“Life is short, the Art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment treacherous, judgement difficult.” - Hippocrates1
The long season of endurance was past. The shorter season of growth was halfway complete. The ground liquid of this season brought death and disease nearer, and her days were busy with healing and ordinary tasks. She now spoke the rhythmic language simply, daily learning new rhythms. A single sustained beat signified serpent.
She had not seen any living serpents since that day many months ago. One day, a companion brought her to look at the ashes of waste burned by the yard labourers. A serpent, with a tail the length of her own height, lay charred in the ashes, next to two burnt leathery spheres. The labourers had not known it was there.
One night, returning to her shelter by the lesser light, she passed an avenue of great living plants. She heard a heavy burden dragged over smooth ground, but saw no one. Shortly after she reached her shelter, another companion came running, calling that a watchman had found an enormous serpent, one that reared up to flatten its tail just below its head, in the avenue.
One day, while she was sitting with another companion, a watchman came to speak. In quiet rhythms, the watchman told his story. The night before, as the watchman’s young male child slept, a serpent slid into his sleeping place and twice injected him with venom. The child was dead.
This day, she paced the corridor of her shelter in thought. The companions who had shared this shelter had returned to their own nations. The exits of their empty sleeping chambers stood open. She paused at one. Something flickered in her peripheral vision. She turned her head. A slender head and tail was sliding over the ground surface of the chamber. Its appearance was the same as the serpent she had killed so many months ago.
She turned and ran toward her own chamber to get her blade. After that first time, an experienced companion had advised, if there was a next time, using something to hold the serpent down. She went into the yard and found an implement with a long handle. She returned to the chamber.
The serpent had slid behind a writing surface. Pulling the surface out from the partition, she climbed on top of it and looked down into the space. There was the serpent. Using the long-handled implement, she held the tail down and severed the head with her blade.
Companions in a shelter nearby told her they had just found the same kind of serpent. It had been slithering up the mesh of their shelter’s outer portal. In the liquid heat of the growing season, she had opened the heavy inner portal between the corridor and the yard so that air could pass through the outer mesh portal. Now she closed the inner portal.
The next day, her ordinary task was garment cleaning. No mechanical devices cleaned garments here. In every shelter’s yard next to the outer portal, there was a raised tiled area where garments were soaked, scrubbed, wrung by hand, and then hung on stretched cords to dry. Her area was shaded by metal sheeting. A blossoming bush grew along the shade’s frame. Fallen blossoms lay clustered along that side of the area.
As she laboured, she heard a slight rustle in the dead blossoms. Glancing to the side, she saw a slender head of familiar appearance raised above the blossoms. The tail was hidden under the cluster of blossoms. She remained still. The head disappeared into the blossoms.
She continued her labour, glancing at intervals towards the fallen blossoms. Wringing out the garments and hanging them on the stretched chords, she watched the area. There was no sign of head or tail.
She finished hanging the garments. Carrying her empty basin with one hand, she walked over to the shelter portal. Reaching out her free hand, she started to open the outer mesh portal. Her heart contracted and leapt. Coiled in the small space between the outer and inner portals was a familiar head and tail.
Her blade and the long-handled implement were inside the shelter. The outer entrance of the yard was across a newly sprouting green blanket that could shelter other serpents. She had to get through that inner portal.
Putting the basin down, she held the outer portal open only a narrow space. She slipped her hand through the narrow space to turn the inner portal latch. She gently pushed the heavy portal, letting it swing open. The serpent slid into the corridor through the crack between the swinging portal and the portal frame.
She ran in the opposite direction toward her chamber. Seizing her blade and the implement, she returned along the corridor as the serpent slid toward an empty chamber. She brought down the long handle of the implement, pinning the slithering tail. Once more, her blade decapitated the head.
She carried the remains of this serpent to show her companions. One of the healers born in the place confirmed it was a very dangerous serpent. She asked her companions if she could change dwellings. An empty chamber in another shelter was available. She shifted her possessions that day.
The day after, she returned to her new chamber, weary from hard labour in the healing place. She lay down on her sleeping couch, looking at the unfamiliar surroundings. She glanced at the ground. There was a long creature sliding along the tiles. She tried to exit the room, but another blocked her way. In despair, she looked up and saw them slithering on the walls. Her cry woke her.
She saw many creatures in the new shelter. Scaly creatures with sticky toes ran over the partitions. Tiny black creatures marched in determined lines, scavenging crumbs she had not yet swept. When she bathed, two-inch long, six-legged, brown creatures with long antennae scuttled away from the running liquid. All these had legs. None were just a head and tail. There were no serpents.
Hippocrates. Aphorisms. W.H.S. Jones. (2019). Athens: Aiora.