In a village near a winding river where all kinds of snakes thrived, there was once a maiden who lived in a small cottage with her parents. Every morning her parents left for the river to catch snakes. In the afternoon they traveled into town to sell what they had caught. The maiden had always feared snakes, but the townspeople, her parents told her, craved the tender meat. The townspeople adored the snakeskin too, which in their eyes was wildly beautiful.

One day in early spring, when the maiden was sitting on the doorstep mending her father's winter coat, a young man came to her in a hurry and told her he had seen her parents bitten by a venomous snake. They had murmured her name over and over again before they died. He led her to the bank on which her parents lay cold, and helped her carry them home. Together they dug a deep grave behind the maiden's cottage. In her loneliness and grief, the maiden grew attached to this man, who was tall, lean and had bright green eyes. When the man said he'd been a wanderer all these years but wished to take care of her for the rest of his life, she blushed a shy pink and said yes.

So they became husband and wife. When the winter came the woman's belly swelled, and in the cottage where she'd lived with her parents, she felt loved and blessed again. But the man had a secret. As he loved his wife more every day, the secret grew heavier, till one night, when his wife lay beside him on their bed, her face soft and sweet in a patch of moonlight, he could no longer bear the burden. He then confessed he was not a man but a snake that used to live in the river. He had bitten her parents when they tried to catch him. When they cried for their poor daughter, alone in the world now, he felt a deep guilt, and the next thing he knew he became a man. As a man, he realized he had to take care of the daughter and love her. Now she loved him back. Now he could not bear to keep her in the dark anymore. He would rather tell her the truth, and let her decide whether she would love him for what he was or not.

She said she would.

That night for the first time since they had married, the man closed his eyes without the fear of speaking the truth in his sleep.

In the middle of the night, the woman quietly fetched a knife from the kitchen, and stabbed her husband in the heart. Once dead, the man changed back into a snake. The green eyes of the dead snake shone in the moonlight, as if the man were still clinging to his wife.

The woman picked up the snake and threw it out of her cottage. But once the snake was out of her sight, the repulsion that had been boiling in her cooled, and she came back to sit on the bed, where a few moments before, she had been lying with her husband. She didn't regret what she had done. The snake had killed her parents. But she touched her swollen belly and found solace in their baby, who was innocent, whom she could love without feeling she'd betrayed her father and mother. And as though the baby knew her sorrow, it no longer kicked; instead it moved smoothly, as if following the curves of a gentle river, and soothed her.


***


Three months later, the baby snake bit a hole through her belly to come out. Its emerald eyes rested upon her for a moment, before it headed for the river and left her to die alone.


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