She was searching for a clothes peg when it struck. Alice would later think that if she had seen it first, or even heard it rustling in the fabric, she might have been able to keep silent. But no, she felt it first, when she slid her hand underneath the blankets in the tool shed. As she groped for the missing peg, something slithered over her wrist. She jerked her hand back. A short but terrified shriek escaped her throat.
She only screamed once, but it was enough to send Uncas sprinting into the shed. His eyes landed on her as she stood frozen against the wall, and then followed her gaze to the serpent coiled in a tense ball in the corner. "Did it bite you?" he asked.
Mutely, Alice shook her head. Uncas stepped inside and shut the door. Moving carefully, he crossed the gap to the petrified reptile. Now that the shock had worn off, she could see by its black and yellow stripes that it was a harmless garter snake. For a moment Alice almost felt sorry for it; with the door shut they had cut off its only escape route. A cold embarrassment sunk in her chest. Had she forgotten to close it the night before? The snake hissed at Uncas and Uncas's arm snapped forward, locking his fingers around the snake just below its head.
Her chest began to untighten and relax, but what Uncas did next caught her completely unprepared. He held out his hand to her, the one holding the garter snake, and with his other hand beckoned her forward. Alice folded her arms patiently across her waist.
"Uncas, please tell me you're not serious."
"Come on," he said. Alice closed her eyes. This was becoming an old routine between them. There were a few times, the truly perilous times, when Uncas would stand between her and her fears. But more often he stood on the other side, gently coaxing her out of them. It had puzzled her the first few weeks they had known each other. She wondered why he would bother. His invitation to her in mid-autumn had been simple: Come and live with me. Later, as autumn turned to winter and Alice grew used to walking in snowshoes and drinking water from the icicles on their door lintel, the invitation had transformed into something even simpler: Come, and live.
Alice stared at the snake and its black eyes that unnervingly refused to blink. It was thrashing horribly in Uncas' hand. It did not comfort her to think that it was even more terrified than she was.
"Come on," Uncas repeated. He never ordered her to do anything, and he was not ordering her now. If she bolted for the door, he wouldn't bring it up again with her or anyone else. It was a very strange husband she had chosen for herself.
Alice braced her hands against the wall and pushed herself forward. This was their home; if she could not be brave here she could not be brave anywhere. As her feet closed the gap, Uncas' fingers closed around her left wrist. The steadiness in his grip gave her a sense of being pulled downward and rooted to the ground. Reaching forward, she let the back of her knuckle graze the snake's stomach. By now the animal was nearly hysterical with fear. Its tail whipped against her wrist as it tried to escape. With a sudden impetus of courage—she did not think it would last long—she seized the serpent's tail with her right hand to stop its thrashing. It immediately went rigid. Its skin felt cold and rough under her palm, and she shivered in spite of herself. A trail of goosebumps crawled up her arm. Uncas let go of her left wrist but kept his grip on the serpent.
"Never grab a snake by the tail. It won't be able to bite if you hold it underneath its head," he told her. Because it was a warning, he did not smile, but a subtle warmth betrayed itself in his eyes. It was more than pride; the expression in those eyes told her he had never doubted she would rise to the challenge. It sent an odd feeling into her stomach. No one else had looked at her with that sort of confidence before.
All the same, she was glad it was Uncas who pushed the door open and tossed the snake outside.