Looking down, sinking down. There was nothing to see, so maybe I was blind. Maybe I was dead. Again.

Please cross no further south than Deep River. Less trouble for everyone.

I saw the end of the great horned serpent gradually, taking hours to sink closer. Its forehead bore a glowing crystal that lit the water above it in churning green swamplight, and I saw that it had iridescent scales of every color. What had appeared to be horns were more like antlers, but they were stranger than antlers. They were like cracks in glass shown by prisms of light, cracks in the glass of space-time that let light from somewhere come in. I saw two plumes of heated air coming out of nostrils the size of manhole covers, and two motionless fangs as great as ship anchors hung from its closed mouth.

This was why Charles Gisant had sent me northwest. The serpent lay in the Ottawa river, stretching for many leagues, its end at Deep River. And I was just above its head, just a little too far south. The water cure was no guarantee that a river would be safe for the wrong kind of spirit. I was going to land on its head, and when I did it would wake up and devour me.

I had to uncramp. I had to start swimming. Just a little bit north and I would miss the head.

I had command of … one finger.

But it was the right finger. It had a ring on it. As the sleeping monster below me drew closer I scrambled, rubbing my pinky against my cramped and useless third finger, turning the ring around the digit to get the diamond facing the right way. Palm down.

Flex. All the way. Almost cramping it anew.

One of these days that diamond is going to be all used up and-

Not this time.

I had my own glow in the dark. If I wasn’t getting faster at recovering from this ring …

But I was. My awareness dimmed, but didn’t disappear this time. The blood diamond was now about as debilitating as a shot of opium, and I was a conditioned user.

Two heavy eyelids opened below me.

The eyes each sent burning rainbow swirls in the water, aiming up. Two red eyes looked down in reply. We looked at each other for a long moment, and then I started to crawl. I ripped my eyes away and just kept crawling north. If this giant river snake wanted me …

Nothing else to do. Ow ow ow. Crawl crawl crawl. Ow ow ow. With my injuries healed I could now feel the new damage of the great pressure. My cheeks were dented in, my eyes recessed into my skull, my skin tightening and rug burning at each moving joint.

The water around me was boiling, and then a forked tongue smashed into my stomach from below

(flick)

I broke the surface of the river at impressive speed, and landed in Ontario, breaking everything beneath my hips. I crashed to earth on groomed waterfront.

Feeling so naked with the sun beating down on me, I cranked my neck around for any witnesses, any new trouble. There was a dock down the shore, but the boats were all out. No one was running or shouting. Looking west, there was a gravel path and a sign forbidding motorized vehicles.

Those African miners and child soldiers bled some more for my benefit, uncracking my bones so I could start moving. My elbows and knees were still smeared green from the grass, but I had cared little for fashion even as a human. Scanning a parking lot past the sign and hearing no people or dogs, I hurried across, spotting another sign for ‘Burkes Road Beach’. But as an engine slowly approached down the winding forest road I fled from sight, back under the trees.

Chapter 34: My Summer Vacation