She didn’t notice the hissing thing: the wind drowned out its sound. Nor did she notice it raise its head and open its jaws wide, exposing those perfectly sharp prongs of teeth. She felt it though: a sharp pain followed by a sickening ache. A strange sensation.
She turned to look it in the eyes. Black eyes set in an arrow-shaped head, dark diamonds running down its brown back. She looked at it, unblinking, as it slowly wound itself back into the shadows.
Suddenly everything became hyper real, the strange crag of the rocks, one jutting stone looking almost like a dog’s head – she thought of her husky and wished he was at her side. She tried to steady her breathing and reached for the notebook and pencil she had tucked inside her pocket. She drew the head shape and the markings, making a note of the colours, and once she was sure she had all the information, she removed the sneaker from her left foot followed by her striped sock, cutting away the toe part with her penknife. Then she pushed her arm into the tube of knitted cotton and slipped it over the wound, not too tight but enough to support her deadening limb.
Slowly she began to move herself towards the road, keeping her arm down so that the bite wound was below her heart.
Looking behind her she saw the tree was gone, carried away by the tornado.
The farmer who drove by in his truck an hour later was surprised to see this young girl stumbling down the road on her own.
The doctor on duty in the local hospital was astonished when upon arrival she produced a notebook containing a perfect drawing of a Western Rattlesnake.
‘That’s … what … bit me,’ she said, her arm badly swollen by now and her voice losing its strength.
‘Smart of you, noting everything down like that,’ he said as he injected the antivenom. ‘Rattler venom can kill in two hours. If we’d wasted any time trying to identify the species, well …’
Which was why from that day on Ruby Redfort resolved to know every snake by the pattern of its skin – such knowledge might just save your life.
WHEN RUBY WAS TEN her father was due to take part in a tasting for the Olivarian Society, so called because in order to become a member of this esteemed club one had to blind taste twelve different types of olive, identifying the variety and the region in which they grew.
For reasons to do with bad weather in Boston, Sabina Redfort had failed to make her Twinford flight and was stranded at the east coast airport. Mrs Digby the housekeeper was on annual leave, Brant Redfort refused to leave his daughter home alone and his daughter refused to have a sitter. Therefore it was decided that Ruby would have to accompany her father to the club on Fuldecker Avenue, a grand old-fashioned building with plenty of carved wood and marble. It being highly irregular to bring a child to the club, Ruby was taken to the small club office, where she might read and wait out the two hours until her father was ready to go home.
Brant Redfort was blindfolded and led to a table on which twelve olive dishes were then placed. There were three olives that Brant Redfort found very difficult to place, but he filled in what he could and, once finished, his completed papers along with the olives were returned to the club office.
Ruby, who was fond of olives, had been his home-study partner and now had a very keen palette and a wide appreciation of olives from all regions. She decided therefore to take the test herself and, finding her father’s answers to be good but not great (considering the time he had given to this pursuit he should really have excelled), she amended his test sheet accordingly.
She detected every herb and every spice, and almost every variety of olive: young, old, barrelled in oak, pickled in sea brine, from the western slopes of Mount Etna and from the northern coast of Corfu.
Brant Redfort was declared a worthy Olivarian and was sworn into the club with a hearty cheer, and Ruby was able to get back to her book.
Some several years later …
WHEN RUBY REDFORT AROSE THAT MORNING, she could not have foreseen what kind of day it was going to turn out to be.
She certainly hadn’t meant to find herself running for all she was worth down the Amster back alleys, nor had she pictured how grateful she would be to see that dumpster in front of the Five Aces Poker Bar. It just happened that way. Sometimes things unfold in a way you could never predict.
RULE 1: YOU CAN NEVER BE COMPLETELY SURE WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN NEXT.
Actually, at the moment when she left the house, Ruby was expecting her Saturday to be entirely peaceful. Expecting and hoping. She hadn’t been sleeping well recently, and she wasn’t exactly feeling sharp. She was planning to nod hello to Ray Penny as she entered his secondhand bookshop; if the mood grabbed her she might even ask after his dog, Jake, who was recovering at the vets having poisoned himself by eating an entire bar of chocolate. Then she would browse the shelves for a good thriller and sit down to read. She didn’t feel like too much human interaction today.
True to the weather report, the wind was really beginning to take a hold, and as she headed down Cedarwood Drive her usually tidy dark hair was yanked free from its barrette and was now wildly wrapping across her face and over her glasses, making it very hard to see.
The ‘gusters’, as Twinford folk referred to them, had been blowing for the past fortnight, ever since the night of the Scarlet Pagoda Film Festival, an evening Ruby would never forget, for although it was not the first time she had fallen from a tall building, it was the first time she had been pushed from the top of one.
The building in question had been the Hotel Circus Grande and the pusher had been thief and psychopath Lorelei von Leyden. Ruby had not been the target, she had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time and, now Lorelei was incarcerated in a maximum security jail awaiting trial, Ruby could sleep more easily. Ruby felt Lorelei was one of those people who just might bear a grudge.
As she turned the corner into Main, Ruby spotted Del Lasco striding out of the recently opened Slush Store, her left hand gripping a blue ice drink, her right hand, newly sprained, in a sling and her face wearing a sour expression. Ordinarily Ruby would have been pretty pleased to see Del but on this particular afternoon she sensed something was brewing. Eleven seconds later and this feeling of foreboding was confirmed as Del and Ruby’s Junior High nemesis, Vapona Begwell, marched out of the store followed by several of her cronies. It was obvious to even the casual observer that Vapona wasn’t about to ask Del the time of day.
‘You wanna say that again, Lasco?’ Vapona shouted. ‘I didn’t quite catch it.’
‘You heard me, Bugwart,’ said Del.
‘So say it to my face, if you dare.’
‘If you’d point me in the direction of your face, I’d be glad to,’ replied Del.
Vapona didn’t wait for another insult, nor did she try and extract an apology, she just clenched her fist and aimed to sock Del right slam in the mouth, only Del, who was used to kids taking a swing at her, ducked and Vapona found her fist making contact with friend and sidekick Gemma Melamare, and it was Gemma’s dainty little snub nose that took the hit.
The sound that came out of Melamare’s mouth made everyone freeze in their tracks; everyone but Ruby. She took the opportunity to yank Del by the hood of her sweatshirt and propel her right across the road towards the back alleys off Amster. Vapona’s gang, spellbound