The young Englishman often took to the woods after preaching. And he did no less the week after Moon Flower’s sisters were baptized. So, moving along the tributary of the Cipo like he had so many times before, he listened intently to familiar bird songs and the rhythmic drumming of a red-feathered woodpecker.

As he continued this way, his gaze fell upon industrious gray squirrels before they bounded away from him and scampered up tree trunks. Meanwhile, a short distance from him was a felled maple tree; here and there its decaying trunk had sprouted clusters of dark-colored mushrooms. There had been rain early that morning, so the scent of petrichor was heavy in the wood as water dripped from the nearby needles and leaves. 

Fowlkes scratched his beard as he approached the damp ground where he typically knelt to pray, but this was the precise moment he heard a hiss. The privateer turned to find that enormous Snake King. While the first half of its body had emerged from the stream, some twenty feet of what remained were still submerged. The young Englishman had not at all forgotten the moment the creature first appeared to him, but he had since convinced himself it had been a dream. 

Similarly, he could not be sure it was not fantasy when the serpent spoke, saying, “We meet again, Henry Fowlkes.”

The young privateer eyed the snake as it slithered past, slowly encircling him.

“I believe last time I offered to take you to your people.”

Fowlkes did not respond.

“Do you not understand that these are my people?”

The young man began to whisper the Lord’s prayer then: “Our Father, who art in heaven…”

“Your Father can do nothing for you now,” hissed the snake. “He has abandoned you, left you to rot in a strange land full of even more strange people and beasts.” The snake hissed again before trailing off and continuing, “Do you not want to leave them? Or is it your true desire to stay?”

Fowlkes spoke finally. “It is you that convinced me it was my duty to stay.”

“How could I convince you of anything?”

“Are you not he? Lucifer?”

“Your spirits do not exist here, Henry Fowlkes.”

“Then who are you?”

“I am the king, and you are in my kingdom.”

Fowlkes swallowed. 

Then, trembling slightly, he asked, “How is it that you speak to me?”

“How is it that you speak the language of the Tuscarora peoples, Henry Fowlkes?”

“I was taught their language.”

“And I yours,” said the snake as he continued encircling the privateer. “I speak many tongues.”

The Snake King’s forked tongue flickered after he spoke.

Fowlkes followed his eyes, entranced by the creature as he continued, “If you do not climb on my back now, there will come a time in which you will travel in my belly, and slither on the ground to meet your people.”
“Why must I leave?” said Fowlkes. "Why?"

“You do not belong here.”

“But I was sent here. To these people.”

The snake spoke viciously, saying, “You were marooned. Abandoned.”

“Then why should I return to the people who’ve left me here?”
The snake spun away, shaking his head. “I know you better than you know yourself, Henry Fowlkes. You do not want to be here. You do not want to live among these people. I know you do so out of a sense of duty—a sense of guilt and shame. I know you fear they will be swallowed in flames, are you not? Well, believe me when I say there are far worse fates.”

Fowlkes looked to the ground just in time to see a much smaller serpent lunging at him. The venomous snake struck him on the calf, sinking its fangs into the muscle before wriggling quickly away.

As the young man fell to his knees, grasping at the wound, the Snake King said, “In time, you will see things my way. In time, Henry Fowlkes.”

The wicked creature then began slithering back toward the stream.

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