The sibillant threat of the snake put fear in his heart and shook his resolve. He could not grip the cutlass's timeworn wooden handle with all his strength. He wanted to drop his weapon and dash away from the farmland.
He rubbed the grit from his eyes and clenched his jaw. He stepped forward. He looked back at his the old man and took another step forward. He scrutinized the clump of bulbous bushes, craned his neck. All he saw were the fibrous leaves of the bushes.
He could hear the snake so clearly. He thought of a distraction and he looked around on the floor and found where his own hook stick had been dropped. He backed away from the bushes slowly so as not to be attacked and subsequently bitten.
He reached the stick and he was far enough that he moved normally and grabbed it off the floor.
The snake he remembered had attacked the closest target and his plan was to throw the stick into the bush and to have the cutlass ready to behead it. He breathed in and could not shake the fear. He raised the stick and then he lowered it.
He saw blood glistening on the bushes faintly and he saw something blue flicking and flicking.He was enchanted by the sibillating tongue of the snake. A liquid horror ran up his chest and down his legs. The sound went on for so long that he was surprised when he could no longer hear it.
He understood that the first attack they had made while it had been on the palm tree failed because of timing. He waited and counted the seconds that passed before the snake started hissing again. He counted and it was close to half a minute. He counted how long the hissing went on and it was around a minute longer than the pause.
He waited until the snake once again began to hiss. With the information he had obtained he was more confident, his fear now had a face and he could put his troubles into words. The bluetongue snake now seemed less of a natural calamity because he knew it would keep hissing for a minute more.
He grabbed his stick tightly and hefted the cutlass. He raised the stick slowly and an idea occurred to him. Instead of throwing the stick away and losing a valuable weapon he decided simply to make his presence known.
He swung the stick into the bush and stepped back. His heart was pounding. The snake reared its head out of the bush. The blue of the tongue was as deeply hued as wild berries. That was all he noticed. He jumped backwards. The snake sprang at him. He swung the cutlass as soon as he landed on the floor and also swung the stick in a crazed attack. The cutlass missed its head. The stick hit the snake's body and hooked it and he whirled it overhead and slammed flailing snake into the floor.
The bluetongue's head smashed the floor and its tail wiped the boy across the face and ended on his right eye. He closed the wounded eye but he was swinging the cutlass, the same way he had swung the blade thousands of time before while clearing bushes, and the snake slithered away in a zigzag.
The cutlass hit the floor and the zigzagging body jumped and landed across his body. He cried aloud and shielded his face while turning away, his cutlass abandoned to the grass. The body was wet and it rolled off him.
He opened his good eye. His chest was covered in blood. The snake was visible as it was dyed in its own blood. The snake was missing its head. He saw the head and inches of its body a foot away from where his cutlass hit the floor. He gulped. He kicked the snake's body away, it landed nine feet away and still squirted blood. His right eye throbbed.
He started shaking. His hands wouldn't obey him and they did not obey him for a long time.
The day grew cooler and wind blew sand across the farm and birds flew across the darkening sky. He was seating beside the old man by that time and the old man's breathing was hurried but steady. It was the breathing of someone engaged in a great struggle.
He touched the old man on the shoulder, shook it slightly. The old man stirred awake with bloodshot eyes streaked with black flecks. The old man closed his eyes and raised a hand to stop the boy from shaking him further before he spoke.
'Is it dead?'
The old man's voice slurred each syllable and he grimaced from pain.
'I killed it.'
'Well done. Have you removed its poisonteeth?'
The boy was disappointed at himself, he knew he should have done that much. He looked back at the part of the grass where the carcass of the snake lay.
'I'll get to it. Tell me what else I have to do.'
'Dig a deep hole and bury them. Tongue it.'
'I did not understand that.'
The old man's slurring worsened as his eyes drew close as if they were too heavy to keep open. All he heard was to bury the poison teeth and to do something with the tongue. He shook the old man but all that came out was incoherent babble. He still did not know how to make the antidote. The foot was swollen now and the four holes were a deep blue color. And the blood had stopped flowing. He shook the old man again but the old man was unresponsive.
'Baba!' He called many times.
'The poison is still doing something! How can I make the antidote?'
'Baba!'
The old man was unconscious, his energy spent in saying those former words. The boy gave up on that and stood up from crouching beside the old man. The cutlass that was stuck into the palm tree was right above him. He banged his head on it. Pain lanced through him as hot as a candle flame. He staggered away and put a hand to his head and was in agony. Warm viscousness ran down his scalp to his forehead and trickled between his eyes. His thoughts fled from him.
The boy was mortified at seeing own blood. He thought for sure he was going to die. He ran towards the stream while feeling a fear more intense and more primal than when he had faced the hissing bluetongue. He believed he would bleed to death if he did not start washing the blood in the stream, and by washing it the blood flow would cease. He believed that.
The stream was the natural boundary separating the old man's share of the land from his neighbour. It was two strides across in the dry season, smooth rocks were settled at the bottom, and was surrounded on both banks by thick bushes that grow only to the boy's knees.
The boy shambled into the shallow water, unmindful of the cold. He bent over and scooped handfuls of water with his palms cupped and plunged into the surface of the running stream. The current pulled his hands away. He brought down his head that was moist with blood into the cupped palms. He closed his eyes and did it. He thought of nothing but to wash it off quickly. The cold water seeped into the cut on his scalp and he repeated the act over and over and scrubbed his face clean.
He opened his eyes and saw that he was knee deep in water that was turned bloody. His reflection on the shimmering surface of the water seemed ominous. He was soaking wet from all the washing he had done. He was touching his head with his finger and brought the finger down to see if it was bloody.
It came away bloody.
He dunked his whole head into the water and water filled his nose. He did not breathe. He scrubbed and scrubbed, avoiding the cut itself but the water current ran against the loose flap of skin. He did not know how bad it was. Something came to nibble on his toes. He shrieked, flailed around, dashed out of the stream.
He stopped running when he hit the eroded streambank and scrambled up the grassy slope. He slipped. He fell backfirst into the water, forgot for a moment that he was falling into water, thought he was going to dash his head against a rock, and clapped his hands around the back of his head.
The stream embraced him and the full body plunge slapped the hysteria out of him. He went under. Swinging his arms and breaking towards the blurry surface of the stream, he bobbed out and swam to the shore. He climbed out and dripped water on the grass. A breeze came rushing down the riverside and the cold pierced strongly into his body. His head throbbed as he stood there shivering and thought to pull off his tunic to squeeze the water out but he did not do it. He now noticed the sky was dark with clouds and the first drops of water from the first rain that nobody in the village was expecting for at least another moon.
The boy remembered the old man who was unconscious under the palm tree with his poisoned foot and how he was now responsible for him. He tore across the path that led to the stream back towards the palm tree but he was still not halfway there when bolts of lightning numerous enough to be branches of a tree arced over him high in the dark sky.
The thunder drummed the sky and the earth and trees he could see swayed to the stormy wind and all at once the rain had begun.