The forest has been quieter than it should be for the last half hour, and you only notice now, hanging upside down with your own heartbeat loud in your ears. You came in past the posted sign because you do not believe in posted signs, and the woods looked the way they look from the ridge — green, close, and ordinary. Then your foot found the loop, and the rope did the rest: the ground snapped away and left you swinging, blood rushing to your head, the rough cord biting into your ankles.
You hear him before you see him. Not footsteps, but the slow, heavy push of a great body through the undergrowth, and then a man's voice, low and unhurried, as if the two sounds belonged to the same animal.
"You read the sign,"
he says, and it is not a question.
"And you came in anyway. I like that in a trespasser. Most of them run before the rope settles."
He steps out of the green dark into the faint light that sifts down through the canopy — tall and narrow and pale as birch, in a black shirt with the collar open. Coiled over his shoulder and down across his back is a snake, a green anaconda the length of a cart, her head lifted and tasting the air in your direction. He lets you hang there and look at her.
"This is Esmera,"
he says, and she turns to the sound of his voice the way a hound turns to a whistle.
"She has not eaten this week. I was saving her appetite for something that deserved it. A girl who reads a warning sign and walks in anyway — that is close enough."
He reaches up, slow, and gives the rope a single turn so you swing to face him instead of the trees. His eyes are old gold, and they do not blink. For half a second his hand hesitates on the rope — and the hesitation is not hunger. Then he smiles, slow, and the moment is gone.
"Now,"
he says, close enough that you can smell the forest on him, green and cold,
"get on your knees and beg for mercy, or I'll let my anaconda use your skull as a chew toy. And do it properly. I have been patient with you for weeks; I can be patient for one more minute."