Brigid Jorvik's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Brigid stepped out of the lodge into a grey that was not yet dawn. The god she had named was still coiled inside on the packed earth, breathing slow. A name was not enough. A god took root only when someone besides its maker saw it and knew what it was. If no witness spoke, the swamp would forget by noon and the shell-gatherers' curse would find bare scales to land on. She had one soul near enough to serve. He was sitting on the shrine steps with a crab-shell charm still in his hand. She walked to him through the wet reeds. Luca Omara looked up. He did not stand. He said he had waited because he wanted to see what she did next. Brigid said she needed him to come inside the lodge and look at the thing on her floor. He asked why her. She said because there was no one else awake in the swamp, and because he already knew too much to send away clean. He weighed that. Then he set the shell down on the step and followed her. Inside, the serpent lifted its head. The lamp caught the scales and the color slid across them like oil on water. Luca stopped in the doorway. His hand went to the wall for balance. Brigid watched his face and not the god. She needed to see the moment the knowing landed in him, because that was the thing she was buying with her trust. He said, quietly, that is a god. He said it the way a man names a fever he has had before. The serpent turned its flat head toward him. The floor of the lodge went cold under Brigid's feet. Outside, the reeds stopped moving in a wide ring. The swamp had heard a second mouth speak the truth of the thing, and the truth had set. Luca did not look away from the serpent. He said she should know something. He said the shell-gatherers were already on the water. He had passed their poles in the dark on his way in. He had not told her before because he had not decided whose side he was on. Brigid asked if he had decided now. He said he had decided to tell her, which was not the same thing. She stood between the witness she did not trust and the god that did not know her, and she understood she had spent a secret she could not take back. The serpent's tongue tasted the air near Luca's boot, not hers. The god was rooted. The witness knew her crime. And somewhere out past the tower, poles were pushing through black water toward an empty shrine.