. “Yes, this kind of mushrooms can be eaten raw. There used to be plenty at my place and we did this all the time. Sure, they won’t satisfy our hunger, but it’ll have to do for now. Let’s eat!”
They dug in. The rest of us, having barely eaten anything for a day, followed suit.
Nora helped herself to some mushrooms. A while later, she looked at Tabitha, a question on her mind. “Are you sure we won’t have any hallucinations after eating these? Once, I watched the news about poison testers in the south. They usually do that come May and June. Those who really did get poisoned are said to be able to ‘transcend reality’.”
Tabitha chuckled. “Well, if you know which ones to eat and which ones to avoid, basically you won’t have any hallucinations.”
Laurel found many other kinds of mushrooms in the soil. She turned around to ask the expert, “What about these?”
Tabitha nodded. “Sure, but we’ll need to cook them. If not, we’ll see things that aren’t there.”
“That’s a pity. None of us have a lighter, otherwise, we could have made ourselves a feast supplied by Mother Nature herself,” Nora sighed as she stuffed more mushrooms into her mouth.
“Ah!” Tessa shouted all of a sudden, prompting everyone else to look towards her, surprise hanging on our faces.
“What? Has your God decided to show Himself?” Nora spoke in annoyance.
Tessa’s face turned pale, her body stiffened, as she muttered, “B-B-Bamboo snake…”
All of us followed her gaze simultaneously. There was a tiny green snake, about fifty centimetres in length, hanging around the leaves of the tree next to her.
We would not have noticed it if we had not been paying attention. The snake spat out its forked tongue. It looked like it was preparing an attack.
“This snake is venomous. We have to be careful!” Tabitha yelled, her face pale and haggard.
I scanned the surroundings from the corner of my eyes. There was a branch that must have been snapped in half by the wind. One of its ends seemed rather sharp.
“What now! What now! I’m going crazy just looking at that ugly thing! Ah, it’s giving me goosebumps!” Nora stood close to me. Driven by anxiety and fright, she clung tightly onto me as if her life depended on it.
I wanted to comfort her, but I was scared too. The creature was inches away from us, equipped with venom!
“Is it not too late if we run now?” Nora muttered, already backing away.
“It’s too late!” Tessa said, her voice trembling. “This is a bamboo snake. It’ll come after us.”
“Damn it! But we can’t just stay here like this!”
Laurel was so scared that she was shaking uncontrollably, her face completely drained of color.
“Kill it!” Tabitha proposed. Despite being scrawny, she dared to glare at the reptile hiding among the leaves with a wicked glint in her dark eyes.
Tessa was closest to the snake. Any careless movements and the snake could latch onto her and sink its fangs on her neck.
But she was too frightened at the moment to do anything. Her body kept shaking. “Don’t provoke it, you guys. I’m scared.”
“What are you scared of? You recite your prayers all the time, right? Your God will protect you. Go on,” Nora said, with great irony.
In a situation like this, no one could afford to be distracted.
Tabitha turned to instruct Tessa. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll count to three. You get ready to dodge. I will throw a rock and see if I can hit it.”
What?
Tessa was on the verge of tears. “You can’t possibly hit it! The chances are slim. What if you hit me instead? I’ll die!”
“Do you have other ideas?” Tabitha asked a rhetorical question. Tessa shook her head in despair.
“It’s a gamble then!” With that said, Tabitha slowly bent down and picked up a stone.
Tessa was really having a breakdown, but time was running out and we had no other choice. We had to take our chances.
“One, two, three… Duck!” As if on cue, Tessa promptly moved away.
Tabitha flung the stone towards the bamboo snake hiding among the leaves.
Wild animals often had faster reflexes than humans.
The bamboo snake evaded Tabitha’s attack. Angered, it made its advance on Tessa, who had just barely got out of its way.
