When the dream comes she is once again the snake, deep in the cavern. She goes to the stream and swims in it, quickly catching her fill of the plentiful fish it harbors. She remains in this form for some time, coming and going with the other snakes, while her body heals fully and regains its strength. But her spirit remains fevered with the thought of the evil priest, defiling the shrine above the cavern.

Finally the day comes when she arises from the cavern to confront the would-be priest in the shrine he has usurped. She goes early, gliding up through the forest as the sun is only beginning to brighten the world around her. She slips into the shrine and settles her coils in a shadowed corner to wait.

Before long one of the attendants, a girl she knows well, comes in to sweep away a few leaves that had blown in overnight. The girl seems subdued, not the bright, happy spirit she remembers, and does a perfunctory job, then sits on one of the wooden benches lining the walls of the shrine, head bowed, makeshift broom in hand, not even glancing toward the corner where she lies coiled. Formerly any one of the attendants would have been meticulous in this duty, joyfully sweeping every nook of the shrine. Clearly, things had changed.

Presently the false priest arrives, leading another of her childhood friends by the hand. The girl's reluctance shows on her face, but she makes no attempt to pull away from him.

"Come, my dear," says the usurper, "It is a new day, time to celebrate the fecundity of the Great Mother. It is your turn to share this sacred duty with me. The Great Mother would be displeased if you did not."

With her snake-form senses she does not only hear these words but knows the thoughts behind them, and his thoughts belie his words. She senses, too, what the girls are thinking, and knows they are not taken in, but fear him. The girl he has led in says nothing as he draws her toward one of the benches. The other girl rises to leave.

Seeing this, she slides out from her corner to the middle of the floor. The girl gasps, and freezes in her place. The false priest and his intended victim turn around at the sound. The girl beside him goes still, and he releases her hand, but otherwise appears unconcerned. She senses he knows that snakes, even ones as big as her, are generally timid and would prefer to escape from the presence of humans if so allowed. But he feels a pang of fear as this huge white one rears up on its long coils and swings its narrow head down toward his face.

The false priest takes a step forward and raises a threatening hand, hoping to frighten her away. Instead she swoops down and wraps him in her coils. He tumbles to the floor, powerless in her constricting grip. As she squeezes the breath from his lungs he looks beseechingly at the girls and gasps, "Help me!" But they just stand there, wide-eyed and motionless, watching.

While he and the girls watch, she begins her transformation. First her arms appear. Still holding him in her coils, she brings her hand to her mouth and takes from it a broken stone blade, the very one he had thrust into her side. Then she changes her snake-like head to fully human form, still deathly pale, surrounded by a cloud of white hair, and speaks. Her voice comes out raspy and hissing.

"False priest! Know that the Great Mother does not lightly allow one such as you to spill the blood of innocents and usurp the position of the Lamia!"

With that she uses the blade to nick a vein in his neck, and begins to lick his blood, emulating his own actions in drawing blood from his victims. As she does this, her awareness of his thoughts intensifies, and she begins to learn something of his past...

He was an outcast from those strange lands to the south, one whose evil ambitions had led him astray in the eyes of his fellows even there. He had brought those ambitions with him, and secretly dreamed of realizing them in this new place.

He had seen that to achieve these ambitions he had to displace the Lamia, but he had feared her power and her influence among the people, and dared not confront her directly. Indeed, he had heard legends of shamans that included among their powers the ability to assume the shape of any animal, to become the animal with which they sought to commune, and the Lamia was rumored to possess this ability. Seeing no evidence of it, he had dismissed those stories from his mind, but now he was learning they were more true than he could have imagined.

In spite of his skepticism, the stories had made him leery of the Lamia's power, so instead of opposing her openly, he spun tales of the south that insidiously challenged her ways and her authority. He sought thus to discredit her and become priest of the shrine in her stead. He secretly coveted not only her position in the community but also the shrine's young attendants, for the girls of this region were often lovely, with dusky skin, wavy chestnut hair, strong facial features and luminous green eyes, and none were more so than those who served the shrine.

He had begun telling tales about southern rituals which, he claimed, were very powerful and were the reason the people of those lands were so much wealthier than people here. When the Lamia actually gave in to the demands of her people to let him perform such a ritual, he laughed to himself at her stupidity, and lost his fear of her.

The day of the sacrifices had gone even better than he had hoped, for he had gotten rid of the Lamia and both of her daughters. He knew he had truly won the day, for no one else came forward to challenge him. He could see in the faces around him that his words had begun to ring hollow on some ears as he tried to justify the third sacrifice. But the younger daughter, in attacking him, had said "You took my sister and my mother, but you forgot about me!" This he had twisted to mean she wanted to join them, and thus he could claim he had only assisted her to that noble end. The doubters did not matter, for he now had the power he had craved, and could arrange for them to be sacrificed as well, if it came to that.

All this she comes to know as she swallows his warm human blood into her cold, reptilian, once nearly bloodless body. He begins swooning with apparent weakness. She stops and lays his body on the stone floor of the shrine, saying "Thus does the earth-mother claim the blood of the evil-doer to replenish the lost blood of the innocent." In this way she exacts vengeance and makes retribution for his crimes.

With the blood-vengeance satisfied her pallor fades, and as she resumes fully human form her human warmth and color also returns. Standing before the awed attendants, she says, "Behold your Lamia. As this false priest suffered, so shall any others who come to defile our shrine. The daughters of the Lamia will never again allow such evil to exist in our world." With these words she assumes her mother's position in the community.

One of the girls gives the new Lamia her outer robe, which she puts on before leaving the shrine to greet the other attendants. The two girls carry the limp form of the impostor between them. The other attendants are all stunned and overjoyed at this development, and when the two who had witnessed the Lamia's retribution tell their story, they are in awe as well. Several run off to spread the word of the Lamia's return.

The false priest, spiller of the blood of innocents, seems not to have the power or will to recover from his own blood-letting, and the Lamia has her attendants drag his nearly lifeless body unceremoniously off into the forest, no longer to despoil the sacred shrine, there leaving him to the mercy of the beasts. The Lamia takes a moment to survey her domain. She walks to the well-mouth deep in the grotto. Leaning on the low wall, she looks down into the cavern, sending a silent thank-you to her snake-friends below, and a farewell promise to her sister and mother to carry on the duties of the Lamia with pride. As she pushes herself erect, she takes note of the dark, healthy color of her hands on the wall, and smiles.