Free Savage (Daughters of the Jaguar) by Willow Rose

with the predator that had become my savior? I couldn’t. I had asked Maria to get me books from the library on near-death experience, and I read them all night. I had cut out every article I could find on jaguars in the newspapers and read every book about the animal that Maria brought me when I asked for it. I knew all there was to know, and yet I knew nothing about what had happened to me or why it had happened.
    “Tell me instead about the jaguar. It must have been real frightening to be face to face with an animal like that.”
    “But it wasn’t. I mean, at first I was afraid, but then …" I stopped myself as I looked into the journalist’s eyes and realized that she didn’t understand what I was saying. She would never understand.
    “You weren’t afraid of it?”
    I wanted badly to explain to her how the animal had looked me in my eyes and somehow reassured me that it wasn’t going to kill me, but I held back. I had no words to explain it properly so she would see it the way I saw it. “I guess I wasn’t afraid of dying anymore,” I said instead.
    The blond journalist looked at me with skeptical eyes.  “You weren’t afraid of dying? How can that be?"
    “Because I had already died once,” I said. “I died in that water with the alligators and then I rose above everything and saw the whole thing from above. And I saw my mother. She was there, too. She was waiting for me.”
    “Your mother? And she is also dead?” She talked like she thought I had definitely lost it. I couldn't blame her really.
    “Yes. She died nine years ago.”
    The journalist rubbed her forehead with her hand. “So, just to clarify. You died and had a near-death-experience is that it?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then you saw a lot of dead people or was it only your mother?”
    “I saw a whole bunch of them," I said. I didn't like where this was going. The character of her questions told me that she thought I was crazy. Explaining a thing like this to someone who has never experienced anything supernatural is close to impossible. "They were welcoming me. That's what I wanted to tell you. There is no need to be afraid of dying. It isn't a horrible thing. The only reason we are afraid of it is because we don't know what it is. What's waiting for us. But I kind of think that I might have been sent back to tell everybody about it. To tell them not to be afraid.”
    As I stopped talking I realized she was staring at me with wide-open eyes. An awkward silence followed and I knew for sure she didn't believe me.
    “And then what happened?” she said, sticking to the story and what she could actually put in her article without scaring off the readers.
    “I went back. I saw myself being dragged out of the water by the jaguar and then I felt the pain. I opened my eyes and looked into the face of the jaguar. At first I thought it was going to kill me but then … well, it didn’t.”
    The journalist took notes on her pad while nodding. “And so how do you feel today?”
    “I am good, I guess. I am still in some pain and I think a lot about life and appreciate everything a little more …” I paused. The voices in my head had become louder all of a sudden. They were drowning even the sound of my own voice. I couldn't hear myself talk any longer. I drank and shook my head slightly as I tried to stay calm and overhear them, pretend they weren't there. It usually worked, but not this time. Among the many noises one voice seemed clearer than the others. Tell her. Tell her, it repeated until I couldn't bear it any longer. Tell her now! Then it happened. I said something that neither of us shall ever forget:
    “By the way. You should keep the baby.”
    The journalist looked up from her pad and stared at me. I put a hand on my mouth when I realized what I had just said.
     “What?”
    To my surprise I didn't come up with an excuse or a simple explanation. I didn’t tell her I was rambling or pretending I hadn't said anything. I considered all of