Bright, Shiny Things

Cathy Ulrich

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I know it’s not what you want to hear, but the snake woman will die at the end of this story. I know you want to believe there are better things ahead for snake women, bright things, shiny soft things, things without teeth and venom and coiling, scaled bodies. In another world, maybe it is like that, all pillowed sweetness and gentle perfume and the taste of sweet honey mead, but in this world, there is no other ending for snake women.
 

Would it make it any better if I told you how the audience roared that night when she took to the stage in her shimmering, bell-clap costume? If I told you how they howled as the snakes were draped over her bare shoulders (you know of course the snake handlers wore gloves and thick, long sleeves, you know they cringed and startled at every snake-strike against rattling cage)?

Maybe if you knew she had been bitten before, that she knew that feel of teeth piercing flesh, that she winced but never dropped the snake? That she told her parents after the first bite, the second, the twelfth, their worried hands running over her pierced body, it’s just what snakes do?

Would it make it better if I told you they laid flowers and coins on the stage for her while she danced? That her voice had never been so clear or so fine? That they called out we love you, oh, we love you—that for a moment, she felt it, that fluttering lovely thing she had been reaching for? That for a moment, it was, like the body of a snake, in her grasp?

Would I help if I told you at first she didn’t feel the bite? That she was enveloped in song, that she was nearly in that other world, that honey-soft world, that the words spun from her throat like grace, that the notes hovered and swarmed and wrapped themselves around her? That she was a perfect thing, a shining that, that she was beautiful, that the pain was something easily tucked away?

Because here we are at the end, and here is the snake woman, our lovely girl, falling onto the stage, here is the audience gasping and her parents putting their hands to their hearts. And here is the snake, being hustled back into its cage, and here it is, being carried somewhere far away.