laughed nervously. "That's right, that's right, hold her tight, they say she's just like a woman, lots of music and death when she bites." Orem knew that Flea was just talking to hear the sound of his own voice. The snake began flapping its whole body from the stick down, slapping out with the tail. Flea showed no sign of paying attention to that - he reached out his hand and pinched the keener tightly right behind where the stick had it, then pulled slowly backward until the head was drawn tight up against the stick. The keener made a choking sound, but Flea was humming. Now he dared reach right up behind the jaw; he took a tight, tight grip. "Not yet," he whispered. The snake wailed. Flea drew his left hand down the snake's writhing body until he had hold of the tip of the tail as well. "Now let go."
Orem waited another second, afraid.
"Let go, you want to strangle it?"
He let go. Immediately the snake writhed violently in terrible shudders and spasms; Flea held on. The snake whined, the snake cried out, for all the world as if its child had died. Flea giggled in relief. "Tricky, that. Tricky, tricky. If you don't hold the tail it flips you in the eye, you know, and you drop it and it gets you. Now come on. The pit's a ways on."
Orem had hoped that catching the snake would be bravery enough for one day. He would gladly have left Flea then, but he didn't know the way out of the Swamp.
The snake pit was not deep - there could be no deep pits in the Swamp, for the water would seep into any cavity. They had only been there a few moments when other boys began arriving, each holding a keener by the neck.
"Flea!" called several, and "Buzzer!" Flea thrust his keener's head toward them playfully. A few of them eyed Orem.
"Scant," said Flea, by way of introduction. "He's a pisser, but he'll do."
One by one the boys came to the edge of the pit and cast in the snakes. Each keener immediately rushed to the water and drank. Then they began trying to slither out, toward the boys. Each snake that came close to the edge was flipped back with a forked stick. The sound of a funeral filled the clearing as the keeners wailed and whined.
"You, Scant," said a boy. "You got no stick, you do the rats."
Rats? Flea was quick to fill in what Orem didn't know. "Off to your right, there, in the castle."
The "castle" was a fence of stones, roofed with wood. Inside were whimpering and scurrying rats. Orem was not delighted at the prospect of reaching in to take one out. Again Flea advised him. "Take the bag and hold it ready and open a stone in the wall." Orem did it clumsily once, and the first rat got away; the second two went into the bag, and then he was able to kick the rock back into place well enough to keep the others in. The rats fought each other and struggled in the bag, lunging every direction and making it hard to hold.
Orem nodded at the boy who spoke, the only one who looked to be about Orem's own age.
"I suppose you don't want to grab just one."
Orem shrugged. Not good to label himself a coward. "Whichever way you want it."
"One then. And heave it right in the middle." The older boy didn't bother watching him - he had to keep flipping keeners back into the water in the middle of the pit.
Orem held the mouth of the bag with one hand and used the other to squeeze the bag between the rats. The one in the dead end of the bag he sealed off by holding the bag between his knees at that point. Then he carefully worked the bag smaller until the rat at the open end was tightly trapped and squealing so it could not move. Carefully Orem manipulated the rat until its back was to the mouth of the bag. I may get piss on my fingers but it's better than teeth.
Carefully he opened the mouth against the resistance of the fingers of his other hand and probed the body of the rat until he found a back leg. Then he released the mouth of the bag and pulled on the rat all at once, and with a single motion flicked it out into the snakes.
If