Lilith's Arc

Chapter 3 of 40

Lilith leaned over the open book. The pages held rows of tight, sharp script. She waited for meaning to rise, the way sea-tongues always came to her. Nothing came. She traced one line with her finger and felt only cold ink. "I cannot read this," she said. "The words are strange to me." Selene sat across the flooded floor, her tattered dress fanned in the water. The pixie glowed on her chest, no longer Lilith's. The moon goddess did not look surprised. "Few can," she said. "The rites were written before your ocean had a name." Lilith's chest tightened. She had paid a living thing for these lessons. Now the first page had stopped her cold. "Then teach me the tongue," she said. "There is no time to teach you a dead language." Selene rose. Her bare feet made no sound in the water. "But there is one who remembers it." She walked to the far end of the hall, where broken shelves gave way to open dark. She lifted one thin hand and hummed a low note. The water stirred. From the shadows came a shape, huge and slow, scales the color of deep night. Silver moons marked its wings. It folded its great body near Selene and lowered its horned head to her palm. Lilith went still. The dragon watched her with pale eyes. It did not threaten. It simply waited, the way a guard waits. "This one served me before the flood," Selene said. She stroked the ridge of its snout. "It carries the old speech in its blood. It can give the words a voice you understand. But it will not do so for me alone." "What does it need?" Lilith asked. Selene's tired eyes met hers. "Blood, freely given. A drop of the one who wishes to learn. The rite must know your name before it opens to you." Lilith looked at the dragon's teeth, long as her arm. She thought of her husband asleep on land, of her three children growing older each year. She had already given the pixie. One more drop was nothing beside that. She swam close. The dragon lowered its head until its eye was level with hers. She pressed her palm to the sharp edge of one tooth and pulled. Pain bit her hand. A thread of blood spread in the water, dark and slow. The dragon breathed the blood in. Its chest glowed with a soft silver light. When it spoke, the sound came from deep in its throat, and Lilith understood every word. "Turn to the first page," it rumbled. "Speak after me." Lilith knelt over the book. The sharp script now made sense, letter by letter. She read the opening rite aloud, her voice shaking, and the pages warmed under her hands. The lesson had begun at last. But her cut hand still bled, and the dragon watched it. Selene said quietly, "It will want more before the end."