Auralia was kicking hard because that’s what her body knew to do from growing up on the water.
Still, it was a confusing, scary ride until one of the totes scraped against the river bottom, dragging along behind as Auralia’s arms were pulled wide, and she was able to get her knees under her.
Twelve inches is all the muddy water necessary to sweep a car away.
Six inches was what it took to drag a human off their feet.
The eddy calmed the waters a bit. And the tree trunk just a few yards away would act as a stopper.
Still holding on to her resources as if her life depended on them—because it did - Auralia came to her knees, then got a foot under her.
The thick clay squished up between her toes. And there she stopped. Winded. Just a moment of rest.
She remembered Papa Jacques taking her along with his family when they went to a friend’s house to go out on the pontoon. The pond where he kept the boat was at dangerously low levels, and the group had to wade out about twenty feet in the low water to reach the boat. The guy simply kept tying a longer and longer rope to keep the pontoon afloat.
That was all fine and good on the way out.
But on the way back in, that was a whole other story.
The kids hadn’t been allowed to swim in the pond because the man said they had an infestation of cottonmouths, also known as water moccasins. They were a type of pit viper that could be lethal. The smaller you were, the deadlier.
At the end of a day out on the water, each of the big boys worked to get the coolers and other paraphernalia that had made their day so nice off the boat and onto the shore, and as asked, Auralia had sat out of the way.
Now that they were all on shore, they called for her to follow.
She jumped off the boat and sank ankle deep into the silky silt. One foot was flat, the other foot curved over a solid form that slid out from under one foot and over the other.
In her mind, the only thing she could think of was that it was a water moccasin and that at any moment it could pull itself far enough out from under her foot, that it would turn and strike, taking retribution for the thing that had attacked it. And when it bit her, she would die.
Auralia remembered that at the moment those images came together in her imagination, it was as if a great hand came down and snatched her out of the water. Somehow, to this day, she couldn’t conceptualize how she leaped from waist deep in water and ankle deep in the mud back up onto the pontoon with a shriek that spun the entire group in her direction.
“What’s she doing out there like that?” Papa Jacques had asked Jean Marie. Before they attempted to answer, Papa Jacques cupped his palms around his mouth and called out, “Cherie, what gives?”
She had no words.
She didn’t, in fact, know what happened.
She was yanked out of the water by an unseen hand. That was even more shocking than the possibility of death by snake bite.
Auralia erupted in laughter and tears, trembling from head to foot.
Eight, maybe nine, still a girl but not a small girl, is what Auralia remembered.
Honoré and Jean Marie were both in the water, coming out to her, racing each other to see who would get there first.
Auralia was crying and shaking her head, wishing that words would come to her so she could tell the boys, “No, don’t come out here! I angered the snake!”
But there they were standing under her, their arms outstretched.
The only way she could think to protect them was to get down to them fast, and then everyone could get out of the water.
The boys turned their backs on her and put their arms around each other’s waists.
Jean Marie held up his free hand, “Come on, Lia, hold my hand and climb on our shoulders. You don’t have to get in the water.”
This was a practiced move, she’d realized. They must have saved others this way in the past.
Auralia clambered on and was carried like a swamp princess out of the water to the shore, where Papa Jacques lifted her for the dismount. “What happened?”
