Inflatable Kayak Blog

(Candace Clayton is an author who’s written novels, poetry and other short stories. She was kind enough to write this fictional adventure series specifically for the Inflatable Kayak Blog about ‘The Traveling Man’, a kayaker who tells us tales about his youthful adventures with his buddies on the rivers where he grew up. We hope you are enjoying it!)

When last we journeyed together with the Traveling man, he and his ever courageous sidekick, John, were being held captive by terror…terror caused by, of all things, a talking snake they discovered near Tomales Bay. Let’s rejoin them and see how they manage to work their way out of the latest of their escapades.

So, there we were, getting ready to run for our lives, when this snake starts making sobbing noises. John and I looked at each other in near shock. I mean, who ever heard tale of a snake that cried. Something weird was going on and we knew we wouldn’t rest till we had gotten to the bottom of it.

“You mean us to believe you’re not a snake?” I asked. “How do you explain the scales and slithery tongue?”

“Scales? Tongue? Are you serious? I am a woman I tell you.”

The snake/woman was starting to get agitated.  We could hear it in her voice, despite her slight lisp.

“Humph…you don’t look like any woman I have ever seen afore.”

“Look”, the snake/woman spit out, “I was here with my family on a picnic. I fell asleep on a rock and when I woke up, they were gone.”

“How long ago was this?” John ventured to ask.

“I don’t know for sure. It’s been quite a while though.”

“Ok, let’s go sit by our campfire while you tell us the whole story.”

I looked at John in frustration. He shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “What else do you expect us to do?” I have to say, it was pretty creepy walking down that trail with a snake dogging our footsteps. Woman or not, she was still a snake.

After we had made our way back to our camping area and rebuilt the fire, John and I looked at the snake/woman.

“I guess I should just spit it out.” She said. “Like I said before, I was here with my family. I was about 12 yrs old at the time. I had wondered off because I was sulking. I had found a baby snake and wanted to take it home with me. My dad said no, the snake needed to stay in its natural habitat. So, I put the snake in my pocket and was planning to sneak it home. Unfortunately for the baby snake, I put it in my back pocket and when I sat down, the snake was squashed. My dad yelled at me for killing the innocent creature.  I wandered up the path and fell asleep on a rock. When I woke up…I couldn’t find my family. I have been here alone all this time.”

“Didn’t your family try to find you?”

“Oh, yes. My dad and mom came back many times. Always calling my name and looking for me, but for some reason, they could never hear me when I answered.”

We sat up for hours talking to this woman turned snake. She was very remorseful for what her selfish actions had done to the baby snake so many years ago. As the night wore on, John and I kept adding firewood to the fire. Each time the light from the camp fire flared up, we could see that the snake/woman’s shadow looked more and more human. Finally, we could stay awake no longer. Adding a few more pieces of wood to the fire, we turned in for the night.

It couldn’t have been more than a few hours later, when a strange noise woke us up. It was a kind of hissing sound but we could make out words in the hisses. Opening one eye, I gave our campsite a quick look over. What I saw brought me awake in an instant.

Rising up out of the glowing remains of our campfire, was a snake, multi-colored and beautiful as well as frightening to see. It was staring at the snake/woman and talking to her in its strange hissing speech.

“You were punished for your unthinking cruelty to one of my children. It has been decided that you have learned your lesson. Go and teach this lesson to others and never forget that all creatures have a place in this world and deserve respect.”

As the sun started to rise in the distance, the snake in the campfire disappeared. With every beam of sunlight that hit the snake/woman, she turned more into woman than snake. As the sun reached its rays towards the earth, her transformation completed. There stood before us a snake no more.

“Look! I have turned to my old self again!” Tears of joy poured down her cheeks.

After a celebratory breakfast of fish freshly caught in the river, we rigged up a way to hook our kayaks together in an outrigger fashion and gave the woman a ride back to civilization, where she found her family and started on the task given to her by the snake in the fire.

Join us next month to see what mischief The Traveling Man and John get into next.

The author, Candace Clayton, lives in Granbury, Texas with her Husband and family, spending as much time in the outdoors as she can.

(New Chapters of “The Traveling Man” series are published on a monthly basis here in the Inflatable Kayak Blog. Check back soon for another chapter or set your computer to receive our RSS feed and you’ll be informed automatically when the next part of the story will be posted.)