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Daniel?  
    Had I seen Daniel?
    The air near my right ear crackled, alive with a slow, electric rattle.  
    I froze.
    The rhythm sped up, shaking me from every other thought. I didn’t dare move, couldn’t move. From the corner of my eye, I saw the snake coil and rise up, it’s rattle held high, warning me, threatening me. It was lightening aimed directly at me.
    If I moved, if I breathed, I was dead. I closed my eyes, please, please let it go away. The rattle persisted, loomed louder in my ear until it was joined by the snake’s hiss. All I could see in my minds eye was the strike, the explosive burst, the fangs sinking fast and deadly into the soft flesh of my cheek. The release of poison, the slow drip of death quickened by the speed of my own blood rushing through my body, betraying me with my hearts every pump.  
    The rattling reached its crescendo then shook down into silence.  
    Was that a good sign? Would it now slither away and leave me to not die here alone in the desert with no hope of ever reaching medical care in time. I knew nothing about snakes. The hissing had stopped as well but I didn’t dare open my eyes, I was too afraid any movement, no matter how slight, would invite the snake to go ahead and take a bite.
    “Are you just going to lie there all night?” someone asked me.
    Startled, my eyes flew open. Next to me, where the snake had been only a moment before, a guy with dark blond hair and brown eyes stared down at me.  
    I sat up and he took a step back. We stared at each other while time and space shifted in my confused mind and he grinned, self satisfied, calm—as if he were only waiting for me to catch up.
    For the first time since bursting through the end of the cactus tunnel, I examined the space around me, I glanced again at the guy, then examined the space all around us.
    Here, on the other side, the desert had sprouted a lush forest that looked hundreds of years old. Ten feet from where I sat, the sand and dirt gave way to a soft, dark earth. A cool breeze rustled the giant trees in front of me, filling my face with the scent of pine and growth, lifting my hair in a wild frenzy around my head. Only when the air lost its breath and the trees settled back into a shushed sway did I look back into his face.
    “What is happening?” I asked.  
    He looked up into the night sky above us, “A simple question,” he said and returned his gaze back to me. “Without a simple answer I’m afraid.”  
    “Who are you?”  
    “You can call me Ray.”
    The forest stirred again before us. I narrowed my eyes at him, “Where are we?” A thought suddenly occurred to me. “Do I know you?”
    He smiled and shrugged. “You do, and you don’t.”
    “Who are you?”
    “I already answered that one.”
    “Then what are you?”  
    “Another not simple answer.”
    “Why do you look so familiar to me?”
    “Because the way I looked before seemed to be making you nervous.”
    I narrowed my eyes at him, “What are you talking ab…” I watched, stunned into silence as Ray’s face and head contorted into the head of the snake I had seen only minutes before. A cold wave rolled through me as my breath stopped and my heart beat hard in my chest. Every part of me wanted to run, dive back into the suffocation of the tunnel behind me but the terrifying idea of this thing chasing me down kept me still.  
    “Now see,” the snake mouth spoke. It was Ray’s voice with a forked tongue that slipped between the words. “I can tell you’re really scared right now.” He shook his reptilian head. “Why do humans hate snakes?”  
    When I didn’t answer he shifted the skin and bones of his head back into the image of Ray and sighed. “Better?” he asked. He felt his cheeks for a moment, as if checking to make sure everything had sifted back into the proper order, and then smoothed his hair back away from his face. “It’s probably best if you think of me as your guide.”
    “Guide to what?” My